LOST interest: Writers seem to be phoning-it-in from the island

I can safely say that the season premiere of "Lost" brought me closer to the characters than ever before.

For the entire two hours, I felt like Hurley as he argued with Miles about time travel in Sawyer's living room.

Here's the spoiler alert for anyone who's still got the season premiere taking up room on their DVR's hard drive.

In 1977, when Juliet smashed Jughead's core with a rock at the end of last season, she in turn created two realities: One where all of the survivors (well, most of them at least) are now back in 2007, but still on the island, and a second, occurring in 2004, in which Flight 815 never crashed and the island is underwater.

The creators don't seem too fond of the term "alternate reality," even though that's what they've created, as executive producer Damon Lindelof explained to Entertainment Weekly.

"To call one of them an 'alternate reality' is to infer that one of them isn't real," Lindelof said.

"Flash sideways" appears to be the preferred term, but whatever you call them, they conveniently let the writers do whatever they want at this point.

"For the fans who are more deeply embedded in the show, you can watch those flash sideways, compare them to what transpired in the flashbacks and go, 'Oh, that's an interesting difference,'" said executive producer Carlton Cuse.

However, one man's "interesting difference" is another man's poor writing.

The confusing, yet cleverly explained, synopsis of bringing about an event in 1977 that causes a separate reality to splinter off the time line in which Flight 815 never crashes easily allows the writers to explain why certain original members are not on the flight. Maybe Jack doesn't recognize Desmond because in this reality they never actually met at a stadium while running one night.

The obvious big question of the season is how and if the two alternate realities will reconcile with each other. While I could spend time contemplating possible ways that could happen, I would rather raise the question of why this seemed like a good idea in the first place.

It seems that the show's creators were just curious to see what would happen if the plane never crashed. But since the writers created separate time lines beginning in 1977, the plane staying in the air isn't the only difference between the two realities by a long shot.

"She (Kate) basically blew up an apprentice plumber as opposed to killing her biological father/stepfather," said Cuse.

As the audience, we're already having to follow the writers into their self-indulgent fantasy because they want to see what would happen if the flight never crashed. Why then, should we have to watch the entire backstory of certain characters change simply because those same writers decided to phone-it-in for a few days?

When we were all praising the genius of JJ Abrams back in 2004, was he just blowing smoke?

In the DVD extras from season 1, Abrams said that while working on the script originally, they knew they had a show once the survivors had been on the island for five years. Why then, in interviews on Tuesday did show creators talk about running out of story?

By my count, 108 days before rescue plus three years off the island and in the '70s adds up to less than four years. So according to Abrams himself, if the last season takes place in 2007, wouldn't the majority of this season's plot have been written before filming began on season one?

Based on the hour-long "catch the slow people up on the past five seasons" special that aired before the premiere, I'm assuming that we're going to see Aaron involved in the story line at some point, which would be good, because wasn't he super important in the first few seasons? Wasn't he special? Didn't Ethan kidnap Claire when she was pregnant? Don't all pregnant women (except Claire) and all babies (except Aaron) die during childbirth?

I'd like to think that all these loose ends will be tied up neatly by the end of season six, but for that to happen, the writers would need to create a third alternate reality.

I think my hope in this third realty began to disappear somewhere in season four, but it may have been in season three. At some point the writers just completely abandoned the fact that there were two islands.

Originally, the Others lived in the Dharma Initiative compound on a second island, separate from the one on which Flight 815 crashed. In post-season-four 2004, and even in 1977 apparently, people are able to drive from the Dharma compound to the Swan Station, which we all know to be on Flight 815's island because John Locke found it in season one before Ben Linus ever showed up in the story line.

I also remember polar bears on a tropical island, but that wasn't ever supposed to be odd, according to what Cuse told TV Guide.

"We sort of felt like we explained the polar bears," Cuse said. "We saw polar bear cages. We saw Sawyer locked in a polar bear cage."

Aside from that, what ever happened to Walt? Why didn't he ever have to come back to the island?

And have characters like Ana Lucia been completely forgotten, or can ABC just not afford to pay Michelle Rodriguez to return for the sixth season? They brought back Boone to have a seemingly pointless conversation with Locke, but then again, maybe Ian Somerhalder just needed a check.

The newest question (which I fully expect a weak answer for) has to do with Sayid.

According to Richard last season, when you're dead, you're dead. There's no coming back. Cuse even reiterated this to TV Guide.

"We've always said that when characters die on 'Lost,' they die," he said.

So how then does Sayid get pronounced dead by Dogen at the temple in the premiere and then magically wake up at the end of the second hour? Was he really dead to begin with, or do the writers, once again, not feel the need to apply all established rules to lesser plot points? Or maybe he really did die, and whatever, or whomever, woke up isn't Sayid at all. And as Lennon said, "We're all in trouble."

I guess it's easy to get a big head when your show is so popular that it forces the president to move the State of the Union address, but it seems like the following conversation is happening around the writer's room a lot these days.

Writer A: So, how are we going to make this happen.

Writer B: I don't know; just have 'em do this.

Writer A: Well, if we do that then we're gonna be contradicting this other part of the story.

Writer B: Dude, no one really knows what's happening in this show. Just have 'em do it anyway. No one will notice.

"Lost" has been one of my favorite shows of the past few years, but at this point I'm concerned that I'm going to end up watching this final chapter, not with the weekly anticipation I have for five previous seasons, but rather by apathetically glancing at ABC once a week simply because I've already invested this much time in the series.

Just like I do with "Heroes."