Nothing Lost
by Neena Louise

I admit it. I was a Lost fan. For all of one season. I was bitterly disappointed when Season One ended with...a hatch being opened. Oooh, how exciting. The sad part is, that was the most exciting thing that has happened in 2-1/2 seasons of Lost.

Yet, still I watched.

I Googled "Lost Sucks" and visited the top sites. All the "Lost Sucks" sites seem to be the same: incessant whining about how terrible Lost is and how nothing ever happens. I can't help but wonder: then why are you still watching it? Then I asked myself: "Why was I still watching it?!?!". I think it's because the first was so different from anything else on television at the time. Weird stuff happened. Flashbacks gave tantalizing clues into the survivors' backgrounds. The characters were interesting in their "ordinariness". It was all so refreshing that one just couldn't help watching to see what happened next. Problem is, nothing happened next.

Still I watched.

Season Two had a whole lot of nothing. The weird stuff became routine. The flashbacks became an excerise in "so what?" and "who cares?". A lot of seemingly unrelated and unresolved plot lines appeared and disappeared. The characters increasingly just...stared. At nothing. I find it hard to remember just what, exactly, happened in Season Two. Probably because nothing of consequence did.

Still I watched.

Season Three began interestingly enough (well, the first 15 minutes of the first episode, anyway). But then The Others were revealed to be some sort of weird cult-like group that lived on the island and liked to mess with the survivors' heads for no apparent reason. It was all so...ordinary. I felt ripped off. It didn't help that The Others were such unpleasant characters that watching them made me uncomfortable. And - espisode after episode - nothing kept happening. Then the plot lines seemed to become desperate and careered into the laughably absurd. Like Eko being killed by a smoke monster. Like Sawyer getting the crap kicked out of him one minute, then lugging around rocks without a mark on him the next minute. Like Kate managing to escape her cage, yet choosing to stay locked up rather than run for help. Like Dominick suddenly becoming psychic, then just as suddenly, not.

Still I watched.

A few episodes into the third season, Ben (of The Others) spoke that death-sentence line "You've been here for 66 days now". Huh? Wha? 66 days?!?! I've been watching for nearly three years during which only 66 days have passed?!?! And nothing much happened in those 66 days?!? I felt even more ripped off. Downright betrayed, actually. And very surprised at my strong reaction to a middling television show.

I'm done watching, now.

I've invested 2-1/2 years in this stupid show and I'm no closer to figuring out what's going on than in the beginning. That would be fine if I was still remotely interested in figuring it out. I'm not. It's one of the most boring, lamest dramas on television and I won't be wasting an hour watching more nothing when it returns. 24 will be on by then (Lost could learn some lessons from 24: It takes an entire season for one day to pass and, yet, never lags) as will American Idol, a few new shows and new episodes of favorite shows. Shows in which stuff actually happens. Every. Single. Week.

With hundreds of channels and thousands of shows available to viewers, people have short attention spans, and the network seems to know it. Sort of. ABC boasted how they'd run "clues" to the returning Lost during its replacement series Daybreak. That failed rather spectacularly when ABC suddenly cancelled Daybreak - a show where stuff happened! Over and over again, maybe, but happened just the same. I swear, ABC is trying to kill itself. But I digress...

It's time to put up or shut up when it comes to Lost. Have some mysteries solved. Have some clue about what is going on. I won't be watching, but there are still plenty of frustrated viewers hanging in, waiting and desperately hoping something will actually happen. And not some teeny, inconsequential tidbit at the end of the season, either. If viewers don't get some choice answers soon, they will join me in the ranks of ex-viewers and Lost will be lost for good.