Hello Losties! How is everyone out there doing? I don’t really have much to share, but I thought the information was worthy enough for a new blog. A little mix of Good News and definitely some Bad News.
LOST: MISSING PIECES
Let’s start with the good! Looks like the Mob-i-sodes, originally intended for Verizon customers have been converted to WEB-I-SODES and they started yesterday! They are called LOST: Missing Pieces, they’ll be 2-3 minutes in length, and the first one focuses on our fearless (albeit, sometimes whiny) leader Jack. Sounds like there are going to be 13 of these with one airing every Monday. Check it out! Not much that I can see to discuss in this episode. Just some Father/Son bonding prior to Jack's wedding to Sarah. I'll have to watch again to see if I missed something! Feel free to share your thoughts!
WRITER'S STRIKE
Ideally the Web-I-Sodes would've led right into the season 4 premiere of LOST, but of course, there is some potential bad news that could prevent this! Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or just pretending not to believe….all of our talented writers of all of our favorite scripted TV shows are on STRIKE! Why are they on strike? Well the reason seems justified to me. They’re planning for the future, and the future is on different mediums of distribution (i.e. DVD, and Internet). Writers are getting pennies on DVDs containing their scripted content and they don’t see ANYTHING on episodes airing over the internet (I’m guessing this probably includes Itunes, Amazon.com sales and various other distributors). Hell, if I was a writer, I’d be demanding the same things. Alas, they have hit a stalemate with the studios who are refusing to budge on their latest proposal.
How does this affect TV land? Well, they’re running out of scripts that they can film! 24 has already been postponed indefinitely until the strike is resolved. The Office has 1 more episode to air and then they’re on hiatus until a resolution has been made (the actors are standing by the writers and refuse to cross the picket line). LOST? Oh LOST….I’m hearing some bad things about LOST. They currently have 8 Episodes that they are finishing, and the remaining 8 scripts have yet to be written. Carlton Cuse used his favorite Harry Potter comparison to airing the 8 episodes in February without the rest stating that it would be like starting a Harry Potter book, and getting to the middle and realizing the rest of the pages weren’t finished yet. (I definitely paraphrased because I’m too lazy to look up the quote!)
Anyway, there are talks that LOST could be postponed indefinitely as well until the whole season can be shown uninterrupted. And the scariest news I’ve heard so far is that this PUSH may be as late as February 2009!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Damon Lindeloff wrote an editorial for the New York Times that seems to show both sides of the debate (writers/studios). It's one grand disaster and whatever the result is, could dictate the way TV is heading in the next 5-10 years. Check out the article!
From what I read today, it sounds like there won't be any strike settlement until at LEAST January. At that point there will still be time to strike a deal before the season is cancelled until 2009. Worst Case scenario? You're going to see some much more in-depth analysis on American Idol this year due to my lack of effort on the LOST blog! Let's just pray it doesn't come to that!
In the meantime, let's watch these web-i-sodes and see if they shed any light on LOST, buy the season 3 DVD/Blu-Day Disc on December 11th, and keep holding onto hope that this Strike will have a favorable conclusion! See you in the near future, I hope!
