The best shows on television live outside themselves; when the credits roll, the fans don’t just call it a night. They theorize. They scrounge. They rewind. LOST inspired the fans. With just one episode aired, the show’s online presence spawned a conspiracy theory fervor that remains to this day. The success of LOST doesn’t stem from any one particular place, but one factor does work as a spine off which everything else drapes: the mystery. The island poses question after question and each one is allowed to hang there to taunt the audience. The characters, whose lives are revealed by flashback one at a time, resonate as some of the most developed on network television – each has their own motives and, making it better, more often than not the motives aren’t without a certain degree of deception. It’s all too easy to imagine a series based on a plane wreck and having it become a simple and ordinary drama of survival – but J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber and Damon Lindelof fashioned a story with depth and intrigue that captivates instead of strands.
Oceanic Flight 815 began its flight from Australia only to veer off-course, break into pieces and crash into the water nearby an unknown island. In the chaos of the landing, survivors stumble about deafened by the ringing in their ears and disoriented by the bone-jarring impact they’ve just experienced. One by one specific characters begin to define themselves amongst the 48 survivors: Jack (Matthew Fox), a surgeon escorting his deceased father’s body back to the United States; Kate (Evangeline Lilly), a woman with a checkered past of crime; an egocentric maverick named Sawyer (Josh Holloway); Hurley (Jorge Garcia) a cheerful and obese multi-millionaire; Sayid (Naveen Andrews) an ex-soldier of the Iraqi army; and John Locke (Terry O’Quinn), a survival-trained paraplegic whose legs mysteriously heal in the crash. This represents the leadership of the surviving members, though plenty more personalities shine through thanks to the outstanding ensemble cast. With the dead tallied and the remaining passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 appraised of their circumstances, the real stories begin to unfold.
To this day, with season four at an end, there are points from the first season yet to be answered. However, to leave the mystery intact, we’ll give a cursory examination of the season’s plot points: an expectant mother (Emilie de Ravin), a radio tower, a heroin addict (Dominic Monaghan), a gigantic smoke monster living within the island, a tribe of people known as “the Others”, a Korean couple (Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim) whose marriage continues to deteriorate and the personal struggles of each character as they search for meaning in their presence on the cryptic island. I’m really trying my best to not give away anything but rather outline enough that you can begin to understand how recursive LOST is as a series. Every storyline wraps within itself numerous times over only to reveal, with surprisingly few contradictions, that what you’ve believed about a character all along was a lie.
LOST’s cast defies all odds as they existed pre-LOST. Typically a cast had one or two stand-out members while the rest were just sort of “there”. In LOST, everyone matters; and accordingly, the cast features familiar faces that the dedicated cinephiles and television-lovers will recognize a few faces here or there, but those you don’t recognize will quickly endear themselves. The six characters mentioned above really carry the weight for the majority of the season, even as the rest of the cast slowly grow into their personalities. The cast starts huge with a focus on a select few, yet by the end of the first season everyone involved has an integral role in the first season.
Filming the entire show in Oahu, Hawaii allows for numerous shifts in environs. The dense junglescapes have incredibly vivid greens in the high-definition, and every shot on the beach reflects brilliantly with the contrast of the water at their fronts and the thick foliage at their backs. LOST looks beautiful in HD. The one complaint is the CG used for the smoke monster – the show’s budget is huge thanks to its location and cast, so it’s understandable they’d try to save some money on the smoke monster. Unfortunately it shows in HD – but it’s such a minor detractor, buy it anyways. The audio is rich and, if you should be so lucky, will rock your world in surround sound.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Before we start on the content of the extra features (of which there is plenty), I just want to note that the menus for LOST could be better. It’s not the lack of animation which bothers me, but the odd way in which they function as you navigate with the arrow buttons – it’s not quite as intuitive. Where the menus do excel is with the “SeasonPlay” option which allows for continuous play with the credits eschewed in favor of an uninterrupted experience.
The bonus features are what you’d expect from any major television series. First you have J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof and Jeffrey Lieber talk about the growth of LOST from a mere “plane crash” scenario to a twisted tale about an island and characters with mysterious agendas. Even if you’re not a fan by the end of the season (impossible), the interviews and the story of the show’s creation entertain. One of the coolest featurettes is “Welcome to Oahu: The Making of the Pilot” where you see the creation of the plane crash. The best part? Buying a plane, deconstructing it, transporting it and turning it into one of the most epic sets for a television pilot to date. This featurette bleeds into another about set design and the locations which stays interesting, but the two could really have just been lumped into one.
After that, the extras fall into the more generic territory with commentaries from cast and crew, deleted scenes and a gag reel. Of all these, the one which interests LOST fans the most is the addition of previously unseen Flashbacks for certain characters. They show nothing too essential, but when viewed with the knowledge of the following seasons in mind, you might do well to ignore this part and not indulge until you’ve caught up – then come back and watch them, just to be safe.
"LOST: The Complete First Season" is on sale June 16, 2009 and is rated NR. Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Television. Directed by JJ Abrams, Jack Bender, Stephen Williams. Written by J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Jeffrey Lieber. Starring Dominic Monaghan, Matthew Fox, Naveen Andrews, Evangeline Lilly, Jorge Garcia, Josh Holloway, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Terry OQuinn.
