I don’t know why I am still watching Lost. It makes me feel terrible about my own ability to follow a narrative storyline, and how easily my buttons are pushed but the simplest of TV trickery. I have never believed that the writers have really known where the whole things was going from the beginning, though I have based this belief on the fact that the writers of 24 don’t know how their series will end – and there are only 24 episodes of those. Lost, with its endless pointless mysteries, time wasting flashbacks (and now flash forwards) and bunch of on the whole unlikeable characters should have driven me off by now. Take the Lost “numbers”. Important in series one and two, they haven’t been mentioned since, and I still can’t see a way of their quasi-mystical importance being explained. Do I think there will be anything like a satisfactory conclusion to the mess which is now taking in time travel, faking the death of hundreds of people and massive conspiracy theories? Nope. Yet I keep watching.
Of course the show trades on its mysteries, though the web of unexplained nonsense is so tangled that I believe nothing coherent will really come out of it (its at least one persons dream*). But this has been further confirmed by USA Today running a competition for viewers to submit what they think is going on to the producers to be graded. They are also voted on in popularity by the readers too. Some of the theories are said to be “very close to the actual plot”.
Now hold on. There are two transparent reasons for running this competition, neither of which bode well for the ongoing series.
a) That the producers have a few various ways they want to go, and are faking entries so the audience can grade the ones they like the best without giving anything away.
Or much more likely
b) Lost nerds have a much better grasp of everything that is happening, and are much more likely to make up some convoluted but basically sound final plot which would at least satisfy those of us who have been watching it from day one. And are a lot cheaper than writers. It also seems to be the best way out of a massive hole (some say research station) that the producers have dug themselves into with its nonsense plots.
*My money is on the Polar Bear.