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The season premiere doesn't bode well since it seems we have the same exact problem that has destroyed the show's original quality--the characters' actions are utterly arbitrary, dependent not upon character or situation or realistic human behavior but on what the writers need to happen in the plot at that particular moment.
spoilers below:
A few examples
a) the group gets told Charlie warned them about the people on the boat--but nobody asks how, nobody asks exactly what he said, nobody thinks to have a discussion on it--which of course would be what normal people would do.
b) once they blindly accept that Charlie's statement (whatever it was) means the boat people are "bad", we get this utterly arbitrary false choice--leave to hide or stay to meet them like they're really rescuing us. No discussion at all of possibly taking advantage of the situation to, oh, I don't know--get a boat or a radio.
c) Hurley tosses their only communication with Jack's group into the ocean rather than just grabbing it and holding it (the walkie talkie)
d) Hurley somehow manages to "lose"himself two seconds after being side-by-side with Sawyer (I suppose that will be explained by Jacob "transporting" Hurley to the cabin)
e) Naomi isn't actually dead. Not yet. Nope, she gets knifed in the back and is close enough to dead so that the doctor (the doctor!) who looks at her thinks she's dead. But she has to be unconscious, because otherwise she'd know that the one who knifed her was considered a loonie by the group and was not Jack or Kate or anybody else. Then, she has to wake up after the scene with Locke but just in time to sneak away (while none of the 20 or so people standing around see her of course). She's alive enough to create a false trail (and one of some distance) and to climb a tree, but only near-dead enough so she can die 40 seconds or so after she is found and performs her necessary function.
f) Jack "knows" Naomi is hurt and thus can't get far, but rather than have someone else check the other trail for the short period of time he's just said it would take, he sends everyone away.
This is just bad writing. Bad at its most basic level. It shows no respect for the audience. None for the material. It's the kind of writing one expects of seven-year-olds: "And then the monkey grew wings cuz he needs to get to the top of the cliff where the lizard is. And then the lizard changes from white to black cuz now he needs to be invisible to the winged monkey . . . "
The show had its moments, but those moments only serve to remind you of how great it was in that first season and how far they've fallen since. They're enough to tease you into thinking maybe, just maybe the show will recover, while most of your head is saying you would have been better off had the show been cancelled after the first episode so you wouldn't feel so cheated.
