Lost - Trapped by its own premise?

MSNBC had an article today about how the mystery of Lost detracts from the characters. While I don't necessarily agree that this is the case, I do agree that Lost could, like it's characters, become trapped on the island. Lost is a show that could benefit from the limited-run series concept. The Prisoner was a short-run British series that was meant to be so. It had a beginning (the first time Number 6 wakes up in the village), a number of episodes where he tries to escape and/or find out who is holding him there, and a conclusion where he ultimately finds out who the mysterious Number 1 is (some other questions, many regarding the sanity of the writers, are raised, but it concludes the arc of the series). If Lost started out knowing what the island was with a plan of eventually revealing the island's secrets, it might be more satisfactory. As it is, the viewer knows they will never find out what is going on because to reveal all would mean to end the show. Even if you rescued the survivors from the island and continued to follow them as they returned to their lives, not only would you change the nature of the show, you would eliminate a whole slew of possibilities about the nature of the island including the idea that the survivors are really dead and the island is some kind of afterlife. If you change the show that much, you might as well end it and call the next season a spin-off show.

If the survivors on Lost gave up on rescue and started to build a society - a more complex society with rules other than "follow Jack" - with the mysteries of the island only occasionally intruding, the series could last much longer than it will at this pace. But then you remove the sense of urgency that the heart beat at the end of each episode punctuates. Thump-thump. Oh, Lost, whatever shall we do with you?