The Standard

Issue date: 3/16/10 Section: Features

WARNING: Spoilers and confusion ahead, for anyone who is not up to date on the final season of "Lost".

After watching the Season 5 finale, it made sense to me that the first episode of Season 6 would answer the question "did Jack's plan work" with a yes-or-no answer.

Leave it to the writers of "Lost" to answer a yes-or-no question with a new story-telling device. "Lost" producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof are calling this new story-telling device "flash-sideways."

Cue the groans of confused and answer-hungry fans who entered the final season expecting the "Lost" rule of three questions for every half answer to be a thing of the past.

Desmond was on Oceanic 815? Jack has a son? Who is the kid's mother? Ben is changing his dad's oxygen tanks, and Locke's getting married?

There are 11 hours (finale airs May 23; mark your calendars) of ABC's sci-fi hit. "Lost's" self-indulgent writers are digging themselves deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole when they should be looking for the exit.

"Lost" took a trip down the rabbit hole and is currently sipping a hallucinogenic cup of tea with the Mad Hatter and March Hare. Don't expect it to emerge in time for the series finale. Unlike Alice, the TV show and its viewers are lost in Wonderland forever.

From Season 1 to Season 5, I accepted the show's time traveling, the Smoke Monster and reappearing dead characters, but we're halfway through the final season. When the Season 6 premiere aired, there were 18 hours and 108 questions to answer until the "Lost" epic ended. Eighteen hours and 108 questions, does that sound like a good time to create an alternate reality in which the characters' storylines are different?

Quite frankly, it's rude. It's a perfect Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown's flexed foot moment. Excited fans who have been patient with the notoriously vague, outlandish TV show for five years turn up for the premiere of the final season, which promises to reward them with answers, but oh no, looks like they get a fat new question mark instead.

If the flash-sideways device was introduced a year ago, I'd welcome it happily because a year ago, I didn't mind being lost. I was content with my scrambled brain, but it's not Season 5 anymore. It's the last season, and I would like my brain to be a little less scrambled and a little more sunny-side up.

I didn't turn on the Season 6 premiere expecting answers immediately, and I'll be content if, when the series ends, only half of those 108 questions are kind-of-sort-of answered. But these flash-sideways are too big to be left open for interpretation, and the ambiguity is distracting me from properly enjoying "Lost's" final season. Rather than enjoying savory bits of answers, I'm still shouting "what the hell" at commercial breaks and spending the better half of my spring break theorizing.

Here's hoping the flash-sideways story-telling device will help the "Lost" writers find a way out of the rabbit hole.

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