J.J. Abrams blends skill, drama on 'Lost,' 'Alias'

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J.J. Abrams blends skill, drama on 'Lost,' 'Alias'
by Laura Miller - New York Times - via StarTribune.com

This is a slightly older article that the Star Tribune updated when they reprinted it today:

To learn why J.J. Abrams has won a reputation as one of the most exhilarating storytellers in television, see the fourth episode of "Lost," the new hit castaway series Abrams co-created. The show follows the survivors of a plane crash on a tropical island, and at first it seems to feature the instantly recognizable types you would expect in any ensemble drama, or any TV show whatsoever. There's the stout-hearted hero, the plucky girl, the malcontent, the adorable child. But then there's Locke, a balding, middle-aged loner with a suitcase full of hunting knives and a penchant for making creepy pronouncements about the providential nature of the crash. He's the ... what -- the half-unhinged survivalist, perhaps?

While Locke narrowly avoids being eaten on a hunting expedition, flashbacks show us that -- hold on -- he's really just a gentle office drone who has long dreamed of trekking through the Australian bush. But when Locke finally arranges his trip, the guide tells him that because of his "condition," he can't set out after all. As the camera pulls back, we discover that -- cue the big dramatic flourish -- Locke must use a wheelchair. But, wait a minute, the crash has miraculously restored the use of his legs. Cut to commercial!

The intentional misrepresentation of a character, the piquant revelation that makes you think you have the real story, then the unapologetically melodramatic twist, all set within a do-or-die face-off with menacing foes: These are the trademarks of a J.J. Abrams show. And Locke isn't the only character with an omigod back story: Everyone in "Lost" turns out to harbor deep secrets. The plucky girl, for instance, is actually a mysterious outlaw in the custody of a sinister U.S. marshal who died after the crash.

It's a big, splashy vision, full of death and drama, that fuses the intrigues and revelations of the soap opera genre to the expensive stunts and exotic sets of a lavish action movie. Abrams' other ABC series, "Alias," which follows the outlandish adventures of a CIA agent played by Jennifer Garner, has earned a devoted if cultish following for its similar blend of interpersonal travails and derring-do. It returns the ABC schedule a week from today, nestling into the 8 p.m. time slot after "Lost."

And now Abrams has returned to writing "The Catch," the pilot he was working on when ABC persuaded him to develop the castaway show. There's also the little matter of "Mission: Impossible 3," the megabudget Tom Cruise vehicle, which Abrams will rewrite and direct, with shooting set to begin next June. Abrams, who got his start writing unremarkable feel-good films and earned his big break with an earnest television series about a pretty but nerdy college girl, has become an unlikely and somewhat subversive keeper of the action-suspense form.

Always juggling

Abrams, 38, might be the most interruptible human being alive. Visit his office, and you're likely to see him switch from untangling the intricate plot problems of an unwritten "Alias" episode with the producers Jeff Pinkner and Jesse Alexander, to tinkering with the sound mix of a "Lost" episode to be broadcast in less than 36 hours, to finagling a product-placement deal for the last candy bar left on the "Lost" island, and then back to the "Alias" conundrum. Subdivide the average human being's attention and it frays; Abrams' seems only to sharpen.

In the middle of fine-tuning post-production work for some bee special effects for "Lost," Abrams jumped up to play back a joke voice-mail message left by the actor Greg Grunberg, expertly impersonating an aged doctor calling with some very unfortunate test results. Grunberg, who has been Abrams' best friend since kindergarten, has appeared in all of his TV series, beginning with "Felicity" in 1998, and he'll star in "The Catch."

At first, the bounty-hunter premise of "The Catch" didn't appeal to Abrams, but then neither did the premises of "Alias" or "Lost."People who crashed trying to survive on a desert island didn't interest me," Abrams says. "But once we start talking about the specifics of context and characters and situation, where they are and what they're going through, I thought OK, this could be amazing."

Likewise, "the idea of doing a spy show didn't interest me," he said. "The idea of doing a show about this wildly dysfunctional group of people who happen to live in a world of espionage and intrigue, that was really cool."

Abrams' current strategy for winning over audiences is deceptively simple: lure in viewers with an old-fashioned adventure scenario, one that has more grandeur than television's usual lawyers' offices and police precincts. Keep the pace fast and the action thick, with reversals, revelations and cliffhangers at every commercial break. And hook viewers on the characters, who despite their over-the-top, cinematic lives, experience everyday yearnings and flaws.

In "Alias," says Damon Lindelof, the co-creator of "Lost," Sydney is running around karate-chopping people, and blowing things up and saving the world like a superheroine, but it still feels like she's a real person. If she shoots someone, she goes home and cries." (Garner describes her work on the show as "Five pages of fantastic dialogue with [co-star] Carl Lumbly and in the same day be hanging off the roof of the building.")

Commercial instincts

Jordan Levin, the former chief executive of the WB network and the man who signed Abrams up for "Felicity," says: "J.J. has strong commercial instincts. At the same time he's very good at slowly peeling back the layers of the onion and revealing character. And his characters are very rich, with very strong internal lives. That keeps you with it."

Abrams grew up in Los Angeles, the son of a television movie producer, Gerald W. Abrams ("Nuremberg") and Carol Abrams, a law professor who occasionally tries her hand at producing, too.

"Even as a kid," Abrams says, "I was very aware of what was going on socially. It felt like the other kids, at least the boys, were much more interested in whatever they were doing and didn't care as much as I did about the social stuff. "Felicity" was all "social stuff," but even so, it had a surprising number of plot twists and cliffhangers. And like "Alias," it began with a bright young woman coping with what Levin, the former network executive, calls "a powerful precipitating incident."

All of Abrams' shows begin with a cataclysmic event that forces characters to remake their lives entirely. On "Lost," it's a plane crash; for Sydney Bristow, it's her fiancée's murder after she reveals to him that she works for what she mistakenly believes is a division of the CIA (she'll later discover it's a rogue unit).

Betrayal, suspense, wildly heightened stakes: Abrams understands that thrillers and soap operas have a lot more in common than we realize. There's also an audience that would never tune in for the undergraduate angst of "Felicity" yet will eat up a show about a female spy with many of the same troubles. One reason for the impressive ratings of "Lost" may be the show's near-universal appeal: Its characters are young, middle-aged, white, black, and Asian, and their stories speak to fans of both action-adventure series and nighttime soaps.

There's one kind of viewer Abrams has neglected: anyone with less than total dedication to following his shows' intricately constructed, speedily thickening plots. Dramatic series must walk the line between the modular, stand-alone episode approach that makes them accessible to novices (and viable as reruns) and the serialized storytelling that often makes for the most inventive, suspenseful television. Abrams is an unapologetic devotee of the second approach.

This is probably why the ratings for "Alias" have never matched the network's hopes for it. The first season was notoriously impenetrable to newcomers: full of hidden agendas, double agents and triple crosses. (Since then, the story arc has become easier to follow, but also more absurd: It now revolves around a prophecy concerning Sydney made by a mysterious 15th-century Italian inventor.) ABC is insisting on more stand-alone episodes.

And now Abrams is finishing a new script for the "Mission: Impossible" sequel, which will start shooting in the summer. If Abrams has succeeded in bringing some of the movies' grandeur to television, he will now try to bring some of the texture of TV characters to the large screen. "Mission: Impossible" has almost no characters, at least not in the intimate, involving sense Abrams loves. The previous incarnations of the franchise have been pure procedurals, minutely focused on the planning and execution of each mission.

But as the director, Abrams, who is plainly less than enthusiastic about the earlier films, will have much more control over the finished product than he ever enjoyed as a screenwriter. "There are sequels that can rival or improve upon the original," he insists. He promises plot twists, yes, but also personal intrigue. Referring to Tom Cruise's role, he observes: "In the first two movies you've learned almost nothing about who the character is. That's not going to be the case with this movie."

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