Yes Lost is the best example of arc storytelling I have yet to encounter. I've said it over and over in various threads on the board but what impressed me the most and what kept me coming back was just how impressive L/C were as writers at constructing this extremely complicated, 6 year-spanning arc. As far as pure narrative structure there is just no series that compares. It did things no other series had really attempted before--however I will give credit where credit is due ENT's Xindi arc did lightly toy with some of the same kind of creative choices LOST did a year later. Also the TCW was kinda the ongoing mystery mythology ENT wanted to do--lots of unanswered questions after each TCW episode, unclear motives, mysterious figures, characters at the mercy of a person orchestrating things, different factions etc
This wasn't a traditional serialized primetime drama with a modest ensemble and two or three parallel storylines told in linear form.
The writers didn't sit on their hands they get down to work and didn't waste a single second of screentime. Every episode felt possessed and driven--fast-paced covering numerous threads constantly, feverishly providing exposition, introducing characters, introducing mysteries, adding new clues and pieces of the puzzle to the mix, always advancing the plot, maddeningly weaving in and out of stories, setting up everything. There is an urgency to LOST that I have rarely encountered in terms of narrative purpose.
Yes I'll be the first to agree that the series drew things out but in hindsight you can see why it was necessary--the show is so interconnected that the writers had to methodically time when they revealed things otherwise it would have spoiled what was to come. The writers had to introduce something and stop short of going any further, set it aside and then proceed working on another part of the Big Picture then set it aside and work on yet another section and in that regard I would call them architects. And as the show nears the finishing line you can see how carefully everything was mapped out in the writers' minds--they knew what they wanted to cover in each season and when the revelations should be unveiled to the audience.
You can see how they carefully almost Tetris-like would drop in place a key piece of the puzzle that suddenly unified several seemingly disparate threads and smoothed the frayed edges by bring them in line settling a particular unfinished piece of the puzzle. To me that is truly impressive. One criticism I do have is the series covers so much in an hour jumping around from thread to thread that I sometimes regret that it doesn't stop and take the time to give some depth to the thread but I long ago accepted that everything is in service of the Bigger Story that is the series and any additional depth I want to inject will be up to me filling in the blanks.
And what I find so impressive as well is you can appreciate a single scene on its own within a vacuum--it can stand on its own--or you can zoom out and appreciate it within the context of the Big Picture. This show was also beautifully intricate. You can see so many threads that weave in and out of other threads and a lot of the time you as a viewer had to see them in order to appreciate them. What is also fascinating about the way the series was constructed was the way you can go through the series one time and just choose to watch the evolution of a character's story and filter out the rest or you can watch it another time and see the path of some of the plot elements. Its interconnected nature offered numerous ways to examine storylines and character histories. I loved the way the writers would drop these "partitions" between certain characters and plot elements and you see how things you couldn't imagine were connected are i.e. the Black Rock/Richard/the statue's destruction.
And it was the kind of heavily serialized drama I'd been clamoring for years--LOST showed you could do all mythology all the time and it work. I always hated when shows like DS9 would leave the Dominion war alone for nearly entire seasons but with LOST I get all mythology, all core material all the time. Every thread is about the arc. In fact, the one hazard with arc storytelling is inevitably having a weak thread(s) that are less interesting than others but LOST has managed to make the alternating threads interesting and because of this I would argue that LOST is the most consistent series with the weakest episode being merely average--always of course a Kate or Jack/Kate episode--otherwise the rest range from solid to great to excellent.
And what series had ever attempted to be this densely plotted with that many threads in a single episode.
It demonstrated how expertly the writers could juggle not just two or three separate threads but several within an hour. Their seasons were also self-contained with its own set of guest characters and specific elements to focus on yet marvelously threaded into the much larger Tapestry.
It has just been a series that has been a great reward to watch every week and a thrill ride to watch waiting to see what happened next, how characters would cross paths, what shocking plot revelations were up the writers' sleeves, what secret character connections there were, seeing the writers capturing all the character reactions and remembering all the details like who knew what when. It was a series I have probably invested more time in than I normally would have analyzing, picking apart, looking for subtleties weaved in by the writers but it was the worth it given the extra effort the writers put into it.
I also appreciated how it ushered in a whole new brand of storytelling where things weren't answered immediately, the narrative was non-linear which was something we had to become accustomed. The series saw an episode as merely a piece of a larger puzzle and its purpose was to contribute various individual pieces to the building Big Picture. The show provided some of the best in tv history cliffhangers and twists that I know I never saw coming.
I personally really enjoyed season 5 for example--a very tightly written season chocked full of lots of interesting revelations and very effectively pulled together a myriad of pieces established in the first 4 seasons and tied them together beautifully while setting up the final pieces as well as establishing a beautiful timeline/history for the island & its inhabitants . The brisk pacing and the tendency not to really dwell on any one thing for too long is just LOST's style--like I mentioned earlier it is all about servicing the bigger picture and forging ahead feverishly--no time to stop and smell the roses-- a show like this really expects the viewers to provide the depth and fill in the margins as it were. LOST doesn't do those big build-ups the way some traditional dramas would but then again those shows usually centered around one or two ongoing threads--LOST a lot of times doesn't make a big production out of something they just drop it in your lap and move on to the next. And as we were talking about the characters they too are all about servicing the story--deaths of characters are sometimes just a mere footnote--since they are about writing out a character who the writers-acting much like the island--feel have served their purpose and are no longer needed. The deaths aren't the big events they once were on tv shows.
I just loved the way they methodically would slowly tie various players and plotlines together then tie in that to other linked players and storylines. It was akin to having put together a portion of a puzzle off to the side then carefully sliding that piece into the Bigger Final Puzzle. I also loved the way new pieces would reshape what we had come to believe from pre-existing threads. They just kept stacking pieces on top of one another.
And as a result of this storytelling style all kinds of shows since then have attempted to intimate it--Heroes, V, Threshold, Surface, Invasion, BSG, Flash Forward etc and in my opinion the only one they got "it" was season one of Heroes. But Lost was the most ambitious and epic--look at how big of a globetrotting series it was with all the locales we saw, the international cast and extensive use of subtitles, the span of history the series visited--from the time of Mother to 1876, to 1965 to 1974 to 1977 to 2004 to 2007. It developed the style of sprinkling clues over the season then pulling it altogether in a big mythology reveal episode towards the end of the season--now you see shows like Desperate Housewives doing it. It played around with time and showing how things happened. And what series on a regular basis did multiple perspectives what I dub "Vantage Point" storytelling until LOST where you see the same event through different characters' eyes.
