Lost Wednesdays Is Back!

Well, at least for a week it is. While everyone is patiently waiting for the 5 remaining episodes of Lost Season 4 to begin airing, The Blot has some exciting news! After a lot of discussion between ABC and Lost Executive Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, ABC has finally agreed “to bring us an extra hour of Lost this season.” (link) Yes, you’ve read that correctly, the Lost crew has figured out a way to produce an extra episode this season! I guess cramming in eight episodes worth of story lines into 5 hour episodes wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Thankfully, to the benefit of Lost fans worldwide, we will now be getting 14 episodes this season.


The next logical question is how is ABC going to be scheduling this additional hour of programming while still giving the cast and crew enough time to produce it? Well, TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello has all the scoop:

With a 14th hour of Lost now a done deal, the show’s finale will swell to three hours. But, in what can only be described as an unorthodox scheduling move, the first hour of that finale will air on May 15, and then we have to wait two weeks – until May 29 – to get the last two hours! That’s right, no Lost on May 22. (link)

The one week break seems very confusing at first until you find out the rest of the story. Because Lost's Exec-Producers convinced ABC they needed to air the final two hours of Lost at the same time and because ABC had already scheduled the season finales of Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy for May 22nd, ABC decided to push the season finale of Lost back a week and ordered an extra episode of Grey’s Anatomy to fill the hour gap left by Lost's move. So not only has this decision given Lost an extra episode, but now fans of Grey’s Anatomy get rewarded with a previously unscheduled two hour season finale. It sounds like it’s working out for all fans of ABC’s hit dramas.


As always, no Ausiello report is complete with at least a little tease of what’s coming up on the finale 6 episodes of the season. The semi-spoiler comes at the end of a Carlton Cuse quote given to Ausiello explaining why the additional hour was needed, “Damon and I were working on the script and we just couldn’t get it all done in one hour without shortchanging the story. Now the finale will have all the sweep and emotional completeness we wanted it to have – along with, of course, answering who’s in the coffin.” (link) If that doesn’t get you excited for Lost’s return on April 24th at 10/9c then I don’t know what will.

ABC's new revised schedule looks like this:

May 15
8/7c PM: Ugly Betty
9/8c PM: Grey's Anatomy
10/9c PM: Lost (Season Finale, Part 1)

May 22
8/7c PM: Ugly Betty (Season Finale)
9/8c PM: Grey's Anatomy (Two Hour Season Finale)

May 29
8/7c PM: Lost (Season Finale, Part 1) repeat
9/8c PM: Lost (Season Finale, Parts 2 & 3)