By Kelly Rausch

“Lost” is like a bad boyfriend. It jerks you around, gives evasive and/or outright confusing responses to reasonable questions, and refuses to provide you any real closure. Just when you think you’ve said goodbye for the last time, it weasels its way back into your life, sneaking in through a crack in your tough-talking façade of strength and independence just like Bill, a special breed of jerk that I dated in college. Before you know it and despite your best intentions, you’re involved again.

With the sixth and final season now airing on ABC, I hope to finally end this toxic relationship.

While I was busy congratulating myself at making such an on-target comparison between “Lost” and the jerky ex-boyfriends of my past, I discovered this is not an original observation. Several other TV writers and bloggers have already used this same metaphor to describe this same show. Despite the Couch Potato’s Texas Press Association award last year, I’m not nearly as clever as I thought (perhaps that’s why I only got second place in column writing, and not first). Maybe I should amend my comparison to include a complaint about “Lost” being promiscuous since the show has simultaneously treated countless others this same way.

Regardless, I have a love/hate relationship with “Lost”. I’ve decided to stop fighting the plot twists and just sit back and enjoy the ride. But there’s a lot I’ve missed during our “breaks,” brief intervals when we were broken up. It’s hard enough to catch up with a normal show. How on Earth does one catch up on a confusing morass like “Lost”?

Perhaps the laziest method for getting up to speed is a half-hearted technique I call the Mother Badger. Named after my own mother’s particularly frustrating habit of badgering me with questions about daytime soap operas on the rare occasions that she watches them.

“Now, who’s that?” she’ll ask, peering at the screen. “Wait, I thought Todd and Blair were together?” “Didn’t Tea get stuck on an island or something? Why is she back?”

She will pepper me with questions for an entire episode. I will spend so much time explaining back story and plot points from years ago that we end up missing most everything that happens on that day’s show.

My husband’s patience being what it is, I cannot rely on him to fill me in on everything I’ve missed on “Lost” by using the Mother Badger method. ABC, however, is more than happy to do the job. They’ve aired series-long recap episodes here and there throughout the series duration to keep fans up to speed and, maybe, even draw in new viewers. ABC.com allows you to watch episodes online, and has written synopses of every episode.

If you want more detail and a little commentary with your episode recaps, check out TelevisionWithoutPity.com. Their recaps are extensive (you might not be done reading all of them before the show ends for good this year), but insightful, funny and well-written. Their viewer forums are also some of the best out there as far as attracting intelligent discussions from people like you.

And of course there’s Wikipedia. For the simplest overview of each season, the “Lost” entry on Wikipedia is a good source. If you still need more detail, each season has its own entry, too. If you want to know how many viewers watched season 5 episode 10, this is the place to look.

“Lost” wraps up its run, reportedly, on May 23. Only three of the final 18 episodes have aired so far, so it’s not too late to catch up before saying a final farewell, a real, lasting farewell, one that won’t be undone by sweet-talking and promises of change. I’ll look back on our time together with a mixture of frustration and fondness. Tune in to ABC Tuesdays at 8 p.m.