Admittedly, I generally don’t watch shows on TV, since I prefer to binge on entire seasons all at once on DVD or BitTorrent, but I was thinking which I liked better:  Lost or Battlestar Galactica.  And the winner for me would have to be BSG.

Lost is a very good show, but so far I’ve been disappointed in the fifth season, and am losing some confidence that the ending will be satisfying after season 6.  What I liked most about lost in seasons 1 through 3, was the sheer confusion and multiple potential explanations.  Using your imagination, you could try to fit things together, but the changing alliances and bits of information kept you on your toes.  Now that they’ve started explaining more secrets of the show, it brings up more questions, but not good ones… These questions are more about the authenticity of the revelations, than curiosity about what will happen next (How does Ms. Hawkins know so much about how to get back to the island?  So why does Jack need his fathers shoes? )  There needs to be some good pay-off in the next few episodes to get the show back on track.

Right now I’ve watched through the middle of the fourth and final season of BSG.  The characters are much better developed than on Lost.  There is intrigue throughout the show (who is a Ceylon, who isn’t, what about Earth, etc) but even when things are unclear, the show fits them together nicely, all while hitting on the shows main themes:  family vs. obligations, faith vs. rationality, freedom vs. security, and what it means to be human.  Some of the second season got bogged down with the religious stuff, but overall the show has been consistently awesome.

Lost also focuses on faith vs. rationality (primarily through Locke and Jack) but sometimes the conflict gets lost (no pun intended) in the convoluted story, shifting or unclear motivations, and over-the-top nature of the show.