Lost is shaping up to be a big disappointment

With only a few episodes left, I have to admit I'm anticipating a very lackluster, unsatisfying conclusion to "Lost."

To date, this final season has seemed very much random and tossed together and short on revelations.

For five years-plus, the show's producers have been stringing us along with myriad mysteries with the promise of eventual answers. But, at this point, what do we really know?

I have a whole list of unanswered questions (some major, others minor) here. I get the sense many of them will go unanswered, and that just doesn't seem fair.

Even more frustrating, I think many will go unanswered because the show's producers have dropped threads they don't know how to pick up. For example, they briefly brought back the character of Lilly this season. But they didn't address key questions concerning her. For example, she played a role in getting Desmond to sail to the island. Why? And she was in the mental ward with Hurley. Again, why?

Click the link for many more frustratingly unanswered questions.

Early on, the producers promised this series wouldn't flake out ala "Twin Peaks" or "The X-Files." They had the whole story pretty much worked out, including the end. But I'm doubting more and more that that is true.

In the end will "Lost" just be the story of Jacob and Smokey -- two characters we barely know and who were really only dropped into the mix at the end of last season -- with the series' regular characters functioning merely as props?

Is it gonna be some lame story about a cosmic/existential chess game played between these two? Is that the best the producers can possibly come up with at this juncture?

I'm watching until the end, of course, because I've followed the story thus far. But I certainly haven't been excited by any of the episodes this season and I'm somewhat dreading the expected disappointment of the series conclusion.

Is it too late at this juncture for the show to get it together and go out with a bang? I hope not.