Lost (2004 television series)

Lost is an American drama/adventure television series set in the aftermath of a plane crash on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific. The series uniquely tracks two major, interconnected themes: first, the struggles of the 48 survivors of the crash as they cope with living together on the strange island and second, the lives of the 14 main characters before the crash, retold through flashbacks.

The series was developed exclusively by ABC: former studio executive Lloyd Braun pitched an idea about a plane crashing on a remote island to series creator J.J. Abrams in January 2004, after most of the new series for the 2004 fall season had already been selected and begun production. Under significant time pressure from the start, Abrams collaborated with Damon Lindelof to create the show's unique style and characters, occasionally even creating characters to fit an actor they wished to cast. From this difficult beginning, which included the filming of the most expensive pilot in television history, came one of the biggest critical and commercial successes of the 2004 television season, and Lost, along with fellow freshman series Desperate Housewives, helped reverse the fortunes of the underperforming ABC.

The show is produced by Bad Robot Production and Touchstone Television. The music is composed by Michael Giacchino.

Cast & characters

Main article at Characters of Lost.

Episodes

Main article, containing episode summaries, at Episodes of Lost.

Season 1: 2004–2005

A plane crash strands the surviving passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 on a seemingly deserted tropical island, forcing the group of strangers to work together to stay alive. However, their survival may also ultimately depend on unraveling the mysteries of the island, including the contents of a hatch buried in the ground, the origins of an enormous creature that roams the jungle, and motives of the unknown "others" who may also inhabit the island.

Notes and Trivia

The Pilot

• Filmed on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, USA. This has, however, proven expensive, and there was speculation during the first season about moving the taping to offset the high cost of filming. However, it was eventually announced that the second season of Lost, which ABC ordered on April 5, 2005, will continue production in Hawaii.
• The pilot episode was the most expensive in history, exceeding $11 million for the two-hour series opener. Over $1 million of that was to purchase, chop, and ship the Lockheed L-1011 jumbo jet pieces to Hawaii.
• J.J. Abrams has used Greg Grunberg, childhood friend and frequent collaborator, as an actor and good luck charm in Abrams' other creations, Felicity and Alias. He appears in Lost as the pilot of Flight 815.

Themes

• Counting the pilot episode as a single story, the first five successive episodes begin with a close-up of someone's eye opening. The eye close-up motif resumed later on in the season. Except for the pilot, each episode then focuses on that character and includes flashbacks from that character's point of view, explaining why they were on the plane and providing insight to the viewer about the character's secrets and motivations.
• Various strange and mysterious things happen during the show, and it is unclear whether the show is going to explain them using science fiction, mysticism or some other approach. Examples include the characters being attacked by (and killing) a polar bear, which would normally be unable to survive the tropical heat; former paraplegic John Locke regaining the use of his legs; the presence of some sort of creature that knocks down trees as it moves. Additionally, a set of numbers have been revealed (in the episode "Numbers") which Hurley believes are "cursed" and keep reappearing in unusual ways, indicating some sort of numerology at work.
• The November 17, 2004, issue of USA Today listed several fan theories as to the nature of the show: that the characters are in purgatory, that Locke is working for the genetic engineers and social scientists using the island as an experiment, and that the island is a sort of dreamworld Fantasy Island. The December 3, 2004 issue of Entertainment Weekly touched upon some of those theories and a few more: that a catastrophe has killed everyone on the planet except for the islanders; that aliens crashed the plane and have placed the survivors in some kind of habitat; and that all the events exist in a dream had by the crash's sole survivor (possibly Jack). However, it should be noted that the latter two EW theories were deemed fairly implausible by members of the cast and crew.
  • In a later interview on Lost.tv, Damon Lindelof said "Here's something that it is NOT... This is not a fictional reality that is playing out in someone's brain. Like I've heard that they're all different personalities inside Locke, or something. To this I say, "Yes. I saw 'Identity,' too. And I did not like it." Also, according to Zap2It, during a recent cast and crew forum at the William S. Paley Television Festival, co-creator J. J. Abrams ruled out the purgatory theory.

Another well thought of theory yet to hit magazines is the shos possible relation to Goldings Lord Of The Flies. The relations are the id (possibly Sawyer), ego (Jack), and superego (Locke). Along with the intellect, the French Woman. Along with the two different beasts, the plane crash, and the two different groups (the unknown savages, and the survivors), the relations go on and on.

• Sawyer was initially seen reading Boone's copy of Watership Down by Richard Adams, which is about a warren of rabbits who escaped from certain death, and battle against another more sinister warren in order to find peace. Sawyer says that the book washed up on shore, although Boone believed it had been stolen. In "Numbers", Sawyer moved on to reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, a science fiction/fantasy novel about three children who travel through time to rescue a father from an impending evil force. Also, the precocious Walt is seen reading a spanish translation of issue #1 of the comic book mini-series Green Lantern/Flash: Faster Friends, in which an alien spacecraft has fallen to Earth, and the citizens of Earth are punished for attacking the alien without first verifying the visitor's intentions; which were actually peaceful in nature; several of the events from the comic book have come to pass, including the bizarre appearance of a polar bear.
• The colors black and white, which traditionally reflect good or positive forces versus evil or negative forces, have featured a number times, particularly in regards to John Locke. In "Pilot", Locke shows Walt a black and a white backgammon piece and says "two players, two sides, one is light, one is dark." In "House of the Rising Sun," Jack finds a pouch on a pair of mummified corpses, nicknamed "Adam and Eve" by the survivors, containing one white stone and one black stone, which he then hides from Locke. In the opening sequence of "Raised by Another", Claire has a nightmare in which Locke has one black eyeball and one white eyeball. In "Deus Ex Machina", a pair of mismatched eyeglasses that Jack and Sayid construct for Sawyer to wear have black rims on one side and white rims on the other side.

The Island

• Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 was en route from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles, California in the United States. It carried passengers from those countries as well as the United Kingdom, Iraq and South Korea, and possibly others. Before the crash, the plane ran into trouble and tried to change course for Fiji. As far as the characters can tell, they are thousands of miles off-course and, presumably, no-one knows where to look for them.
• In "Hearts and Minds" Locke gives his compass to Sayid, who figures it must be faulty because its magnetic north does not align with true north. There are certain geographic locations where this is true (due to large deposits of ore); it is unclear if the compass is just broken or if it is due to the location of the island.
• Furthermore, when Boone tried to send a Mayday radio message in "Deus Ex Machina", he identified himself as a survivor of Oceanic Flight 815, but a garbled voice on the radio stated, in a surprised tone, that "there were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815" (according to the closed-captioning). This would help explain the absence of a search and rescue mission. Why outsiders believe there were no survivors, and whether or not Boone may have changed their opinion, remains to be seen.
  • It is important to note, however, that this single line has caused considerable debate. Some people have claimed that the voice on the radio says "we're the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815", even though the closed-captions do not support this. The problem rests with the audio of the line itself. In the episode, as originally aired, the voice seems to say "there were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815." Later, in a recap video clip on the ABC.com website posted on April 1st (April's fools day) and in subsequent show previews on the ABC network, the audio clearly says "we're the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815." However, the audio from ABC seems to have been reedited and possibly redubbed, as the voice in the previews sounds markedly different from that heard in the episode. Consequently, the question of what the voice on the radio actually said is currently a matter of some debate among Lost fans.
  • Regardless of what was said, Boone's radio conversation in "Deus Ex Machina" makes clear that there is at least one person within the radio's range who can communicate over radio. It is unknown whether this transmission came from survivors from the tail-end of the plane, a member of "The Others," or some one else, since the radio's range in not known.
• At least 16 years ago, Danielle Rousseau was on a ship that ran aground on the island at least "three days out" from Tahiti. This would ostensibly indicate that the the island is in the southeastern Pacific, near French Polynesia.

The Numbers

• In the episode "Numbers," 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, sometimes referred to as "Hurley's numbers" by fans, are revealed to be significant. The transmitter on the island apparently had broadcast the numbers as far back as World War II; the message also drew Rousseau's expedition to the island, and she later changed the message after the deaths of her team. The numbers are also engraved on the hatch, and Hurley won the lottery using them. After a string of misfortunes happening to those around him after winning the lottery, Hurley comes to believe the numbers are cursed. His search for answers leads him to Australia and, eventually, through the crash, to the original source of the numbers, the island itself. Major references or connections to these numbers include:
  • 4:
    • Shannon asks for a 4 letter word for "I don't care" in "Walkabout"
    • Locke reveals he's had leg problems for 4 years in "Walkabout"
  • 8:
    • Months that Claire is pregnant on day of crash
    • Months between Ray Mullen's wife dying, and Kate showing up on his farm
    • Number of months Locke has been talking to Helen in "Walkabout"
    • Number of weeks Charlie has booked for DriveShaft's comeback tour opening for MeatCoat
    • Number of hours Kate spent with her dad one day tracking in the woods
    • TV Station that interviews Hurley is KSVU-8 (channel 8) in "Numbers"
    • Number of people that died in Hurley 's shoe factory fire in Canada in "Numbers"
    • Kilometers from secretary of environment's house to riverbank where Jin is to dump car in "...In Translation"
    • Number of days Claire was missing when Ethan took her
    • Age of Shannon when parent remarried
  • 15:
    • When Kate is found in the sheep pen in "Tabula Rasa", he says the nearest town is 15 km away
    • In the game of backgammon, which appears in several episodes, each side begins with 15 pieces
    • The number of years since Kate made the time capsule tape with her friend Tom in "Born to Run"
  • 16:
    • The backgammon die in "Pilot, part 2" is showing 16
    • Jack says he needs to land in LAX in 16 hours in "White Rabbit"
    • The number of years Danielle has been stranded on the island, and the number of years the distress call has been playing.
    • Number of weeks the lottery had gone without a winner before Hurley wins in "Numbers"
  • 23:
    • On the flight, Jack and Rose are sitting in row 23.
    • Kate's reward is 23 thousand dollars in "Tabula Rasa"
    • Jack says 46 people need to drink 1/2 gallon a day each, which makes 23 gallons of water to take to the beach each day in "House of the Rising Sun"
  • 42:
    • The number of circles on a game of Connect Four, which Lenny is playing in "Numbers"
• There have been references to other numbers besides this string of six.
  • The most prominent has been 815, which is a concatenation of two of the hatch numbers, 8 and 15.
    • The flight number
    • In "Whatever the Case May Be," Kate's objective in the bank robbery is to get access to safe deposit box #815
    • In "Homecoming," Charlie is doing a sales pitch for the model C815 copier
    • Locke points out aisles 8 & 15 to his mother in "Deus ex Machina"
    • There were statues of the Virgin Mary, whose Feast of Assumption is celebrated on August 15 (the fifteenth day of the eighth month), on the plane found by Boone and Locke in "Deus ex Machina"
    • August 15 is also the date on which Kate and her friend Tom made their time capsule audio recording in 1989 in "Born to Run".
    • In an interesting coincidence, unrelated to the numbers' meaning on the show, several of the male members of the cast appeared on the cover of the April 15, 2005 (4/15) issue of Entertainment Weekly, which happened to be issue number 815 of that magazine.
  • Also, the numbers 8 and 4 feature prominently in chinese characters on a shirt that Boone wore frequently; it was also the shirt he wore in Locke's vision, and the shirt he was wearing at the time of his fall and death.
• It is important to note that the numbers could be significant to the overall storyline, or have some other purpose. One such purpose is an inside joke, similar to the use of A113 in many animated films. Another purpose is that the numbers are a writer's "trademark," as happens another JJ Abrams series, Alias. This series has many references to the number 47, which continues a long tradition in television writing, begun with Star Trek.

The Survivors

• As far as we know, one dog and 50 humans survived the plane crash. To date, however, there have been a series of events that have changed the number of survivors, and, at present, there are 45 humans and one dog remaining.
  • Death: A man is sucked into a spinning jet engine in "Pilot"
  • Count: Jack says "at least 48" to the co-pilot in "Pilot"
  • Death: The co-pilot is killed by the creature roaming the island in "Pilot"
  • Death: The US Marshal is killed in a "mercy killing" at the end of "Tabula Rasa"
  • Death: A woman named Joanna drowns at the beginning of "White Rabbit"
  • Count: Jack says "There were 47 of us..." in the episode "White Rabbit"
  • Count: Hurley says "... the names of everyone who survived, all 46 of us." at the end of "Raised by Another"
  • Death: Scott Jackson is killed by Ethan Rom in "Homecoming"
  • Birth: Claire's baby is born in "Do No Harm".
  • Death: Boone dies from various internal injuries in "Do No Harm".

• Rose believes that her husband, Bernard, who was in the rear of the plane when it broke off in flight, is still alive.
• All of the human survivors are adults except for Walt (Michael's son) and Claire's baby. The one canine survivor is Vincent, Walt's dog.
• At least two other people were already on the island, alive, at the time of the crash. Both are introduced in "Solitary". First is Danielle Rousseau, the Frenchwoman responsible for the distress call heard in "Pilot". Second is Ethan Rom, who is first seen hunting with Locke as one of the survivors. However, in "Raised by Another", Hurley discovers that Ethan is not one of the survivors of the plane crash.

Miscellany

• John Locke and Rousseau were both famous social contract philosophers both theorised a civilisation prior to the creation of state called the state of nature.
• The role of Hurley was created specifically for Jorge Garcia.
• The role of Sun was created specifically for Yoon-Jin Kim, who had originally auditioned for the role of Kate. Jin was also created as Sun's husband.
• Although they share the same last name, Yoon-Jin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim are in no way related.
• At one point, producers considered having Michael Keaton play Jack in the pilot episode, in which he would have been killed.
• Drive Shaft's hit song "You All Everybody" took its name from an audience member's rant on The Maury Povich Show. Singer-songwriter Jude performed the version heard in "The Moth"; it also can be heard in the background during a party scene in the Alias episode "The Awful Truth".
• Claire and Hurley are never seen on the plane. Originally, Claire was to die in the first episode--but it was later decided that they needed to recast to have an actress play the character all the way through.

See also

• Characters of Lost
• Episodes of Lost

External links

• Lost (2004-present) at the Internet Movie Database
• ABC's Lost homepage; includes Flash game based on the show
• CTV's Lost homepage
• The Fuselage, forum sponsored by J.J. Abrams and the show's creative team
• Lost at TV Tome
• Television Without Pity (show recaps and discussion)
• DAH TV – Lost (episode and character information)
• Lost Links Everything 'Lost'
• Lost-Media
• Radio-Canada's Lost homepage
• Fan site
• Lost ... stuff, Timelines, Numbers, Survivor Count, Survivor Connections
• Google Video index for Lost