The ‘Lost’ Episode That Got Us Hooked

Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed.

I'm Joanna Robinson.

I'm Rob Mahoney.

And today we are here to talk about one of my favorite TV shows of all time.

This is an incredible week for me personally.

I know you guys are all excited to hear that.

Over on House of R, I got to show Mallory Rubin Bothy Vampire Slayer for the first time.

And here on the Prestige TV podcast feed, I get to show Rob Bahoney Lost for the first time.

We're going to be discussing two-part premiere of Lost today.

Rob, I'm thrilled.

Are you excited?

What a time to be alive.

What a time to be Joanna Robinson.

Let's get into it.

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We're here to talk to you about one of my favorite TV shows of all time.

And I feel extremely lucky.

You're listening to this a couple days after we're recording it, which means I got to record it the same week that I recorded a House of Our episode with Molly Rubin talking to her about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And it's just like double delight for me because here I am to talk to Rob Mahoney, who's never seen it,

here to talk to him about Lost and the double premiere of Lost Season 4 for this hooked episode.

Yes.

Everything is coming up, Joe.

Have you purchased a lottery ticket?

Have you considered any other adventurous pushes out into the world that might benefit?

I gotta visit Veronica Mars this week and we got to talk about Ale.

It's been a really good, good week for me personally.

Thanks so much for asking.

Listen, the premise of this pod, of this mini-series we're doing hooked, if this is the first episode of the miniseries that you're listening to, is the idea is that usually we talk about an episode that's not the pilot that we feel like is the best example of an episode of the show, of any of these like pantheon shows, that you could show to a friend or a loved one to be like, hey, man, if the pilot didn't do it for you, this is the episode to really get you into this show.

Yes.

However, when we were brainstorming ideas for this, we were sort of saying, well, we should probably pick a show where the answer is just the pilot.

And I, Rob took me on my word when I said it has to be lost.

And Rob, having not seen any of Lost, is like, are you sure you

debated me on whether or not we could do a two episode premiere?

You were

really uncertain.

You had a lot of questions.

But here we are.

I got my way and I feel very good about it.

So I will follow you into the dark, Joe.

I will follow you to the deserted island.

You know,

I trust you implicitly with these things.

And you were 100% correct.

Sometimes the pilot just rips and it does our job for us.

And we don't have to come up with these alternative examples.

And to be able to do it with a show that I had not seen before, as you alluded to, and so I get to play guinea pig on how hooked do I feel coming out of this double pilot.

Spoiler alert, quite hooked.

I am ready for my lost binge watch to commence.

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You made me so nervous when you had just watched part one and as you should, you're like, I'm saving my

takes for the pod.

We don't want to burn pod in the group chat and then have nothing to say when we get on mic.

But then you're like, but suffice to say I was surprised.

And it made me so nervous that you hated it.

And then I made you confirm for me that you at least liked the first hour.

So should have kept you hanging.

You know, the tension that builds in anticipation of a podcast, you know, maybe it would have amplified it.

I was like, Rob, where are we emotionally about the lost pilot?

So here's the deal.

In case you don't know, Lost is a TV show that ran on ABC for six seasons from 2004 to 2010.

It absolutely captivated, dominated, devoured the world for several seasons.

Not the entirety of the run, for several seasons.

And is, alas, best known these days for its deeply divisive finale,

which I'm happy to debate Andy Greenwald on if he wants to do a stick the landing on Lost.

Mallory Rubin and I are ready to defend the Lost Finale to our very bones.

This is reassuring, honestly.

I just want to tell everyone listening right now, I don't care if you've seen the show or not, the thing that people say rolling their eyes about the lost finale that puts people off watching the show and figuring out what is going on is, quote, they were dead all the time.

They were not dead the whole time.

That is not true.

That is people wildly misinterpreting the show.

And it's a huge myth that surrounds lost.

And I'm just here to dispel it.

They were not dead the whole time.

We are not just in purgatory.

We are watching real people do real things.

So.

Rob Mahoney, before we get into a little bit more detail about what you loved about this, and I'm so, so excited that you loved this double pilot.

But before we get into that, why do you think it was that you,

you know, you and I both never watched the Sopranos, things can like slip by us really easily, but you're a big Lindelof guy.

Why do you think it is that you never watched Lost?

Well, I think part of it was this was before I knew I was a Lindelof guy.

You know, I really came in through some of his later TV works and other projects.

And so

you weren't a Nash Bridges guy.

I mean, you weren't there day one with Damon Lindelof.

Tangentially, but that's kind of in its own category.

I think part of it for me is kind of what you alluded to, which was the phenomenon of the show.

It's the kind of thing where you either get swept up in it or it repels you a little bit.

Like, I thought I was a little, I thought I was a little too good for it.

I'm going to be over here watching Deadwood and Arrested Development.

You guys can have your cute little gigantic, big honkin' sensation show.

Totally.

And so, so many people in my life were watching it.

So many people were recommending it.

And I was just kind of putting it off and shrugging it off for that reason.

And it appears quite foolishly.

So I really understand that impulse though i was thinking about this a lot when mallory and i were discussing buffy which was my introduce introduction to rabid fandom that like message boards and all of that definitely buffy was during its initial run still a niche show and it it is often my preference to really champion a niche show rather than dive headfirst into a massively popular show and i know i say that having like covered game of thrones and all these other massive shows and there's joy in that too but there's joy in just sort of like finding someone else who likes the niche thing you like out in the world versus, hey, are you watching the most popular TV show in the world?

I am also watching the most popular TV show in the world.

I'm glad we're doing it for hooked for that reason.

You know, we have our humble kind of AMC projects.

We have our like UPN-originated Veronica Mars.

Like, we need to do something on a slightly different scale.

And this is the kind of show that welcomes this sort of introduction with all of the fanfare, all of the theatrics, all the fireworks of the two-part pilot.

I think it's perfectly worthy for this kind of exploration.

I did not watch Lost from the very beginning.

And it was one of those things where people were talking about it.

And I think I caught up mid-season.

And I want to say I had to catch up via like a very glitchy ABC go

stream

situation.

Yeah, it was legal, but it was, it was deeply grainy.

And like the joy of finding, like the first time I watched this pilot, especially on the biggest screen possible um and i know that you just recently got a new television so i'm so excited that you got to watch this like wonderful with the whitest whites and the blackest blacks available to you um

so i wasn't a day one lost fan but i was but i watched it while it was on and i was a fan of it and then

In case folks don't know,

coincidentally, during COVID, I started a Lost Rewatch podcast just right before COVID.

You could hear COVID happen if you listen to this podcast.

It's called The Storm.

It was a lost rewatch podcast.

We re-watched every single episode.

We interviewed members.

I went really, really deep on lost for several years leading up to me starting basically right up until I started at The Ringer.

So you went really deep on lost for basically from the time you were hooked on the show and then re went even deeper for the purposes of the podcast.

Yeah, but I wouldn't say that I was like, I loved lost and I loved talking about lost and I loved theorizing about lost, but I wasn't like an obsessive fanatic.

Okay.

And then, and then I covered it in granular detail detail in a way that made me appreciate it even more.

Um, and it means I felt like sort of

fondly, emotionally attached to my time with lost.

And now I'm like, this is a text I have studied back and forth, every single word, et cetera, et cetera.

So, yeah.

I do find that to be true of the Lindelof stuff in general, where look, I can't speak to the mystery box elements of lost.

Clearly, I've barely seen literally any of the show.

But from a character perspective, I find that when you tug on strings, you see where the string goes.

And like you can understand how these people are getting from point A to point B, emotionally speaking.

And the other answers are going to come up as they do.

And sometimes they're satisfying and sometimes they're not.

But like, that's the kind of thing you can trust.

And to have that be even more enriched by the level of granular detail you were turning over rocks left and right, trying to understand the show better.

Like that's a really reassuring place to be with a show.

Yeah.

And I think you're absolutely right in terms of loss specifically when people get frustrated about various mystery rabbit holes that they went down and maybe didn't resolve the way that people wanted.

Why is a polar bear on a tropical island?

All these other questions that come up in the pilot.

And by the way, we are not going to be spoiling other than the fact that I was like, they're not dead the whole time, but that's just something I will tell a stranger on the street.

So just so you know.

You just have a sandwich sign on on the corner.

Guess what?

They were not.

It was, that's a lie that people tell you to get you to not watch lost.

We're not talking beyond the double premiere because I'm really excited.

Rob's about to watch all of Lost in all of his spare time.

I hear basketball starting up again soon, so you're going to have a ton of time to do this, and I'm really excited about you.

I did not say what timeline my watch will be on.

A lot of episodes to get through.

I'm very excited about it, but you know, we're going to go at our own pace.

It'll just be a fun thing for you.

There are huge misses in lost.

There are mistakes were made that the creators will admit were mistakes.

All of that happened.

But in terms of that character, that emotional attachment that you have to character,

and

it's here in the pilot.

And, you know, many, though not all of these characters, you know, will journey with you through all of the season.

And so as soon as I saw them, it felt like, here are my old friends, and I care very deeply about their fates.

And I think that's true from the jump.

And then it just deepens sort of as you go.

So season one, episode one and two, the pilot parts one and two.

written by JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof, directed by JJ Abrams.

J.J.

Abrams gets credit as like a creator of Lost, but he's not really.

He's here like right at the beginning.

And then it's Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse's show basically going forward.

So that is the deal.

Here's what happens in this double premiere in broad strokes.

This is the one where Oceanic Flight 815 crashes on Mysterious Island.

We get a couple of flashbacks, which we're going to talk about.

We perform some pit-worthy triage on a beach, discover a disturbingly French 16-year-old 16-year-old radio signal.

Oh, and also there's something big, scary, and noisy in the jungle.

It ate question mark, the pilot?

Guys,

where are we?

Rob, what were you expecting?

You said the word you used to me when you texted me was like you were surprised.

Yes.

So that made me curious.

What were you expecting from this pilot?

And how was it different from what you expected?

I think I was expecting the pilot to be a little more matter of fact.

You know, like we get on the island, the crash has happened.

Let's get into straight like Lord of the Flies, mostly human drama as these people are like sorting out order and authority among the people who are there.

I was not expecting full-on plunge into the mystery box right out of the gate.

And I think that's a lot of what separates, you know, this from being a good pilot to a really great pilot is it's, it has all the stuff that I was expecting.

And then it has that.

Just one of my favorite qualities in any media, which is the, what kind of show am I watching?

Like, I am not sure, and the ground is shifting under my feet as all of a sudden trees are getting knocked down by some mysterious monster out there as we're getting into like creepy voice recordings.

Like, I knew about the lost polar bear.

That is a thing that if just if you are a person of the cultural world, you have probably heard about in some respects.

I had zero idea it was going to be coming in this two-part pilot.

I assumed that was a midway through season one kind of reveal.

I thought the voice recordings would be like a season three kind of turn.

And so, to get all that stuff jammed in here feels incredibly propulsive.

And it, like, if you'll, if you'll pardon it, it is an incredible hook for an episode like this that is just dragging you into the following episodes for the season.

I genuinely think, um, and I told you that earlier today, I was, I was sort of in my mind going through closing scenes in Pilots, and I genuinely think Dom Monaghan as Charlie Pace saying, guys, where are we, is

up there at the top, like, final beat of Lost.

There's also one in part one, which makes me wonder, is this a Carrie Bradshaw-style Dom Monahan is going to ask a pertinent question at the end of every episode of Lost, which I'm not opposed to for the record.

I just want to know where I am.

Wonder, guys, where are we?

There's also these audio cues that come with

your experience watching Lost.

that you become sort of like Pavlovian trained to respond to.

So there's the like boom sound cue that happens at the end of an episode of Lost.

There's also

the term I like to use is, sounds like a brass band going over a cliff.

There's just this like audio clue of like, what is happening?

And the score just goes like,

you know, and you're just like, I don't, I don't know what's happening.

My, my emotions are all triggered.

Michael Jacquino, who is the composer on this show, bears a lot of credit for some of the emotional turmoil that you feel watching this show because his score for Lost is absolutely top tier.

You're a Lindelof guy.

You mentioned this idea of like sort of character threads that you can pull

and you know that you can follow them to sort of logical conclusions.

Are there other sort of Lindelofian, this is a very J.J.

Abrams pilot and we will talk about that, but there are, are there other Lindelofian sort of hallmarks

or characteristics that you were able to pull out of this episode?

I suspect.

Many more will pop out in retrospect.

When I am sitting where you are sitting now, having seen and experienced all of it, I will see more.

The two that popped out for me are the connectedness of all things and all people.

I feel like it's something that comes up all the time in Lindelof's stuff.

And it's like the ways in which people have these very obvious macro sorts of connections.

Like if you are a convict being escorted by a U.S.

Marshal on a plane, it's like you are bound together, maybe in like a physical, literal way.

And then there are the micro ways of like, I was mean to this guy at the gate and now he's just like in my head.

You know, like we are bonded in a kind of different way.

And the fact that the structure of the show lends itself to tracing back all of of those connections or like fleeting connections between these people before they crashed on the island.

That feels very Lindelafian to me.

And I would say the other thing is sort of like the secrets that we keep and the ones that we keep to protect us and the ones that we keep for the greater good.

That stuff is like already popping out front and center.

I think a great example of the first case that you're talking, I mean, this will be the show.

Like, how are we all connected, blah, blah, blah.

But I think the best example of that in this two-part premiere,

great shout out for that Shannon moment when she's sort of having her grief over this dead body, but

Jack helping Rose,

uh, you know, in a medical capacity, and then you find out that they were sitting across the aisle from each other on the plane.

Yeah, her husband was in the bathroom, and he's like, I'll keep you company while he's gone.

You know, so there's this like promo, this promise that was made that we've already seen Jack fulfill in a way in his doctor capacity, but that, you know, that these are just these moments between characters.

You know, Charlie runs by in that first flashback, and then we see why Charlie was running by,

you know, and it's, it's part of the larger mystery, but they're often character-based moments.

It's not just sort of like, how did this person get here, but why did this person totally get here?

And that's a Lindelofian concern, I think.

So, yeah.

What makes this episode a good entry point?

We're not going to do our usual structure, obviously, because like Rob can't speak to the larger picture.

I will, you know, come in with some of those thoughts myself in a non-spoiler way, but we're going to do it a little differently and sort of drill down on the things that make just this isolated experience of watching, you know, an hour and 45 minutes of television so special.

J.J.

Abrams is sort of famously killer at launching things.

Most like a JJ Abrams premise and a J.J.

Abrams cast is one of the most like irresistible things you can have.

That's true of alias, that's true of Felicity, that's true of fringe.

Like there's just all these examples.

He knows how to cast a show incredibly well.

And then, in terms of landing that project, that is usually not his specialty.

On the cast front, Joe, obviously, there's a lot of people who I knew were on loss.

I don't think I fully realized the scale of that guys and gals who are going to be appearing here.

Like, I just straight up did not know if Angeline Lilly was in this show somehow.

Are you serious?

I'm completely serious.

Just did not know it.

And so she pops up.

It's like, oh, this is, this is telling you me.

Oh, Ian Sommerhalder is here.

It's just like, just an incredible collision of actors who I like and have great affection for are just like popping up on the screen left and right.

Most of whom, like, it is a weird situation where I would say some of the break, what I interpret from the outside as being like the breakout stars of Lost.

are kind of still most known for lost.

Like the specter and the shadow of this show, I think looms pretty large over a lot of this cast.

And some people have been able to break out.

Some people had long and successful careers before appearing on the show, but it is kind of a mixed bag in terms of what kind of launch pad loss turned out to be for a lot of these people.

It is interesting.

I won't sort of

spoil for you out of the people who get sort of minimal screen time who rises to the top, though you might have a sense of that.

But what's clear from the two-part pilot is that Evangeline Lilly's character, Kate, and Matthew Fox's character, Jack, are like two main characters of this pilot.

And then also Dom Monaghan, who was the most famous person in the cast at the time having just done Lord of the Rings um Charlie is like the third these are the three characters who get little flashbacks inside of the episodes these are like the three you know leads of the show in a show that is very much an ensemble show and um

I think it's it's wild to me that so you were just like oh it's the woman from Ant-Man like where do you know Evangeline Lilly from it's not from lost I mean the woman from Ant-Man the woman from the desolation of smaug you know

oh,

the woman from the heart locker.

You know, I think that's, that's where we're going.

Tariel from sure, of course, as

we all know.

God,

desolation of smaug.

Amazing.

But yeah, but to your point, yeah, Ian Summerholder, this is like a big launch in his career before the vampire diaries.

Daniel De Kim,

Josh Holloway,

you know, there are a bunch of people who really got their toe hold.

But to your point with someone like Josh Holloway

who is great on lost and we're still waiting for what he's gonna this is like what we were talking about last time with Veronica Mars we're still waiting for what Jason Doring is gonna do after Veronica Mars it's gonna sort of be his thing and we're still waiting it's not it was not his HBO show uh that came and went Josh Holloway so what will it be for him but maybe that's our fault maybe we should have been covering duster you know that maybe that's on us we considered it okay

we are launched right into the action without a Veronica Mars voiceover, without a Joan Harris tour of the office to orient us.

And the disorientation is kind of the point.

We've talked about this, like the way in which these other pilots that we talked about, Breaking Bad, Madman, Veronica Mars, have this job of

orienting us, making sure that we know who everyone is and we know what the order of the office is or why Walt wound up in the Winnebago in the desert or

the social milieu of Neptune High, or whatever it is.

In Lost, the disorientation is the point, so it doesn't have the burden of that.

Yeah, you're introduced in this very dislike.

Lost is such an to your point, it's such an interesting show to try to nail down in terms of genre because the prompt was give me survivor, but make it fiction.

Like, that's what the suits at ABC wanted.

But you've got Damon Lindelof here who loves Twin Peaks, so you're going to have like some weirdness weirdness in here.

And you've got Damon Lindelof as someone who loves character.

And you've got J.J.

Abrams as someone who loves

a spectacle and a close-up.

Yeah, a close-up of Jack's eye.

So you've got a guy is in a suit in the jungle

and there's a dog here.

And you're immediately like, this is a weird setup.

And then we follow Jack as he emerges onto the beach into chaos, but chaos that makes logical sense to us.

Oh, it's a plane crash.

And though

this is not an ordinary event, it's an event that we recognize versus just guy in jungle in a suit with a mini bottle of booze in his pocket, you know?

And so it's just like, it's this cool sort of surreal moment that bleeds right into this.

And watching it after covering the pit with you, I was just sort of like, oh, the pit owes a lot.

It probably does.

A lot of

favors to this opening of Lost Hair.

Well, I mean, they are successful for the same reason, which is the pacing of these opening episodes is really remarkable.

And I think some of it is what you're alluding to, which is like, you put screaming people on a beach with wreckage.

We all know what happened.

Like you don't need to be told.

And it turns into like a masterclass lightning round show don't tell.

We are just moving from case to case, injured, like person in peril to person in peril.

And as you're going through all that, obviously it's just propulsive in a watching.

capacity.

Like I'm just hooked on what is going to happen next.

Who's the next person who needs to be pulled out from a jet engine or away from a jet engine?

And, but you're also getting all the little character moments that are telling you about these people as you go.

Who is willing to help?

Who is stepping up to do this?

Who is calling for their loved one who they can't find?

Like, but you're filling in all these gaps really, really quickly in a way that, you know, you and I, Joe, as we've been talking about all these other pilots, have been returning to.

Like, how, how efficiently?

are you able to set up your cast of characters?

And how broad can that cast be in a pilot?

And even for the shows that do it really efficiently, how are you able to also make it an entertaining episode with its own story that is satisfying in its own way?

And this is the answer to how you do it.

Like, it's incredibly efficient storytelling, but it also has that like roller coastery feel right from the jump where I'm just like, I'm locked into the rhythm of the show to the point that when we finally do ease up and zoom out, it's like, okay, I kind of know in a broad sense who some of these people are, who some of them are to each other.

And now we can kind of reset the stage and figure out like, okay, what is the next thing we have to accomplish?

It's like,

as a piece of entertainment, it is just pure adrenaline joy and it looks great.

You know, the, the fuselage looks amazing on the beach.

You know, they're filming on Oahu in, you know, the same place that Jurassic Park was filmed.

And you could tell, you know, like everything is just absolutely gorgeous.

But when you dive into it from

just pull apart this screenplay and figure out the magic trick that they pulled off here.

Yes.

Tracking the character whose name you learn when, and what

you know, kernel of information you get about them when, and how natural

all of it feels.

When we find out that Charlie is in a one-hit wonder band, when we find out that Saeed was in the Republican Guard, you know, like all of these, when we find out that Sawyer is a racist piece of shit, like all of these moments are inside conversations that feel like fun and natural.

And like, Saeed makes this revelation while he's trying to fix a radio.

And Charlie tells, you know, Kate, you know, sings a little, you all, everybody, while they're hiking to try to find the wreckage.

You know, we're doing something

and we're dropping, oh, boon, that's my brother.

God's gift to, you know, humanity, like, blah, blah, blah.

Like, that's all inside of these other moments.

And it's all just carefully sort of.

nested like a like a little like Russian doll sort of inside of a plot that's just going going going and this is where I think the survivor structure that you described like really pays off.

You can feel like in the same way that a reality show kind of comes out in the edit of like what information, as you're saying, in lost case, like do you reveal first?

And how does that anchor our opinion of that character?

Right.

You can see the same kind of storytelling happen here.

You can see the same kind of archetypes from reality TV happening here, as far as like, oh, here's the do-gooder Dr.

Hero.

You know, here, here's the, you know, attractive woman he happened to stumble upon.

And now they are like bonded together in this very alchemical way.

And you have like all of these very easy stand-ins for people we know.

Here's the superficial woman painting her nails.

You know, it's like all of these things are very recognizable immediately.

And then you get the entire show, I imagine, to peel back, to subvert, to tell us more about who these are, these people are.

I thought the way that is done with Kate and her flashback specifically is just like really smart storytelling.

And so like, that's the part of the show I am most looking forward to is, okay, we have, you know, the one-line synopsis summary of all these characters, and we started to get a little deeper with Jack and Kate and Charlie.

How does it dramatically transform our understanding of who these people are as we get every little bit and piece along the way?

I think the best, like, you know, the fact that Charlie Pace is in a band and also has a heroin habit is not that surprising.

The fact that Kate, who we've seen be so both, both scared and

deeply terrified and also quite heroic and has some leadership qualities to her and has some like, I'm here for the for the group qualities to her

to have that revelation of oh she was the one in handcuffs is just one of the many genius beats of of the show um and then but then to get that revelation oh she's the one in handcuffs uh and then if you re-watch you see like the first time we see her she's rubbing her wrists because she just took the handcuffs off of them and stuff like that like um

to to get that information and in that same beat you get that information you watch her put the oxygen mask on the piece of shit U.S.

Marshal before she puts it on herself.

And so then you learn even another thing about Kate is that even inside of this information we have that, you know, she's being brought in to justice, quote unquote, but there's something about her that is the person that we thought we were getting to know also.

So that's...

Again, like triple layers deep on

a character inside of this massive cast.

I'm just going to, to, I wrote this down from memory.

I think I got everyone, but we'll see.

Here are the characters that we are supposed to be at least somewhat tracking in this two-episode pilot.

Jack, Kate, Charlie, Saeed, Shannon, Boone, Hurley, Claire, Rose, John, Sawyer, Sun, Jin, Michael, Walt.

I'm sorry, Vincent, good boy.

What a good boy.

I was about to say,

you better name that dog.

Vincent, not to mention the flight attendant Cindy and the pilot, Greg Gunberg, Breast in Peace, the pieces.

And the Pilar Bear.

And the polar bear, of course.

And whatever it is that's making a lot of stompy noises in the jungle.

And whatever French woman did the VO for the recording.

Yes, the French woman on the radio.

Great point.

Great shout.

Did anyone like fail to land with you?

Or did they, you know, there are certain people we, you know, like John Locke is here to be mysterious and tell us about Backgammon.

You know, like there are certain characters who are, you know, Hurley seems friendly and doesn't like the sight of blood, but we don't really know anything about him,

you know, his history and stuff like that.

There are certain things that we don't get.

Claire is pregnant.

That's all we know.

Are there any of these characters that failed to like connect with you or you were like, oh, that wasn't an interesting way to meet that archetype?

Those kinds of meetings, the characters who we know little about, I'm mostly intrigued by.

And I just want to know more about them.

So none of them really fell flat for me.

The one that didn't quite work for me was Charlie.

And I think it's because...

The drug stuff is like such an, it's like such a clear feint.

And maybe there's a double faint, and this is a head fake and we're going to swerve some other way that I don't expect.

But that was the one time in these two episodes where I felt a little ahead of the curve of what the show was dishing out.

And everything is so mysterious, and everyone's backstories are so closely held that even feeling that felt different than everything else that was happening on screen.

You were like, oh, a twitchy guy has disappeared into the bathroom.

I fucking wonder why.

He sprinted to the front of the plane, and everyone is trying to figure out where he went.

Like, he obviously hid something, probably drugs in the bathroom.

He's either a junkie or a mule, or maybe both.

Like, that just seemed like where we were headed with all that.

I think that's completely fair with Charlie.

For my part, I will say I think the least successful part, like in terms of you're exactly right, that we are presented with various archetypes that will then be subverted.

That is, that's just the show, right?

And there are ways in which this information is so interestingly doled out.

Like I think, you know, you mentioned we first meet the character of Michael.

screaming for Walt.

We find out that Walt is his son.

And then we find out that he doesn't quite know how old Walt is.

And we find out that Walt doesn't even live with him, that he lives with his mom who just died.

Can I first say

very relatable in that way?

Because I am the kind of person who, if someone asks how old I am, will occasionally give the slightly wrong answer and then have to correct myself.

So who among us?

No, that's.

If you asked me about most people that I love and care about, I could not tell you actually how old they are precisely.

Now, we are not their parents.

So yes, there's a different reflection in that in specific, but we're learning more about him as we go.

But that's a great, that's a great moment of like oh this guy doesn't know how old his kid is yeah okay um despite seeing how concerned he was about where walt was um well also with i mean when he says we'll get you a new dog just like very clear this guy does not know how to fully dad not great not great um i would say for me the biggest failure and in this double premiere which i think is so good um in terms of like

we will subvert expectations around them but in in something that i don't think they had a full handle on i will say the son and gin

relationship.

This is the couple who speak only Korean in the double premiere.

And, you know, Jin is

sort of like, it's us first.

This is very like Joel and Ellie, last of us.

Like, we are concerned with us.

Then sort of makes his public bid with some, you know,

sea food that he has procured for people that nobody wants to eat, least of all the pregnant woman.

Just ungrateful.

Literally, the only person who seems to fully appreciate like the fresh uni he's dishing out is claire's baby other than that come on but isn't claire not supposed to be having sushi look desperate times all right fair enough fair enough this is fascinating you say this though because i i found myself like really compelled by their relationship I'm compelled by it.

I think they just, it's the one case where I think they swerved a little hard in a direction, if that makes sense, that they then don't find a natural way back from.

I think that makes total sense.

But I do think having two characters in this case speaking Korean, where all of the audience, you know, in my case, who people who don't speak Korean, like I am reading every bit of body language, every bit, like every kind of social cue and detail, trying to understand who these people are, reading into their hesitations.

Like, are these people who only speak Korean?

Are these people who are choosing to speak Korean, even though they do speak English, to create that barrier, like an us versus the world or us alone kind of thing?

Like,

I'm really captivated by what we've seen from them on screen, even in these first two episodes.

So I'm eager to see kind of what becomes of them.

Other than sort of the instances that we've mentioned, Michael not knowing how old Walt is, et cetera, et cetera.

Are there any, do you have any favorite instances of like telegraphing a relationship dynamic without overtly saying the thing?

I actually think even though that one is a little heavy-handed, it might be Jin and Sun.

It might just be like the, again, just the way they are, like those two actors are physically responding to each other's dialogue is something that like I'm already locked in on in terms of, like, clearly, there is a male patriarchal protectiveness/slash assertiveness, slash, I mean, maybe it feels almost like a little misplay, like a little overcompensating in a way that I don't know if that's what you're alluding to as far as maybe being pitched a little bit intense, or if that's part of the character.

I don't really know any of that yet, but that's all fun stuff to dig into two episodes in.

Absolutely.

Okay, so we've mentioned that we have three flash.

We have a flashback for Jack, a flashback for Charlie, and a flashback for Kate.

And this is all like

what they were doing on the plane before the crash.

And I'm really glad we're doing this next to our Veronica Mars coverage because having just come off a show where we were quite critical of how they use, how they overused flashbacks inside of that,

Lost is a show that is just, his first couple of seasons are just.

anchored on the concept of a flashback.

So many shows copy the lost model going forward where you have, you know, in this first episode,

you know, we've got Jack and Kate and Charlie, but going forward, you will have a blank, it's a blank episode.

It is a Kate episode.

It is a Jack episode.

It is a Charlie episode.

It is a John episode.

It's whatever.

And so you will get flashbacks that will help you understand a bit more who that character is while they're working their way through some drama on the island.

And what is so genius about the way in which Lost employs that as a rule is,

again, it's not about

how this person got here.

It's about why this person is making the choices that they're making on the island,

what it is about how they got, like who they are, why they are, the way that they are.

And you slowly peel back the layers on these characters to find that out.

So that is like a,

you know, any given Netflix show might try to pull off that trick nowadays.

That is like a fairly common sort of idea, but Lost really pioneered it.

How do you feel like these sort of mini flashbacks that we get for Jack, for Kate, and for Charlie work inside of this double premiere?

They're incredibly effective.

I think you're right to point out the contrast.

And to me, a lot of it is.

Like what's striking to me hearing you kind of unpack the role that the flashbacks play and kind of the way they're deployed is they are answering questions that we actually already have as a viewer, right?

Like you see these people, you see them on the beach.

I'm like, John Locke, why are you the way you are?

Like, I genuinely don't understand this man or his whole deal.

I can't wait to see more of him.

But, like, that's a character I want to know more about.

And by virtue of the structure of the show, putting all these people on a plane, all for their individual purposes, all who had complete lives leading up to that moment and the crash, those are questions we have.

Just by, you know, you see them and the way they act on the island, as you said.

And I want to be able to reverse engineer who these people are based on their backstory.

Things like Veronica Mars often are grinding the action that we're invested in to a halt to then tell us about something that we didn't know we needed to ask.

But then, of course, yes, like, oh, you know, here's a murder suspect.

Here's this other element.

Here's this character motivation that you didn't know about.

Like, that stuff's helpful and I think can be good and can, in retrospect, feel valuable.

But as far as the momentum of a show, like these are flashbacks that are accelerating that momentum and not taking it away.

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I feel very confident in us picking this double pilot as the hook episode of the show.

I do think in the grand scheme of thing, the most convincing argument that people could make for a different episode is episode four walkabout, which is John Locke's episode, which is a stunner of an episode.

And so, um, and is and is a moment that a lot of people cite as like a, oh my God, this is why I watched Lost.

We should say that.

Like, I know people have been emailing us at prestige TV at Spotify.com about this series, about the hooked conceit, about various shows and what they think a hooked episode is.

I almost want to like come through this a little bit.

There is like the hooked episode that gets you on board, and then there's like the, oh shit episode.

And to me, they're often not entirely the same thing.

One of them is

it kind of

again, takes you to a place that you maybe didn't know the show could go or shows you a version of the show that you didn't think could exist.

There's an amplifying effect to that that is, to me, almost separate from what we're trying to do with Hooked.

I can't wait to see what happens next sort of thing.

And there's two, there's two different natures,

like two different ideas when it comes to Hooked, which might not be a clean concept for a podcast, but there's like, there's this, which is this, this pilot ends, guys, where are we?

Boom.

And you just want to press play on the next thing.

You can't wait to see what happens next.

And then there's,

this is what the show is, which is a little different.

That's sort of what we've been trying to drill down on with like something like Mad Men.

Like, I think, I think the Breaking Bad episode we picked was very much more like that, that literal hookiness.

But with like our Mad Men or our Veronica Mars choices, we were like, this is actually more what you can expect.

from the show, which is just like a little different than like a grab you.

So I guess we're coming up with like all kinds of taxonomies.

There's the oh shit, there's the grab you, there's the like, I'm insecure storytelling hands kind of idea.

And we also got an email from a listener who was like suggesting that we we should do a mini-series called Unhooked, which is like, what is the, what is the episode that like kicked you off, like killed forever your interest in a show?

And I think that is interesting to think about.

Absolutely interesting to think about.

I do think it's worthy to discuss whether a two-part pilot and premiere should qualify.

And I say that especially because, look, I.

You were anti-this.

I was a little skeptical of it.

Like, obviously, they are of a piece and they are telling a story that is a two-part story.

Yeah.

From the,

I was going to say safety, from the whatever 2025 is, I on my couch can hit next on Hulu and watch the next episode of Lost.

This was not a double batch same night premiere.

This was two separate weeks, two separate episodes.

I think by a certain definition, it's just kind of episode one and two of Lost.

I

don't entirely disagree with you.

And episode one, I think, does end with like a pretty neat hook.

Like you were, you were pretty much in.

Oh, yeah.

When I was rewatching, like you, you watched episode one before I watched my episodes.

And like, bearing that in mind, when episode one ended, I was like, we maybe could have stopped you.

Like, we actually probably could have stopped.

I honestly had seen all I needed to see as far as like an investment in a show.

Yeah, but there are certain character beats.

that I think are so important

in the second episode in terms of like they simply do not have the time to give you little moments with everyone.

And so you just need that extra hour to sort of give you that Saeed and Hurley conversation or give you these various other things.

It's so

Jack and Kate and Charlie focused in that first hour.

So I think just getting the full scope of what is on offer here

is sort of how I think about it.

But

it's a fair point.

Ultimately, I'm glad we did it for exactly that reason.

Like, I do have a better sense of all of these other characters, many of of whom I want to talk about in greater detail.

Uh, but like, yeah, it would have been a much narrower scope on what we have been talking about.

It's like a huge ensemble show, and that in itself is maybe not a fair representation of what lost is.

One in two in total is maybe the fairest representation of that.

Who, which characters do you want to talk about?

Are you saying, like, right now or as you can see?

I'll save it for some of our prompts.

Yeah, I have some dialed up.

Okay, all right, all right.

Um, before we get there, Rob, there's a mystery monster in this episode.

There certainly is.

How does that?

Can I give you a little bit of trivia?

Please.

When we first, you know, it's really Claire who's like identifying, like,

guys, what's that?

What's happening over there?

But the character of Rose,

it's there, there's overlapping dialogue.

So you might not on first watch hear this, but Rose is like, it sounds familiar.

It sounds like something from home.

And people ask her where she's from.

She's from, and she says, the Bronx.

A fun fact is that the sound design that they use there does include the sound of a printing receipt in a taxi.

Wow.

So that's just like a sound design joke, essentially.

But I mean, it's a tremendous bit.

And a ticker tape of

a taxi cab receipt, which children, once upon a time, taxi cabs used to print receipts for

digital.

They still do print them.

The sound design of all of the monster sequences really does make it.

And the sort of like walking the line of like, is this an animal?

Is that a mechanical kind of roaring, which is you alluded to is in the sauce there?

The fact that it's impossible to place, I think is what makes it so good.

So like, I love a mystery.

I love a monster.

I love a mystery monster.

I'm game for all of this stuff.

And especially in the way I was describing earlier, where it sort of like transforms what you think you're watching and where you think you are.

And it's, you know, I,

Joe, you're so right to point out like the fact that we don't have like a natural sort of point of view character or like a tour guide character to take us around the island.

Like we are firmly in the other bucket.

There's those two buckets.

Either someone is taking you through the world and telling you all the rules and showing you what's what, or we, along with the characters, are trying to figure out what the hell is happening.

And I feel like the sound design and the deployment of the monster specifically is the crystallization of that idea of even if they thought they knew where they were, and clearly they're way off course and could not pinpoint themselves on a map, even if they tried,

they don't know what universe they're in, how this polar bear got here, what this monster is, where these sounds are coming from.

Like the accelerating nature of those mysteries, I think, is just so compelling for a show like this.

And I love that you shout out this sort of that moment where we find out that they're way off course.

The use of the pilot in the pilot.

Once again, shout out J.J.

Abrams, regular Greg Grumber, but like

the fact that, like, you know, he's

ailing,

you know,

we're on a we're inside a bit of plane that's like precariously teetering you know very Jurassic park-esque like precariously teetering out of a tree

you know we're at a sharp angle everything is is and there's a monster in the jungle all of this is putting pressure on us and also the pilot is asking questions that he who is like sort of a de facto would be a de facto leader if he were not now just like bloody pulp should be asking which is how many survivors and so we find out how many survivors and we find out how long it's been since they crashed.

You know, these are questions he's asking Jack.

And then he gives Jack information about where these many miles off course, like, and this, and this constant refrain we hear from, especially characters like Shannon, of

they'll take care of it.

Whoever the they are when they get search and rescue is named.

But like several times characters will be like, oh, they will do this or when they find us.

And it's this idea of like, someone is watching and taking care of us.

Someone is at the wheel somewhere.

And it's, no, it's you guys are, it's you guys are going to have to figure it out, you know, and Jack in his, you know, very Noah Wiley in the pit, Robbie like in his

the natural authority that comes of being a medical professional in a medical emergency, right?

Gets slotted into this leadership role.

But as you alluded to,

as well as survivor, Lord of the Flies is definitely the DNA here.

So it's like, who do we want leading us?

And who will they decide they want leading them?

And

will that always be the same answer going forward as it is in a medical emergency hallway on the beach?

Yeah, now that the initial wave of trauma flood has happened in terms of the physical, well, it's still happening.

I mean, surgery is still in progress.

So things are happening.

But yeah, once the dust settles, who is your kind of peacetime president?

You know, who are you, who are you deferring to in that capacity?

I do have an information question for you that I was not sure about from these two episodes.

When they do return from this expedition to the cockpit where they meet the pilot and then lose the pilot and then run off into the jungle, many, many things happen.

Yeah.

When they return, they tell Ian Summerholder's character Boone that there are no survivors from the crash.

To me, that read initially as like they're not going to tell people about the pilot.

Maybe they're not going to tell people that the plane was so horribly off course.

I wasn't quite clear how much had been conveyed from

the Trinity who went out on the expedition and came back as far as like how fucked everyone is from a search party perspective.

That's a great stay tuned

question to ask.

Though I will say,

as we enumerate all the mysteries of the island, like who is this French woman?

What does she mean when she says, you know, they're all dead?

What is that about that 16-year-old mystery, all this sort of stuff like that?

What if it's just like Juliette Benoche hiding in the mountain?

You know, I'm just saying there's lots of, there's lots of very satisfying answers to where that plot line could go.

Julie Delpy, like there's a number of of such women I would, I would happily encounter.

Any one of the women in Portrait of Lady on Fire, like whoever's waiting for us in the jungle, I would happily receive them.

They mentioned that the tail section landed elsewhere.

So that's just like a big question mark that is existent.

Disconcerting.

The way the plane was ripped apart, very disconcerting to watch.

I love, I love when you, I don't know if you're, if you're like me, but you're like watching, I love part of the flashback of who was sitting where on the plane when it crashed is like really fun you know you're just like okay john is sitting right behind rose uh charlie crawls over shannon and boon who go out of their way to say they weren't in first class because if you're in first class that means you were in the tree with the pilots right um and so when she's like he saved our lives it's like if they were in first class they'd be dead in the tree yeah but they were sort of a bit back and it's just like charlie made it all the way to the front of the plane and then somehow made it all the way far enough back that he survived uh the crash as well and that's all just like fun little like puzzling puzzle making that you can do and just a pro move crossing a you know the aisle like that by charlie in order to you know to evade oh yeah one that i really learned i think from the wedding singer when uh you know a guy is trying to escape billy idol and you know like really the only way you can get away from billy idol is by crossing to the other side and both the wedding singer and uh charlie's flashback have a dangerous uh cart going down the aisles uh bodily harm moment.

Watch those elbows.

You know, it's a real hazard.

Theaters struggle out there.

Okay, so I'm just going to race through some of our usual questions without spoiling anything for you, just to like, you know, do due diligence to what we usually ask.

Sounds great.

Is the setting location typical or atypical of the larger series?

Does that matter?

We're on the island.

That's where we need to be.

It's fairly typical.

Makes sense.

The immediate emergency of the plane crash is slightly atypical, but

are enough of the main

slash most important characters represented here?

Does that matter?

Yeah, the gang's all here.

The gang is all here.

Not the entirety of the series gang is all here, but like our season one gang is all here.

Do you want more characters that we've met in these first two episodes?

I don't think you can handle it.

And then most important relationships.

I would say

we can get into this a little bit more, but I just think, you know, I think like having a son and gin moment.

having a Michael Walt moment, having, you know, Jack and Kate's, you know, on unfurling conversations, Shannon and Boone, Shannon talking to Claire, Saeed, talking to Harley, like it's all, they're all sort of, you know, and Sawyer doing whatever the fuck Sawyer wants to do inside of these episodes.

Like it's all Jack and Walt, John and Walt.

Like it's all, it's all sort of in the mix here.

There's too many things to pick from, and they're all important, as it turns out.

So that's the great news.

So that's, that's sort of all the bare bones sort of stuff we wanted to race through.

I appreciate the sensitivity.

I'm almost like compelled to ask you about different character dynamics and like, you know, whose arc I should be looking out for.

But I feel like with a cast this big, I want to know as little as possible.

Can I tell you another fun fact, which is so, like, okay, then this is not a spoiler, but

years ago,

before I started the lost podcast, I was at

an HBO party.

And it was when Watchman was on.

So Damon Lindelof was there.

And I never met him.

And I like forced a friend of mine to introduce me to him

so that I could tell him we were about to do a lost podcast.

And he was like very, very nice and gracious.

And he was like, really?

Every episode?

And,

and, and at that party, he told me a fun fact about the pilot script, which is that originally for Boone, our guy Boone Carlisle, Ian Summerholder, um, they wanted to call him five, as in like he was the fifth, Boone Carlisle the fifth, sort of thing.

So like his name was five.

And then they decided against that.

So they just did like a find and replace in the script for five and changed it to boon but then when you get to like either jack or kate counting like one two three four it said and said like one two three four boon in the script because they just did like a blanket find and replace i love that story so something about ian summer holder does just read like you would you would be the fifth in a lineage you know like maybe that's maybe that's my like rules of attraction brain seeping in but just the man reads uppity i don't know what to tell you it's the way that i mean

ian zommerholder one of uh you know god's gift to humanity absolutely absolutely he's so like well and to inhumanity in the vampire sense absolutely he's so he's like such a like objectively beautiful person but his eyes are just like a little too close together

in a golden ratio sense that makes you think like yeah you might be the fifth in the line of something absolutely i love the boon moment that i love

um is when jack's like go yeah sure go get me some pens.

Yeah, guy.

Um, and then he comes back, he's like, I didn't know what kind to get, so I got all the pens.

And, um, great.

I want to say, in the great sibling feud of Shannon and Boone, I gotta say, I'm Team Shannon in this whole ordeal.

Uh, let, like, everyone's been through a lot.

Let her paint her toenails, you know, like, I think it's okay.

Shannon is a real, like, 2004, this series comes out.

People hate Shannon.

Yeah.

When I, you know, we're, we're in our Paris Hilton is on Veronica Barrs era of culture, you know, and people are just like hating the Shannon archetype.

When we covered it, I was like quite defensive.

I found myself quite defensive of Shannon.

I do feel like we've really like come in a sort of like Cordelia Chase kind of way, like really come

on on these characters.

Yeah.

Come on.

All right.

Episode MVP, aka the honorary Bill Simmons, who won the episode trophy.

Rob, who are you giving this to?

It's very clear from AJo.

It's sawyer

tell me about

he shot a bear

where did it come from polar bear village i don't know yeah yeah uh easily the most interesting character to me so far just like right just with a bullet um in some ways like he's clearly being misjudged by other people as is almost everyone on the beach in some ways he is exactly the kind of asshole who other people have determined that he probably is that sort of like some true some false binary i find really fascinating with him.

I am also just like, personally speaking, and maybe this is something I need to reflect on, deeply skeptical of Jack.

And so the fact that there is a character who's calling Jack out on his like hero bullshit, I just feel bonded to that character.

Maybe not in, you know, the ins and outs of his specific kinds of racism, but I am glad that he is involved in the plot.

I am glad for the presence that he is providing in this show.

So you're like, yeah, um,

yeah.

So what I'm hearing from you is that you love a man who accuses an arrow man of

being a terrorist.

Not what I said.

But you need some bad people.

Also, like, not everyone can be goody two-shoes.

Not everyone can be rowing in the same direction.

Like, I need somebody who just wants to pick up the gun, shoot the bear, and answer questions later.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about Sawyer that I can't wait to someday talk to you about.

It'll be a treat.

But I

was hoping that you would feel an interest in Sawyer, which is, can be a hard sell for some people in this pilot, given

some things he does.

I will say there's a prompt that I dropped in here for a couple bullet points down, just so that I could have an excuse to talk about Sawyer, which is a single striking visual.

And I genuinely think it's Sawyer sitting in the curve of the fuselage reading this letter after having just like introduced himself to us as like an absolute asshole, having what is clearly an emotional reaction to a letter with this like massive backdrop of the jungle behind him, and it's just like the way it's framed, it's just sort of like

you don't know everything about this character yet, which is true of every single character on the show.

But like, he's the one who is, he and like, I would say, Jin are the two characters who, like, in this pilot, we are sort of being asked to judge and just like,

um, and then also be curious about

at the same time.

So, well done.

Um, gosh, my

who won the episode trophy, though, I think I have to give it to Evangeline Lily as Kate.

I think I was familiar with Matthew Fox from Party of Five.

I was familiar with Don Monaghan from Lord of the Rings.

This is Evangeline Lily's introduction to the world.

You didn't have the benefit of Desolation of Smaug leading you in.

She is so Canadian, though her character is not, but she's so Canadian.

I think Kate Austin, though she's not my favorite lost character, is so compelling.

And this is, again,

when we talk about the character, someone said this to me when I was covering every episode of Lost that really unlocked it for me, which is Kate Austin is a JJ Abrams character.

She's a very Sidney Bristow,

an alias, a very Felicity character.

Like, this is a

very Ray in Star Wars.

Like, this is a character that J.J.

Abrams loves to create.

Then she becomes a J.J.

Abrams character in a Damon Lindelof show.

And that just like eventually, some of those pieces don't fit anymore.

But like, that was such a revelation to me.

And I was like, yeah, of course.

She is a JJ Abrams confection and she's works so well here.

And I'm, you know, the moment where she has to take the boots off of a dead body and we are asked sort of to just be with her in the silent horror of that moment, but the very sort of utilitarian, like, I need these boots

to do the thing is, you know, barring, well, actually, I'll get, I'll get to another Kate moment, but like that, that to me is

what hooks me most about this double premiere.

Well, you are, you are in my brain today, Joe, because that, you know, we like to pick a standout scene from these episodes.

That was my standout scene, was the specific prompt of Kate wanting to go along on the hike.

You're going to need some better shoes.

And again, silently plucking these boots off of this dead man's body in a way that like everything had been so propulsive in this pilot to that point, you didn't really have time to stop and sort of account for the devastation of what has just happened.

And then, as you said, like the practical realities that are coinciding with that, it's not just there are all these dead bodies and we need to figure out something to do with these dead bodies.

It's we're going to have to kind of loot these dead bodies for the supplies that we may need just for the just for the realities of surviving on this island.

Coinciding with, she looks up and gets the orange slice smile from John Locke across the way in a way that's making me think, what the fuck?

I am like, kind of,

it leaves me in such a strange place because it's like kind of comforting in a way and kind of creepy in a way.

And that sounds like John Locke.

That means I am exactly where the show wants me to be.

I am already wondering more about both of these characters and how all of these people.

are going to deal with the reality of what just happened once it finally settles in for all of them.

Like once the screaming stops, the internal screaming begins.

And now, all of these people are going to have to pluck boots off of various corpses in order to figure out how to go on.

And, like, that was the sort of moment that to me was like, okay, this is not just the show that can do the boom, boom, boom triage of the initial crisis.

It's also the show that's going to slow down.

It's also the show that's going to give us the character moments.

It's also the show that's going to give us the mystery into who these people are and how they are trying to interact with each other.

Whether John Locke was

trying to reassure her, doing a weird bit, maybe just eating an orange and forgot he was eating an orange.

I don't know, but I would love to find out.

I can't wait for you to find out.

Um,

for me, the standout scene is uh

Kate and Jack when he is giving his angel hair pasta sort of story to her.

A horrifying visual to imagine.

Exactly.

Like that, again, that feels like a very Lindelof moment to me.

Jack, who is, you know,

the big hero of the introduction to the show, is then telling her a story of like failure and fear and vulnerability.

And he's doing it as a bid to like get her to steady her hands as she does something for her.

He's also inside of this scenario where

I'm so sad that I can't talk about like a future thing that Jack does, but like inside of a scenario where he's like,

I,

the, the, the Jack Savior complex, the Jack Hero of the complex, the Jack, I can save everyone.

I can run around and I can help Claire and I can help Rose and I can help all these people unless they get literally sucked into an engine.

You know, like, I, I can, I can do it all, but I've got this cut on my back that I can't reach.

Yeah.

And I need to ask someone for help, you know, and it's just sort of like, what is the

What is in terms of like that social interaction of community, you know, what is what is that moment?

I need to ask this woman who I don't know for help.

I need to trust her that she can do this.

She's very hot, but is she competent?

I don't know.

Can she sew?

Can she sew?

She sewed her drape, so that was with a machine.

So who knows, you know?

I love that he's got that like travel sewing kit that's in like so many people's luggage.

And,

you know, and then Kate as,

you know, someone who is presented as quite competent, you know, she like gets a gun off Sawyer later.

Like, there's like a lot of stuff that she can do, but her fear, her, her fear as she tucks herself inside of like a mangrove tree and is,

you know, counting to five, her fear in this moment, like all of that, his failure, her fear inside of these heroic moments for them is the like absolutely intoxicating.

I'm going to use the Mali Rubin word, brew that is, that is lost, you know?

So it's really, it's really delivering a lot of different emotional wavelengths within these first two episodes in a way that is really impressive.

And I think transcends, as we've been talking about with these other pilots, the sort of like Wikipedia entry version of the show, or even the like, we are selling this to the network version of the show.

It is,

we are delivering out of the gate on the promise of who these characters already are to each other and who they could potentially be to each other.

And there are a lot of compromises that they had to make, of course, to like, you know, get this through to the network.

I will say, and, you know, as you watch season one,

a mandate that they were given in season one is that there needed to be a plausible explanation for everything that happens on the island, even like a monster, you know, like because ABC was like too, like,

genre shows did not have this kind of like mass appeal.

Like, this was kind of a risky move.

And so, you know, barring, you know, the X-Files was, of course, a cultural phenomenon, Buffett was a niche cultural phenomenon, like these things existed.

But on this scale of what Lost becomes, this is a different animal altogether.

Absolutely.

It's also, I would say, baked into the DNA of something like the X-Files that it's like, there are no answers for some of this stuff.

You know, it's like there are things that we can answer and there are things we can't to come into this as like a plane crash show that then quickly becomes a mystery show.

Yeah.

I can understand the thinking of why you want to maybe like give people a little bit more firm ground to walk on, but it does defeat the purpose of what the show is kind of trying to be based on these first two, it would seem.

And I will say eventually like the show, the show, the the first season is so popular that eventually the network is like, okay, do your rude thing.

Like, do your rudeness.

It's fine.

Okay.

I already mentioned my single striking visual.

I'll pick another one.

There's a lot.

Actually, I'm going to pick two.

One is John Locke.

You mentioned the orange peel smile.

That's great.

The John Locke holding up the back gamut pieces, two players, one black, one white, is like an absolutely iconic visual.

I can imagine.

From this episode.

And then I will also say the choice to have Kate find the captain's like wings in the water and then to get the reflection of his body up in the tree in the reflection of the water.

That's good shit, Joe.

That's good.

That's good shit.

JJ, you can do it.

You are capable of it.

All right, what do you, what would you pick here?

I think for me, it's sort of, again, in a different register, where it's the visual of a collapsed Hurley on top of the surgery scene,

where

a lot has been happening.

And yes, there have been like quips to this point and like a little light humor.

I would say especially like Charlie had kind of has that role throughout some of it through these first two episodes, but we're just like in the midst of a crisis and we're pulling off like full-scale physical comedy.

And it's like a legitimately very important moment in terms of, you know, deflating some of the anxiety from the episode in this surgery that I really appreciated.

And that we can have all of these beautiful visuals, all these dramatic elements that we're introducing to the show, all these mysteries, and we can also have fun with it.

Not a lot of shows can pull that off.

And so I was very appreciative.

I think that is sort of a Lindalafian

pull that I always appreciate is that

once you get outside the first season of The Leftovers, which has its ups, but is fairly unrelentingly grim.

But when you think about those later seasons, which you and I talked about in previous Prestige TV podcast episodes, or we think about Watchmen, like all of this is dealing with incredibly heavy emotional stuff, then there's just like a bit of whimsy also there.

You got to take the piss out of the thing.

Because in a way, it will amplify the grief, the difficulty, the like all of the heavy emotions you're trying to get into.

It's like a little bit of a salt on the watermelon situation where it's going to intensify what you're getting from these other elements of the show.

I want to, I already mentioned Michael Giacchino as this like key player.

I just want to mention that a musical cue that we get inside of this episode is one of my favorites.

Actually, it will recur.

It's called like the traveling theme.

And it's when Sawyer and Kate and Shannon and Boone and Charlie and Saeed are like grappling up a cliffside via vines, essentially, right?

And it's just like this very jaunty, like we're going somewhere on the island music that you hear a lot.

But it's called, and I think in honor of Shannon, it's called Hollywood and Vines.

That's what that track is called because every single Michael Jacquino track for Lost is like a

will piss off Rob Mahoney pun.

Look, I like it.

Levin Vines is one of my favorites.

I like a pun.

I just think we need to show a little restraint sometime.

Okay.

Michael Giquino did not get that memo.

No, that's okay.

You know what?

Again, if you do the work like that, you get the fuck you privilege to everyone else.

I'm trying to give you one that is not a spoiler.

I will give you, there's one that's called,

I can't even say it out loud.

You can't even say it out.

It's Shannon shenanigans.

It's shenanigans.

I actually do like shenanigans.

You do?

Okay.

You know what?

Maybe I'm just full-on shannon pilled at this point.

You know, I'm willing to go along with anything Shannon related.

I love how Boone's like, clearly you found your location.

The sunbathing was very funny.

Yeah.

And then like Claire tried to participate with her like eight-month belly.

And she's just like, I will take a layer off.

I am also doing this.

And also Shannon being the kind of woman who like clearly doesn't know how to talk to a pregnant person.

Or to anyone.

I mean, honestly, it's kind of an alien in her own right.

Okay.

What's the most 2004 thing about this episode?

I actually think, from a production and storytelling perspective, it is a moment you've already cited, which is when Kate gets scared and does her count to five.

And we do not get the cutaway flashback to Jack telling her about it, which I feel like if this show were made today, that note is coming from somebody of like, oh my God, I'm so worried people aren't going to, why is she counting to five?

This test audience didn't understand it.

Like, that's so depressing.

Yeah.

And again, to get

they were second screening,

they totally missed it, even though it was dialogue.

Yeah.

Another way in which I just feel reassured that this is not a show that takes my attention and my just like baseline intelligence as a viewer, this is not critical thinking.

This is just listening to the show and understanding what's happening for granted.

Like this is a show that's going to reward you for paying attention to

not even a detail, but just kind of the baseline executions of the plot and the characters.

I love that.

I think

we've already talked at length about Shannon.

I think, as like a 2004 archetype, she's like pretty clear.

I will say also, so yes, comes out in 2004.

The television show 24 is enormously popular.

We are in like the echoes of 9-11 into the Iraqi war.

And so Saeed as a character,

the conversation about him being like pulled out of line and patted down in the airport,

Sawyer's suspicion of him, Hurley's realization that he was in the Republican Guard, all that sort of stuff.

And just in general, this actually is like, so I would say Saeed and Shannon as sort of like these, we've got our finger on the pulse of some kind of conversation moment.

And then I would say on the flip side of that, this sprawling international cast

is very unusual for television at this time.

For sure.

And so, you know, to have Sun and Jin speaking in Korean, to have, you know, the character Saeed here

and all the, you know, unusual kinds of people that you get in this motley assortment, this was like a huge cast.

And there's been so many imitators, bad imitators of lost after lost that this might not seem like a big deal, but this was a really big deal at the time.

So it was so striking in that way with the international cast that when Claire started talking, I was like, is this an Australian character or is this an Australian actress whose NARs are poking through?

You know, like, what, what is happening here exactly?

Claire's from Australia.

You're, as you continue on your journey, so the Oceanic is the flight from Sydney to Los Angeles.

So why were all these characters in Australia in the first place?

Is a, is a, you know, we know why Michael and Walt were there, but why, why was everyone else in Australia is a good question to ask.

Um, you're going to hear some quote-unquote Australian accents on this show.

That's just some of the worst stuff I've ever heard in my life.

I genuinely can't wait.

Really, really good.

Um, anything else you want to say before we do like a brief sort of spoiler-free look ahead, if I'm even capable of that?

Not particularly.

I just, I think these episodes are successful in delivering on

hooking you in a way, as I alluded to earlier, by like, I didn't know what I wanted from these two episodes.

And I, the fact that they were able to supply that and give you a backdoor way into a different kind of show, I think it's just really evolved storytelling for this sort of introduction.

And I don't know how it's it's done.

Like, I don't know how you pull all this off within this, I think, relatively finite runtime, given all that they accomplish, but I am in awe of it.

It is incredibly impressive.

So excited.

I'm on the hook for the show.

I also, we would be loathe not to mention, like, there have been many lost homages, crossovers, references, not just as you, as you said, Joe, in terms of shows like kind of trying to rip off the concept or the structure of the cast or whatever it is, but the numbers kind of pop up everywhere.

We were talking about them earlier this year with Severance.

Severance, yeah.

But coming off of Veronica Mars, where they also make an appearance as the fortune cookie numbers on, you know, a fortune that Duncan gives Veronica to kind of reignite their relationship.

So, you know, even within the hooked, the hookediverse, lost

lost as an outsized presence.

Normal is the watchword is what I heard.

Okay, so I'm so excited.

I genuinely cannot believe my luck.

In this like

weird sort of podcasting Bermuda triangle that we find ourselves right now, where like you and Mal and I I are covering Alien Earth together.

Um, I get to show Mal Buffy, which is one of your favorite shows.

I get to show you Lost, which is one of Mal's favorite shows.

It's like, I feel very fortunate to be like sort of in this

time.

It's beautiful.

Mal's joy and Malory's joy in watching the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Your joy and your sort of like assertion that you're going to keep watching Lost is just like, I can't wait to hear your takes on Lost.

I'm so excited for this.

So, again, I know you have tons of spare time to do that.

You're at sort of rap screenings in LA every night now and stuff like that.

So

but we'll see what we can do.

But let me be our first in-person affirmative testimonial that you proposed the hooked episode.

I watched it.

I'm hooked.

We did it.

Mission accomplished.

We did it.

All right.

Please text me when you get to walk about and let me know what you think about it.

Anything that I can say in a relatively spoiler-free way, discuss what larger themes or storylines or characteristics are seated here.

I will just say, I think we've already covered most of this, but I'll just say, you know, like caring about all of these characters is something that Lost will continue to do.

The flashback structure, which we already talked about.

This moment as, I mean, as you might like a couple of visuals that always come to mind when I think about this pilot, Shannon sort of standing there, like scream sobbing in front of the fuselage is one of them.

And then Charlie, who just recently rubbed some heroin on his gum, sort of like walking, stumbling around, like in a dazed state, or like

sharpieing the word fate on the tape on his like fingers and stuff like that.

Like, there are these

moments and seeds that are planted.

There are little details planted here that someone who's watched the show a million times, the backgammon game, all this sort of stuff that is just going to like continue to come back and back and back and back around.

So, like, you know, this

Lost was the first show inside of a rising internet fandom that really got the accusing finger of did you have this all planned out when you started yeah

and um

they did and they didn't yeah right which honestly is probably the way you should do it we talked about this before i think on this podcast which is just sort of like breaking bad is such a compelling counterexample Absolutely.

And like with something like Severance, like I don't need them to,

you know, Severance, a show that we really like and we also found a bit messy also at the same time.

I don't need them.

I love mess.

I don't like, I don't know, again, this is this is my preferred zone.

You and Marie Kondo.

Just like, I love it.

I don't need them to know exactly where they're going.

I do need them to

be authentic to their characters.

Yes.

And

I do need them to,

what I want a show to do when they present twists and turns.

are twists and turns that are there to serve character and serve plot and not just to shock and awe.

That's it.

You know, like that's, that's really key to me.

And that's something that for something like Game of Thrones delineates early thrones to later thrones.

Later Thrones was just like, how can we replicate the high that we get thought of of surprising you in the early seasons and we'll just do it, you know, willy-nilly just to shock you.

Whereas in early Seasons of Thrones, it's like, here are these complex character choices that led up to this.

tragic and disastrous moment.

And so it's just like, it's, it's,

it's just a, I really think it comes down to caring about your characters.

That's it.

If you care about your characters, you're going to be authentic to their choices.

And if you care about them, you're going to care that you've put them in premises that make sense for the choices that they've made.

And if those, if those.

premises, if those tragedies, if those twists and turns provoke an emotional response from the audience, they only will if you've hooked us into character as well as as premise.

So that's where I am.

There is so much you can understand in a different way or forgive or kind of just blot out as from a plotting perspective, if all of that character stuff is on point.

And like, I will trade the lore master show Bible every day for a showrunner or a creator or a writer who has an actual good sense of who their characters are.

Yeah.

And if you're nailing that, like, we will let the mystery be.

Like, we will forgive a lot and we will understand a lot in a different context if you can pull that stuff off.

You beat me to the let the mystery be drop.

I love that for you, Rob.

Okay, so this is uh

this is it for hooked colon lost uh hopefully you you watch these episodes and you are hooked and want to watch lost if you haven't already they were not dead the whole time i just

to reiterate important to me it's really important that you know that um

we'll be back uh uh as we mentioned we're covering task on a weekly basis uh with bill We're going to be covering Slow Horses at the end of the month.

We've got a couple more hooked episodes coming, hopefully with some guests.

Yeah, with some friends, which should be a lot of fun.

Some pals are going to be joining us.

So, that is the plan.

And then, Rob and I are covering Alien Earth every week over in House of R for the rest of that run.

So,

anywhere else that folks can find you, Rob Mahoney.

That's about it for right now.

NBA season is almost upon us, but

mercifully, I think we're going to get through some of this very chunky, very good TV before the basketball really kicks up.

Absolutely.

All right.

I will see you all soon.

Thank you to Kai Grady and to Justin Sales.

And

bye

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