Lost

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

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Overview

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. more...

J. Abrams in January 2004 -- after most new series for the 2004 fall season had already been selected and begun production. Working under significant deadline 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. Lost, along with fellow freshman series Desperate Housewives, helped reverse the fortunes of the underperforming ABC. In September 2005, Lost won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series; Abrams was awarded an additional Emmy, for his work as director of the pilot.

The series uniquely tracks two major, interconnected themes: first, the struggles of the forty-eight survivors of the crash as they cope with living together on the strange island, and second, the lives of the fourteen main characters before the crash, retold through flashbacks, thereby greatly expanding the more prosaic role of the typical television "backstory". In most episodes, the primary focus of the action is on a specific character and includes flashbacks from that character's point of view, thus providing insight to the viewer about the character's secrets and motivations. In the first season, the flashbacks also showed why each character was on the doomed plane. The exceptions to this character-based structure are the pilot and season one finale episodes, in which flashbacks from several characters are featured and depiction of action on the island takes a much more general approach. "The Other 48 Days" featured flashbacks after the crash, rather than before the crash. The show is produced by Bad Robot Production and Touchstone Television; the music is composed by Michael Giacchino.

Season Synopses

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

Season 2: 2005-2006

Season two began airing September 21, 2005. Several new characters appear in the new season, including Ana-Lucia Cortez (who previously appeared in the Season 1 finale), 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.

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."
• 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 black-and-white logo of The Dharma Initiative appears on various surfaces in the hatch compound; the same symbol appears on the labels of all the food in a storage room, and on the tail of a shark that circles Michael and Sawyer.
• The frames of Sawyer's glasses are fused from two separate pairs; one of the frames is white and the other is black.
• The polar bear seen in "Pilot: Part 2" was white, and the horse seen in "What Kate Did" was black, as are the boars.
• 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, and will develop a "seminal mystical relationship." See Philosophy.

Parents

Most of the major characters have fathers who are or were either absent, reluctant, or destructive. Thus far, the father issues 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". These characters are not alone, however: Aaron was abandoned by his father (Claire's boyfriend Thomas), Claire's past with her father has been alluded to, Shannon's father is dead, Hurley's father is absent (although he does talk about "Fishing with his old man" in Walkabout), and Sun's father is a particularly destructive force. In contrast to this prevalence of father issues, the only main character whose father seems to have been a positive force is Jin's. In this instance it was Jin's shame at his father's poverty that led him to tell Sun and others that his father was dead. Additionally, though previously absent, Michael is working diligently at being a good father to Walt. Up until now, there has been little to no mention of the fathers of Boone, Sayid, or Charlie.

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