Lost Interest

Watching Lost has been a very interesting experience. You've got great actors and a compelling story flanked by questions that never get answered and a history of multiple scheduling problems. Along the way many fans have been lost and it's really too bad because it feels like this season has been a payoff of sorts.

Up until this past episode, I had nothing but praise for season five. By the way, for those not keeping score at home, season six will be the last for Lost. It's inevitably time that they start tying up some loose ends.

This season has seen the full-fledged introduction of time travel. While time travel can be a story-breaker, it's worked amazingly well in season five. The writers have used it to reveal some key events on the island. Through this process we've learned:

• Where you go when you exit the island
  
• How to get to the island from the regular world
  
• That Charles Widmore was originally part of the Dharma initiative
  
• What happened to Danielle (the French woman) and her crew
  
• That Ms. Hawking is Daniel's mom and was part of the original Dharma group
  
• That Daniel was later part of the Dharma group

This has also led to some speculation of things that will most certainly be revealed before the series ends. Kearsten suggested that Miles will end up being Marvin Candle's son, which I think is all but guaranteed at this point. Ms. Hawking told Desmond that the island wasn't finished with him yet, even though he refused to return to the island with the rest of the group. I suspect Ben killed Penelope before boarding the plane, which will lead to Desmond's return. It also seems likely that Richard Alpert is from an ancient Egyptian civilization that has had a major influence on the island.

As I said earlier, up until the last episode I had no problems with the time travel. The group has just reunited in 1977, with Sawyer, Jin, Miles, Juliet and (presumably) Daniel working for Dharma for the past three years. Weird. But it will allow for a "live" view of Dharma which is pretty cool. It also allows Jin a lot of time to work on his English.

But of course, it's Lost, so we have to introduce some drama. And what loop do they throw at us? Oh, just that Sawyer and Juliet have fallen in love during the three years that Jack, Kate and the rest were off of the island. Do any other fans of the show have a problem with this? Maybe it feels so phony because it all happened in one episode... but I'm just not on board with this development at all.

Sawyer and Juliet together feels about as natural as having Nikki and Paulo on the show. Seeing those two come to an end was quite rewarding, I don't expect the same for these new love birds.