Loves! Labors! 'LOST!' -- Is Season Five Worth Watching?

So "Lost" is back for a fifth season of sermonizing on how you should perceive the afterlife--or numerology, or arctic wildlife migration patterns, or Evangeline Lilly's turquoise eyes, depending on how you interpret the teachings of the Church of J.J. Abrams.  It's been several long months since the last new episode--and yet, years will pass before we find out what all the hootenanny actually means.  For the skeptics, see if TV critic Joshua Alston--who's screened the first three episodes of Season 5--can convince you to keep feeding your addiction.  And for the die-hard fans--the ones fleshing out Lostpedia--peek at Patrick Enright's essay on how the show's confounding logic has gotten too, well, confounding.

JOSHUA ALSTON: Season Five Keeps the Hope Alive

Tonight is the premiere of the fifth season of "Lost," that annual opportunity for "Lost" viewers to evaluate their relationship with the show. Does the show excite or exhaust you? Does it tantalize you or turn you off? This is not a ritual specific to "Lost," of course, every show perilously sets a new course with each season, but "Lost" is a little bit different because of the way the show blossomed over its years.

Perhaps the shrewdest thing about the show is the way it has slowly but surely introduced more and increasingly out-there supernatural and sci-fi elements. It was never just a show about people stranded on a desert island--we got the howling monster and a tropical polar bear in the pilot--but it's always been a show rooted in relatable characters, their emotions and their relationships. "Lost" has been so good at rendering and exploring those relationships that it has been able to seduce many viewers who would never tune into an unabashedly sci-fi show like, say, "Battlestar Galactica." They were watching a show about the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle, or Michael and Walt repairing their father-son bond, or Locke's island rebirth, and if a giant column of smoke swallowed people every now and then, well, that was okay too. But even those folks have become wrapped up in the show's deepening mysteries, and they don't like how slowly the fuse is burning. They want some major questions answered, and the last thing they want is for "Lost" to get more complex.

Well make no mistake, fence-sitters, season five is the "love it or leave it" season of "Lost." It began in last season's finale, when Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) pushed a giant frozen donkey wheel and the island disappeared. When we return to the "Lost" universe, the conspiracies are shadier and the plotting more difficult to untangle. But most of all, the sci-fi element is greater than ever as time-travel comes to the fore in a way it never has before this point. Over time, the show has flirted more and more with pure sci-fi, and season five's premiere is the prom night consummation.
 
Having seen the first three episodes, I suspect that after seeing them, some viewers will feel the show has dragged them to a place they never really wanted to go. Others will watch the show out of slavish devotion, never fully committing to its direction but feeling like their investment has been too great not to see how it all plays out. I'll make one final plea: stop thinking of the show as a puzzle, and start thinking of it as one of those digital photo collages, in which a bunch of smaller pictures are assembled to form a larger one. If you're at a point where the individual frames aren't doing it for you anymore, and your interest in the island's mysteries is greater than your interest in the characters, I say give up and rejoice in having an extra hour of free time in your week. But if you still have any emotional connection to the characters, even just one, let the show work its magic. Even if the whole doesn't wind up being greater than the sum of its parts, those parts are pretty darn spectacular on their own.

PATRICK ENRIGHT: It's Getting Deep in Here.

"Lost," we need to talk. Come over here, sit down on the couch. Look, this is hard for me to say, but … well, it's not working out. OK, please don't. Please stop pulling things out of your pockets. I don't care about that stuff. No, I don't want to see pictures of the smoke monster, I have no interest in yet more schematic drawings of the umpteenth secret Dharma station, and I definitely have no use for that polar bear. (Also, didn't you drop the bear yourself with no warning or explanation years ago?)

Here's the thing: For a while there, I really loved you. I raced through every single episode in your first three seasons in two months on DVD, and I will say this: You really know how to keep a fella wanting more. Every episode I watched confused the hell out of me and gave me just enough back story and explanation that I had to watch one more, and then one more and one more. I guess even back then, you could say it wasn't really a healthy relationship.

With the start of season four, I was all caught up with the rest of the country. I knew I'd only be seeing you once a week on TV, where I'd have to suffer through copious commercials, but I was still fired up and raring to go. Only then you started throwing flash-forwards at me, along with the usual flashbacks, and things got muddled. It's not you, I swear; it's me. I liked the flash-forwards, I really did, but I just couldn't keep up. I kept getting confused and wondering whether Jack with a beard was in the future or in the past, and not really understanding why that lovable (but conflicted, so deliciously conflicted!) Sayid was working for sinister, evil Ben.

Wait. Ben is evil, isn't he? Don't tell me that wasn't true.

OK, whatever, the point is I was trying. I was trying really hard, but you weren't doing anything to help, just making things more and more complicated and confounding. And by then, the honeymoon was over. I saw Jack for the petulant whiner he is, especially as a weepy pill-popper in (I think?) the future. It became clear that Sawyer's strongest assets as an actor are his (mysteriously waxed) pecs and abs, which explains why he's always shirtless. Many of your female characters turned out to be woefully underwritten and far too often depend on a strong guy to bail them out.

Little things finally started to bug me, too, like the fact that the male leads on the show continue to have perfectly shaved perpetual five-o'clock shadows (somehow, I don't think Norelco makes a solar-powered electric shaver). The trombone slide and drum sting that precede every commercial break were endearingly cheesy at first. I looked forward to them, I even sang along with laughter in my little heart at your cute, idiosyncratic habits. But now? Honestly? I realize how grating and annoying they are.

The biggest problem, though, was your ridiculous, ridiculous plot developments. I was willing to grant you the smoke monster—there could be a non-mystical explanation—and the weird coincidences, which kept me hooked. Time travel? Moving the island? Not so much. At a certain point, I realized you're desperately revealing more and more of yourself because there's no there there. You keep throwing up twist after twist to hide the fact that, deep down, you don't really know who you are.

There, I said it. Believe me, it hurts me more than it hurts you, but it's for your own good. Someone had to help you realize that you need to get it together. Quit promising a perfect resolution; it's becoming less and less likely you'll be able to provide one. Stop with the over-the-top explanations (seriously? time travel?), the magical talking ghost rocking chairs, the sextuple-crosses. Get serious. Until you do, I need some time to myself.

Sure, if the mood strikes me, I might tune in to watch an episode or two this season. But that would just be, you know, for old times' sake.