I was mixed after the LOST finale. Then I saw the Flashforward finale. Flashforward is a show that did a *lot* of things wrong, but with only two weeks notice they would be canceled, they rearranged a few scenes, solved the largest mystery, and gave us an interesting, hopeful, cliffhanger-y ending. Yes, they ignored or let die the majority of the ancillary mysteries, but overall, it was great, given the circumstances. Lost, on the other hand, was a joke.
The gave us a “resolution” to the characters ignoring the fact that they sucked us in with the Island. Dharma. Jacob. The hatch. Hanso. The DeGroots. The intertwining lives. The numbers. Hurley at the institution with Libby. Walt being special. The Egyptian stuff. The statue. The constant. The pregnancy thing. The others. The purge. The pylons. The “files” on the castaways.
And they f*$%ed us. They broke our contract – we watched and pieced it together, they were supposed to reveal what happened. And they didn’t. They didn’t just leave one or two things up to us, they just flat out abandoned the mysteries altogether. I’d say more, but I can’t do it better than Eugenia already did. I urge you to read this piece on why LOST worked, and this piece on why Lost sucked first. Ultimately, for me, Lost was the best ride ever that had no real payoff.