I'm strongly in favor of the way you're broadcasting Season 3 - one 6-week chunk uninterrupted in the fall, and then another uninterrupted chunk in 2007 to complete the season. I'm totally for that. In my mind, that better serves the serialized nature of the show.
DAMON: There's nothing more disappointing than going to the store to buy what you want and then getting there and being told that they're out and you have to come back the following week. That's essentially what a rerun is. And we've been steadfast from the beginning, saying, "If you can't air all of the episodes in one straight shot from January to May, then at least air them in chunks so that the sequence isn't original episode, rerun, original, rerun, rerun." We're really, really happy with the way ABC has decided to air the show for Season 3. It'll help us get a lot more narrative traction. What's exciting for us as storytellers is we're sort of designing the first arc of six episodes almost as a mini season, in that Episode 6 will have a mini cliffhanger. But the audience isn't going to have any Lost to watch the entire month of December and a good chunk of January.
Personally, I'm okay with that. Any possibility that you'd ever be able to do it like 24 and air all of the original episodes in a season uninterrupted? Or is that too big of a gamble for ABC to wrap its head around?
CARLTON: I think they don't want to be off the air that long. In other words, they don't want to go from May to January without any Lost at all.
DAMON: It's also a byproduct of the schedule - Fox can air 24 totally consecutively since they have World Series [in October]...
CARLTON: ... and they have other things they can put on in the fall. I don't think ABC wants to surrender our time period [9 p.m. EST Wednesdays], either. I think the compromise that we worked out was fantastic. We couldn't be any happier with how the show's gonna air this year.
And I guess the crux of this season is, as you guys have posed it elsewhere, who is "us," and who is "them"? Who really are "The Others," and who aren't?
DAMON: That's a big thematic piece of it, and we already flirted with that in Season 2. One of my personal favorite moments in Season 2 is in "One of Them" [Episode 14]. When they first capture Henry, Jack is about to pull the arrow out of his shoulder, and he says, "He's an Other," and Henry says, "An Other what?" Like, they've been using this word "Other," but it's all relative.
Finally, the climactic event/cliffhanger for Season 1 was codenamed "The Bagel," and Season 2's was dubbed "The Challah." Have you figured one out for Season 3 yet, even at this early date? If not, might I suggest "The Focaccia"?
CARLTON: We haven't finalized our choice for Season 3, but we won't be branching out to Italian - we'll be sticking with Jewish bread products.
DAMON: There have been whisperings that it might be "The Matzoh," but that's a tad obvious, is it not? All will be revealed... next May!
BackTalk: Dominic Monaghan
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Secrets of "The Hatch"
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