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LOST: When a Good Television Series Goes Bad

By June Williams On February 10, 2010 In Reviews: Television 7 Comments

LOST
When a Good Television Series Goes Bad
by June K. Williams

I must admit that I was one of millions of people who became enchanted with ABC’s Lost from the day it first premiered. It was action packed and intriguing. It was SMART.

Lost was Survivor for the thinking man or woman. You never knew who might die next, what were the forces at work on the island, where the island was in time and space and why had they not all died in the crash. We were introduced to fascinating characters that were forced by circumstances to interact with people they would probably never have met in their normal day-to-day lives…or would they? In addition to the overall questions of where the passengers of Oceanic 815 were and how they could live without any of the technology that they were used to, how they might get rescued, you were presented with a dizzying number of personal histories. Even in the first season the audience was given glimpses of connections between the lives of these people, connections that once again the characters themselves were unaware of. Many if not all of those who crashed were given the ability to hit the restart button on their lives. The survivors of flight 815 did a lot of soul searching with varying results. After awhile they began to uncover bits and pieces of the puzzle that was the island’s history. All sorts of tantalizing tidbits of information were peppered through the shows. The phenomena that was Lost swept the U.S. and a good portion of people on the planet that have access to U.S. television programming. Then the problems started to slowly overtake the show. They had long hiatuses where the complex storylines would fade from memory of the casual viewer. The relevance of some character deaths were explored but not resolved. We, the audience began to believe that the writers really did not have an over all story arc and were instead flying by the seat of their collective pants.


The investment does not seem to be worth the pay-off however and with the start of the newest and last season of Lost the threads have not only unraveled but they seem to be marooned at LAX airport. Now that is a really frightening scenario.

Watching the 7th season of Lost is something akin to watching the 3rd Matrix movie or Star Wars The Phantom Menace. I might have compared it to Star Trek Voyager or Star Trek Enterprise but in retrospect they were not nearly as bad as Lost has become. The question is will I continue to see this after all my griping and the sad reality is that I probably will. Oh it isn’t like I will run home to see it or set my VCR or DVR to record it for later viewing. It is just that I know I will be sucked up into it. It is my destiny. I know I should take my fate in my hands and turn away from the train wreck but I just can’t. Maybe, just maybe they will tie it all up with a pretty red bow and I can place it high on a dusty shelf to be revisited at some future date when scripted shows have gone the way of the Dodo bird.

by June K. Williams
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June Williams

June Williams

June, also known affectionately as Buzzy Lady #2, has been with the company since it began. She was born in Manhattan, raised in the Bronx (the first 12 years in the heart of the south Bronx) and spent most of her adult life living in Westchester County N.Y.

Always a Science Fiction fan and dabbler in writing she had thought herself too practical to pursue a career in the field. Before coming to Buzzy she spent over 30 years in the travel industry, then one day decided it was time to spread her wings and plunge into publishing. Everyone she knew thought she had gone slightly daft but as this was not the first time they had expressed that opinion she took the red pill anyway and now spends all of her time putting together projects that make each day a pleasure.

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  • http://spazingames.blogspot.com Michael Parker

    I was never able to get into lost. I also never had a strong opinion against the show, it just never caught my interest. I see the same kind of writing problem across many shows. It’s not Just “jumping the shark”, but I see it more as good concepts being extended beyond their natural endings. It makes the middle and the end not connect or mesh as well as if it had ended in a shorter, more concise, time frame.
    I see the British series and season length as a good example of giving the audience ‘not enough’ as opposed to ‘too much’.

  • Icarus

    I gave up on Lost after the first season, which I really enjoyed. I simply realized that, like X-Files, they were never going to give us all the answers, andI did not want to wait 5-6 years to find that out.

  • Crimson

    ok, i don’t mean to sound bitchy…but i probably will…

    this is the fifth and final season of lost…not the seventh. team darleton has promised answers to the majority of the questions by the end of the season. i have faith that they will deliver.

    lost is….absolutely brilliant.

    if the long hiatuses kept the “casual viewer” from remembering complex story lines…maybe they should have been watching another show. something that does not require thinking. something more like…ok, i’m not going there.

    i m o, there has never been another show on television that has a much depth. nearly every detail in every scene is relevant, especially the books that appear from time to time. everything is thematic.

    and if there were no other reasons to watch the show…terry o’quinn’s performances would merit watching all on their own.

    you might not think the investment is worth the payoff…but i will definitely be there for every minute until the end.

    b t w…i’m guessing you didn’t watch last night’s episode at the time of your posting… they aren’t stuck at l a x. :) :)

  • June K. Williams

    You are absolutely right. 5 seasons not seven. However in the Lost vein with all that bouncing about in time it SEEMS like seven.

    The journey was fun for the first and second seasons but somewhere in the middle of the second season I became totaly convinced that they were making it up as they went along without any real overall vision for where things were going. There have bee some wonderful character studies but especially in this last season things feel like they are coming apart. I mean Claire is now supposed to be the embodiment of EVIL, come on ..if that isn’t just mixing things up for the purpose of mixing it up. I would bet that if I got a chance to look at the background of Claire in the original story bible of the show it would have talked about her innocence, her pregnancy, how the baby fit in with the story and the shock of finding out Jack was her biological half brother.

  • Cindy

    I agree with you about Lost, June. I was a fan for the first 2 seasons and even into the 3rd season, but somewhere along the way in about mid Season 3, I got lost (pun intended). I’m not the sharpest crayon in the box at times and can be pretty darned slow other times, lol, but I don’t think that I got lost solely because I don’t ‘think’ enough to appreciate the show or because I was too casual of a viewer. I think that it got too convoluted and ‘messy’, but that’s just my opinion. I hope that Crimson is correct in his/her faith that “they will deliver”, because I’d like to see it happen.

  • Alison Mackey

    I’m sorry to hear you’re not a fan of “The Final Season” (I do think it’s pretty cheesy, the way they are hyping it up, but…the economy’s tough, attention spans are short; I suppose even giant tv phenomenons have to work to stay on top). Personally, I love the show, new season included. I love the way little clues are peppered through-out each episode; subtle clues, literary references, double meanings hidden in words, numbers, letters. I have a great time dissecting it with my friends every week. There have been a few “meh” episodes here and there, but overall…superb.

  • Corinne

    I couldn’t agree more. I actually got into the show really late. I started watching before the previous season aired because I didn’t want to miss out. I decided to do a rewatch (or really, a first watch) and got hooked.

    I actually liked the last season, even though it was dizzying. I definitely felt interested in finding out how it ends.

    Unfortunately, it feels like NOTHING has happened so far this season, and I can’t help but want to fall asleep while watching. Especially with this past episode, I’ve never liked Locke, so dedicating a full episode on him is just… tedious at best. Obnoxious at worst.

    What’s more annoying? There’s barely been any Ben, who is my favorite character. I wish they’d just hurry this up.