L & S

“ Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. ” - - - Henry Fielding

In any drama, the ups and downs of a romantic relationship is good fodder for a story. 

Likewise, scandal, something morally or legally wrong, can juice a story line.

In the criss-cross story tangents of LOST, love and scandal rarely intersected in any meaningful way.

You did have traditional cardboard love story cut-outs: Jin and Sun's up and down marriage; Bernard's devotion to his ill wife, Rose.

You even had the addict-stalker-friend-companion evolution of the Charlie and Claire dynamic trying to answer the question: what is family?

You had the fairy tale miracle of Jack saving Sarah's life, then marrying his most successful patient. But that story ended badly in a jealous soaked divorce. The miracle was not the surgery, but why they even married in the first place. A promise to make her walk again was not a matrimony proposal.

 You had the school yard love triangle mess that was Jack-Kate-Sawyer. It is clear that Kate used her charm to be the center of attention in order to control her situation. What is unclear whether Kate could have been loyal to any one man; she was a runner - - - a person who took no responsibility for her actions. She ran away from commitment (and her Florida marriage); and she also ran away from Jack in the O6 story arc. Why Kate wound up with Jack is a matter of convenience over romantic story breakthroughs.

The love triangle itself could have been a scandal, but even that ping-pong tourney of affection was not as sizzling as a wild boar steak. For the island did not have a real moral compass in which to judge anyone's behavior, let alone punish it.

Even though most characters "found" someone to be in the sideways church, one cannot conclude that LOST was a web of interesting or compelling love stories.