"Lost" Pilot: Part 1 (2004)

User Rating:

9.3/10   

Director:

J.J. Abrams

Writers:

Jeffrey Lieber (story) and
J.J. Abrams (story) ...

TV Series:

"Lost" (2004)

Original Air Date:

22 September 2004 (Season 1, Episode 1)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Fantasy | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Plot:

Forty-eight survivors of an airline flight originating from Australia, bound for the U.S., which crash-lands onto an unknown island 1000 miles off course, struggle to figure out a way to survive, why trying to find a way to be rescued.

Plot Keywords:

Mysterious Plane Crash | Labrador Retriever | Swimming In Underwear | Mysterious Island | Sucked Into Jet Engine

Cast

Naveen Andrews	...	Sayid Jarrah
Emilie de Ravin	...	Claire Littleton
Matthew Fox	...	Jack Shephard
Jorge Garcia	...	Hugo 'Hurley' Reyes
Maggie Grace	...	Shannon Rutherford
Josh Holloway	...	James 'Sawyer' Ford
Malcolm David Kelley	...	Walt Lloyd
Daniel Dae Kim	...	Jin Kwon
Yunjin Kim	...	Sun Kwon
Evangeline Lilly	...	Kate Austen
Dominic Monaghan	...	Charlie Pace
Terry O'Quinn	...	John Locke
Harold Perrineau	...	Michael Dawson
Ian Somerhalder	...	Boone Carlyle
Fredric Lehne	...	Marshal Edward Mars (as Fredric Lane)

Runtime:

42 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Korean

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

UK:15 | Portugal:M/12 | USA:TV-14 | Venezuela:PG-13 (DVD rating)

Filming Locations:

O'ahu, Hawaii, USA

Company:

Bad Robot

Trivia:

Boone frequently wears a t-shirt with Chinese characters meaning 84, which are two of the numbers that frequently appear throughout the show.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When the scene where the engine explodes is slowed down a black object can be seen flying down and hitting the engine. While some fans believed that this may have been the Monster destroying the engine, the producers confirmed that it is merely a CGI rendering error and that what was meant to be debris flying away from the exploding engine instead became an object hitting it.

Quotes:

Kate: You don't seem afraid at all. I don't understand that.

Movie Connections:

References The Godfather (1972)

"How does something like this happen?"

One of the most amusing special features on the DVD box set of Lost's first season is the Q & A with the cast, in which Harold Perrineau reveals no one really knew what the show was about when they first auditioned. They just went for it because they heard J.J. Abrams, still benefiting from the success of Alias, was involved as a co-creator and executive producer (plus, he won an Emmy for directing the pilot). It's probably the same thing that happened when people watched the show for the first time: they didn't quite know what to expect, but trusted Abrams to deliver something special. And boy, did he deliver.

The first episode of Lost is remarkable for one reason: no matter how much time has passed since it originally aired, it still impresses. Then again, how many writers could get away with pitching a series about a group of people who survive a plane crash and end up on a desert island? Considering America was still recovering from 9/11, such a scenario was risky. Which is why Abrams added that extra ingredient, which makes these first 40 minutes of the show every bit as thrilling as all that has come after-wards: the island ain't normal. Okay, so that fact is shown to a minimum in the first half of the pilot, but there's a definite sense of bizarre mystery to the misadventures the stranded passengers of the ill-fated Oceanic Fight 815 must face.

The first episode focuses mainly on three characters: Jack Shepard (Matthew Fox), who is revealed to be a doctor in the show's trademark flashback sequences, Kate Austen (Evageline Lilly), the first person he encounters on the island, and Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan), a has-been rock star who joins them in order to kill time. We get a glimpse of the other survivors as well, especially in another flashback which depicts part of the actual crash (the plane went off course while flying from Sydney to Los Angeles).

The complicate time structure is, by itself, a very good reason to watch the series: whereas most mainstream shows, both past and present, insist on linearity, Abrams and Damon Lindelof's willingness to trust the audience to connect the dots, reminiscent of Chris Carter's pact with viewers regarding the mythology arc of The X-Files, gives the program a sense of real, unpretentious intelligence. The huge ensemble cast is also very good, and it is to Abrams' eternal credit that he manages to give everyone (even Terry O' Quinn, who has about a minute of screen time in the first part of the pilot) at least one attention-worthy moment over the course of 40 minutes.

And then, last but not least, we have the suspense, the Twin Peaks-like questions which pile up and spend a lot of time unanswered. "Guys, how does something like this happen?" one character asks regarding the final events of Part 1. Referring to the series, the answer is deceptively simple: it just does.