The first time I remember seeing something like this was with (appropriately enough) Murder She Wrote, with a paperback mystery novel credited to Jessica Fletcher. In that case, though, the show had been on for years and was a television staple. DC Comics got into it in 1997 with The Life Story of the Flash, credited to Iris (West) Allen, which had previously been referenced in the comic books.

More recently, Lost had an in-universe book published in the real world: Bad Twin was billed as the final novel by one of the passengers on Oceanic 815 who didn’t make it through the first episode. I actually read that one. It was interesting enough, though it had little to do with the show beyond the presence of the Widmores.

And we learned some very interesting things about the fate of the islanders.

Spoilers follow.

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So, this season we learned:

• How the Others are connected to the Dharma Initiative
• How Locke was paralyzed, and why he can walk again
• Some of what the Others are doing on the island, including why they kidnapped Claire
• The father of Sun’s baby
• The identity of the real Sawyer
• The fate of (most of) the Dharma Initiative
• We know at least some of the castaways will return to the outside world.

We also saw the resolution of a number of conflicts: The Kate/Jack/Sawyer triangle finally resolved into Kate/Sawyer. Rousseau and Alex finally met, uniting mother and daughter for the first time since birth. Charlie came to terms with his life (which, unfortunately, seems to be the kiss of death on this show). Penelope knows Desmond is on the island, and the islanders contacted the outside world.

Some unanswered questsions:

• Who was in the casket? I’m betting on either Sawyer or Locke, going by it being someone clearly important to Jack and Kate.
• What’s Naomi’s group really doing? Why is Ben afraid of them finding the island? And how did she end up with the picture of Desmond and Penny?
• What is Jacob? A ghost? How is he connected to Locke, Ben, and the Island? What’s his agenda?

It’s a shame to lose Charlie, but his death was at least handled well. He went out a hero, saving Desmond’s life and leaving him a message.

It was great to see Hurley save the day. I was also really worried about Bernard and Jin (not so much about Sayid). Think about it: You’ve got, what four couples among the group (assuming people know about Kate and Sawyer), and you stick three of the men on the dangerous missions? (I kept thinking of the “let us not waste lives” line from Les Miserables, when the students realize that no one is rising up to join the revolt, and Enjolras sends away everyone who has family.)

We both had the flashes pegged as possibly future pretty early on. I think the beard was the first clue, followed by Jack apparently being well-known already. The RAZR phone clinched it for me, and Katie ran the name of the funeral parlor against the anagram server and came up with “flash forward.” Then there was the structure: it actually felt like the island scenes, or at least the ones with Jack, were flashbacks from the city scenes.

That seems to be the “game-changing” element to the episode: We know they’ll get home (and possibly very soon). More importantly, it opens up the format. They can mix flashbacks with flash forwards. They can run a parallel narrative of the time on the island with future Jack and his companions trying to get back. They can even pick things up in the future (well, more likely it’s our present), and flash back to the island.

7-8 months until next season. *sigh*

Warning: the remainder of this post contains spoilers for Heroes through episode 1.21 “The Hard Part.” Also, if you haven’t seen Babylon 5 and Memento, or at least have some working knowledge of the two, you probably won’t be able to make head or tail of it. (God knows I can’t, and I wrote the darn thing.) The more background, the better.

Okay, so Linderman, a Vorlon, a Shadow, and Leonard the amnesiac dude from Memento walk into a casino. Two of them can agree that the problem with manipulating people to fight your battles for you is a Risky Proposition, for the simple reason that they are people, not chess pieces. Leonard agrees but can’t remember later that he did, because Linderman confiscated his tattoo stuff. And Linderman himself is sitting grinning and thinks the godlike beings are just so tragically wrong.

(Drinks arrive.)

VORLON: This plot has always been here.

LINDERMAN: Well, of course it has. Do you think we’d leave this all to chance? We only crib from the best.

LEONARD: Um, guys, my money disappeared. I think John G. took it.

(CANDACE walks by, tries to morph into a VORLON, and gets a richly deserved psychic bitchslap.)

CANDACE: (from the floor) Ow.

SHADOW: Mr. LINDERMAN, what do you want anyway?

LINDERMAN: Isn’t it obvious? You’re the godlike aliens, after all. We’re just mildly special, but we can play around with all sorts of fun toys. Like people’s minds.

VORLON: Reflection. Surprise. Terror. That’s your future.

LEONARD: Who are you people, anyway? And why am I drunk?

LINDERMAN: Mr. Kosh, I’m sure you’re mistaken. I’ve seen the historical documents, and while I’m quite impressed, you’re overlooking the fact that I’m—we’re—not attempting to fight a war here. We’re only trying to reach the…nexus, if you will. Thereby throwing a hydrospanner into the proverbial gears.

SYLAR: I can fix that.

SHADOW: Oh, hi there Gabriel. Having fun being our emissary?

THE PROPHETS: Wrong show, dorkwad.

SHADOW: My bad. Still, we’re winning. (blows a raspberry at the VORLON)

(VORLON is shaken, and its voices appear to be muttering layers of “dumbass” and “shit-for-brains.”)

VORLON: Impudence. Hiro and Mohinder remain to us. And Parkman and the Bennets are not lost.

LINDERMAN: (chuckling) Oh, you’ll see. They’ll all fall in line easily enough. Why do you think I and my associates have let so many of them realize they were being manipulated? Because they’re so adorably predictable when their trust is betrayed. You really should read the Widmore report, it’s marvelously entertaining. Believe me, no amount of time travel is going to change people’s gut reactions.

LEONARD: (reading off a legal pad smeared with paint) Okay, so…what, you shoved Meredith at Nathan and then shoved Bennet at Meredith, knowing how she’d react, so you could force Claire’s expression of the gene. So what’d you do it for and how’d you get Molly?

SHADOW: A better question would be, is there anything—

LEONARD: (brightly) Worth living for?

SHADOW: (sighing) Wrong tattoo. Anything you didn’t account for.

LINDERMAN: I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.

CANDACE: Wow, it really is hard to hold a Vorlon form with so many people watching. (passes out)

SYLAR: Oh goody, lunch.

LINDERMAN: Not on the casino floor, Gabriel. Why don’t you visit one of our many fine restaurants?

VORLON: You start the avalanche, but you do not know how all the pebbles will vote.

LEONARD: Yeah, what he said. Or she said. Whatever. Hey, do you guys know if I finally did it?

SYLAR: No, I’m the one who does it. Kaboom. Good-bye, Nyuu Yooku.

LINDERMAN: Wait, you ate Hiro? That’s not in my script.

VORLON: And so it begins.

ANGELA PETRELLI: There’s a new draft, hon. Page 606. (hands LINDERMAN a script with the word balloons filled in)

LEONARD: So you’re just making up your own truth? I think somebody’s going to lose a Post-It sooner or later here.

LINDERMAN: Nonsense. Mohinder is seeing to that. We won’t even need computers of dubious origin and purpose to find all the mutants, which is a good thing since I’m really not going to be happy with how perceptive Micah’s turned out.

SHADOW: (throwing up a few appendages in surrender) Okay, you don’t want to listen to the ones who’ve been there. We get that. Just don’t come crying to us when your boom tomorrow isn’t the one you wanted.

LINDERMAN: Fine. Go ahead back to the future, the past isn’t what it used to be. (glances at SYLAR, who is eyeing CANDACE) Oh for God’s sake, Gabriel, get a doggie bag, you’re going to die at the end of the season.

(There is the faint sound of FANGIRLS wailing. It’s loud enough for SYLAR to wince.)

VORLON: You are so not ready for immortality.

ANGELA PETRELLI: That’s why we have kids, stupid. LINDERMAN just adopts, that’s all.

LEONARD: Receipt, please.

Though I have to say, I hope they’ve checked their contract for loopholes. Farscape thought they had a two-season deal, so they took their characters and story to some really dark places in Season 4, figuring they had another year to dig them out. Instead they got canceled, and it took a fan campaign and the sale of the Jim Henson company to get even a four-hour miniseries to wrap things up.

As for the structure, this is actually probably better than two 24-episode seasons. It makes it easier to show an entire season through without interruptions. This season’s schedule, with just 6 episodes at the beginning followed by months of reruns, was terrible. Of course, once they came back from hiatus, it was much better than the sporadic episodes they showed in Season 2.

Arc vs. Scheduling

This brings up a problem with trying to run a TV series with an arc to it: Scheduling can seriously mess it up.

Babylon 5 suffered from PTEN’s decision to hold the last four episodes of each season until fall, followed immediately by the following season. It undermined the season-ending cliffhangers, and broke the narrative in the middle. Eventually they started anticipating it: JMS would write a mini-cliffhanger five episodes before the end of the season, and in one case even wrote a recap into the script for episode 19.

Veronica Mars and Heroes have done a good job this year of breaking the season into mini-arcs that match the schedule. Veronica Mars had a 9-part mystery, followed by a 6-part mystery, followed by a series of one-shots at the end of the season, and each arc was shown without interruption.

Heroes told the initial “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” storyline, followed it up with some backstory, and finished the first run with a teaser for the main arc for the rest of the season. (Heroeswiki breaks it down further, by tagline.) The second arc deepened the plot, and brought everything to a high point: the revelation of Linderman’s and Bennett’s agendas, plus cliffhangers in Hiro’s and Peter’s journeys. Now we’re in the home stretch. As the tagline says, “It’s time to save the world.”

That seems to be the way to go: If you don’t have the clout to change the schedule (like 24), find some way to work within it. Plowing straight through without regard to when the episodes are going to be shown, like Lost did with Season 2, is just going to frustrate your audience.

(Thanks to aeryncrichton for the news!)

Incidentally, on the question that so vexed Hurley and Charlie—namely, who would win in a race, the Flash or Superman… it’s the Flash. That’s not just a fan reaction, I have documented evidence.

Okay, actually, they’re a moving company, but check out this sign:

This is in a business/light industrial area on Walnut Ave.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that they might be able to land Claudia for a recurring guest spot as her “mother” (flashbacks maybe?), and thus call into question through visuals alone whether Danielle is even as right in the head as she seems to be.

I’d seen the Drive Shaft site last year (or at least a Drive Shaft site), though it seems to have exceeded its bandwidth for this month.

The official sites don’t have much detail, but they do have easter eggs…

Update (April 2010): Four and a half years later, as the show barrels toward its conclusion, only the Drive Shaft fan site is still around. Oceanic Air now redirects to ABC’s page for the show, the Hanso Foundation isn’t responding at all, and Mega Lotto Jackpot seems to have been picked up by a domain squatter.