Retiring... Sort Of

In case anyone cares, last week I came to the difficult decision that I no longer had time in my life to continue writing weekly recaps of the television show "Lost" for Matt Zoller Seitz's website. I'd been on the fence about the assignment (which typically took anywhere from four to six agonizing hours every Wednesday night) but because of the strike-shortened season reducing the number of episodes to 8 (by contrast I did 22 of them last year) I figured I could make it work.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending how you look at it, the real world intervened. I'm going to be working on an independent film starting in early February in a position that requires a lot of responsibility and a lot of time. Complicating matters further, the entire film is being shot at night. This would force me to miss, at bare minimum 1/4 of the season due to work, making the whole endeavor kind of pointless. I don't feel good about bailing on Matt on such short notice but since I let him know last week I feel like I've moved out from underneath a dark cloud. The "Lost" gig was only made possibly due to a highly dysfunctional and not terribly productive work schedule. That it's finally beginning to resemble that of my contemporaries is a good thing even if it does mean I'll be out till 6am for a couple of week. Furthermore, the show moved to Thursday nights, the one night of the week where am I almost guaranteed to have plans. So hooray for personal freedom.

I have full confidence that Matt will be able to corral someone into taking over the position. God knows when I was holding court enough people came out of the woodworks convinced they knew more than I did. I wish whomever takes the job a ton of luck. It's a fun show to dissect but not an easy one. The fact that the network clearly plays favorites with who they do and do not send screeners to will only complicate the matter further. And for those who absolutely have to read my input, I'll no doubt chime in from time to time in the comments section over at the House. After all, just because I don't want the job anymore doesn't mean I think anyone can do it as well as I did.