Why Lost is About to Lose Me

Let me start out by saying that I am an AVID Lost fan. I got hooked about halfway through the first season. Soon before the second season was set to premier, I ran out and spent $50 for the season one DVD to get caught up. A friend and I spent five days watching every episode and finished at about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday night, just in time for the 8 o'clock premier, which did not disappoint. It had been a long time since I had watched a TV show that had so much suspense and so many cliffhangers and plot twists. But what really made the show were the characters. The show somehow managed to develop believable, diverse characters with interesting backgrounds along with all the action and suspense.

Somewhere during the second season, I began getting together with two girlfriends to watch the show. The tradition stuck and now every week we have Lost night filled with wine, cheese and plenty of girltalk. I should also point out that I do not have cable and other than Lost, there is not a single other show that I watch on a regular basis.

For the most part I thought season two was great. There were plenty of new plot twists: the new "tailies" were worked into the plot effortlessly, Desmond and the Hatch added a lot of mystery, and Michael's search to find the abducted Walt was very suspenseful. The only thing my friends and I found frustrating was the two or three weeks of reruns for every new episode. But when the season two finale ended, with Kate, Sawyer and Jack captured by the others, Michael and Walt on a boat to freedom and the explosion of the hatch, my Lost buddies and I jumped up and down on the couch Tom Cruise style and immediately started counting down till the premier of season three.

So we waited all summer and in September we could hardly stand the anticipation. But after the premier had come and gone, many questions had remained unanswered and some of the giddiness we had felt after the second season's premier was somehow missing. Here are the top five reasons why Lost is going down the tube

1) Who gives a crap about The Others?
Up until now, the entire premise of Lost has been Us against Them - "Us" being the plane survivors and "Them" being The Others. The audience is emotionally invested in the plane survivors and all along The Others have been the bad guys. So why would the audience want to watch episode after episode of the Good Guys being beaten up, humiliated and made totally defenseless? Was I the only one who thought it was completely unbelievable that Kate would have put on the handcuffs after Ben told her to, simply so she could eat breakfast? Jack, Sawyer and Kate are all great characters, but there is only so much a person can do from the inside of the cage.

We are five episodes into the third season and we STILL don't know why The Others have captured Sawyer and Kate. We know the reason why they captured Jack - to operate on Ben - but was the whole capturing and torturing thing really necessary? Maybe if Ben "wanted Jack to want to help him" he should've been nice to him in the first place! If Ben's motive has been the entire time to get the spinal surgeon to operate on him, you'd think The Others would have been a little more welcoming. After five episodes of the new season, we know absolutely nothing about The Others except that they apparently have a fondness for book clubs. When you know nothing about a character's background or motivation, it's hard to really give a care what happens to them.

2) Too many people are dying!
Hello people, these characters are on AN ISLAND. If people keep dying at the current rate, by the time season five rolls around we'll be left with nothing but Hurley and his fruit salad. I understand that it is sometimes necessary for a show to kill of a main character to make the show more suspenseful. After all if everyone were invincible, the show might get a little boring. But I'm beginning to think they are taking this concept a little far.

The creators have now killed off six of the show's central characters - Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, Libby and, most recently, Mr. Eko. I could understand why they killed Ana Lucia because she wasn't a very likeable character, but I was surprised that they killed Libby, mostly because there was an entire storyline left completely unresolved. We had just found out that Libby and Hurley had been in the same psychiatric hospital, which created many new questions about her characters. But all the questions were left unresolved with her death. I was also disappointed that they would kill Mr. Eko, who was definitely one of the show's more complex and interesting characters.

With all these people dying, I guess it's understandable that the creators would have to think of some way to introduce new characters, which would explain the sudden appearance of two new characters in last week's episode - Nikki and Paulo - who helped Locke explore one of the hatches. This is all grand, but, um, WHO THE HECK ARE NIKKI AND PAULO??? They can't just throw two new characters into the mix with no explanation or introduction! If you ask me this is just plain lazy.

3) Too many questions, too few answers
Why did the Hatch blow up? Who are The Others? Why can Desmond suddenly tell the future? What happened to Sun after she shot that Other lady? What the heck is the big black cloud ghost? Why are there visions of dead people all over the island? Where are Michael and Walt and will we ever see them again? How did Locke become paralyzed?

Now, I know this is a TV show and in order for the show to continue there must be many unanswered questions. But it seems like for every new discovery, there are many larger questions left unanswered.

4) No group chemistry
One of the show's greatest strengths was its diversity of characters and the interaction among them. With everyone so scattered now, most of the group interaction is gone. Does anyone notice the absolute futile effort the plane survivors are making to find Jack, Sawyer and Kate? Why are the two most skilled outdoorsmen - Locke and Sayid - not working together? Back in the main group, people hardly seem to notice anyone is missing.

5) Everything is moving soooo sloooowww
Take the season premier for example. The episode focused entirely on Jack, Kate and Sawyer and their imprisonment by the Others. Not once in the premiere did we see any mention of the hatch or the four people who supposedly blew up in it, Michael and Walt who were sailing on the open sea, or any of the other plane survivors.

It seems that about half of each show is backstory, which, unlike previous seasons where the background story revealed surprising and crucial details about a person's past, now seems to add little to the forward momentum of the show. It seems that many of the characters who were at one time complex and interesting, now have been reduced to one-liners. Jack is probably the show's central character but how much have we actually learned about him this season? All of his scenes so far have almost solely consisted of him being held in a cell, confused and questioning his captors. He seems to be stuck, completely at the mercy of The Others

Now, I know that Lost is only a TV show and no TV show is perfect. I just hope that the creators will realize what made the show interesting and unique in the first place and not change the format too much. Otherwise my friends and I will have to change our girls' night to Thursday and join the Dr. McDreamy masses.