It explains my long standing theory that LOST is a video game.

My theory is the most comprehensive theory available to date about LOST. It explains the mythology, character development, mission accomplishments, deaths, and rules of the game.

It also explains all of the duplicates in names, situations, professions, repeated dialogue, and why so many of the characters resemble each other.

"...the castaways would be...going about the incredibly complex, interesting business of building a civilization on the beach while trying to get rescued."

And the show would be cancelled, because people don't give a rats rear parts about that.

Don't be a buffoon. Haven't you seen Deadwood? Or for that matter Swiss Family Robinson? To be sure, Lost's popularity is positively affected by the fact that it's a faux-profound potboiler that makes the audience feel like it's thinking. But the show's creators really do have pretensions to seriousness; listening to Lindelof and Cuse talk is slightly embarrassing at this point, as they shuffle around trying to justify the emptiness of the show's endless plot maneuvers and explain away the dead ends and dropped balls that plague it.

The audience is shrinking for the same reason The X-Files's audience shrank: viewers are running out of patience, and justifiably so.

Lost's artistic impact is a good deal smaller than you suspect; it's not treading new ground at all, formally or metaphorically. Its immediate commercial impact has already sailed past, in the form of doomed over-plotted hackwork like The Nine and more interesting formal experiments like Daybreak. Oh well.

Since you're presumably kidding about Myst and Zork - what debt could be clearer, after all? - I'll refrain from making fun of your analogy.

Best,
Wa.

And the show would be cancelled, because people don't give a rats rear parts about that.

What you off-handedly refer to as conspiracy boilerplate sets people's minds in motion, trying to bridge the gaps. And that is where magic happens.

You write as if with some authority, that Lost is a staggering failure, which is interesting, considering Lost's track record.

So maybe-just maybe--you just need to face that perhaps Lost isn't a staggering failure, but your expectations for the show are... well... warped.

It's called storytelling, you should look it up, it's fascinating.

(Myst was fine, and it is no more a Zork knockoff than Star Wars is a Star Trek knock-off).

It's the writers' staggering failure to engage with their promising premise that's pushed them further into Myst territory. If they gave a damn about the island community, only limply gestured at over the last 2.5 years, the show would be a mix of Deadwood (on the beach) and The X-Files (Jack/Kate/Locke/etc. having pointless boys'-adventure-novels troubles inland). With much, much, much worse dialogue, of course - there's nothing to suggest that most of the Lost writers are even capable of the kind of sharply-observed wit and empathy that Milch fills even his least creations with.

(And in any case Myst was a boring-as-the-tomb Zork knockoff about which the less said the better.)

Please don't type those numbers. They are bad luck dude.

And wasn't the idea of Myst that these magical books created new worlds/dimensions? And time/fate/destiny could be manipulated or changed (I really don't remember too well...)? Even Myst's sequel, Riven, involved it's own "magic" number - 5 - a la Lost's magic numbers (4-8-15-16-23-42)....