Slowly Going Bald

I miss "Lost."

Sure, on the surface that sounds like an easy enough problem to solve. The show's third season starts in a few weeks, and the second season just came out on DVD. But re-watching the first few episodes of the second season, I was struck again by the problems that would come to plague the show's sophomore year. In no particular order:

• Man oh man, this show is boring. The Season 1 episodes always presented a specific challenge: Leave the cave/beach/jungle and go find the water/food/pilot/cocaine in the cave/beach/jungle. The characters were constantly moving, and the flashbacks beautifully illustrated each castaway's traumatic past and how it had led them to Australia and how it connected with any number of other characters. The story's development had an organic quality, the crystallization of the growing relationships stretching out before the viewer. Unfortunately, this all came to a screeching halt in Season 2. The show did more than just get stuck in neutral: It fell down the hatch and got stuck in a giant hole in the ground.

• Seeing the characters walk into the hatch for the first time is completely different than when I saw it happen last fall: Whereas I was then filled with a sense of awe and foreboding, this time around I felt nothing but a sinking dread as the castaways discovered the dank, circular room that would come to dominate their lives and stories for the season.

• I've only made it through the first five episodes in the past week, which definitely shows a lack of motivation on my part. As I slid the first disc into the DVD player over the weekend (I'd delayed the inevitable till Saturday, hoping that would help), I felt none of the familiar rush of anticipation I usually get when starting a newly purchased season of TV. Always a bad sign. I watched out of duty, not joy.

• It doesn't help matters that I'm watching Season 2 of "Lost" so soon after re-watching Season 2 of "Veronica Mars," which is easily one of the best shows on TV and definitely the best show that no one's watching (and it's only on against "Law & Order: Another One," "Standoff," "The Unit," and "The Knights of Prosperity," which means it's officially the best show airing in the Tuesday 9 p.m./8 CT time slot this fall, so you'd better all tune in). "VM" packs more into some episodes than other shows do all year, something that became painfully obvious when I finally struggled my way through to the fifth episode of "Lost" Season 2, which is actually titled "... and Found" but could more accurately be called "The One Where Absolutely Nothing Of Consequence Happens."

• The "... and Found" episode was another Jin/Sun flashback, which means it will merely be boring; a Charlie-centric episode is enough to make me throw things at my TV. And instead of continuing the flashbacks from Season 1, where Jin starts to be drawn into a life of violent crime by his wife's father, the whole stupid episode was about how they met. The island story involved Mercutio, Sawyer, and Jin being rounded up by the Tailies and setting out for the good guys' side of the island. (I'm already eager, by the way, for Ana Lucia to take one in the chest.) The only moment worth anything was when Jin and Mr. Eko hid in the bushes and saw the Others walk by, clad in tattered pants, one of them dangling a child's teddy bear. That moment could easily have been grafted into another episode involving the Tailies' trek through the jungle, which would have bought the producers an entire episode to, I don't know, make something happen.

• Maybe it's because I've been spoiled by Sorkin and Whedon, but the dialogue on "Lost" has long since degenerated into vague generalities that do their best to remain monosyllabic: "It's all going to be ruined," "This isn't right," "I can't—..." followed by a trail-off. I'd give anything if these people talked in complete sentences.

• Only five episodes in, I can already see the show getting bogged down in itself and losing its sense of purpose, of direction. The numbers, the hatch, the symbology: It becomes a heaviness that weighs on the characters and the viewers, crushing them.

• And if it was a giant electromagnetic snafu that wrecked the plane, what's the point of having everyone be connected to everyone?

• There's only so long a show can draw out a mystery before people get tired of caring (call it the Twin Peaks Theorem: an inverse relationship exists between unsolved mystery and viewer interest). "Lost" is great at execution — introducing new mysteries, broadening the puzzle — but it's horrible at resolution. Answers come few and far between, which used to be exciting but is now just frustrating.

That said, I'm still a loyal viewer. Hell, I stuck with "The West Wing" through its abysmal last three seasons; I know what it means to commit to a show and see it through. I just hope that "Lost" gets back some of that momentum, that magic, that made it so captivating in the first place. Fewer flashbacks and more plot progression and interaction in the present would be a good way to start.

--------