I’ve watched J.J. Abrams’s “Lost” from the very beginning just as faithfully as other devotees. But I have to call it like I see it: the show has deteriorated into a mess of too many plotlines, too many time zones, and too many wrong turns. It’s lost its compass, so to speak.
One thing that kept me faithful this season was the show’s shift to flash-forwards in lieu of the typical flashbacks—last season I started fast-forwarding through most of the character flashbacks because I was so sick of them (sacrilegious, I know). Another was last year’s announcement that the creators and writers of “Lost” had determined an end to the show. A brilliant idea, I thought, because it gave fans the assurance that the writers knew where they were going, that the show would not wander around aimlessly for an indeterminate number of future seasons. Finally, there was what I call “the Desmond episode”—”The Constant“—which was so brilliant, engaging, and moving that I felt this one segment made watching the entire series worth it.

But alas, after last week’s episode, “The Shape of Things to Come,” with it’s revelation of this businessman Charles Widmore as somehow intimately tied to the Island in ways that disappoint and bore me, I quit. The show has become more about Benjamin Linus than anyone else. And yes, Ben is probably the creepiest character ever to hit the small screen. But he’s become the central focus of the show—and I didn’t sign up for Ben when “Lost” started.
Besides, Locke—who I used to love—has lost his status as the Island’s true-believer prophet, and now seems more of Ben’s puppet than anything else. Between Locke’s shift in character and the loss of Mr. Ecco last season, the plotlines of the show keep veering away from the mysteriously religious, and now default simply to confusion.
Unless, the “eye for an eye,” oh whoops, I mean, “a daughter for a daughter” form of um, justice (if you can call it that), taken up by Ben after he watches his daughter get shot—brutal—somehow counts as sufficiently biblical.
Regardless, I’m done. I quite the Church of Lost. Weekly attendance has started to feel like Catholic mass did as a kid: a chore. I feel better already!