Lost: Season 6

I've vented and ranted enough times in the past year or more about what an utter letdown the sixth and final season of Lost was. For three seasons, it was my favorite show on television and I was completely convinced that the various dots the writers had mysteriously placed everywhere would somehow connect in an ornate and well-articulated manner. Instead, the showrunners realized with about five episodes left that they had way too many unconnected dots left to reasonably connect, and instead just began to explain the dots away in bunches. "Oh, we're going to leave that one unanswered. It's supposed to be a mystery. Oh, we're not going to have time to elaborate on that backstory. Blame the writers' strike!" The sixth and final season was just so sloppy, poorly paced, and shoddily put together. It wasn't just a bad season of Lost, or a case of a TV show extending itself for one season too long; it was a grand reveal that never was. Because it was so frustrating and unsatisfying, it retroactively made many moments from many previous seasons frustrating and unsatisfying, ultimately compromising the entire show's integrity, and even tainting the initially fantastic early seasons. I'd like to think that if I went back and watched the first season or three, I'd still love the way it all sorted out. Perhaps Lost would have been better off had it been canceled after the third season. With a few tweaks, that season's finale would have made a fantastic series finale. Instead, we got a series finale in which the main theme was, "nothing we do in life matters because the people we do it with will all be there with us in death." Wait, what? And some casual fans actually liked that ending? And defended it by saying, "you can only hate the way Lost ended if you cared more about the sci-fi mysteries than the characters" in a non-ironic way? Ugh. Blech. Sigh. Perhaps nothing can illustrate Lost's decline more than my DVD viewing procedures. I watched the first season on DVD at least twice, many episodes three or four times (and the pilot probably seven or so, I swear). I bought the second season for full price and watched it twice through with new college friends. I bought the third season immediately and for full price as well, and watched every episode once again, a few of them twice. Then it was announced that the show would run for three more seasons an end. My friends and I already looked forward to being able to buy Season 6 on DVD some time in 2010 and watching the entire series all the way through again. Then Season 4 was so-so, and I bought the season and watched it right away only out of practice and principle. The same was true of Season 5. (That write-up begins with the sentence, "Lost is one of my favorite shows of all time, but I'm really unsure about where it's headed after this messy season," and ends with "I know Lost has enough left in the tank. It's up to the writers to make the right decisions, execute, and deliver." Whoops!) And after Season 6 was as disappointing as it was, I didn't even buy it for four months, and din't watch it for another eight months. And my desire to go back now and watch all six seasons in order is nonexistent. Oh well. A lot of good shows wind up with weak final seasons. But that's the thing - Lost went from being a great show to merely a good one because of how uninspired and lame the ending was. And I don't just mean the final episode, but by extension, the final season, and perhaps even the final two or three. Eh, whatever.