Lost fails to impress with storyline so far

Survivors: or is everyone dead and in purgatory?

We keep watching in the hope that if we give the island our time, the island will give us something in return.

Still watching? We are still, just, watching Lost (8.30pm, TV2), although we were rather hoping to be a little more, well, lost in the story this far into the jungle.

I had great hopes that the golden labrador would turn out to be something evil, or at least weird.

It still could. But it is more likely, given the form of recent storylines, that that lab will turn out to have some drippy story in which it was very naughty in its past. It was addicted to those dried pig's ears, or was nasty to children.

Aah, but on the island everyone, even naughty labs, is allowed a shot at redemption.

Perhaps it will catch a fish or something, and share it with the survivors.

It could, actually, if Lost is going to carry on lame-brain moralising about being reborn.

I'm beginning, reluctantly, to think that those people who think that everyone is dead and that the island is purgatory might be right. Which would be slightly more preferable to Lost turning out to be some adaptation of The Tempest, sans the revels.

There are not many revels, or laughs, on this island. There has been a lot of sighing from the couch recently.

The whole Charlie and the drugs trip has turned into some sort of advertisement for just saying no in the first place. With the mysterious Locke (we know he is mysterious because he pulls mysterious faces) as the counsellor.

Charlie, advised Locke, had to give something to the island, to receive something in return. Like what, exactly? A really big opium patch?

Nope. A moralising metaphor from Locke.

"What do you suppose is in that cocoon, Charlie?" asked Locke. It was a moth. Aah, but a moth is so much more than a moth. There it was, inside the cocoon, struggling to get out.

Locke could help it to be free, but it would be too weak to survive. The struggle is nature's way of strengthening it.

You could guess the rest. This was about as sick-making as the episode where Locke exhorted Charlie to look up and there, behold the miracle, was Charlie's guitar case, with intact guitar inside. What a shame. This was the cue for some sitting about and strumming.

How cute. The island is becoming more and more like a Christian camp with every episode.

And the trouble is that nothing seems to move us on very far. Every episode has the feel of a pilot with the device of giving us the back story of a different character.

So we know now that Sun can speak English but that her husband doesn't know she can speak English.

Will she speak English again? Do we care? Not much.

So what's keeping us watching? Hope, of course, that if we go on giving the island our time, the island will give us something in return. But the something we want is more scary things in the jungle and less of the pseudo-mystical stuff.

And, despite myself, I want to know what that dog's up to. Although I fear it's going to turn out that what it is up to is being a dog.