I do kind of wish they'd tie up a few loose ends, just a few, before going off on new tangents all the time. I can't argue the plots, but I remember what happened to my favorite show, Babylon 5, when it labored under a cloud of cancellation. Though the circumstances are different, the result could well be the same. Lost folks may open so many stories that there's no way to resolve most of them when the ratings finally slip too far. As with B5, which had to cram all the big parts into Season 4 for fear of not having a fifth season with which to work. It's easy to see next season becoming "death of the week" TV if there's a doubt about a Season 5. No matter how compelling the drama, an on-location ensemble show is expensive. And one bump, let's go back to Ivanova abruptly leaving B5 due to real-world differences with Claudia Christian and project it to Kate leaving Lost, can really, really hurt. While on the subject, does anybody know whether the other Losties, those seen in the background in what has to be one of the world's greatest odd jobs, have names? I always thought they'd be like the guys in the red shirts in Star Trek; Jack leads four stars and two extras into the jungle. Four come back. That said, the biggest production mess in the history of movie making in terms of story, character development and conclusion became the greatest movie ever made _ Casablanca. Maybe Lost is a show that needs a little uncertainty to become classic television.