@Greg:
If you don't have the kind of patience the show DEMANDS then I can totally understand. But then you are at a OP BBS. And almost 10 years later no one still knows what the OP is so….yeah. You should know what it means to be patient with a story until it's fully told.
Yeah but then, thanks to the magic of the internet you can spend 3 days getting completely caught up with 10 years of work. Not that I'm accusing anyone in this discussion of being a noob but those of us who have been following OP for years already are definitely in the minority here.
There are definitely a lot of different types of people that enjoy Lost; you can't be a megahit without having really wide-ranging appeal. But I think the main reason why the overall popularity has dropped over these last two seasons is that the core nature of the show is being slowly revealed, and it's alienating the less rabid fans.
I think it's safe to say that you can't really be a hardcore Lost fan unless you, like the core writers who dreamt the whole thing up, are really into the science-fiction/speculative mystery solving angle. They decide on certain underlying details of the show's background and are then free to do all sorts of freaky, completely unexplained stuff so long as it fits within the framework that will eventually, finally be revealed. People who don't really pay close attention or have a mind for the speculative side get fed up because they think the writers are making it up as they go along. I'll admit that I didn't think the show was going to be quite so sci-fi heavy and complex when I started watching it, but the returns for those who really get down and dirty have been rewarding so far. I mean, compare those people who only watch the show on TV, and those who mess around with the online Lost stuff, deciphering the map on the blast door, etc. They're basically following two completely different stories at this point.
And then they are pretty gutsy with the direction and writing people out of the show. Obviously in Eko's actor's case he requested it, but I'd have to say that all things considered with the size of the cast and the special circumstances of the production of the show, they do a remarkably good job of juggling everyone. But then, some people don't care about the mysteries and just have a favorite character. Once he's been offed, well there goes another percentage of your viewership.
As for me, I don't have a favorite character on the show, and I don't even really particularly "like" any of them. They're all petty and vindicative and bitchy to some degree or another, but they have such interesting roles to play in the story that it's interesting to see how they're played against each other. All signs I've seen so far point to some really mindblowing future answers that will wrap things up in a jawdropping way. But it will only pay off if you're patient.
The only really truly lame part of this season so far has been the weak-assed insertion of these new fuselage characters. They have both been pretty retarded so far and need to shape up or get ate by polar bears.