I have this sneaky (and sinking) feeling that no matter how ridiculous this show gets, I will keep right on watching it. And I will just become more and more irritated.

JJ Abrams and I go waaaay back. I loved Felicity—the show started while I was a senior in college, my mom liked it too so we could talk about it, and it starred Scott Foley! (By the way, if you aren’t watching The Unit, you should.)

After that, I started watching Alias. Now that was a show we could both enjoy—a butt-kicking female lead with exotic travel and lots of costume changes. The problem, of course, which anyone who watched Alias knows, is that the Rambaldi mystery got completely out of hand and it became painfully obvious that the writers weren’t sure how they wanted the story to end. By the time the season finale aired last year, I was completely disenfranchised with the show. Eric didn’t even watch the last few episodes.

This brings me to Lost. I loved the first season. Loved it. The backstories were fantastic (Locke in a wheelchair!?!) and the interpersonal character dynamics were interesting and exciting. The second season was pretty good, but this season is absolutely trying my patience.

First off, I don’t like the new people—they just appeared from nowhere and started commenting on everything. They don’t fit in very well and they just remind me that the writers have left good characters out (Rose and Bernard) to give these people screentime. The backstories are thin—they used to show how the passengers were connected or how they ended up on the plane… all we got from Kate’s last flashback was that she was married once and couldn’t settle down. Um, didn’t we already know that? Frankly, I don’t have any invested interest in the whole Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle, but I do like Juliet and Ben and am looking forward to see what is going on with them.

Mostly, I’d just like some questions answered now that they’ve introduced a whole new group of people/others. Where are Michael and Walt? Are Claire and Jack related and what happened to his father’s body? And where is Danielle?

I am worried, however, that no explanation about how Locke got into that wheelchair is going to satisfy me now. And I think that’s a shame.