By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY  began in 2004, with 48 plane crash survivors on a small tropical island. It will end May 23, having enveloped millions of TV viewers in an emotionally lush, intellectually verdant world.  What started as an ABC drama about castaways asking a basic question — "Where are we?" — has evolved into a critically acclaimed cultural phenomenon that reaches well beyond television, touching on literature, philosophy, psychology, spirituality and physics.  "It really comes across as a piece of high literature rather than pulp fiction," says Nikki Stafford, who has written the Finding Lost season-by-season guides. "This is a show that requires a lot of your head, but if your heart wasn't in it too, then you wouldn't be tuning in season after season. We care about these characters."  ABC is giving the series a grand sendoff, turning May 22 and 23 into a Lost weekend. The acclaimed pilot episode will run May 22 (8 p.m., all times ET/PT), followed by a night-long extravaganza May 23, including a retrospective at 7, the 2½-hour finale at 9, and Jimmy Kimmel Live: Aloha to Lost at 12:05 a.m. The celebration begins in Los Angeles tonight with Lost Live: The Final Celebration, featuring a red-carpet reception, Oscar winner Michael Giacchino conducting the show's music, and a screening of the penultimate episode (which airs Tuesday).  Lost has spawned books, blogs, websites and college courses. And, timed perfectly with the advancement of communications technology, it found a level of interactivity with fans that went further than did earlier shows.  "It tapped into the imagination of a culture, in terms of people watching it, talking about it, going beyond a strict television experience, whether it's all the online participation, the extension of the brand," ABC Entertainment Group president Stephen McPherson says. "For us, it's a much bigger event, much bigger project than just the 22 episodes we started airing and now the 17 or 18 we do" a season.  For cast, crew, writers and fans, the coming finale is bittersweet.  "I'm living on the island of denial," says Lost blogger Jo Garfein (jopinionated.blogspot.com).  Lost's producers promise answers to important questions, though not to some lesser ones. The show's ultimate success doesn't depend on it, executive producer Damon Lindelof says.  "Essentially, we just hope people have an emotional experience, and when they look back on the six years they spent with the show, they feel it was worth it emotionally," he says.  "It wasn't about the answer to what the (the mysterious) numbers meant. It was really about, 'How did I feel while I was watching Lost? Did it excite me? Did it scare me? Did it make me cry? Did it make me laugh?' "  Jorge Garcia, who plays fan favorite Hurley, has a simple hope for its legacy. "I just want people to sit back now and then and be like, 'Yeah, that's a great show.' "  Unique in 'so many ways'  On a literal level, Lost is the story of survival.  It began Sept. 22, 2004 (on the show and in reality) with the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 on an island in the South Pacific. Forty-eight passengers miraculously escaped death; their struggle to stay alive on the island and find a way off it became the core drama.  But this was no typical island, as the survivors discovered when they encountered both a polar bear and a "smoke monster" — a dark killer cloud — in the $12 million pilot. Viewers were enthralled, and Lost won the best-drama Emmy for its first season.  Some of the characters eventually got off the island. But they returned, sensing a larger mission, perhaps one in which the world's fate hangs in the balance.  As the final hours approach, their struggle against a force that has taken the form of one of their own, the deceased John Locke (Terry O'Quinn), is unresolved.  Lynnette Porter, co-author of Unlocking the Meaning of Lost and Lost's Buried Treasures, says Lost leaves a long string of firsts.  "There are so many ways it has been unique: in the way we have a six-year story that's been serialized, the united fandom initially through the Web, but also through a lot of little extras the series' creators have been putting in, stories, websites, novels, games, texts that play into new media," she says. "Heroes comes along, and it has interactive elements on NBC's website. They probably wouldn't have done that if Lost hadn't done it first."  Others believe that Lost, by its nature, is one of a kind.  "It may change things in subtle ways, but in TV history it will stand alone as pretty unique," O'Quinn says. "There have been a few things that have popped up in the last few years that have a similar tone, but I'm not sure how (they have) been received."  McPherson, citing Lost as part of a TV golden era that includesThe Sopranos and 24, says imitations of the show aren't likely to succeed. "The next Lost won't resemble Lost at all. The next Lost will be something completely different, something that is ambitious and takes incredible risks and surprises people."  Lost's production history is an interesting story of survival, too. It was a late long shot, an idea then-ABC entertainment chairman Lloyd Braun had when he was in Hawaii — merging TV's Survivor and the film Cast Away.  "What if you actually had a planeload of people and something happens and the plane goes down? A bunch of random people survive. No one knows each other, so it's like everyone's starting from scratch," Braun says.  When an initial script didn't work, Alias executive producer J.J. Abrams was recruited to Lost.  "He said, 'I don't think there's enough there for a series, just forming a society, getting off the island. There has to be a layer of suspense. If there's something about the island that is wrong, that is off, that is a deeper mystery,' " Braun says.  Since the Lost concept came so late in the TV production schedule, programmers didn't have a script in hand when it came time to order a series pilot.  Abrams, joined by up-and-coming writer Lindelof, had time to produce only an outline, but, Braun says, "that was basically the best outline I've ever read."  One element did get changed in the process: In the original plan, reluctant hero Jack (Matthew Fox) dies. "The only giant thing that I ever said, 'You just can't do this,' was, 'You can't kill Jack in the pilot,' " says McPherson, who put the show on the air.  Lost covered topics not usually seen on series TV, with an array of references from the Casimir effect in physics to philosophers both famous, including John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and more obscure, such as Jeremy Bentham. It told characters' stories via flashbacks, flash-forwards and flash-sideways.  "We always felt we had to respect the intellect of the audience and not dumb it down," says executive producer Carlton Cuse, who has run the program in tandem with Lindelof. "It's a complex, ambitious, intentionally ambiguous show. And the audience has embraced that."  That attitude extends to the decision to kill off major characters in a recent episode. "You have to understand that anything is possible," Cuse says. "We don't want it to be false jeopardy."  Lost's broad sweep changed the TV landscape, Garfein says.  "It successfully intermingled science fiction, the supernatural, history, mystery and love. There was no blueprint for that before, in my opinion," she says.  'A new kind of energy'  The size and nature of the cast have been influential, too, says Daniel Dae Kim, whose character, Jin, died a couple episodes ago.  "One of the things I'm proudest about this show is, because it was so multiracial in its casting, it affected the way other shows were cast," Kim says. "It made people think twice about their preconceived notions of what an Asian man might have been. I'm grateful to the creators of the show that they were able to flesh out Jin to a point where he became human."  Lost has been groundbreaking in structure, too. It set its end date three years in advance, an unusual move by ABC in a business that usually stretches programs for as long as they remain popular. Setting an endpoint gave the producers a timetable for plotting the rest of the story.  "It is the defining moment of the series. We knew we could not write the middle of the show anymore," Lindelof says. It also was a sign to fans demanding answers to the mysteries. It said, "We respect you. We hear you."  Garcia noticed an immediate change: "You could tell, the moment they announced the end date, the episodes seemed to have a new kind of energy."  Lost has shed viewers over the years, some because of its intricacy or demanding serialized nature, but it maintains a good portion of its fan base (11.6 million viewers, ranking 21st) and is faring better than last season. It performs even better with advertiser-desired younger viewers, ranking fifth. More than 13 million DVD sets have sold worldwide, pulling in new viewers.  "Fans — important does not begin to describe them," Lindelof says. "The part that's the most fun is the interaction ... even if they're busting our humps." And fans aren't shy about showing their frustration, although Lindelof and Cuse see that as a sign of their dedication.  The interaction was timed perfectly to emerging technology, as a multimedia mix of fan and network blogs, books and videos connected viewers with the creators, the stars and each other.  "Lost seemed to show up right about the time that the social-networking stuff was really taking off," Garcia says.  "It really brought a lot of people together to talk about it. It was the kind of show that started discussion. An Internet community sprung up around Lost, even before it aired."  He followed online commentary "to get a beat on what the fans were thinking as an episode would air. It made me more aware of stuff around the set, knowing people are scrutinizing the show. It made me pay a little closer attention to detail, so nothing slips through."  ABC's marketing approach fit Lost's unique nature, emphasizing content and interactivity in its promotions, executive vice president Michael Benson says. It made a website for the fictional Oceanic Airlines, produced a candy bar seen on the show, and recruited fans to the Dharma Initiative, an island scientific research project.  "It changed the way we look at the audience, from new audiences who are coming in to audiences who are rabid fans of the show and everything in between," he says. "It changed the way we have used media we go out with, whether its on-air or online. It's been kind of this great playground of experimentation."  For Lost, the end may be just a new beginning. To this point, fans and academics have focused on an unfinished serial. After May 23, they will be able to talk about a complete work.  "It's like taking a university course on Ulysses and going into discussion having read only three-quarters of the book. Once you finish the book, now you can really discuss it," says Stafford, name-dropping one of the numerous books featured on Lost.  Porter plans another book. "For so many reasons, I doubt Lost's success, its place in popular culture, can be duplicated. There will be great series and great stories down the line. I don't think there will be another Lost."  There should be plenty of post-finale food for thought, even if not every little question is answered. "We feel like we're answering a number of big questions, but for us the end of the show is really about the fate of these characters and the resolution of their stories," Cuse says.  With the finale, it is goodbye to Lost for Cuse and Lindelof (McPherson has said there are no plans for new Lost projects). Fans needn't worry about big hanging threads. "For us, our storytelling is done," Cuse says.  Lindelof picks up the thought: "That's why we called the last episode 'The End.' "  You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference.
ABC's hit series is winding down to its May 23 finale, but its impact on popular culture will linger for many years to com.