“There’s No Place Like Home”

Synopsis: The face-off begins between the survivors and the mercenary team from the freighter.
Written by: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof.
Directed by: Jack Bender.
Original Airdate: May 15, 2008 (Part 1) and May 29, 2008 (Parts 2 & 3).

Related posts:

1. Sundays LOST Rewatch: “The Constant”
2. Sundays LOST Rewatch: “Through The Looking Glass”
3. Sundays LOST Rewatch: “Pilot”

Thanks to Jack and Cynthia for the heads up!

In this interview with “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof, we look back on some of the behind-the-scenes decisions for season four, why some fans may be troubled by season five’s emphasis on time travel, and why the worst episode in “Lost” history was also the most important episode in “Lost” history (from a production standpoint, anyway).

What material did you have to leave out because of the strike that you won’t be able to get back to?

I don’t think that there’s anything that just got basically junked. There’s stuff that got truncated, so you’re getting the Cliff’s Notes version of the story. Whereas there might have been an entire episode that was Charlotte’s flashbacks if there hadn’t been a strike, now you get the story but not the flashbacks. I think the complete jettisoning of a story plan would take the whole Jenga tower down. We have to do all that stuff to get to where we’re going. Nothing was so expendable that you could just say we couldn’t get to do this. The show would suffer for it. But the Michael story, we wanted to do something that was more redemptive for him than staying with the bomb and allowing Jin to get to the deck as he was spraying liquid nitrogen onto it. But it ended up having to be that, as opposed to something that was probably more heroic, more emotional, by virtue of the fact that we had to collapse our time frame. Originally, we were going to do an hour less than we wound up doing, and we had to beg for that. We were still rolling film, like, 11 days before it was on the air. It was all we could do to cram everything in there, and you go, “What are the major story points you can play?” and you need to connect the dots. The primary story focus was on the Oceanic Six, and everyone else had to defer. We had to explain how Jin died, and so that gave us less time for Michael’s redemptive arc, and we regret that.

One of the things you and Carlton talk about a lot, and I never quite understood until we got to “There’s No Place Like Home,” is that you’re always afraid of doing these episodes where people stand around and explain stuff and you give a lot of answers at once. Those three hours answered most of the questions of that season, and while it was good, it definitely felt like, “Okay… okay… alright…” It was not as thrilling as the hours leading up to it.

Sure. For us, we always think the reason that the show is a water cooler show, or still generates the audience it does and the Internet culture that it does is the audience wants to talk about the show. If the characters are talking about the show, you basically have a scenario where they’re so interested in catching each other up that you can’t propel the story forwards. Now if they need to share info for the purposes of story, then you have to write the scene. But the season four finale was really about bringing everything together. The drama of knowing, “How are these guys going to get off the island?,” well, you’ve known that they did get off since the end of season three, so now we’re just going back and showing you things you didn’t already know about it, like that Penny picked them up. It’s a big reveal, but everything else is, “Oh, they’re in a helicopter… the helicopter’s going into the water… is Demond going to survive because he’s not one of the Oceanic Six?” So you can kind of do these things, but things like the press conference, Kate having dreams about Claire, you need to do them, but they’re more about filling in blanks than moving forward. That’s the nature of the year. You’re telling a story out of sequence, and so the finale wound up being a lot of middle.

Let’s get back to the question that I asked at the summer tour: Watching last season and seeing the Oceanic Six in the present, I start building up scenarios in my head. “Why these six? Why do they have to be so secretive?” And in the end it just turned out that those happened to be the ones who were on the helicopter, and Jack, for whatever reason, gets into his head that they need to tell this specific lie to avoid the wrath of Widmore. Did you know that was how it was going to play out going in?

We knew that the season was going to start with Locke and Jack splitting up, Locke taking a group of people with him, Jack a group with him, Jack group’s mission was to get off the island, Locke’s group mission was to stay on, and when we got to the end of the season, Jack and Locke would have one more scene. And in that scene, Locke would basically say to Jack, “We’re supposed to be here, it’s our destiny, you’ve gotta stay.” And Jack would say, “(Bleep) you, I’m leaving.” And Locke would say to Jack, “If you’re gonna leave, you have to lie.” So the idea to lie is Locke’s. That we knew with great specificity. We also knew for over a year that Locke was in the coffin and that all the actions Jack is going through in the season three finale, reading the obituary, suicide attempt, are in the wake of Locke’s death. The Jack/Locke of it all was incredibly mapped out in detail. The intricacies of the lie were, Jack is lying because Locke told him to, and there’s a part of him that realizes maybe Locke was right. He’s not consciously ready to accept that yet, so the lie’s going to be sloppy, and he’s making that up on the fly…

I pitched to the DVD team that it might be fun to have a documentary crew poke holes in how (bleepy) the lie is, on every level. You see those things about the WTC, on that trajectory. I thought it would be fun, but these guys came back with the film and I was, like, “Wow, the lie’s even worse than I thought.” It’s one of those things where you basically say, if this really happened, if these six people showed up on some island in the South Pacific and said, “Here’s what happened,” no one would ever think to question the story. If there’s any conspiracy, you have to start with the premise, “Why did they lie?”

How did you choose the Oceanic Six?

We basically looked at it as a very simple equation first, which is, “Who would want to leave the island, and who would not want to leave the island?” and that’s what the whole season’s about. Kate kind of waffles, Sawyer doesn’t want to leave the island, and leaps off the chopper when he has a chance to do so. He’s perfectly fine where he is. And clearly someone like Juliet would want to leave the island, so we had to figure out geographically, where people would want to be, and present a lifeboat situation where Billy Zane’s running around the Titanic with a gun, and it’s whoever can get on the chopper in time. Jack and Kate we had committed to, obviously, but when we talked about who the Six would be, we realized the majority of storytelling in season four would involve those people. But we were also setting things up for the ultimate endgame of the show which will hopefully reveal some more specificity about, “Why them?”

I’ve wondered about the team from the freighter, Faraday and those people. When we initially see them being put together, Naomi’s supposed to lead them, they have some specific mission that apparently requires a mercenary, a physicist, a medium and an anthropologist and a chopper pilot. Are we still going to find out what that was? Did that get left by the wayside by the events of season four?

The intent was that their mission was to find Benjamin Linus, then call the mercs and they’ll show up and remove Ben. But Faraday and Charlotte are both there for personal reasons. He’s doing time/space experiments while he’s there, Faraday has a lot of story yet to reveal. As does Charlotte, as does Miles. But the mission they’ve been tasked with to find Ben.

And this particular combination is the best Widmore could put together?

One would assume Miles was selected for his unique abilities. As to why Faraday comes, I think that the strategic thinking in sending those guys over first is, Faraday is the one who can figure how to get from the freighter to the island safely. Charlotte’s an expert in anthropology and dead languages, and Widmore thinks that skill-set would be useful for locating Ben for some reason. Hopefully, once you have all the information from season five, that will not be as much of an unanswered question, and you’ll have a little information as to why those people.

Time travel plays a big part in this season… This gets back to what I’m always asking you about: long-term planning. Obviously, some things get changed on the fly depending on what’s working and what isn’t, but did you know from the start how important time travel would be to the show, or is that something that evolved?

We were being asked, certainly as far back in season two, “Are you guys ever going to do time travel on the show?” And we responded, “Who says we haven’t already?” The time travel elements of the show have been built into the DNA of the show all along.

Obviously, the big question going into this year is this idea of, there’s only two fundamental approaches to time travel. There’s the “Back to the Future”/”Heroes” approach where you can go back and change things, that stepping on a butterfly, suddenly, there’s a different president, people have anetnna, George McFly’s a best-selling author. And the other way is, if you went back in time and tried to kill Hitler, you would fail, because Hitler wasn’t assassinated. What would happen if you were in the past and tried to change the present as you knew it, would you A)Fail, or B)Succeed, or C)Cause the thing you were trying to prevent. And that’s really interesting to us, because there’s no (do-over’s).

You’ve been covering the show since the very beginning. There’s been this very interesting thing for me, in terms of certain audience’s members to grasp the idea that they’re not watching a genre show. To them, I’m like, “What show were you watching? When the big column of smoke is in Eko’s face in season two and he stares it down and it retracts into the jungle, that’s not a genre show?” And they say, “No, it’s not.” And it makes you go, “Okay, this is how there can be both evolutionists and creationists.” You can take the same data and apply it to your own spectrum. You can go, “Oh, it’s not a genre show, because I don’t like genre shows, but I like ‘Lost.’ Therefore, ‘Lost’ is not a genre show.” That’s the logic they apply. Well, we’ve been writing a genre show from the word go. We’re sorry that it’s getting more genre.

The biggest audience that ever watched the show was the premiere of season two, where we revealed that Desmond was down in the hatch pushing the button every 108 minutes because he’s told the world will end. The show had a critical mass at that point, we’d just won the Emmy, people were talking about it, and they tuned in to see, ‘What is this thing?” And they saw that, and went, “Alright, it is exactly what I thought it was. No thank you. Not for me.”

But there’s been a steady attrition over the years, because the show demands that you watch every episode. And Lord knows, I wish there was a way we could do the show where the casual viewer could come along, but once you start writing for those people, the long-term fans will (bleeping) kill you, as well they should. We always thought it would be a cult show, and that’s the show we’ve been writing. But the fundamental strength of the characters — and our ability to say, “Nobody’s perfect, we’ve made mistakes, we’ll continue to make them” — as long as everyone’s acting in a way that makes sense, even when the story doesn’t entirely make sense, you can understand why they’re behaving the way they are. If you introduce a time travel element on the show, maybe one character will say, “I don’t want to be on the time travel show. I don’t like time travel.” That might make it more palatable to those viewers who don’t like it, either.

And the other thing is, nothing on “Lost” lasts forever. These are books in a series of six books. If season five gets a bit too far out there in terms of its genre for you, it’s just 17 hours in the grand mosaic of the show. Our hope is that, I feel like the greatest achievement that the show could have in terms of its legacy value, is that, 10 years from now, there’ll be an active debate about what were the best and worst seasons of the show, and two people will be able to say to each other, “My favorite season was this season,” and the other would say, “That’s my least favorite season! It was terrible!” And they’d still be fans of the show as a whole.

Let me put it to you this way, then: Up until the time you cut the deal to end the show (after season six), you and Carlton had to write not knowing when you could move certain stories forward. If you’d somehow known going in that it would be six years and out, what things would you have done differently in those first three years?

It’s a question that’s impossible to answer, because that wasn’t the condition of it. I think there probably would have been less internal pressure to introduce new characters into the show, but at the same time, new characters make it fresh. What would the show be without Ben and Juliet as series regulars? I think many shows that are on the air for a long time require a certain degree of cast turnover. We were certainly going to be killing people off and you then need to bring new people in.

But I think there would have been a lot more confidence in the storytelling, particularly in season’s two and three. There’s a stutter-step feel to season two and the first part of season three where you’d take two steps forward and one step back and one step forward. Even though the storytelling was emotionally-based, we’d realize that we didn’t need to do 25 episodes in a year, we only needed to do 17. For us, the big win wasn’t just setting an end date; it was also that the remaining seasons would have a reduced episodic order, so you could never get to a point where you’re like, “Wow, we really want to activate the endgame of the season, but we’re seven episodes away from that, so we need to just do a rollicking boar-hunting episode.”

That being said, some of my favorite episodes of the show are ones like Hurley in the van. Which doesn’t advance the plot in any way at all, except that they find Ben’s dad, that’s cool, but did you really need any of it?

No, but it’s a really good episode.

A good episode of “Lost” is not necessarily one that gives you major plot revelations. It’s one that works emotionally and kind of justifies its own existence. And there’s some episodes that never needed to have existed.

I think that’s what would have been different. If we’d known we could be six and out, we wouldn’t have done 25-pisode seasons, the narrative would have been a lot tighter, but I wonder if those episodes like finding the Dharma bus would have existed. So I don’t know that I would go back and change it.

Not only was it a good episode, but it sets up that wonderful moment in “Through the Looking Glass” where Hurley saves the day with the magic bus.

That’s right. That was all (Edward) Kitsis and (Adam) Horowitz (who wrote “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead”), that pitch. They were saying, “Well, Hurley finds this bus and then uses it to save them in the finale.”

What’s interesting is, it’s almost a time travel conundrum, which is, if I could go back in time and be more convincing about saying, ‘I will write this pilot, but we need to be six years and out,’ and therefore those episodes don’t get written, would I do it? The answer is no. The journey is the journey. But more importantly, if “Stranger in a Strange Land” — which, universally, is (considered) the worst episode we ever produced — had not been produced, we would not have been able to convince the network that, “This is the future of the show: how Jack got his tattoos. Everything we’ve been saying for two years about what’s to come, is now all here on the screen. You argued that an hour of Matthew Fox in emotionally-based conflicts, it doesn’t matter what the flashback story is, it’ll be fine. But now that we’re doing his ninth flashback story, you just don’t care.”

We can’t go back and apologize for the creative mistakes that we made, because we had to make them. If that episode hadn’t been made, we weren’t able to get a notes call that said, “We don’t like this episode,” and where we could then say, “We don’t like it, either, but it’s the best we can do if we’re not moving the story forward. And we’re now at a point, guys, where we can’t move the story forward.” And they asked, “Well, what would you do if we allowed you an end date?” And we said, “Give us an end date, and we’ll tell you what we’ll do.” And the conversations then reached a new pitch.

Everything has to happen the way it happened.

You brought up the introduction of Ben before, and people who are agnostic to atheistic about the idea of a master plan will say, “Well, geez, they hired (Michael) Emerson to be a day player for an episode or two, and now he’s the fulcrum of the show.” Could you clarify?

We have plans, but the big plans have trap doors. Basically, the plan on the table was Rousseau captures the leader of The Others, but doesn’t know who he is. She turns him over to Sayid, Sayid tortures him, he claims he’s a balloonist, it’s a case of mistaken identity, and it becomes a David E. Kelley story of “Will Sayid believe him or will he not?” It’ll be a three-episode arc, at the end they’ll realize he was lying all along and he’ll escape. That was the plan all along. The trap door of the plan is that, once it’s revealed that he’s an Other, he’ll admit to it and talk about the leader of The Others being a great man, in the third person. So if the actor is awesome, he’s referring to himself. But if the actor is not awesome, he’ll just be a lieutenant. He’ll go running off, or get killed, and we’ll meet the actual leader of The Others in the finale of this season when Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Hurley are double-crossed by Michael. We already had the spinal surgery story in our back pocket, and that’s where the story was going. Emerson basically, not quite guaranteed, that the story ballooned from a three-episode arc to a six-episode arc that tied into Michael’s return and the killing of Ana-Lucia.

At the beginning of the year, we have all these ideas, but we’re writing a script every eight days. I love that people think we’re smart enough — I understand why there are atheists and agnostics out there, because they believe in a subjective reality of it. They believe that JK Rowling outlined all seven Harry Potter books because she had unlimited time, nobody to answer to and an unlimited budget. She could make her characters do whatever she wants. WE can’t make our characters do whatever we want; our characters are played by actors. if we were just writing a novel, “Lost” would be uncompromised in its vision, and probably a lot worse than it’s been for being realized by a cast and crew of 500 who helped realize it in their own separate ways. The idea that Michael Emerson, the way he played Ben, is more Napoleonic — when you had thought of the leader of The Others, you thought of a big scary dude, and the fact that it’s him is fascinating. Which was our thinking when we cast him. We cast the leader of The Others, but we didn’t commit to it until Michael said, “You guys got any milk?”

Okay, lightning round. The story keeps moving forward, and therefore there are certain things you might never get back to. You don’t have to tell me what the answer is to any of these mysteries, just whether they’ll come up again

Okay

The four-toed foot?

You will see it again.

Why Libby was in the hospital with Hurley?

Hopefully, but contingent on factors beyond our control.

What happened between Alex and Rousseau during the brief period between their reunion and their deaths? Or was that another casualty of the episodes you lost to the strike?

Nope. Casualty.

Will we ever find out why Dharma (or someone else) is still making supply drops to the island?

I sure hope so.

Will the superpowers (or lack thereof) of Others like Ethan (superstrong and/or healing factor?) and Richard (immortal?) ever be clarified or explained?

Ethan works out a lot. And everyone heals fast on the island. Hasn’t Sawyer been shot like, fourteen times by now?

Source: NJ.com

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Source: EW.com

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EW’s Doc Jensen recommends us to re-watch the following episodes in preparation for next week’s premiere.

”THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME (PARTS 2 AND 3)”

Otherwise known as the Season 4 finale. Even if it’s still fresh in your mind, you might want to re-watch the Orientation Film for The Dharma Initiative’s time travel station, The Orchid, as well as the scene when Ben crawls down into the ice cavern and cranks the frozen donkey wheel — good context for the season premiere’s opening sequence. If you don’t feel like digging out the DVDs, ABC will re-broadcast the episode on Jan. 14.

”FLASHES BEFORE YOUR EYES”

This Season 3 classic — which revealed how Desmond projected his mind back in time after The Hatch imploded — is the producers’ choice for essential Season 5 prep. Pay close attention to all things Ms. Hawking. Timecop Granny is something of a paradox. On one hand, she tells Desmond that time can’t be altered — that if you try to change the past, Fate will find some way to thwart you. On the other hand, she warns of catastrophic consequences if Desmond doesn’t repeat all of his past actions. But if history can’t be changed, why the apocalyptic angst? Knowing the producers, my guess this contradiction isn’t an inconsistency, but rather exactly the question we should be asking.

”THE CONSTANT”

This Season 4 stand-out built upon the Rules of Time foundation laid by ”Flashes Before Your Eyes.” Viewers would be wise to bookmark a couple ideas: Island time travelers have a tendency to get sick, bleed out of their nose, and die; and said sickness can be at least temporarily slowed by fixing one’s mind, heart and life to a single source of meaning — a lover, a passion, an ideal. A constant.

”CABIN FEVER”

Perhaps the least of my five suggestions (at least at this point), but I put it No. 4 on my list because I sooooo loved this season 4 noodle-cooker, which chronicled John Locke’s strange and sorry-ass early years, from his premature birth to his esteem-challenged adolescence. If there is one scene I think you should check out, it’s the moment where ageless Other Richard Alpert shows up at Boy Locke’s house and gives him The Test. Make note of the items that Locke touches — and the one he ultimately chooses. The premiere will reward your research.

THE PIERRE CHANG COMIC-CON VIDEO

Who is Pierre Chang? Well, if you believe last July, Pierre Chang is the real name of the mysterious narrator of all those Dharma Initiative orientation films, whose other aliases include Dr. Marvin Candle, Dr. Mark Wickmund, and Dr. Edgar Halliwax. The Chang stuff kicks in after the comical, now-irrelevant bit about the Comic-Con dude being brought to a Dharma recruiting booth. Listen carefully to the very end of this proverbial message-in-a-bottle SOS from the past. Doesn’t the cameraman’s voice sound rather Season 4-familiar? Check the clip out below:

Source: EW.com

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LOST editors Henk Van Eeghen, Robert Florio, Mark J. Goldman and Stephen Semel have been nominated for an American Cinema Editors Award for their work on the Season 4 Finale “There’s No Place Like Home”.

The winners will be announced on February 15.

Source: ace-filmeditors.org

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Source: ABC.com

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Jin & Bernard

Jorge Garcia

Source: 4815162342.pl

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The six episodes submitted by Lost’s producers to Emmy judges for the Outstanding Drama Series race were just revealed. The episodes are: “The Beginning of the End” , “The Constant”, “Ji Yeon”, “There’s No Place Like Home, Part 1″ and “There’s No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3″.

Source: DarkUfo

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A large frame with plastic wrap around it. And the grips would shake it to make “waves.”

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Traitor. Desperate dad. Indestructible being. Tortured soul. Harold Perrineau’s Michael Dawson has been many things on Lost, and apparently you can now add “dearly departed” to that list. Michael — who had returned to action earlier this year after vanishing on a boat at the end of season 2 — seemed to be among the casualties of the freighter explosion in the season 4 finale on May 29. If Michael’s demise raised some eyebrows, so did some comments that Perrineau made in a recent interview about his departure. He voiced unhappiness with the end of his story line, which he also saw as having racial implications. EW.com asked him to elaborate on those thoughts — and to look back on his Lost journey.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You expressed displeasure with the way your story line ended, calling it “not cool.” Do you feel bitter about what happened?
HAROLD PERRINEAU: I wouldn’t say I’m bitter. I’m just like the fans, and I got excited when Michael was coming back. I thought it was really significant when Michael dropped those people off with the Others; I thought he was going to have something just as significant when he came back. I was disappointed that he didn’t. He didn’t get to make amends with those people. And nobody got to see [him try to neutralize the bomb]. Walt didn’t get to see it. Jin got to see it, but wasn’t necessarily so mad at him. And Desmond, who Michael didn’t know at all, was there. I was disappointed more than anything, like the fans were disappointed. Like I think the fans were disappointed.

You were quoted as saying that the loss of Michael meant that Walt “winds up being another fatherless child, [and] it plays into a really big, weird stereotype.” Did you voice that concern to the producers?
There’s not been any conversation about that. That was just my point-of-view in an interview. This is nothing that I’ve ever talked to the writers about, or I think is necessarily anything I should talk to them about. Their job is to make the story work. My feelings about the social implications are my feelings. My feelings don’t determine what the storyline is.

Do you feel that there is something fundamentally problematic with that plot, or is that just an observation?
It’s just an observation. Michael’s a black character and I’m a black person, so I have feelings based on it. I can’t really separate those two things — my race and my country and all that stuff. How it plays out in the story, I don’t know, because I don’t know how the rest of the story is going to play out. I accept that this is what [the producers] need to happen for something else to happen later.

Do you regret going public with your feelings?
I should probably think more before I say things. I should especially think before I say anything racial, because I recognize that when you make a racial comment it polarizes people. That was never the intention. It’s like, “No, no, no, don’t choose sides. I’m just telling you this is what I think. Everybody stay on whatever side you’re on; this is my point-of-view.” I should think about those things, and then unfortunately what happens is I just start to talk — like I’m doing now, I should probably shut up. [laughs]

Did you express your disappointment when you found out about the story line, or even say to them, “Have you considered this or that option?”
No. It’s not my gig to write it. When they called me up to tell me what was going on, in the moment, the most I could say was “Okay.” I didn’t want to seem like, “Oh, please, save my job.” I just [said], “Okay, that’s what you’ve come to. Cool.” Even in the moment, there’s no full-on processing all of it. No matter what they tell you, you have to take time and process.

When you agreed to return, did you have any idea how long it would last?
Not at all. We re-signed a new deal, and the deals are multi-year deals. So the thing was like, “He could be back for the season, or he could be back for the next three seasons. We’re just not sure.” They weren’t sure which way they were going with it.

If you had known that this was going to be the story line, would you have come back?
If I had known, I think I would have asked if I could have a conversation about it. And then I might have said, “Hey, these are some of the things that I think. What do you think about that?” And [executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse] would say, “This is how it’s going to play out in the story line or not going to play out in the story line.” We find out things pretty quickly and then have to process it and go do the work…. I wouldn’t have chosen it if it were me. [But] then I would have done whatever they said. They are brilliant guys. They have a fantastic show. The show’s been great since we’ve been on it; it’s going to be great when I’m not on it. They know exactly what they’re doing, so I don’t question that.

How would you have liked Michael’s story to have played out?
I didn’t think he got to redeem himself especially to the people who I feel like he wronged. I wanted Michael to go back and do something for them so that they felt like he really put out and that he did something to satisfy his own guilt and their anger…. At the beginning of the show, we didn’t understand much about him, but as we did get to understand him, he was a good guy. I think he was probably going to be a good father. I wish Michael would have gotten to be the father that he had always wanted to be, because he’s a good dude.

On some level, he did get a hero’s death.
Totally. In some sense he did. It wouldn’t be what I would have done. What I was wishing for was something, and that could be my actor pride too: “It should have been bigger!’ [laughs]

Was it emotional shooting your last scene?
No, actually because I’d been in and out and in and out again [laughs]. All those folks in Hawaii — the crew and the cast — they’re like my family, so it’s like, ‘Hey, I’ll see you when I see you. I gotta go have a baby but I’ll probably catch you at some point.’ [Perrineau’s wife gave birth to a girl on May 7.] I mean, until the show ends, it doesn’t feel like it’s the end, if that makes any sense…. A bunch of guys were like, ‘Yo, man, I said goodbye, but I said goodbye to you once before…. I’ll see you next time.’

What are the chances that you’ll return, as a ghost, or in some other form?
There are definitely possibilities for Michael to return — and maybe even possibilities for the thing I’m hoping for to happen. Maybe there’s some way through Walt’s eyes, or through a vision, Michael gets to redeem himself to those people. Or maybe never. When they said, “We’re not going to finish with him here, but as on Lost, you never know who comes back, and dead doesn’t mean you’re gone from the show.”… If they call me up and say, “Hey, Michael needs to come back and do a thing.” It’d be like, “What’s the thing he needs to do? Yeah, let’s go do it!”

What kind of send-off does a dead character receive on Lost? Do you get a “Sorry for Killing You” Hallmark card from the producers? And is there a support group for dead Lost characters?
Now that you’re saying it, I might have to start a little group that meets every weekend in West Hollywood. [laughs] Goodbye is never goodbye. There’s no official sendoff because you never know. Until it’s over, none of us know. So there’s no card, no flowers. There’s the call from Carlton and Damon, and you know that’s it. It’s like, “Aaagh, here it comes! The ax! Kapoooosh!”

Name your three favorite moments on the Lost set.
The top, top, top, top moment is in the very first season when Hurley introduces us to golf. We had been working so hard that it really was a breath of fresh air to shoot that kind of light scene. Me and [Matthew] Fox giggled almost through the whole thing. It was like, “We’re playing golf, dude—it’s crazy!”… [My second favorite] wasn’t funny in the moment, but it’s funny now. When I got the [script] at the end of season 1, I went “What? They’re on the raft and he’s screaming ‘Walt!’? The boat blows up? Wait a minute! I don’t know how to swim! I don’t swim!” They all looked at me like, “What do you mean you don’t swim?’ [laughs] Suddenly there was a rush of calls because nobody had thought to ask, “Do you swim?” We took care of that because we had a really great water team, so I just went, ‘Listen, if I die, I die. Here we go.” Third favorite moment is in the second season — me, Dan [Dae Kim], and Josh [Holloway] wind up getting thrown into a pit when we get caught by the Tailies. It was just a day of boys-in-a-pit humor, and if you understand boys in a crowded, tiny little room, you understand that the humor was, you know, smelly. [laughs]

How about a least favorite moment?
One is the day that Michael killed [Ana Lucia and Libby]. It was just really sad and I just wanted that day to be over, because we all — can I say “fell in love” without everybody getting all upset, thinking I was cheating on my wife? [laughs] We all fell in love. That was a bad day.

When you look back at your Lost experience, what are you most proud of?
I was really, really proud to be part of this group of people that looked like this on network television. We just weren’t used to seeing that kind of diversity on television. So when the cast won the SAG award [in 2006], I was like, “Yeah, man—that’s absolutely right.” And we worked really, really hard.

On your way out, did you score answers to any burning questions about the show’s mysteries?
No, no, man. I’m not that dude. I’d rather see when it happens. I don’t want you to tell me. I’ll just wait around with everybody else.

Source: EW.com

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TV GUIDE:

Lost’s breathtaking finale will no doubt have fans feverishly dissecting its innumerable puzzles until the show returns in early 2009. (Read our recap and weigh in with your thoughts!) Locke (aka Jeremy Bentham) is in the coffin?! What “very bad things” happened after the Oceanic 6 left the island?? How in Jacob’s name is Ben gonna help all of them — plus Locke! — get back there??? And exactly where did the former Others ringleader and that wacky frozen device move the island to?

But at least one major character’s fate was definitively sealed with the close of Season 4 when Michael (Harold Perrineau), the suicidal castaway — and father to “real big” mystery boy Walt — perished aboard the fiery freighter. “Michael had an incredibly heroic, noble death,” says executive producer Damon Lindelof. “He sacrificed his own life to redeem himself for past mistakes and to help the Oceanic 6 get off the island.” Sound familiar? It was this time last year that we were mourning the loss of the similarly selfless Charlie. Though Michael got a little something special that the ex-junkie rock star did not: a surprise send-off from Christian Shephard.

Shortly after he wrapped filming, an emotional Perrineau — who made a much-hyped return to the series in March after leaving in Season 2 — called to chat about his explosive second exit, the mad dash home to be with pregnant wife Brittany and why he feels the lack of a Michael-Walt reunion was “not cool.”

TV Guide: Did you know Michael was being killed off when you returned?
Harold Perrineau: I had no idea. It’s like, what the hell? I came back for that?

TV Guide: You’re laughing as you say that, but you don’t sound particularly pleased.
Perrineau: I’m disappointed, mostly because I wanted Michael and Walt to have a happy ending. I was hoping Michael would get it together and actually want to be a father to his kid and try to figure out a way to get back [home]. But this is [the producers'] story. If I were writing it, I would write it differently.

TV Guide:: So when did you get the news?
Perrineau: [Lindelof and fellow executive producer Carlton Cuse] called before the finale scripts were out. They said they weren’t going to continue with Michael.

TV Guide:: And what did you say to that?
Perrineau: At this point, I’ve been on the island, off the island, back on the island — so I just went, “Oh, ok.” [Laughs] This is their show and they know what they can or cannot write. I thought it was disappointing and a waste to come back, only to get beat up a few times and then killed. I felt like it was sort of pandering to some fans who wanted to see Michael punished because he betrayed people.

TV Guide: Are you referring to when he shot and killed Ana Lucia and Libby in Season 2?
Perrineau: Exactly. I honestly feel like Michael’s death served a really weird bloodlust for the fans.

TV Guide: Were you disappointed Michael and Walt didn’t reconnect before your character died?
Perrineau: Listen, if I’m being really candid, there are all these questions about how they respond to black people on the show. Sayid gets to meet Nadia again, and Desmond and Penny hook up again, but a little black boy and his father hooking up, that wasn’t interesting? Instead, Walt just winds up being another fatherless child. It plays into a really big, weird stereotype and, being a black person myself, that wasn’t so interesting. [Responds Cuse: "We pride ourselves on having a very racially diverse cast. It's painful when any actor's storyline ends on the show. Harold is a fantastic actor whose presence added enormously to Lost."]

TV Guide: Take me back to your last day of shooting.
Perrineau: My last day was kind of hectic. [Production] was trying to get me out because, at the time, my wife was a centimeter dilated.

TV Guide: Was she in labor at the hospital when you got back to L.A.?
Perrineau: No, I got home and then for another week, the baby would not come! We were like, “Seriously, dude, I was in Hawaii rushing like a madman!” I was talking to the baby, my wife was walking around, practically hiking, but the baby just would not come out! [Laughs] So we went to the hospital a week later and induced. A beautiful little girl came on May 7. Wynter Aria — I thought it was a nice name. It’s poetic, and she’s a little poetry in our life.

TV Guide: Let’s talk highlights. Surely, you had some positive experiences on Lost.
Perrineau: Doing the job in Hawaii was cool. Getting to meet and work with [co-creator] JJ Abrams was very cool. The day we found out the show [premiered] so well [in 2004] was an amazing day. We were all so hopeful and excited. The first season was one of my best years as a working actor. Not to say there weren’t tough times, but I loved the first season. And that one of my best friends, Dan [Dae Kim, who plays Jin], and I got to do pretty much the whole finale together.

TV Guide: Dead characters have a way of returning to the show. Would you be open to that?
Perrineau: I’d love to go back and work with people I really like working with, but I would have to know what was happening [story-wise] before I showed up again. Because this [last] storyline, I full-on feel, “No, that’s not cool.’”

TV Guide: What’s next for you?
Perrineau: This movie I did with Stephen Dorff called Felon is probably coming out at the end of the summer. And I’m in talks for a couple different films.

TV Guide: Any final thoughts?
Perrineau: Just that I hope the show continues to thrill people. I’m sorry to have to go, but I’ll see you in another incarnation. I’ll re-create myself because that’s what I do. That part of leaving is pretty cool.

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TV Guide interviewed Michael Emerson to talk about the season finale. The article contains some minor details about the finale.

Say what you will about wily Ben Linus, but Michael Emerson is one of Lost‘s most interesting cast member interviews. Maybe it’s the way he searches for just the right words — always cryptic, yet sometimes telling. On the eve of the conclusion of the ABC serial’s season finale, I decided to kick off a two-parter of my own. Here, Emerson talks of Ben’s fractured bond with the island, names the other (Other?) character that makes his “mouth water,” and chimes in on a tale of two Emilys.

TVGuide.com: Give me three words to describe the season finale.
Michael Emerson: [Thinks] Dark. Violent. Casualties.

TVGuide.com: About a year ago, you and I spoke about how Ben was loath to ever leave the island. And yet we’ve now seen that it is something that does happen. What do you think changed there?
Ben’s attachment to the island was… provisional. He’s always been able to leave it. But now there’s some question of him maybe having to abandon it – and that’s as a result of developments in this last season.

TVGuide.com: So it’s always been there as an option, but it’s only recently that he has chosen to avail himself of it.
I think so, yes. Things have gone so… wrong. Events have forced his hand in a number of ways. And John Locke appears to have been “anointed” somehow.

TVGuide.com: Ben appears to be making some sort of peace with that shift.
Yes. His gut reaction is that of a teenage boy, which is to be vengeful and full of rage and bitterness. But eventually, he will always play the board as it is in front of him. He will accept the terms.

TVGuide.com: “Whatever makes Jacob happy.”
Exactly.

TVGuide.com: When you first were pitched this role, did they give you any hint as to the scope of Ben’s involvement in the mythology?
No. I doubt if they even knew it at that time! As far as I knew, it was to be three episodes. I think it was an experiment, one that worked out happily.

TVGuide.com: They’ve told me that the same thing happened with Nestor Carbonell. They didn’t have any “grand plan” for Richard Alpert, but once he became available, they said, “We could do something here.”
Yeah… And he’s a great character. It makes my mouth water to think what they could do with Richard Alpert.

TVGuide.com: The guy is just flitting around time no worse for the wear, no nose bleeds….
Right, and he’s just one of the eeriest characters.

TVGuide.com: You received an Emmy nod last year for Lost. Does an actor ever settle into a part and think, “You know what? This could be an award-winning role, if I do the right things with it”?
I tend to just show up and do the work. I don’t think too much about those more popular issues — partly because I’m a creature of the theater and am therefore more superstitious. Some things are not to be said or thought, if you can avoid it. It begs for the gods to punish you for your hubris. It is flattering when it comes, though. Last year, I thought, “Oh my god, I am having more impact that I thought.”

TVGuide.com: And with a dark role that doesn’t always connect with Emmy panels.
And we work in such isolation, too. That’s a contributing factor. We’re out there in Hawaii, there are no paparazzi, there are no fancy parties…. We get up before the sun, drive to some remote location, and punish ourselves all day long. You don’t get a strong grasp as to how it’s received on the rest of the globe.

TVGuide.com: Are we to make anything of the fact that both Ben’s mother and Locke’s mother were named Emily?
Well, that very idea occurred to me last week — and I’m usually the slowest on the uptake with those kinds of clues. I thought, “Hmm, let’s hold onto that.” They don’t make those kinds of accidents. The guys who write Lost are very careful about names. [Laughs]

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