Can someone give me a brief synopsis of this show?

[SG-1ssm]

I think I might start watching Lost when season 3 starts because is sounds really cool. Could someone give me a brief summary of the show so far?

[Commander Ivanova]

I think I might start watching Lost when season 3 starts because is sounds really cool. Could someone give me a brief summary of the show so far?

Plane crashes. Weird sh*t happens.

Brief enough for you?



Seriously, someone else'll do a better job I'm sure

[2ndgenerationalteran]

thats a hard task you ask of, way too much has happened to make it brief.

[Naonak]

Brief synopsis of Lost, eh? Uhh, no. Seriously, it ain't possible. There's just too much going on.

Wikipedia has episode synopses.

[Morbo]

the best synopsis can be found here and here.

enjoy.

[The Prophet]

If you're going to start watching Lost S3, it'll be better to actually watch S1 & S2, otherwise you'll have absolutly no clue of what's going on (every minute detail usually serves a purpose...)... You can watch S2 on Youtube, don't know about S1 though...

[*E*K*R*]

If you're going to start watching Lost S3, it'll be better to actually watch S1 & S2, otherwise you'll have absolutly no clue of what's going on (every minute detail usually serves a purpose...)... You can watch S2 on Youtube, don't know about S1 though...

agreed... don't just jump in there. it will really ruin it. You have to watch season 1 and 2 first... in order.

they are out on dvd i think?

its definetly worth a watch though!

[The Prophet]

Yeah, S1s on DVD, not sure about S2, I don't think it's out in the UK yet, is it in the US?

[Qtyled]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...v=glance&n=130
No, it's coming out Sep 5.

[rarocks24]

If you are going to start in the beginning, I recommend buying the episodes off iTunes. They are fairly cheap, $1.99, and have a good plotline.

[Scoobing]

I thought I read you couldn't just watch iTunes stuff on your PC, do you have to have a vid ipod to watch the eps you get from there?

[*E*K*R*]

I thought I read you couldn't just watch iTunes stuff on your PC, do you have to have a vid ipod to watch the eps you get from there?

you have to have a recent version of itunes.... but itunes plays it fine on your PC.

[Mousie]

Yeah you do really need to watch the first 2 series. Each episode related to the one before and after, it's basically one looooooooooong film chopped up into 22 (or 24) bite sized segments. Lost doesn't have any stand alone episodes (like any other show would have - a few arc episodes with the rest as stand alone episodes) so it would be almost impossible (I would think) to pick it up going cold into S3. So what you have to realise is that by the end of the second series the survivors have only been on the island for about 50 days. Most other programmes usually have one series genrally representing a year.

[YodaMate]

I'll have a crack at summarising some of Lost for you, but like the people have said, you really do need to watch it to gain a fuller understanding, and to actually know and care about the many characters.

Alert… Massive spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2

Season 1

Spoiler:

A commercial passenger flight from Sydney to Los Angeles mysteriously tears apart in mid-air, crashing on an apparently deserted island beach somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, leaving 48 survivors whose perspective the series follows. They soon locate the separated cockpit section and interview the pilot, learning that the plane suffered technical failure (including communications) and had changed course in mid-flight before the crash. Any rescuers will be looking in the wrong place.

The interview is interrupted by a large and unseen monster that pulls the pilot out of the cockpit and kills him. They try to use the plane’s radio but discover a signal already broadcasting, in French, saying “it killed them all”. The signal has been repeating over and over for 16 years. Later on, one of the survivors (Sayid, an Iraqi ex-Republican Guard who specialises in communications and torture) is captured by the French woman, who is still alive. She has been living on the island by herself for 16 years and her sanity is questionable. She releases Sayid, warning him of ‘Others’ on the island.

Before Sayid returns, the survivors do a census of themselves and discover that one of their own, Ethan, is an impostor who wasn’t on the plane. He kidnaps a pregnant girl, Claire, and escapes into the jungle. Later, she mysteriously returns with no memory of her time on the island, but with an angry Ethan close behind. He demands Claire be handed back, but is ambushed instead by the survivors. He is shot dead by Charlie (a failed rock star and recovering drug addict who likes Claire) before they can get any answers out of him.

The pre-crash lives and many secrets of the survivors are revealed one-by-one in flashbacks over the course of the series. Some secrets are more important than others ; for example, they have several handguns thanks to the now-deceased US Marshall that was escorting a female prisoner (Kate). The survivors are international and diverse, also including a North Korean couple (only the wife speaks English), a doctor with a hero complex (Matthew Fox as Jack), a con man, a father and his young son who don’t know each other, a rather overweight dude and the mysterious John Locke. Some secrets are revealed only to the audience.
The island is a strange place ; there are unusually sudden rainfalls, the survivors occasionally hear whispers in the jungle, a number of polar bears are running around and of course, there is the monster. Early on, Locke saw the monster and has come to believe the island is a supernatural place (interestingly, Locke was paralysed before the crash and since he’s been on the island he can walk again) though he tends to hide his beliefs and discoveries from the others. He found a metal door in the jungle (dubbed the ‘hatch’) but couldn’t open it despite his best efforts. He followed a dream and discovered a smaller plane crashed in the jungle, a plane carrying heroin. However, the following the death of his young friend Boone, the other survivors discovered the hatch.

One of the strangest secrets to be revealed is that of the husky American gentleman Hurley ; he is actually a millionaire after winning the lottery. However, he suffered a string of unlikely accidents, causing him to believe the winning numbers are cursed. He came to Australia to find the source of the numbers and discovered that they were transmitted 16 years ago out of the Pacific. Even stranger, the French science team came to the island investigating a signal that comprised only of those numbers and ran aground on rocks. Shortly thereafter, the French woman killed the rest of her team, claiming they had been infected with a fever. Additionally, the winning numbers are scratched into the hatch door ; 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42.

In the season finale, the French lady, Rousseau, returns to warn them that the Others are coming to kill them, as evidenced by a column of black smoke on the island horizon. This prompts them to launch a raft they had been building and she leads a group out into the jungle, where they have a scary but ambiguous encounter with the monster. She refers to it as a “security system”. She leads them to a very old wooden ship that somehow crashed quite far inland, where they salvage some dynamite, which they use to blow open the hatch (hoping to hide their large group underground). It turns out there was no threat, she lied to create a distraction and steals Claire’s newborn baby and heads to the black smoke. Sayid and Charlie track her there and confront her ; she heard whispers in the jungle that they were “coming for the boy” and hoped to trade the baby for her own child, kidnapped 16 years ago. Distraught and alone, she gives up the infant.

Meanwhile, out at sea, the raft is attacked by another boat and destroyed, leaving the survivors injured and in the water. A shocked and capsized Michael can only watch in terror as his young son, Walt is taken away.

[YodaMate]

Season 2

Spoiler:

The new season begins with the hatch door blasted open. Inside they find an underground facility (the Swan), complete with living quarters and a small arsenal. Here the survivors meet Desmond, an athlete who crashed his boat on the island and who has actually met Jack once before. He asks if they have come to replace him in his task, entering a numbered code into an old computer terminal every 108 minutes. Disturbingly, the number code is comprised of Hurley's cursed numbers. He tells them that by entering them, they are “saving the world”, before he runs off into the jungle.

Meanwhile, Michael and Sawyer (the con man, who was shot in the shoulder) are adrift at sea but a current brings them back to the island. Once on the beach, they are met by their Korean comrade Jin, who is running from people he calls “Others”. The Others are chasing him and they capture all three survivors, throwing them into a pit. After some initial misunderstanding, the men learn that their captors are in fact also survivors from the other half of their own plane and are brought to their own, much smaller and un-powered hatch facility (the Arrow). They are much worse off than the main section survivors and are living in fear due to attacks by the Others. In a flashback episode, we learn that they too were infiltrated and that 12 of them (including two children) have been kidnapped by people wearing ragged dirty clothing, leaving only 5 survivors remaining. At one point, a hidden Jin and the burly African man, Mr Eko observe a line of dirty legs pass silently by, including one pair of smaller legs dragging a teddy bear.

The new group decide to trek across the island and join the main group, but in the process, another member is kidnapped and they hear whispers in the jungle. Their spooked leader Ana Lucia, having confiscated Sawyer’s gun, accidentally shoots one of the main survivors, Shannon (the deceased Boone’s sister and Sayid’s love interest). Interestingly, Shannon was lead straight to her death by visions of the kidnapped Walt in the jungle. Despite the tragedy, the new survivors are welcomed and absorbed into the main group.

Meanwhile, the hatch is reluctant to give up its mysteries ; they determine that a large magnet is buried in concrete, supporting the 1980s orientation film they watch telling of an ‘incident’ involving magnetic fluctuations and setting out the protocol for ‘pushing the button’ ; which involves entering the numbers. Jack and Locke have an ongoing debate as to whether to push the button, for the moment Locke’s pro-button views hold out. Among the items from the other hatch retrieved by the other survivors (including a short-wave radio), there were missing fragments from the orientation film that reveal the computer can be used to communicate. At the same time as this revelation is revealed, Michael sees a message from Walt on the computer.

Without telling the others, Michael secretly communicates with someone he thinks is Walt and, taking his advice, steals a gun and heads north across the island. Jack and co. try to follow him but are stopped by the Others. They, via the captain of the boat that took Walt, give an ultimatum to Jack to stay on his (southern) half of the island. Reluctantly, Jack returns to camp but immediately starts to plot a way to attack the Others. He gets an opportunity when Rousseau delivers a man she caught in a net. After some initial confusion, whereby the man claimed to be a crashed balloonist named Henry Gale (confusion that ended when Sayid finds the real Gale’s body), they confirm he is an Other and Jack heads out to the line to make an exchange for Walt. Instead, they make no response and Michael turns up out of the jungle.

Michael has in fact been imprisoned by the Others in a fishing village, which he accurately describes to the survivors, but he neglects to mention his captivity. Originally, they wanted to question him about Walt, as it appears he has special abilities (he seems to occasionally read minds and makes things happen). Michael’s absence during Walt’s upbringing doesn’t help but they do find another purpose for him ; sending him back to infiltrate the survivors, free ‘Henry Gale’ and return with further hostages in exchange for Walt and his freedom. In the process of freeing the prisoner, Michael shoots and kills Ana Lucia and fellow tail section survivor Libby (Hurley’s love interest with a secretive past). Passing it off as an Others attack, he rallies a group to strike back. Sayid, however, sees through him and makes plans to turn the treachery into a triple-cross and hopefully take out the Others.

Meanwhile, other Season 2 highlights include Claire regaining her memories and discovering a third hatch, a medical station (the Staff), where she was held during her abduction. In the station, they find costumes that look suspiciously like the garb worn by the Others. It is revealed that Mr Eko planned the heroin smuggling flight that crashed on the island, (and that his brother’s corpse is on board) before changing professions to become a priest. Locke is injured when the hatch goes into lockdown and a large bundle of supplies is dropped into the jungle at night. During the lockdown, he briefly sees a map of numerous hatches on the island written in invisible ink and becomes intrigued by the question mark in the map’s centre. We learn that one survivor, Rose, had a terminal illness and appears to have been cured during the plane crash and she knows Locke was in a wheelchair. Also, we finally see the monster in broad daylight ; it is comprised of black smoke and contains flashes of target people’s lives inside it. It is unclear at this stage whether it’s a living creature.

In the lead-up to the finale, Mr Eko sees his dead brother in a dream and follows his instructions taking Locke back to the crashed smuggler’s plane. They discover the ‘question mark’ etched in salt on the ground and another hatch (the Pearl) right underneath the plane. Inside it, they discover tv monitors that display views from inside their own hatch and a film stating they are watching a psychological experiment and requiring technicians to take copious notes on the subject’s activities. They also print out a system log and take it with them. Crushed, Locke loses his faith in the button and the island, but Mr Eko’s faith is redoubled and he announces that he will keep pushing the button.

In the finale, Desmond returns. His sailboat was actually repaired and he’s been attempting to sail away from the island but the currents keep bringing him back. Sayid sees in the boat the tactical advantage they need to attack the Others, whilst Locke sees in Desmond an ally to stop Eko from pushing the button. Desmond triggers a lockdown, trapping Locke and himself in the computer room. Michael, unaware that his treachery has been uncovered, takes Jack and a small group out into the jungle on foot whilst Sayid sails to the fishing village ahead of them. But when Sayid gets there, the place is empty. Meanwhile, Jack realises Michael has outsmarted them and lead them away from the village moments before they are attacked by darts, right next to a huge pile of discarded notes from the Pearl Station.

Back in the Swan hatch, Desmond reads the log from the Pearl and realises the one day he was late pressing the button (when the place began to shake and the computer displayed “system failure”) coincides with the exact day Jack and co.,’s plane crashed. However, it’s too late, time is up and the entire hatch begins to shake. All sorts of metallic items (including dishwashers) fly through the air towards the magnet. As a stunned Locke looks on, Desmond grabs a hidden key and enters a crawlspace under the computer room. He inherited the key from his previous button partner and it turns a dial for ‘System Termination’. Both we and he are uncertain what it does ; when he turns it, a bright light and noise envelopes the island. After it subsides, Michael concludes his business with the Others on jetty, in front of his bound and gagged friends. A senior Other appears, surprise surprise it’s ‘Henry Gale’. He’s not happy that his comrades offered Michael both a boat and Walt in exchange for him but allows them to go anyway. He claims the Others are “the good guys” and tells Michael the heading he’ll need to find rescue, but assures him he won’t be able to find the island again. Michael and Walt set sail, leaving Jack, Sawyer and Kate captives of the Others.

Meanwhile, in some icy region of the world, two technicians are playing a game of chess when they are interrupted by their computer reporting an “electromagnetic anomaly detected”. One of them immediately places a call and Desmond’s girlfriend answers the phone. He tells her “we think we’ve found him”.