Lost and Mastermind Narration

ABC’s Lost is indicative of a recent trend in television programming that exploits seriality, information multiplicity and real virtuality. While these aesthetic innovations have arguably facilitated the franchising of this and other programs, it has also created several textual problems around the issues of canon, authority and narration. In this article, I illustrate how Lost uses the strategies of what I call mastermind narration to rearticulate this imperiled textual authority. The strategies of this tendency include the use of repeated subject matter, particularly confidence tricks, and the patterning of textual form, particularly through shifting the narrational valence of series flashbacks.