Pilot, Part 1

WHY AM I WATCHING PILOT, PART 1?

See, because it's the first episode of the series, and also the guy who flies the plane gets eaten by a dinosaur.

Eye welcome you to my blog.

THE ISLAND

We start out, in media res, which is Latin for "thing I saw on a more professional media blog", with our hero Man In Suit, regaining consciousness on the jungle floor. As he stumbles onto a beach, the camera focuses on a shoe for some reason. The director must be a Reverse Tarantino. Then, we are out on the beach. It's a good thing it's pretty because we will be spending a lot of time here. Well, it's not pretty yet. Right now it's full of fire and death. But we should probably get used to that too. Here we meet all our main characters. Pregnant Girl, Fat Dude, Korean Douchebag, Guy Who Can't Find Walt, Guy Who Tries Hard But is Basically Useless, and Girl Standing There Just Fucking Screaming. It's a pretty big cast. We also find out the name of the guy we've been following around. We learn this because he literally turns to the camera and says "My name is Jack." Who says this show never gives you any answers? We're then treated to a pretty cool scene of Jack Shephard: Action Doctor! He's running all over the beach, jumping dunes, dodging explosions, getting his triage on. It's pretty great.

What's not so great is what happens next. Jack finally gets a chance to take care of his own wounds, and gets help from a pretty girl named Kate. We first meet Kate coming out of the trees, which makes sense because that's where she spends all of her time. Jack is aided by a tiny bottle of airplane vodka, the disinfectant of the discerning castaway. And also Kate is there. It's almost a good scene, but Kate ruins everything. And climbs trees.

The first night on the beach is quiet. It's a nice way to decompress after the action of earlier. There's lots of nice character moments as everyone settles in for the evening, Hurley, in particular seems to be settling into his role as head of the Party Planning Committee. Also, Kate is unusually interested in the fate of the man who was sitting next to her on the plane, but I could not begin to care about it. Jack decides that he's going to find the cockpit of the plane to get the transceiver they need to call for help. Kate and Charlie are going to come along too because why the fuck not? But before anyone can head out, all hell breaks loose again. The trees in the jungle start shaking, and there's some crazy noise that sounds like a cross between a T-Rex and a  dot matrix printer. This freaks everyone out a bit.

During the hike to the flight deck we learn a few things about the characters. Charlie is kind of a goofball and plays bass for the popular rock band Drive Shaft. Jack is Very Serious and more than a bit of a control freak. And Kate doesn't have consistent characterization. And it just starts fucking raining. It starts Jungle Raining on everyone and the three castaways take shelter in a conveniently placed airplane half. Who put that there? Let's go ask the pilot, because apparently he's still alive and has just been chilling out for a day and a half. Well, was alive. The monster thing comes back, and apparently the pilot has never seen a movie before, because he sticks his head out the window like a goddamn jerk. There's a pretty great chase scene as our heroes make their escape. Charlie falls behind, and Jack goes to get him, because that's what heroes do. Kate starts crying and goes and hides in some trees. Because if there's one thing that I really want to establish here in this first blog post, it's that Kate ruins everything. And climbs trees.

I guess we're supposed to think that the monster ate Jack, but he shows up like half a second later. We do get to see the mangled, bloody corpse of the pilot, which makes for a good cliffhanger, but not as good as "The guy we've been following all hour is probably dead now". I hope Charlie kept the pilot's little wing pin, though. That would look nice on his lapel.

Keep an eye on this Abrams kid. He's going places.

THE FLASHBACK

It's a quick flashback this week. There's only one scene and it starts on the plane right before the crash. There's some nonsense with Jack flirting with the stewardess and talking to Rose. Typical Jack stuff where he pretends to be in charge even though he has no idea what's going on. But like most things on this show, it's just smoke and mirrors distracting you from the true hero of this episode. We finally learn the secret origin of the bottle of vodka that Jack uses to sterilize his wound. Godspeed, tiny bottle of vodka. You were too beautiful for this world.

When a hero comes along...

THE RANDOM THOUGHTS

Jack is bamboozled

• I can't tell if Kate is really that bad in this episode or if I'm basing this off of what's to come. Either way she ends up being the worst, so I stand by it.
• Originally I was going to do both parts of the pilot together. But it seemed kind of arbirtrary to me to take a show this seralized and decide that two part episodes need to be put together. I mean, the whole series takes place over like two weeks. But as it turns out it originally aired as two separate episodes. So some ABC executive just bought me an extra week of content. Thanks!
• I could have sworn that by 2004 we were beyond the whole "Smoking makes you look cool, man!" thing.
• Honestly, I didn't take a lot of notes for this. It's really good television. At the time, it was the most expensive pilot ever made, and it shows. All the money is up on the screen. There's a huge cast, beautiful set, lots of things going boom. It all makes for a very engaging hour of TV.
• So, real quick. Here's my plans for this blog. I'm going to review/recap all of Lost. In between seasons, I'll find a movie or something short to break up the monotony a bit. And when this is done, I'll find another show to do. But that's like two and a half years away, so I'm not too worried about it right now.

THE CATCHPHRASES

• WALT! WAAAAAALT!
• We have to go back!