Well, on and off for longer than that, even.
By season 3 they were making stupid decisions, but for good, human reasons.
Then by 4 they kind of started to flail about, as if completely uncertain of what to do, but unwilling to bide their time and figure things out, opting instead for generally self-destructive behavior.
Sawyer becomes an exception in 5, and even beyond that manages to finally give some direction to the whole group. They manage to live comfortably for two fucking years in a stable environment. Then Jack and Kate show up, and everyone loses their goddamn minds in a matter of days as if by some neural instability effect field. Or maybe it’s something to do with the cameras actually being on them. Makes people act stupid.
Now, they seem to have devolved to being mindless puppets, bouncing around between modest willpowers without pause or consideration for their actions.
Sorry, not completely. Sometimes they ask ‘why’, but they are easily rebuffed by ‘cause’.
Sayid’s senseless acceptance of The Shogun’s demand was a new low in character study for this show. It’s essentially become a lampshade for what the real problem is - not any plot inconsistencies, nor the unanswered questions, but the complete lack of any personality in the main characters. They all appear as a collective of mindless automaton drifters, bouncing from event-to-event. This is what really made the early shows good for me - when there were no answers at all. But there were people who behaved reasonably to unreasonably situations. Even when they fucked up, they fucked up like humans. Not random action generators.
The only people who have retained any sense of humanity or character are the second-tiers, who end up latching onto one of the crazy bastards. For whatever reason (lack of attention?), though might they end up following the crazies, those people still actually have the sense to question and wonder and sometimes even try to avoid disaster rather than diving headfirst into it - or, worse, making every effort to cause it.
So, there it is - The Ascendancy: Jack, Kate, Swayer, Sayid, Ben, Richard - causally-oblivious, soulless angels; Hurley, Jin, Miles, Frank, Desmond - poor, helpless humans stuck just trying to make it through the fucking mess of astral madness.
Ugh, that went on longer than I’d intended. Think I’ve got it out of my system.
