Static Zombie

Find Lost

If you weren't in front of your television tonight, you missed the premiere of the best new show of the season and quite possibly the most brilliant, well-executed pilot hour in TV history.

Lost, created by JJ Abrams (the man behind Alias), is brilliant from the word "Go!" even as it pays homage to the works to which it owes a debt. The opening shot echoed that of Fox's lamented John Doe, but this man stranded on a remote island is in for an entirely different experience. The first act plunges us directly into the aftermath of a passenger jet crash, as Party of Five's Matthew Fox shakes off his shock to help his fellow victims amidst the chaos. In the space of an hour we get introduced to just a handful of the 48 survivors, with only tantalizing glimpses of others (please, please let Terry O'Quinn not be a government agent / military operative for the first time in his career!). Knowing that nothing's scarier than the unknown, Abrams takes a page from Hitchcock's book and keeps the jungle threat mysterious and unseen. The Jurassic Park sequence, while predictable (I knew the pilot was a goner-- the actor is still part of the Alias cast!), was well-executed and effective. The pacing was spot-on, and the tension palpable.

For those who watched the show, here's my theory. It can't be a dinosaur. That would just be too... too. My money's on something else-- note that the pilot wasn't eaten, just killed. I'm just not sure what killed him. The comment the black woman made early on about the sound being familiar from the Bronx made me think of the subway, so I'm thinking there's a secret government (not necessarily US) underground base on that island. Their countersurveilance tech took out the plane's systems and crashed it. The noises are from underground machinery and are being heard through venting ducts. And they've got some kind of big machine roving the jungle, and the pilot got sucked into a turbine or something.

The two-hour pilot got split into two episodes, so we've only seen half of the setup. And that half was dynamite. Lost has been getting great reviews, so it wouldn't surprise me if ABC decides to rerun this episode later in the week. Watch for it. And add the show to your season pass list. In Elaine terms, it's sponge-worthy.