[quote name='RAMSTORIA']shit man, people need to calm down. they are setting up everything for the rest of the season. did you expect them to just reveal everything to us in the first 4 episodes? cmon now, we all know they arent going to reveal something until the inevitable 3 hour finale, and even then they are going to leave a lot of things up to the imagination.[/QUOTE]
They've got so many loose ends that they couldn't possibly tie it all up in one, two, or 15 episodes. This is where Lost loses me, when they try to convince me that the answer to a given question isn't worth a direct treatment because either there's a newer question out there or the question itself is somehow "open to interpretation" and much hand waving.
They should've looked to BSG. I'm not sure that I like BSG's final season as much as its other seasons, but I do appreciate that in that final season, just about every episode felt big. It was the opposite of this situation: with BSG I was concerned that the show was moving too fast in tying up unresolved plot lines. And despite this pacing, BSG's final season somehow kept barrelling forward -- it didn't provide too much too soon and fall apart. It attempted some resolution, introduced a few smaller elements to keep things moving, and raised a few challenging issues in the process.
I'm going to see Lost to its end, but I don't think it's unfair to expect more of these episodes. I think the problem is that the writers still want this to be character based, where they're still giving us a chance to explore characters (e.g. good daddy Jack, repentant hardened criminal Kate, etc.). Well, guess what? We've been with these characters for over 100 episodes. The writers have had a lot of time to detail these folks. That time has passed. Now make an honest effort at resolution, don't duck out on it with character studies in an alternate timeline.
EDIT: Also, yes, to bmulligan, Rousseau is dead. She got plugged by Widmore's boys. C'est la vie.