//We Have To Go Back

Without skipping any episodes, I broke the 23 hours of Season One into four arcs, with each four arc containing smaller arcs which are made from distilling individual episodes.

Like so:

THE SURVIVORS

The individual survivors have to find food, clean water, shelter, and help Charlie kick heroin addiction.

ABDUCTIONS AND GUNS

 Sayid meets Rousseau who tells him about The Others. Charlie is assaulted and Claire is abducted by Ethan, Jack and the survivors find guns to protect themselves, Claire is returned and Charlie executes Ethan – the only Other we’ve seen.

VILLAIN REVEALED

Locke finds the Hatch with the Numbers on it, convinced he needs to open it. He causes Boone’s death and lies about it to Jack who finally lets it go when Shannon almost shoots Locke.

HOPE EXPLODES

The raft launches while Jack and Locke team up with Rousseau to get dynamite from the Black Rock to blow open the Hatch. The Others blow up the raft and take Walt.

What I was most surprised to discover while cutting season one by removing the Flashes and then isolating the narrative arcs was (what I understand to be) the mythology of the series remained so in tact. Granted, a problem could emerge if I carried out the same method into the Season Five finales “The Incident, Part One and Two” because the Flashes reveal Jacob’s connections to the characters.Still the question would remain: is our pre-knowledge of the series capable of accepting what we would otherwise dismiss as exposition when Locke explains the Candidate process in Season Six’s cave or when Jacob explains to the remaining Candidates in “What They Died For?”

Having lived the series in its entirety before there was an end, with the capability to judge each scene from the micro to the macro story-focus, what I found is that most of the essential plot points and dramatic moments hinge at the overlap of several story purposes. I was never at risk of cutting the greater metaphor of The Hatch or the ultimate victory of Charlie kicking heroin because the key moments in the main mythology and its narrative arcs were often the same scene. The construction of the episode into distinct narratives creates key moments and some of those moments–like Jack and Locke’s confrontation in the season one finale–echo through the entire series mythology.

What’s left of season one is actually a coherent story of a group of survivors on a mysterious Island. They overcome obstacles and they learn about themselves, albeit in an abbreviated fashion. To someone that’s seen season one of Lost, however, it’s a pleasant refresher of how interpersonal relationships and abductions made up the majority of this science fiction show.

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