The ending of “Lost” TV series is disappointing

Six years ago I watched the mystery TV series “Lost,” a story about people trapped on an island. It used the following trick to entice a viewer to come back to watch the next episode: each episode ended in the midst of a climax, to be resolved in the next episode.

I expected the mystery to be resolved by the end of the series, and I proceeded to binge-watch episode after episode. There are so many episodes in this series that I spent two weeks of holiday time watching it. I was tired, but didn’t want to stop because of the time already invested into it. I wanted to see it through, and savoured the moment when the twists in the plot would begin to make sense. However, when the resolution finally came, I felt that I was cheated and wasted two weeks of my life.

Today I read Ayn Rand’s letter of 1948, which she wrote to a writer, Robert Spencer Carr. In this letter, she criticizes the ending of his novel:

The device which you chose for the structure of your novel — the prologue in which you promised the reader that your hero had a tremendous secret to disclose at the end of the story — was an excellent device and it kept up the reader’s interest. But surely you realize that a device of this kind amounts to a promissory note which the author gives to his readers. Its effectiveness lies in the readers’ trust that the author will live up to his promise and will disclose something of tremendous importance. When your disclosure finally came, your story collapsed. This reader experienced an angry sense of disappointment — the feeling of having been cheated. It was a fraud … the idea you intended [your hero] to disclose was nothing more than an assertion about life after death, presented in the vaguest terms, adding nothing that had not been said before, lacking all element of philosophical importance or freshness.

Reading this critique reminded me of the frustration with the ending of “Lost.” The show also promised a great resolution, and also capitulated into mysticism in order to attempt to deliver it.

The makers of “Lost” wanted to sell the TV series to a mass audience, and like Wynand of “The Fountainhead,” did not care about the substance of content. When one bases his work on the wrong concept of value, it is no surprise that it eventually would lead to a contradiction: in this case a contradiction between expectation of the audience and the value that the audience gained.

/sb