Published April 6, 2005
(ABC)
Meet Charlie: Dominic Monaghan plays a has-been musician on the ABC series "Lost."
It's not too late to jump into 'Lost' this season
By Tim Greening
Gannett News Service
"Lost" is the kind of drama that immediately grabs viewers by the throat and doesn't let go - except when it goes into reruns for weeks at a time.
Now that we have new episodes, 16 million viewers can breathe a sigh of relief.
ABC's serial drama, which airs 8 p.m. Wednesdays, has spawned a rabid fan following, which debates and speculates the show's many mysteries over water coolers and on Web sites. If you'd like to be one of them, but haven't been watching, you can still catch up.
The premise centers on a group of plane crash survivors and how they adapt to the mysterious island they've found themselves on.
"Lost" creators J.J. Abrams ("Alias," "Felicity") and Damon Lindelof ("Crossing Jordan") have thrown a curveball into the storyline, though, giving the island an "X-Files" type of supernatural vibe. There are only hints at this, however, leaving fans to speculate wildly about what's really going on.
Also, the show has a unique storytelling structure. Scenes of the characters adapting to their surroundings, not to mention their new neighbors, are interspersed with flashbacks revealing the back story for each character, all of whom have a dark secret.
Here's a recap of the important plot points, to date:
The plane was headed to Los Angeles from Sydney, Australia, and broke apart in midair. We don't know why.
There were initially 48 survivors, but the show focuses on 14. About half of them live on the beach to keep a signal bonfire alive; the others live in caves deeper in the jungle, where there's a water source.
Before being killed by a mysterious, unseen creature, a pilot said the plane was a thousand miles off course at the time of the crash, so any rescue parties will be looking in the wrong place. Not all of the survivors know this, as the reluctant leader, Jack (Matthew Fox), didn't want the others to lose hope.
Their only radio, taken from the plane, has a weak battery. When they tried to send a message, they found the frequency was dominated by a repeating distress signal in which a French woman pleads for help and says, "It killed them all." From the counter that precedes each message, they figure it's been broadcasting for 16 years.
There are wild boars on the island, which makes sense, and polar bears, which doesn't, deepening the mystery.
There is also an unseen entity that appears occasionally to growl and shake the treetops. Only one character (Locke, played by Terry O'Quinn) has seen it and lived, but he's not talking.
Besides animals, they are not alone. The French woman from the distress signal is still alive, armed, half-crazy and living in the jungle. She was part of a scientific expedition whose boat shipwrecked on the island.
A census taken by Hurley (Jorge Garcia) revealed there was one more person on the beach than was on the plane's manifest, a mysterious "Ethan," who was already living on the island but mingled among the group unnoticed. When found out, he kidnapped the pregnant Claire (Emilie de Ravin) and hanged Charlie (Dominic Monaghan), though Jack was able to revive him.
Days later, the still pregnant Claire wandered back into camp with no memory of anything since the crash. Ethan returned to get her and was ambushed, but Charlie shot him before they could get answers.
On the last new episode (March 30), Locke dreams of a small airplane crashing in the jungle. He thinks it's a sign, and he and Boone go looking for it.
They find the plane at the top of a tree. Boone climbs up into it and finds it's a heroin smuggling plane with a corpse inside it, along with maps and a radio. As the plane teeters, Boone gets to the radio and turns it on. A voice responds. Boone says, "We are the survivors of Oceanic flight 815."
What the voice said next is the subject of much fan debate: according to the closed captions, the response is "There are no survivors of flight 815." But many fans believe the voice either said, "We are also the survivors of flight 815" or "There was no flight 815."
The plane crashes to the ground. Locke takes the injured Boone to camp, then disappears to the hatch they've previously unearthed but been unable to open. As he yells, "I did what you asked of me!", a light comes on inside.
And according to TV Guide, Claire's going to give birth to her baby tonight. TV Guide online is also reporting that "Lost" will air its season finale May 25 - a two-hour season finale that will air opposite ratings juggernaut "American Idol."
ROLL CALL
Jack
• Played by: Matthew Fox.
• Back home: U.S., surgeon.
• Skills: Medicine, martyrdom.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: Testified against his alcoholic father, also a surgeon, for operating under the influence, which resulted in a patient's death. Dad went to Australia and apparently drank himself to death.
• On flight because: He was returning to the States with his father's body.
• Island job: Doctor, the group's reluctant leader.
Kate
• Played by: Evangeline Lilly.
• Back home: U.S., some kind of criminal.
• Skills: Brave, resourceful, good with a gun.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: Her exact crime is still unclear, though we know she participated in a bank robbery that was actually a ruse to get into a safety deposit box, which contained a toy airplane. We don't know its significance.
• On flight because: While she was hiding in Australia, a federal marshal arrested her and was bringing her back to justice. While dying from crash-related wounds, the marshal warned Jack that Kate is dangerous and can't be trusted.
• Island job: Volunteering for search missions and ratcheting up the sexual tension with Jack and Sawyer.
Locke
• Played by: Terry O'Quinn.
• Back home: U.S., cubicle drone at a box company.
• Skills: Extremely resourceful; he's a good hunter/trapper. He's also the character most attuned to the island's mystical qualities.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: While hunting boar, he came face-to-face with the mysterious tree-shaking creature and lived, but the others (not to mention viewers) know nothing about the encounter. Also, he and Boone discovered some kind of underground hatch they haven't told the others about. After two weeks of digging, they have it unearthed, but they haven't been able to open it.
• On flight because: He was returning home from vacation in which he'd hoped to go on a walkabout in the Outback. He was denied participation because before crashing on the island, he was a paraplegic. He was cured somehow, one of the show's more intriguing mysteries. On the last new episode (March 30), his legs started to fail.
• Island job: Besides his hunting skills, he seems to know some deeper meaning about what's going on and has helped Charlie kick heroin and Boone get over his obsession with his stepsister.
Hurley
• Played by: Jorge Garcia.
• Back home: U.S., lottery winner, fast food employee. There's a hint of a troubled past before that.
• Skills: Comic relief.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: In Los Angeles, he won the lottery with a mysterious set of numbers that may be cursed and keep turning up on the island.
• On flight because: Returning home after seeking out the source of the numbers, a man who had been living in Australia but committed suicide.
• Island job: To be genial and helpful.
Charlie
• Played by: Dominic Monaghan.
• Back home: England. Bass player for Driveshaft, a defunct one-hit wonder.
• Skills: Plays bass.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: Addicted to heroin, which he started to kick in the seventh episode.
• On flight because: Returning to the States after unsuccessful attempt to get his brother to reform the band.
• Island job: Take care of Claire, the pregnant chick.
Sayid
• Played by: Naveen Andrews.
• Back home: A former soldier in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard.
• Skills: Knows a lot about electronics, mechanical devices and torture. Also very smart and level-headed.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: While a soldier, he defied orders and shot his boss to save a childhood girlfriend from execution. She escaped then, but we know she died later.
• On flight because: We don't know.
• Island job: Trying to build a working transmitter for a distress call and cozying up to Shannon.
Sun and Jin
• Played by: Yunjin Kim (Sun) and Daniel Dae Kim (Jin). No relation.
• Back home: Korea. Sun is the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Jin is the son of a poor fisherman.
• Skills: He's good at catching fish and building boats; she knows herbal remedies.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: Jin's job included violence, which he refuses to tell Sun about. She was planning to leave him just before boarding the plane in Sydney but changed her mind.
• On flight because: The pair were delivering gifts to her father's business associates in Sydney and Los Angeles.
• Island job: He shares fish with the group and has just joined Michael in building a raft. She tends a garden.
Boone and Shannon
• Played by: Ian Somerhalder and Maggie Grace.
• Back home: Boone is the son of a wealthy wedding guru. Shannon is his stepsister.
• Skills: Boone said he's a lifeguard, though he nearly killed a woman by improperly performing CPR. She's pretty useless.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: They always had a weird jealousy vibe, like they were romantically involved once. Turns out they were, but they're not related by blood, only by marriage.
• On flight because: Her latest con was a supposedly abusive boyfriend in Australia who could be paid off to leave her alone. Boone paid him but figured out it was a ruse and was taking Shannon back home to Los Angeles.
• Island job: Boone has become Locke's right-hand man; Shannon's stilted French has helped them translate some materials from the papers Sayid took from the French woman.
Michael and Walt
• Played by: Harold Perrineau and Malcolm David Kelley.
• Back home: U.S. Michael is a struggling artist who works construction to pay the bills. Walt is his estranged son whose mother took him away from Michael when she began her globe-hopping career.
• Skills: Michael's good at building things; Walt has an odd clairvoyant link to animals.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: Walt burned the raft his father built because he didn't want to leave the island. Only Locke knows this.
• On flight because: The mother, who was living in Sydney, died; the stepfather didn't want custody, so Michael was taking him back to the States.
• Island job: Michael is the engineer and is building a second raft.
Claire
• Played by: Emilie de Ravin.
• Back home: Australia. Pregnant, jilted girlfriend.
• Skills: Getting kidnapped.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: When her boyfriend left her, she consulted a psychic, who pleaded with her not to put the baby up for adoption, saying great danger would result if she didn't raise the baby herself.
• On flight because: She backed out of an adoption deal at the last second and returned to the psychic, who put her on a plane to Los Angeles.
• Island job: Being in distress.
Sawyer
• Played by: Josh Holloway.
• Back home: U.S. Con artist.
• Skills: Hoarding supplies.
• Dark secret/guilt trip: He adopted the name of a scam artist who seduced his mother and bankrupted his father, causing his father to shoot her and then himself. Sawyer vowed to find the man one day and kill him.
• On flight because: We assume he was just returning home. Another con artist convinced him the man who destroyed his family was living in Australia. Only after fatally wounding him did Sawyer realize it wasn't the right guy.
• Island job: Though he usually only acts out of self-interest, sometimes he shares supplies he's hoarded.
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...0322/1055/news