The Numbers

No new LOST episode last week (boooo), hence no new posts her for a few days. Since I can't think of anything new to discuss, I'm going to tackle The Numbers today.

For a quick rundown of every time they are brought up, see the Lostpedia article.

From the same article:

It has been revealed in The Lost Experience that these six numbers are the core values of the Valenzetti Equation, a mathematical formula designed to predict the end of humanity. The numbers in actuality are said to represent human and environmental factors in the equation (given numerical form), though their precise meaning is uncertain. One purpose of the DHARMA Initiative was to change the factors leading to humanity's demise, which will be indicated by an alteration in at least one of the human/environmental factors - i.e. the numbers. However, in all its years of research, the Initiative failed to reach its goal. Despite much research and manipulation of the equation's values, the end result was always the numbers.

If anyone can translate what that all means, I'd be appreciative.

Bottom line, The Numbers are the highest-profile, least-explained mystery in the show. It seems that Hurley's entire character is based on The Numbers. The Swan hatch (and subsequently all of Season 2) was based around The Numbers.

And then the Swan blew up, and it seems they disappeared.

Sure, random numbers show up from time to time, but that just seems like the writers messing with us.

To cap off the frustration-fest, here is a long quote from Damon Lindelof (one of the LOST producers):

There are some questions that are very engaging and interesting, and then there are other questions that we have no interest whatsoever in answering. We call it the midi-chlorian debate, because at a certain point, explaining something mystical demystifies it. To try and have a character come and say, "Here is what the numbers mean," actually makes every usage of the numbers up to that point less interesting.

You can actually watch Star Wars now, and when Obi-Wan talks about the Force to Luke for the first time, it loses its luster because the Force has been explained as, sort of, little biological agents that are in your blood stream. So you go, "Oh, I liked Obi-Wan's version a lot better." Which in the case of our show is, "The numbers are bad luck, they keep popping up in Hurley's life, they appear on the island." ... But if you're watching the show for a detailed explanation of what the numbers mean—and I'm not saying you won't see more of them—then you will be disappointed by the end of season six.

Well. I wish the producers would give us a list of mysteries they aren't going to bother explaining so I can stop worrying about them.

And the problem with the mitochlorian thing, Damon, is that it is terrible. Lucas didn't make fans mad merely because he explained the Force, he made them mad because the explanation was totally lame.

Foreshadowing of your own future? :)

Reality subtext as applied to LOST

The website tvtropes.org discusses a concept called "reality subtext," which essentially means real-life events cause certain things to happen on-screen. An actress becomes pregnant, so the show has her character become pregnant (Samantha Stevens in Bewitched), have her take a leave of absence (Sculley in the X-Files), attempt to hide the baby bump (Angela in The Office), or use a combination of any of the three (Benson in Law and Order: SVU).

The point is, writing angles can be entirely changed by stuff like this. In LOST, the actor who played Eko, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, requested to be let off the show after the death of his parents.

Bottom line, that means the smoke monster killed Eko because of the reality subtext, not because of to any planned storyline from the writers. (I always knew the "he refused to repent so he died" explanation seemed off...)

Maybe this was already obvious to everyone else, but the concept kinda cracks my perception of what I thought the show was. I believed the writers had a fairly intricate vision of where they were going, and their job was to keep the train on the tracks, so to speak.

Of course, I knew about the Nikki and Paulo thing, but I never made the connection that we could see more of that. The writers made a mistake, the viewers hated the two, that was that.

But now... now I know. Shoot, major plot lines could be entirely dismantled by one hissy fit thrown by a star. And the writers have enough to deal with as it is, seeing that they have around 25 more episodes to resolve this whole thing and the 23,000 loose ends that are dangling in the breeze like the cherries in Amy's car James.

This discovery, combined with my recent realization that nothing is answered in J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield (good movie nonetheless) is making me very worried that the LOST experience will end badly.

Character connections

One of the more interesting parts of LOST is the fact that everyone seems to be connected to everyone else somehow. Our friends at the good ship Lostpedia have created a giant flowchart that shows how this works (as far as we know, so far).

Click image for a larger view.

We haven't discovered many (if any) of these in this season, so you tend to forget just how weird it all is.

What is the significance?

Ret Con-ing

One of the main aspects of LOST (and something that makes the show interesting) is that things we saw in previous seasons can suddenly make sense in light of new revelations. Here's a simple example: Minkowski the radio guy on the Kahana starts getting nosebleeds and eventually dies. We have no idea why until the episode The Constant, where it's all explained. Other examples are the polar bear Sawyer kills and why Kate is rubbing her wrists just after the crash in the pilot episode. 

There are two ways to look at this phenomenon; the first is that the writers had it planned all along. When they introduce Charlotte at the beginning of season 4, they have her smile at finding the polar bear skeleton because they've already written that she spent a lot of her childhood on the island and is trying to find her way back.

The other is that these are Ret Cons, or examples of Retroactive Continuity. The writers use a new revelation to explain something unexplained in the show history because it works, not because they had it planned out the whole time.

I think there are examples of both on LOST.  

How do you see it?