The Mad Rants of a Raving Genius

Lost clearly isn’t for everyone. Let’s face it: most people watch TV for mindless entertainment, which generally entails explosions, sex, or reality game shows (Survivor, anyone?). You don’t usually watch TV to think. But that’s what Lost is all about. It’s like reading a good mystery story. If you got all the info at first, there’d be no reason to read the rest of the book. Instead, it’s revealed bit after bit which makes you come back for more. That’s why I love Lost. At the end of every episode, I just have to sit and stare at the screen for a couple minutes, wondering what the hell just happened. I’ve got my own little theories about what’s going on and I keep on watching to see how much I got right.

While my hopes for Lost are high, I have to realize that in this day and age of shortening attention spans, any TV show that doesn’t feature singing, dancing, C-list celebrities, or lots of explosions isn’t going to last very long on network television. I’ve seen many good TV shows get axed (Threshold, Invasion) because the viewers didn’t want to take the time to wait and see how the show panned out before deciding it was “too complicated” or “too boring” for their liking. Ironically, the thing that made Lost big–the overarching plot linking all the episodes together–is probably the thing that will eventually kill it. Too many people want things nicely wrapped up each episode. They’re just not patient enough to see things out to the end. Their loss, isn’t it?