I'm asking how people didn't see it coming.
Because the show has never been this bad or disrespected its audience to this degree. That's how!
The fact that there has been plenty of time to answer questions and they've still been moving at a snail's pace should have been your first clue that the reveals were going to suck donkey balls.
Again, when a show is competently written for many years, it is not the fault of the audience for maintaining high expectations. This is like, the worst argument ever.
Since the middle of season 5, I've seen the show this way...
It's like my friend who has always been in some sort of trouble but always managed to make it. He has a ton of problems in his life. Bad debts, arrest warrants, barely hanging onto a job. And everyone knows that one day it's all just going to come down and turn to shit and it's going to happen really fast. He loses his jobs, gets picked up, has creditors suing him and his wife leaves him.
I honestly expected it to fall apart sooner. But I also assumed they would at least try to spread the BS out over this whole season.
Like I said, it's shit and I can admit that. I just think people were naive and were not fucking paying attention to the direction the show was going in. They hadn't answered shit and the answers given had been shit. The season finale is going to be a 2 hour awesome shitfest.
Bottom line, and I guess you agree, is that the show has sunk to a new low and has turned on its audience. Eel's quip that last night's episode resembled the kind of hackneyed writing that a weekday syndicated television show might tout was pretty accurate. Lost sucks, end of story.
And that's not the fault of the audience, that's the fault of the writers.
I completely agree with the bolded. I just can't understand all the dudes on GAF going "what the hell happened?!" and freaking out. I saw it and for a while i was

but then I was

and saying "yeah, about what I expected"
But I guess people were more hopeful that I was.
I won't lie. I hoped they would have a decent answer. I really did. But I prepared myself for the worst.