For those of us who watched last season’s Lost and were confused by the deaths of background characters Nikki and Paulo, the show’s executive producer Carlton Cuse has an explanation: it was what we, the fans wanted. What? In an interview with Sci Fi Wire, Cuse defended the plot that saw two of the peripheral characters given centre stage only to promptly die: “People asked questions about the other characters on the beach. Are we ever going to learn anything about them?’ But once we did it, people were angry that we were taking time away from our main characters and giving it to Nikki and Paulo, so we listened to the fans and decided to bury them alive.”
That is such rubbish. The only way that audiences can warm to and appreciate new characters is to be given time – the one thing that Lost producers decided to deprive Nikki and Paulo of. Of course after the briefest of introductions to their personalities and back stories, they weren’t going to rival the likes of Sawyer and Jack in the popularity stakes, but that didn’t stop the writers from persisting with the likes of Desmond, Ben and Juliet who were also latecomers to the action.
As much as I respect the supposed bid to please fans and listen to their opinions, the failure of this experiment shouldn’t be blamed on us. We’ve patiently enjoyed and supported the show, despite its shortcomings and for the programme’s team to effectively blame us for one of the most significant low-points is unfair, unjust and completely hypocritical. We demanded the show deliver on cohesion, consistency and quality – something you failed on, not us.
[via Digital Spy]
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Low point? I *loved* the bury-’em-alive episode! We can go through whole series without ever getting a sense of resolution, but the Nikki/Paulo story gave us a little respite – a story with a beginning, middle and end which nestled nicely into the larger (sprawling, even) story arcs. Our slow realisation of what has actually happened to Nikki and Paulo was brilliantly paced, and when the penny DID drop, it was a true OH MY GOD moment. Mini-stories like this should be a regular feature, not apologised for.
I have to say I was left pretty befuddled by these characters, they introduced them very slowly and then killed them off in the one episode they actually gave us chance to get to know them. I think there was enough interesting aspects to these two to justify a proper run. I’m quite surprised that they listened to fans and changed a story arc.
Although the listening to the fans could explain why during the first half of the season (the really poor half) the only characters that ever got stories were Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Locke, to the complete by-passing of the the other very interesting cast aways. I love Lost because of the diverse number of characters and focusing far too much on the percieved popular characters meant the first half of the series felt lacking.