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Lost (2004 TV series)

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This article is about the drama series. For other uses, see Lost (disambiguation).
Lost
File:Lost-season2.jpg
Created byJ.J. Abrams
Damon Lindelof
Jeffrey Lieber
StarringSee Cast and characters below
Country of originUSA
No. of episodes34 (plus two specials) (as of November 30, 2005)
Production
Running timeapprox. 42 minutes
(per episode)
Original release
NetworkABC
ReleaseSeptember 22, 2004 –
present

Lost is an American drama/adventure television series surrounding the survivors of a plane crash on a mysterious tropical island in the South Pacific.

Template:Spoiler

Overview

Lost's development began in January 2004, after former ABC studio executive Lloyd Braun pitched an idea about survivors of a plane crash on a remote and uninhabited island to series' creator J.J. Abrams. Initially hesitant, Abrams warmed to the idea, and eventually collaborated with Damon Lindelof to create the series' unique style and characters. The development of the series was constrained by tight deadlines, as Lost had been commissioned late in the 2004 season's development cycle. Despite the tight schedule, the creative team remained flexible enough that they did not hesitate to modify or create characters to fit actors they wished to cast.

While Lost's pilot episode was criticised for being the most expensive pilot episode in television history, the series became one of the biggest critical and commercial successes of the 2004 television season and, along with fellow new series Desperate Housewives, helped to reverse the flagging fortunes of ABC. Capping its successful first season, Lost won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series and Abrams was awarded an Emmy for his work as director of the pilot in September 2005.

The series is structured on two interconnected elements. The primary focus of the show tracks the struggles of the survivors of the crash as they cope with life on the island. This is supplemented by the second element, which uses flashbacks to highlight choices the main characters have made in the past, as a means of illuminating their actions on the island. In most episodes Lost follows the actions of a specific character, both past and present.

During the first season, flashbacks revealed why each character was on the doomed flight, while also beginning to explore the deeper motivations of the more central characters, a theme developed more fully, and for more characters, in the second season. There are exceptions to this general formula, however. Examples of these deviations in style include the pilot and the season one finale episodes, which featured flashbacks from several characters and a more generalized depiction of action on the island. Also, the season two episode, "The Other 48 Days," did not feature any action prior to the departure of the flight, instead telling the story of the tail-section survivors of the crash from their first moments on the island.

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

Season synopses

Season one: 2004-2005

Main article: Episodes of Lost (Season 1)

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 the motives of the unknown "Others" who may also inhabit the island.

Season two: 2005-2006

Main article: Episodes of Lost (Season 2)

Season two began airing September 21, 2005. Several new characters appear in the new season, including Ana-Lucia Cortez, Libby, and the mysterious Mr. Eko. This season begins 44 days after the crash and also introduces The Dharma Initiative and its benefactor, The Hanso Foundation, which may be responsible for some or all of the strange occurrences on the island.

Story elements

There are several recurring story elements on Lost, which drive central plot points and the development of the survivors as they try to live on the island.

Themes

Parents and children

Most of the major characters have dysfunctional parents who are or were either absent, reluctant, or destructive. The troubling parental relationships of Locke, Jack, Sawyer, Walt, and Kate have been the most well explored, with Locke in particular being the victim of a wretched betrayal in "Deus Ex Machina" by both his natural parents. Jack's broken relationship with his alcoholic surgeon father Christian was the impetus for him to travel to Australia, at the behest of his mother. Kate was forced into a life on the run after the murder of her step-father, which eventually leads to her being captured in the Outback.

These characters are not alone, however:

  • Claire's son, Aaron, was abandoned by her boyfriend, and she was prepared to give her unborn child up for adoption;
  • Michael was absent as a father for most of Walt's life, and it was the death of Walt's mother that reconnects Michael with his son;
  • Shannon's father died in a car accident, leaving everything to her stepmother in his will;
  • Sun's father is a gangster, who led Jin into a similar life;
  • Jin's own shame at his fisherman father's poverty and upbringing incited him to tell Sun and her family that his father is dead.
  • Ana Lucia's mother was her police captain, a situation comparable to Jack and his father. While responding to a robbery call, a pregnant Ana Lucia was shot, and lost her child.


Symbols and motifs

Black and white

The colors black and white, which traditionally reflect good or positive forces versus evil or negative forces, have been featured a number of times, often brought together, particularly in regard 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." Backgammon is played on the island at various points.
  • 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, and the cards he uses for playing are black-and-white.
  • The Dharma Initiative logo is black-and-white.
  • The frames of Sawyer's glasses are fused from two separate pairs: one white, the other black.
  • In the final scene of "Collision," Jack and Ana Lucia are facing each other, with Jack wearing a white shirt and Ana Lucia wearing a black shirt.
  • Rose, a survivor from the mid-section of the plane, is black, while her husband, Bernard, who survived in the tail section, is white.
  • The show's most spiritual characters, Locke and Eko, are white and black respectively.

Numbers

The number sequence 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 is a recurring and significant story element. This string of numbers was broadcast from the Island's radio transmitter, and it was this message that drew Rousseau's expedition to the island. Although she later changed the message after the deaths of her team, the numbers had also been heard by others, eventually making their way to Hurley, who used them to win the lottery. However, after his win, a series of misfortunes began to happen to those around Hurley, leading him to believe the numbers are cursed. His search for answers led him to Australia and, through the crash, to the island itself, where he ultimately discovers the numbers engraved on the hatch. Inside the bunker, the same numbers appear on the occupant's medicine bottles, and make up a code that must be entered into the computer. The sum of these six numbers, 108, has also become significant in connection to the Dharma Initiative. This number appears on a mural inside the Initiative's Station Three, and the full sequence of numbers must be entered into the computer every 108 minutes. These numbers also frequently appear individually throughout the lives of the survivors, both before and after the crash.

Character names

The nature of the show is often personified through the names of characters on the show, in particular through the resemblence between the names of characters and famous philosophers or scientists. While the characters themselves often hold similar ideals to their eponyms, on the whole, the theories of the philosphers bear a distinct relationship to the themes and motifs of the show.

  • John Locke and Danielle Rousseau are both named for famous social contract philosophers who dealt with the relationship between nature and civilization. Locke shares his name with English philosopher John Locke, who believed that in a natural state, all men had equal rights to punish transgressors; to ensure fair judgment for all, governments were formed to better administrate the laws. He believed all men were born with a tabula rasa or blank slate (also the name of an episode in Season 1). The tabula rasa theory claims humans are born without any innate knowledge or experience, and their identity is a product of their decisions and choices in life.
  • Danielle Rousseau is named for the Franco-Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that man is born weak and ignorant, but virtuous nonetheless. Only after man develops society does he become wicked. His theory of the Noble Savage hypothesized that a child raised in the wilderness independent of human society and culture would be an objectively superior person with regards to a universal set of ethics.
  • Locke's father, Anthony Cooper, was named for Lord Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the real-world John Locke's political mentor and patron.
  • Boone Carlyle shares his name with Thomas Carlyle, a philosopher who spoke of the organization and structure of society and their leaders, who he proclaimed were inevitably flawed.
  • Boone and Sawyer are named after famous "outdoorsmen" from, respectively, American history and literature.

Literary references

Literary works are frequently displayed or referenced within Lost:

Eyes

Many episodes of Lost have opened with a closeup shot on a character's eye, in most cases the character whose flashbacks would be featured in that episode.

The Dharma Initiative logos

The Dharma Initiative logos resemble the Taoist symbol known as the Bagua, and also the borders have associations with the trigrams of the Chinese philosophy I-Ching. This logo is prevalent across the island, appearing in the bunkers and most of their contents as well as on the tail of the shark that circles Michael and Sawyer in "Adrift".

Fan speculation

Lost's mythology is as complex as that of other shows of a similar nature, such as The X-Files, Twin Peaks, and Babylon 5. This complexity, and the unresolved questions it spawns, have led to rampant speculation and theorizing among fans, mainly concerning the nature of the island, the origins of the "security system" and the Others, the meaning of the numbers and the reasons for both the crash and the survival of some passengers. Several of the more common fan theories have been discussed and dismissed by the producers, including:


Cast and characters

Main article: Characters of Lost

Lost in other media

In addition to the television series, the characters and setting of Lost have appeared in the following official tie-ins:

  • A diary by a survivor was incorporated into the official ABC web site for the show.
  • The interactive back-stories of several characters are included in Lost Untold, a section on the Channel 4 Lost website.
  • The book, Lost: Endangered Species by Cathy Hapka was released in 2005. Another tie-in novel by Hapka, Lost: Secret Identity, is scheduled for release in January, 2006 and a third, Lost: Signs of Life by Frank Thompson, will be released in March, 2006.
  • In early 2006, Verizon Wireless will distribute the Lost Video Diaries to its subscribers via its V-Cast system. Each video diary will run several minutes and cover events not seen in the television episodes.
  • Hyperion Books will be publishing a metafictional book entitled Bad Twin, written by fictional author Gary Troup who was a passenger of Oceanic Flight 815.

Awards

Note: Awards won are not listed under nominations.

Wins

Emmys:

  • Best Television Series - Drama (2005)
  • Best Director of a Television Series - Drama, Pilot Part 1 & 2 J.J. Abrams (2005)
  • Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series - April Webster, Mandy Sherman, Alyssa Weisberg, Veronica Collins (2005)
  • Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series - Mary Jo Markey (2005)
  • Outstanding Music Composition for a Series - Michael Giacchino (2005)
  • Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series - Pilot: Kevin Blank, Mitch Suskin, et al. (2005)

Nominations

Emmys:

Golden Globes:

  • Best Television Series - Drama (2005)
  • Best Television Series - Drama (2006)
  • Best Actor in a Television Series - Drama Matthew Fox (2006)
  • Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series - Drama Naveen Andrews (2006)

Writers Guild of America:

  • Outstanding Acheivement in Writing - Dramatic Series (2005)

Trivia

The book DisneyWar briefly covers some aspects the conception and production of Lost. According to DisneyWar, Michael Eisner, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company at the time, disliked the concept for the show. Lloyd Braun boldly proceded with the production of the show but was later fired. In an interview with James B. Stewart, Eisner said a week after the Lost debut, "Lost is terrible. The pilot was two hours; it was broken into two one-hour episodes. Then the show goes off a cliff. There's no more plane crash! Who cares about these people on a desert island?"

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Lost.
Official tie-in sites
Production related sites
Network sites
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