Is Lost Lost?

For Lost fans only:

Reaction to last night's season finale of Lost seems to be split among the fans, between those who loved it and those who feel it didn't answer nearly enough. Count me among the former--while it's undeniable that they really didn't offer any concrete answers to the season's most pressing questions (what the numbers really mean, what's in the hatch, who are the Others?) that seemed appropriate to me. After all, these are two of the most prominent mysteries they have--I wouldn't expect them to answer them so early in the show's run. And they did reveal important things.

We saw the Others, after all, and we did learn that it was Walt they'd been after all along, not Claire's baby. While the show's creators and writers do have a heck of a balancing act to maintain, I think they're being wise about erring on the side of revealing too little, as opposed to too much. While that tactic can easily crash and burn, killing a series when the fans get more and more frustrated, if deployed well, it can result in a long-running and dramatically interesting series.

The other piece of the puzzle to keep in mind is that the vast majority of those 20 or so million people watching every week don't track every twist and turn on the Internet. To that more casual fan--the typical fan, it should be remembered--the teasing out of details probably seems much less tortuous. Many of the smaller details these fans (and I include myself among their number) can obsess about the average viewer hardly thinks about. And it is this casual viewer they should be writing for, at least on some levels.

So I'm good. Not eager to have to wait four or so months before the show resumes, but very happy with the first season they've put together.

Until Whenever