Emily's Lost

In her New Yorker review of The Strain and The Leftovers, Emily Nussbaum can't help but mention Lost--after all, these two new shows are produced, respectively, by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the two men who ran the ABC hit.

Early on Nussbaum describes Lost as a show that "began with huge ambition and then took a late-season nosedive." I suppose that's fair, though it might give the impression it didn't end with huge ambition. In fact, the ambition was as big as ever at the end.  Some though too big--that was part of the problem. (Though there is a sizable minority that likes the ending.)

At the end of her piece, Nussbaum writes that Lost "was a mystery that never got solved, leaving many viewers furious." This is less fair. Lost, good or bad, answered most of the questions it raised. The big one it didn't get to is how did the Island get to be the way it was--in face, the show explicitly stated we shouldn't even try to ask this question--and many found that annoying. But what the Island was, always the central mystery, was essentially explained.  I'd say the main complaint fans had was the resolution to many of the mysteries weren't satisfying, not that they weren't solved at all.