Lost

Lost remains one of television's most groundbreaking shows and as such in preparation to write my own I started studying the season series bible. Now we can all talk about how bad the show ended and we will as part of me picking up this show as a project is to determine the exact moment it went downhill. Now I have my current theory and the timeline somewhat lines up but let's get into it.

In the season 1 series bible it is clear that the writers know what story they want to tell as well as just being super passionate about it. They lay out their plan for the first season but it's very clear that they have more in store. I would say by the end of the first season these writers knew what season 2, 3 and 4 would entail. The foreshadowing and setup done in season 1 is so so well done. But really what season 1 was an establishment of character and relationships

My full breakdown of each character and their major moments will be a pdf on my website but for now I will just hit the highlights. Kate is for obvious reasons if you know me my favorite character. I think her role on the island is really interesting. Though they don’t get more screen time together until later, her and Sun are pretty close and her relationships with both Sawyer and Jack are so incredibly different and it's great. Her and Sawyer each have this darker, criminally based past. They’ve both suffered great loss and have made it through life on their own. They are both very alone type people. I would say the bond between Kate and Jack is that he takes on the more noble act as he tries to be the leader and constantly helps the other survivors even when he has no business doing so. But I think Kate is drawn to that because she has a little of that in her too. She is a kind person who wants what's best for the most people.

I love that the show gives us enough background into these characters to get a sense of who they are and be interested in their histories but not enough to actually tell us the whole story. We know Kate is a criminal on the run and that she got someone killed but we don’t know any more than that. We know Sawyer took the name of the man that got his parents killed and then became a con man himself. We know Jack got married and had an alcoholic father but there is so much more to their stories that we haven’t touched yet.

Our next cluster of characters is Boone, Shannon and Sayid. Now Shannon and Sayid eventually begin a romantic relationship and Boone is the first of our main survivors to die. Boone and Shannon’s relationship is a bit much for me. They are step-siblings who have slept together and I hate it. They grew up together they became step siblings at the ages of 8 and 10 that is too young to have grown up and fucked each other. Boone was always there for her, he saved her, bailed her out and took care of her and she manipulated him. When he dies and she goes into this grief spiral I just want to smack her. She has no right to grieve him, she was always a manipulative bitch toward him and she sucked until he died and I have no sympathy or empathy for her at all. Sayid and Shannon I’ve never really liked because Boone was right, Sayid is older than Shannon and she needed someone to take care of her and he played right into her hand. Now at this point in the series I can’t say anything else but they really don’t have any chemistry so the whole thing is kind of Meh.

The two relationships I’m actually most invested in are Walt and Michael and Sun and Jin. These are the two I feel have the most development over the series. Walt and Michael basically start the series as strangers as Michael has just re-entered Walt’s life and he is immediately the best dad. There are a couple moments where I am just wowed at Michael’s parenting. The first is in the flashback when Michael goes to pick up Walt after his mother dies. It becomes really clear as an audience member that Her and her new husband are actually garbage parents and put themselves ahead of the kid but Michael doesn’t tell Walt. Even when Walt is yelling at him and acting out he preserves the image Walt has of his mother and step-father and that had to be difficult for him. The second is when Walt tells Michael that he is the one that burned the raft because he didn’t want to leave. Michael’s first reaction was “It’s okay buddy, we can stay here” and that is some next level amazing listening. Michael just wants his kid to feel safe and he is such a fantastic parent to Walt and that makes it all the more heartbreaking when the Others kidnap him.

Now let’s get to Sun and Jin. At first all we really get to see of Jin is that he is an overbearing and controlling husband. He is jealous, he’s protective and Sun comes off as mousy and scared like she is used to this behavior. As their characters unfold we learn how in love they were and how gentle and thoughtful Jin used to be but working for Sun’s father an obvious crime boss really hardened him. In order for him to do his job properly so that he wouldn’t lose her or the life he had built for her he couldn’t feel all his feelings. They are fractured still when Jin leaves on the raft but it is very clear that they still love each other.

Our outliers here are Locke and Hurley now we get a lot more backstory on Locke then we do about Hurley. With Hurley we really just get that he feels like he is some kind of jinx and honestly he kind of seems to be but we don’t really get much from him until later. Locke however gives us our first indication that the island has some sort of magical properties as when he crashed he was paralyzed and when he woke up on the island he had full use of his legs. John is someone who has also been through a lot, and since he’s been in a wheelchair he has clearly studied adventure, walkabouts, hunting, tracking and being trapped on this island is kind of a dream come true for him.

Last but not least we have Charlie and Claire. Charlie is our sweet little druggie who really just wants to help the pretty girl through her pregnancy. They are both on the island alone and seem to have no other super strong connections on the island. I love watching their friendship and relationship bloom because it's just so sweet. He becomes so protective over her and when Aaron gets kidnapped he braves the island and Danielle to bring him back to Claire.

We mentioned the island having magical properties but reality is there seems to be more than just magic on the island. At first the big bad of the survivors being stranded on the island is just shifts and noises in the forest. It also seems like the island has some kind of consciousness, towards the end of the season it's revealed that the survivors were all there on purpose, by design like the island drew them there. Towards the end of the first season we also get to see the black smoke as an attacker, we don’t know where it's coming from or what’s controlling it but we know that it’s dangerous. The other side of the island lore is the obviously more science side of things. The hatch that Locke found with Hurley’s numbers on it and the polar bear all indicate that the Others have been on the island for a while.

The chart above describes the relationships between our survivors. The light blue being "friendship", the green being "antagonist", the pink color of the name boxes and the pink lines indicate a romantic connection. And the gold name boxes indicate familial realtion. As you can see Boon and Shannon have their own color because their relationship is...different.

Overall The pacing is incredible, the day by day depiction does exactly what it was intended to do. The audience feels what the characters are feeling without feeling bored. We fully understand what their survival stakes are because we are watching them struggle in real time. The balance of storylines is brilliant. To fully acknowledge and flesh out such an insanely large ensemble cast is a very difficult task and no show has really been able to do it since. We care about each of the characters and when one gets the spotlight it isn't at the expense of anyone else. The casting is so phenomenal, Dominic was a HUGE get like this is just on the tail of the ending of Lord of the Rings. Everything was set up so well in this pilot, the survivors' introductions, the full-on shifts in the jungle, the way they use flashbacks was great. It really set up the rest of the season by raising questions like How are we going to survive? and What role is everyone gonna take on?

The first season may not have stuck story for story to what was laid out in the bible but it did use the story type that it set forth. I rated each episode of season 1 in 5 categories, out of 5 and averaged the score. The categories of criticism used were; Character development (as Lost is a character driven story someone should be driving it forward at all times), Acting/Directing (though the entire cast is amazing, there are some stand out performances that should be acknowledged as well as making sure the directing is consistent with the original tone set forth), Storytelling (is the episode compelling and interesting to watch as we are moving through time very slowly with the survivors it's very easy to slip into a more mellowed out or boring story), Lore (does the episode add to or at least stay consistent with the lore already revealed) and for the first season only, Story Type (does the episode fit into a predetermined story type set forth by the series bible. Now that last one will be replaced going forward, I just haven’t decided with what yet. The season average is 3.8 and each episode's score will also be available on my website. The first season does a great job of raising a lot of questions; Who are the Others? How did they get here? Why are they attacking the survivors? Why do they seem so focused on children? What is the black smoke? How did a polar bear get on the island? How did the hatch get here and what is in it? Is the island really magic? All things that could be fleshed out in the second season, leaving this a very solid first season of television.