I have tremendous respect for my colleague, Fred Topel. He created the Best Episode Ever column for CraveOnline. And while I don’t always agree with his choices, I can see his side of the argument.
At least that was true going into last week’s column, when Fred choose “Across the Sea” as the Best Episode Ever of “Lost.” And he was wrong. “Across the Sea” may be a personal favorite of Fred’s, but it’s pretty damn far from the Best Episode Ever. It’s not even the best episode in the sixth season of “Lost!”
One of Fred’s arguments is that “Across the Sea” solves several mysteries of “Lost” while unveiling the backstory of Jacob (Mark Pellegrino) and the Man in Black (Titus Welliver). But honestly, who really cares about Jacob and the Man in Black? Yes, they are important to the mythology of “Lost,” but they were never central characters.
“Lost” only existed because ABC President Lloyd Braun wanted a drama series that mixed in elements of Cast Away, “Survivor” and even “Gilligan’s Island.” After Jeffrey Lieber took a pass at it, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof were the writers who eventually created “Lost” as we know it. They took ABC’s unworkable ideas and turned them into something truly special while working alongside a talented team of writers including Paul Dini, David Fury and Javier Grillo-Marxuach, among others.
There’s no question that the mysteries of “Lost” played a huge part in making it into a hit. But “Lost” was never about just the mystery or unanswered questions. “Lost” was the story of a group of incredibly diverse survivors who each had compelling backstories and different agendas of their own.
That’s the lesson that so many of the “Lost” imitators never took to heart. “Surface,” “Threshold” and even ABC’s “Invasion” were rolled out to ride the coattails of “Lost” and they all ran for a single season because they couldn’t make a large audience care about even a single character as much as they did for anyone in “Lost’s” ensemble cast.
One day, if there’s a “Worst Series Ever” column here at CraveOnline, I’ll go on at length about “FlashForward,” another one of ABC’s attempts to recreate “Lost” that was all mystery surrounded by the most dull and flaccid characters imaginable.
Very few people are willing to admit this, but creating a successful TV series often comes down to luck in addition to skill. The same is true in casting and there’s a certain alchemy involved when it comes to finding performers who can not only play off of each other, but do so with undeniable chemistry. That’s not easy and the creative team had to scramble to get the cast of “Lost” together on an accelerated production timetable.
Somehow, “Lost” had just the right mix of performers and characters that helped carry it for six blockbuster seasons on ABC. Nothing has come close to that level of success in nearly ten years. Even “The Walking Dead’s” highest rated episode falls several million viewers shy of matching “Lost” at it’s peak. This show was a cultural phenomena and it may be impossible to recapture that level of success in today’s television industry.
When picking the Best Episode Ever of “Lost,” there are a lot of potential candidates. The two part pilot episode is nearly immaculate and the twist ending in “Through The Looking Glass” is one of the best in TV history.
The most popular episode of “Lost” is probably “The Constant,” an amazing story that put Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) front and center for an unusual time travel tale that focused on Desmond’s intense love for Penny Widmore (Sonya Walger). Remember that alchemy I was talking about? Cusick and Walger had incredible chemistry together. And yet when Walger was one of the leads on “FlashForward,” she had no chemistry with either of her love interests.
“The Constant” is the safe pick, but it’s not the one that I’m going with. Instead, my choice is “Walkabout,” the third or fourth episode (depending upon whether you count the pilot as one episode or two) from the first season of “Lost.”
