Lost in "Lost"

I couldn't resist: I bought a copy of "Bad Twin". It's a fiction written by a fictional person, a character that has not  (yet) appeared in the television series Lost, presumably one of the other passengers to whom we haven't been introduced -- yet. Or possibly one that was actually killed in the crash.

I haven't finished the book, but it's actually a pretty good story, pretty well written. The kind of story written by the writing team putting out the script for Lost. You can't find out from the the front or back pages of the book, who (meaning, the real live human beings) actually wrote the book. So I'm assuming it's the same writing team that produces the script.

I am, however, totally impressed by the production quality of this show. I watched the season finale last night (five days late, thanks to TiVo). What a great show. A good book. Lost is clearly a merchandising program and the group that produces it, Touchstone Television, has figured out that it has a property that can be extended. I don't remember an instance of a television show producing a book for commercial sale that is part of the plot and theme of the show itself. Much less having that book appear on the New York Times bestseller list!

All these guys have to do is be careful about over-manipulating their audience. (Of course, it's in character to be manipulative, since the most likely scenario in the show is that the cast itself is being manipulated in some kind of giant mind game.) But during the season, Lost rarely appeared two weeks in a row. Lord knows why they wouldn't put the program on every week, at least mostly, to create an addictive habit in the audience. Even TiVo users notice when one of their favorite shows is so irregular as to not satisfy an existing addiction.

Comments

[Chris Hanson]

"Twin Peaks" had a couple of associated books including "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer" - the existence of which played a prominent role in the plot, though not a lot of what was in it was revealed - as well as "Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes" which goes into some of the background behind Agent Cooper and his relationship to both the mystery of the series and the Wyndham Earl character.

Of course, "Lost" is one of the few series that has been compared to "Twin Peaks" in a meaningful fashion, considering that pretty much any series that has even a whiff of mystery about it has had that comparison made...

[david grady]

Actually one of the things I like about Tivo is the way it allows for non-weekly shows to be regularly watched without studying the schedule. "Weekly" is a tough schedule to maintain for anything other than sitcoms, if that. Burns up the writing ideas too quickly. Compare for instance Murder She Wrote with Monk.