''PILOT''
(Season 1 Premiere)

Immediately after their Sydney-to-L.A. flight crashes on a remote tropical island, the surviving passengers — including tortured doc Jack (Matthew Fox), feral fugitive Kate (Evangeline Lilly), and quippy conman Sawyer (Josh Holloway) — buckle up for a bumpy ride: Their pilot is munched by a weird creature. They hear an eerie, 16-year-old distress transmission in French. A freakin' polar bear charges them from out of nowhere. ''Guys…where are we?'' asks washed-up rock star Charlie (Dominic Monaghan). We're still looking for the answer six years later, but the place to start that quest is here, the episode that deftly unveiled the weird world of Lost. —Dan Snierson