Synopsis:

A group of Beautiful People are stranded on a tropical island with mysterious properties. They want to go home, but then those of the group who do make it off the island alive want to go back. There’s a bit more, but that’s basically it in a (coco) nutshell.

Season 1:

Oceanic Flight 815, en route from Sydney to Los Angeles, crashes on a remote desert island. The expected struggle to survive ensues, complicated by the fact that it quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary desert island—unless desert islands are typically populated by smoke monsters, polar bears, and hostile inhabitants whose origins are shrouded in mystery. A conflict is quickly established between rational Man of Science Jack and Locke, the Man of Faith, whose ability to walk is miraculously restored post-crash.

Season 2:

The producers promptly introduce a whole new set of survivors, as well as creepy Island inhabitant Ben Linus and time-travelling Desmond. We learn that a group called the Dharma Initiative set up shop on the Island some years before to run experiments, the exact nature of which is not revealed. 

Season 3: 

Still more characters are introduced; conflict between the survivors and the Others (the Island’s mysterious pre-crash population) boils over. The survivors get in touch with a rescue team, but will it do them any good? 

Season 4:

Even more new characters are introduced when a boat actually comes to the Island. Unfortunately, it’s a boat full of bad guys; fortunately, a handful of survivors actually do make it home, where –as we find out – their lives proceed to suck in a big way. Back on the Island, Ben Linus turns a massive underground wheel (hey, I’m only the messenger here) and the Island seems to disappear! Linus himself will emerge in Tunisia next season; but what of those left behind. 

Season 5:

The survivors left behind on the Island skip through time, which turns out not to be a completely survivable state of affairs for everyone. When the time-skipping finally stops, they find themselves stuck in 1977, where the costume department doesn’t go completely overboard with the neons and the wide lapels, even though you know they totally wanted to. Jack works tirelessly to convince the “Oceanic Six” to return to the Island, and when they finally get there – with the Man of Faith’s corpse in tow – they find that they’ve walked into an age-old conflict between avatars of Good and Evil.