Losing its way?

I don't want to be premature, but last night Lost seemed to lose it's way a bit. Until this point, I have found this show consistently creative and full of surprises.
SPOILERS
I knew someone was going to die last night and I knew it was going to be a woman. I had also read a lot of guesses that it would be Shannon. When Sayid told Shannon he loved her - I thought, hmmm it's not going to be Shannon - that would be too cheesy for this show to do - what an old tired plot device. But, there were only about two minutes to go, so I cringed inwardly and waited. And then they did it - they stooped to that low level of sensationalism - oh no, he just said he would never leave her and then she gets shot, how sad, how shocking - blah!
Try - how tired, how boring.
There were also spoilers about who killed her - that it would be another woman and it would be shocking. It was a woman, but it was hardly shocking that the chick who is a tad angry and had a loaded gun ended up killing Shannon - shocking would have been Sun killing her in a grief-filled rage, or Claire suffering from post partum and accidentally pushing Shannon off a cliff - something! But not this.
On the whole other hand though - I may be being rash. I am going to have to wait it out and see what comes of this, but i am feeling a definite twinge of disappointment in a writing team that had set the bar a lot higher than what they delivered on last night.
Take care,
V