Thursday, June 14, 2007

Lost: Will It End Like The Sopranos?
Fastforward to May 2010. For six years Lost fans have been following the misadventures of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, and it's all come down to one final hour of the show. It looks like they're going to be rescued, but the remaining Others are closing in fast, and maybe they won't get on the helicopter after all. The music begins drumming louder and louder, and suddenly the helicopter pilot puts loudspeakers in the windows of the heli, a la Apocalypse Now, only, instead of the Ride of the Valkyries, the speakers are blasting Journey's "Don't Stop Believing." Just as Sawyer, panting and out of breath from running, spits out, "SON of a BITCH, I HATE this song!" the screen suddenly goes black. Fans everywhere think their satellite has gone out, there are five seconds of blank screen, and the credits begin silently rolling. That sound you then hear is 16 million viewers screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOO!"


Don't worry. It ain't gonna happen. According to an article in the NYT yesterday, while Damon and Carlton loved the ending of The Sopranos, with its ambiguity and stadium rock (seriously, I can NOT get that song out of my head), they won't be doing the same thing. Damon told the NYT, “I’ve seen every episode of the series. I thought the ending was letter-perfect.” He explains that he went upstairs to bed following the show, but just laid there for 2 hours thinking how great it was, and how it was the perfect ending. Carlton wasn't so quick to like it, though, admitting that he was initially frustrated, but after pondering it, realized “In that blank screen, there was a certain kind of purity in the choice Chase made to make it the fulcrum of the ending.” (His reaction was more like mine, taking about a day to sink in and actually like it.)


Tim Kring, creator of Heroes, wasn't as enthusiastic. He hadn't been watching the show lately, and came back to it this season to see how it would end. He found “the storytelling in the finale a bit disjointed, so that you lost the cause and effect of some scenes.” While my immediate reaction after reading this was, "Well, it was a HELL of a lot better than YOUR finale, and you just had to wrap up one season," it also gives me a lot of hope that he's aiming for something much bigger for the ending of his show.


If the enthusiasm of Darlton makes you worried about a similar blackout on Lost, however, don't fear. A Reuters story appeared today where they qualified their statements, and assured that they wouldn't do that.


More excitingly, however, they announced that this fall they will be introducing "mobisodes" to help fill the gap between the May finale and the February startup. While these eps will be tied in to Verizon Wireless (blech), the eps will be about 90 seconds each and will eventually air on ABC.com (they hope).

Cuse said the mobisodes, about 90 seconds each, will give hardcore "Lost" viewers more information that they probably weren't going to get through the show itself. What it won't be, they said, was a mini version of "Lost."

"It needs to be interesting enough and well produced enough that people feel they're
getting enough bang for their buck, even if it's free, the bang for their time," Lindelof said.

Lindelof said the negotiations for the talent took a long time, but they wanted to make sure that all of them were involved in the mobisodes. "Nobody wanted to see two people sitting on a beach that we've never heard of talking and saying, 'Hey, did you hear what Jack and Kate did today?' You want to see Jack and Kate. It's taken us three years to get those deals in place," Lindelof said.


Now, whether or not Canadian fans will be able to access them is a different story. So to the American fans, please find a way to download them and put them on YouTube for us Canucks. ;)


Read the rest of the story for a funny mention of Nikki and Paulo. :)


In other Sopranos news, and for my reader (why isn't there more than one?) who hated the Sopranos finale, check out the Salon review, which referred to the ending as sparking riots of ziti hurling in New Jersey.


The Globe and Mail reviewer (who typically I don't give a lot of weight to, but whatever) liked it.


The National Post reviewer (ditto) did not. (But since their search engine is complete crap, I can't find it to link to it. Read the Salon review; it's better.)


And totally unrelated, here's a funny pic I found on a MySpace site. Anything to get another pic of Desmond on here. :)



In tomorrow's blog: I've seen Knocked Up, and I'm mad as hell. They TOTALLY ripped off my first pregnancy!!!!!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just for the heck of it, us Lost fans should come up with a song that would be great to end Lost on, in case they did do the blackout thing...

Picture it...Jack sitting all by himself...in the dark with his Chia beard, with tears streaming down his eyes...he turns the radio on...a song comes on...

Silence...

LOL...I gotta think about which song :)

Chris in NF said...

Really, at that point, I think anything by Aqua would fit the mood. ;-)

This post has me thinking, Nikki, further to what I was saying in my last comments about series finales tending to be anticlimactic. It's not really the case with *season* finales, is it? Again, I think because seasons tend to have a relatively cohesive story arc, their finales can pack a bigger punch ...

what's everone's fave season finales? I'll nominate my number one -- or number ones, since it's a dead heat between two season twos: Buffy and the West Wing. I can't watch the former without tears welling ... the Sarah McLachlan, the distressed and isolated Buffy, that bus departing Sunnydale ...

And in the latter, that amazing sequence where Bartlet walks through the rain to the strains of "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits, and deliberately avoids the easy question to take the question on reelection ... so cool.

And to link this up to today's theme: both finales that made great use of music, no? (in fact, "Brothers in Arms" would be a great Lost finale song -- maybe enough time will have passed that they can plunder it)

Saza said...

Most clever/funny finale of all time:

The Newhart Show

Nikki Stafford said...

Roland: Man, you've got me thinking now... As much as I'd love to see Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" somehow, it's been overused. Maybe it'll be something new like the song they used for the finale of Six Feet Under. I'd never heard that song before hearing it there, and now I can't hear that song without immediately associating it with that ending.

But then again, as Chris says, "Barbie Girl" would be the perfect ending, don't you think?

Or perhaps a Manilow classic, but in Jack's grieving state, he'd hear different words:
"O Katherine
You came and you sle-ept with Sawyer..."

Chris: Great question... and great minds clearly think alike, because if I had to choose what my favourite season finale was that was NOT a series finale, I'd also choose "Becoming Part 2." Slays me every single time. And actually, the recent Lost finale. I thought "Through the Looking Glass" was brilliant.

Anonymous said...

And in the latter, that amazing sequence where Bartlet walks through the rain to the strains of "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits, and deliberately avoids the easy question to take the question on reelection ... so cool.

definitely one of my all-time favourite season finales of any show, ever. it was simply beautiful. just thinking of that final sequence gives me chills.

K J Gillenwater said...

I really believe more people are claiming to 'like' the Sopranos ending, because it is the cool, artsy thing to say. Just like all those people that go to funky poetry readings. You know many of them are there just to look cool, not because they actually like or understand the poetry being read.

What is wrong with wanting a typical ending with an actual conclusion? Somehow I am made to feel like some mouth-breathing troglodyte (not here, Nik, but other commentaries on the finale) because I didn't 'get' or like Chase's vision.

It is very much like the debate that goes on about literary vs. commercial fiction. And I'm just tired of it.

Most of the Sopranos audience was not there for Chase's artistic take on the mob. Wish he respected that a little more.

But...I am SO glad that LOST will not have a similar ending. I never thought it would, but it's good to be reassured by the powers-that-be.

Anonymous said...

Last Lost song?

Gotta be Wonderwall.

Anonymous said...

"SON of a BITCH, I HATE this song!"
^ROTFL. Sad thing is, he probably would scream that.

I never considered LOST ending like The Sopranos (I don't watch Sopranos, but my Mom told me about the ending). If they did end it like that, it wouldn't be as satisfactory. Noone would know any answers, and fans would be horrfied.
Glad to know the writers aren't doing that.

Anonymous said...

I know this is COMPLETELY off topic, but it is LOST related. What do you think next year's season opening song will be? I was thinking maybe "Good Vibrations" because it kind of fits the theme/genre of the previous two and it also would be an ode to Charlie. Of course, it'll probably bee a more Ann-Margret, female singer type song. I love that kind of music...

Anyway... love the site. This particular entry was a great read for some reason. Can't wait for the book! Ah!

-Brian (www.furtherinstructions.com)

Anonymous said...

Nik:

On an unrelated topic, here is video compilation of the crash sequence of events from Lost that I thought you might enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu3SxqSrAOM

Anonymous said...

I'm finally reading 'Finding Lost' - and I think this passage from your section on The Turn of the Screw is appropriate in light of the Sopranos finale.

"Perhaps the writers will eventually end the show as abruptly as James ended his novella, leaving the real ending and interpretation for the audience to decide. But if they do, they'd better not be walking down any dark alley near fan conventions afterward..."

Do you think the Sopranos writers read your book? Do you think you were just being prescient?