10 Reasons Why Season 5 of 'Lost' was Awful

Season 5 of Lost was by far the worst season of the show. If you want to know why, I have provided the following comprehensive guide, intercut with several soothing images to cool your frustration.







10) The entire off-island story of the Oceanic 6 was rushed so that they could be brought back to the Island.

The entirety of Season 4 was about the rescue of the Oceanic 6, and what it meant for them. Then, they're just brought back like it never happened. They skip ahead three years, and as a result it's impossible to identify with the characters' personal journeys. I don't feel for Jack or find his burn-out interesting, because it's not. It's a plot device, not a character arc, and it's irritating.

Jack, I have some bad news. You're about to stop being interesting.

9) The whole 1977 thing is just a big load of horseshit that no one should have been forced to eat.

The intention here was painfully clear: tell the Dharma story without having to break from the established narrative. As a result, the mystery and intrigue of the whole Dharma project is forfeited so that our main characters can be at the center of the action once again. Lost's appeal is that these semi-ordinary people are caught in the middle of this dense mythology that's way beyond them. Making those characters a central element of the mythology is lame writing that's usually reserved for fan-fiction. I would have rather there been episodes of the show, or a miniseries, devoted to telling the Dharma story exclusively, instead of contriving the story to put the main characters at the controlling center of whatever mystery they want to explain.


8) Time travel bullshit.

Mental time-travel was acceptable in Season 4, but now that it's physical there are so many questions they'll never answer. What travels through time? They're in boats, then the boats disappear. But their clothes remain. So does Locke's watch that he specifically gets from the future. If it's only organic substances, why these specific items? Why their hair and the top few layers of skin? If it's only things they're holding, why not the paddles for the boats? They'll never answer these questions, because the only possible answer is "God did it." And then I'll fucking kill them for saying it.


7) The bullshit ways they go back-and-forth with their time-travel stance.

One episode, they can change the future, the next one they can't. It's as if one set of writers watched 12 Monkeys but the other watched Back to the Future. "The power of will" is right next to "the power of love" in a list of the most half-assed deus ex machinas. I don't care how strong their willpower is, or much fighting spirit they have, if you've established that the future is locked, that's that. Are we to believe that Jack is able to break the golden rule of time travel just because he wants it really really badly?

Take a break.

6) Everyone has to come back... except for the kid, because we don't want a kid on the show all the time.

Understandable, but you should have thought about it before you said everyone has to come back. Just saying.


5) Everyone is everyone's father, and time travel explains everything, and people aren't real.

Want to know the quickest way to turn a three-dimensional character into a two-dimensional one? Instead of saying that his megalomania is a result of a troubled upbringing and a combination of events that have shaped his life over time, just say that he was cured of a gunshot wound by The Others and they made him evil because of it. One dimension down, two more to go. The show has also taken away the everyman element, as part of their initiative to make every second of the show somehow vitally important to the mythology. Now there are no characters left to identify with, because none of them are there by accident, they've all been a part of this from the day they were born. Just like the rest of us, right? Where are the interesting but real people up against extraordinary circumstances? They're gone, replaced by plot devices that serve only expand the already bloated mythology.

Take another break.

4) Speaking of characters, where were they?

Describe Jin's character. What has he done this season?

Describe Sun's character. What has she done this season? Looked for her husband, for a total of twenty minutes of screen time? Deep. So deep.

Describe Desmond's character. What has he done this season? Nothing. He was shot, and then he was better. Oh wait, I forgot, the laws of physics don't apply to him. The show's physicist actually says those words out loud.


3) Contrived romance yields contrived romantic triangle

By skipping ahead three years, we were forced to accept Sawyer and Juliet's romance without it ever being earned. Romance on a serial drama is like I Can't Believe it's Not Butter on delicious 12-grain bread- it's laid on in thick globs, spread too thin, is unhealthy for you, and people are gonna eat that shit up no matter what. Romance is integral to serial drama, but why? Is it because we want to see Person X matched up with Person Y, and Person A matched up with Person B? Partly, but overall no. The real reason is because we want to see their romance develop and take the trip with them. Romance more than anything is about the journey, not the destination. I don't give a shit who ends up with who, as long as I see it happen and believe that it's real.

How did Sawyer get over the fact that Juliet once locked him in a cage for a week and fed him nothing but polar bear biscuits? Maybe this helped fuel his attraction for her (it would have for me). He's used to being in control, so maybe he has an unrealized fetish for being stripped of that power. How did their romance start? Was it solid the whole way through, for three years straight? We're never told, and have only the first few episodes (which did hint subtly at romance) as clues.

When Kate returns, it makes for an awkward triangle... or at least it should, if there were any substance to Sawyer and Juliet's relationship. What circumstances have changed Sawyer so much that he's a model citizen now, in a healthy relationship? He's a con man, and a damn good one. He got himself and his friends integrated into the Dharma community by means of the biggest and most dangerous con of his life. But then at some point it stopped being a con, and became real. What was this point? What effect did it have on him? Why am I asking a team of professional writers questions that appear on a ten-year-old's book report?

Ladies, take a break.

2) Time is not a place.

Although the producers made the extra effort to post title cards saying "Thirty Years Earlier" and "Thirty Years Later", this did little to change the fact that these scenes were produced and edited as if they were happening in separate places at the same time. The writers and editors went for an approach that favored dramatic tension, so that both storylines coincided in their themes and pacing. That's great; in fact, it's the best way to tell two concurring stories. Concurring stories. When two scenes are edited together so that their dramatic pacing matches up, but they take place thirty years apart from one another, the result is bullshit that plucks you right out of the zone they tried so hard to make. Ever since The Great Train Robbery, cross-cutting has been well established as a convention wherein multiple events happen in multiple places at the same time. The drama and excitement is built from the progression of time that affects both stories. Without that, you've got nothing. It's cool to experiment with this convention, but it's even cooler when it works. Every ounce of dramatic tension was drained every time I shouted, "This isn't happening now!"

It's not like a movie where the similarities in warfare over time are shown by cross-cutting an American Civil War story with a story of the current American occupation of Afghanistan. Lost takes place on an island, with characters the audience has grown accustomed to seeing together. Cross-cutting is a staple of the show, used to show the different journeys each character experiences when apart from one another. The same convention is used to show them doing things thirty years apart from one another, against a landscape and background that is virtually unchanged. No clear visual distinction is made between the two time periods, certainly not enough so that we're always aware of it. Instead, when we want to consider the fact that these storylines take place thirty years apart from one another, we have to do so consciously and the excitement dies. Lost's asinine use of time-gap cross-cutting is akin to using a helicopter shot of an ocean to establish a scene that takes place in a basement. Most conventions serve very specific purposes, and when that formula is changed it confuses the audience. You wouldn't use montage music over a scene where a family quietly eats dinner, so don't use cross-cutting to show things that aren't happening at the same time.

So why, if it's the best way to tell two stories at once, am I faulting them for doing it? After all, they couldn't help it, right? Horseshit. They could have helped it by not putting their characters in that situation to begin with. There are very few exciting ways to concurrently tell two stories that take place thirty years apart, and that's why people don't usually write stupid shit like that.

Everyone take a break.

1) Season 5 of Lost was poorly made

No, this isn't just a reiteration of everything I've talked about so far. This last, most important entry is about why Season 5 failed in the most general sense: it's not made for people. More than any other season, this one demanded that you have a full encyclopedic knowledge of the show's mythology before tuning in. If you're like me, you did. You and I are part of a relatively small percentage of the population that could watch this show and understand what was happening. That is a mistake- one bred from the most severe self-indulgence ever exercised on national television. Worse than Flavor of Love or Rock of Love or anything of love. In Season 5, Lost had its dick so far up its own ass, it had to do front flips for sixteen hours before reaching a climax. Nothing on the show is enjoyable anymore, not even to 'Lost scholars'. It's a project that the writers are too close to, and care about too much to be trusted with. They're so in love with the world they've created, simple elements such as character depth and the mysteries of the ongoing story have given way to boring, two-dimensional elements that make the characters nothing more than pawns in their god-like hands, and the mysteries nothing more than the next "what the fuck" moment.

That's not to say there aren't some redeeming factors. The two greatest moments of the season each represent a significant aspect of the show: character arcs and mysterious reveals. These moments happen exactly in the middle and end of the season, respectively, and both center around John Locke. Both stand out so strongly from the rest of the season, the suckage with which they are juxtaposed is that much more painful to watch.

You earned it.