- Hey guy, Welcome back to the same
room I've always filmed in. So I think it's pretty obvious by now that my favorite thing
to do on this channel is talk about the most relevant topics that are on the forefront
of everyone's minds. Which is why today I will be defending the hell out of a show that came out 17 years ago. Not you, Joey! That would be an impossible task. This video is about Lost. For a couple of years in the mid 2000s Lost was the biggest cultural
phenomenon in America. Everyone was talking about it, all the late night shows
were doing bits about it, and it was widely considered
to be must see television. Until a lot of people
started to turn on it. Its reputation eventually
shifted to being a show that's too convoluted and the writers are just making shit up as they go along. Why is there a polar bear
here? The island is hot. You know, things like that. And when the show ended in 2010, it didn't quite leave behind the impact that at one point it seemed destined to. Now when most people talk about Lost, the popular opinion is that it was a really promising show that just went off the rails. That was the opinion that I adopted myself and just kind of accepted as fact because I was a kid when I watched it and that's what kids do. And then recently, Amanda and I were looking
for something to watch. So she put the pilot of Lost on as a joke. And then we watched the second episode and the third episode, and two months later, we had watched the entire series, cried dozens of times. And now it's one of our
favorite shows ever. We got the DVDs. I have this book. I bought the soundtrack on vinyl. What is happening to me?! It actually made me kind of frustrated to watch this near masterpiece of a show and think about how much
I had been discrediting it over the years. Lost helped pave the
way for a complete shift in our approach to television and it's been largely cast aside. Nowadays, it's super common for shows to feel like a series of short movies with high budgets and
these big ensemble casts. But Lost was doing this on ABC, the same network that
was premiering Wife Swap. This is not what TV was like in 2004. Prime-time dramas were
simple and formulaic. They were filmed on cheap looking sets and made to be easy for people to tune in to any random episode
without missing a beat. Lost was different. It was heavily serialized. It was intense and it started right away. You watch the chaotic first few
minutes of the pilot episode and then the initial music kicks in as the opening credits roll. And it's like, wait a minute, "This was on television? You could just watch this show for free?!" Apart from just the writing
and production quality though, one of the things that stood out the most to me upon
re-watch was the music. I forgot how fantastic
this soundtrack was. So many of the moments in
the show can be triumphant or heart wrenching on their own, but then you combine that
with these beautiful strings, this big booming orchestra that comes in and crescendos over a scene. And you go from thinking, "This is a pretty good show," to "Oh my God, I'm already crying. And it's the third episode." After a few episodes, I had to look up who the composer was and I found out it was someone named Michael Giacchino. Interesting, I've never
heard of him before. Let's see what else he's done. Oh, just some of my favorite
movie soundtracks of all time, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, Speed Racer. I never realized that the
same person was responsible for so much music that I grew up loving. Which is why now, before I even get into the show itself, I want to do a quick
sidebar just about him. When it comes to world-building
and a fictional universe, the soundtrack can be so vital in establishing a
transformative atmosphere. There's a reason John Williams is generally considered to be the gold standard of movie composers. And that's because the
music becomes so iconic that just hearing it can make
you feel like you're there. Whether it's Harry Potter, Star Wars, the line to the Jurassic Park
ride at Universal Studios, the music is what creates the world. Like, yeah, Darth Vader looks pretty cool, but how much less intimidating would he be if he wasn't always accompanied by one of the most menacing
theme songs ever made. But if I were to nitpick one
thing about John Williams, which I guess is what I'm doing now, it would be that a lot of his compositions sound very similar. There are songs in E.T. that sound like they could have
been in Indiana Jones, that sound like they
could have been in Jaws, and so on and so forth. But what I've really grown to
admire about Michael Giacchino is how much his instrumentation varies based on the tone of the
project he's working on. So for example, The Incredibles soundtrack
has a heavier focus on these deep brass instruments. (triumphant brass instrumentation) - Most of the time, we're just-- This movie, the whole
brass, all the brass, French horns, trombones, tubas, Everything are so out front- - And this little sweeping percussion that you wouldn't hear in
any of his other works. The movie is about a family of retired mid-century superheroes. So it's a stylistic choice to have the music invoke
this vintage cartoon vibe, which makes the songs sound nostalgic, even if you've never
seen the movie before. On the other hand, you have something like Inside Out, a movie that takes place
mostly inside someone's brain. So the music is fittingly more ethereal. And then you've got Ratatouille,
which is very French. (French woman singing) But if you want to talk about
someone adapting their style to fit the project they're working on, Lost is the perfect example because they literally used
pieces of the plane wreck to create certain sounds in the music. - [Michael] I wanted to set up a very different sound for this show. Just didn't want it to be, "Okay, I'm scoring another show and it's going to have that sound to it." I want stuff that's like, bizarre. So what we did was we shipped
home sections of the airplane. We used that on the show
and in the percussion booth. The guy plays the airplane pieces. - This is a show that takes place on a mysterious island with supernatural and even horror elements, which the music accompanies perfectly. Listen to something like this, (chaotic percussion instrumentation) And then replace that with just standard epic stock music. (generic triumphant music) It's a completely different vibe. Now instead of pissing my
pants and cowering and fear, I'm just rolling my eyes
at something so generic. Lost can be an extremely unsettling show, and I think so much of that intensity can be attributed to the
sounds that they compose. But that's not even my favorite
thing about the soundtrack. Each of the main characters in Lost has a theme song that's centered
around a specific melody, which Michael is able to
reuse in different contexts, somehow changing the emotion
attached to it every time. Arguably the most famous
song he's ever composed was in the opening
sequence of the movie Up, which he won an Oscar for. As most of you probably know, this is a beautiful
yet heartbreaking scene with a beautiful yet heartbreaking song carried by one simple melody. (happy, whimsical string instrumentation) - [Narrator] Twelve seconds later. (sad piano instrumentation) - There were several scenes throughout the course of Lost where you knew what was coming. You were already in an
emotionally vulnerable place. And see you're like, "Come on, please. Don't play this song." (sad music gets louder) "Oh God, not again." Just when I thought I couldn't like this guy's work any more, I was listening to the
song that plays during-- spoiler alert-- Boone's funeral. It's not a huge spoiler. He dies pretty early
on. Just watch the show. But I was listening to the song that plays during Boone's funeral. And then I looked at Spotify and realized it's called "Booneral" Holy shit. Where a lot of network
TV shows have soundtracks that seem like they're straight
from a stock music website, Michael Giacchino took what
the writers gave to Last and used it to orchestrate songs that invoke even more
emotion out of the material. I know it's kind of weird to start my review with the music. But honestly, if it
wasn't as good as it was, I probably wouldn't even
be making this video in the first place. So the music definitely added
depth to the characters, but the casting itself is another reason why I love this show so much. I love that almost no one in this show was an established actor at the time. I feel like it's so much
easier to invest in a world when it's not like, "Oh, and there's Matt Damon
pretending to be a doctor. Oh, what's that? His name is Robert in
this? No, it's Matt-- I'm not going to call him Robert." When I watched Lost, it reminded me of something Bo Burnham said once on Pete Holmes podcast. - [Bo] No one would see a movie if there wasn't this idea of a movie star, but it's completely antithetical to art. I want to show up and
watch a movie and be like, I don't know these people. I don't see-- I only see the characters. - [Drew] To me, Matthew Fox just is Jack. When I see Jorge Garcia in anything else my brain says, "Hey! It's Hurley! Wait, shouldn't you be on the island?" Part of the fun of the first
couple of seasons of Lost is that you don't know
anything about these people. And it slowly gets unraveled over time, but in the beginning, it truly is just a group of strangers trapped in the same predicament. You don't know what any of the individual
actors are capable of, so you don't have any expectations until you see it happen. The writers do a great job of building out the world early on too, by devoting each episode
to an individual character, by flashing back and forth between what's happening on the island and to a thematically similar event from earlier in their lives. It helps fill in the blanks
of who these characters are by showing instead of telling. And what is slowly revealed is that each person is not exactly who you assume them to be on the surface. In fact, they're all kind
of Lost in their own ways. (studio audience applause stock sound) Thank you, I am the
first person to say that. I think the reason that lost was so good is the same reason that it wasn't fully appreciated
for what it was. And that's because it was about
a decade ahead of its time. I think it would have been a much larger part of the
pop culture conversation. If it had been made by
Netflix 10 years later. The seasons would have been more concise, so you wouldn't have had a situation where you get to season three and you've run out of flashbacks to do. They'd be given more
flexibility to end the show when they felt it was time to. They could have had one of the characters say the F word. I mean, let's be honest. The two most unrealistic
things about the show are that they crashed a plane on an island and none of them say "shit" or "fuck". And also they're all wearing
jeans the whole time. You can't wear jeans on the beach. I'd rather die. But if they had the creative freedom that's been given to Netflix and HBO shows in the years since, I think the audience that
ultimately turned on it would have been more forgiving of the somewhat bizarre twists. What I'm saying is Lost walked so Stranger Things could run. It's kind of unfathomable that the show is as successful as it was in spite of all that. In spite of dealing with a network that wanted them to stretch it out to at minimum 10 seasons. - There were all these
compelling mysteries. And so we were saying, we want to have this stuff answered by the end of season one, and this stuff answered
by the end of season two. And then the show basically
ends after about three years. That was the initial pitch,
but they were just like, "Do you understand how hard it is to make a show that people want to watch? And people like the show.
So why would we end it?" You don't do that. You don't end shows that
people are watching. - [Drew] And wanted to do to Lost what they've done to Grey's Anatomy, which I assume will just go on forever. Hey, man. People keep
going to the hospital. Someone's got to treat them. I think for the most part, the Lost writers did a masterful job of balancing having to add
new characters and plot lines while still developing the existing ones. Some of the characters
added in later seasons ended up being my personal
favorites of the entire series. I think they managed to create
a thoroughly compelling story from start to finish, even if it did get a little
too complex for awhile. So because of what ABC
forced them to have to do, I don't blame people for falling off the Lost wagon at the time. I certainly did. I had never finished the
show until this year. I think it was somewhere
during season five when I was like, "Guys, I appreciate what
you're trying to do here with all this time travel stuff, but I'm in middle school now. I can't be taking notes in order to wrap my head around this show. I'm just trying to play Runescape and get my first kiss. Maybe at the same time." But I think it makes
sense why so many people struggled to keep tuning
into Lost in later seasons. This is a show that
100% needs to be binged. That needs to be consumed
in quick succession if you want to stay fully
invested in what's going on. And that just wasn't possible
with the way it was released. There were so many times when an important plot
seed would get planted, but then not brought up again
until four episodes later. And that's fine, if you just watched
that episode yesterday, but in 2006 that could
mean a month and a half of real time passing, where you're expected to
retain that knowledge. I couldn't tell you what key information I saw in a show last month. I don't even remember how
I started this sentence. It's almost as if the creators knew that Lost could be more
appreciated as time went on because they made a
couple important decisions to help future-proof the show. For one, they somehow convinced ABC to spend an unheard of
amount of money on the pilot. More money than had ever
been spent on a pilot before. Just think for a moment how insane it is for a major network to
green-light so much money for a completely unknown IP. It's not like they were
making the Spider-Man show. It's a show about a plane crash with a cast full of unknown actors. It's so crazy, in fact, that it actually got the executive who approved the money fired. You'd think they would have hired him back once they realized how
popular the show became, but I guess the bridge
had already been burned. Why did the pilot have to
cost so much money though? Well, mostly because
they had to figure out how to ship a commercial
airplane to a beach in Hawaii. Sure, they probably could have CGIed it, but given how impactful
that first impression of an on fire airplane
crashed on a beach is, I don't think they could
have done it any differently. Maybe now you could
pull that off with CGI, but special effects in 2004 looked awful. That's one of the only things that hasn't aged well about the show is some of the special effects. But as long as they're not trying to computer animate a submarine, the show generally looks really good. It doesn't look like something that was filmed two decades ago. And that's because of
another conscious decision made by the creators to shoot
Lost on 35 millimeter film, which was the less convenient and more expensive alternative. But another way of
future-proofing the show. Because of technological reasons that I'm too stupid to fully understand, let alone explain, film can be almost endlessly upscaled. Which is how you can have movies from like the '70s remastered to look practically brand new. Had they instead shot
Lost digitally and 480p, that's just the resolution
it would be forever. There's nothing you can do about it. In fact the more you stretch it out, the worse it's going to look. "Well, okay Drew. So if this show was so
good and so popular, why did people turn on it?" Without a doubt, the biggest contention that people have with
Lost is the way it ended. But a lot of that contention is predicated on a belief that is untrue. Because of the somewhat
vague nature of the finale, coupled with ABC's decision to show an empty island
during its credits, a lot of people came to the conclusion that everyone must have
been dead the entire time That they all actually
died in the plane crash in the pilot episode, and the island was some
kind of afterlife purgatory. If that was the ending,
I would be upset too, because that would undermine everything that happened on the island. It would mean that all
of the people who died over the course of the
show didn't actually die because they had already died. So it retroactively removes
the gravity of their death because it didn't matter. All of the stakes of what
had happened on the island would have been reduced to nothing because turns out it wasn't real. It was all just some shared fantasy. That is not what the ending was. The writers have said adamantly, that that's not what the ending was. Frankly. I'm surprised
so many people thought that's what the ending meant, because that idea is verbally refuted by one of the characters in the finale. I have to fight the urge
to go into more detail because one of my hopes with this video is that people who have never seen it will watch it for the first time. And if that's the case, I
don't want to spoil the ending. I know I spoiled the Boone thing earlier, but again, it's minor. All right? In the grand scheme of
things, not a big death. I think what a lot of people ultimately wanted out of Lost was a Scooby-Doo style ending, where they rip the mask
off someone and go, "Mr. Jenkins? You were the island the whole time?!" And then he gives a 40 minute
PowerPoint presentation covering every single plot
point from all six seasons. Instead, you have to accept that in spite of all the mysteries and the science fiction elements, what the show was ultimately about was the characters on the island. And the ending of the show is a reminder of the journey they went on, how they grew as people and how coming together on the island was the most important
part of all their lives, even though the only
thing they wanted to do when they were there was
get the fuck off of it. I thought it was an
emotionally satisfying ending, even if it wasn't necessarily
the ending that I expected. But I'm also surprised
how many people view the show as being super open-ended. Like there's this long list
of unanswered questions. There really aren't. I had always looked back on Lost as this like meandering improv scene where people just keep
adding more and more stuff instead of focusing on what
was already established. But to me, each of the six seasons had its own theme and answers most of its own questions while still maintaining forward momentum. I would say if anything, the show over explained itself sometimes. There was an entire
episode in season three devoted to the origin of Jack's tattoos. No one asked for that. A lot of seasons five and six explore the deep history of the island, where it came from, the
first people to live there. And it's like, okay, that's
interesting, I guess, but I didn't really need to know all that. Some of the things that
were explained in season six sounded like dialogue from
a Kingdom Hearts game. And that's not good. - Because I'm you. No, I'm me. But filler episodes aside, the first three seasons of Lost are pretty much perfect in my opinion. And with a little bit of tweaking, I could see how the season three finale could have just been the end of the show. But it kept going because
ABC demanded that it would. And ultimately I'm glad it did. I've never seen a show with an ending quite like Lost's. It was a left turn for sure. It's the kind of thing that if you were just to describe
to someone what happened, it would sound ridiculous. But for some reason I think it worked because those two things
are what Lost always was. It's funny, I think if the show had
ended after three seasons with everyone just getting off the island, there would be far less criticism about all the unanswered mysteries. People would just be like, "Well, that place was pretty weird, huh? Glad they're all home safe now." But instead the show made audiences stay invested for six years. The final season was heavily marketed as something that it ultimately wasn't. And that's where I think a lot of the bad taste in
people's mouths came in. - [Announcer] The time for questions, - [Character] Why is my
name written down on this? - [Announcer] Is over! - That's where ABC and
the creators themselves fucked up the most. It's only now, that we're over a decade
removed from that, with expectations fully subsided that I think Lost can be
appreciated for what it was instead of detested for what it wasn't. This show was not always perfect. There were moments that
made me roll my eyes. There were conflicts that could
have been easily resolved, had two people just spoken to each other. There were some really
disappointing character arcs. But in a world where so
much media is unoriginal, where it seems like
every movie is a sequel and every show is a spinoff, Lost was one of a kind. There was nothing else like it on TV. And in the years since, very few shows have come close to accomplishing what they did. Certainly none under
the same circumstances. It was bold. It was unique. And it was ahead of its time - So what'd you think? - Drew, this is a web design class, - Uh-huh. - and you wrote an entire report about the show Lost. - Well, I don't need to
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