This bit from Alan Sepinwall’s review of the last episode of Lost is key to why I loved it, and the series as a whole.

“Ulti­mately, “Lost” didn’t suc­ceed because of the mythol­ogy. We’ve seen too many exam­ples of mythology-heavy, character-light series fail over the last six years to think that. “Lost” suc­ceeded on emo­tion, whether that emo­tion was fear of the mon­ster in the jun­gle, or grief over Juliet dying, or joy at Desmond reunit­ing with Penny, or thrills at Sayid’s break­dance fight­ing and Hur­ley rid­ing to the res­cue in the Dharma bus. When “Lost” was really and truly great, it locked you so deep into the emo­tions of the moment that the larger ques­tions didn’t really matter.”

The rest of the review is also inter­est­ing, if you care.