Lost Summer: Episode 1-2.

"Pilot (Parts 1 & 2)."

Lost Summer is upon us. We have much to discuss; it’s so good to be back.

If you can believe it, when I sat down on July 1 to start re-watching Lost on Netflix, it had been my first time back since my initial viewing. I don’t usually re-watch drama series- even ones I love- as I’m in this lifelong battle with an endless entertainment queue that I need to have at least somewhat under control upon the annoying distraction of my death (est. 2050). Hell, Lost had been on Hulu for years leading up to the Netflix handoff and I never once stopped in to check on Jack and his time-skippin’ pals (‘ope, spoiler). It was for the best, frankly. We needed a little time apart after all the work I had put into that parasocial relationship with such little reciprocation. Did you know that Yunjin Kim has yet to send me a single lock of hair even after all the hair I’ve sent her?

Low key rude, no cap.

That’s the last time I do that, I promise. The broccoli-cut Zoomer slang, I mean. Not the hair thing.

“Welp, I already started. No sense trying to make it to the bathroom now.”

Anywhoozle, Lost is now able to be binged (bunge’d?) in a matter of weeks, so Lost Summer is evolving and following suit. We’re doing five episodes a week, twice a week for five straight weeks, wrapping up just before the official 20th anniversary on 9/22. I’m through with sleeping. I’ve quit my job. Showering? A now-foreign concept. From now until the Autumnal Equinox I’m living on espresso, ibuprofen and spite for my enemies. Feel free to ruin your respective lives along with me as we journey through these magnificent 25 episodes.

Now get into a three-point stance and greeze yourself up something fierce, because it’s time for THE THICK AND MEATY!

PART 1 - ON THE ISLAND

Jack Shephard opens his eyes, then immediately closes them. He is dead. The airplane he was on crashed and everyone aboard has died except for a dog named Vincent who whizzes on Jack’s corpse.

lol

Alright, let’s get going.

Jack does indeed wake up in the jungle, and it initially doesn’t seem like too different of a morning than any other for him, as he’s coming off a Russian vodka-fueled bender. He’s smooched into lucidity by Vincent, who is a Good Boy and will not ever die and still hasn’t died.

Jack makes it to the beach, and it’s looking like Fyre Festival out there. Nobody has water, a college-aged girl shrieks to nobody in particular, and Ja Rule is nowhere to be found. The entirety of Migos was sucked into a jet engine, my hand to God.

“I will decide who lives and who dies.”

But Jack is a doctor! Not a great one, or a licensed one, but good enough to assist many survivors, including his half-sister. I won’t elaborate further on that for those of you who are still working through the series for the first time…but it’s Rose! He performs CPR on her and everything; bet you didn’t expect that.

After establishing himself as That Bitch and getting his bearings back, he retreats into the jungle to stitch his bod back together. This is where he meets Kate for the first time and asks for assistance…sexy assistance.

That baby is so ready to come out it’s already got its shoes on (please look at the photo again).

The rest of the main cast start to pop up and prove useful: Sayid organizes a clean-up, Hurley starts salvaging food to distribute to the survivors, and Shannon reminds you that not all miracles happen to deserving people. This is also the first reminder that Shannon and Boone are step-siblings (more on that once we get to Episode 13).

As night falls on the crash site and said survivors seek safe, secure slumber shelter (that one was for me), Godzilla or something about that size rampages through the jungle, uprooting palm trees and clomping about. For those of you who weren’t around when Lost initially aired, don’t let the old heads fool or memory-hole you: The first “big” theory was that there was a dinosaur on the Island. Silly in retrospect, but fair enough at the moment. Not even close to the weirdness that would truly follow. Quaint, really.

“Durr, I’m the Smoke Monster and I sound like this and nobody knows what my deal is, durr hurr!”

The following morning, Jack and Kate set out to retrieve Flight 815’s transceiver from the front section which landed out in the jungle. Charlie accompanies them because he heard tell of a legend that says a bag of premium China White has allegedly found itself in one of Oceanic 815’s stainless steel toilets. Everyone needs something to do.

They find the plane and climb up the cockpit to retrieve the radio while Charlie poops. Jack and Kate soon join Charlie in their respective pooping as 815’s pilot suddenly regains consciousness and scares the shit out of them. The pilot gives the duo some valuable, terrible information: Flight 815 lost radio contact six hours after takeoff, whereupon it turned back for Fiji and hit turbulence. The pilot estimates that they were a thousand miles off course before the crash, meaning that any rescuers would be looking in the wrong place. Oh, and the transceiver’s broke too, so suck it.

Thanks, ya’ big load.

“I’m sorry Mr. Pace, but this is a no freebasing flight.”

At once, the Godzilla roaring is heard again, and the pilot is sucked out of the window of the plane, prompting the trio to grab the transceiver and hit the bricks. After the unseen monster leaves, the three reunite to discover the pilot’s mangled, dead, dead, mangled, very mangled body suspended in a tree top.

Friggin’ load. Seriously. Harrison Ford is a better pilot than this guy.

PART 1 - FLASHBACKS

Turbulence shakes Flight 815, which scares Rose who is sitting across from Jack. The two talk. Rose mentions that her husband is in the bathroom. Jack does one of those really exaggerated yawns to relay to Rose how boring her story is so she’ll stop talking and he can get back to his vodka omelette with vodka hollandaise. But then a guy hits the ceiling of the plane and all the masks fall out, so that’s going to have to wait for another time.

If you fly economy on Spirit Airlines you have to sit on the ceiling.

Alternate Caption: “Gravitron! Whoo!”

Throughout the entire run of the series, you’re gonna see that guy slam into the roof of the plane, like, 20 more times. Hey, this episode cost $14 million dollars; might as well make the most of it.

PART 2 - ON THE ISLAND

Jack, Kate and Charlie head back to the beach, where ten-year-old Walt has discovered a pair of handcuffs. I can physically hear this young man growing like bamboo every time he’s on my screen. Poor kid; he’s special!

Everyone’s favorite dirtbag, Sawyer, gets into a fistfight with Sayid, with Sawyer claiming he’s a terrorist that crashed the plane. Assuming it’s a bare-knuckle brawl with three 3-minute rounds and 60 seconds of recovery time between, I’d put my money on Sayid ending Sawyer’s life somewhere near the first half of Round 3. Maybe even Round 2 if Sawyer calls him “Abdul” again.

“Oh, bullSHIT the Green Album’s better than Pinkerton!”

Jack determines that the worst-injured survivor is an unconscious U.S. marshal with a piece of wreckage ever-so-delicately peeking from his abdomen. He has Hurley help him. Hurley immediately passes out.

Sayid repairs the transceiver, but it has little remaining battery life and no signal. We’ve got to get to higher ground. He and Kate decide to go inland, alongside Charlie, Shannon, Boone, and Sawyer. Along the way, A POLAR BEAR emerges and charges the group. Sawyer shoots and kills it with a gun he took off the marshal, and Sayid accuses him of being the marshal's prisoner. Kate seizes the gun before the situation can escalate. Back at the beach, the marshal awakens and asks Jack, "Where is she?"

I bet RFK Jr. dumped this here.

The inland team reaches higher ground, Sayid turns on the transceiver and gets a signal. However, it is being blocked by a looping transmission in French, which Shannon translates as "I'm alone now, on the island alone. Please someone come. The others...they're dead. It killed them. It killed them all." Since the transmission lasts 30 seconds and each iteration states the number of repeats thus far, Sayid calculates that the transmission has been broadcasting for over 16 years.

Charlie then scans the breadth of the island and says four of the most memorable words in Lost history: “Guys…are we Lost?”

Smash cut, episode over. Well, not yet.

PART 2 - FLASHBACKS

Under suspicion from the flight attendants, Charlie runs to the bathroom where he locks himself in to snort heroin. As the turbulence hits, Charlie is slammed against the ceiling and rushes out, strapping himself into a seat as the plane starts to go down.

“Damn, that’s good stroopwafel.”

I didn’t then, and apparently still don’t know how heroin works. You can snort it? Isn’t that how Uma Thurman ODs in Pulp Fiction? And you can rub it on your gums like cocaine and Anbesol? Here’s what I do know: It must be awesome, because there is no nook or cranny more repugnant than the inside of a Van’s checkerboard slip-on. It’s leagues worse than an airplane toilet. A single drop of pond water turns that shoe into a Petri Dish.

Kate is revealed to be the marshal's prisoner, wearing the handcuffs Walt found in the jungle. As the turbulence hits, the luggage compartment is shaken open and the marshal is knocked unconscious by a falling suitcase. Kate struggles to put on her oxygen mask due to the handcuffs, so she frees herself using the marshal's keys and puts his oxygen mask on him before attaching her own. The tail section of the plane breaks off and falls away. See you later, Bernard!

Okay, now we’re done.

“So anyway, I said ‘hawk tuah’ on TikTok and now I’m worth 10 million dollars.”

Perhaps the greatest pilot episode in TV History, no? I sure would like to talk more about that argument. It’s a shame we don’t have a place to just kick it, you know?

…hey, waaaaait a minute…

I’ve waited almost 20 years to say this…let’s BREAK IT DOWN!

True story: I was going to use a photo of that Australian Olympic lady breakdancer for this section, but she was hyped, mocked, meme’d, praised, reassessed and ultimately canceled for cultural appropriation all within the 11 minutes it took me to edit the graphic. It was easier for me to dig up the original photo I used in 2005 than to predict what Raygun’s cultural cachet would be two weeks from now. We’re doing just great as a society.

So, is “Pilot” the best pilot episode in TV history? From a personal preference standpoint, I’d put it right next to Friday Night Lights in that regard with nothing else in the conversation. Would you like my Top 10? Okay, you twisted my arm.

10. The Shield
9. Mr. Robot
8. The X-Files
7. Mad Men
6. Freaks & Geeks
5. The Walking Dead
4. Arrested Development
3. Twin Peaks
2. Friday Night Lights
1. Lost

(Note: I have not seen all the TV shows.)

And again, we’re not talking about how shows ended or how good they were from start-to-finish (such as Breaking Bad, The Sopranos or The Wire). Lost was different. Nothing up to this point ever started out like this. Nothing on TV looked like this. Lost is the reason pilots are as expensive, important and good as they are now.

“WARRIORS! Come out and PLAY-EE-AYY!”

Storyline-wise, it’s all there from the very beginning in “Pilot.” The exposition, the main character setup, the mystery and slow-burn mythology. Questions posed in “Pilot” carried us straight through to the finale (much to the chagrin of some). And yeah, despite several episodes along the way that hang around the house and tend to not move forward (really more of a network issue than a show issue, which we’ll discuss in future reviews), “Pilot” has nary a scrap of fat on it.

In rewatching, I was surprised at how quickly it flew by and how much it set up in that amount of time. When Lost aired live, we were quickly driven insane by reruns, commercial breaks and the weeklong wait in between new episodes under the most ideal of circumstances. Now in streaming multiple 42-minute episodes back-to-back, Season 1 feels like being shot out of a cannon.

Sayid silently fantasizes about how cute Hurley would look with his hair in a ponytail.

There’s a specific scene where Jack, Kate and Charlie have fled the fuselage and are running from the Smoke Monster in the rain, and it looks like it was lifted directly from Jurassic Park. Not only is this a clear homage and example of J.J. Abrams’ influences (and emblematic of what we’ll see of Abrams in the future), but a reminder of just how goddamn cinematic this all looks.

At the 2005 Emmys, “Pilot” won Best Directing (J.J. Abrams), Best Editing (Mary Jo Markey), Outstanding Music (Michael Giacchino) and Outstanding Visual Effects. That’s 4 Emmys for 1 single episode of television. By my research, no other single episode has won more.

Ipso fatso, best pilot episode ever.

Alright, enough of this show! Let’s see WHAT ELSE IS ON!

Here’s a grim reminder of just how popular trashball Reality shows were in 2004. This is a splattered smattering of the shows that aired just within the same 8-9pm Eastern timeslot as Lost in Season 1:

ABC - Supernanny, Brat Camp (late Summer)
CBS - The Cut
FOX - The Simple Life (Spring), So You Think You Can Dance (Summer)
NBC - Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search (Spring), Psychic Detectives (early Summer), Most Outrageous Moments (late Summer)
UPN - America’s Next Top Model (Fall), The Road To Stardom With Missy Elliot (Winter), R U The Girl With T-Boz & Chilli (late Summer)
WB - Beauty & The Geek

That’s an even dozen, folks. All airing at the same time on any weekday night in 2004. Pathetic. In comparison, Sunday night on FOX was a murderer’s row of classic comedies in King Of The Hill, Malcolm In The Middle, The Simpsons and Arrested Development. So, you know, that’s nice.

Back to regular programming. Let’s get nerdy with THE NUMBERS!

4 - The production budget for “Pilot” was enormous for it’s time at about $12-$14 million. Most of this money went towards shipping an actual jumbo jet to Hawaii. In fact, the price tag was so high that the man who greenlit it, ABC bigwig Lloyd Braun, was fired for that very same reason. He’s the voice that says “previously on Lost” at the beginning of nearly every episode, a small compensation for bringing ABC one of their biggest hits ever.

8 - “Pilot” was watched by 18.65 and 17.00 million viewers respectively, easily winning its time slot for each night. And despite those numbers being something that any broadcast TV exec would murder for in 2024, Season 1 of Lost in totality was just enough to put them in the Top 20 (not the Top 10) for the year.

15 - What were the Top 10 at the time, you ask? Okay, you twisted my arm.

Monday Night Football
American Idol
CSI
Survivor: Vanuatu
Survivor: Palau
Desperate Housewives
Grey’s Anatomy
CSI: Miami
Everybody Loves Raymond
CSI: Without A Trace

“The last thing I remember was inventing a new cocktail with Bang and Ambien and everything went black. I called it ‘The Millennial Speedball.’”

16 - According to Nielsen, the top show on broadcast TV last week (August 12, 2024) did about a 6.0, nearly three times less than a show that aired 20 years ago and still couldn’t crack the Top 10. And what is this #1 most-watched show on Network TV in August of 2024?

60 Minutes!

Shout-out and nothing but respect all around for the O-friggin’-G of broadcast television. One of the first shows ever is currently the #1 in broadcast? Talk about playing the long game.

23 - Speaking of ratings, I want to tell this story now because I might not be able to later. About halfway through Season 3 (‘06-’07), Lost took an unpredictable nosedive in ratings. What was discovered was that fans were not leaving en masse like Neilsen thought they were. What was actually happening is that this was around the tipping point for DVRs in the average household, which Nielsen wasn’t measuring. Once DVR ratings went into the equation (+24, +48, etc), it was discovered that Lost was far-and-away the most DVRd show on television at that time. I’d often DVR a Lost episode that I was watching live just so I could go through any Easter Eggs I’d see throughout (and good lord are there many).

J.J. Abrams fought the censors tooth-and-nail to show uncensored dog butthole.

42 - Of all the lore surrounding Lost and the pilot episode in general, I wanted to share with you (those of you who might not know this) what would have been the wildest Lost pivot of all-time.

Michael Keaton was originally slated to play Jack Shephard. It’s not like Keaton was doing all sorts of stuff at that point in his career, so the thought would be that bringing Keaton in would pop a rating from those who wanted to see a respected film actor helm this giant ensemble show (again, not a normal thing in 2004).

…problem was, the pilot was initially written to kill off Jack at the end of the episode. This is why they were looking at getting Keaton; he had no interest in playing television roles at the time, so what would generate a better buzz than having your hero shockingly killed off at the end of the first episode? The showrunners stated that Kate would then step up to lead the Losties, and whatever that show would end up looking like is anyone’s guess.

Probably one season and done, if I were a betting man. Which I am. I only brought Lost Summer back to pay off my many debts and keep the goon squad at bay.

Two quick things before we go! One, check out this Funko CDP! This is the classic, Season 1 CDP we all know and love, too. No tattoos, smooth face, fake glasses. Good stuff.

Two, Lost Summer returns for Round 2 on Friday! We’re back, we’re moving fast and I can’t wait. Thanks so much for reading; please sound off in the comments and enjoy your week.