Lost: Of course they're making it up as they go along, you fools.

Why should that be surprising? From an interview with the Script Coordinator on Lost, Gregg Nations:

"I was a fan of Lost to begin with, so I was up to speed on all of the first season episodes. However, watching the show as a fan and watching the show as a script coordinator are two different things. I went back and read every script and re-watched every episode. There had been no character bibles or island/flashback timelines created, so I created them, taking notes as I read the scripts and watched the episodes. I realized that we had a lot of characters and a lot of specifics about each character to track, so I created the bibles and timelines with that in mind," he explained.

Listen to what this man is saying. There were no character bibles, and no timeline, until the beginning of the second season. People talk about the human drama on Lost, but let's say it again: there isn't any. There's a huge quantity of plot, and a set of paper cutouts masquerading as human beings. There's a half-baked 'conspiracy' or 'mythology' for fans to discuss amongst themselves. But Lost isn't meaningful drama; it's a premise, a backstory, and the onerous requirement to actually move the story forward. The revelations illuminate the plot, not the people. The third season started relatively strongly - anything would have been preferable to the pointless involution of Season Two - but let's stop deluding ourselves: Lost might be enjoyable adventure pabulum, but talking about it in the same breath as the great genre-expanding dramas of the last several years (Galactica, Firefly, Deadwood, and so excitedly forth) is insulting to the writers who've actually laboured to depict deep human relationships and textured societies. Whedon, Moore, and Milch create worlds and do justice to human spirits.

Abrams and Lindelof wrote a logline, and got a full year of excitement out of it.

There's a difference.