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Via Alisa Lee from The Daily Beast:

Rich in mythology and character development, and tantalizingly complex, Lost is not something to be watched passively. Throughout its five years, the ABC series has brilliantly weaved a human drama about plane-crash survivors on a mysterious island into a Byzantine tableau. We’ve witnessed smoke monsters and polar bears, unearthed a bygone scientific initiative, met the native inhabitants, and sidled up to a four-toed statue and a hydrogen bomb named Jughead. There have been flash-forwards, time travel, meditations on faith and destiny and redemption, literary and pop-culture references, and the occasional Latin phrase. What’s more, all of these bizarre components are all somehow connected. The show’s intricate and cryptic details have sent many a rabid fan to reference books and online chat groups in an effort to unlock the show’s secrets.

But even for those who aren’t content to parse through the myriad clues to find out what it all means, Lost, while epic in scope, is also intimate in its relationships. The overarching story can be incredibly dizzying and confounding as it travels around the world and through time and back again, but its writers (including executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, or “Darlton,” as they’re called on message boards) take care to keep it rooted solidly in its characters—who, over the show’s duration, have grown as rich and deep as the mythology that surrounds them.

And this fifth season—which featured a return to the island for those who had been rescued and erratic time travel—was not only enthralling; it was satisfying. The energy intensified as the series began answering integral questions, ramping up acceleration and purpose as the show barreled toward its sixth and final year.

State of Shock

“There have been some seasons when the show was nominated, and there have been some seasons when the show wasn’t nominated,” said Damon Lindelof of this year’s Outstanding Drama Emmy nod. “When it’s not nominated, it’s because the show’s too weird, or too genre, or it’s too mythologically dense. So…those are the three characteristics of the fifth season of the show. We did time travel the entire time, so it was incredibly genre, it was very sci-fi, and the mythology was more dense than it’s ever been. So we were like, ‘This is definitely not the year that we’re going to be nominated for an Emmy.’ And so when it happened, we were genuinely shocked.”

Damon’s Favorite Moment

“The standout scene for me…is the moment in ‘The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham,’ where Locke [Terry O’Quinn] is about to hang himself, and the scene begins with the guy about to commit suicide, and then bridges all the way to that guy getting murdered by another guy. The maneuvers between Ben [Michael Emerson] and Locke, the summation of their relationship up until that point, the surprise of Ben killing him, the mystery of why would you talk someone down from killing himself, only to kill them with your bare hands. There were just a lot of hoops to jump through, and in the writing of that scene, and then in the actors’ execution of it, and Jack Bender’s direction of it, it was just one of those moments where you go into the editing room and you watch sort of the editor’s first pass at it, and you just go, wow, it worked. This could have been the biggest disaster in the history of television, and we somehow pulled it off. And I think that in that scene is indicative of what we try to do on the show, which is we have a bold goal—you know, we reach for the stars. Sometimes we fall short, but when we accomplish our goal, it can be really special.”

Carlton’s Favorite Moment

“The moment [in ‘The Incident, Pt. 2’] when Sawyer is basically holding Juliet [Elizabeth Mitchell], in the shaft that will one day become the Swan hatch. You know, that is also, I think, a moment that really resonated for us because you know, it was really the culmination of Sawyer’s relationship with Juliet, and Josh Holloway’s so good in that scene, and just kind of what went on between those two actors in that final moment. We wanted to try and make it somewhat ambiguous as to whether she sort of lets go and dropped, or whether it was just basically inevitable that she couldn’t take hold any longer, so it kind of embodied a little of the ambiguity that we liked to have. And it was such a strong, powerful, emotional moment for both those characters. That was another moment when, again, on a character level, you know the bulk of the scenes that we described are really, you know, hinge on the emotions between our characters, and again, there’s mythology surrounding those events, but the actual scenes that we chose, and the moments we love are when our characters really connect with each other in profound and emotional ways that make the audience feel that emotion.”

Our Man Sawyer

“We really looked at Season 5 as the year of Sawyer,” said Lindelof. “I think that the focus has been on the kind of Jack, and Locke, of it all, and obviously, Michael Emerson who came, then, as the villain, has been a very prominent character in the third and fourth years. But we had this really cool idea to basically say let’s completely flip the paradigm for Sawyer, who we’ve always perceived as kind of the Han Solo bad boy, and put him into an entirely different position, where he’s having a leadership position and he’s responsible, without sort of selling out the spirit of who he is…. And then we would do it overnight, literally. In a single episode, we’d jump three years ahead and show this sort of before and after of this guy.”

Ben’s Journey

“The great thing about Ben Linus is he sort of wears his bad guy stripes on his sleeves, and Emerson this year, especially, sort of did the opposite of what he’d been doing in previous years, obviously as a result of the storytelling, and sort of really humanized this character,” said Lindelof. “Instead of seeing Benjamin Linus as a guy who’s completely in control and all of our characters were at his mercy, now suddenly, we flipped the script on him as well, so that in addition to feeling these grave responsibilities for the death of his daughter, he’s also now Locke’s acolyte. As opposed to the way that it had been in previous seasons. And seeing Michael kind of play that pathetic version of Ben, and seeing how angry he is, about suddenly being stripped of his power, the first half of the season he’s ruthless and manipulative in getting the Oceanic 6 back to the island, and the back half of the season is now, he’s basically kind of Locke’s lackey, I think was, again, this guy just keeps finding new levels to that character.”

Evil Ben for Supporting Actor

“People really love a villain,” said Lindelof of Michael Emerson’s nomination. “And I think if you look at the actors who traditionally walk off with that supporting drama award, or the ones who are nominated, there’s always this sort of degree of a dastardly air about them. You know, John Slattery or William Hurt, you know, those guys are playing characters with a sort of nebulous moral intent, and I think that audiences really respond.”

Ben v. Locke

“Every time we write a Ben and Locke scene, we just can’t wait to see what we get back from Hawaii,” said Lindelof. “Because as Michael Emerson has mentioned multiple times, he loves working with Terry, and for some reason, those guys are like the wonder twins. When they are put in a scene together, they are ten times more powerful.”

The Lost Ensemble

“We’re kind of at the point where we recognize the challenge for actors to be honored on our show,” said Cuse of the lack of acting nominations. “We have so many characters—we have 15 or 20 regular spots, and a huge supporting cast—so our actors don’t get the kind of screen time that actors who do get nominated get, and I think that puts them at a disadvantage. You know, Hugh Laurie is awesome, but he’s also in practically every scene of House, and he really is so integral to that show. Our actors are collectively integral to our show, and yet no one of them gets to be on center stage more than a few episodes at a time.

“When we’ve had success, it’s been in a supporting actor category,” Cuse continued. “Terry did win before, and Michael is such a tremendous talent that we would be so pleased if he won, but that, I think is about as tough a category as there is in the Emmys, and I think you can make a case for all of the actors that he’s up against, and so, we’re obviously rooting for Michael, but understandably, it’s a tough thing to win in that category.”

The Human Element

“Despite the fact that people perceive our show as a genre show, or a mythology show, we like to think we’re making a character show with sort of a frosting of mythology,” said Cuse. “But you know, when people eat the cake, the thing they remember the most is the frosting. We focus on the characters of these stories, and I think we felt that we told some good character-based stories this season. It seemed that because of the context in which we told those stories, we were surprised that we got nominated, but we were very pleased that people sort of recognized the fact that I think we’ve worked really hard to try to have a strong kind of, humanistic character base underpinning to the stories.”

Emmy Recognition

“As incredible as it is to be nominated for an Emmy, and what that means, in terms of, you know the support you’re getting from your peers, the only thing on our minds in terms of writing the final season of the show is making it worth everybody’s while, who came this far,” explained Lindelof. “Most importantly, our own. We’re now trying to end what will essentially be 120 hours of this kind of epic story that Carlton and I have spent full time, without doing anything else, really, you know, telling. So the primary motivation for us is that everyone will love it and that we ourselves will feel proud of it. and if that results in an Emmy nomination, well, that would just be the icing on the cake. But, you know, amazing shows like Battlestar and The Wire finished their run, and they don’t get Emmy nominations in their final seasons, so at the end of the day, the legacy value of the show itself, and the audience’s reaction to the final season and the final episode of the series is really what’s driving us.”

The Sixth and Final Season

“We’re in the early stages of it, but it’s very exciting,” said Cuse about the last show’s last run, which begins in early 2010. “I think it’s sort of exciting and bittersweet at the same time. It’s exciting because we’re finally getting to the core mythology that we’ve known for a long time, and we’re anxious to see how it lands with the audience…. At the same time, you know, I think we will be sad to see Lost go. It’s such a special thing to have any sort of successful show. And especially in this economic climate, doing a really big-scale action adventure series shot on location in Hawaii with a huge crew on 35mm film. Not only is it a question of the show coming to an end, in a lot of ways, I think it’s this era of television is coming to an end, with the economics of the business changing so profoundly.”

Any Season 6 spoilers for us?

Lindelof: “You know you had to try, but no. We can’t say squat.”

“The LOST Season” by Alisa Lee.

Related posts:

1. Damon And Carlton Talk Season 5 [Video]
2. Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse Talk about Comic-Con
3. Daniel Dae Kim, Damon & Carlton Speak To TV Guide [Video]

Tags: Benjamin Linus, Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Elizabeth Mitchell, Emmys, interview, John Locke, Josh Holloway, Michael Emerson, Sawyer, Season 5, Season 6