The Fate of Lost?

I just watched the season 5 finale of Lost. Don't worry there won't be any spoilers (although there may perhaps be spoilers for previous season finales), my main mind-defecation for this blog post will be more about my concern of where Lost is heading, and my internal-conflict of how I want it to keep doing what it's doing for the final season but I'm afraid at what cost?

I loved how season 5's finale gave me an overload of mindf*ck through pure storytelling, but only just the right amount of overload to keep me sane. Any more and I'd be decorating my walls with mind-defecation instead of my blog...and it might just come from more places than the mind if you know what I mean.

I thought I had a mind-bender with season 3's finale, but that was just from a writing device that caught me off guard. Up until that point we've just been getting flashback structure, then BAM we're hit with a flash-forward. Season 4 kept going with flash-forwards, but also throwing in the occasional trick like mixing in a flashback. I loved season 4 for constantly blowing my brain and mending it again just so it can be blown once more, however the finale was just more of a cliffhanger than an amazingly spectacular (there is no word that can go here to describe what I'm trying to say). Perhaps it was due to the high quality of storytelling of the previous episodes that they couldn't really reveal anything too amazing but just give off a big explosion of light and settle with that. I did like the secret compartment behind the secret compartment though.

Now we come to season 5. Without giving anything away, I just loved how we are given an answer but only at the expense of a Pandora's Box opening full of new questions. I don't think a story has been told this well since End of Evangelion, but that brings me to my ultimate conflict concerning the fate of Lost.

My favourite kind of stories are the ones that require you to have your brain switched on. I love complexity, I need to think more than I could handle, so that when I sleep my brain will grow and evolve enough to handle it, and then I need more. From my experience with people, and perhaps it's not as much experience as a normal socialite would have but also is the precise reason why I'm not a socialite, is that people tend to scoff at the idea of using their brain when it comes to entertainment. People want to be entertained with something simple and not thought-provoking. Explosions and tits accommodate to these tastes, it doesn't really matter the context of where they came from just as long as it's a bunch of pretty colours. Lost contains explosions, tits AND lots of pretty colours but they all belong to a context, so it's been doing pretty well so far.

Now, though, Lost is getting more and more complex, as it needs to, but all the explosions, tits and pretty colours are starting to fade away. Maybe not the explosions, but if they're caused by electromagnetic fields and other science mumbo jumbo then it won't hold for long. I hope it gets even more complex in the next season, but if it does it might lose a lot of its ratings and will probably be canceled before it even ends. All I can hope for is that fans of Lost, the ones who are just there for the fireworks, don't lose faith in the show and will keep supporting it. Something like this is hard for me to hope for because I've already lost faith in humanity. I know there are a lot of smart people out there, I know there are probably a few million Lost fans who love it because it provokes thought, but that's not enough against the tens of millions who'd rather watch American Idol and a bunch of mindless light shows.