Lost celebrates its 15th anniversary: How the ABC drama helped usher in the Peak TV era

USA Today

Lost premiered on Sept. 22, 2004, kicking off a first season that won it the outstanding drama series Emmy. It would go on to inspire many failed copycats, from The Event to FlashForward -- "a quest that remains unfulfilled, a sign of the high bar set by the original," says Bill Keveney. The ABC drama, he adds, "smartly explored science fiction, religion and philosophy despite the crushing demands of broadcast TV, averaging 24 episodes its first three seasons. Despite that burden, Lost sparked with creativity well into its run, shocking viewers – in a wonderfully satisfying way – with the introduction of flash-forwards at the end of Season 3 and offering a brilliant treatise on time travel the next season with 'The Constant,' my favorite episode. The stretched seasons resulted in some wheel-spinning just to keep up with a rapid-fire production schedule, and eventually led executive producers (Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse)  to force a restructuring of the traditional broadcast model, opening creative opportunities for programs that would follow. They negotiated a reduction in the number of episodes per season (from 24 to 16) and announced a series end date three years in advance, a revolutionary move in a medium that would typically grind advertising dollars out of a popular show long after it was creatively exhausted."

ALSO:

• From Heroes to Once Upon a Time to Manifest: Here are all the shows that tried to recapture Lost's magic
• Lost stars look back on 15 years of awkward fan encounters
• Here's Daniel Dae Kim's interesting theory about the Smoke Monster
• Every episode of Lost, ranked