As the series went into the day-to-day, week-to-week, grind of
producing scripts and episodes with air date deadlines looming,
the rigors of leading the production in Hawaii all the way from
the writers office in Burbank - even with a magnificent
producing director like Jack Bender at the helm along with
producer Jean Higgins in Hawaii, the showrunner is expected to
be the lead creative voice in the series - as well as JJ's
mounting absence (it was always understood that he would not be
a day-to-day presence in the series, but his quick acquisition
of the directing assignment on Mission: Impossible 3 made for a
much faster departure than any of us expected - the Lost pilot,
it seems, was a cracking directing sample, perfect to land the
job on a Hollywood franchise tentpole) the strain on Damon was
rapidly becoming a problem that would have to be addressed.
As early as the production of our sixth or seventh episode -
shortly before Lost premiered - a search seemed to be going on
for a showrunner who could come in and lighten some of Damon's
load to allow him to do what he did best: be the lead creative
voice of Lost.
For a few weeks, the names of potential candidates would come
and go. Jeff Pinkner - who, as I mentioned before, would
eventually sign up to executive produce later in the show's run
- was one of these names. He was already in the Bad Robot
family, was already a consultant on Lost, and worked on Alias
just across the way from the offices of Lost. This arrangement,
however, would not be feasible - in the best of times, neither
Alias nor Lost were the sort of productions that could be
executive-produced on a part-time basis, and we were in crisis.!
Around the same time, John Eisendrath (a successful and well-
regarded showrunner who had also worked on Alias, was then
working on pilots with Bad Robot, and today runs The Blacklist)
came in to watch the inner workings of Lost. All I know is that
after a morning watching our writers room work the massive
patchwork of fifteen series leads, flashbacks, and a not-
entirely developed, and potentially science-fictional
continuity, Eisendrath stood up from the couch, made a funny
remark about the enormity of the task ahead, bid us farewell,
and was never heard from again.
At the same time, Damon was in conversations with Carlton Cuse,
who had hired him for his first network writing job on Nash
Bridges, which Carlton had created, and whom he viewed as a
mentor.!