I’ve finally distilled the source of my aversion to Lost:

I don’t like being duped.

If I’m engrossed in a story, and I sense (rightly or not) that the writer of the story is trying to dupe me into simply playing along, when they themselves don’t have a story that has, baked into its marrow, a sense of meaning and purpose and “wholeness”, then I’m done. Don’t misunderstand—I love a good mystery. All good stories leave stuff out along the way. But that’s just it—they leave stuff out. They don’t not have the stuff to begin with. Withholding clues and ideas from your audience is one thing. Brazonly making stuff up as you go along is another.

I firmly believe that the writers of Lost decided mid-way through season 2 (or thereabouts) that they didn’t ultimately know where they were going to take it. They were surprised by their success, aware of the limited nature of their plotlines, and aware that they didnt have an “out” that didn’t include ruining the premise of the show by just getting people off the island. So they hunkered down, wrapped their lack of forsight in a shroud of “mystery,” and started backfilling in a story where there really wasn’t a story yet.

And then when their back-filled story started drying up and people were clamoring for more and advertisers were ponying up big dollars for more seasons, they took the logical next step and started building wackiness on top of backfill until the show that closed was simply not the same show that had opened. They hadn’t built upon it, they had changed its fundamental nature. It wasn’t a gritty hand-held, well-acted mystery. It was a gritty hand-held, moderately-acted, ridiculously far-fetched pseudo-sci-fi philosophical/religious exercise in tail-chasing. And the crazier it got, the more polarizing it got, and the more people watched—which was why the sponsors kept paying the big bucks, which was why the network pushed for more seasons, which was why they had to keep inventing new elements to the story so that they could keep drawing it out further and further until finally, like an island that gets uncorked (wha?), it couldn’t hold its own weight anymore and eventually collapsed in a pile of half-cooked melodrama that doesn’t get criticized enough for its shortcomings because those shortcomings are celebrated as “mystery.”

Not my cup of tea.

Tell me a good story from start to finish and if you have to backfill a few things along the way, do it in a way that serves the story and never gets noticed by anyone but you. Don’t wholly reinvent it because you need it to be longer so the network can justify spending more dough on it and you can guarantee yourself better syndication royalties in 5 years.

Do I blame them? I guess not. Well, yeah actually. They were lazy—or perhaps just insecure—and tried to dupe me into believing they had it planned. But I don’t like being duped, and I don’t buy it. Show me a series outline or treatment from 2003 that includes smoke monsters and the Man in Black and corked islands and I’ll believe you. I’m not gonna hold my breath.

I’m sure I have offended my Lost-loving friends yet again, but this is my take on it. I’m sure it will be missed and talked about for a long time by its loyal fans. I’m just not one of them. The End.