Lost
On September 22, 2004, the J.J. Abrams television series Lost started off with jolting pilot episode that dominated water cooler talk for weeks. Viewers were given just a few seconds to breathe as the pilot opened with Dr. Jack Shepard lying on a beach before the show introduced the disorienting plane crash that sucked us into the sci-fi series.
The pilot alone was enough to get all the actors on board for the show, despite the fact that they were still unsure if it would succeed as a series. Matthew Fox, who played Jack, told Empire, “I got cast ten days before we started shooting, usually I read things before I go into meetings. But there was no script. When I did finally get to look at something, JJ put me in a room and proceeded to open the door every 20 minutes, saying, ‘What do you think? What do you think?’ I said, ‘You gotta let me finish!’ But I was blown away, from the first page. The image of a guy waking up in a bamboo forest, wearing a suit, was incredibly intriguing.”
