Films, television series, and books ultimately come down to the same thing: the written story. Something that is beginning to annoy me in storytelling – particularly in film and television – is the use of flashbacks. To the best of my knowledge, JJ Abrams’ television series Lost popularised the use of flashbacks to introduce backstory. Lost has an ensemble cast of characters. In the two seasons I watched (before the constant baiting and switching turned me off), each episode would focus on somebody different. Throughout that episode, we’d get flashbacks about the character’s life before they got on the island. A younger, much-less cynical version of me enjoyed this –…