The mania surrounding “Lost” continues. It has emerged that the series finale now holds the record of being the most downloaded TV show in the history of TV. The final two episodes, within 20 hours of appearing online, were downloaded some 900,000 times. Quite a bit, yes.

Many of the downloads came from overseas, and that makes sense: episodes of the show typically don’t air in local markets for some time. Why wait until the local TV network gets around to showing the episodes when you can hop on BitTorrent and watch it just a few hours after ABC in the U.S.?

The show’s producers did anticipate this, and tried to have the finale air quickly after its U.S. debut. That would explain this little stat: a full 15 percent of downloads come from Australia, where the finale doesn’t air until tonight. Or maybe it already has; I don’t understand time zones. The point is: Australians would rather download the show than wait around till the local TV network decides to air it.

A staggered release may have worked in the past, but in this day and age, when 720p rips of every TV show are available online within minutes of their U.S. debut, there’s no way you can convince people to wait around.

Done and done!

Lost ended its glorious run last night. While I stopped watching the show about two years ago, I fully recognize that my fellow Americans absolutely love the show. In fact, they love the show so much that they’ve been tweeting about it non-stop. Come, let’s explore how the Twitterverse responded to this great TV moment!

Here we go!

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I think that sums of pulse of America (well, there entire world, what with that Venezuela tweet in there). There’s approximately 80 zillion tweets dedicated to Lost in the past 24 hours, so this represents a fraction of a fraction of a fraction…

One question: Should I pick up the show again? I stopped with the season that ended in Spring, 2008.

This isn’t a sign of a clever mystery. It’s simply bad storytelling and so I submit to you the four reasons why Lost is actually a terrible TV show and not deserving of all the attention it got over the last six seasons.

Here’s the obligatory *Spoiler Warning* tag although there is no way you’ll be able to avoid Lost news next week so you might as well get over it now.

1. A main antagonist was never established

Remember the first two seasons? The barefooted Others were the baddies. Then the Dharma Initiative and Ben took over that role as The Others switched sides. Then we learned that the Dharma Initiative were really just nerdy hippies and Charles Whidmore took over as the bad guy by trying to kill everyone on the island. But wait, he’s just another one of Jacob’s pawns and the real bad guy is ol’ Smokey who previously seemed like the island’s janitor.

Critical viewers have always questioned whether the end-game was known when the show started. While I’m sure the writers knew the overall story arc from the beginning, they probably didn’t know how much fluff was needed to fill in seasons. After all, the core business model of TV networks is to get viewers to watch the commercials and successful shows are generally dragged-out to con people into watching said ads.

2. Story arcs never ended

The key to long-running TV shows are simultaneous story arcs. Ideally one arc should be wrapping up while another is in full swing with the next one clearly on the horizon. Lost never wrapped up any story arc, instead left viewers hanging while distracting them something wildly off-topic. Sometimes, like with the story of Walt, the arc would seem to be nicely wrapped up but then out of nowhere, it was clear that wasn’t the case.

Clearly Lost’s writers and creators were trying something new. They bucked nearly every traditional TV show guideline and created something that seemed on the surface as something totally different. The result was something different but doesn’t relate to good storytelling.

3. Lost never really fit into any genre and so missed a huge opportunity

Sci-fi shows are for nerds, only housewives watch dramas, women hate action shows, but yet Lost tried to appeal to all three demographics without fully committing to one.

Sci-fi/fantasy shows are all about mythology and science. The writers could have created this rich and deep storyline that told the tale of good vs evil in a totally new way, complete with new symbols and analogies. The writers could have created another Matrix. But they didn’t. Instead it’s a story about a glowing well that turns people into smoke monsters that for some reason will unleash all hell if it’s let off this mystical island.

Lost was an action drama in the beginning. This was probably by design as both males and females got something out of it. But quickly it turned into a quasi-drama by showing these people’s crappy lives before they got on the plane. We learned Kate was a killer, Jack’s a dick, Sawyer’s a lazy con man, and Eko’s a drug runner. But the personal flashbacks only lasted one episode and we had to endure everyone else’s backstories before it would cycle back around to a particular character’s.

In between these random backstories is when the real action would take place. But just when it was getting good, the trademark Lost tone would crescendo in and the story would jump from the island to watching Jack track down his dad in Australia. Each episode was 20% island happenings, 40% backstory, and 40% commercials.

We now know for sure that the extensive backstories were there to simply justify Jacob’s selections, but surely there had to be a better way to mix up it up a bit.

Of course each viewer probably wanted Lost to be a different show than it was. I would have like a more sci-fi-orientated theme. Others, however, maybe wanted more of the Kate-Jack-Sawyer love mess.

4. So many questions

There are too many unanswered questions that were raised over the last six seasons. Many previous story arcs like the whole Dharma Initiative are now seemingly trivial. A person really could watch the first two seasons and the last and get the whole story. Most everything that happened in between was just fluff.

1. Why does the island move?
2. Who made the huge four-toed statue?
3. Why does it only have four toes?
4. Why is the island a super-magnet?
5. Where did Jacob’s and Smokey’s step-mother come from
6. Who taught Jacob the secrets of the island?
7. How did the Dharma Initiative construct massive complexes?
8. How did the Dharma Initiative learn about the island?
9. How could Richard travel off the island?
10. Why did Smokey need Locke’s body when there are plenty of corpses around?
11. Why does the island heal some people and not others?
12. Why couldn’t Dharma women get pregnant on the island?
13. Why can’t Smokey just fly over the sonar fence?
14. Why does a ring of ash protect against Smokey?
15. Why does Smokey spare some people?
16. How does Walt figure into the end-game?
17. What’s the significance of the numbers and how are the connected to Jacob?

There are so many more questions. It’s sad, really. Lost had the makings of a great show but there are simply too many loose ends for them all to be wrapped up tomorrow. It’s a good rule of thumb that if a show needs a question and answer session after its finale, then the writers didn’t do their jobs properly.

[Awesome vintage Dharma ads by Hot Meteor]

‘Lost’ audio: Garnett explains the island to ‘Big Baby’ from The Basketball Jones on Vimeo.

Okay, so this video can basically bring anyone up to speed on Lost and so it probably deserves a *Spoiler Alert* tag, but there’s going to be no avoiding Lost news after the finale on Sunday so you might as well get used to it. Your screwed if you’re just now getting into the show. The Internet isn’t going to stop just because you’re only on Season 3. Sorry.

**Major spoilers ahead**

His best point,

Remember in season three, when Ben took Locke to visit the mysterious Jacob and we assumed the always-crafty Ben knew the secrets of the island? Turned out he didn’t. However, the immortal, enigmatic Richard Alpert definitely knew more than he was letting on, right? Wrong. Richard was as in the dark about everything as Ben was. Then surely Jacob, the mystical protector of the island, the dude who brought everyone here in the first place, the man responsible for the events of the entire series, would know what he’s doing. Turns out he was given some vague instructions by his wacky mother and set loose to protect a cave that may or may not be the essence of humanity.

Oh but there’s more — five points in all. Give it a read.

Anyway, that is all. The graph is the post. It’s supposed to be funny and would be if it wasn’t true. Click through to supersize.

1: Is island Desmond the same person as alternate-reality Desmond. Like are they of one mind and conscience?

2: What job are the Losties applicants for? It doesn’t make sense that it’s Jacob’s role because then Jacob would have had to know he was going to die in order to qualify and observe certain people their entire life. So what’s going on here?

We have so many other questions like who that boy with the stick is, how/why the island had the big gear underground, and how does Jack’s Dad tie into all of this, but it’s those two that are bothering us the most. Help?

The final season of Lost starts in mere hours and here’s a video that should bring you up to speed.

The launch date is August 24, 2010 and the set will carry a $279 MSRP. Of course it will be crammed with all sorts of extras and directory commentary that no one but freaks will watch. I mean, who has the time to sit and watch each episode again with the director and J.J. Abrams rambling on about this and that? Oh, right, my fellow Michiganders. That’s who.

The first five seasons only costs $108. According to Amazon, that’s 70% off the list price. If you’re not into Blu-ray just yet, the same set is on standard DVDs for only $72.99. [Amazon via DealNews]

Heads up, fans of the hit TV series Lost. Amazon has a little sale going on through July 16 that may interest you. Buy two seasons on Blu-ray and you save $20; buy three seasons and you save $30; buy four seasons and you save $40. You’ll need to enter the promo code LOSTBLUS to see the discount.

Meanwhile, here’s the trailer to the movie that did time travel right: Back to the Future. Lost is garbage juice compared to this movie.

via High-Def Digest

Bad news, “Lost” fans. Well, those of you who download 720p caps of the show. It looks like ABC, per juicy message board rumors, is doing something screwy with the video as it airs in order to fit in more commercials—removing frames after the 2:3 pulldown, that is. So, when cappers convert the video into bite-sized x264 chunks for us, it results in jerky playback. (Dupe frames that are present in the original broadcast are removed from the cap.) You’re not going to notice the dropped frames when watching the show on TV (due to the nature of broadcast television), but it makes capping the show a pain in the neck. The resulting cap, less the dupe frames, plays back like garbage.

This dropped frames issue only seems to have affected S05E01—episode two doesn’t exhibit the same problem.

The moral of the story is, as “scene” cappers grapple with this dropped frames issue, we’ll have to wait longer than usual for “proper” caps, perhaps after the shows airs in the UK, where, presumably, Sky won’t drop frames left an right to fit in more adverts. Clever way for ABC to combat piracy, though.

A little personal information about me: I’ve never seen a single episode of Lost. I understand it’s quite popular, though. A co-worker of mine at a previous place of employment was so adamant that I join the Lost-watchers club that she leant me the first season and then asked me every day what I thought of the show. After a month of not even taking the first disc out of the sleeve, I returned it to her.

If you’d like to try to force someone to hop on the Lost bandwagon or if you, yourself, would like to churn through the first three seasons in rapid succession, Amazon has Seasons 1, 2, and 3 for $58.99, which is less than half what they normally cost. That deal’s good today only, though, so hop to it if you’re interested.

Lost – The Complete Seasons 1-3 [Amazon]

I’ve been playing Ubisoft’s “Lost: Via Domus” for a few minutes and so far it’s not too shabby. But, then again, I’m a huge fan of the show so I may be playing favorites. The game begins with you on the plane experiencing the crash from the perspective of survivor of Flight 815. You wake up in the jungle and can’t really remember too much of what happened. I’ve run into Kate and she’s sort of uncooperative thus far and doesn’t seem too keen on answering any questions or helping. There’s also some woman that randomly appears but as I get closer she disappears. It’s creepy and scary. It appears that when you encounter other characters you go through a Q&A phase. When you think you know them you revert to a flashback of the plane where you snap a photo for future reference. It’s kind of weird, but makes sense. I’ll be sure to finish this game when I get back from CTIA.

Has anyone else played this?

Product Page

Xbox Page

Lost, blah blah Ben blah blah smoke monster blah. Blah blah Whitmore blah blah (“NOT PENNY’S BOAT!” said the hobbit) blah blah!

Cash also says it is absolutely possible that a plane’s black box would still be in working condition after four months on the ocean floor. The current record goes to a recorder that, after nine years at the bottom of the Mediterranean, was perfectly fine. “The water, in general, doesn’t hurt them at all,” Cash says. “It’s the air that hurts them once they’ve been wet. It starts the corrosion and rust process.” Once the black box is found at a wreckage site, it’s transferred to the lab in a water-filled cooler so the data can be retrieved and copied right away.

Blah blah mystery blah smoke monster blah with Sawyer in the blah blah up inside Jack. Blah blah I’ll bet anyone 50 bucks this show ends up like Twin Peaks and angers us all to no end. Blah.

Lost’s Black Box Story Holds True, NTSB Records Chief Says: Hollywood Sci-Fi vs. Reality [PopMech]