Lost Season 1 Review

Lost (2004-2010)
Season 1 - 25 episodes (2004-2005)

Rent Lost Season 1 on Amazon Video
Created by: J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber, Damon Lindelof
Starring: Matthew Fox, Terry O'Quinn, Josh Holloway, Evangeline Lilly, Naveen Andrews, Jorge Garcia, Dominic Monaghan, Harold Perrineau, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, Emilie de Ravin, Maggie Grace, Malcolm Ian somerhalder, David Kelley
Rated: TV-14
Watch the trailer

Plot
The survivors of a plane crash are forced to work together in order to survive on a seemingly deserted tropical island.

Verdict
Lost is such a fun show. With a huge cast of characters, there are plenty of stories to tell. Every character has a secret, their backgrounds slowly revealed in flashbacks. There are characters you like, dislike, appreciate, and detest. The island is full of mysteries, and the potential is never greater than in the first season. It's such a great ride. The season is addicting with each episode ending on a cliffhanger, making it nearly designed to binge. You have to see what happens next on the island, and you have to see which character's backstory we'll delve into next.
Watch it.

Review
I first saw Lost on Hulu back when everything on the site was free. I quickly binged the five available seasons. I then watched the first five seasons again ahead of the season 6 release. I'm a big fan of Lost. There are few things that weave such a fun mystery and intricate character backstory. Of course the mystery got away from the writers, but Season 1 is the best of Lost. I wasn't sure how much of Season 1 I would watch, but that ended up being the entire season.

The season is such an enigma. It's engrossing and riveting with amazing characters. I love these characters, though I've had the privilege to run through this show a couple of times. The pilot is absolutely phenomenal. A good pilot should hook you, and this does exactly that.

The show presents all these archetypes, but their backstories develop them well, often their flashbacks relating to what's happening on the island and informing their reactions. That's one of the tricks of this show. It establishes certain character types and then subverts are expectations in the flashbacks. Each character is good and bad, struggling with conflict.
It's easy to criticize many of the characters, and that's another trick. The show makes them slightly unlikable, only to reveal backstory that makes you empathetic. In a flashback you feel bad for the characters, then something even worse happens.

Sayid is such a great character, and I appreciate the show humanizing a man from Iraq when many people saw him as a threat. The show addresses that head on. Often Sawyer is the character that acts as a bit of an every man, voicing crude thoughts that allows the show to address the ignorance. Sawyer is the willful deviant, looking out for himself. It's hard not to find him intriguing as he revels in being a villain, but we often see him helping in dire circumstances. His surly nature is a defense.

Sun and Kim are Korean and the show uses subtitles. Generally people don't like subtitles. I like that the show takes risks or does things a lot of people won't like.

Jack is the de facto leader. He wants to be the hero, but not the leader. You can't separate it like that. Being the doctor makes him in high demand.

Terry O'Quinn plays Locke.

Locke is the main of faith. He's the first to realize the power of the island. His backstory is agonizing, but his role on the island allows him an authority he's never had. He doesn't want to be a leader, but it's his knowledge and determination that places him in the role.

The great thing about so many characters is that there is something for everyone. The show infuses a lot of tropes into the characters and then builds from that, explaining why the characters have these traits. It's a great bit of storytelling.

There are the main characters, and then the secondary characters. There really are just too many, and the show gets meta towards the end with Ernst, a character we've never seen before, telling the main characters "you aren't the only ones here." That line is as much for the characters as it is for the viewers. A few times main characters mix up Scott and Steve. Two people we never see. For a show with so many characters, I don't know why it introduces even more.

This season creates a lot of mystery, playing fast and loose with logic when it fits. I don't blame the show for that. It's what made it so fun at the start, and later so infuriating when good answers weren't to be had.

Dominic Monaghan, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly play
Charlie, Jack, Kate.

That's ultimately the big criticism of the show, that the answers to the mysteries feel cheap. The defense is that the show has always been about the characters, and while that is completely true, the show didn't have to dive so deep into the mysteries or try to explain all of them. Leaving some of the questions unanswered would have helped, but these are all issues that come to a point in season six.

Just as each episode ends on a cliffhanger, so does the season. I wasn't planning to watch all of Season 1, but I did. I didn't plan to start Season 2, but I have to get the answers.What's in the hatch?