Lost (Seasons 1-5): *Dons Flame-retardant armor* Well, I just finished Season 5 of Lost, the show that apparently everyone loves but me and for the life of me I can't understand why. This show is one giant tease (to use a forum-friendly term) that in the end was obviously scripted by the writers throwing darts at a board and using an endless barrage of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and (to use a Funny Farm term) even in places seemingly flashing sideways to just drag the series on for as goddamn long as humanly possible. For the first two seasons, at least half of every episode was spent covering the characters before they reached the island, as if that was something I ever cared about. Then we finally seemed to gain something approaching momentum in season 3 only to see the show jump into one of the most ridiculous Deus Ex Machina plot points I've ever seen. Once again, the dart board...
Writer A: "Ok, we need to find a way to explain all these freaky things on the island. Ok, steady hand...*
*thwack*
Writer B: "BRILLIANT! THE ENTIRE ISLAND IS A GIANT TIME MACHINE! OF COURSE!
Then we spend the next two seasons repeating the oh-so-cute Pulp Fiction-style nonlinear storytelling, glacial pacing, predictable plot points, and unlikeable characters. Joy. It's especially fun knowing that at any moment one of the writers could just get bored and pull out the dartboard again. The worst thing about it all, though, is that there is a genuinely interesting story hidden somewhere in here, one that would be infinitely more enjoyable if they just stopped trying to be cute with all the time-wasting flashbacks and whatnot and just told a straight-up story. The episodes in themselves are perfectly enjoyable when taken as individual stories, but the moment you try to put them all together the show just falls apart.
Sadly, I've already wasted so many hours of my life on this series, yet ABC will probably have many more of them in a few weeks when Season 6 starts up...if only to watch and see how they can possibly resolve this train wreck without using the big "Reset the World!" button they've already hinted at a few times now.
3/10