One of my personality quirks is that I tend to be too much of a loyalist. I don't easily drop my fandom of something, and I give a lot of grace - perhaps too much so - for subpar efforts and mistakes. This might explain why I'm still a Warriors fan. Combined with being a completist, I've "stuck it out to the bitter end" on various things that, in retrospect, weren't entirely satisfying.
Having been a fan of Abrams' Alias, I was fully aware that Lost could very well fall into the same trap - come up with intriguing mysteries without any solutions, ending on a hand-wavey whimper and no sense of resolution. However, after the creators of Lost were able to negotiate an end date to the show, and seasons 3-5 were more tightly plotted, I had a bit more hope.
How did I feel after the finale 2 weeks ago? The best way to describe it would probably be to draw a contrast with another sci-fi story - the Matrix series. In that trilogy, they started with a tightly plotted action movie with a mythology that wasn't exactly original, but was pretty intriguing and had a sense of closure. When the movie succeeded at the box office and the creators were contracted to make 2 more movies, they proceeded to inflate the mythology way too big in the 2nd movie (remember the conversation with Colonel Sanders at the end?), and eventually weren't able to resolve all the big mysteries in a very clear way, so ended with an unsatisfying conclusion.
The reason why I left the 3rd Matrix movie with a bad taste in my mouth was because while the action was good, the mythology ended up being a dud of sorts, and I didn't care enough about the characters to ultimately redeem the trilogy (I figure you need to be positive on at least 2 out of those 3 areas for sci-fi/mystery to consider it a success).
Contrasting this with Lost: while ultimately the mythology ended up falling prey to over-inflation and leading to a personal sense of dissatisfaction at the end of the entire series due to unanswered questions, the fact remained that I cared about the people. After 6 seasons of character development, drama, tragedy, flashbacks and flashforwards, I genuinely wanted to see closure for the people, and for better or worse, that's what we got. As mentioned elsewhere on the interwebs - it was basically an emotionally satisfying cop-out.
I am kind of disappointed at the number of unanswered questions, but listening to interviews with the creators and writers, I can understand some of the reasons - needing to be set up for an unknown number of seasons, actors leaving the show (they had a big plotline planned for Mr. Eko), and other uncontrolled circumstances can play havoc with your story. Anyway, for the real Lost geeks, here are a few links I've found chronicling the unanswered questions, as well as one guy's stab at coming up with reasonable speculation for answers that I found pretty sensible.
"All the Lost Mysteries - Answers, Reasonable Conjectures, Nitpicks, and Missed Opportunities" - well worth the time to read
"The Idiot's Guide to Lost":
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with_kristin/b183078_idiots_guide_lost.html
"Unannswered Questions in Video Format"
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291
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