iRant: Lost gets lost (and good riddance)

I've finally done it. After multiple seasons of increasing disappointment, culminating in the most recent episodes (which have been plain 'ol bad), Lost has been removed from the auto-recorded programs on my DVR. I've been talking about doing this for a while and if I didn't get to see the show in beautiful hi-def (and I have to admit it's still very nice to look at) then I would've done it long before now.

Lost is just a terrible, substanceless tease. Each week brings the promise of something new to be revealed, but there are no answers, only more (stupid, insipid) questions. Although the first season, and to some degree the second, were quite good as network television goes, the show how so "lost" its way that it's very hard to believe that there is any over-arching story going on here at all.

Let's face it - Lost was burdened by its concept from the beginning and should have ended after a couple of seasons (there's a reason why Robinson Crusoe was such a quick read). What's going on now is just a pathetically slow death kept on life-support entirely for business, as opposed to creative, purposes. Such is the way with television, but it's hard to believe how low Lost has sunk.

Look at a show like Heroes (which I really like) - it, too, unwinds a continuing stream of new questions with each episode. The difference is that it also answers some of these questions every episode. If the makers of Lost could muster up enough pride to understand that this endlessly wavering series is not going to make it past another season then they'd smarten up and start writing their way out of this tangled mess they've created. At least then, after a final season of explaining what's going on instead of just creating further shallow "mysteries" like some David Lynch series gone bad, viewers could look back and think that all in all it wasn't a total waste of time - good first season, decent second season, some floundering in the middle, but boy did they wrap it up tight! However, given the decision-making that has brought the show to its current sorry state (and the lack of much competition on Wednesday nights), I'm not too optimistic about a "creatively principled" ending anytime soon.