Oh good, my Lost torrent has downloaded. Suppose I’d better…yeah.

I’ve been in this situation before around season two where after over twenty five episodes of next to nothing happening, I finally snapped and ran screaming from the island like so many Michaels.

The season passed and moved into its third year. Friends of mine said it got much better and was worth checking in with again but I’d been burnt like this before. Prison Break, Being Human, Tim And Eric, CSI Miami, Nathan Barley, Flash Forward, every single fucking episode of Dollhouse…

WHERE IS RANCH DRESSING?!?!

Eventually I moved in to this house with my friend Andy who had a full media centre set up packed full of easily accessed avi files viewable on the television. Lost was among these and extreme boredom / idleness eventually pushed me back into its loving smoky embrace. I was glad I went back, especially being able to fast-track through the still quite tedious second run and get onto the third where things started to get more interesting.

I was caught up and soon craved the new episodes like my uncle craves hanging around the park with his underpants round his ankles. Seasons four and five passed – the latter being among some of the strongest TV drama I’ve ever seen, particularly thanks to the timey-wimey nonsense and the shifting of key characters into more interesting roles (because, let’s face it, no-one cares if Jack falls into Hurley’s arse and is never seen again). And those brown outfits? Magnificent!

So why am I suddenly miserable to see new episodes of season six? It’s hard to say. The alternative flash-forwards hark back to the character per episode themes of season one which was always something that bored me rigid. While it’s an interesting concept to show that the characters would eventually end up bumping into each other anyway, the over-arching feeling is failure. No-one seems to do that well “on the outside”.

There’s definite improvement as things progress with this week’s Sayid-centric episode feeling a lot more action packed than previous weeks (Jack: “BOO HOO HOO MY SONG PLAYS A PIANO”, Locke: “BOO HOO HOO MY LEGS DON’T WORK”, Kate: “BOO HOO HOO I AM NOT NEARLY NUDE ENOUGH FOR BEN’S LIKING”) although that could have something to do with the multiple stabbings and face-shootings that occur within its fractured walls.

Six seasons is certainly to be respected though in the modern climate of fickle TV fanciers, many of whom will probably digest Lost a disc at a time via increasingly cheaper and less unwieldy boxsets and therefore not really understand the battle of the weekly torrenting man. To those people I say “fuck you” and “have you met my friend John ‘Smoky’ Locke?”

Now, what’s next on the torrent pile to watch? Five unwatched seasons of 24? Fuck it, I’ll just read a book…