After having watched my fill of the Jersey Shore, I am officially ready for the final season of Lost to begin. Since forming my addiction in late 2004, I have had a love/hate relationship with the show that can most accurately be described as Lord of the Flies meets Blue Velvet. Lost is about as a frustrating as a high school hook-up. It’s fun, but you know that there’s got to be something more. Every episode that I watched during the first two seasons would end with me experiencing the five stages of Grief:

1. What!?!? No!!! The episode can’t be over. Wait, what time is? There’s got to be one more scene.
2. WTF! WTF! WTF! This show is retarded. They make everything mystical, don’t answer any questions and just make you hate yourself for not being able to figure anything out. Also, did Sayid seriously just lay down a picnic for Shannon. WTF.
3. If Sayid does treat Shannon to a romantic picnic in a tent he’ll get to bang her, right? And, if I watch next week I will definitely get some answers, definitely.
4. Whyyyy? All of these questions, and I know the answers to none of them. I feel numb and hollow inside. I am a worthless shell of a man.
5. Maybe it’s OK that I don’t know what’s going on. It will probably just make the rest of the show that much more satisfying when I finally figure everything out. Now how am I going to wait until next week? I’m still not over that picnic thing.

While I would eventually recover from this emotional roller-coaster, it always left me with a residual sense of resentment towards the show. I mean how could an hour of television evoke such powerful emotions from me and ultimately leave me feeling so frustrated? How could I love a show so much while at the same time despise it with a furious passion born from the rage of bewilderment.

To calm the wrath I felt after watching individual episodes of Lost, I developed a sort of coping mechanism that, while not completely effective, did help me to derive the most amount of happiness from the show. For the last three seasons I have not watched a single episode of Lost on television. You have no idea how difficult it is to know that your favorite show is airing that night, and also know that you won’t be watching it. The agony!! The sheer torture has to be comparable to waterboarding. I wait until the last episode airs and then I spend an entire weekend on itunes in unadulterated Lost nirvana. Allowing time for bathroom breaks, food deliveries, the sporadic roommate distraction, and a few hours for sleep and you’ve got a totally immersive Lost experience.

But, with the sixth and final season of Lost beginning this Tuesday, I am faced with a unique predicament: Do I endure the disappointment and resentment that accompanies watching Lost on a weekly basis, or do I wait until the show is completed and risk having the finale spoiled? Having the finale of any prior season spoiled was always a nightmare of mine, but somehow, throughout my Lost adventure I always managed to avoid it. But risking a spoiler on the final season? The risk seems too great, the cost too high. Could you handle it if someone revealed the ending of The Sixth Sense before you got to see it? How about Empire Strikes Back? This is what I have come to realize: With great risk comes great potential to ruin your life.

Yes, I will be watching Lost every Tuesday night for the next several months. Yes I will be enduring deliciously torturous television only to experience multiple stages of grief for six subsequent evenings. But, hopefully by the end of the experience I will have answers to the five following questions currently burning a hole through my cranium, and they won’t have been inadvertently spoiled for me:

1. Who or exactly what is Jacob?
2. What is Locke’s connection to the Island, and why is he special?
3. What is that damn smoke monster and why is it so spiteful?
4. Why does the island have magical healing powers?
5. Whats the deal with the numbers and are they actually cursed?

Tune in to Lost this Tuesday, February 2 at 8/7c on ABC

Gonna get Lost this week? Need somewhere to vent? Go to the Comment Section and blast away!

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