The Light Grows Brighter

Still more encouraging news coming from the Writer's Strike, as it seems the end may truly be at hand. This article from CNN (and a host of others on every major news site) would seem to indicate that we are a few formalities away from a full-fledged return to new TV.

The question now becomes, "When will my favorite show (a.k.a. LOST) produce new episodes?" For our purposes, we know we've got 6 consecutive new episodes to take us through March. It is highly unlikely (if not impossible) that the other 8 episodes of the promised 16-episode Season 4 will not be ready to go at the end of this first 8-episode run. The unwritten "deadline" for uninterrupted new episodes of any show was January 31st. It looks like the strike may very well be resolved within 2 weeks of that date. And even before these final agreements are ratified by the masses of writers, certain personalities are already returning to work as early as today. That includes LOST God, producer and show-runner Carlton Cuse who, along with Damon Lindeloff, is the brains behind the whole operation.

That's a good sign. My guess is production was very abruptly halted when the strike began. There are probably rudimentary scripts lying around (well, locked up in an Al Gore® Lock(e) Box) and some outlining that needs to be done to get to the point they wanted to reach by the end of Season 4. Hopefully Carlton and Co. will be hard at work in the next few weeks. And more importantly, we can hope that they decide to finish out Season 4 over 8 episodes. There's been talk that some shows may shorten their run to accommodate for the strike. So we could get 4 or 6 episodes of LOST, meaning a 12- or 14-episode season, instead of 16.

Either way, it's exiting. It's been an arduous last couple months for American TV watchers, who have been forced to resort to shows like Fox's The Moment of Truth, which I'm fairly sure is, in and of itself, a sign of the apocalypse.

Oh, and I know this is The Dharma Blog and not The Diary with a Unicorn on the Front of It Blog. But here's to hoping that Scrubs gets back to work and can finish strong in their final season. It's an underrated yet brilliant show that deserves nothing less than the opportunity to finish telling their story the way they intended to. If the strike gets resolved, rest assured I'll be toasting to it with an Appletini - easy on the 'tini.


Namaste.
.charlie


Addendum: Maggie has forwarded me a short article that interviews the good doc Jack Shepherd about LOST's return to filming. Click here to read it.