Lost is loosing its way

We are into the second season of Lost over here in the UK.

I was on the edge of my seat for the first season and thought it was fantastic, however the second season has really started to piss me off. It would seem that flashbacks are going out of fashion, but the writers have just bought 5 million of them. As a result they are plugging them into random places in the script. They are getting in the way of the story!

I can't see how I will give anything away here, but I'll give a mild spoiler warning just in case. In last night's episode the "Others" showed their faces. There was so much that could have been done with that to pick up the tempo of the story (which has slowed to a snails pace at the moment), but instead it was broken up with about a gazillion flash backs. I must have watched about 10 to 15 minutes of flashbacks focused on Jack, where the only point was to make it clear that Jack always has to have a problem to fix!

I was always told that to blatantly show back-story to get a point like that across was bad writing. After season one I saw one of the writers say that they have about 4 seasons worth of story. I think they probably only have 2 seasons worth, but they are padding it out to 4 with these unnecessary flashbacks.

This show is going to die on its backside soon if they don't sort it out.