Lost: Let Me Explain

I figured I owed the good readers of this blog more of an explanation to the events that eventually led to me hating the show Lost.

So here it is.

My wife and I like to get into shows late in the game. Some shows we break this rule and watch on a week to week basis because they're just that good. (i.e. Numbers, The Mentalist.) But other times we take the plunge and search for shows that have already finished or are at least three or four seasons in. We've come to watching them on instant on Netflix. It's a nifty little way for us to gorge on a chunk of episodes.

With Lost, which debuted in 2004, we found it around 2009 or so. We tore through the first season like nobody's business. Eventually we found ourselves slowing down in the fifth season and came back to it several months later. We finally came back to the show and finished season five and had a marathon of season six, which only got more confusing with each passing episode. On the last day, there were only three episodes left. We decided to save them for one day. A day I labeled "Happy Answer Day" because, well, y'know, I actually THOUGHT THEY WOULD BE GIVING CONCRETE ANSWERS!

However, as the events unfolded, we found that the episode descriptions were not matching up with the episode in question. Like an Episode with the description, "Locke finally reveals his real motives." What we we treated to instead was an episode composed entirely of a flashback from Lord knows when. Locke appeared five seconds before the episode ended and didn't say much of anything important.

But the real kicker was when we downed the last two hour and a half episodes that completed season six. When the last credit rolled, we were left sitting there with, as usual, 45 questions left hanging in the air. My patience was fading and we both squinted at each other. My wife and I expected more. Wanted more. Deserved more of an explanation.

In the end we realized that, the hours wasted watching the show equaled a total of five days we would never get back. All that time we could've been out with friends. We could've been living it up. I could've been writing.

Look, I know that J.J. Abrams wasn't originally to blame, because he focused on Season 1 & 2 and left the rest of the show to dimwits, but he abandoned a project that left way too many holes. With each episode I felt as if I were kicked in the face.

So, okay, J.J. Abrams wowed me with the Star Trek movie but, as my wife and I have discussed, that wasn't his baby. He was working with someone else's brain child. He did a good job but most of his movies just left me disappointed.

Cloverfield? Too much noise and not enough explanation.

Mission Impossible 3? It was alright but not groundbreaking.

Fringe? I stopped watching after ten episodes.

Now everyone is telling me to go watch Super 8. Well, whatever excitement I had toward that movie has disappeared. Enough so that I may just wait until it is on dvd.

So, there you have it. A Lost rant if there ever was one.

So disappointing. I guess the only thing I've taken away from the show is that it was a lesson on how not to F^*% with your audience when you are writing. The acting was good, the story was compelling, but everything fell short. I mean everything.

If you're like me, I know you've probably watched the Epilogue show somewhere online (which answered two meaningless questions) and you've probably come across the Lostpedia site which tries to satiate your frothing curiosity but, in the end, it wasn't worth the time. I guess I'll just have to settle for self-contained shows in the long-run.

That's about it.