I loved this comment from Steven Johnson's discussion about Lost:

Steven said:

"Lost" has the unique opportunity of proving you can build a narrative of mesmerizing implausibility that ultimately turns out to be entirely plausible simply by changing one elemental rule of the universe--and then not telling your audience about the rule change until the third act.

Then the commenter, TDAWWG, said:

Err, that's called a deus ex machina and is generally considered one of the worst storytelling faults, the quackiest canard, if you will, in the arsenal of terrible narrative humbuggery. It's not literally Father Zeus dropping out of the clouds to make everything all right at the end, but it's a similar kind of unfair trick, a fake plausibility: even worse when it's used, not out of desperation in ending an unwieldy plot, but from the beginning, as a ticking narratological time-bomb that will explode to the delight of the credulous.

Dunno, Twin Peaks proved there was a vital market for "one-damn-thing-after-another" storytelling, false portentiousness, etc.: why is Lost so special? Really, I'm curious, despite the snark....

Haha! I like Lost, but he makes a good point.