Sorry, But You "Lost" Me Right There

It happened two episodes ago with the death of Mr. Eko. My son was asking me all kinds of questions about what the characters on "Lost"were doing and why they were doing it and I kept saying, "I don't know. I don't know." And I suddenly realized that the writers of the show probably don't know either, no matter what they say.

I simply can't imagine any kind of logically consistent framework into which all the puzzle pieces are going to fit. There are just too many of them, to the point of ridiculousness.

The Others in particular don't seem to make any sort of sense. They say they're the "good guys," but no one who acts as they do is so sociopathic as to say that with a straight face. And if I had a tumor in my spine, I wouldn't abuse the only doctor in my neighborhood and torture his good friends in the hopes that he might operate on me successfully. Off the top of my head, I can think of about a dozen more productive strategies.

I'm getting tired of all the torture and the nastiness and the total refusal to ask the most obvious questions. ("Hey, where'd all you Others come from? Does this island have a name I might have heard of? Do you know how that smoke monster thing works?") Watching the "mid-season finale" was a real chore. By the time Sawyer and Kate got around to the Dirty Monkey Love in the polar cage, I'd lost interest.

If you stop and think about it, every single main character on "Lost" is running some sort of con game, either on him/herself or others. I'm convinced the writers are doing the same to the audience, and it's really starting to annoy me.

I'll be back for more in February. But as Adam Sternbergh points out in New York Magazine, "Lost" didn't have to end up like this.