Then came the hatch. And the button pushing every 108 minutes. And Locke’s unrelenting faith that there was a purpose to it all. From there the show descended into a pointless maze of false clues, red herrings, flashbacks, flashsideways, and sheer inconsistent nonsense, compounded by introducing wave after wave of new character sets, only to kill off most all of them pointlessly after taking loads of time to painstakingly give us their character backfill in endless flashbacks. It got so bad, we were left finally with a group we could only call the other Others.

After the third season we began realizing that what we were watching was writing which truly was lost, and instead of correcting course simply kept tacking on more answer-less storyline branches in an attempt to distract viewers from the fact the writers no longer knew what they were doing. However, the distraction worked; Losties began to believe that it all made sense with such strength they were able to come up with numerous detailed theories which would tie things back together. The more obscure, random and counter-intuitive the clues were, the more the Losties believed with Locke-like faith that it was all for a reason. Unfortunately, our faith turned out to be as useful as believing in Baal.

While the sins committed against the viewers were many, there were a few major reasons that Lost ended up being little more than a 6-season hoax:

False Advertising: all season long ABC kept running ads which promised that finally, in this final season, we would get answers. If truth-in-advertising laws apply to ads about TV shows, somebody needs to be hauled in to court. In a show which raised literally hundreds and hundreds of questions, the final season provided almost no answers, while insultingly raising dozens more. Ultimately, there were only two answers given by the show; one, that the nameless smoke monster was human, and that six people did get off the island. Somehow, though, the writers succeeded in making me not care about the one thing which should matter in a disaster/survival show, which is “who lives?”. By the time we see the jetliner somehow managing to take off from a beach, it just didn’t seem to matter any more – probably because the purgatory world which dominated the last season made it seem irrelevant. Probably also because the writers used the characters more like pawns on a chessboard than people; kill Sayid, but then put him in some water in the other Other’s temple and he comes back to life – sort of, just so he can be killed again. Or can you say Walter? Most of the characters became unreal, so caring about them no longer happened. While a few (very few) questions about some characters were sort of answered (Richard’s story was interesting), those weren’t the answers which mattered. The questions which mattered were about the island (obviously a product of technology alien to us), and of those answers we were treated to exactly zero.

Immorality: while the writers went to great lengths to show each and every character as flawed, I’m not talking about that, or even the Kate/Sawyer hookup. A successful story has to in some way demonstrate a reason for good to exist in the world. Usually it’s a simple good triumphing over evil, but sometimes the story is much more complex, using deeply flawed characters struggling through a morass of difficult situations which don’t offer black and white choices. Ultimately though, as Locke would believe, there must be a reason – some positive affirmation. However, we watched Locke become a man so obsessed with the island that he would murder in order to stay on it. That is not simply a character flaw; that makes Locke a bad guy. Then we learn that the nameless smoke monster is a child imprisoned on the island by the woman who murdered his mother (who then pretended to be his mother), and that all he wants is to leave. That makes him a sympathetic character, if not an outright good guy. He remains imprisoned by his brother (who tried to murder him, only to turn him into the smoke monster) to the point he is willing to kill to get out of his prison, so maybe he is a bad guy, but you could argue about that. The psychological damage of what his “mother” and brother did to him could be grounds for mental duress, and his killing (at least at the end) was only of people he felt were in his way to escape. Because he was revealed as a good or sympathetic character (in a show dominated by characters we didn’t like or ultimately didn’t care about) I was rooting for him to get off the island. The story that somehow he was a danger had no facts to back it up and was certainly a lie (coming from the woman who murdered his mother and imprisoned him). At the least, his willingness to kill to escape was no worse than Locke’s willingness to kill in order to stay. The best you can say is we have moral ambiguity, at worst bad guys were portrayed as good guys and vice versa.

Locke was wrong: the storyline was often presented as faith versus science; Locke versus Jack. I’m sure most were rooting for Locke to be right – that there is a purpose (the allegory being there is a purpose to life). It turns out Lock was wrong. He simply died, the island didn’t need him, and even when his body was used by the smoke monster in an attempt to escape, that purpose didn’t work out either. While the island eventually got Hurley as its guardian (and Linus as “number two”), to what purpose? If the smoke monster was a threat the guardian needed to keep imprisoned, that purpose no longer existed. If Locke was right and there was a purpose, it was never explained, so might as well not exist as far as the viewers are concerned.

Linus never got his: In real life, we always want to believe in redemption, but in fiction we relish the bad guy getting ultimately taken out. In Lost we waited six seasons to see Benjamin Linus finally get what he deserved. Instead, we got nothing but him deciding to, rather than go into the light with the rest, stay a while on a park bench in a purgatory where time has no meaning anyway. Big, stinking whoop.

It was just a lame ending: there are hundreds of examples, but try these – throw someone into the light and they turn into a smoke monster. Except Desmond. And Jack. And apparently anybody except the one poor soul it turned into the smoke monster? We go to great lengths to get Desmond in the cave with the light because only he has the (unexplained, of course) super-powers to withstand it. Oh, except that Jack can go down there just fine and handle the light-stone as well. If you’re going to set up rules, you have to follow them, or explain why there are exceptions. And the whole “we created a purgatory for you where we wouldn’t remember things, and we even made you believe you had a son” crap? Please. It makes the Bobby-stepping-out-of-the-shower-it-was-all-a-dream on Dallas years ago look like Shakespearean level writing.

The result of all this is that I’ve been cheated. It turns out a relationship I gave six seasons of my life to was a scam. Having been burned, I’ll be looking much harder at getting into other relationships. I watched a few episodes of “V”, but when it started to look like (and maybe I’m just seeing things because of Lost) they were setting up some answer-less ongoing mystery story lines, I quit, deciding I can’t trust continuing dramas on ABC for a very long time (ever?). I just don’t want to risk being caught up in another Lost.