I think there's another potential explanation for "nerdfotainment."

When recording music became possible and common, the style of music changed. First, composers started creating more complex and subtle works, that depended less on the listener following the work on the first try, because listeners could get a recording of the work and listen to it over and over. Second, the recording became the most important thing, where previously the score or the tune had been.

The same thing is happening with Lost: because we have the technology to back up to the second scene before the credits and watch it in single-frame-advance mode, because we have the entire archive of the TV show so we can pull out the second episode of season 2 to see if that's the same strange marking on the whatsit that the whoosit had on its underside, the writers of the TV show don't need to make sure we see every detail the first time.

My only real concern with Lost -- I'm all the way through the second season on DVD, having stopped Tivoing it when ABC started playing games and starting it at X:59 and making it last until x:01 to prevent me from Tivoing shows on other networks, so I'm a bit behind -- is that there may be no *there* there. This is what happened with The X Files: every time things started to slow down, Carter & company threw in another twist in the conspiracy, until by the end of the show it was clear he had no idea where he was going with it.