lost

back then, when i was in college, everybody was talking about lost. i can't emphasize enough how much it helped all of us as juniors to socialize and get to know each other.

i was that quiet introvert who always sat in the back corner as my default, but it didn't take too long to loosen up thanks to everyone being super excited about the show and banging our heads together to figure out what it was trying to say, what's up with all those famous philosophers' names were given to those characters, what are those hidden messages and symbols were being dropped in every single episode was trying to point on?

this level of intimacy eventually led us to break the ice and talk about other important things in life, such as alias! another great show from jj abrams :)

now i see people harshly judging jj abrams and lost based on what we know today vs back then. that's unfair. it was a breath of fresh air and was done very well. *

now finally lost has come to netflix, which makes me think hard and long about going one more round after all those years. i'm scared to find out if i'll be still enjoying it even though knowing the entire storyline or if i'd feel that i just made a big deal out of it and it will not match my romanticized expectations of it. damn lost, there you go again, confusing the hell out of me!

it's january 2004. lloyd braun, the top executive at abc back then, came up with an idea and ordered a tv show script based on it. the show would be about a group of people stranded on an island after a plane crash. however, braun wasn't happy with the script, so he reached out to j.j. abrams, the creator of alias at that time, and asked him to write a new pilot script.

initially, abrams thought the concept wasn't suitable for a tv series, but he eventually got to work, convincing the producer that the island couldn't be just any "normal" island. partnering with producer damon lindelof, abrams filmed the pilot episode in a brief 12 weeks.

the result? lost's pilot became the most expensive in tv history, with a budget of 12 million dollars! braun, having greenlit such an expensive project, was fired from abc. as you know, lost turned into one of the greatest commercial and critical successes in tv history. abrams solidified his reputation as television's (and then cinema's) golden boy.

as for braun, the man who first discovered the show, he ended up accepting yahoo's job offer after he asked this question to his kids "whether they'd rather give up their computer or tv" and not surprisingly they said "tv".

and just one last note; the chilling "previously on lost..." voice that opens each episode, though slightly slowed down, was actually braun's voice.

lost was the show that kick-started an interest in me to tell stories. it taught me it doesn't matter how cliche your storyline is; if you can tell it well and keep things interesting, you can make everyone glued to their screen. (come on guys, it wasn't just the mystery that kept us begging for the next episode; there was more to it!)

it's like lost opened a new era for tv series back then and had a major influence on what kind of content people wanted: well thought out, full of intricacy, super detailed, nuanced, and featuring interesting, complex characters. i believe american tv series experienced its peak during this decade.

so this was my introduction to great storytelling, and from there, i kept binge-watching a lot of series and stumbled upon some epic ones along the way (see: house md), (see: breaking bad), (see: mad men), (see: how i met your mother), (see: house of cards), and a whole bunch more...

all this subconscious education from the very best led me to write my own short stories, which i published on some websites. to my delight, i received some great feedback. nowadays, however, i don't write fiction; though it cracked open the writer within me. kudos to you lost :)