ABC & Disney Should Sanction the “Chronologically Lost” Fan-Edit of the Show
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The series LOST is a controversial one, but at the time it aired it was a true cultural sensation. However, as I noted while writing about the series finale of 12 Monkeys, the entire last season left viewers feeling frustrated. To echo an overused phrase, they didn’t stick the landing. Still, this series is not without its super-fans. Mike Maloney is one, devoting hours of his life to a project that, due to modern copyright law, can only be seen illegally. It’s called Chronologically LOST, which explains its premise in such a straightforward manner that it’s almost ironic when paired with this of all series. Yet, ABC and Disney would be wise to find Mr. Maloney and legitimize this project, because it actually helps bolster LOST’s legacy as a truly remarkable piece of storytelling.
In case it’s not clear by the name, Chronologically LOST takes all the episodes of the series and 14 online-only videos and recuts them into chronological order. That means that all those off-island flashbacks appear in this version of the series totally divorced from the island stories they were originally paired with. Those long-awaited chapters from the final season about the history of the island, its mythology, and central characters are revealed right in the beginning. The fifth season, the one with all the time-travel? It’s scattered throughout the series, and the bulk of it plays out before we even see theplane crash.
In an interview with Esquire, Damon Lindelof was asked about this project and if he’d heard of it or seen any of the episodes. Here is how he replied:
“ I wish I had the time to watch that and I love it when fans reshape the story to fit their own specifications. But for us, so much time and energy went into designing these episodes. So the idea that someone unwound all that stuff just to tell the show in chronological order makes it the least interesting version of Lost. I watched the Godfather movies in chronological order and it was just so much worse.”
His partner and co-showrunner, Carlton Cuse said that ABC even asked them to do something similar, but he flatly refused. He said the show doesn’t “work” that way, but he’s wrong. In fact, to suggest that this is the “least interesting” version of the show is unfair to the point of being almost cruel. It also shows me that that they don’t really have confidence in their stories’ ability to stand on their own. They don’t believe only a “part” of those narratives are worth telling. In fairness, I understand this. This show was their creation. As much as they cared about the mythology of the show, their first loves were the characters themselves. Chronologically LOST does undo a lot of that character work.
For example, in this project perhaps the single greatest episode of the show, Season four’s “The Constant,” is shredded in two: one half set in 1996 and the other set in 2004. Watching this way, you experience that episode not from Desmond’s (Herny Ian Cusick) point-of-view, but rather from Penny’s (Sonya Walger). The episode “Dave” is also split in two, with Evan Handler’s one-episode guest spot split in this series by more than 30 episodes. It’s because of this, that I don’t think anyone’s first experience with Lost should be this version of the show. (Though, if you’re considering it, reach out because I would love to know how it goes.)
Personally, I came to the show late. I was going through the process of deploying to Iraq when it premiered and didn’t return until after the second season finished airing. The first place I worked after leaving the service was a terrible law office, but the assistants all loved the show. Listening to them talk about the episodes and what they thought was happening made them sound, to me, like crazy people. I could also tell that the show frustrated them, but that only made them want to know the answers to their questions even more. It wasn’t until much later, after I’d heard the show would be given a proper ending, that I decided to give it a go.
Thanks to fortuitous timing, I finished the end of season four about a week before the fifth season premiered. I’d just binge-watched the whole show (before that was even really a thing). I wanted to watch the final season live, because it was sure to be a cultural moment. I also wanted to see if the writers could stick the landing. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I’d gotten it wrong. Yes, the show was ending, but there was to be one more season after the one I’d watched live. The long agonizing four months between the finale and the final season premiere was awful, and I couldn’t have imagined doing that for years. That I missed all that may be why I really liked the final season and all they did with it.
By the time the last season aired, I’d watched the first five seasons twice (a re-watch helped scratch the mystery-itch over that summer). To even things out, I watched season six twice. Then I did a third re-watch a year or so later when my daughter wanted to watch the series. It took us about a year or so to get through the whole show. She actually liked taking time between the episodes to puzzle through the mysteries, even though the answers were a single Google search away. Because this is the golden age of television, I hadn’t revisited the show for years after that. Finally, while thinking about time-travel, I looked up the clip where John Locke (Terry O’Quinn) gets to watch the ageless Richard (Nestor Carbonell) patch up an injury on an earlier, time-traveling version of himself.
Sucked into a YouTube spiral, I soon saw the above clip of how the chronological series handles moments from different episodes that happen simultaneously. (More on that, later.) That’s when I really discovered that the re-edit of the show existed, and even though new shows are as good as ever, I thought it might be fun to check this out. Sadly, because of DMCA rules, there is no way to legally watch this fan-edit. About two dozen or so episodes exist on different user-driven streaming sites, and I watched them. Seeing them only made me want this fan-edit even more.
See, Lindelof and Cuse didn’t like the idea of their stories being unwound and rearranged by something as boring as in the order in which events happened. Yet, the greatest criticism of the show is that their stories were wound a bit too tightly. They dragged things on (though, to be fair, that was kind of this show’s whole “thing”), and a lot of the arcs are actually enhanced because of it. The early episodes have a kind of Twin Peaks: The Return quality to them. They are these disjointed character stories, some which go off on their own tangents only to spin back around. These are interrupted by flashes of very dirty people babbling on about time-travel, moving islands, and bringing back characters to the island we’ve not yet “met.”
When I rewatch a show, I like to go in knowing the ending to see how well the writers set-up how they got there. The recently-ended 12 Monkeys is a show that’s so well-crafted each rewatch deepens your appreciation for the material. In fact, because of how large this show was and how much stalling (for lack of a better word) the writers had to do, one might think LOST couldn’t really withstand such scrutiny. When you rewatch the show as it aired, you see the “plot holes” more so than you do all the awesome elements in the story. Watching it chronologically, however, shows just how well the writers were able to sync up their stories, even with all the improvising they had to do.
The third episode of the chronological series starts with Season Five Locke talking about his birth, being the leader of the people on the Island (a.k.a “The Others”) and his predecessor in that role. Immediately after this, we see a large part of his childhood backstory and the childhood backstory of his main nemesis, Ben Linus (Michael Emerson). We get to see the two feuding leaders come of age. It’s a nice payoff and a testament to the work the writers did. In a later episode, after the crashes, you see the main cast and the other group of survivors added in season two burying their dead at the same time. Also, the episode dealing with the death of Boone (Ian Somerhalder) arguably works better without the flashbacks. Matthew Fox portrays Jack’s desperation in just the island scenes in a way that’s almost undercut by the interruption of flashing back to his own past.
There are problems, of course. First, the split-screens. It’s the only way that Maloney could show the different views of concurrent events. Still, the way they run together can make those scenes almost unwatchable. For example, the plane crash is a mish-mash of split screens and characters talking over one another. It’s unavoidable, and it never lasts very long. Another problem is that when the camera hangs on a character right before a flashback, those transitions can be awkward. Certain scenes, according to the series’ site, are just audio because it was played over scenes from the past. Again, a questionable choice but one that doesn’t have an easy answer for this project.
But the biggest problem is the “Season Five” problem. As I mentioned above, the past episodes are interrupted by flashes from when a group of characters was bouncing around time. Also the main storyline leading into the final season takes places mostly in 1977, and I wonder what it would be like to watch those scenes out-of-context. Interestingly, when Josh Holloway’s Sawyer has a peak character moment and truly becomes a leader, the next chronological scene in the series is the double-murder of his parents. I am not sure if that would be more or less powerful than how that tragic origin story was revealed, but it would certainly be interesting. Technically, these events do happen later chronologically from the experiences of the characters. But having a large chunk of the chronological show take place out of sync like that would sort of defeat the purpose.
Still, despite all that, I wish I could legally rewatch the series this way, and I am certain I am not alone. Only 23 of the 101 episodes take place before the plane crash, which is interesting considering how much time traditional episodes seemed to spend in the past. I would like to go back and watch it chronologically, both knowing how it ends and imagining what it would be like to discover the show that way. Knowing that this is a magic island and two brothers are in an eternal and mystical struggle right from the beginning would absolutely change how audiences related to this show. In fact, if this show were broken down into traditional network television seasons, you actually get the plane crash around what would be the first season finale/second season premiere.
I’d love to see how Michael (Harold Perrineau) changes over time, with the flashback-to-his-captivity bits shown before he actually turns. Would it make his character’s journey more sympathetic? I’d love to find out, but I can’t unless I download it illegally. To ABC & Disney’s credit, they’ve not gone after Maloney or even contacted him about the project. The official streaming versions have been taken down, both from Facebook and Google Drive. Some of the episodes still exist on various platforms, but the full experience is nowhere to be found outside of shady torrent sites.
Whether or not they think this is a good way to watch Lost, ABC and Disney should absolutely buy the project from Maloney, tweak it as necessary, and throw it up on their soon-to-launch streaming service. A hundred hour series that can be rewatched in two completely different ways may not bring in as many subscribers as a single season of The Clone Wars or some original Marvel Cinematic Universe series might. But it would keep them subscribed longer. No one is going to get through this during their free trial month. There may not be all that many of them, but the LOST fans would be good for three months of subscription fees at least.
LOST was a good show. It is, arguably, a great show. What could help make it less arguable is something like this. Seeing how the series stands up when it’s been unmade and reassembled can help answer those sorts of questions definitively. From what I’ve seen of it, I think it shows that these disparate stories work just as well alone as they did in their original arrangement. Sometimes better and, of course, sometimes worse. I would bet two papayas and a mango that the ratio for Chronologically Lost is about even with the regular series. It would be nice to find out for sure.
