Dude, here's an interestin' little Lost tidbit
Cuse said that being a showrunner now is much different than it was 10 years ago. "You have to be more of a brand manager," he said. He said there are 37 ancillary parts to the "Lost" brand from T-shirts to mobile phone applications to a planned video game. It led to a discussion of several missteps, including the tie-in novel "Bad Twin" that Cuse said didn't meet their bar and the introduction of two previously unseen survivors, Nikki and Paulo.
The characters came out of "Lost" viewers' questions about why the show focused only on the same 12 characters and not the "socks," the unnamed survivors who provide the background around the camp. Cuse said "socks" comes from the term "sock puppets," which the writers call the extras.
"We're like, 'Trust us, you don't care about those guys,' " Lindelof joked.
They said they realized almost immediately that adding Nikki and Paulo was a mistake, even before the viewer outcry. Many of the scenes they shot would get cut on the editing room floor, not because of the actors but because they were concerned about how they fit into the story. Lindelof said that it was a lesson for the writers to stay true to the show's vision even if the viewers don't seem to like it.
"We buried them alive," Cuse said of Nikki and Paulo. "OK, you guys don't like Nikki and Paulo, there."