I'm too busy to make a tl, dr post at the moment, but I'll sum up with this:

The magic bean of Lost was the Island and whatever the central mystery of it was. Presumably, whatever the magic bean was, was powering all the crazy stuff happening there.

All well and good.

Until --spoilers-- the flash sideways in the last season turn out to be purgatory, an entirely different magic bean.

So, basically, the producers of Lost introduced a second magic bean in the last season and spent the finale explaining that, while leaving the Island magic bean substantially unexplained (not wholly, mind you, but substantially).

I think were really edging into the area where personal definitions are really the issue.

Does a "Magic Bean" really ever need to be explained. I would argue that as long as we have an idea of what it is in concept, that is enough.

If we go with the arguement that "magic" is the magic bean in Harry Potter, it's not like we need to know HOW it works, rather that it does.

The magic bean of Sixth Sense is most assuredly the fact that this kid can "See Dead People" but ... yeah it's been a while but do we really ever know why? I don't think so and that's fine.

I would argue that both Magic Beans & Mcguffins are by there nature better off unexplored.

We see vailidity to that when we get the god awe-full miteclorians (sp) in Phantom Menace, which is a blatant attempt to explain the magic bean of the Force.

(as a side note, I always rationalized that one as a causality issue, these Jedi had noticed that all the force users had a measurable amount of this micro-organism in proportion to their ability, but cause and effect were never linked, I always thought it made more sense that it just happened that there was this bitty thing that was really attracted to a property of the Force using persons physiology, or static cling, and they just gathered more around and inside them the more powerfull they were. So once again basic logic failed them, just like the thinking that "balance to the force" would mean good would win ... umm doesn't balance infer that you would be essentially stalemated with the opposition? and thats were you ended up ... so result)

Sorry got sidetracked.

Yeah so I think that we could really argue that the Island was the "magic bean" we partially tried to explain it over the season, leading largely to more questions (electromagnetism and energy pockets) and then again at the end with the cave of glowy light energy, but that resulted in the same kinds of issues as the Star Wars justification.

It just is, deal with it.

And while I personally was happy with the FlashSideways resolution of "purgatory" I can definitely see the argument that it's a second bean out of nowhere, preying on the previously established formats of flashing back and forward. I just find myself giving them this one.

And no, working on Lost in its final season isn't influencing my perspective much, I still came at pretty much each episode as puzzled as to what was going to happen as the general populace.

Well that was a nice long ranty first post.

These are some of the best posts I have ever seen. Teague, you were right to have faith in these people. I need to give it all some thought before my next post, so, I'll edit this in a bit if there haven't been too many posts below me.

As someone who has seen every episode of Lost, I'm not sure that it changed the rules as it went along.  It really didn't.  They were actually pretty consistent and if you rewatch older episodes, you'll see that they had plenty of plant and payoff.

The problem with Lost and specifically the finale, isn't that it changed the rules, its that it changed its focus too often.  Season 1, the island has a monster and a hatch.  Season two, it has/had a Dharma Initiative.  Season three, it had others.  By Now yes, they did establish Jacob in season 3 , and the "massive pocket of energy," in season 2.  But because the focus and emphasis changed so often, it was difficult at times as an audience to get a foothold.

If this was Flash Forward, whatever, audiences wouldn't have cared and it would have gotten canceled.  But because it had interesting characters that had a rich backstory, portrayed by solid actors, mixed with beautiful sets and cinematography and a brilliant score....we as the audience were sucked back in, again and again. 

I feel that the makers didn't betray me so much as they couldn't stick the landing.  had this season been a bit more focused, it could have been a masterpiece.  Sadly, now its going to be remembered not for the amazing 5 seasosns of tv it was, but as an unfocused bag of meh.  Its unfortunate because there is some truly GREAT tv in there.