Man, hearing that monster for the first time was when I knew this show was gonna be something very different. The first 20 minutes are some excellent drama what with all the death, destruction, and screaming while the survivors start to get to know each other, but then that completely otherworldly roaring and what sounds like a giant animal stomping on the ground. When I first started watching this in early 2006, my immediate first thought was probably like a lot of other peoples': dinosaur. "Did they crash on a literal lost world full of animals that survived extinction?"
The first flashback! God, the show utilized this device so incredibly well, win the flashbacks going from most recent events to years and years before anyone got on that plane. The show spending three seasons teaching the audience that these cutaways were from the past was a recipe for the greatest misdirect in television history: "We have to go back!" At this point during my first watch of the show, I didn't expect we'd be treated with scenes in the plane right as the crash was beginning; I was so used to TV dramas not having huge budgets, so I didn't think the show would be able to afford the sound stage and CGI for a scene of the plane being ripped apart.
At the time, I had no idea this pilot episode was one of the most expensive episodes of television ever; a fact that got Lloyd Braun (the "previously on Lost" voice) and inspiration for the show fired by Disney for green-lighting such an expensive pilot. The story of how Lost even came to be is fascinating, because it went from a basic "Cast Away meets Survivor" premise to having most of the pilot written and cast, to shooting in Hawaii in just a few months.
The reason Rose thought there was something familiar about the sound of the monster is because one of the main sound effects for it was a parking garage's ticket machine/receipt printer.
John's orange smile; first sign that maybe this dude isn't all there?
I love that Drive Shaft's hit song was just borne out of Dominic Monaghan throwing out a random sentence in a falsetto voice.
There's the island's goodest boy, Vincent! I remember thinking to myself, "what if the dog's the monster?" the first time I watched this show.
Oh, right, I forgot about Charlie's little chemical dependency issue. Man, they did such a great job of building up the mystery behind the monster; won't see it in its smoke form until the end of season one, but for a show full of mysteries, whatever the hell it was was one of the biggest right off the bat.
Kate doing the counting exercise is when I realized it was gonna be the interpersonal drama between the characters that would matter more to me than all the mysteries. The mysteries being the cause for most of that drama is definitely an added bonus, but this was the shit that kept me coming back to the show for 6 years.
Review by Digital PhreakerBlockedParentSpoilers2024-06-21T18:11:12Z
Man, hearing that monster for the first time was when I knew this show was gonna be something very different. The first 20 minutes are some excellent drama what with all the death, destruction, and screaming while the survivors start to get to know each other, but then that completely otherworldly roaring and what sounds like a giant animal stomping on the ground. When I first started watching this in early 2006, my immediate first thought was probably like a lot of other peoples': dinosaur. "Did they crash on a literal lost world full of animals that survived extinction?"
The first flashback! God, the show utilized this device so incredibly well, win the flashbacks going from most recent events to years and years before anyone got on that plane. The show spending three seasons teaching the audience that these cutaways were from the past was a recipe for the greatest misdirect in television history: "We have to go back!" At this point during my first watch of the show, I didn't expect we'd be treated with scenes in the plane right as the crash was beginning; I was so used to TV dramas not having huge budgets, so I didn't think the show would be able to afford the sound stage and CGI for a scene of the plane being ripped apart.
At the time, I had no idea this pilot episode was one of the most expensive episodes of television ever; a fact that got Lloyd Braun (the "previously on Lost" voice) and inspiration for the show fired by Disney for green-lighting such an expensive pilot. The story of how Lost even came to be is fascinating, because it went from a basic "Cast Away meets Survivor" premise to having most of the pilot written and cast, to shooting in Hawaii in just a few months.
The reason Rose thought there was something familiar about the sound of the monster is because one of the main sound effects for it was a parking garage's ticket machine/receipt printer.
John's orange smile; first sign that maybe this dude isn't all there?
I love that Drive Shaft's hit song was just borne out of Dominic Monaghan throwing out a random sentence in a falsetto voice.
There's the island's goodest boy, Vincent! I remember thinking to myself, "what if the dog's the monster?" the first time I watched this show.
Oh, right, I forgot about Charlie's little chemical dependency issue. Man, they did such a great job of building up the mystery behind the monster; won't see it in its smoke form until the end of season one, but for a show full of mysteries, whatever the hell it was was one of the biggest right off the bat.
Kate doing the counting exercise is when I realized it was gonna be the interpersonal drama between the characters that would matter more to me than all the mysteries. The mysteries being the cause for most of that drama is definitely an added bonus, but this was the shit that kept me coming back to the show for 6 years.