Current Affairs

There are creative squabbles on every show. Former LOST producer David Fury has made his public in a recent Rolling Stone interview, and my friend Javi, supervising producer of the show,  isn’t happy about it. But the squabbles aside, Javi’s lengthy post (which refutes Fury’s assertions) offers a fascinating insight into the development of LOST. While the details are unique to LOST, the process is applicable to most TV shows I’ve ever worked on…especially when it comes down to how individual episodes are crafted:

a good example of how the writers room works in a series such as
"lost"- and one that is extremely appropriate to this situation – is
the creation of the story that eventually became david’s emmy-nominated
episode "walkabout."

now, let me make one thing perfectly clear.
david wrote the living hell out of that episode. he deserved the emmy
nomination (and in my opinion, the emmy itself) for an episode which is
rightfully hailed as a turning point in the series and a signature
moment of "lost."

however, like all episodes of this – and
almost any television show – that story was "broken" in the writers
room. it was discussed, conceived and divided into acts and scenes in
an environment where a group of writers sat together, shared their best
ideas and thoughts, and collectively filtered out the chaff to come up
with the best possible version of that story: which david – to his
complete credit – then turned into one of the best hours of tv that i
have ever seen.

HEAD CASES was cancelled by Fox after only two episodes, but it’s hardly the first series cancelled so abruptly. It joins an infamous list, compiled by TrivialTV, that includes such forgotten failures as BIG SHAMUS LITTLE SHAMUS, CHARLIE LAWRENCE, FOUR CORNERS,  THE PAULA POUNDSTONE SHOW, PRINCE STREET, SLEEPWALKERS, THE MIKE O’MALLEY SHOW, and RYAN CAULFIELD: YEAR ONE.