It didn't help that it capped off a season that showed promise - several episodes were very well received by critics and fans alike, particularly one late-season episode in which several major characters were killed off - but which ultimately felt disjointed, violently shifting in tone from episode to episode and asking more questions than it tried to answer.
I've been thinking back, rather fondly, about Lost this week, after reading about a cast reunion at the recent Paleyfest television festival in New York. A swath of stars, including Josh Holloway (Sawyer) and Yunjin Kim (Sun), joined showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse to mark the tenth anniversary of the series premiere.
The similarity between the premise of Lost and several theories surrounding Flight 370 also had me thinking about the show, not because one is like the other, but theories about the missing flight certainly evoked the hit show.
Almost ten years on from that premiere - a big budget double episode directed by JJ Abrams that introduced nearly every major character, and laid the foundation for some of the character dynamics that carried through the series' six seasons - I'm starting to wonder if Lost is going to go down as the last show of its kind.
The episodes, even going back to that first season, hold up well after a decade; a year or so ago, I decided to watch the show from the beginning again and my daughter, who was 11 years old at the time, got hooked as well.
After the plethora of low quality imitators that followed in its wake - shows like FlashForward and The Event - we've lost sight of the fact that Lost was a huge show, loaded with great performers playing memorable characters, written to simultaneously leave viewers confounded while forming emotional connections to the cast, and with a visual aesthetic that places it among some of the most well made television of all time.
At its absolute best, Lost is a show that stacks up with the best television of the last two decades; episodes like season two's Man Of Science, Man Of Faith or season four's The Constant deserve to be mentioned alongside the best episodes of Mad Men or The Wire. I don't think Lost was consistently brilliant enough to be "the greatest ever", but it hit that peak at times.
Even my thoughts about the finale have softened. When it aired, The End was a travesty, a confused mess of closure mixed with forced emotional moments. Yet, as more auteuristic forms of television become the standard - Breaking Bad and Vince Gilligan are inextricably linked - I've grown to respect, even admire, that head writers Lindelof and Cuse told the story they wanted to tell, and ended their series the way they felt it needed to end.
I do think, as I mentioned before, that Lost will go down as the last show of its kind. A friend recently asked me what current show bore the closest comparison to Lost, and all I could think of - to my absolute horror - was Once Upon A Time, the fairytale serial that shares writers with Lost, yet seems to get worse with every new season.
American free-to-air networks - like ABC - just aren't taking a chance on the kind of mysterious, heavily serialised story-telling that was a hallmark of Lost's six seasons. Television production is getting more specialised, more niche, and these kind of shows are increasingly moving to cable networks like HBO or AMC, satisfied with smaller, loyal audiences.
Despite all logic, Lost was a mega-hit that drew huge audiences while holding on to some of the traits that make shows like Game Of Thrones or The Walking Dead so enjoyable, so successful. There is no doubt in my mind that, were it put into production today, it would've run for five seasons, around 65 episodes, on a channel like FX or Showtime in the USA.
It might have been a better show that way. Lost was inconsistently good, occasionally suffered from poor characterization, and shifted tone from episode to episode. It caused problems for itself by introducing more storylines than it could possibly hope to resolve, and getting too complicated to placate the giant audiences it was drawing in those first few seasons.
But it was also a show that entertained, that formed a unique bond with its biggest fans, and that was among the greatest television ever made when it was firing on all cylinders. It was a one of a kind, an experience for those who stuck with it for the entirety of its run. Lost is a true original that - due to the talent involved, the circumstances surrounding its development, and the era of its production - is impossible to replicate.
We'll never see another show like it.
I don't think Lost is the greatest show ever made, but it is in my holy trinity of favourite shows of all time, alongside Breaking Bad and The Simpsons. I loved Lost as it aired, and I still love it now.
Like many fans, I looked into the eye of that island, and what I saw was beautiful. And I'll never forget it.
