Reality subtext as applied to LOST

The website tvtropes.org discusses a concept called "reality subtext," which essentially means real-life events cause certain things to happen on-screen. An actress becomes pregnant, so the show has her character become pregnant (Samantha Stevens in Bewitched), have her take a leave of absence (Sculley in the X-Files), attempt to hide the baby bump (Angela in The Office), or use a combination of any of the three (Benson in Law and Order: SVU).

The point is, writing angles can be entirely changed by stuff like this. In LOST, the actor who played Eko, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, requested to be let off the show after the death of his parents.

Bottom line, that means the smoke monster killed Eko because of the reality subtext, not because of to any planned storyline from the writers. (I always knew the "he refused to repent so he died" explanation seemed off...)

Maybe this was already obvious to everyone else, but the concept kinda cracks my perception of what I thought the show was. I believed the writers had a fairly intricate vision of where they were going, and their job was to keep the train on the tracks, so to speak.

Of course, I knew about the Nikki and Paulo thing, but I never made the connection that we could see more of that. The writers made a mistake, the viewers hated the two, that was that.

But now... now I know. Shoot, major plot lines could be entirely dismantled by one hissy fit thrown by a star. And the writers have enough to deal with as it is, seeing that they have around 25 more episodes to resolve this whole thing and the 23,000 loose ends that are dangling in the breeze like the cherries in Amy's car James.

This discovery, combined with my recent realization that nothing is answered in J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield (good movie nonetheless) is making me very worried that the LOST experience will end badly.