LOST
It might be hard to believe, but I never watched the series LOST when it was on the air. I bought the DVD sets as they came out and only just now got around to watching them. Even though the series ended in 2010, I have been able to spend the last 8 years successfully avoiding spoilers, so although I knew the basic premise of the series and that it involved lots of mysteries, I really didn't know any plot points.
Well, I've just spent the last 3 weeks binge-watching the six seasons, and I have to say that I feel sorry for the people who actually watched the series in real time and thus wasted a full six years of their lives with this claptrap.
Now, the reality is that Lost did do a lot of things right. It had great production values, exciting moments, intriguing plot twists, and employed interesting narrative techniques in telling its story.
The problem is that it failed to deliver a satisfying and conclusive ending. When you stoke people's curiosity with so much mystery, subtext, allusion, and synchronicity, and then basically abandon all of it to give a schmaltzy ending that favored amateurish tearjerking over resolving your own mythology, then you have betrayed the fans and crafted one of the worst finales in TV history that actually rises to the level where it invalidates all the good things that came before it. Basically, nothing that happened on the series really mattered except Jack plugging up the light hole in the finale and then dropping dead.
Further, the flashforward at then end of Season 3 where the bearded Jack tells Kate that they "have" to go back to the island turned out to be kinda wrong. If they never went back, things actually would have been better for all concerned. Now, this could have been a great dramatic point, but it really wasn't made out to be as such.
Also, when you look back on everything, the fact that everything was so mysterious was really more the writers jerking the audience around than anything else. There really was no reason for all the characters to speak in riddles. There really was no reason for the Others to be as violent as they were. The only justification for that was given in Season 6 in the Jacob origin flashback episode: "they are bad people."
It's fairly obvious that in spite of the writers protestations that they had the whole story mapped out in advance so that the finale wouldn't be a cheat like "the snowglobe" of St. Elsewhere (and, by the way, St. Elsewhere was a much better and more satisfying show than this), the writers really didn't have each and every nuance decided upon because later revelations sometimes contradicted earlier events and were clumsily brushed aside with a half-assed explanation like "I lied."
Umm, exactly why was Walt kidnapped anyway in the Season 1 finale? His psychic abilities really played absolutely no part in the series, and since The Others and the Dharma Initiative were revealed to be two different unconnected entities, it doesn't make sense that The Others would be conducting experiments on people or even know how to do so.
Why did Mr. Friendly need to wear that fake beard? Why did the Others often dress up like backwoods hillbillies? Just to make people afraid of them? Why was this necessary especially when the Others could leave the island and travel either to Hydra Island or back to the United States pretty much any time they felt like it? What were the Others so desperate to protect that they had to go through all the subterfuge? Lots of cryptic hocus pocus that added up to nothing since it was later revealed that Ben never spoke to Jacob anyway, so what the hell did Ben really know about the purpose of the Island?
And where did that wheel come from that could shift the island in time?
Tons of other questions remain because the writers chose style over substance and didn't really have any indications of what the answers were or how everything tied together themselves.
The whole series amounted to a bunch of English majors / film geeks lounging around their college dorm room engaging in pseudo-intellectual discussions about fate vs. coincidence, faith vs. science, and six degrees of separation just talking to hear the sound of their own voices.
Again, on a micro level, Lost did create an exciting, often compelling show with lots of great characters, but since it was part of the premise that it would all add up to one big, great macro story, the series fails because it definitely did not deliver that. There really is no reason to ever rewatch the show now that you know it all adds up to nothing.
So, what are your feelings about Lost and what are your candidates for shows that ended up disappointing you?