Nobody's Perfect: "Lost's" 25 Biggest Flaws

ABC's beloved show made its share of missteps.

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When Lost crash-landed on ABC in the fall of 2004, few expected it to run as long as it did, let alone make it past year one—creative team included. The pilot was rushed and the premise so whimsical and unsustainable—50 castaways survive a plane crash on a deserted island and have to learn to co-exist until rescue—that it seemed like sure-fire cancel bait.

Well, that rushed pilot went on to become one of TV's best debut episodes of all time, the season played out with the confidence and efficiency of a classic debut album, and on top of that, regularly averaged upwards of 16 million viewers a week. A masterful blend of action/adventure with mystery, and genuinely affecting characters made the show an instant hit. Simply put, its narrative fearlessness and execution was refreshing. But the unanimous praise was not built to last (does it ever?). As Lost's narrative went further and further down the rabbit hole and evolved from the relative simplicity of the first season, so too did it stray further from perfection.

Everyone has a different opinion about where Lost went off the rails. Some jumped ship during season three’s extended stay with the Others. Others felt like the show blew itself up quicker than a stick of Black Rock dynamite when it went full sci-fi by incorporating time travel during season five. Many stuck around to “The End,” only to feel gypped and betrayed when the Sideways world didn’t line up with their own predictions.

With Lost, it isn't so much a case of a great series making a few memorable mistakes, but instead a great series that endured so many fails, it forced audiences to consider just how many fuck-ups can one allow a show before it must be knocked down a few pegs in the history books.

Six seasons later, Lost is indisputably a classic TV series, one that changed its medium and its genre in several ways in both storytelling and programming. But in its wake, the debate over the show's deserving place in the TV pantheon still rages.

Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, affectionately referred to by fans as "Darlton," may go down in history as TV's most harassed showrunners. They did their best to finish what they started and please as much of the audience as possible, but ultimately, they wrote the ending they wanted to make. We enjoyed the end. But the road there? Bumpy as hell. These are Lost's 25 Biggest Flaws.

Written by Frazier Tharpe (@The_SummerMan)

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Abbadon

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Matthew Abbadon

This show is filled with supporting characters that make grand entrances, rich with possibility and mystery. These characters left fans thirsty for the next appearance and had message boards tripping with wild theories in the interim, only for said character to return with decidedly underwhelming results.

When we first meet Matthew Abbadon (in “The Beginning of the End") he’s scary as hell, given by Lance Reddick’s menacing baritone and cold stare.

Fan speculation went so far as to suggest he was an off-island manifestation of The Monster. What was clear upfront is that he worked for Charles Widmore, but as the man who planted the idea of a walkabout in John Locke’s head, he seemingly possessed a greater understanding and thus greater significance.

Yet, during our first and only real look at his character a season later, he’s a glorified Chatty Kathy cabbie for John Locke. Less menace, more manservant, down to the incessant quips. And then he’s shot and killed, thus fulfilling his destiny as the personification of one of this series' key problems: it didn’t always know how to service it’s large rogues gallery.

Answers Elsewhere

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Answers, Elsewhere

A series as big as Lost is always going to generate content outside of the show. Interactive games, internet shorts, novels, and the like are par for the course. But even if this content is "canon," and approved by the show's Powers that Be, the edict is simple: Fans of the series proper should not have to seek these things out for answers to questions posed on the series.

For example, while the Numbers were eventually explained, kind of, in the final season, an earlier explanation was given in an interactive game—and it's simultaneously lazy and unfair. Exploring other media and additional content should be a choice, not a necessity. It's a TV show—the answers should be found right there on the tube.

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Outrigger

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The Mystery Outrigger

Great LOST Stories That Never Were—there are plenty of them, because this ADD-addled series wasn’t always interested in finishing what it started. Fans paid hawk-eyed attention to chronology and setting during that stretch of season that found Sawyer and various castaways jumping back and forth through time. At one point they are clearly, in the very, very near future, being shot at while rowing to shore in an outrigger, by another outrigger that they’d previously left on the beach.

Who were these mystery assailants? We couldn’t wait to see how the show would circle back to it and close that plot loop. But it never did. Jokes on you, attentive audience. Again.

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Aaron

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Who's Raising Aaron? Who Cares?

For a kid whose birth was such a big deal, Aaron ended up as pretty basic baby. Claire’s first character-centric episode is even called “Raised by Another.” Then Kate raises him for a few years. Lightning didn’t strike Kate down. As far as we know, Aaron didn’t grow up to be the antichrist. So what was all the fuss about?

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There's No Place Like Home

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"There's No Place Like Home"

Flaws and all, Lost always turned up for its finales. There was action, adventure, daring rescues, maybe a sad death, and definitely a reprise of the series' trademark, string-filled score. "There's No Place Like Home," the finale of the fourth season is no exception. But while it's definitely entertaining, it stands as the weakest of the show's finales because it was so run-of-the-mill.

There's one plot that brings the finale down: It ultimately didn't deliver on what the flashforwards promised. Up until then every glimpse of the Oceanic Six survivors that we got was tinged with guilt and even a little shame, and we were left to wonder just how and why these six escaped and no one else. The answer that "Home" gave? That's just how it worked out, man! There's no conspiracy, no shady development, just a bunch of people running from one place to another, and the Six were really just the lucky few that ended up in the right place at the right time.

It felt a little lazy, with certain characters making certain decisions simply because at the beginning of the season Darlton pulled four names other than Jack and Kate out of a hat. Like, really? Sawyer just jumped off the helicopter...to save gas? Whatever.

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The Temple

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The Temple

With many of the mysteries on the series, there was the distinct sense of "be careful what you wish for." Press hard enough, and Darlton just might make good on a story thread they promised earlier…whether you like the result or not. We’d heard a lot of talk about The Others Temple in the lead-up to the final season, and we were psyched when the year started with an introduction to the locale and its inhabitants.

Fast forward six episodes and we're having flashbacks to the Dharma cages, praying for Jack and co. to leave that place and never look back. Quite simply, it sucked. Dogen, the man behind the Temple’s curtain, was yet another in a long line of Island-authority cyphers, who casually spouted nonsensical facts sans context, or refused to answer anything at all, and in between was asked to seriously deliver lines like “This machine will determine his morality.” Curiously, we weren’t sad to see the place go up in flames.

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The Cage Arc

Aside from a strong premiere (and also J.J. Abrams' last official contribution to the series), this was not what we expected from our first extended visit with The Others. The six-episode arc on Hydra Island hit the same beats over and over again: Ben does something manipulative. Jack rages. Sawyer and Kate make eyes—and eventually sex. They break rocks all day (what?). Juliet acts mysterious.

And over and over again, in the same mechanic routine as winning a fish biscuit. Sadly, this wasn't even the lowest of low points for season three.

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The Others

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The Others

Whether Darlton had a broad sketch of the story they ended up telling planned from the beginning or not is irrelevant. Plans change, and as long as things in “The End” more or less lined up with what we saw in the pilot, we'd be set. The problem is, some things did't. Key example? Pick a few random eps from season three, see how The Others are living, and ask yourself if that really tracks with some of their first appearances.

So they wore fake beards and raggedy clothing to appear as wild island natives—fine. But some of their earliest sightings really do suggest that, right there in the writing. This would’ve been clear even without season one writer David Fury’s confession that, indeed, at the time The Others were undefined and he did imagine them as feral island natives.

Couple that with the fact that, before the late season six reveal that “the whispers” belonged to the lost souls that died on the island, they were blatantly associated with The Others, and rewatching or even just reflecting on this element of the series becomes one jarring headache.

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Pregnancy

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The Pregnancy Problem

So pregnant women die on the island during the third trimester. Terrible. But why the hell was that such a big deal to Ben? Why didn’t The Others just stock up on Dharma condoms and jet off to the mainland in their submarine if they wanted to conceive? Was this really worth nabbing pregnant women in their sleep, and murdering anyone who got in their way?

Didn’t a community of people taking orders from an immortal, who protected a mystical island, have better experiments and such to focus on? What this really exemplifies is that The Others were really just douchebags to the unnecessary extreme. Maintaining secrecy is one thing, but not randomly abducting people and blowing up boats really would’ve resulted in less death on both sides.

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Crazy Claire

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Crazy Claire

What was the point of this exactly? Late in season four, Claire survived an explosion, only to claim to see visions after and find herself the subject of many quizzical looks from Miles, who can commune with the dead. When she abandoned baby Aaron to follow the Man in Black, who frequently appeared as her (and Jack's) father Christian, into the woods and later eerily reappeared alongside him in Jacob's Cabin, many fans speculated that she had died in the explosion to become something supernatural.

Then she finally reappeared in season six, and she's no longer off-putting and creepy she was just...wild for the night. Essentially the new Rousseau, she set dangerous jungle traps, killed at will, referred to a bundle of sticks as her baby, and had apparently run out of Dharma shampoo. Her abandonment of Aaron did wonders for Kate as a character, but Claire herself became a plot device.

Sure, we're told she's infected with that dreaded "Sickness," and she palled around with the Man in Black, but her kooky state of mind wasn't at all in line with the track Darlton was setting up in her prior appearances with Christian. Instead it just reeked of more sloppy narrative course-correction and served as yet another unfortunate detour for a previously compelling character.

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Sayid 007

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Secret Agent Sayid

By the mid-point of the series, Lost was a narrative melting pot, incorporating aspects of practically every major genre. The weekly flashback-per-character structure had lent the show a 31 flavors-vibe since the beginning, but around season four/season five, all of these elements came to the forefront, creating an atmosphere that could simultaneously blend action and adventure with a sweeping, Notebook type romance story and a scare-filled horror cabin to boot.  

But the mixture wasn't always stable. In retrospect especially, some elements feel grossly out of place. Many fans felt jerked around when the show introduced time travel, and while that arc did have its problems, at least it was hinted at earlier and then significantly impacted the overarching story later. No, our biggest nitpick isn't time travel. It's Sayid's between island assassin tour, for no other reason than how ridiculously vague it was.

We got a great self-contained episode in "The Economist," and then what exactly? For several Sayid-centric hours we watched him vengefully jaunt around the globe, executing faceless suits that Ben, and the show, informed us were somehow important to Charles Widmore and therefore dangerous to the castaways, those that escaped and those still on the Island. But we never learned anything more about these people, the danger they posed, who the eponymous economist was, and, on top of that, Charles Widmore ultimately flipped sides.

All this subplot boiled down to was, Sayid is best with a gun in his hand and Ben is best when he's being shady and manipulative. So Darlton gave them a vehicle to exhibit their best qualities until they returned to the jungle. At the very least, they could've choreographed better action sequences than this. Knives facing up in the dishwasher, who does that?

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Charles Widmore

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Charles Widmore, Villainous Flip-flopper

At the end of season four's "The Shape of Things to Come," Ben Linus and Charles Widmore have an ominous face to face, one that suggests a rich, hateful history and a bloody future, and all but cements Widmore as the de facto villain of the series. Well, forgive us for taking the title of the episode literally, because that is hardly the way things play out.

The series eventually refashioned its central war from the decades old rivalry of Ben and Charles into the centuries old sibling rivalry of Jacob and his brother in black. So where did that leave Widmore, who, up until then, was positioned as a scary gazillionaire desperate to harness the powers of the Island at all costs (and also as a really mean father-in-law)? Well, after the admittedly cool twist that he was actually an Other, and formerly the head cheese of the whole clan before Ben deposed him, Charles Widmore unceremoniously fell to the wayside.

He told Locke that he was one of the good guys, while Ben told Sayid that he was a danger to everyone while they jetted around the globe murdering his friends, and everyone played it too convincingly on both sides. Where did that leave us? Confused. Nevertheless, we waited to see how he would impact the great Jacob-Smokey beef when he finally arrived, and when he does he's suddenly on the side of the angels thanks to an (off screen!) visit from Jacob that set him straight.

This is the guy who was portrayed as the Devil for roughly a season and a half, beating people up, intimidating others, dispatching murderers to the island and planting a fake Flight 815 for the world to find, complete with dead bodies. And now he's a good guy because Island Jesus sat down with him. Off-screen.

Let's not even get into how casually his death is treated when Ben finally shoots him—or how it negates the implication that they couldn't kill each other. Very, very sloppy stuff.

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Libby

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The Libby Backstory That Never Was

Here's the thing about Lost threads that went nowhere. The ones that went unresolved obviously had no bearing on the story. If you liked, and were satisfied by "The End"—as we were—then it doesn't really matter why Libby was in Hurley's hospital, what led her to cross paths with Desmond, etc. But then these things still beg the question...why include them in the first place?

True TV fans know that complaining about showrunners making things up on the fly isn't the felony it's made out to be. A good 75% of the plot developments on your favorite series were happy, serendipitous accidents and the Lost-imitators that have rigidly tried to map out a complete course in advance often stumbled in spite of it.

But the "making things up" argument gains weight when the fact that a Libby flashback never occurred proves that it never had relevance to the story and was simply there because the six-degrees-of-castaway-separation became something of an expectation.

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Flashbacks

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The Flashbacks

“Walkabout” is only the fourth episode of the series, and remains one of its finest hours. It’s the episode that confirmed we were watching some truly historic television unfold, it’s the episode to show non-believers to get them hooked, and it’s the episode that proved the flashback structure was gangbusters, sparking an overzealous use of the narrative device in many a succeeding series. But the device that was, for a time, the show’s bread and butter began to falter fiercely in the third season.

By season three, good flashbacks were becoming rare. It became painfully clear that Darlton were straining to continue to create character-centric flashbacks that resonated and enriched the castaways back-stories. Flat tales like the story nobody really wanted to know about Jack's tattoos, Locke being a gullible fool for the 47th time, and Sayid facing a personification of his shady past yet again, left the once rapturous audience bored.

Meanwhile other characters were saddled with increasingly ridiculous additions to their bios: Kate was once married? Desmond was a monk? Still others offered character twists that the audience guessed back when Michelle Rodriguez was still around, like Claire’s not-so-secret relation to Christian Shephard. Aside from standout hours like “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” and “The Brig,” which by no coincidence, abandoned the standard flashback format, the device suffered a dishonorable death, giving way to the much juicier flashforwards.

The Love Rhombus

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The Love Rhombus

Every great adventure has romance, and over time Lost expanded from the original love triangle between Jack, Kate, and Sawyer to reveal that tortured romances were as much a part of the show's backbone as daddy issues. But the main love strife that had been there from the beginning soon became unbearable as it morphed into young adult melodrama.

The high school fuckery started with a randy, death fearing Sawyer and Kate copulating in cages while Ben and Jack watched, and got more complex when Juliet entered the fray and configured it into a bizarre rhombus full of jealous glances, awkward exchanges, consolation kisses, and revenge tent sex.

The nonsense crescendos in season five, when Jack, still smarting from his failed engagement to Kate, resolves to detonate a nuclear bomb with the hopes that it will alter time so they never met, and the usually level-headed Juliet agrees to help him because pseudo-husband Sawyer keeps flashing puppy dog eyes at Kate and falling back on affectionate nicknames. Face, meet palm.

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The box

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The Magic Box

“Picture a box.... What if I told you on this island, there’s a very large box, and whatever you imagine, whatever you wanted to be in it, when you open that box, there it would be. What would you say about that?” – Benjamin Linus, “The Man From Tallahassee”

To that we say, there is such a thing as too much, Lost. Even Darlton realized they’d gone too goofy with this one, later claiming it was just a metaphor. Sure, whatever you say, guys. We’re just thankful we never heard about that “metaphor” again.

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The wheel

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The Frozen Donkey Wheel

The last third of every Lost season begins with an episode that sets up a clear mission. Open the hatch. Rescue Walt. Furthermore, from the flash forward reveal onward, key finale scenes were given highly publicized (in LOST nerd circles, anyway) code names that generated speculation on what crazy twist would close the year out. Imagine our excitement in "Cabin Fever" when island vanguard Locke was tasked with moving the entire rock to protect it from would-be conqueror Charles Widmore.

Then one of the secret scenes was designated as the frozen donkey. Mysterious! Now imagine our faces when the actual method of moving an entire island was revealed to be a frozen donkey wheel located in the catacombs of the island. A few more hours in the writers' room wouldn't have hurt here, guys.

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Walt

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What's up with Walt?

The one and only Walt-centric episode is called "Special." What's so special about him? We never really found out. There were hints, and implications, but when the big set-piece of your season finale is a boat of wild-looking people kidnapping the gifted kid and nearly barbecuing his father, you've gotta do more than hint and imply. The Others wanted to study him, but what exactly were they studying? Why'd they have to be douchebags and take him with such extreme force anyway?

What did Ben mean when he said Walt was "difficult?" Was that him appearing to Shannon during his captivity, since The Monster only appears as dead people? If so, why'd he essentially lead her to her death? After "The End," for the most part any question that wasn't answered could be inferred, but the mystery of Walt may be the biggest loose thread the series left dangling.

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Smokey

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The Smoke Monster Rules

For the most part, The Man in Black was a great villain, played to menacing and nuanced perfection by both Titus Welliver and Terry O'Quinn, and the reveal that he was indeed the "Smoke Monster" was about as cool a resolution to that series-long mystery as we were going to get.

But for as often as Lost liked to dabble in the supernatural as well as science-fiction, it was in these aspects that it stumbled most when it came to exposition. At times, the audience was subjected to some truly clunky dialogue when a character would try to explain an Island phenomenon, and Smokey was no exception.

Instead of just leaving the nature of MiB as a shape-shifting spirit that sometimes appears as dead people, other times manifests itself as a homicidal black, cloud-tendril, the final season also intimated that he could literally corrupt souls. It got worse. He corrupted Sayid, and it's through that device that the would-be sensei of the Temple spouts cringe-worthy lines about "the sickness," tests to determine said sickness, and dumbest of all, a machine that gauges whether someone is...good or evil.

Oh, and you can only stab dude with a special sword, and it has to be before he speaks to you. Yea, for a few episodes season six seemed like a bad episode of Hercules.

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Sayid-Shannon

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Sayid & Shannon 4ever

Maggie Grace is too fine to be stranded on a deserted tropical island with 48 other people and not get her own romantic subplot. And bringing her hate-sex dalliances with half-brother Boone from the flashbacks into the present wasn't the answer. But we're really supposed to believe that, in less than a month, the spoiled, materialistic NYC ballet brat (with a heart!) fell in love with the equally big-hearted, misunderstood Republican Guard torturer?

Their star-crossed love barely lasted a season before Ana-Lucia thankfully put us out of our misery, freeing Sayid to remember that the whole reason he was on Flight 815 was to finally reunite with his long-lost, one true love since childhood, Nadia. He finally completes that mission in the flashforwards, before she's killed in an attempt on his life by Charles Widmore, or by Ben, blaming it on Charles Widmore, or the Hand of Jacob, or who really knows, because Lost didn't like to sweat the minor details, even while sparking one hundred different theories and possibilities from them.

Then, before the Sideways world even revealed itself as Purgatory, it was clear that achieving true happiness and emotional satisfaction was a major theme. Toward the end, this theme manifested itself as the castaways reconnecting with their One True Love, which on paper could've been cheesier than the result, but every cast member sold it so well that it was actually sweet to watch. That is, until Sayid's soulmate was revealed to be none other than...Shannon, his vacation girlfriend. Um, WHAT?

In case you forgot, let us remind that Shannon hadn't been seen on the show, let alone even mentioned since her early season two death, and that she and Sayid knew each other for about forty days, and dated for maybe twenty of them. Damn, Nadia, jilted at the heavenly altar for that.

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Across the Sea

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"Across the Sea"

The hour in which you learned everything you needed (but not wanted) to know about both Jacob and his murderous brother turned Smoke Monster. It should have been awesome, epic, and informative. Instead its scope was narrow, it raised even more questions than it answered, and it still stands as the show’s goofiest episode. (Goofiest, not worst. That honor still belongs to "Stranger in a Strange Land.")

Allison Janney was terrific as the formidable, duplicitous “Mother.” But just learning of her character creates a whole new host of questions that can’t be answered in forty minutes, but there are some that were just avoided completely, for no reason. Like, how did she wreck an entire community, and destroy their village? Certain shots suggest she had a little black smoke in her herself…so why not show that?!

Speaking of Smokey, this episode revealed that his grand desire and motivation is to finally get off that damn island. Cool. But what the hell was he even going to do on the mainland? Don’t even get us started on the Island’s magical light, that must be protected at all cost, but can also be harnessed by…a wheel. Damon Lindelof once referenced the notorious midi-chlorian scene from Phantom Menace, as a cautionary tale for the dangers of exposition. He should’ve taken his own advice.

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The Unlikeables

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Character Assassinations

The first two seasons of Lost are great because every single character in the sprawling cast was compelling, and, if not likable, then at least entertaining (the two weakest links were, coincidentally, the first to die). A major reason why fans felt a disconnect during the show's more maligned years is that all their favorite castaways kind of went sour.

Locke went from badass believer to gullible Island zealot and willing dupe, to the point where his eventual death by Ben's manipulative hand was inevitable. Kate, once belle of the isle, habitually ruined the best laid plans with a tired damsel in distress routine.

As for Jack? Someone exposed to bullshit like Ben's mind games, Locke's weirdness, Kate's flightiness, with daddy issues and bad nightmares of Bai Ling on a Thailand beach is bound to lash out every once and awhile. But for awhile the good doctor exceeded his rage limit on a weekly basis, and was to put it plainly, a dickhead, operating on a Yell First, Ask Questions Later basis that understandably got him nowhere all too often.

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Cabin Fever

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Jacob's Cabin

What's your Lost kink? Maybe you obsessed over the statue, while your best LOSTpedia perusing geek friend couldn’t get enough of the Dharma Initiative. As the show left many threads dangling while it powered to its endgame, it in turn left a variety of fans unsatisfied that their favorite plot never got resolved. If you were heavy into the supernatural aspects of the show, then no unsolved mystery burns like Jacob’s Cabin.

Before we actually met the real deal island deity in his actual home, Ben took Locke on a dummy mission to a cabin where he claimed Jacob was, and proceeded to put on a Clint Eastwood performance with an empty chair as part of the bit. Only, the cabin actually started to rumble and shake, scaring them out, but not before Locke saw a split-second vision of a crazy-looking guy actually sitting in the chair. He uttered, “Help me.” It was creepy. It was awesome.

Of course, Mark Pellegrino is not old and grizzled, and Ben had never actually met Jacob at that point, nor knew where he truly resided. So, after season five killed off Jacob and exposed the Smoke Monster’s plot to assume John Locke’s identity, we very reasonably expected some cool sort of flashback episode that would fill in the blanks. After all, the cabin was encircled with volcanic ash, known Smokey repellent (which Locke and Ben disrupted while fleeing). In a way, Locke did indeed help it/him. And a second visit yielded an appearance by Christian Shephard, one of Smokey’s favorite visages, who told Locke to move the island, which set in motion events that led to his death. Puzzle pieces that add up to a cool conspiracy, right?!

Alas, we did not get a sure-to-be awesome flashback that centered on a supernatural prison escape plot. Nope, we got a Richard Alpert episode that had other agendas, and “Across the Sea.” File this under Great Lost Stories That Never Were.

Stranger

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"Stranger in a Strange Land"

The most hated hour of the series, and for good reason. The flashbacks—Jack travels to Thailand to “find himself,” shacks up with Bai Ling, forces her to ink him, gets beat up for it—are dreadfully boring, with the lamest excuse for character insight and backstory exposition yet. The island stuff is just as dull, but retrospectively it becomes infuriating, because it features as clear a sign as there is that Darlton indeed made shit up as they went along.

We’re introduced to an Other named Isabel, nicknamed the Sheriff for her high rank within the group and her execution of law and order. She’s there to decide whether Juliet is a traitor and blah blah blah. It doesn't matter because, although we’re told she’s oh-so important, this is the only episode she appears in. The writers' room basically created a character on the fly to serve the needs of the episode, and discarded her after the fact. She's never seen again, despite the ever-increased face time the Others receive in the back half of the season. How much stock can we put into a mythology that rewrites its own universe like this?

Season 5

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The Worst Stretch of the Show

Forget the lowest points of season three, and the Temple arc of season six: the first five episodes of season five are easily the worst stretch Lost ever inflicted upon us. The off-island misadventures of the Oceanic Six+Ben are beyond lame, and around the time that many people jumped ship for good (a shame, because the season really does pick up later).

Sayid engages in stupid fights with faceless assassins. Sun is suddenly a badass ice queen holding court with Charles Widmore in scenes that just completely fall flat. Lawyers questioning Aaron’s parentage send Kate on the run. Meanwhile Ben has shadowy conversations with fellow off-Island Others who operate out of…a deli.

Lost was always a hodge-podge of multiple genres, but this was just too all over the place, with weak results in almost every regard. On the bright side, it made the race to get back to the Island that much more pressing.

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