But last night’s episode, “Across the Sea” cinched it for me. The naysayers were probably right.

LOST sucks.

(This blog entry, as you can probably guess, will contain significant spoilers about the series. None of them will be that interesting though, because, as we’re quickly learning, the island is boring as shit. But anyway, you’ve been warned.)

I was unusually excited about last night’s episode. My reactions to season 6 had been mixed so far; I felt the series was spending entirely too much time talking about Jack and Kate (who, if you didn’t know, I hate) and the pacing has been uneven. Since the destruction of the temple, there seems to be an awful lot of people standing around, dithering, and very little interesting character development or plot resolution. But, like the episode on Richard Alpert a few weeks ago, this one promised to be mythology- and answer-centric. The previews told me that it was going to focus on a character I found compelling (no, not Jacob; the smoke monster!), and I hoped for an hour of complex and intelligent television.

I’m not quite sure why I hoped that. It doesn’t really mesh with anything I’ve come to know about LOST.

Early detractors to LOST complained that it was clearly going to be like The X- Files–that the writers were setting us up with mysteries with no larger overarching plan. That the series, if it ever reached an end, was going to be a sprawling, incoherent mess, like the mythology of the older SF series. However, beginning in Season 3, and coinciding with the announcement of the series’ eventual planned ending, we started to get some answers–and some hints that the producers had a plan for the overall story.

The problem, though, was that a lot of these answers weren’t all that interesting.

Take one of the early mysteries, the polar bear that’s shot down in the first season. Turns out there were some people doing experiments on polar bears. Why? I don’t know. Because they’re scientists or something. Please don’t think I’m being flippant because I don’t actually know the answer. This is the answer that’s given to us by the LOST writers and producers.

Here’s another example: what’s with the numbers that turn up over and over again over the course of six years? We learned the answer to that a few weeks ago. These are the exact words stated by one character in the know: “Jacob likes numbers.”

Oh.

I could keep going. We’ve heard creepy whispers for years because there are ghosts (GHOSTS!) on the island. There’s a runway there so that Jacob could land an airplane. The button does exactly what this video says it does. Kate’s equally irritating in two universes. The weird VW van with the DHARMA logo was left when this scuzzy janitor died. I could go on, but other people have covered this, and far better.

You might think that my disappointment with the answers, as they’re being offered, is just part of the nature of being engaged with a mystery. That I’m bound to be disappointed after being kept in suspense for so long. It’s true that such build up doesn’t help anything, but quite a few of the choices the writers made have been conspicuously bad–obvious, cheesy, trite.

Like how, in last week’s episode, we see Sun and Jin die in what I assume was supposed to be an incredibly romantic and stirring moment. Sun has just been reunited with Jin, her husband and the father of her daughter, Ji Yeon, when she becomes trapped in a sinking submarine. She told Jin about her daughter’s existence a few scenes before. Jin’s not trapped. He has an opportunity to escape. Instead, he chooses to voluntarily die with his wife so they can never be apart.

Awww. Only, not awww. Because they have a kid, which Jin knew about. And now both of her parents are dead dead dead.

Even the actor who played Jin, Daniel Dae Kim, doesn’t seem completely convinced that Jin was making the best decision. In this interview, he tells us that he had to make up a reason why Jin couldn’t leave: “In the sub, there’s a moment that’s not scripted where I looked away from Sun toward the door and I wondered, ‘Should I go?’ That was my moment for Ji Yeon. I thought to myself, ‘Can I do this?’ But the decision I made at that point was that even if I tried to leave I wouldn’t have made it, because I had no oxygen and the submarine was so far under water. All I can say is that I’m sure Damon and Carlton took the concern of Ji Yeon to heart when they wrote the episode.”

Yeah, well, I’m not so sure. Because Damon and Carlton seem to have the emotional depth of fourteen-year-olds who are convinced that Romeo and Juliet is, like, OMG, the most romantic thing ever, not realizing that Shakespeare deliberately made our famous star-crossed lovers emotionally immature, infatuated teenagers so he could march them towards senseless tragedy.

This was pretty clearly illustrated a few weeks ago during Ab Aeterno, the episode that promised to reveal the back story of Richard Alpert, one of the island’s most mysterious and (I thought) interesting characters. Viewers have been making guesses about Alpert’s immortality since he was introduced–and probably one of the most popular guesses was that he was a slave on the ship the Black Rock who was granted immortality by the mysterious Jacob.

This seemed, frankly, a little obvious to me. I hoped for something a little more nuanced and subtle, particularly in the weeks leading up to “Ab Aeterno.”

Turns out that Richard’s story is pretty much identical to what everyone guessed it would be. He was a slave on the ship the Black Rock who was granted immortality by the mysterious Jacob. We also learned in this episode that he was pretty much OMGTHEBESTHUSBANDEVER and incredibly good and noble and would go to great lengths to get medicine to save his sick wife and the whole thing felt like something out of a Harlequin romance, only with less sexy and more dying. I mean, it was an okay episode, in a treacly sort of way. But it wasn’t very good.

After “Ab Aeterno,” I should have known better than to raise my expectations for yet another integral back story episode. Because, in the end, “Across the Sea” was more of the same. Only much, much worse.

I could talk about the bad writing in this episode–the shallow sibling rivalry, the hackneyed talk about the “bad men” that felt lifted out of my favorite Madeline L’Engle book, A Swiftly Tilting Planet (read it; it’s awesome, and much better than this tripe). I could complain about how three fairly talented actors–Allison Janney, Mark Pellegrino, and the awesome, awesome amazing Titus Welliver–came across as cheesy and overwrought. Instead, I want to talk about the big secret–you know, the big flipping secret–that was revealed last night.

Last night, we learned what’s so special about the island. And, like, I think the writers thought they were being subtle and leaving some mysteries uncovered, but basically, it’s the Force. You know, the Force, like from Star Wars. The source of all life. Men want to get to it because they’re greedy and want to harness its power and maybe think it will make them live forever (sorry, dudes, but it’s the magic wine that does that). Allison Janney’s stuck protecting it, and she wants little Smokey* to take over for her, but he’s all whiny because she murdered his real mom, so it’s up to Jacob, who doesn’t mind because he’s got a major boner for his foster mother, despite her being a murderous monster and all.

And this Force? This life-force that powers the universe? It’s a golden beam of light in a cave. And I laughed every time I saw it. Because it looked like a fucking Thomas Kinkade painting.

Part of me, irrationally, still wants to believe that there’s more to it than that. That maybe this has something to do with complex Egyptian mythology, and that the writers actually respect their audience enough to be up front and discuss that. Or that maybe there’s a spaceship down there, or a Great Old One, or something else awesome. But if I’ve learned anything from six years of watching LOST, it’s that things are, consistently and transparently, exactly what the writers tell us they are–and never anything more than that. LOST‘s problems aren’t anything like The X-Files; in fact, the problems lie in direct opposition. The mythology here isn’t sprawling or complicated enough. It’s simplistic. It’s obvious. It’s childish. It’s bland.

A few weeks ago, I made the prediction that Ji Yeon–Sun and Jin’s kiddie–would be revealed to be Jacob’s replacement. It seemed lightly foreshadowed–the name “Kwan,” not Jin or Sun, appeared on Jacob’s list of candidates, and he touched them both in their past. This could still happen, but I’m not going to hope for it. When it comes down to it, I just don’t think the writers are that smart. And last week, Sayid told us that Jack is Jacob’s replacement. So Jack it is. Because on LOST, everything is always exactly what it seems.

*Since the introduction of his character, the audience has wondered what Jacob’s nemesis was named. Could it be Esau, referring to the Biblical twins? Naaaah, that’s too, like, literary, or something. Last night we found out that he’s not called anything because . . . wait for it! He has no name! Hahahahaha! Heh.

Oh.

I hate Jack Shepherd.

(More inside; this entry contains spoilers for the sixth season of LOST.)

When I think of Jack, he looks pretty much like he does above: he’s wearing a dull-eyed, slack-jawed expression, with his dumb tribal tattoos showing, and I pretty much want to punch him in the face.

To be fair, he’s not the only character I hate. In fact, there’s one character I hate much, much more than Jack Shepherd.

Her name is Kate Austen.

I’m pretty positive that I’m not supposed to hate either of these characters. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that I’m supposed to think that they’re terrific. They’re supposed to be our heroes. I know this because the writers have chosen to spend an inordinate amount of time with them. Early in the show, Jack was clearly meant to represent SCIENCE!(TM). And, like, sure, I like science.

But on LOST, liking science is apparently akin to being one of those handsome dickweed highschool jocks with an overblown sense of entitlement. Jack seems to have, as we might call them, control issues. At his best moments–the moments when he’s not a pills and booze addict–he seems to view everyone around him with sneering condescension. His soul motivation in life (despite the fact that “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” is Locke’s tagline) seems to be to be the boss of everyone around him.

This was beautifully illustrated in last night’s episode, when Jacob was able to manipulate Jack right into his hands by subtly implying that Jack has never had free will. How dare a mysterious island monster god thing watch me. How dare he! It didn’t seem to bother Jack one bit that Jacob was also watching all of his friends. All he cares about is himself, and so he goes ballistic.

I believe I was supposed to feel a deep pathos for Jack at the moment he smashed the mirror. Instead, I only felt frustrated. Not for Jack, but because of him. Because I really, really would have liked to see what the mirror reflected when pointed towards the names/numbers of the other characters.

I often feel that way while watching LOST. We spend so much time with characters that I don’t care about (Jack, Kate, even Claire) and comparatively so little time with characters that I find genuinely compelling: Ben, Desmond, Juliet, Bernard and Rose, even Locke or Sawyer. There are so many loose ends left–is it really necessary, now, in the final season and with just eighteen episodes to spare, to dedicate two to Jack and his Problems?

And nearly sandwiching a Kate-centric one. I’ll come right out and say it: much of my dislike towards Kate is thanks to her proclivities, the way she plays men off one another. It’s not necessarily the promiscuity, but her lack of characterization beyond promiscuity. I felt like the writers were trying, somewhat, to make her more likable last season–by turning her into an overprotective mama bear. But I didn’t buy it. And after five years with Kate, I still have no idea who she really is.

(Okay, I’ll admit grudgingly that she’s a stock survivor character. Emphasis on “stock”; she’s not a very interesting one.)

It’s not as if the writers aren’t capable of writing complex-but-still-likable people. This season’s Locke-centric episode “The Substitute” illustrated that perfectly. Because not only did I enjoy the mirror-universe’s exploration of Locke, but Ben’s appearance as a snarky history teacher also seemed totally appropriate and enjoyable, not to mention Rose’s cutting-down of Locke’s pretensions. And, what do you know? I also found myself empathizing with the monster that has taken on Locke’s form.

I thought for a moment–and my mother, who I chat with about LOST weekly, agreed–that maybe that episode was indicating that the monster wasn’t evil, but that Jacob is the real bad guy. This seemed, perhaps, supported by Jacob’s maneuvering of Jack last night. But then the writers showed us that the Locke-monster also causes the sickness, removing most of the moral ambiguity. Oh well. I should have known better. I was, after all, supposed to be cheering for Jack all along.

Well, fine, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

While we’re on the subject, here are a few theories of mine: Juliet is David’s mother; the Kwan who is a candidate is neither Jin nor Sun but their daughter. And the little boy who appeared in the woods is a time-warped version Aaron (a la Walt at Shannon’s death), not a manifestation of Jacob.

Man, this probably makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the show.