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"Pilot, Part 1" is the first of a 2-part pilot episode for Lost. Part 2 aired the following week. The complete pilot aired in its original format on October 2, 2004. The episode sets the precedent of realtime events and "flashbacks" of characters' pasts before being on the island. Jack Shephard, a doctor from Los Angeles, finds himself a survivor of a terrible plane crash on a mysterious island. With the help of other survivors, he begins treating the injured, and attempts to find the cockpit of the plane in the hope of contacting civilization.
Synopsis
Flashback
Jack, looking out the window of Flight 815
The flashback opens on Jack Shephard, sitting in a plane and looking out the window, when he is approached by an attendant. She asks about his drink, and hands him two more bottles of liquor. A little later, he gets up and stands in the aisle, when a man bumps into him while hurrying towards the bathroom, followed by two flight attendants. The woman sitting across him comments on it, and they start talking about her husband, who was at the bathroom then. Jack attempts to comfort her fears of flying, ensuring her that they are safe, when the plane suddenly starts shaking, and soon looses cabin pressure, tossing people around. The oxygen masks fall from the ceiling, and in a fit of panic, everyone, including Jack, scramble to put them on. As he succeeds to wear it, he looks out the window to the approaching ocean.
Realtime events
Jack Shephard, waking up in the jungle
A close-up of an opening eye shows the pupil contracting. The tops of trees in a bamboo grove are seen through the eyes of man (who is later identified as Jack Shephard) lying on his back in the jungle. A Golden Labrador Retriever dog trots past through the trees. Obviously confused to how he arrived there, the man gazes about at the idyllic surroundings when his memories rush back to him. He notices a white tennis shoe hanging from a tree. With great effort, he sits upright, revealing blood on his shirt. He bolts upright and runs pell-mell through the jungle, emerging at a beach strewn with the wreckage of a jet airliner and almost 50 confused survivors of the crash. The fuselage of the jet is still burning and one of the engines is still in operation, though its speed waxes and wanes due to no apparent cause.
Jack, walking in the wreckage
On the beach, Jack moves quickly among the survivors attempting to administer medical aid, identifying himself as a medical doctor. With the help of other survivors (one is later identified as Johnathan "John" Locke), he pulls a man with a severed leg from underneath the fuselage. When he notices a pregnant woman (whom we later meet as Claire Littleton) complaining of possible labor pains, he directs a nearby survivor (whom we later meet as Hugo "Hurley" Reyes) to help her. Chaos continues as the fuselage continues to burn and disintegrate. A male survivor is sucked into the jet engine, which explodes, sending debris raining on the beach. Jack administers CPR to a woman (later identified as Rose Nadler) unconscious on the beach after a man had attempted to do the same (later identified as Boone Carlyle).
After administering aid to the others, Jack takes a sewing kit from a suitcase and slips off into the jungle to examine the wound on his left side.
It is also revealed through their conversation that the plane disintegrated in the air, with the tail section of the plane having fallen off (Kate claims she saw the whole thing, while Jack says he blacked out before that).
Kate sawing up Jack's wound, as he tells her his "Count to 5" story
On the beach, Jack tends to an unconscious male survivor who is badly injured by a fragment of the fuselage embedded in his torso. Kate asks Jack if he thinks the man will live, and informs him that she was sitting next to him during the flight. Other survivors (including the father and son we later meet as Michael Dawson and Walt Lloyd) congregate and discuss what to do with the bodies still in the fuselage. A male survivor (identified soon as Sayid Jarrah) has created a fire and asks another man to assist him (later identified as Charlie Pace). We briefly encounter the character later identified as James "Sawyer" Ford, lounging nonchalantly on his back on the beach, who lights a cigarette and smokes in the wreckage. The character we earlier met, Hurley, salvages meals from the plane's galley and distributes them, giving two to Claire (her labor pains were false, but it is revealed she is eight months pregnant). A young woman whom later meet as Shannon Rutherford petulantly refuses a chocolate bar offered by her male companion (whom we later meet as Boone Carlyle, her step-brother) on the grounds that she will eat on the "rescue ship" when it arrives. Among the survivors, there is a general expectation that they will be rescued at any time. Sayid organizes the clean-up of the beach.
In the evening, beyond the light of their fire, the peacefulness of the waiting is interrupted by loud terrifying mechanical-sounding noises from the nearby jungle, punctuated by the crashing of trees. The source of these noises seems invisible or hidden, and is later referred to as "The Monster". The next day, Rose remarks that the sounds remind of where she used to live - The Bronx, New York.
A group of the survivors discuss going to the nose section.
The next day, Jack decides that in order to be rescued, the survivors will need to send a radio message using the transceiver of the aircraft, which is located in the cockpit, which broke off in the air (In doing so, Jack reveals to Kate that he took a few flying lessons but that it "wasn't for him"). Jack leaves Boone in charge of the wounded, including the man with shrapnel in his stomach. Based on Kate's descriptions of the location of smoke, he sets off into the jungle, accompanied by Kate at her insistence, as well as by Charlie. As the trio walks away from the beach, they are observed from the brush by the dog encountered in the opening scene. Kate tells Charlie he looks familiar, and he reveals to her that he is the bass guitar player in a band called Drive Shaft.
The nose of the plane.
As the trio advances into the jungle, they are drenched by a sudden rainstorm. They encounter the nose section of the plane, which is sitting at a steep angle in the trees. The three of them, led by Jack, climb into the nose and scale the steep floor, where Jack pries open the cockpit door. Inside he and Kate find The Pilot, still in his seat, who awakens suddenly. The pilot reveals to Jack and Kate that the plane had lost radio contact before the crash, and had changed course towards Fiji. They were, in his reckoning, 1000 miles off course and thus no one knows where they are. The pilot locates the transceiver, but he cannot get it to function. At this time, Kate and Jack notice that Charlie has disappeared. He suddenly emerges from the restroom to the suspicion of Kate.
Meanwhile on the beach during the same rainstorm, a group of the survivors huddles in part of the fuselage. The conspicuous exception is the older fellow, John Locke, who sits alone in the rain on the beach with his arms outstretched up the air, as if glorying in the rain itself. A young Korean couple (whom we later meet as Jin-Soo Kwon and Sun-Soo Kwon) huddles under part of the fuselage. The man tells the woman in Korean to stick close to him at all times.
In the jungle, the conversation in the cockpit is interrupted by loud noises from outside the plane, accompanied by mechanical thrashing identical to the "Monster" heard by the other survivors on the beach. The pilot attempts to investigate by climbing out a broken cockpit window. To the horror of the others, he is seized by some unseen presence while halfway out the window and disappears. Jack grabs the transceiver and he and Kate exit the cockpit in terror. As the three run from the "Monster", Charlie is nearly taken by it, after he trips, and Jack leaves Kate to return to fetch him. She calms herself by counting to five as Jack had suggested. Charlie runs into Kate without Jack, and the two go searching for him. Kate finds the pilot's badge in the mud, then they spot his bloodied body suspended in the tree tops. Jack emerges and says he dodged The Monster, and Charlie questions what could have done that to the pilot.
Trivia
Awards
- J.J. Abrams won an Emmy for directing this episode.
- Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Jeffrey Lieber also got an Emmy nomination for writing it.
General
- With a budget between $10 to $14 million, this episode, along with its second part, became the most expensive pilot in TV history.
- Jack was originally intended to get killed off in the pilot episode, with Kate replacing him as the de-facto leader of the survivors. However, after reconsidering the effect on the viewers of pulling out a main character in the first episode, as well as Matthew Fox's own phenomenal acting, the writers decided to keep Jack, and introduced the short-lived Pilot character instead.
- Boone's original name was "5". When they decided to change it to "Boone" they ran a find-and-replace on the script. They later noticed that this changed the dialog between Kate and Jack in the stitching scene to "1, 2, 3, 4, Boone!".
- The pilot who was killed by the monster, although uncredited, was played by Greg Grunberg, J.J. Abrams's childhood friend who has appeared in almost every one of his productions.
Recurring themes
| Recurring themes |
|---|
| Animals • Black and white • Character connections • Children • Coincidence • Death • Deceptions and cons • Dreams • Economics • Electromagnetism • Eyes • Fate versus free will • Games • Good and bad people • Imprisonment • Isolation • Leadership • Life and death • Literary works • Mirrors • Missing body parts • Nicknames • The Numbers • Pairings • Parapsychology • Parent issues • Pregnancies • Psychology • Rain • Redemption • Relationships • Religion • Revenge • Salvation • Secrets |
- The episode opens with a closeup on Jack's eye, which becomes a recurring theme after, with a closeup on the eye that will most probably have be the center of the episode's events and flashbacks. (Eyes)
- In the next scene, a Golden Labrador Retriever dog appears to Jack, right in the jungle, which is later introduced as Vincent. (Animals)
- At the wreckage on the beach, the presence of death prevails, with all the dead bodies lie around, in addition to those trapped in fuselage. (Life and death)
- At the wreckage, a man gets sucked into a still-running turbine, killing him and causing the turbine to explode. (Life and death)
- At the Front section, Jack, Kate & Charlie have their first fearful encounter with an unseen Monster. (Fear)
- In the events of their encounter, the Pilot is pulled from the section, and later fund dead, hanging from a tree (Life and death)
- Among the very first survivors Jack tends to, is the pregnant Claire. (Pregnancies)
See also
- The Turbine explosion
- The Wreck Of Island Aeromotive - a parody of Pilot, Part 1