Originally posted by: FanFiltration
I've played around with an edit of the first season, but gave up on the project. To me, I think "LOST" is best as is.

There's no dispute 'Lost' certainly is good episodic fiction, and there certainly is an argument to say that it doesn't work as well without the flashbacks.

On the other hand, the plot progression is appallingly slow, even taking into account the format. There are episodes in there where, if you cut the backstory, you'd wind up with about 15-20 minutes of footage that actually talks about what's happening on the island. You could make a "Lost: Survivor's Experience" with all the backstories cut to make it feel much more like you're actually on the island -- obviously there's a lot less explanation for why characters are doing things, but it might well increase the mystery of the show, and it'd certainly give a greater impression that you don't know everything there is to know about these characters. (Okay, maybe that's an extreme.)

I'd argue that large portions of the backstories were done in a 'slow reveal' similar to the slow plot progression of the show overall; it'd take you the whole show to find out, for example, that Locke was in a wheelchair before he came to the island. Personally, in an edited/'miniseries' version of the show, I would've thought much of this could be cut -- you could even get away with one flashback instead of the three or four to illustrate the major point. Admittedly, there might be some backstories worth preserving ...