As ''Party of Five'''s scruffy oldest brother, Charlie Salinger, Matthew Fox cared for his inordinately troubled sibs after their parents' death, survived Hodgkin's disease, and fathered an unplanned child with a stripper. You'd think no TV gig could top that kind of drama...until you watch Fox (playing a doctor named Jack) live through a devastating plane crash, rescue a pregnant woman from falling debris while resuscitating another passenger, and flee an unseen monster -- all in the first episode of ''Lost.''
This new drama from ''Felicity'' and ''Alias'' mastermind J.J. Abrams follows 14 stranded strangers after their flight goes down somewhere between Australia and America. And while the ''Lord of the Flies'' premise puts Fox worlds away from the Salingers' San Francisco Victorian, he says Jack isn't all that different from parental figure Charlie: ''He's a reluctant hero, but that's a role he's sort of been assigned. There's something going on with him underneath where he's not quite as heroic as he seems.''
In fact, none of ''Lost'''s island castaways are quite what they seem. Jack's comrades include a comely woman (Evangeline Lilly) with a juicy secret; a wisecracking guy (Jorge Garcia) who gets faint at the sight of blood; a drug-addicted ex–rock star (''The Lord of the Rings''' Dominic Monaghan); a Middle Eastern radio-communications expert (Naveen Andrews); a young boy (Malcolm David Kelley) traveling with his father (''Oz'''s Harold Perrineau); and a non-English-speaking Korean couple (Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim). ''It's about this extreme event and how these people are going to redefine themselves from who they were before to who they're going to be on this island,'' Fox says. ''We all have those parts of ourselves that we'd like to leave behind.'' Adds Abrams, ''We'll see these people [in flashbacks] before they boarded this plane, and then see how they deal with each other now.''
Like Abrams' other series, ''Lost'' borrows from familiar TV genres to create something entirely new: The budding romances and interpersonal conflict give it a soapy feel; the care of crash-inflicted wounds evokes a primitive ''ER''; and the mysterious island -- which appears to be inhabited by at least one vicious, man-eating creature -- takes ''Lost'' into sci-fi territory. But one comparison Abrams won't entertain is to his mythology-laden ''Alias'': ''There are going to be things that will be just left of normal on the show, but the reason you'll care is because you get invested in the characters. Ultimately, this is a show about 'What would you do?'''
Intriguing as all of that may sound, aren't the storytelling possibilities for a show set on a remote island (one that doesn't include Jeff Probst, of course) a bit...limited? Producers say each episode will represent a day or two, which means they'll have plenty of juice for several more seasons. ''No one ever says about 'The O.C.', 'How are they going to keep making a show about that every week?''' says cocreator Damon Lindelof. ''It's basically the same thing happening every week, but this time it's at a cotillion. Instead of a cotillion, we have somebody going into the jungle and not coming out.''
''We have a cotillion too,'' Abrams jokes.
''It's just that our plot blurb is 'Summer eats Ryan,''' Lindelof says. ''That came out wrong. But you get it.''
-- Jennifer Armstrong
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