Get Lost: Early Frontrunner for 2010 “Top 10 Videos”

I’ll give you this, Lost-ies: the first season was pretty good. By the end of the second season, however, I was annoyed. I’ll give it credit for trying something different–and I use “different” here in the strictly value-neutral sense. “Different” is only different until it suddenly isn’t.

FINAL SEASON OF ‘LOST’ PROMISES TO MAKE FANS MORE ANNOYING THAN EVER

That’s the problem with having a show that’s essentially Gilligan’s Island as written by Samuel Beckett: there are no boundaries. Any nonsensical bullshit you throw in can be justified as just another part of the overall enigma. When you give yourself carte blanche to jump and re-jump the shark as many times as you want to, that’s too much dramatic leeway. As I watched, the afore-mentioned overall enigma became not “where is this island?” or “what happened on the island before they got there?” or “that polar bear–what the fuck?” but rather, “why am I still watching this televised non-sequitur when I’ve stopped caring what happens?”

Yet people still keep asking me, “Ohmigod, did you see Lost last night?” Pfft. Whatever.

OK, OK, I’m not going to dis it too hard. Any scripted show that stays on network TV for several seasons is OK with me, even if I am not personally interested in watching. It beats the shit out of another programming hour being sacrificed to Jay Leno, Primetime Live, I Survived a Japanese Game Show or some other flavorless, antiseptic time-filler. Lost has provided work for hundreds of creative professionals in my industry–writers, technicians, designers, not to mention my fellow actors.

The show is automatically worthwhile for having raised the profile of Michael Emerson, who plays Ben Linus; I’ve known that guy deserves to be a star since I first saw him onstage in New York in the mid-’90s. My limited Lost viewing was also enough to make me a fan of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (who displayed gravitas out the wazoo as Mr. Eko) and Elizabeth Mitchell, although I’ll admit that I don’t remember anything about her character (JanetJuliet); I recall her because 1) she is smokin’ hot, and 2) in a flashback episode her mother was played by my friend, the thoroughly awesome Amy Stewart).

I did get a kick out of how Lost fans’ mini-hysteria over the possibility of their show being pre-empted made national news:

Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, Chicago Public Radio, January 16, 2010

Enjoy the last season of your mind-fucking tele-fetish, Lost-ophiles, but remember: you have no right to ever give me a hard time about being a Twin Peaks fan. Unless, I suppose, you are equally willing to admit that you maintained allegiance to your show even after it had begun to suck.