I wanted to take a quick minute this morning and comment on one of my favorite television shows: Lost. Natalie and I have been watching lost since Season 2. We began our Lost journey by checking out Season 1 from the library and watching them almost non-stop for a week. We didn't get to bed before 1am or 2 am for that week. It was AWESOME! Season 2 did not disappoint, either. The character development, the plotting, foreshadowing, building conflict, setting major characters in place--everything was great! Now, I have to say, that watching shows or movies, and especially reading books for a writer is an entirely different experience than most. For me, anyway, I tend to analyze every part, listening for word choice, scene and setting placements, etc., looking for the "tricks" of the trade as the story progresses. It can be somewhat of a curse because gone are the days of seeing a movie or reading a book for the simple pleasure of it.

But I digress...

Seasons 3 and 4 of Lost have typified the problem of "writing yourself into a corner." I laughed pretty hard when Saturday Night Live, News Update, reported (something along these lines): "NBC announced today that the television series Lost was picked up for four more seasons, to which the writers were reported as saying: Oh, Crap!" Now, I have to admit, that I have written myself into that proverbial corner many times, but as a writer of a novel (yet unpublished) you can always go back, fix parts that need fixing, change scenes or events, and make the characters at the end of the book match the characters you started with (they inevitably grow and change as you write the story). You can't, however, do this with a series television show, such as Lost. And I cringe when we watch it now, wondering, "How in the world are they going to wrap this up?" (I have to admit, a few years ago when there was buzz on the internet about what the island really was, and where the passengers really were, I really liked the idea that the island was a "pergatory-like" state and when the characters "died" on the island they had tipped the scales--so to speak--and either went on to heaven or hell.)

Needless to say, we continue watching every Wednesday night, frustrated with the new plot twists and added confusion, and I hope and pray (well, sort of...you know what I mean) that the writers are able to tie it all up in a way that satisfies the hard-core fans (like us, who wait on each and every episode with baded breath).