Previously next

I'm not a consistent watcher of Lost. I saw a bunch of episodes from the first 3 seasons in a kind of discontinuous fashion, but now I see a few minutes at a time and hear it from a neighboring room sometimes. I think this is the best way to watch the show, as a bunch of scattered bits of action and a fun musical score. Why?

Well, at this point I've ceased to believe that there's an actual story. They started with a couple of plot lines and they've just let them go on and expand based on nothing more than "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" Then they make up the justification, such as it is, after the fact.

Second, the whole time travel thing brings new meaning to the TV catchphrase, "Previously on Lost.." So does that mean this stuff happened in the last episode or is it something that happened back in time? And what if it was something that was in the previous episode but happened in the future? Is that really previous? And I guess the same goes for "Next on Lost." What if that's something that happened in the past? Is that really next or is it previously?

Now my head hurts, which I guess really is the point of the show anyway.