On occasion we TV fans might find ourselves in a discussion about what is the greatest TV pilot ever. Someone might pose The Shield as an excellent answer, another might disagree and argue Breaking Bad or Six Feet Under's case, another might say it is certainly The Sopranos but then another will say Lost and everyone will agree with them.
Lost's two parter pilot is the quickest eighty minutes of TV you could ever hope to see. It is one of the finest achievements in the history of television (I might use this phrase at various points when describing some of Lost's greatest hours) and I think that when people talk about the magic of season one of Lost they are in fact talking about the magic of the pilot.
We open in the eye of Jack Shepard, just waking up after blacking out from a plane crash. Straight away it is an incredibly provocative opening as Jack stands up in the middle of the jungle in a suit and with a Labrador running about the place. Jack then runs out on to the beach and all of a sudden we descend into chaos.
There are people screaming, there are massive bits of plane about to fall over. It is just a crazy good opening set piece, as we follow Jack round as he attempts to save everyone. It is impossible not to be fully engrossed in Lost at this stage, even I in the knowledge that I'd be reviewing this episode was right there in the moment.
So let's take a step back and look at Lost as a whole. I'm a big defender of Lost and really love the show, through good and bad. It is certainly flawed, but the vast majority of these flaws I can excuse in the name of ambition.
Probably the most striking thing when coming back to the Lost pilot is just how different a show it and the first are to the later years. This is quite normal, with each season a TV show tends to get that bit removed from its initial premise but with Lost it is pretty extreme.
The premiere is certainly not lacking for mythology but at this point Lost, among other things, is very much a survival show. It is very much rooted in problems that would occur if such an event where to happen (monsters and polar bears aside.) Now I will defend and even love the show it became, but there is an undoubted charm to these earliest days and while I don't mean this as a criticism the later seasons don't really have that.
So what keeps Lost from being some weird quasi anthology series? Its the characters. The mysteries will go in and out of focus but the commitment to Lost as a character study piece would never change. From the first moment to the last Lost was always about its characters above all else. For first time viewers this will maybe become a little more apparent over the next few episodes but it is totally and utterly ingrained into Lost as a show, that week to week it functions as a character study.
The pilot can only give us very brief snippets of the survivors, we see Sawyer looking at a letter, we find out that Kate is a convict and we find out that Locke has a secret. At the same time really the Pilot does as much groundwork on the characters as it does on the mysteries like the Monster and the French message, allowing for the next few episodes to delve deeper into these individuals.
The first half predominantly focuses on Jack, delivering a hero you can route for in this age of the antihero. The second half gives you little bits of Kate and Charlie too, its tough to say that these characters are anything like as fleshed out as they would become, even in the near future, but the show-runners certainly have a good sense of all of the fifteen survivors that the show would be predominantly concerned with.
I mean the introduction to Jin is overly harsh and without giving too much away the Lost does somewhat struggle to reconcile the Jin we are given here with the Jin who is in the majority of the show, but otherwise it is pretty difficult to say anyone does anything out of character in this episode and that is pretty strange and amazing when considering it's a pilot.
Even amongst all the chaos, Lost takes out time for some little character moments, which was probably the thing Lost was best at. Even though we don't know her name yet, when Claire's baby starts kicking and she begins talking to it you develop and instant affinity with this person.
I must also mention those final moments, that simple question delivered by Charlie "Guys where are we?" Would certainly rank as one of the most compelling and engaging questions ever posed on a TV show.
As we go along I'll get into more detail about various themes as well, but for now it is also just worth noting how efficiently this opening hour introduces us to concepts like Good vs Evil and love etc, that would really drive the show alongside these characters.
All in all no matter what you thought of the ending the beginning of Lost is unquestionably brilliant.
(For more reviews go to donheisenberg.tumblr.com)
Lost's two parter pilot is the quickest eighty minutes of TV you could ever hope to see. It is one of the finest achievements in the history of television (I might use this phrase at various points when describing some of Lost's greatest hours) and I think that when people talk about the magic of season one of Lost they are in fact talking about the magic of the pilot.
We open in the eye of Jack Shepard, just waking up after blacking out from a plane crash. Straight away it is an incredibly provocative opening as Jack stands up in the middle of the jungle in a suit and with a Labrador running about the place. Jack then runs out on to the beach and all of a sudden we descend into chaos.
There are people screaming, there are massive bits of plane about to fall over. It is just a crazy good opening set piece, as we follow Jack round as he attempts to save everyone. It is impossible not to be fully engrossed in Lost at this stage, even I in the knowledge that I'd be reviewing this episode was right there in the moment.
So let's take a step back and look at Lost as a whole. I'm a big defender of Lost and really love the show, through good and bad. It is certainly flawed, but the vast majority of these flaws I can excuse in the name of ambition.
Probably the most striking thing when coming back to the Lost pilot is just how different a show it and the first are to the later years. This is quite normal, with each season a TV show tends to get that bit removed from its initial premise but with Lost it is pretty extreme.
The premiere is certainly not lacking for mythology but at this point Lost, among other things, is very much a survival show. It is very much rooted in problems that would occur if such an event where to happen (monsters and polar bears aside.) Now I will defend and even love the show it became, but there is an undoubted charm to these earliest days and while I don't mean this as a criticism the later seasons don't really have that.
So what keeps Lost from being some weird quasi anthology series? Its the characters. The mysteries will go in and out of focus but the commitment to Lost as a character study piece would never change. From the first moment to the last Lost was always about its characters above all else. For first time viewers this will maybe become a little more apparent over the next few episodes but it is totally and utterly ingrained into Lost as a show, that week to week it functions as a character study.
The pilot can only give us very brief snippets of the survivors, we see Sawyer looking at a letter, we find out that Kate is a convict and we find out that Locke has a secret. At the same time really the Pilot does as much groundwork on the characters as it does on the mysteries like the Monster and the French message, allowing for the next few episodes to delve deeper into these individuals.
The first half predominantly focuses on Jack, delivering a hero you can route for in this age of the antihero. The second half gives you little bits of Kate and Charlie too, its tough to say that these characters are anything like as fleshed out as they would become, even in the near future, but the show-runners certainly have a good sense of all of the fifteen survivors that the show would be predominantly concerned with.
I mean the introduction to Jin is overly harsh and without giving too much away the Lost does somewhat struggle to reconcile the Jin we are given here with the Jin who is in the majority of the show, but otherwise it is pretty difficult to say anyone does anything out of character in this episode and that is pretty strange and amazing when considering it's a pilot.
Even amongst all the chaos, Lost takes out time for some little character moments, which was probably the thing Lost was best at. Even though we don't know her name yet, when Claire's baby starts kicking and she begins talking to it you develop and instant affinity with this person.
I must also mention those final moments, that simple question delivered by Charlie "Guys where are we?" Would certainly rank as one of the most compelling and engaging questions ever posed on a TV show.
As we go along I'll get into more detail about various themes as well, but for now it is also just worth noting how efficiently this opening hour introduces us to concepts like Good vs Evil and love etc, that would really drive the show alongside these characters.
All in all no matter what you thought of the ending the beginning of Lost is unquestionably brilliant.
(For more reviews go to donheisenberg.tumblr.com)