Made you post.

Well since you misspelled "balloon" I'll just assume you do have a two digit IQ.

Lost is just another minor variation on the annoying and cloying "everything happens for a reason" world view (vs the "we're just differently evolved apes & shit happens" world view).

The whole "intervention of the gods" thing is annoyingly egotistic. ('Gee, I'm so special the gods pay attention to me and jerk me around for their own amusement'.)

Even that might make for some amusing TV except that the characters, with few exceptions, are so wishy washy and change their minds so often and make such unlikely and irrational choices that it is difficult to relate to them or care much about the consequences.

The scenery is nice though, and I do like the part about the god living in the giant foot.

This show clearly isn't for everyone but at a steady 9M viewers for a primetime SciFi show, it's doing something right.

It's not a show that gives out all the answers in a 1 hour time slot - that may not be for you. The writers have even said there are going to be some things they are not going to explain to a finite detail. They said that very early on.

Those of you that got hung up on the smoke monster, maybe all that it will ever be is a strange entity that roams a mysterious island passing judgment and killing people as some sort of security system. I can live with that.

go here:

http://jezebel.com/5256090/lost-finale-recap-jacobs-red-herring

Wait a second--

Do I correctly understand that the smoke monster has still not been explained? How long has this show been on????

Sorry, that's lame.

A friend who loves 'House' is constantly rolling her eyes when I discuss Lost - not with her, mind you, but within earshot. Now, who has the character fault? Me for NOT spouting my bad opinion about House, based on maybe one episode, or her for spouting her opinion gathered in the same way? The hostility folks feel for this series is the real mystery of LOST, though I'm sure it has everything to do w/leftover high school coolness factors.

I look forward to the answers that we get, the ones we don't, and hopefully seeing Claire again. Though now that it seems that Island God #2 is playing w/all the dead bodies on the island, I think that I will be much more sad at the end than I previously envisioned.

I would try to explain it, but you wouldn't understand.

LOOK! A BALOON!

It's very true that the creators have changed their tune in official statements several times over the course of the series, but this seems to be more a case of them being deliberately duplicitous about the future of the show than of them having made stuff up along the way.

As evidence of this, I've noticed all along how carefully indelof and Cuse have chosen their words. Like in the link you posted, they say, "We're still trying to be ... firmly ensconced in the world of science fact. I don't think we've shown anything on the show yet ... that has no rational explanation in the real world that we all function within." The stray "still" and "yet" weren't accidental. It's part and parcel of how they've always talked to the fans. They also kept insisting in Season 1 that Christian was dead, and dead means dead, but two years later he kept showing up everywhere. He's probably still dead, but dead now has a different meaning on the show...

"You know all those tiresome people who used to boast of being wised-up to "Lost," ridiculing anyone gullible enough to think the series' writers had a plan and weren't just making it all up as they went along?"

Earlier this year Fark linked to an article (from a few years ago) where the LOST creators said there was no time travel nor would there be time travel. Clearly, some things have been made up on the fly.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/handheld/30246.html

"You know how obnoxious and rude people with three digit IQs are?"

WTF does this even mean? The average IQ is 100. That's three digits. So you're saying every average person is obnoxious and rude? Do you have a two digit IQ so you hate even average people?

Over the past 10 years, I have watched exactly one TV program -- Lost is it. Like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or any other great science fiction/fantasy type story, it's not for everyone. Many people simply do not enjoy not understanding why things are happening, and do not get anything out of situations that plainly could not happen in reality (and have no real relationship to reality). I get that. I personally love the stuff (I also loved X-Files, Buffy, and Twin Peaks). Does the fact that I am entertained by the Lost fantasy really make me stupid? For those of us who like the genre, Lost is terrific. Its clever, it keeps us thinking and guessing, the plot moves forward, and it provides great foder for conversation. If you don't like it, fine. Why critize those of us who do?

If you don't like to watch it, then don't. That's your privilege.

But IMHO it does have a plan, and they are not making it up as they go along.

No one demands a pithy moral from Paradise Lost or The Stand. They both have spiritual resonance and religious themes, like Lost, which is why I brought them up.

Lost is a complex story with large, overarching themes, which has recently begun to circle back on itself. It does so in a way that at least gives the appearance of having been thoroughly conceived from the beginning. Whether it was or not will be beside the point if they succeed in closing the loop next season, and it looks now like they actually will. I've never heard anyone who criticizes the show for being random who's actually been paying attention the whole time, or who is in command of the basic facts of the plot.