While ostensibly about a group of plane crash survivors trying to return to civilization, Cuse and Lindelof said the show thematically was about people who are metaphorically lost in their lives and seeking to find themselves again. Cuse said that "Lost" "showed that it was possible on network TV to tell a highly complex, serialized narrative with intentional ambiguity‚ leaving the audience room to debate and discuss the meaning and intentions of the narrative‚ and still find a large audience." Part of Cuse's own life made it into the scripts, when the show made Cuse's hometown of Tustin, California part of the origin story for character John Locke.