LOST: SEASON FIVE – 4.5 / 10

After the creative resurgence that was season four, I had high hopes going into the fifth season that Lost was really going to be something special in its last couple seasons, that it would finally become the show everyone seemed to think it was.  But dear god, season five might be the worst of the bunch.  If not for the return of badass John Locke (who, of course, isn't really John Locke), the season would’ve had no redeeming moments whatsoever.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD – edgar wright – 4.8 / 10

Though it’s not nearly as offensive or misogynist, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is Twilight for hipster nerds.  Like Twilght, Scott Pilgrim is wish fulfillment for an audience already predisposed to like it.  To someone not in its narrow target demographic, however, Scott Pilgrim, like the Twilight books / movies, is so impenetrable it might as well be speaking a foreign language.  It bears no resemblance to anything one might call reality with no characters behaving like actual human beings and nothing happening in it that makes any real sense.  Unfortunately for Scott Pilgrim’s financial prospects, where Twilight’s target audience is millions and millions of young girls ready and willing to be pandered to, there just aren’t all that many hipsters nerds (thank god) and most of them don’t particularly like being kowtowed to.

LOST: SEASON FOUR – 8.1 / 10

After the mind-blowing three-part finale of season three that saw the introduction of recurring flashforwards as an ongoing storytelling device, Lost seems to have undergone a creative resurgence that has propelled it through what is easily the series’ best season thus far.  No longer constrained by the rigid structure of the series first two and two-thirds seasons, the writers have discovered a whole new world of stories to tell.  And the show has improved dramatically because of it.

LOST: SEASON THREE – 6.5 / 10

Three seasons in and a pattern has begun to emerge in both the individual episodes and the seasons as a whole: they start off strong, with a solid cold open or a few good episodes, meander in the middle, getting bogged down with all manner of trivialities that no one cares about, then make a triumphant return in the last few minutes or episodes.  Season three typifies this pattern more than any season thus far.  It opens with Jack, Sawyer and Kate imprisoned by the Others, a potentially fascinating development that goes pretty much nowhere for half the season until Jack strikes a deal that allows Kate and Sawyer to return to their camp, facilitating the terrific three-episode conflagration between the Others and the castaways.

LOST: SEASON TWO – 4.9 / 10

It becomes clear about two or three episodes into Lost’s second season that the writers have little to no interest in the survival aspects of the show.  By introducing a hatch with a couple of beds, a shower, a kitchen and all manner of other amenities as well as palettes that fall from the sky with enough food for everyone for months (even though they were ostensibly only meant for the two people who were living in the hatch), they take away all exigency to the characters’ fight to survive on the island.  No longer is anyone worried about having enough food or finding suitable shelter.  Instead they’re free to focus on everything else around them, though, curiously, not on finding some means of escape.  This is present in smaller details too, like the fact that the cast’s clothes, despite always being covered in sweat and dirt, are constantly changing and usually fit pretty well.  There’s also always a tarp available whenever a new person comes to camp (even though you’d think those would be precious commodities in a situation like that).  Lost’s writers clearly don’t find the struggle to survive on a (mostly) deserted island all that interesting.  And while this takes away a lot of the urgency of the characters’ existence, it does free the writers up to tell stories that have nothing to do with figuring out where the next meal is going to come from.  Unfortunately, in the show’s second season, the writers just weren’t up to the task of telling interesting stories outside of mere survival.