101 Lost: "Pilot, Part 1" Review

TV Review: Viewers need to find Lost.

September 22, 2004 - It's time to get Lost. J .J. Abrams' latest series starts tonight and while the premiere will be long on questions and short on answers, the promise of the pilot episode is enough to leave viewers wanting more.

Survivors of an international airline flight awaken to find themselves on a tropical island after unusually strong turbulence breaks the plane apart. If you've ever had a problem with air travel, the flashbacks the main characters have to the crash will make you never want to step on a plane ever again. The first character the audience is introduced to is a doctor named Jack (Matthew Fox, Party of Five). Jack wanders onto the beach where he is greeted by the shocked and the wounded. Taking charge, Jack immediately starts setting up triage, treating as much of the wounded as possible, even enlisting one of the other passengers, Kate (Evangeline Lilly, Kingdom Hospital) to help stitch up one of his own wounds.

The passengers deal with the initial shock in a variety of ways. While Jack and Kate try to bring the group together in what may be a fight for survival, others choose to sit and wait for the rescue that may never come. A non-English-speaking Korean couple, Jin (Daniel Dae Kim, Crusade & Angel ) and Sun (Yunjin Kim), segregate themselves from the others, finding their ways to different from the rest of the survivors. A Middle Eastern man fights the racial profiling from some of the other survivors while a vaguely strange older man (Terry O'Quinn, Millennium) sits on the beach, just taking it all in. A rock star (Dominic Monaghan, Lord of the Rings) tries his best to help out but a drug addiction may threaten his own life and those around him. A very pregnant woman worries that her child hasn't survived the ordeal.

As it probably would if this many people were to survive this kind of plane crash, the situation brings out the best and worst of everyone involved. To make matters worse, the island itself seems to be a home for a bizarre mixture of creatures and weather patterns. Night falls suddenly with a driving rain and just as suddenly goes back to normal. An unseen creature attacks and leaves no doubt of its carnivorous intentions. An attacking polar bear is shot dead in a field of palm leaves. Like a much more menacing adult version of Land of the Lost, this island may prove to be the most important and enigmatic character in the series. But don't expect to see any young girls riding a T-Rex here; on this island, the creatures bite and so does the writing.

The script for the pilot moves along at a brisk pace, never forcing its hand and giving the audience just enough to keep the interest piqued without giving up too much, too early. It will be interesting to see how Abrams and company manage to keep the audience interested once the new show smell wears off and we get into the week to week trials of the survivors. Like Alias, the series is built for story arcs and viewers who decide to tune in for the start of the ride won't be disappointed. Lost delivers on every promise it makes to its audience and is simply the best new show on any of the networks this season.