Midweek Update: Cruel Gods

The toxic work environment behind 'Lost' puts the show in a new light.

Lost is one of my all-time favorite TV shows. It wasn’t always perfect, and I still have mixed feelings about the finale¹, but I couldn’t resist the lure of what amounted to, “Origin Stories: The Show.” While the island mysteries were fine, the show’s true appeal was its large ensemble of characters harboring various secrets from and about each other. Sure, it was neat to investigate the mystery of The Hatch or trying to figure out what the deal was with the Dharma Initiative, but the show’s dizzying highs came from scenes like Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) telling Penny (Sonya Walger) how much he loved her in “The Constant” or Locke (Terry O’Quinn) shouting, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” These moments blended the show’s sci-fi premise with perfect moments of character growth and catharsis to create unforgettable moments of television that had rarely been seen on a major network drama.

I’ll always hold a special place in my heart for Lost (people were not allowed to disrupt my Wednesday nights when the show was on the air), but Maureen Ryan’s new book, Burn It Down, ran an excerpt in Vanity Fair detailing the show’s toxic workplace. In the article, Ryan details how showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse allowed a toxic environment to fester and repeatedly engaged in not only racist and sexist behavior, but also retaliated against anyone who dared question their edicts. In responding to the reporting, Cuse denied the allegations while Lindelof apologized although he also claimed he couldn’t recall such incidents as the ones described.

In television, it is said that the showrunner is god, and that’s certainly true in a cultural behemoth like Lost. More than any actor, Lindelof and Cuse were the stars of the show. When Comic-Con rolled around, they were the ones who addressed the audience. They’re the ones who spoke for the show as a whole. To be fair, they also absorbed the criticism from fans, but they seemed to take that largely in stride (and also decided not to do any press in the immediate aftermath of the show’s controversial finale).

Prior to reading this piece, I knew the behind-the-scenes origin story: J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof were supposed to co-run the show, but then Abrams got offered Mission: Impossible III, leaving Lindelof to run a massive show on his own. Lindelof wasn’t adept at those kind of logistics, and so Cuse was called in to co-run the show, and thus TV magic was born…at least, in front of the camera.

Lost Season 1 Cast | Image via ABC and Bad Robot

What’s illuminating about Ryan’s reporting on Lost isn’t that sometimes showrunners are massive jerks who create toxic work environments, but how that impacted the show itself. We labor under the illusion that sometimes people are, to use a phrase I heard applied to a NFL player once, “good enough to be an a-hole.” If people are deemed creative geniuses (and let’s be honest—it’s typically white men who receive this designation; women are deemed “difficult” and/or “crazy”), then their bad behavior is simply part of their allure and process. That’s a myth, and on Lost you can clearly see how that harmed the show.

Look no further than the treatment of Michael, played by Harold Perrineau. Perrineau is a terrific actor (he pretty much blasts everyone else off the screen in Romeo + Juliet with his performance as Mercutio), and he was a “get” for this expensive ensemble drama ABC was launching. But when he broached a real topic with the showrunners—how Black men are portrayed as fathers in popular culture—Cuse and Lindelof were incensed and didn’t care to listen to a Black man’s lived experience. Instead, they retaliated, cut his screen time, and eventually booted him from the show. Michael became a punchline among Lost fans as a hapless character screaming, “Waaaaaalt!” (the name of his son who was kidnapped by The Others) before turning to terrible deeds to get Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) back.

Cuse and Lindelof both deny that pushing out Michael was because of Perrineau’s concerns and rather the character’s exit was because Kelley was growing up too fast to fit the show’s chronology. I call BS. It’s a magic island. They simply could have recast Walt as an adult and brought him back to Michael, thus realizing Michael’s worst fear and forcing him to confront it: that he had missed his son’s childhood. In this way, Michael wouldn’t be an absent father, but would still have to deal with what it meant to see Walt not as a boy but as a man and trying to forge that connection. But that’s just one possibility because again: magic island. If Cuse and Lindelof had wanted to keep Perrineau they would have; they chose not to, and to blame Kelley for aging is a cop-out.

In this way, we can see that accountability is still a ways off, and perhaps Ryan’s suggestion to “burn it down” isn’t so far-fetched. There are always promises to do better, and yet these institutions not only remain in place but continue to venerate abusive behavior as creative genius. In an interview with Lithub, Ryan says:

But it’s from a toxic set of norms. And that toxic set of norms is exactly what you just said. That if you are not willing to put up with inappropriate behavior, misconduct, abuse, psychological abuse, vindictive behavior that could end your career any moment, you just don’t have what it takes.

Ryan elaborates that this stretches far beyond Hollywood into other industries where we allow people to be abusive and say that’s okay. For Ryan, this profile of Lost’s workplace was bold reporting because Lost is still close to people’s hearts, it was a great (if flawed) series, and she clearly has a camaraderie with Lindelof. But part of the problem is that we’ve played nice with abusive people for too long hoping for a pat on the head while ignoring the havoc that they’ve caused. Lost was a major career boon for actors like Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, and others, but not for Perrineau because he had the audacity to tell two white guys that they might want to think a bit hard when writing a Black character.

I look forward to reading Ryan’s full book, and while I still love Lost (and I don’t think Ryan is saying that you now have to dislike the show because of this new information), it does mean that I’ll have a new lens to view it. Cuse and Lindelof fashioned themselves as Jack Shephard (Fox), a determined leader who didn’t always make perfect decisions but knew that communal effort was the only way to success. Instead, they were Benjamin Linus (Michael Emerson)—a character introduced in Season 2 (when the show had become a massive hit)—a manipulative schemer willing to cut down anyone he has to in order to achieve his goals.

Recommendations

Recommendations are back! Each week, I’ll recommend a different Blu-ray/4K you should add to your collection. Note: I use Amazon Associate links so I get a few cents store credit if you buy anything through my links. Please help me to live large off Amazon bucks.

Edge of Tomorrow 4K ($9.99) - This is one of Tom Cruise’s best movies. It not only uses its Groundhog Day conceit wisely, but like all of Cruise’s best performances, it pushes back against his winner persona. Movies like Mission: Impossible and Top Gun: Maverick are fun, but they’re about reinforcing Cruise as movie star. Cruise is far more interesting when he’s playing cowardly like he does at the outset here or desperate (Jerry Maguire) or sleazy (Magnolia). Also, Edge of Tomorrow features one of Bill Paxton’s last performances, and he’s great here as a goofy drill sergeant.

Substack Recommendation - Author and film critic Jason Bailey has a successful podcast, A Very Good Year, where he invites a guest to talk about a particular year of movies. That podcast now has a Substack. Subscribe!

What I’m Watching

I’m caught up on Succession and Barry. I have plenty to say about those shows and their series finales, but that’s for Sunday’s issue.

My wife and I made our way through Shiny Happy People, Amazon’s docuseries about the Duggar Family and their Christian fundamentlist church, Institute of Basic Life Principles (IBLP). The docuseries is well made, but it’s very hard to watch because of all the tales of sexual abuse and child abuse. We could only watch about one episode per day (there are four episodes total) and at the end of each episode, we felt completely wrung out.

It’s an excellent docuseries, and draws a clear line from IBLP to the Duggars to the larger political and social forces at work. If I have one qualm with the documentary, it’s assigning IBLP the designation of “cult.” Yes, it is a cult, but that also makes it seem like an abnormality, and really everything IBLP wants is what the modern GOP wants. Ending public schools to force children into homeschooling? Check. Getting women out of the public sphere and into the home where they can only do childrearing? Check. Working to enforce a system of Christian Nationalism where men hold all the power? Check.

It’s not difficult to see why something like IBLP is appealing to weak men like Bill Gothard, Jim Bog Duggar, Josh Duggar, and their ilk. If you have a system where men are only answerable to God, then there’s no accountability because you can always claim that God told you to do X,Y, or Z (this phenomenon is obviously not unique to Christianity). These people don’t care about God or Jesus or any religious tenets other than how they can wield power and abuse it. That’s it. When you see all the sexual abuse wrought by a far-right Christian organization like IBLP, I can only marvel at the shamelessness of then turning around and saying that it’s actually those in the LGBTQ+ community who are “the groomers.” Let me know when the Pride Parade starts selling books on the finer points of child abuse.

What I’m Reading

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to finally read Moby-Dick. I’m reading the Norton Critical Edition, which is incredibly helpful with its bevy of footnotes and details. I’m about 150 pages in and I’m enjoying it! The book is funnier than I expected it to be, and Melville also knows how to put together some beautifully written prose.

I also started reading Maria Konnikova’s The Confidence Game, but bailed after 70 pages. I hoped it would provide some insights about con artists (especially as it seems like we’re in a golden age of grifting), but instead it’s just a bunch of pop psychology, poorly sourced, and repetitive. I’ve now moved on to Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Impostor Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries.

In other reads (six recommendations this week instead of three since I’ve been on a short break):

• Inside the Meltdown at CNN by Tim Alberta [The Atlantic] - I almost made this the midweek topic, but I feel like so many others have already weighed in wisely (Check out The Present Age for an astute breakdown of not only Chris Licht’s flaws but Alberta’s as well; I also recommend this Perry Bacon Jr. article about guys like Licht who pride themselves as anti-woke centrists, but only seek to exacerbate the issues we face). Anyway, Licht was fired this morning, and I can only hope that the next person put in charge understands how to run a news organization.

• Apple Vision Pro hands-on: A new milestone for mixed reality, but issues remain by Devindra Hardawar [Engadget] - I trust Devindra’s opinions, and I liked his insight on what the Vision Pro can and can’t do. My current belief is that this could be a great tool for businesses. As a consumer device, I’m not sold in part because of the massive price point, but also because I’m getting a little tired of Silicon Valley selling us expensive technology that professes to bring us closer together while doing more to keep us apart.

• A Flight Attendant’s 12 Etiquette Rules for Summer Travel by Kristie Koerbel [The New York Times] - I really don’t need to see another video of an adult getting on a plane and acting like they’ve never been around other people before. To quote George Costanza, “We’re living in a society!”

• We ask the creator of 'Succession' everything you wanted to know about the finale by Terry Gross [NPR] - Like I said, I’ll have more on Succession on Sunday, but if you’ve seen the show, this is a terrific interview with creator Jesse Armstrong and executive producer Frank Rich.

• The last good website by Danny Funt [Columbia Journalism Review] - I’m fascinated by the success of Defector, a subscription-based website from Deadspin writers who jumped ship when the site’s new owners starting flushing that’s site successful editorial down the tubes. The online media landscape is deeply broken right now because the ad market that supports it has been largely devoured by Google and Facebook with every other website fighting over the scraps. Defector has tried a different plan that has worked so far: worker-owned with modest profits. It’s a successful site that’s not looking to become the biggest media conglomerate on the planet. Can this work for other kinds of media? I’m not sure (I’d love to see it for movies, and I feel like if The Dissolve had this model when it was around instead of being ad-based, it would have survived and flourished), but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

• Inside Snopes: the rise, fall, and rebirth of an internet icon by Chantel Tattoli [Fast Company] - File this under the annals of “Why Are Men.” I’ve long loved Snopes, a website that in the early 2000s was able to shatter every urban legend I’d ever heard of and make me breathe a little easier. Unfortunately, as is too often the case, a couple of toxic dudes made life harder for everyone. The story does have a happy ending though: those toxic guys are now gone and the site is now under leadership that will hopefully make Snopes flourish again.

What I’m Hearing

Slow Burn: Season 8 - This is the good stuff. The new season of Slate’s Slow Burn focuses on Clarence Thomas. Thomas is a fascinating figure because of how much he’s worked to uphold the very institutions that seemingly made his childhood and young adulthood so difficult in the first place. Also, with all the recent (albeit unsurprising) news about his corrupt dealings with billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, I wanted to know more. The first episode is very good, and I’m excited to hear the rest of the season.

If Books Could Kill: The World Is Flat - Readers of this Substack know I am not a Thomas Friedman fan, so it was fun listening to hosts Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri rip apart Friedman’s 2005 book The World Is Flat. No one loves metaphors like Friedman and yet he’s absolutely awful at using them. But not to worry: all of his conclusions are from gut speculation rather than doing the tough work of talking to experts and using data to back up his points.

The Chernobyl Podcast - I finally watched Chernobyl this year ahead of The Last of Us (both shows overseen by writer Craig Mazin), and wanted to know more since I thought Chernobyl was a fascinating limited series. Thankfully, there’s a podcast where Mazin discusses the episodes with host Peter Sagal (of NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!”) I loved the first episode of this podcast because it not only illuminates more of what happened at Chernobyl, but Mazin, who has been a professional screenwriter for decades (and also co-host of the screenwriting podcast Scriptnotes) is great at explaining what goes into trying to fit historical events into a narrative TV series.

The Daily - I decided to quit The Daily because of this episode. I was listening to this particular episode because I wanted to know why Texas AG Ken Paxton was being impeached since it’s rare for Republicans to turn on one of their own. While host Michael Barbaro and guest J. David Goodman (Houston bureau chief for The New York Times) did manage to explain what happened, they did so in an infuriating way. Goodman explained that the Republican rebellion against Paxton was that he was working to implicate them in his own scandal, and that was a bridge too far because it could harm them in their districts for re-election. That makes sense. But then Goodman and Barbaro wrap up the episode by saying that these Republicans who voted to impeach could be harmed if the Senate acquits Paxton and there’s backlash against House members who “stood on principle.” Less than 10 minutes ago, these were guys who were political operators making decisions for their fortunes, but now they’re standing on principle? Give me a break. It’s fine to be a canny political operator, but survival isn’t a principle.

S-Town - I finally decided to give this one a shot after six years, but quit after three episodes. I found Brian Reed’s reporting to be obvious, stale, and exploitative. It very much feels like a guy from the big city gawking at rural people while missing obvious insights into their lives. Gosh, Brian, do you think if a guy who tells you how miserable he is with where he lives (the title “S-Town” is the publicly-allowed title for the show’s real title, “Shit-Town”, which is what the podcast’s main figure calls his small Alabama town) and talks for hours on end might be lonely and depressed? Another whiff by Serial productions.

What I’m Playing

I feel like everyone I know is much further ahead in Tears of the Kingdom than I am. I was talking with my brother the other day, and he said he had completed 80 shrines. I’ve only completed half of that! I’ve only done one temple! Granted, I’ve spent a lot of my time also watching movies (follow me on Letterboxd!), but still I should probably up my game a bit. I don’t want to still be making my way through shrines when Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 shows up this fall.

1. I feel like all the stuff on the island works. All the stuff in the afterlife/flash-sideways/whatever-you-want-to-call-it never completely worked for me. It felt like a way to have your cake and eat it too where we saw a glimpse of what might happen to these characters if they never met, but also when they had a moment of connection, it’s like they got to see a recap of the series and suddenly they were a changed person. The flashes (whether flashbacks or flash forwards) always felt grounded in decisions and part of essential set-ups to what happened on the island. Changing those flashes from set-up to pay-off undermined their use.