Friday, February 02, 2007

Counting Down To Lost's Return: 6 To Go

Staying up late tonight just to make sure I get this done (technically, it's after midnight now, but....)

Being something of a numbers freak, how can I not love the fact that one of the central mysteries of Lost is a series of six numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42) and the seemingly mystical powers they have. I love the way the writers work in the many subtle references to those numbers - such as the sports team in the airport flashback that each had one of the numbers on their back - as well as the more overt uses, such as on the hatch, in the French woman's transmission, and on Hurley's winning lottery ticket. I also appreciate the fact - unintentional or otherwise - that Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's "answer to Life, the Universe and everything" - 42 - is included in the sequence.

As with all the big mysteries, I hope that this one gets explained before the show ultimately ends. But in the meantime, it's always fun to conjecture as to their significance, which fans do at the slightest provacation. And isn't that a pretty cool by-product from a TV show?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are so many little nuances with those numbers. Even the fact that the totalling of all those numbers equals the number of minutes you have to press the buttons (108)!!

I'm also interested in finding out what the black smoke really is...poor Ecko.

Tammy said...

I agree, I love the numbers. Hear about something called the Valenzetti equation?