TV Storytelling Taxonomy

Knowing the complete scope of a television series allows us to identify the core storytelling dynamics at any point in the entire series. If you can identify the beginning, middle, and end of a narrative, you can track what the current season, episode, arc, or scene contributes to the whole. Without the Flashes diverting a linear narrative to create audience tension, isolating the individual cell structure that makes up the organism of serialized storytelling on television becomes much easier.

Lost is a 5 Act story with a Cold Open. That means that we open without a title on a sequence, then cut to the moving Lost title and a commercial. After that are five acts, with a commercial separating them. The leftovers from having commercial breaks, each act needs to tell a piece of the story and then conclude with a cliffhanger that propels you into the next act (lest anyone change the channel and miss the rest of the tale).

My first test edit was cutting down Season 2’s Premiere “Man of Science, Man of Faith” (fun fact: it’s the highest rated Lost episode ever), let’s look at how that episode breaks down and what we lose from each plot to cut the episode’s Flashes.