Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz joined the 'Lost' writing staff midway through season 1 and stayed with the landmark ABC drama until it ended in 2010. Along the way, they penned island favorites like 'Tricia Tanaka Is Dead' and 'Everybody Hates Hugo,' just a couple of their many Hurley-centric outings (and with the Nikki and Paulo kiss-off 'Expose,' they helped win back many wavering fans during the dark days of season 3).

Once the show wrapped for good, they knew what they didn't want to do. "We weren't going to write the cheesy [procedural, i.e.], 'Young D.A. balancing her life and work, here is the case of the week,'" Kitsis said in an interview in the pair's Los Angeles office two months ago. "We don't think that way."

Instead of going that route, they revisited a fairy-tale script that they had first shopped around many years earlier, way back when they were staff writers on 'Felicity.' Nobody wanted it then, but ABC eagerly bought their revised pitch for 'Once Upon a Time,' which premieres 8PM ET Sunday, despite the fact that, as Horowitz joked, the pilot script is a compendium of elements that often make network executives freak out.