It's the other way round, the guy from Hurley's mental institute heard the numbers being broadcast from the tower and then mumbled them repeatedly in the institute, which lead Hurley to use them to play the lottery. They probably originally got on the broadcast because of something to do with the candidates. As for why they were on the hatch, I don't know, probably because the guy who wrote the 'Numbers' episode thought it would be a sick ending to show a shot of them on the hatch.

I know a lot of people disagree, but I feel it was more important for the writers to give a satisfying ending to the characters' stories than answer random questions like 'why were the numbers on the hatch?' or 'why did the photos change in Miles' room?', and that is what they did.

Also, I believe the numbers were covered quite heavily between seasons one time (Valenzetti Equation), although I don't really pay much attention to stuff that isn't in the body of the show.

I came up with that in 10 minutes by myself. If you gave me a team of professional writers and 20 hours to sit down and come up with something, I'm sure it'd be a lot better. And yes, once we had that general story arc written, we could then proceed with the show without having many major storyline inconsistencies. Surely the writers had much more than 20 spare hours to do this either before the show began or during season 1, no?

Kobayashi was a made up name. Was Redfoot a real character? Probably not but who knows? The fact that they replay that sound clip "tell me every last detail" while the FBI guy is staring at a wall full of names that Verbal used leads you to believe that a lot of his story is at least a different account and possibly largely BS.

I don't want to get sidetracked on TUS, just saying a lot of that movie can be interpreted differently too.

I'm not a super fan of Lost so don't know the intricacies of every plot arc in the entire series but what I like about it is that a lot of the stuff in there is left to your own intepretation. So spoon feeding answers about polar bears, Walt being special or the significance of some numbers seems to go against the grain of the show.

And every name and location as well right?

I agree with the frustration, I'm just saying it hasn't been done better (imo) on network television. I'm sure the reasons for this involve many different factors, including simple supply and demand considerations. A perfect show in my mind, would probably never get the initial ratings to get off the ground on a major network.

But hopefully Lost will inspire some other talented writers to make an epic tale that dodges these particular pitfalls.

Not "without many major inconsistencies", NO inconsistencies! You're the one who said that Jack being wrong about how long clothing takes to decay is this huge indicator at how awful a job they did at writing the show.

lost lovers,

how do you feel the series will hold up on another viewing?

Yeah, I was going to say this last night. I never intend to revisit the series now. If the last season were better then I'd probably watch it all again someday but not now.

also, to the big defenders:

I don't think people are calling for spoon-fed answers. The complaint is that there are many mysteries that were simply discarded or made ignored, with even later things contradicting older mysteries. "Leaving things open ended" is a reasonable choice for story telling, but making a huge deal about something and then not even addressing it for a few years before wrapping up is not exactly endearing to the audience.

Here is the best pro ending critique I could find. Still don't agree with it, but I found it enlightening.

http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2010/0...-this-matters/

It's one of my (if not THE) favourite movies and I have watched it a similar amount of times. The fact that "Kobayashi" is the brand name of the coffee cup Kujan is drinking off always made me wonder. This and other things make it that to this day I still don't know how much of verbal's story actually happened and how much was made up. Anyways, this doesn't add to the thread and should be discussed elsewhere.

I just did my rewatch. This is even better than I thought it was. I seriously can't get any of the hate, period. I also respect/often agree with a lot of the posters that are "hating" or not liking the ending as much as me, so I'm pretty confused. That is a testament to how good this ride really was imo.

Assani,
I don't think you realize how much stuff goes into the day to day working of an episode. They need to write huge scripts, film the episodes, etc. etc. It's not just like they can sit down and write till their hearts content. I mean they had the challenge of writing this whole show, concluding it, etc without getting cancelled and keeping the show entertaining. This is not nearly as easy a task as writing fan fiction that answers a bunch of questions.

Edit: It seems like I am a LOST apologist itt, but I am not. I just think some people had unrealistic expectations and ignored the faults in LOST that were obvious all along. LOST was never a great piece of art, but is a very good piece of culture and used the medium of TV better than almost any show ever. In an era with DVRs/hulu/etc, it was one of the few shows that people still watch live. LOST was and ended as a good show. If people think LOST sucks then they probably can't come up with words to properly describe Heroes. Throughout it's run it has been the best or 2nd best drama on network TV, which is a little like being the worlds tallest midget, but i'd rather see a bunch of shows executed as well as LOST than a bunch of ****ty police procedurals.

Don't get me wrong. I loved LOST and stil do. It's just that I think they could've done better. So I don't like to be put in the "hater" camp.

According to this article, the writer and director didn't actually agree on the plot AFTER they had made The Usual Suspects.


I wish everyone who wanted Lost to be an air-tight package would think this over.

Lol, no shock that Assani watched Usual Suspects 30 times and still didnt understand the film.

Virtually none of that story was true right down to the fact Keaton wasnt even on the boat when it blew, hence they found no remains.

Personally i consider this the best part of the film and not the worst, but 90% of people are like Assani and dont understand the film which is a shame.

Right.

And then ok, they probably have a very solid idea of what they want do wrt the s6 arc. They know they are going to use the flash sideways and they know what it's going to be. Since they know what it's going to be, they probably know exactly how they want to end the story on the island as well. But nonetheless, they have 14-15 hours of screen time to fill and so they introduce characters like Dogen and Ilana to get from point A to point B. And then people are like WTF WAS UP WITH DOGEN AND "INFECTIONS"?? THE WHOLE THING MUST HAVE BEEN A SHAM!

Fair enough. If your argument is "Its simply too hard to write a TV show and expect it to be anywhere near as good as a movie/book" then i can understand that. Then maybe i simply don't like mystery TV shows.


However, I still feel that its completely inexcusable to build characters up as really important, have them only give vague answers, finally give us that characters' flashback, and find out that they weren't all that important. Imo thats simply a cheap writing trick and we should indeed be upset at the writers for that.


I think that the Lost writers should've cut the number of characters in half and done a better job with the ones they kept. They just weren't able to tie it all together the way they did it. The following characters could've been totally eliminated and the show would've been just as good:

Michael
Walt
Paulo
Nikki
Mr. Friendly and almost every one of the Others except for the main ones
Dogen
John Lennon dude
Libby
Mikhail
two chicks in underwater hatch
Boone
Shannon




I also think they were guilty of trying to fit too many major themes into the show....

Faith vs Science
Ben vs Widamore
MIB vs Jacob
Child birth issues
Claire raising Aaron
Time Travel
The Others and the mystery surrounding them
Dharma
Desmond's jumping through time
the Losties getting off the island
the Losties coming back to the island






If they would've trimmed down on a lot of the characters and storylines, then I don't think we'd need to be making these "but TV is really hard to write" type of excuses.

Obviously I'm just not as smart as you. Congrats on your intelligence.

Yes it is. Notice the stained glass mosaics in the church. They have all the symbols of the different religions.

Whats with lockes second toe, i puked in my dinner looking at it.

Seriously, why the need for **** like this, Phil? Do you find your own arguments to be insufficient without ad hominem attacks added in?

Assani,
Shows need to have peripheral characters. I don't know why you think all these characters were built up as being important or why they needed to be important.

I think you are putting plot arcs, conflicts, themes, characters, under the same umbrella, when they are very different.

pretentious ******* gonna be pretentious *******s.

No way you could take out all those characters/themes from LOST Assani. Shannon adding hotness and Mikhail scaring the **** out of me every time he appears. As for the girls in the underwater hatch, they're not really characters. To me they're only extras like most of the Dharma Initiative.