I think it’s pretty bad. I still watch it - after the time invested, I feel sort of obligated even though I realize it’s sort of like throwing good money after bad. But it was clear fairly early on into the second season that the writers were just stringing us along and had no real idea what they were doing and not much has changed in that regard.
The characters have always been implausibly stupid in this show, never sharing information, not having reasonable motivations, etc. but it has deteriorated to an absurd level.
Typical conversation (made generic):
“Why are you doing this?” “Because I am.” “But why? This is a bad idea.” “I just… trust me… it’s what I have to do” - this sort of thing is supposed to pass as plausible motivation for characters for just about everything they do.
or
“We have to go [way across the island]”
“Why?”
“There’s no time to explain, just trust me”
“But it’s a 12 hour walk, you’d have plenty of time to explain…”
“JUST TRUST ME AND SILENTLY WALK ACROSS THE ISLAND WITH ME! IT’S HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE!”
In recent episodes:
So Sawyer and crew live for 3 years as Dharma-ites. They must’ve learned vast amounts of information about the Dharma initiative, the island, and the others. I said then in a Lost thread, I bet this will happen: Someone will ask a question about Sawyer’s experience in the last 3 years and then there will be an explosion in the background which distracts everyone and the question will never be raised again. I was spot on - there was a point where someone was asking Sawyer something about his experiences when the flaming van came through the town, and that was that.
Jack, Kate, and Hurley know Sawyer must know some of the mysteries that have dominated their lives, and yet they’re completely incurious about it. In what universe is this remotely plausible?
The characters aren’t even characters anymore, they’re plot devices running around from place to place without much explanation other than “I HAVE TO DO THIS… JUST BECAUSE”.
It’s just comically amateurish at this point. If it wasn’t well budgeted and didn’t have momentum from what seemed like earlier promise, it would seem like a bad B movie.