Preface - I AM enjoying this season. I repeat, I AM enjoying this season, but it definitely has it's flaws.

This season is different for one reason emotion, or to be precise, a lack thereof.

There are no characters left to care about. I couldn't pinpoint why the season was 'off' the other day but in talking with a friend I think he is absolutely right.

There is no one left to really root for. People in this thread have basically said as much leaning towards Flocke because he's a badass and everyone else pretty much sucks(on island).

Locke - dead
Sayid - dead
Juliet - dead
Dogen - dead
Jacob - dead
Desmond & Penny - MIA

Claire - cared well enough before she disappeared but they should have left the crazy jungle lady thing to Rouseau.
Jin & Sun - ?? not much happening with either
Kate - It's been hard to care about her for a couple years now
Ben - has been the bad guy for so long it's hard to root for him now especially after killing Locke
Miles - was never a major player so hasn't really developed much beyond his initial appearance. "whatever you say, Boss!"
Hurley - is well, Hurley. Still likable and has had some decent scenes but still feels lost in all the action.
Jack - Not sure how I feel about Jack this season.
MiB/FLocke - hard to root for considering he is being heavily painted as the bad guy. Doesn't matter how awesome O'Quinn is playing him.
Richard - again, hard to root for when they have been so cagey about his character for so long and haven't really given us a reason this season to care.

Sawyer - to me, Sawyer is the wild card here. His torment over Juliet plays well and seeing him with nothing left to lose is great. So far the only character this season worth rooting for, IMO.

It feels like in their haste to race to the finish line they forgot who the characters are and it shows in scenes that are supposed to be filled with tension but aren't. Do I care at this point if Smokey kills Kate instead of her making it into the hole? Not really, she'll probably turn up again anyway.

To be fair, the Hanso stuff has never played predominately in the show itself. It mostly came from the the "Lost Experience." According to the Lostpedia, Hanso has only been mentioned three times in passing during the entire run of the show.

Interesting.

I think the creators completely and suddenly shifting focus of the show, to the whole Jacob/MIB rivalry, really changed things and the entire dynamic of the show.

No longer are the original losties the centerpiece of the show. They are merely just pawns.

Not gonna comment on how I feel about it until its all said and done, though.

I loved last season, but so far this season is boring especially since it is the final season, I thought it would be amazing, but all the temple stuff and Jacob stuff I dont find interesting what they are doing now. The show built such a very cool mystery, with the large statue etc through the series, but this season its just boring, not exciting or has any of the wonder or mystery.

Not one episode this season has really kept me glued to the screen.

This is pretty much my biggest gripe with the show right now. They've left the viewers so much in the dark now, we really have no idea who we should be pulling for. Without a clear protagonist, I feel very detached from the events that are happening. We need to learn what the stakes are before we can really become emotionally invested in the characters.

Very well said.

I was publicly chastised for feeling this show was losing it's edge after week 2 of this season. I was either wrongly accused or very pre-emptive

Either way, caring about characters is a great point and probably not the reason I felt the show was off... but it clearly is the reason. I know that's Locke -- or Flocke -- but it's really not. I liked Locke, I don't care so much for Flocke. And even if you die, you don't really.

Focusing on Hanso would have been a much better route to take. This Jacob / MiB stuff has nothing on using the theory of the islands magnetic properties and combining that with time travelling.

It's interesting to see how divided people are on the quality of this season, especially compared to the last two. In my mind, seasons 4 and 5 were the low points of the series. So much crazy shit happened to the point where nothing surprised me anymore. Some characters lost their believability as real people (Sun going badass with a gun? Sayid as an assassin and working for Ben? Ben killing Locke) and most of the dialogue was incredibly corny and tried too hard to be profound(anything involving Elouise or Ben especially).

Season 6, although flawed, has returned to a well-paced and believable (within the boundaries that the show has set) show. I like the sideways stories, but it's true that we would have more affection and sympathy for characters if we knew what their roles were in this whole game.

As someone mentioned, the dynamic of the show has changed so much. It's cool that the story has continued to escalate to the point where we are finding out about the island and it's nature on the biggest scale. Yet thinking about the simple mysteries of the early seasons makes me think about how much better things once were. It used to be about the characters, now the story is far bigger than any one of them, for better or worse.

OOPs I was looking at the replay at 8:00.

They need to have a Black Rock episode that shows us:

1. The crash of the Black Rock and who was on it.
2. How it ended up in the middle of the island/statue falling - same event?
3. Why Richard doesn't age and his overall importance.
4. How did the MiB first get trapped.

I'm curious about the ship's ledger. If pirates found it before Hanso owned it (then Widmore), it most likely would've been down under the water maybe even fell off the ship before it ended up on the island. Otherwise, the pirates would've needed to find it on the island. So, how much info could Hanso have found written in there before they reached the island? Maybe simply that the island was pulling them in or doing strange things to their compass readings. I guess they could've experienced the same sickness as on Widmore's boat.

Maybe this stuff is being saved for the finale.

What's the deal with these pointless embedded videos? Just kidding, I enjoyed it and am slightly jealous. I will have my next one ready soon!

That's really cool. Until the last second when it just mentions J.J. Abrams.

I came to the conclusion that the women/babies problem was because dharmaville was built on top of a leaky hydrogen bomb since sometime after 1954. That's good enough for me

Not bad at all. I like it.

I don't. That still doesnt explain why women can have babies if they got pregnant off the island but die if they got pregnant on the island.

Maybe Jacob's got such an obsession with bringing people to the island, that he kills any baby that's born on the island because he had nothing to do with it.

Why? Biblical analogies have been used all through this series, among others.

No not because of that, just seemed to be his tone or something, I don't know.

Or why that one woman's vajayjay was 80 years old.

Dude, that is badass. It made me all over the place.

This is what Andrew Michaels should be doing now.

here is a theory I read in another forum.

Theories don't need to be spoilerized and is similar with what I posted here yesterday.

Speaking of wishes coming true...

I REALLY hope we get an explanation of "the box" and how Locke's dad came to the island.

No offense but why does this keep getting asked(I've seen multiple people mention the same thing)? The others have extensive files on all the castaways and they owned a submarine to go to the mainland(wherever that may be).

You hear hoofbeats think horse, not zebra. They know about Cooper & Locke's kidney debacle so they go and kidnap him and lock him up until John Locke comes a knockin'.