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If you haven’t watched up to the Season 3, Episode 5 of LOST, then please don’t click the “read more of this entry” link below.

I rarely ever vouch for something I have little control over. I don’t like the thought of saying something is great only to turn around later and see it’s total crap. Movies and books are one thing, for if I watch or read one and love it enough to recommend it to people, it’s rarely going to change. No matter how many years later I suggest it, the movie isn’t going to have changed nor will the book have gone through another round of editing. But then you’ve got the oh-so-fickle world of television.

When I first watched LOST, I was excited. Just the general plot was something that I’d imagined about in my brain for years, something that I’d actually begun to write about and ponder turning it into a real story. And then before I knew it, ABC was actually coming out with a show just like the one in my head and I couldn’t wait! And to be fully honest, that first season was dynamite. It was exciting, explosive, mysterious, and fun. I told everybody I knew about it. I stayed up one night in my kitchen, blowing off hanging out at the bars with my friends, to tell my brother all about what he’d missed and why it was so great. I got my dad hooked, my other two siblings, my mom. Anybody who would listen to me, I went on and on about the show.

And now I wish I could go back, tell them that what I saw that first season wasn’t the final product and that if they were smart, they’d stay far, far away from this show.

It’s hard watching something you love deteriorate into a bulky mass of nothingness and incoherency. It’s like I’m watching my grandmother suffer through Alzheimer’s all over again. Actually, it’s more than that. A part of me was invested in this show. I wanted it to succeed, in small part to validate all the time I’ve put into it. But now it’s become an abusive relationship where every other week I hear over and over, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, baby, I swear! I promise to never do it again!” Until now, I’ve always accepted its apology, welcomed it back into my life every Wednesday night, and wound up getting hurt time and time again.

Well not anymore. This show has Jumped the Shark. Or, as I like to call it now, Shook the Bunny.

There’s just so much wrong with this show, it’s not even funny. From day 1, the writers have claimed that A) They have the entire first 4 seasons completely mapped out and B) Everything will be realistically and scientifically explained in the end. If you still believe either one of those is true, I’ve got some wonderful tourist packages to Iraq you might be interested in.

The writers (from here on out called TPTB: The Powers That Be) clearly have no preplanned story arc. They’re all over the place. They spend an entire season assimilating a group of characters only to kill them all off in a pointless need to shock and awe us. They refuse to either drop the flashbacks or use them to teach us something new, instead opting to drive home the point that Jack has daddy issues and that Sawyer is a con man. We. Get. It. Hell, they even constantly bring up new questions without even so much as a sniff of an answer to any of the previous ones they brought up.

Here’s a little tip. Constantly arising new questions that make us forget all about the ones you posed last year doesn’t equal good storytelling. It makes you look like bad writers who can’t come up with decent answers.

Don’t believe me? Check out this message board post where fans of LOST spend 31 pages talking about all the unanswered questions. And it’s not even the fact that there are so many that’s frustrating, it’s the method they’ve now adopted in doing so. It’d be one thing if they asked a question and then constantly dangled it in front of us, like they did with “what’s in the hatch?” But now they simply ask a question, forget about it for a year, and then suddenly bring it up again and expect us to get excited. Sorry guys, but it doesn’t work that way.

Everything they’ve revealed so far has been such a letdown. I don’t think they could have built the Others up any more than they did and all we get is this? Some kidnappings, fish biscuits, and a “will you fix my spine? Only if you want to, though!” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I used to be TERRIFIED of the Others. Now, they remind me of a weird cult that loves Kool Aide. Nothing they do makes sense, none of their actions are logical, and the illogicalness of it all has served no purpose whatsoever. Way to drop the ball on this one.

Think of it this way. You have a spinal tumor. It is terminal. You are desperate for medical help and surgical care. A spinal surgeon “falls from the sky”. You:

A) Race over to him, befriend him, help him, and ask for his help.
B) Send others to race over to him, beat the shit out of him and his friends, kill a few random folks, kidnap all the children, kidnap him, and keep him locked in an oversized aquarium.

And the Others are geniuses… how?

But it’s not only the Others who don’t act normally. Even the Losties are pure idiots. Almost every episode something will happen and either nobody questions it or somebody keeps it a secret. I don’t want to watch a show full of morons. That’s not fun, it’s frustrating.

Even the writing on an episode to episode basis has deteriorated. My head still hurts from where all those religious symbolism anvils crashed into my skull last night. We get it. You took Intro to Philosophy freshman year. Good on ya, bruthas. But that doesn’t mean you have to dust off those old English assignments analyzing the passage for color symbolism and try to out-allegory Hawthorne. Stick to what worked during the first season, for Christ’s sake. Actually, I guess I should be thankful they haven’t given any character the initials J.C. and suspicious scars on their palms. Then again, we really don’t know anything about the new characters, so I won’t hold my breath.

All of this finally came to the boiling point for me when they killed Eko last night. A full season of assimilating the Tailies into the show only to not use them at all in the plotline and then kill them off? Where is the Master Plan in that?! You’ve told us from day 1 that it’s going to be similar to Stephen King’s The Stand, with there being two different main factions. First you try to set up a Jack vs. Locke, then you try a Cave vs. Beach or Beach vs. Hatch scenario. You’ve already failed at the Losties vs. the Others and I guess we can kiss those hints of Eko’s religious group vs. Locke’s nuthouse fate camp down the drain. Now? It’s none of them and you still can’t figure out what the hell you’re trying to accomplish with this show.

I can understand killing Boone to give Locke his Great Test o’ Faith. I can understand killing Ana Lucia in a seemingly shocker twist in a season finale. But to write off Eko, Walt, Michael, Shannon, and Libby just because you can’t think of any better storylines for them is pointless and lazy. Stop introducing new characters if you don’t even know what to do with the one’s you’ve got! I swear, I don’t know how anybody could believe TPTB aren’t writing this show on the fly and making it up as they go along!

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a TV show that’s both entertaining and intelligent without insulting it’s audience.

I guess you can say this is my apology to all those out there who had to listen to me talk about LOST so much. If you want a part comedy, part drama that makes Law & Order look like a high school production of Macbeth, check out Boston Legal. Scrubs is by far the best comedy on television these days, whenever it actually IS in the lineup. Heroes is also one of the better new shows this year, although they are already teetering on succumbing to the LOST factor.

And then you’ve got Battlestar Galactica. A show which hasn’t had an equal on the airwaves in the past year. A show which not only is well planned and well written, but well acted. A show that if push came to shove and I was forced to pick only one series to watch for the next 5 years, it would be spoken by my lips in a matter of seconds.

Trust me, if you were one of the chosen that I mistakenly turned onto LOST, please accept my sincere apologies and spend your time more wisely on Battlestar Galactica. You won’t be disappointed.