I’m Lost

Last updated on July 8, 2022

I’ve been feeling it for awhile, and I’ve started seeing the same thoughts I’m having start popping up across the internet : I’m probably done with Lost. It was nice and fine when it began, but I think it’s over with.

I thought it was a great concept – 40ish people crash land on a deserted island and have to survive. Meanwhile strange things start happening. What’s causing it? Well, tune in next week and learn some more. In the mean time you’ll learn about the people that you’re following through flashbacks to their lives off of the island. Not a bad idea for a show.

And I stayed around for months, years now. Two and a half years as it is, and I tune in dutifully week after week, like all of the other people who have been there from the beginning or got hooked on the show at some point during its run. Every Wednesday at 8 pm was Lost, and you watched it for clues and then you talked about it the next day at work, and you pondered the meaning of little things and hoped and prayed that your theory(s) would be addressed at some point.

What is the monster? What was Walt’s power? How did he draw animals to him? How did he manifest himself when he was somewhere else? Who was the guy that Jack thought was his father? Who’s the guy that Eko thought was his brother? Was it the smoke monster? How did Locke lose the ability to walk? Was Charlie ever doing more heroin on the island that he found in the plane that Eko’s brother showed up in? Why did Boone have to die? What happened to Desmond’s boat? What was the deal with that shark that had a Dharma logo on it? Where did Rose’s cancer go? What’s with the magnetism on the island? And what do the Numbers matter for?

All are some of the questions I’ve got about this show, and I know from the episode where Jack watches the Boston Red Sox win the World Series that they’re only 70 days into their stay on the island. At this rate Sun will finally have her baby along about season 12 or so. Time moves slower here, things happen more rapidly on the island than in our world, since we wait an entire week to watch one or two days on the island.

And it’s getting tedious. There are better, far better, shows out there (Battlestar Galatica) and shows that are more interesting (Heroes), so why stick around for Lost anymore? The ratings for the season 3 opener of Lost were down 1 million viewers from the season 2 finale. One million viewers is a lot of ad dollars to ABC. Are they going to start prodding the show’s creators to start giving more information to get people back?

If they would just cough up some big plot points (Why the crashed, who the Others are, where the island is, what the monster is) they could always create new plot points, like they did in the season 2 finale with the huge stone foot Sayid saw on the beach. But instead they drip out minutia week after freaking week with no secrets revealed.

Why should I stick around for a show that I feel takes me for granted? Why should I watch a show where I know almost no more about the Lostie’s situation now than I did when it began? Will ABC force changes to the show in order to get people back? And since it’s not even my favorite show on TV anymore, why should I care about Lost now?