Freedom is a myth.
The Mystery Box is empty.
So, what now?
Credit: Van Redin/HBO
They say a rising tide lifts all boats.
Ten years ago, J.J. Abrams tide was rising, boats lifting.
Abrams had just co-createdLostwith Damon Lindelof.
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Then Abrams took a step back.
The big screen beckoned: When Tom Cruise wants you, you dont say no.
That left Lindelof showrunningLostalongside Carlton Cuse.
Lostbecame a hit, beloved by many, ultimately loathed by some.
Abrams directedMission: Impossible 3, producedCloverfield, took overStar Trekand thenStar Wars.
In early 2008, Abrams gavea TED talkthat carved what you might call The Abrams Method in stone.
See, when Abrams was a kid, he bought himself a magical Mystery Box.
He never opened it.
That was the point.
Maybe there are times when mystery is more important than knowledge, said Abrams.
What are stories but mystery boxes?
None of Abrams movies are actually mysteries.
As a concept, the Mystery Box factors more into Abrams work as a marketing mastermind.
He didnt show the monsters in the marketing forCloverfieldorSuper 8.
Leonard Nimoys appearance in the 2009Star Trekis structured as a twist.
And there was the elaborate shell game around Benedict Cumberbatchs role inStar Trek Into Darkness.
The resolution of theInto Darknessmystery was unsatisfying for most people.
Is Luke Skywalker evil?
Is that new character somebodys son/daughter?
This is how we talk about things now.
Film critic Matt Singer coined the phrase teaser culture to describe the radical focus we now put on anticipation.
We dont talk much about what happened; we prefer to talk about whatmighthappen.
Coincidentally, all of those projects involved Damon Lindelof.
Which partially explains why for certain people he became a kind of freefloating internet metaphor for narrative disappointment.
The nadir came during theBreaking Badfinale, when a fleet of Twitter-itesrage-tweeted Lindelofabout theLostfinale.
(Among other things, theLostfinale didnt feature nearly enough desert Nazis.)
The years have passed, and its fair to say that Damon Lindelof has thought a lot aboutLost.
Before he left Twitter, his bio read: Yeah, Im one of the idiots behindLost.
And no, I dont understand it either.
But there was always the assumption that the show had answers.
With one key twist.Losts pilot ended with Charlie asking, Where are we?
You know something about boxes, dont you John?
Six episodes later came The Brig, scripted by Lindelof and Cuse.
Locke asks Ben about his magic box and Ben admits that the box is just a metaphor.
Maybe theres nothing in there at all.
But what if you build your story around disappointment and frustration?
And the characters will never know, either.
What does that mean, for a mystery to have no resolution?
How do we live with knowing that?
Have you ever seenThe Prisoner?
British show, definition-of-cult-phenomenon, almost 50 years old.
J.J. Abrams has seenThe Prisoner:He told TV Guide, There are elements ofThe Prisonerin bothAliasandLost.
Christopher Nolan has seenThe Prisoner: He wasworking on a movie version, beforeThe Dark Knightchanged everything.
Whats going to happen is youre going to do your best; nobodys going to watch the show.
He played John Drake.
The show was a hit.
More on that rage later.The Prisonerstarted airing in the UK in September, 1967.
The show ran for 17 episodes.
2.McGoohans character has a name, but we never hear it.
McGoohan was not a man who said yes to a lot of things.)
3.It is impossible to escape the Village.
Number Six tries once, and gets swallowed by a giant bubble.
He tries again, and fails again.
4.There is someone in charge of the Village, named Number One.
We never see him/her/it.
Instead, we meet the second-in-command, a man named Number Two.
By the end of the episode, there is a new Number Two.
5.Number Two, and whatever cabal he represents, wants information from Number Six.
Specifically: Why did he resign?
More abstractly: What does he know, about, like,anything?
Number Six refuses to reveal the reasons for his resignation, and refuses to reveal anything about anything.
(Number Six is not a man who says yes to a lot of things.)
To answer your unasked question:The Prisonercan be hard to watch today.
If you go to the show expecting some element ofLost-ian serialization, you will be disappointed and angrily confused.
With one notable exception, plot stuff doesnt really carry over from one episode to the next.
Its not even clear what order youre supposed to watch the episodes in:Wikipedia lists five different routes.
There is no carryover continuity in the world ofThe Prisoner.
Sometimes the Village is on an island in the Mediterranean, sometimes its in the Eastern European borderlands.
You could have a go at explain this with some coherence.
Maybe everything that happens in the Village is an elaborate ruse.
Maybe every episode takes place in an alternate universe.
Maybe its all a dream.
(When AMC remadeThe Prisonerterribly back in 2009, they settled on the all a dream idea.
It was terrible.)
If youre looking for anything like continuity, you only really find it in the last two episodes.
Fall Out starts with Number Six marching into the depths of the Village.
In a moment of triumph, Number Six gets to make a speech.
This happens:
Does that work sans context?
Theres a way of watching Fall Out as a kind of savage deconstruction of everything you thoughtThe Prisonerwas about.
Number Six was supposed to be the rebel against the system.
Now, the system absorbs him, even welcomes him.
Its all veryMatrix Reloaded, but less ponderous, more humane, and much sadder.
Theres an explosion, and theres dancing.
Freedom, he says, is a myth.
That might sound depressing.
Maybe it is; maybe we should all get depressed sometimes.
The irony ofThe Prisoneris that the characters are eternally imprisoned, but the show feels free as a bird.
McGoohan and his collaborators takes every advantage of television as a unique form.
Episodes dont build toward some long-running story.
There are episodes set inside Number Sixs head.
Theres an episode that satirizes political elections.
Number Six gets cloned.
One episode begins with twenty minutes of no dialogue: Just Number Six walking through an empty Village.
One episode is a western, and McGoohan plays a cowboy who hates guns.
Some episodes are one-on-one battle-of-wits showdowns between Number Six and Number Two.
One episode is a bedtime story.
One episode the worst, but also the most strangely poignant barely features McGoohan at all.
(They put Number Six in a different body; McGoohan was off filmingIce Station Zebra.)
It makes you wonder: What wouldLosthave looked like, if the show didnt have to be serialized?
It would have been stranger.
It definitely would have been less popular.
It might have felt a bit likeThe Leftovers.
(Warning: Many, many spoilers below.)
Season 2 ofThe Leftoversended last night, with an episode called I Live Here Now.
But only by a little bit.
And its not a competition; theyre both great.
If TV shows were animals,LeftoversandHannibalwould be these:
Did you watchThe Leftovers?
If youre a human being, probably not.
In its second season, all measureable ratings were microscopic.
Understandable: Anything I say about why you should watchThe Leftoverswill potentially chase you away from watchingThe Leftovers.
Its a show filled with great characters, and half of them only really appear in a couple episodes.
And yet, if you come toThe Leftoverslooking for grit-bleak nihilism, you wont find that either.
Actually, I can:Friday Night Lights.
But imagineFriday Night Lightswhere football is death and Coach Taylor is a sweaty blackout-prone suicidal lunatic.
Death is everywhere inThe Leftovers.
Everyone has lost someone.
A better name forThe Leftoversmight beThe Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
Thats actually the name of a Damien Hirst art pieceinvolving a dead tiger shark.
LikeThe Prisoner,The Leftoversis initially hard to watch.
That might turn off most people, or everyone.
That was the central idea of TV versus movies its in my home; why go to the theater?
It might feel like the show is aggressively chasing you away.
That subversion extends even to people who are already locked intoThe Leftovers.
Did you love season 1?
Season 2s premiere starts with a whole new setting and whole new characters.
Actually, season 2 starts with a flashback to caveman times.
Subversion as a default position isnt necessarily the best idea.
(It can lead you, maybe, to make two different Batman movies where somebodys secretly surnamed al-Ghul.
But to whet your appetite, maybe watch season 1, episode 6.)
But, likeThe Prisonerand the earlier seasons ofLost,The Leftoversdoesnt tell its story in a straight line.
Were told that Jardin, Texas, is the only place on Earth where nobody disappeared from.
Its a magical place, or maybe it isnt.
There are scientists trying to explain the Sudden Departure.
Some scientists think its a matter of geography: If you were standingthereinstead ofthere, you disappeared.
Some people think its a matter of personality: Some people possess bad juju that causesotherpeople to disappear.
The big joke is that nobody really knows anything.
InLeftoversseason 2, ghosts dont even know why theyre ghosts.
The town of Jardin has been rechristened Miracle.
But unless you have a wristband, you could only visit for a few hours.
Its a flipswitch fromThe Prisoner.
Number Six wanted to get out.
OnLeftoversseason 2, everyone else wants to get in.
And across 10 episodes,Leftoversseason 2 plays out every angle of the idea of Miracle.
They convince one woman to leave the Remnant.
She returns to her house, welcomed home by her husband and her son.
And then she commits suicide taking her husband and son down with her.
It bothers him, relentlessly.
He looks everywhere for it.
At the end of the episode, Johns daughter Evie gives him a birthday present.
A Mystery Box, if you will and it remains unopened until the season finale.
John refuses to open it: Maybe he prefers the mystery.
His wife, Erika, grabs it from him, cracks it open.
Inside, theres a dead cricket.
John looks consumed with cathartic melancholy: His daughter has given him exactly what he wanted.
Why does Matt imprison himself?
Its my turn, he explains.
Maybe everyone is a Prisoner.
Maybe admitting that is the only freedom.
By the end ofThe Leftovers finale, everyone of any narrative importance was inside Jardin.
Trapped, kind of.
Freedom is a myth, probably.
