Lost is a 2004 American drama/adventure television series by J.J. Abrams about surviving passengers of a plane crash on a (believed to be) deserted island somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. The show is produced by Bad Robot Production and Touchstone Television.

Cast & characters

Main article at Characters of Lost.

Staff

• J.J. Abrams - Creator, executive producer, director (Pilot), writer (Pilot)
• Jeffrey Lieber - Creator, writer (Pilot)
• Damon Lindelof - Creator, writer (Pilot)
• David Fury - Producer, writer
• Paul Dini - Writer
• Michael Giacchino - Composer

Episodes

Main article, containing episode summaries, at Episodes of Lost.

Season 1: 2004-2005

A plane crash strands the surviving passengers on a deserted island. This group of strangers must now work together to stay alive. Survival depends on unraveling the mysteries of the island, including an enormous creature that roams the jungle.

Notes and Trivia

The Pilot

• Filmed on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, USA. This has, however, proven expensive, and there is currently speculation about moving the taping due to offset the high cost of filming. Source. However, it has been confirmed that the second season of Lost (which was ordered by ABC on April 5, 2005) will indeed still be shot in Hawaii.
• The pilot episode was the most expensive in history, at $11 million-plus for the two-hour series opener. $1 million-plus of that was to purchase, chop, and ship the Lockheed L-1011 jumbo jet pieces to Hawaii.
• J.J. Abrams has used Greg Grunberg, childhood friend and frequent collaborator, as an actor and good luck charm in Abrams' other creations, Felicity, Alias, and in the pilot episode of Lost where, ironically, Grunberg played pilot of the downed plane.

Themes

• Counting the pilot episode as a single story, the first five successive episodes begin with a close-up of someone's eye opening. The eye close-up motif resumed later on in the season. Except for the pilot, each episode then focuses on that character and includes flashbacks from that character's point of view, explaining why they were on the plane and providing insight to the viewer about the character's secrets and motivations.
• Various strange and mysterious things happen during the show, and it is unclear (as of the first few episodes) whether the show is going to explain them using science fiction, mysticism or some other approach. Examples include the characters meeting a polar bear (which would normally be unable to survive the tropical heat), Mr. Locke regaining the use of his legs, and the presence of some sort of huge force (a monster?) that knocks down trees as it moves.
• The November 17, 2004, issue of USA Today listed several fan theories as to the nature of the show: that the characters are in purgatory, that Locke is working for the genetic engineers and social scientists using the island as an experiment (in Walkabout it was revealed that Locke worked for a box factory), and that the island is a sort of dreamworld Fantasy Island. The December 3, 2004 issue of Entertainment Weekly touched upon some of those theories and a few more: that a catastrophe has killed everyone on the planet except for the islanders (though this seems to have been discounted in Deus Ex Machina, when Boone sends out a mayday and is answered by someone); that aliens crashed the plane and have placed the survivors in some kind of habitat; and that all the events exist in a dream had by the crash's sole survivor (possibly Jack). However, it should be noted that the latter two EW theories were deemed fairly implausible by members of the cast and crew.
• Sawyer is often seen reading Boone's copy of Watership Down by Richard Adams, which is about lost rabbits looking for a new home. Sawyer says that the book washed up on shore, although Boone believed it had been stolen. In "Numbers", Sawyer has moved on to reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle.
• The doomed flight's number, 815, figures prominently in some of the characters' back stories. In "Whatever the Case May Be," Kate's objective in the bank robbery is to get access to safe deposit box #815; in "Homecoming," Charlie is doing a sales pitch for the model C815 copier. In the Locke-centric episode Deus ex Machina Locke points a woman to aisles 8 and 15 in a toy-store, and there were statues of the Virgin Mary on a crashed small plane — the Feast of Assumption is on August 15 (the fifteenth day of the eighth month). Similarly, the show Alias, created by Lost creator JJ Abrams, has many references to the number 47. Thus, the special number could be significant or it could be a writer's "trademark" like A113 in many animated films.
• In the episode "Numbers," 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, sometimes referred to as "Hurley's numbers" by fans, are revealed to be significant. The transmitter on the island apparently had broadcast the numbers as far back as World War II; the message also drew Rousseau's expedition to the island, and she later changed the message after the deaths of her team. The numbers are also engraved on the hatch, and Hurley won the lottery using them. After a string of misfortunes happening to those around him after winning the lottery, Hurley comes to believe the numbers are cursed. His search for answers leads him to Australia and, by way of flight 815, to the original source of the numbers, the island itself.
• Black and White have featured with Locke a few times. In the "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 Adam/Eve that contains 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. In "Deus Ex Machina", a pair of mismatched eyeglasses that Jack and Sayid construct for Sawyer to wear have black rims on one side and white rims on the other side.

The Island

• Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 was en route from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles, California in the United States. It carried passengers from those countries as well as the United Kingdom, Iraq and South Korea, and possibly others. Before the crash, the plane ran into trouble and tried to change course for Fiji. As far as the characters can tell, they are thousands of miles off-course and, presumably, no-one knows where to look for them.
• Furthermore, when Boone tried to send a Mayday radio message in Deus Ex Machina, he identified himself as a survivor of Oceanic Flight 815, but a garbled voice on the radio stated, in a surprised tone, that "there were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815" (according to the closed-captioning). This helps explain the absence of a search mission. Why they believe this, and whether or not Boone may have changed that, remain to be seen. (N.B. Some people claim that the voice says "we're the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815", however neither the closed-captions nor seemingly the audio of the original episode support this. However, in a recap video clip on the ABC.com website, the audio (which has been reedited and seemingly redubbed, as the voice is markedly different from that in the episode) does indeed seem to say "we're the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815." Consequently, this is currently a matter of some dispute among LOST fans.)
• At least 16 years ago, Danielle Rousseau was on a ship that ran aground on the island at least "three days out" from Tahiti. This would probably put the island in the southeastern Pacific, near French Polynesia.

Survivors

• As far as we know, one dog and 50 humans survived the plane crash.
  • Death: A man is sucked into a spinning jet engine in "Pilot"
  • Count: Jack says "at least 48" to the co-pilot in "Pilot"
  • Death: The co-pilot is killed by the creature roaming the island in "Pilot"
  • Death: The US Marshal is killed in a "mercy killing" at the end of "Tabula Rasa"
  • Death: A woman named Joanna drowns at the beginning of "White Rabbit"
  • Count: Jack says "There were 47 of us..." in the episode "White Rabbit"
  • Count: Hurley says "... the names of everyone who survived, all 46 of us." at the end of "Raised by Another"
  • Death: Scott Jackson (not Steve) is killed by Ethan Rom in "Homecoming"
  • Birth: Claire's baby is finally born in "Do No Harm".
  • Death: Boone dies from various internal injuries in "Do No Harm".
  • That makes the current number of known human survivors 45.

• Rose believes that her husband (Bernard), who was in the rear of the plane that broke off in flight, is still alive.
• All of the survivors are adults except for Walt (Michael's young son), Claire's Baby and Vincent (Walt's dog).
• At least two other people were already on the island, alive, at the time of the crash. First is Danielle Rousseau, the Frenchwoman responsible for the distress call heard in "Pilot"; she is introduced in "Solitary". Second is Ethan Rom, who is first seen in "Solitary" hunting with Locke; he is identified as not being a crash survivor in "Raised by Another".
• Boone's radio conversation in Deux Ex Machina tells us that there is at least one person within the radio's range on the island who can communicate over radio. It is unknown whether this transmission came from survivors from the tail-end of the plane or other.

Characters

• The character John Locke is named for the English philosopher of that name. Appropriately, the Locke character seems to be a sort of sage figure for the others, full of deep advice and uncanny perceptions about the others' motives and secrets.
• The character Sayid is named for Edward Said, a writer, journalist and political theorist. Said (pronounced "Sayid") was a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights and is most famous for his theories about Orientalism. He contended that Western attitudes toward the Middle East are precursors to violence. The show's Sayid is a former member of Iraq's Republican Guard, and Sawyer's claims aside, is the true "Eastern" outsider in the island's "Western" culture. (Source: TV Guide.)
• The name "Rousseau" is a reference to philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as indicated by Damon Lindelof, the show's co-creator.
• The name "Ethan Rom" suggests Edith Wharton's character Ethan Frome, who steals away with his loved one so that they both might kill themselves. Also, "Rom" is the singular term for a member of the Roma people, also known as "Gypsies". Also notable is that Ethan Rom is an anagram of other man and more than.
• Until the episode "Hearts and Minds", Boone and Shannon were believed to be blood siblings. However, it was revealed that they were only related by the marriage of Shannon's father and Boone's mother; in fact, it is implied that Boone and Shannon had a sexual encounter before leaving Sydney.
• All of the characters we've been introduced to speak English except for the Korean couple, Jin and Sun. However, in the episode "House of the Rising Sun," Sun reveals to Michael (and the audience) that she speaks English, but is keeping it secret from her husband, Jin. Later, Kate figures out that Sun understands and speaks English after noticing Sun's reaction to a statement she made in "Hearts and Minds". But in "...In Translation", Sun reveals her knowledge of English to everyone when she screams for Michael and Jin to stop fighting.

Miscellany

• The role of Hurley was created specifically for Jorge Garcia.
• The role of Sun was created specifically for Yoon-Jin Kim, who had originally auditioned for the role of Kate. Jin was also created as Sun's husband.
• Although they share the same last name, Yoon-Jin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim are in no way related.
• At one point, producers considered having Michael Keaton play Jack in the pilot episode, in which he would have been killed.
• Drive Shaft's hit song "You All Everybody" took its name from an audience member's rant on The Maury Povich Show. Singer-songwriter Jude performed the version heard in "The Moth"; it also can be heard in the background during a party scene in the Alias episode "The Awful Truth".
• Claire and Hurley are never seen on the plane. Originally, Claire was to die in the first episode--but it was later decided that they needed to recast to have an actress play the character all the way through.

Trivia

• Some male members of the cast appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly in April, 2005. The issue number? 815.

Hurley's numbers references

This is a list of explicit references to Hurley's numbers.

4:

• Shannon asks for a 4 letter word for "I don't care" in "Walkabout"
• Locke reveals he's had leg problems for 4 years in "Walkabout"

8:

15:

• When Kate is found in the sheep pen in "Tabula Rasa", he says the nearest town is 15 km away

16:

• The backgammon die in "Pilot, part 2" is showing 16
• Jack says he needs to land in LAX in 16 hours in "White Rabbit"

23:

• Kate's reward is 23 thousand dollars in "Tabula Rasa"
• Jack says 46 people need to drink 1/2 gallon a day each, which makes 23 gallons of water to take to the beach each day in "House of the Rising"

42:

815:

• The flight number
• Kate seeks deposite box #815 in "Whatever the Case May Be"
• Charlie sells copier model C815 in "Homecoming"
• Locke points out aisles 8 & 15 in "Deus ex Machina"

External links

• ABC's Lost homepage; includes Flash game based on the show
• CTV's Lost homepage
• The Fuselage, forum sponsored by J.J. Abrams and the show's creative team
• TV Tome (series information)
• Television Without Pity (show recaps and discussion)
• DAH TV - Lost (episode and character information)
• Lost-Media
• Radio-Canada's Lost homepage
• Fan site
• Lost ... stuff, Timelines, Numbers, Survivor Count, Survivor Connections
• Google Video index for Lost