With Lost, I knew they had no direction in mind, and that bothered me. But I also knew that whatever they were doing, they were doing a damned entertaining job of it.
I didn't feel like the terrible ending ruined the fun I had with the first five seasons, but I did believe they had a direction in mind through most of it. What I remember bugged me most was that sometime quite early in the show, probably season one, the writers "promised" that they had an ending and explanation for everything, and that it explicitly wasn't going to be a cheap cop-out like "it was all a dream". Which, as it turns out, was either one or two lies by my count.
