An Open Letter to Lost

Dear Lost,

Thanks for all the great times. You've not always been perfect, I know. I famously promised myself I would give you up during the god-awful first half of the second season, and I gave you one more episode to prove that you weren't suffering from Arrested Development Syndrome, and you proved it to me. Since then we've been on an upward swing. No, you'll never top the glory of the first season, but that's because the best part of the show is never the answer, but the question. It's great to see you knock the pins down, but watching you set them up is fucking magical.

But that's not what we're here to talk about. In the fifth season, you killed off about 99% of the cast, including my favorite character. Fuck you. The only thing I want out of the sixth and final season is for Daniel Faraday to rise from the grave. I'm not terribly interested in having all my questions answered, because the payoff is backwards. All I want is more goddamn Jeremy Davies. Did I mention fuck you? Fuck you.

To be honest, this was a great season. Maybe even the best since the first. You haven't ran laps around us this effectively since the brilliant second half of the second season. But if you keep killing off characters with this much enthusiasm, by the third episode of the sixth season we'll get fixed shots around Skullfuck Island for an hour every week.

Also, fire Josh Holloway. The man has two expressions. You gave one of the best characters to that asshole? I don't care if you get a fat black man (that's a good inside joke, Oliver) to play him as long as he's a good actor, but you're wasting a great part on that dipshit.

But none of this matters to you, does it? I imagine the show was written without an ending in mind, so you could set up the pieces with impunity. That's okay, though. You've crafted a brilliant show, one of the best of all time, and you could chalk all the mysterious goings-on to alien farts and we'd be cool with that.

I care that the sixth season holds up the standard set by the last, and I care that you stop killing off everyone. How many shootouts can you get into on a dessert island? Really, it's a writer's crutch. I know the Lost writers are all very powerful beings that walk around the office using their giant, exposed brains to make things float around, so why do they have to solve every situation in this show with someone getting pistol-whipped? I love violence as much as the next guy, hell, I'm something of an action movie enthusiast, but your story does not require this level of violence. It's incredibly out of place.

On occasion, though, the violence in this show has been appropriately shocking, powerful and, best of all, mysterious. Examples include Ben calling Jack on a payphone, soaking wet and covered in blood.

After all this, though, it may seem like I have it in for the show. Just the opposite, in fact. This is the best show on television. Period. It's not perfect, but it's incredibly dense, so I'll forgive some errors in logic. It's beautifully shot, incredibly well-written and acted by people who have every right to be huge stars (I'm looking at you, Terry O'Quinn).

But please, Lost. Stop doing all those things I said not to do. And also, because I forgot, have characters actually ask questions. If I were walking around with Ben Linus all the time, I'd be asking him some fucking questions about smoke monsters and giant feet and shit. None of the characters seem particularly interested in this shit anymore, like it's all a day at the fucking office, right up there with doctors and physicists firing two pistols while jumping through the air.

Heterosexually yours,
Oliver

P.S. - There were spoilers in this post.