I thought this show looked stupid for years, then I ended up binge watching the entire thing one sweltering summer with my brother at his place that has A/C. it was good.
I've been thinking of doing a 20 year anniversary hextube watch of the first and second seasons this fall. Locke's story is one of my absolute favorites. I've been rewatching the show again and I'm at the part where Locke meets his father, such a great scene. I watched "Numbers" last night too, such a great episode.
It's very good, but the ending was very divisive at the time and so it gets a lot of hate too. I think the show does fall off a little bit near the end, but the first and second seasons are some of the best television I've ever seen.
I remember watching the finale live on television and thinking "oh boy, let's see how many of the remaining 13,523 mysteries finally get explained!" And then the ending was like "the real explanation is the friends we made along the way."
The issue in real time was years of the show runners promising over and over and over that "every mystery will be answered, and there will be no loose ends after the finale, and we already know what the end is going to be, just trust us".
People were extremely hyped because dozens and dozens of mysteries were generated over the seasons, so to tie them all up would be incredibly impressive.
Unfortunately it was blatantly unrealistic for that to happen, and there are several examples of the writers not having a clear direction and just stringing the audience along by creating more mysteries than they could possibly solve to add "suspense".
Two decades later it's sort of a different experience watching the show on its own terms.
It's... interesting. Like a genuine cultural artifact, but not conventionally good. I really like it to be clear. The plot is kind of insane and all over the place, but it also has this uncanny knack for always answering 2 previous questions, and raising 3 new ones. The cast did a phenomenal job, and I don't think any other TV show has ever captured me in a "I need to tune in next week" kind of way.