Lost Season Six So Far

I’ve been a fan of Lost since the beginning, and I have always been confident that the writers had a plan for the show, and that much of what seemed bizarre or unexplained at the time in the early seasons would ultimately be explained.  Even in the somewhat uncertain 2nd & 3rd seasons, I remained a “man of faith” (to borrow a common phrase from the show).  With the absolutely spectacular 4th & 5th seasons, I felt that my faith had been rewarded, and I entered the sixth (and final) season of the show with enormous enthusiasm.

Well, my friends, my faith is now wavering, and wavering big-time.

It seems to me that, so far, season six has been by far the most mediocre season of the show so far.  The problems are myriad.  The alternate-universe storyline, which seemed so intriguing in the season premiere, has started to feel more and more like a time-waster to me.  This is exacerbated by my frustration that the storyline on the island has been moving so slowly.  Of my enormous list of the show’s unanswered questions, what have we learned so far this season?  We now know the nature of the undead Locke/smoke monster/MIB, and we know Richard Alpert’s story.  Is there anything else that has been definitively answered for us?

This is extraordinarily disappointing, and it has caused me to begin to resent the time spent, each week, on the alternate-universe stories.  It seems to me that that is valuable episode-time that could be better spent paying off some of the many story-lines that the show has built up over its first five years.

As episode after episode ticks by, my hope that my many questions will be answered begins to fade, and this is really starting to honk me off.  And as the burden of these unanswered questions grows from week to week, the same thing is happening to me that happened as I watched the final run of Battlestar Galactica episodes — my growing frustration is impacting my enjoyment of episodes that, in previous years, I would have quite enjoyed — such as last week’s Richard Alpert installment.  Yes, it was phenomenal to see Richard finally get the spotlight!  But did that episode really tell us anything that attentive viewers hadn’t already guessed?  Had that episode aired during the 4th season I would have called it brilliant.  At this point in the final season, though, I’m just left scratching my head about issues like Jacob’s motivations.  (Why does his long-held commitment to non-involvement suddenly switch to his being willing to guide, through Richard, all the people he brings to the island?)  And if the wine-in-a-bottle metaphor is all the information that we get as to the true natures of Jacob and the MIB, then I am going to be very upset.

Let’s go, Lost!  Pick it up!  Only eight episodes to go!!

(For more info on this issue of what resolution we can/should expect from the writers of Lost, I encourage you to check out this terrific article, to which I posted a link earlier this month, called The Real Problem with Midichlorians.  It hits the nail square on the head.)