Lost -- no spoilers

[very_improbable]

I'm late to the party and have only just discovered this fact.

In the commentary track on the Season 1 DVD, the producers explained that the character of Jack as the de facto leader of the survivors was intended to be killed off in The Pilot by the Monster, with Kate becoming the de facto leader. However, ABC executives and advisers to the producers convinced the writers and producers to keep him alive. They reasoned that killing him off, while a novel idea, generated feelings of betrayal, bewilderment, and anger in the audience. Instead, the pilot was written in and killed in Jack's place.


I can not possibly tell you how badly I want to see that version of the show.

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

However, ABC executives and advisers to the producers convinced the writers and producers to keep him alive. They reasoned that killing him off, while a novel idea, generated feelings of betrayal, bewilderment, and anger in the audience.

Clearly these people have never watched Spooks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooks).

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

I think ABC never quite recovered from Twin Peaks.

[strangemuses.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. It would have reinforced the idea that no one on the island is safe, and that anything could happen to anyone at any time.

Not to mention that it would have spared me from having to put up with Jack week after week. He is my least favorite character on the show.

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

I might even say it would have introduced the idea that no one on the island is safe--I'm not sure I ever felt like "anything" could happen, and, you know, that's perfectly normal for a network TV show, it just would have been incredibly neat if it really had been that no one was safe.

[thingswithwings.livejournal.com]

yup. although in the version of that fact that I read, the leader was supposed to be Rose. !!! Either way, man, I bet I wouldn't have broken up with the show so quickly, or been so exasperated with it, if Jack hadn't been there. Siiiigh.

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

yup. although in the version of that fact that I read, the leader was supposed to be Rose. !!!

!!!!!

(On some level I can actually see American network TV doing that one. Rose, "in charge" of the survivors, would probably have wound up more of a secondary lead character-wise and we probably wouldn't have had endless dwelling on her daddy issues, angsty love interests and Tragick Drive to Fix Things like we do with Jack. But either way...yeah.)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, because everyone knows *girls* can't lead.

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

Yep yep yep yep. Well, you can put a girl in charge on network TV from time to time, as long as THE FACT THAT SHE IS A LADY is, as Officer Lockstock would say, the central conceit...of the shoooooow. You couldn't put a girl in charge on a normal TV show. That would be madness.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Frankly, Lost could have done with an Officer Lockstock. I might have stayed engaged for longer if someone wandered around the show, slowly explaining bits and pieces of the narrative of the "island," and then finally revealing that there is no "island", we just throw people off the roof.

I'd have watched that show every week. And the pilot episode would have been called "Too Little Exposition".

And yes--if Kate were the leader, the show would have been about all the ways the island isn't a practical living arrangement for a LADY.

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

I'd have watched that show every week. And the pilot episode would have been called "Too Little Exposition".

Hahahaha. I smell an AU!