Finding the Lost Trail

The cast of Lost. Courtesy CTV.

Every TV show prays for a season-ender like the one Dallas pulled off in 1980, when lead character J.R. Ewing opened the door to a pistol blast from an unseen assailant.

Fade to credits, roll commercial. Not only did the season end with our not knowing if the “human oil slick,” as Time magazine called J.R., was about to dry up — we didn’t even know who was holding the sponge.

The finale made the entire season seem more tantalizing. “Who shot J.R.?” bumper stickers appeared within a week. Vegas bookmakers were still taking action on which of 15 likely candidates popped Ewing minutes before the fall denouement aired to a 53.3 share in the U.S.

Today, shows typically end with a Dallas-style cliffhanger or by tying up the season with a perfect bow made of loose plot strings. But as we inch towards the May 25 finale of one of the season’s hottest shows, fans are wondering where you go with a series like Lost — a show that provides a cliffhanger before every commercial and has by now accumulated enough loose plot lines to carry Tarzan swinging through the jungle.

Although Desperate Housewives, which finished May 22, is this season’s breakthrough hit, my guess is that Lost has captured more water coolers. Certainly no rookie series this past season has offered more harrowing plot turns and mysterious characters.

The storyline is a classic hybrid — Survivor meets Robinson Crusoe on the way to Jurassic Park. A plane goes down in the Pacific, with 40-odd survivors washing ashore on a tropical island. They are not alone. A monster stirs the forest. There’s also a prowling polar bear, potential survivors from a previous plane crash and, most mysterious of all, a locked hatch with a gleaming portal on the jungle floor.

Castaway Kate Ryan (Evangeline Lilly). Courtesy CTV.

Not only that, one character has built a raft and is now choosing best mates. But monsoon season is coming. Who gets to leave and will they make it? Or will the rough beast that slouches through the jungle finally announce it is ready for dinner?

And what about the characters — what sent fugitive Kate (Canadian Evangeline Lilly) on her pre-island killing spree? Will crazier-than-Kurtz John Locke (Terry O’Quinn) depose island leader Jack Shepard?

Up until a month ago, the creators of the ABC series didn’t have any of these answers. In April, one writer acknowledged that Shepard (Matthew Fox) had been scheduled to be killed mid-season. But the good Shepard grew on producers. Now he’s the series star, sure to make it through the show’s two-hour finale. We think.

In other words these guys have been making it up as they go along. That the airplane pilot died in the series pilot was another of creator J.J. Abrams's (Alias, Felicity) morbid jokes — a sure sign that Lost was in delirious free fall. The show’s creative philosophy would seem to be madman Locke’s favourite motto: “The island will tell us what to do.”

It’s not unusual for a TV show to have late unresolved issues. The makers of Dallas didn’t know who shot J.R. until days before the denouement. They filmed pretty well everyone in the cast pulling the trigger, then at the eleventh hour went with Kristin (Mary Crosby), the pregnant mistress he’d framed yada, yada, yada ...

Still, no show has left audiences itching with more questions going into a season finale since Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s 1991 TV hallucination. That’s not a good omen, for audiences walked away from that finale with a collective shrug, with few making an effort to see the subsequent film prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

Many of the speculative endings proffered by feverish bloggers might prove disastrous to the health of the series. (Conspiracy theories include: Lost is a dream; it’s a Truman Show government experiment; the characters are already dead and are now in purgatory, auditioning for a greater reward.)

I’m betting that Lost pulls it off and that the first season finale will, at the very least, solve the mystery of its most fascinating character — unlocking, as it were, O’Quinn’s John Locke.

The mysterious John Locke (Terry O'Quinn). Courtesy CTV.

Locke is the guy who has been fiddling with the hatch, banging away with catapults and his own bleeding fists at the mystery chamber. And the actor, who nursed the monster in The Stepfather (1987) to life, is having the time of his career playing Lost’s most mysterious seeker. The show’s creators evidently love writing for him, probably because he brings a Twilight Zone glow to the most innocent exchanges.

Here’s Locke a couple of shows back, examining an insect in the jungle with Charlie (Dominic Monaghan).

Locke: “What do you suppose is in the cocoon, Charlie?”

Charlie: “Dunno. Butterfly, I guess.”

Locke: “No-no, it’s more beautiful than that. That’s a moth cocoon. It’s ironic, butterflies get all the attention, but moths, they spin silk. They’re stronger. Faster.”

Charlie: “That’s wonderful, but...”

Locke: “You see this little hole? This moth’s about to emerge. It’s in there right now, struggling, digging its way through the thick side of the cocoon. Now I could help it — take my knife, gently widen the opening and the moth would be free — but then it would be too weak to survive...”

He concludes the speech with a smile that could belong to either a happy gardener or a psychotic killer.

We’ll soon see what emerges, digging and struggling, from Lost’s eight-month, first-season cocoon. It promises to be an irresistible show — must-see TV, as they say.

Finales are hard to pull off, though. The audacity required to pull off a shock ending ensures the occasional spectacular failure. Ironically, Dallas, the show that benefitted from the most successful season finale ever, was irreparably damaged by the worst year-ender ever.

At the end of the 1984-85 season, Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Ratings plummeted. A season passed. Then Bobby showed up first show of the 1986-87 season, lathering up in the shower. Turns out his wife (Victoria Principal) had dreamed up the whole previous season.

After that, few dreamed of watching Dallas again.

Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.