Fall TV Flashback - Revisiting the 'Lost' Pilot 20 Years Later

How does the groundbreaking broadcast sci-fi drama hold up nearly two decades after its premiere? Pretty damn good.

For me, the end of summer and arrival of autumn only means one thing - it’s time for Fall TV! Back when TV Guide Magazine was the way everyone got their TV schedules and news, I know I’m not alone in remembering how I’d wait with bated breath for the Fall Preview issue to show up in the mailbox. I could hear the mail truck coming down the street and would watch as he put the mail in the box and, as soon as he drove off, I’d run out and check to see if it had arrived. For you youngsters, TV Guide was the Bible for TV watching back then in the time before on-screen menus for scrolling or internet listings. It was a wonderful time of year.

Jump ahead a few decades and in the fall of 2016, I had just joined the staff of TV Guide Magazine as their West Coast Bureau Chief and I found myself working on my first cover story for the Fall Sneak Peek issue. That’s the issue that comes before the iconic Fall Preview issue, which is then followed by Returning Favorites. Working non any of those issues was always a thrill as I remember that young boy in Indiana waiting for the mailman to bring the Fall Preview issues. (I even have a few freelance stories in the Fall Preview issue that is out this coming week in the U.S. so that’s eight years in a row I’ve had a hand in there!)

But, backing up to Fall TV in general, it was that glorious time when there’d be a few dozen new shows coming on the air and you could sample all of them and by, say, mid-October, you knew which shows you’d be obsessed over. Times have changed, unfortunately, and in 2024, new shows drop year around and broadcast TV is no longer your main destination for TV watching but Fall TV does still exist and there’s still some excitement about finding that next favorites. This fall could it be the Young Sheldon spin-off Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage on CBS? Or Zachary Quinto returning to NBC where his career launched in 2006 on Heroes with a new medical drama, Brilliant Minds?

The season 1 cast of ABC’s Lost. (ABC/Disney)

Looking back twenty years ago to the fall of 2004, cable was taking a lot of our attention with must-see shows like The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Six Feet Under (that should tell you how HBO was knocking it out of the park back then) but broadcast still had a lot to say and the 2004-2005 season saw the premieres of a number of shows that would become long-running favorites. During that season, Fox debuted animated hit American Dad as well as Hugh Laurie donning a doctor’s coat for medical drama, House. CBS added CSI:NY to the already popular CSI franchise. NBC hit it big midseason with the U.S. version of The Office. And ABC would hit a few drama series home-runs with the premieres of Grey’s Anatomy (still going strong with season 21 starting next month), Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives and, of course, beginning September 22, 2004, Lost.

Lost was impossible to not be aware of before it aired. I remember the promos running constantly and there was no way I was going to miss this show. Plane crash! Stranded on a mysterious island! A monster? Matthew Fox from Party of Five? Sign. Me. Up. Note that this was a few years before I began my career as a television journalist so I didn’t “cover” the show for work. I was still very much a TV viewer. (In fact, I was working as a nanny to three kids in Los Angeles at this time - more on that in a future post!)

The first of many great things about Lost is that with all the anticipation that built up before the show premiered, I remember that the 2-hour pilot (airing on September 22 and 29, respectively) did not disappoint. 18.6 million viewers showed up to watch the show live and that pilot episode also won its time slot. I was one of those viewers and stuck with the show through highs and lows for six seasons and, jumping ahead, it still stands as one of the most controversial endings to a TV series ever.

But the point of this post is to go back and watch the pilot with its story by Jeffrey Leiber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelhof, teleplay by Abrams and Lindelhof and directed by Abrams. Would I love the show as much as I did the first time around? I remember where a lot of the characters and stories went over Lost’s six season run and 121 episodes and I also remember the lows as well as the highs over the years. Spoiler alert - yes, I loved the pilot just as much and intend to launch a rewatch of the entire series. Here are some of my takeaways from the pilot rewatch:

I was not alone in being a big fan of Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sun (Yunjin Kim) in Lost. (ABC/Disney)

Love the characters, love the show: A big concept like a plane crashing with the survivors having no idea where they are as well as the threat that nobody may be looking for them is great for a movie. But how do you make it work for a TV series? You make sure the viewers fall in love with the characters, which Lost accomplishes from that first image of Dr. Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) opening his eye shortly after the plane crash. Jack is our way into this world and that opening scene where he stumbles onto the beach to see the plane wreckage and various other passengers either injured, screaming or dead is a lot to take in but works perfectly. We figure out Jack is a good guy pretty quick. He’s earnest, goes out of his way to help those in need (I mean, being a doctor doesn’t hurt!) and, as Sawyer (Josh Holloway) correctly calls him later, he’s our hero and he locks us into the journey we’re about to go on. Once you love a character, you’re willing to join them wherever they go and that is what Lost gets right immediately. In addition, we’ll also find more characters to love or, in Sawyer’s case at least at the start of the show, love to hate.

Backstory is key: One of the biggest pieces of the pilot’s backstory - the plane crash - is parceled out in those first two hours. The first scene that takes place on Oceanic Flight 815 just moments before all hell breaks loose doesn’t even come until the 21:15 mark when we go back to the flight where Jack, not seeming exactly happy, is throwing back some cocktails before the turbulence kicks. We don’t see everything here but we’re definitely going to stick around for more.

More from the plane doesn’t come until early in the second half of the 2-hour pilot when we that musician Charlie’s (Dominic Monaghan) main goal on the flight is to keep his drug-filled high going while and a handcuffed Kate (Evangeline Lilly) just wants to get away from Edward Mars (Fredric Lehne), who is escorting her to the authorities for some bad things she’s apparently done. But once the back half of the plane is ripped off (at the 34:05 mark), there’s no way you’re not going to want to know more.

The respective backstories of our survivors becomes a big part of the show as we’re presented with questions in the present day on the island and then flashbacks answer those questions and tell us more about each character. I haven’t gotten to those post-pilot episodes yet since I wanted to write this with the pilot fresh in my mind but the two I still think about twenty years later come early in season one - the “Walkabout” episode (#4 if you count the pilot as #1 and #2) that gives us a big piece of backstory for John Locke (Terry O’Quinn) and “House of the Rising Sun” (episode #6) that provides insight into the marriage of Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sun (Yunjin Kim) that comes with its own surprises.

The epitome of a hero can be found in Dr. Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox), seen here in the Lost pilot. (ABC/Disney)

That Island Mystery: I know that Lost is technically a sci-fi series but it’s not the kind of sci-fi that would sit next to, say, Star Trek. And one of the biggest mysteries in the show other than where the survivors have landed is that monster. We hear it a lot in the early days of the show and I remember a lot of grumbling from critics and viewers that the show didn’t really know what it was doing with that monster over the course of the show’s six seasons. But, just talking about the pilot and not thinking about the monster’s trajectory, it works as a great device here that elevates the threat of all the survivors above merely being lost on an island - something big and Jurassic Park-esque may also show up at any time to gobble them up.

Here’s a fan-created Lost season 1 trailer I found on YouTube that encapsulates the show pretty well:

Once we reach the end of those first two hours and Charlie ominously says to his fellow survivors, “Guys, where are we?” there’s no way you’re not hooked in finding out what’s coming next. I’ll share my feelings as I get through the rewatch but if memory serves, Lost ends up being exciting and nail-biting but at times also frustrating and annoying with storylines that go in different directions and characters that just don’t work. But, like I said earlier, I hung in with the show through the highs and the lows. We’ll see if I make it all the way with this rewatch!

One major Lost beef: I know there’s a history with Lost co-creator J. J. Abrams and actor Greg Grunberg that goes back to the Felicity days and no offense intended where that’s concerned but I was reminded that Abrams likes to stick Grunberg into his projects, which sounds cute and insider-y but it never works. In fact, whenever Grunbergs shows up (including the biggest offense - putting him in a Star Wars movie) it immediately takes me out of the story of that TV series or film. It doesn’t come close to having a wink-wink impact like seeing cameos by Stan Lee in Marvel films or Alfred Hitchcock appearing briefly in his films. Seeing Grunberg pop up in Lost as the injured pilot of Oceanic Flight 815 who quickly dies is the one sour note for me in the whole thing. It took me out of the experience of watching this brilliant show twenty years ago and, since I’d forgotten he shows up, it took me out of it again in 2024. Thumbs down.

Which TV pilots are your favorites of all time? Which ones showed the promise of the series it would become? Which had weak TV pilots but became awesome (I’m looking at your Parks and Recreation)? Leave me your thoughts in the comments!

Lost is currently streaming on Netflix.

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