Lost article in Chicago Sun-Times

Here lies 'Lost'
I'd rather bury my head in the sand than watch another answerless episode. Or better yet -- bury the show.

February 4, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic

The other night, I was remembering when, as a music critic, I had to review Britney Spears. I realized something startling: Even the moronic Britney has experienced more character growth in the last three years than the hit series "Lost."

Think about her arc since about '04: Spears has altered her tours (for the worse), developed her music (slightly less awful) and she went from pure virgin to party slut to pregnant.

"Lost," on the other hand, has evolved about as much as "Gilligan's Island." The castaways are still stranded. Nothing substantial has changed.

And fans will not get answers to "Lost's" supernatural MacGuffins for a long time. At recent press conferences, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said they want to keep their secrets until the show ends.

When's that?

"If it was 11 or 15 years, God, we really hope that we're doing something different by then," Lindelof said. "But if we get to tell the story that we want to tell, in the time we think it should be told, we're the guys that absolutely want to do it."

Eleven years?!?!?!

If you suffer the delusion you will get resolutions from "Lost" before the end of the series, listen to Cuse: "If we started really giving answers about what is the nature of this island, what is the sort of innate underlying meaning of the numbers, those things are sort of series-ending questions."

So there you go, "Lost" fans. Have fun waiting, possibly until the year 2018, for writers to have the guts to end overall mysteries, then see if the character dramas are good enough to stand on their own. (They probably would be.)

Fall episodes led to backlash
After airing six new episodes in the fall, "Lost" took a winter break and returns anew this week. I won't divulge anything big. It's just like any "Lost" episode -- a staring match between disinterested idiots, plus sporadic violence.
One new scene looks stolen from "A Clockwork Orange," just as last fall's killing of Mr. Eko was eerily similar to a scene from "Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn" -- death by a cloud of smoke in the shape of a tree-size arm.

I used to hear fans guess about what the island is. But after autumn's frustrating episodes, the "Lost" backlash is now in full swing. It was the No. 1 show that became unwatchable last year, according to the fan-interactive site JumpTheShark.com.

Of those old fan theories, the most convincing one has strandees as subjects of a grand experiment carried out by a mysterious entity: an omnipotent force, an evil corporation or something.

My theory is this: Lindelof is conducting an experiment to see how long he can jerk around viewers while getting money from ABC.

In its third year, here are just a few of the show's unresolved issues:

Why is there a polar bear on a warm island?

What entity is controlling the castaways?

How can a cloud turn into a huge arm and kill a man?

Oh, and there are ghosts of people who are still alive, like in "Scooby Doo." What's up with that?

Ree. Diculous.

It's like watching math
I've been wondering why viewers stick with "Lost." I mean, the cinematography can be gorgeous. The actors are fine. The flashbacks are rich. But all this glory is infuriatingly ruined by idiotic dialogue and go-nowhere mysteries.
I think many fans are trying so hard to figure out how any detail is a clue to the larger mysteries that they're not really watching "Lost." This isn't a viewing experience. It's like doing Sudoku.

Another appalling development is that Lindelof confessed he's intentionally keeping his characters from asking realistic questions. No one on the island ever seems to ask the Others, who appear to understand everything, what the hell is going on.

"As writers, the questions that the characters are asking on the show are always a slippery slope," Lindelof said. "We find ourselves saying, 'We'd be asking much better questions, too.'

"Unfortunately, if Jack asked the questions that we wanted him to, the Others would answer none of them. So you would just have him asking a string of questions with Michael sort of looking back at him stoically."

Lindelof understands he's ticking off a lot of people: "The audience doesn't feel they're getting answers to mysteries in the time allotted."

No kidding.

"I think the characters on the show experience in many ways the same frustrations that the fans and the critics do," Lindelof said. "Why don't the characters talk more amongst each other about the mystery of the island?

"The reality is, we've written those scenes and in some cases we even shoot those scenes. And whether you take our word for it or not, we think they don't work; they're incredibly boring."

You know what's boring? The first six episodes that ran in the fall. Co-producer Carlton Cuse feebly explained them this way: "We had to service the story of Jack and Kate and Sawyer in captivity. By the time we sort of did that, we ran out of time to do a lot of other stuff in those first six [episodes]."

Really? Six hours is what it took to tell the story of two people in cages in the rain and a third guy in a prison cell? Pathetic.

'Lost' creators are adrift
I believe Lindelof has no idea where he's taking "Lost." Lindelof addressed this concern, but he didn't win me over.
" 'Lost' came together very, very quickly. During that period of time it was all we could do to write the outline, write the pilot, put the cast together and begin to have preliminary conversations."

He said those conversations were about, "What is this island? Who are these people? If Kate's in handcuffs, we need to know what Kate did. If Locke has a secret, we need to know what that secret is. If we show a polar bear, we need to know where the polar bear came from."

But he added, "To say we know everything we're going to do in advance would be completely disingenuous and probably stupid as a writer/producer because you have to be able to adapt to sort of the changing currents."

Here's where Cuse and Lindelof's arrogance is painful to listen to. Cuse said "Lost" lost viewers because "this show requires sort of vigilant maintenance.

"There are people who fall away because it does require you to really keep up on the episodes. It's a complicated show. It's hard to drop in and out," Cuse said.

So if viewers are frustrated with the series' lack of plot progress, it's the viewers' fault for not bowing down to the genius brains of the producers?

I stand by what I've said before. I can't wait for "Lost" to get canceled. Then, the writers will be forced to give answers. I will resume caring about "Lost" at that point of resolutions, I imagine, and not a moment sooner.

Originally Posted by Carlton Cuse

There are people who fall away because it does require you to really keep up on the episodes. It's a complicated show. It's hard to drop in and out.

Originally Posted by djdementia

I guess that the majority of people aren't ready for that or aren't interested in that. People just want mindless reality TV, and that's why intelligent shows like Lost are likely doomed to be cancelled in favor of more garbage, mindless, reality TV.