Get "Lost"

Like many other folks my wife and I have spent the past six television seasons watching "Lost" on ABC. This show has been so uneven, so up-and-down that I have to really think about watching anything else produced by J. J. Abrams. I know I'm not the first to say this, but as the series wraps up later tonight, let me join in the horde that says "who cares."

Excuse the pun, but "Lost" lost it a while ago. The writer's staunch refusal to answer questions and the inadequate way in which they answer the ones they do makes the show unpleasant to watch. For instance, the episode that focused on Jacob and his brother (would it really be that hard to give him a name) could have been a 10-15 minute piece within an episode that moved the rest of the story line further. But no, as time wound down on the show the writers decided to dedicate an entire episode to something they continued to not fully explain.

Similarly, the entire "parallel universe" motif that has been going on the entire sixth season is just a ploy. Seriously? The only good J. J. Abrams show is "Fringe" and that show has so much parallel universe stuff it's not even funny - but it's interesting. In "Lost" it seems like the whole plot was thought out willy-nilly. It is as though the writers were planning to write 7 shows but were give 12, and they thought, "oh crap, we better come up with some filler."

Two or three years ago, when "Lost" was spiraling out of control (remember the episode where Paolo died?) and the writers announced that the show would end in 2010, the show actually started to move forward instead of chasing it's proverbial tail. With an end date in sight, the writers seemed to have an idea of where they wanted the story to go and how they wanted to get there. Somewhere along the line, while writing the last season, it appears obvious that the task of answering all the questions they had prompted during their 40 years in the desert period proved too daunting. Having shot themselves in the foot, the writers threw up their hands in frustration, jumped into the safety net of post-modernism and said "We don't have to answer all the questions. Not all questions need to have answers. You have the body of work, what does it mean to you?" To me, it means a total cop out. People can parse and analyze the show all they want, a recent article in the Washington Post suggested that the show was a metaphorical mirror of contemporary America. Hog wash. It's a piece of escapist television that was crushed under its own popularity and the indecisiveness of its writers.

The entire sixth season my wife and I have been watching the show. Like suckers. We figured that since we had already invested so much time into the show we might as well finish it out. However, the entire season has been like pulling teeth. Neither of us really cares what happens at this point, we just want the show to end. If I had to do it over again I would have jumped ship when the show initially went downhill, like we did with "Heroes."

So while many may be going crazy over what will happen in tonight's final episode, like the final episode of the Sopranos many will be content with the ending and many will not. In my household, the feeling will simply be "thank God it's over." We don't care.