Pariah said:
As long as the show is selling commercials like crazy, they'll keep the show going. Which means they need to keep coming up with new angles.
Once the show's end is announced, you can bet they'll start wrapping it up. But, in the mean time, why kill you cash cow?
I guess I have this fear of them going Alias or to really show my age going "V" on us. V was a miniseries in the 80's I think where Aliens came down and tried to take over the earth. They looked human but were reptilian they had a famous scene where one of them eats a live rat that I'll always remember. The series was so popular, they made it into a weekly show. The problem is in an effort to keep the show going so they stayed on the air, they started throwing out wild tangents, the show got ridiculous. There was some of the worst stuff in history on that show, characters died and weeks later were back alive with no explanation(Because they fired writers and hired new ones trying to resurrect the show). The show just completely died I don't think they ever remotely got close to ending it. It went from one of the most popular shows on tv at the time to a show people joked about.
Alias didn't go that badly IMHO they had a combination of an ever increasingly convoluted plot, and a situation where a key actress, Garner, got into movies, got pregnant, and forced the show into a long hiatus that lost much of its fan base. But Alias was spinning out of control before that her absence just exacerbated the problem.
Lost is nowhere near that yet but I gotta wonder how long will people wait for answers that never seem to come before the ratings start to decline?
Not saying I won't be watching next season or that it's not still my favorite show, it is, I just am getting a bit tired of the excess. If you've ever read the long version of the Stand you might understand, there are so many characters and so much back story and side story etc that it gets incredibly hard to follow. Lost is kind of getting to be like that, you almost need a reference binder of information so that you can remember hey Clancy Brown was in the backstory of Sayid torturing in Iraq.
Oh well, off my pedestal, still easily the most creative show on in years but I really hope after 2 seasons of insisting he's not going to go Twin Peaks on us, I really hope JJ is telling the truth.