by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer

Season one of LOST was an undeniable hit. Notably, the show was nominated for six primetime Emmys, including Best Drama, which it won. Interestingly, Naveen Andrews and Terry O’Quinn were in the supporting actor category, which were the only acting nominations for the show that year. The show was also nominated for, and won, a couple Creative Emmys, including outstanding casting and music composition for a series (well-deserved).

With LOST on its path to becoming a cultural juggernaut, the creative team would need to follow it up with a second season that would satisfy the studio and the fans. By the end of season one, there was only one writer from the original think tank who would stay with the show through the end of season two—Javier Grillo-Marxauch. And though the show gets remembered as a J.J. Abrams project, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were the main showrunners for the run after Cuse was brought on mid-season one.

First, it must be said that season two has one of the most iconic opening scenes. We hear some beeps, see the typical LOST eye shot, and then a guy jumps out of bed to enter a code before starting his morning routine. With “Make Your Own Kind of Music” by Cass Elliot playing, we see a man go through his morning routine and then the record scratches, and we realize that he’s in the hatch that Locke, Jack, and crew have just blown open.

It’s wild that the answer to the long season-one mystery of “what’s in the hatch” is, well, just a guy and a computer. A potentially world-saving computer that needs a code put in every 108 minutes, but still. Just some guy. Desmond and his iconic opening scene and backstory. That’s all!

Without breaking down the full events of the season, as that would take literal days, I’d like to go over some of the storytelling trends that start in season two. The aspect of season two that sticks out to me the most is delayed gratification; episodes will end with a cliffhanger, and then we won’t see the pay-off for another two to three episodes.

The best example of this is the Jack (Matthew Fox) and Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) interaction. We’ve seen the two speak before in a flashback, so we know that they might recognize each other. But that was in a stadium in Los Angeles, and it would seem so wild to see someone you recognize on the island like this. Especially when Desmond was by himself for so long in the hatch. So, what happens when they see each other?

First, the two men see each other at the end of the season two opener (“Man of Science, Man of Faith”). Then the following episode details how Michael, Sawyer, and Jin are doing on the raft after Walt was taken. It also rewinds to show us how Kate got into the air ducts above Desmond and Jack during their first interaction in the hatch. And then in the next episode, we actually see them speak to each other, but they don’t even acknowledge that they know each other. It’s only after Desmond has run away and Jack follows him that Desmond finally recognizes Jack.

And this delayed gratification functions in a couple ways. One, it builds tension for the audience. We want to know what’s going to happen, and keeping us waiting means that we’re going to tune in. And it’s probably at least in some part a form of stalling for the writers’ room. They know they’ve got us on the edge of our seats, and delaying it means they can spend a little more time deciding how it’ll go down.

Reportedly, Damon Lindelof would hesitate to lock down a story or character element until he felt confident that it was satisfying for the audience. So, he’d agreed “it’s going to be that unless someone can beat it” (from The Lost Will and Testament of Javier Grillo-Marxuach). Which means that maybe there were earlier ideas of how the interaction would go down, but someone had a better one at the final hour before the script was locked.

This same delayed gratification is used after Ana Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez) shoots Shannon (Maggie Grace), mistaking her for an Other. It takes us several episodes to see the aftermath. Ana Lucia shoots Shannon at the end of episode six (“Abandoned”), but then episode seven is a fill-in episode that shows us where the people on the other half of the plane, the Tailies, have been for the last forty-eight days. The end of the following episode finally shows us how everyone reacts to Shannon’s death.

This example is relevant to another story trend for this season that I find less effective: just how many women die in this season…and how those deaths serve the men. First, we have Shannon’s death, which is detailed above. Shannon gets shot right after she and Sayid (Naveen Andrews) had repaired their relationship. Obviously, this sends Sayid on a bit of a spiral, and he’s faced with his desire for revenge. It’s only after talking to Ana Lucia that he lets go.

Then, we have Ana Lucia and Libby (Cynthia Watros). Ana Lucia had a flirty relationship with Jack, but she also sleeps with Sawyer (Josh Holloway) in episode 20 (“Two for the Road”), so when Michael (Harold Perrineau) kills her, Jack and Sawyer both have a lot of emotions about her death. Libby and Hurley (Jorge Garcia) have bonded throughout the second half of the season, and they’d just kissed for the first time three episodes before. And then, Michael shoots her. She’s in critical condition, unable to speak about what happened before she dies. Hurley’s faced with grieving her but not even knowing a lot about her.

It’s not an uncommon trope—“fridging” a woman in order to further develop a man’s character. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it, and especially not when it’s done so much in a single season. Was there not anything more interesting to do here?

Overall, season two went down in television history as a messy season, but I’d argue it cemented LOST’s status as appointment television. It was still in the zeitgeist, everyone wanted to talk about it, and the messy storytelling just kept people interested. We got some answers to questions, but they mostly ended with more questions. Which is just how you keep a mystery box show going.

I’m still rip roaring through my rewatch and having a delightful time. There are definitely whole plots and characters that I’ve forgotten about, so I’m excited. I think it’s interesting to see the episodes much closer together than the week-to-week TV schedule of its time. And I’m ultimately glad it had such long seasons. Sure, it dragged some things out, but it also gave us a lot of character work that modern shows wouldn’t spend this much time on.

That’s all for now on season two. Come back next month if you haven’t been taken by the Others!

Notable episodes:

“The Hunting Party” — Jack’s confrontation with the Others…enough said.
“Lockdown” — the Henry Gale reveal at the end of the episode is perfect television.
“Live Together, Die Alone” Parts 1 and 2 — this show knows how to do a season finale!