"Lost": Everything But Weight

I don't watch "Lost". I sat through a small handful of the first-season episodes with the Wife -- just enough to make me realize where all the former "Twin Peaks" writers were now employed. (Both "Twin Peaks" and "Lost" were ABC productions. Coincidence? I think not ...)

But certain things became alarmingly apparent to me faster than they did to anyone on the show ... like this silly obsession with the number 108. It was very early on that I realized the six numbers printed on the side of some hatch somewhere (or some toilet seat -- I have since lost track) added up to 108, which is the frequency with which the "doomsday device" needs to be reset. And the digits in "108" add up to 9. And the "Dharma Project" has something to do with Jenna Elfman's career, but darned if I can figure out what.

As any loyal fan of "Lost" knows by now, the six numbers on the fortune cookie that led Locke (the bald guy who looks like Rudy from the first season of "Survivor") to get on that plane, because after all, it was his destiny, were also the six numbers that caused big Hurley to win the lottery and promptly crash on a desert island where money is worthless.

Hurley		Hurley?

What we have learned from "Lost" so far is that neither the writers nor the survivors are as smart as they think they are. "Lost" no longer refers to the people on the island; it now refers to the plotline as well. Have we learned nothing from the mistakes of "Twin Peaks"? Have we not learned that once you start writing things into the script merely because they're weirdly cool, and leave the story progression by the side of the road, your audience will also be "Lost"?

And have we not learned that if a 400-pound man is stranded on a desert island, basic nutrition dictates that he would LOSE WEIGHT? Does common sense also dictate that you do not put this 400-pound man in charge of your food supply?

In fact, this reminds me of another overweight island "survivor" whose tropical diet of coconuts and figs suspiciously never resulted in any visible weight loss:

Hurley		Not Hurley

(Yeah, you saw that one driving up the block, didn't you?)

Note that on "Lost", people keep disappearing. One or two appear out of the jungle long enough to speak backwards and confuse everybody, then vanish again. The rest are gone forever. Mind you, I have no proof ... but I suspect that Hurley is eating them.

The same thing happened on "Gilligan's Island", too: an alarming number of people kept landing on the uncharted desert isle, then disappeared, and none of them were ever able to tell the authorities where this island (within a three-hour boat ride of Honolulu, remember) might have been located. Do we know that these visitors made it back to civilization? Or do we only know that they vanished from the island, never to be seen again?

Meanwhile, the Skipper kept gaining weight. You figure it out.

Shows dealing with supernatural phenomena were big hits in the '60s and '70s: "Twilight Zone" and "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" come to mind. How long did the new version of "The Night Stalker" last? An episode and a half? The only shows dealing with the supernatural that have succeeded recently are comedies ("Sabrina, The Teenage Witch"), anthologies ("Outer Limits", "Psi Factor"), and dramas centering around a teenage cheerleader named Buffy. Ooo, scary stuff.

Meanwhile, we're supposed to believe that life for a bunch of plane-crash victims depends upon six arbitrary numbers, and their ability to outwit a bunch of "The Others" who are rather pissed off for no good reason. Although, the Wife and I have deduced a reason ...

The Wife (who watches the show a lot more closely than I do) pointed out that the seating configuration on the crashed plane was five seats across, three-and-two. That means it was either a 727 or an MD-80. On a trans-Pacific flight. That means they were flying on a very cheap airline. And there were apparently no first-class passengers and no first-class cabin.

This can only mean one thing. The "Lost" passengers were flying Southwest.

And when you plug this information in, the reason why "The Others" are so angry becomes obvious. The first group of survivors found a cache of food. "The Others" have to survive on small packs of honey-roasted peanuts.

No wonder they're pissed.