All is Lost: Final Friday

As the hours tick away toward the Television Event of the Decade, the New York Times giveth, the New York Times taketh away:

Last night saw a big Lost event at the Paley Center in New York with many comments and cheers and spoilers:

Cuse and Lindelof allowed that they can’t answer everything to everyone’s satisfaction, but they also thought some things have been made too much of. As an example, they responded to a fan’s query about the psychic who insisted both that Claire’s unborn child would be special and that she had to get on a plane to Los Angeles with the fact that an episode in Season Two had revealed that character — the only one who ever said Aaron was special — as a hoax. But that seems to rarely satisfy those who watch the show. “We’ll give these explanations, and people will be, like, ‘Nope. Why is he special?'” Lindelof said.

Note the above article includes a HUGE spoiler. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.

After sponsoring this nice event, Times TV crtic Mike Hale totally nails the weaknesses this season and the problem of wrapping up a mystery. Unlike previous mystery shows like The Prisoner and Twin Peaks, the landscape is even more treacherous:

The contract between author and audience is being rewritten throughout our culture. Certainly we have always expected the satisfaction of resolution and revelation in our fictional narratives, but we had to let creators provide it on their own terms and then judge the overall result. “Lost” is a sign that that’s not so true anymore, at least with regard to television. Now that the public conversation about how a work should play out can be louder, and have greater impact, than the work itself, the conversation will inevitably begin to shape the work in ways that earlier television producers — or, say, Charles Dickens — never had to reckon with.

ALSO, another Carlton interview

CUSE: It’s far more about the character relationships that resonate. The thing is that people talk a lot about the mythology of “Lost,” but we probably spent 85 percent of our time in the writers’ room talking about the characters, and I think that’s why the show was a broad audience show as opposed to a genre show. While the mythology was important, first and foremost the show was about the characters. I think that a lot of people care much more about what’s going to happen to Kate. Is she going to end up with Jack, is she going to end up with Sawyer? That’s why we feel like a lot of shows that have tried to imitate “Lost” make the fundamental mistake of having the characters just focus on the mythology. If you watch certain shows like that, you’ll see all the characters are talking about is, “What’s that dinosaur in my bathtub?”

Also, NY Mag makes every dream come true with this “Shirtless moment” compilation.