Lost - Season 5

After a couple meandering years, Lost's plot kicked into high gear last year once the end date was in sight and the newest season follows suit, as they're finally starting to give some answers and fill in a lot of gaps instead of just throwing confounding twist after twist at the viewer, half of which will never be explained. There's clearly a conscious effort to explain as much as possible, but they aren't trying to get to everything, which is good because that could easily turn into a mess. As it is, it feels like they're striking the right balance of satisfying fans wanting validation for spending the last few years of their lives watching this show while still taking the time to finish a story they wanted to tell. Abrams (who really doesn't have nearly as much to do with the series as his two co-creators) himself has admitted that it wasn't all planned in the beginning with the medium of television being so fluid, but it's falling into place well enough that you probably could have fooled me for the most part.

While I enjoyed the overall progression of the story as much as in the fourth season, I don't think I enjoyed individual episodes quite as much. Because of some time travel (didn't they say they weren't going to go there?) tomfoolery, the whole gang isn't together on the island anymore, and instead of intercutting all the different settings together they keep it manageable by focusing on a handful at a time. It doesn't affect the quality of any single scene negatively, it's just less of a satisfying experience when you can go weeks without seeing what happens next to someone you're interested in at the moment. It would probably work better if you watched the whole show straight through on DVD at a later date, which I haven't ruled out, it just made the week to week watching a little too disconnected for me. Still, there were some genuinely great moments and episodes throughout, and the finale was probably my favorite of the five so far. There are arguments for others, and I agree that some of the love-triangle stuff going on is tired and annoying by this point, but besides that I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and while season three's ending was the best moment of the series, season five's has me the most frustrated that I have to wait nine months for the next part. Only about sixteen hours left before it ends, and I can't wait to see how it does.