As Lost ends, what got lost for me

With Lost ending on Sunday night, this paragraph from a story in today's New York Times pretty much sums up how I feel about the series:

"Since Lost itself favors oracular pronouncements, here’s one more: The show had one good season, its first. It was very, very good — as good as anything on television at the time — but none of the seasons since have approached that level, and the current sixth season, rushed, muddled and dull, has been the weakest."

I watched Season 1 on dvd and I loved it - especially the way the back stories of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 slowly unfolded. As things moved forward, I figured the story would be about their exploration of the island and their attempt to get back to civilization.

But in the subsequent five years characters and interconnections multiplied, the violence ratcheted way up, the action moved back and forth through time at a dizzying pace and it got to be too much. The plot was much too complex and I just couldn't keep up.

Seriously, did you care about any of the succeeding characters or stories as much as you did about Jack, Kate and Sawyer, Michael and Walt, Jin and Sun, Claire and Charlie, Rose and Bernard, Locke, Hurley and Sayid, Shannon and Boone?

Plus, I love a good mystery but as time went on, Lost became less of one and more of a supernatural battle between the forces of good and evil. I feel like that wasn't what I signed up for in the beginning.

So while I've kept watching, hoping some questions would get answered, I haven't really felt emotionally involved like I did that first season. I feel like producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were making it up on the fly, without a real sense of where the show was heading or even if it made sense.

Of course I'll be sitting in front of the TV on Sunday night. I really do want to find out how it ends. But I'm just sad that somewhere along the line, amid the smoke and explosions and science and philosophy, the show's human element got lost.

My Broadway celebrity wish list

I have to give credit to James Spader, who's making his Broadway debut in David Mamet's play Race, for something he wrote in his Playbill biography:

"After working in film and television for more than 30 years, it is one of the greatest honors and pleasures of Mr. Spader's career to be back in the theatre performing this play, with these players, on this stage, for you tonight."

Even though I was disappointed with the play I love Spader from Boston Legal and it was great to see him on stage.

Since celebrities are all the rage on Broadway these days, I'm hoping some other actors who've been concentrating on movies and TV will follow his example.

For instance, after the Golden Globes on Sunday night, Meryl Streep told the press that she's ready to return to Broadway.

"I don't have a plan for that, but I would like to. I always said when my children grew up and went to college, I could think about that. And, that happened this year, so I'm looking."

Of course America's greatest living actress is high on my list of people I'd love to see treading the boards. Streep last appeared on Broadway in 1977, in the short-lived Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht musical Happy End.

(Although she did return to New York to great acclaim in Mother Courage and Her Children in Central Park in 2006. I definitely would have waited in line for a chance to see that!)

If Meryl's looking to return, I'm guessing some producer somewhere is thinking up a project for her at this moment. (It would be icing on the cake if she could bring former costars Anne Hathaway and Amy Adams with her.)

It's always cool to know that someone who's moved on to movies or TV got their start on Broadway.

Sometimes they come back, like Emmy winner Kristin Chenoweth who's starring in Promises, Promises, and sometimes, sadly, they don't, like comedian Ben Stiller, who made his first and thus far only Broadway appearance in 1986.

There's another performer who's definitely overdue for a return.

With the final season of the ABC series Lost beginning next month, I'm hoping Michael Emerson will make his way back to Broadway.

In the right role I think Emerson, who plays the creepy Benjamin Linus on Lost, would be a big draw.

He was last on Broadway in a revival of Hedda Gabler in 2002. And before that, he starred with Kevin Spacey and Paul Giamatti in a revival of The Iceman Cometh.

Perhaps there's a play they could all do together?

Waiting to get Lost

Lost is one of my favorite television dramas and I'm eagerly awaiting its return at 9 p.m. on Jan. 31 on ABC. Eight episodes were filmed before the writers' strike shut down production.

It took me awhile to start watching the series. Despite an overwhelming amount of hype, I resisted throughout the first season. I just figured, what was the point? I watched Gilligan's Island as a kid. I knew how every episode was going to turn out - the plane crash survivors weren't going to get off that island, otherwise the show would end. Where was the suspense?

But a friend had Season 1 on DVD, so I gave it a try. I was immediately hooked by the way the back stories of all the crash survivors slowly unfolded. I liked spotting some of the interconnections between the characters in their former lives, and trying to figure out what all of the island's mysteries meant.

Plus, there definitely a cinematic quality to the way Lost is shot. Visually, it's at times very stunning. I think you could easily take the subtitled flashbacks that tell the story of Jin and Sun, the Korean husband and wife played by Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim, string them together, and make it into a movie all on its own.

I think Lost has lost its way a little over the subsequent years. While I love mysteries, I'm not too enamored of the supernatural turn the story has taken. Sometimes I wish the plot would just move along. Characters are introduced who don't seem to play a big part in advancing things, and then they're gone. In the beginning, I figured that the creators had the whole series mapped out from start to finish. Then I began to wonder.

I'm sure I'll be writing more about Lost. But since there are still 19 days before Season 4 begins, here are a few interesting links that I found:

Damon Lindelof, the show's co-creator and executive producer, contributes an essay to the Why We Write series at Deadline Hollywood Daily. Here's part of what he has to say: "I write because I can’t help but make things up. I write because I love to tell stories. I write because my imagination compels me to do so."

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Matthew Fox talks about the surprise at the end of Season 3, in which we learned that Fox's Jack and Evangeline Lilly's Kate eventually make it to safety. "It really caught me off guard. I'm not sure I ever thought that people were going to get off the island," he says.

The 33-second trailer for Season 4 is tantalizing: there's a teaser that says "February 2008 - rescue arrives. Or has it?" Michael Emerson's Ben intones ominously, "Every person on this island will be killed." (Well, we know that Jack and Kate weren't killed becuase we saw them off the island in the flash forward at the end of last season.) Here's a slightly longer sneak peek from the season premiere. It clearly sounds like help is about to arrive, as Jack assures Kate that "we're really going home."

Are they? Eventually, yes. But I wouldn't count on it happened right away. I know there are only eight episodes filmed so far, but I hope this season we get some more answers, and not just more questions.