They’re making me rank all 122 episodes of Lost – and I couldn’t be happier

I’m a ‘Lost’ obsessive, and a firm believer that it changed the shape of television

Evangeline Lilly as Kate Austen in ‘Lost’ (ABC)

Each month, the culture team gather and throw around all the feature ideas we’ve had rattling around our heads. It’s more fun than it sounds. I particularly enjoy it when my team members unearth the approaching month’s anniversaries, which are mostly met with gasps from those who “can’t quite believe” a certain film or album is turning 40.

Next week sees the anniversaries of two wildly different, but no less influential, television shows, that are beloved by two different people on our desk: sitcom Friends and the cult drama Lost, which premiered on the same day in the US – 22 September – 10 years apart (in 1994 and 2004, respectively).

How does one go about commemorating such shows? In an age of digital journalism, the first answer is usually the right one: we rank the episodes. While lists may get a bad rap from some people who write them off as nothing but lazy, let me tell you this – even contemplating putting the episodes into some form of order has left me sleepless.