Lost Season 1

I wasn't planning on doing a review on this. Watching Lost was really a spur of the moment thing. I wasn't planning on watching it until two seconds before I clicked on the title. 24 episodes later, I finished the first season in about 3 days.

Then I started to ask myself, why?

How did this show about a plane crashing on a desert island and a large cast of survivors just simply surviving on this island make such a big splash going 6 seasons?

The premise seems really simple. Its not and a lot of people know that. I watched pretty much up to season 5 the first time I watched the show and I know things get a lot stranger in later seasons than they do in the first.

So what about the first season got people so hooked?

Surprisingly, the first seasons barely scratches the surface of the mystery of the island. Sure there's a polar bear, sure they run from some strange monster they're running away from, and then there's that shady hatch Locke and Boone find.

But the focus of the first season really is on the survivors and who they are. Not only that but the different personalities and how they interact with each other. Which personalities clash and which go really well together. The mystery is less about the island and more about the mystery of the survivors themselves.

The setup of the first season is that while the action on the island is happening, an episode will mainly focus on one character in flashbacks, telling stories from their past. Possibly why they were in Sydney Australia where the plane left. It may often show stories from their lives that reveal something that would not have come out on the island.

While each character is different, who they are on the island is not who they were in the real world.

So what I'm going to do with this review is analyze the parts of the show that make the first season really damn good. Yes there are parts I don't like (like Walt), and while I may mention those things, I'll mainly focus on why this season was so good.

 1. The Island

I've spent a lot of the review already focusing on telling you the characters of this show are phenomenal, there needs to be something said about the mystery of the island. Lots of shows have good characters, in fact any show can have good characters. Its the combination of the environment and the characters that make shows really good.

The island serves as a vehicle to drive these characters forward and keep the show going.

It could be enough for people to say that Lost is about a bunch of castaways on a desert island just

surviving until help arrives. And a lot of the first season is that. But knowing what happens in later seasons, I know for a fact that's not what this show is about.

The first night the survivors have on the island, they hear a loud monstrous noise. They see trees shaking and it just freaks them all out.

An episode later, Sawyer shoots a polar bear... on a tropical island.

From the beginning, something seems off about this island. To top it all off, people start showing up that weren't on the plane that crashed, it starts being understood that there are other people on the island.

And then there's the French woman.

Danielle Russo is introduced about halfway through the season as a survivor of a science expedition that got shipwrecked on the island. Apparently there was a sickness that killed off her entire team and since she has been mentally scarred.

They really did a good job with Russo in the first season by limiting her exposure to the majority of the survivors and showing up as a special guest in one or two episodes until the finale episodes.

Of course there's Ethan, the guy from the island who kidnaps Claire. There's a lot of things that are just not right about the island. But when things go crazy, they are quickly written off, not fully investigated until much later episodes. For example, the episode with Ethan. He kidnaps Claire, comes back for one episode when Claire comes back and is quickly killed off. They're not able to question him or figure out who he was and we don't figure out really until the second season.

Like I said before, the first season really isn't about the island. It throws in enough mystery about the island to keep you going, to keep people interested and wondering. A normal episode from the first season is something like, "We have no food", or "All the water is gone" how are they going to survive? The real appeal of the first season is on the characters.

2. The Characters

This show came out in 2004 and kind of started out the shows that start off with a billion characters.

It set the stage for Heroes, Greys Anatomy, etc. (Disclaimer: I've never seen Grey Anatomy) Shows with about 14 billion characters and yet it still feels personal.

Each character in the picture to the right has an episode dedicated to their backstory.

The first season does a brilliant job at not only introducing these characters, but making you fall in love with them. Really feel when they are hurt and cheer when they succeed.

In a sense, the first season is really just an introductory season. A chance to create a cast of lovable characters and then throw them into the real mystery of the island. Whereas most shows will introduce the characters and have the audience get to know them as the plot takes them, Lost does the characters development all in one season. Not only that, but they continue the development throughout the series.

Unfortunately, from what I remember of the later seasons, I preferred the first season. I never saw the last 1 and a half seasons of the show but I know there's a big philosophical climax to the show. The thing about it is that the first season starts to ask philosophical questions, especially in the last few episodes where they ask if maybe they're on the island because someone in punishing them.

I can't say I know if that'd be a better product but its interesting to me to think about.

I intend to watch this show as long as I can and get as much as I can out of it. I do remember the last time I tried watching it all the way through I got burned out by some of the contrived storylines and how it got more and more complex but that was a few years ago now. Maybe I'll get through it, I do have an entire J-Term maybe its time.

I think Dane Cook put it well when he said this.