Why I Admire 'Lost' For Dumping Me Over My Failure To Commit

Tonight marks the finale of the penultimate season of Lost, ABC's Emmy-winning drama that has, over five seasons, constructed a story so complicated that it makes the black-oil mythology of The X-Files look like an episode of Full House.

Sadly, sometime this season, the show dumped me, because I wouldn't commit.

Let's back up.

Once a hyper-dramatic Gilligan's Island, where the main concerns were survival and ideally escape (at times, all that was missing was the coconut radio), Lost is now a maze of allegories and coincidences and time travel and shadowy villains who may or may not even manifest as human beings.

But while the show's critical acclaim has rebounded after a drop around the beginning of the third season, the ratings have slid from an average of about 16 million viewers in the first season to about 11 million in this one.

And in truth, more than ever, it's designed and built to only lose viewers over time, and to weed out the wimps. The wimps like me.

Changing my mind about an old theory, sort of, and some "spoilers" about what I can decipher of the current season, after the jump...

 

You might recall that in the fall, as the fifth season premiered, I wrote about not entirely buying the theory that the viewer attrition was the result of having to watch every episode. As I explained at the time, I didn't watch every single episode, and I still managed to enjoy it. And I still think it's true that you don't have to watch every episode.

But I'll give them this: it's gotten much harder. And it's been a long time since you could pick it up new without a huge investment of time figuring out what was going on. To tell you the truth, while I used to be able to follow along, mostly, even if I missed things, I'm now utterly baffled. Which is what I get, of course, for trying to be a casual viewer. As a friend pointed out to me recently, I advocated casual viewership at what was probably its last moment of even arguable viability.

I think it was all the time travel that put it over the top.

And I have to say, from a critical perspective, I admire the show for completely alienating me, no joke. It's very hard to find network shows that don't constantly try to leave a light on for you in case you arrive late — even good shows. Even very good shows.

I am forced to admit, painful as it is, that now, this show has given up on me. "Sorry!" it calls out jauntily, sailing off into its own oceans of complexity as I stand on the dock, helpless. One day, I will figuratively get in my little dinghy and row out to the party; I'll go back and watch it all on DVD from the beginning...won't I? The way I will Battlestar Galactica? The way I actually did with The Wire?

Perhaps. Until then, it's impossible not to respect a move as creatively rewarding for fans and as commercially suicidal as making your story absolutely, positively impenetrable. I get the feeling that more than ever, the people who love this show really love it — they feel like they're reaching the big payoff, the long-awaited answers, the reward for years of the best kind of hard labor.

If more shows had end dates; if more shows could count on a life of a fixed length on television followed by a longer life on DVD where everyone can afford be a completist, maybe we'd get better shows. Imagine the world we might find ourselves in if more creators were willing to say, "If you've been dating us on and off for five years and haven't married us yet, then we're dumping you, how about that?"

So: Bravo to you, Lost. You're right to fully reward the people who have given you their Wednesday nights faithfully and seriously. I know it's better this way, and I hope we can still be friends.