4 8 15 16 23 42
The Numbers
Much to Apple and ABC’s delight, I recently decided to download a couple episodes of Lost and see what all the fuss is about… then I downloaded a couple more…. then I downloaded all of season 1. And then season 2. I’m pretty sure I like it. 🙂
Not only is the show intriguing in it’s own right, but I’m having a blast with all the easter egg hunts. For example, the fictitious Oceanic Airlines website. It doesn’t take much digging to find the seating chart and Michael’s letter to Walt. And of course the numbers are there…
The numbers. Now, this has been the most fun. I knew that these numbers (or portions of them) seemed to come up from time to time in back stories and so forth, but I had no idea how liberally the creators have sprinkled references to them until just recently. I’ve made a little flickr set with just a few of the references to the numbers in the show. Most are obvious. Some not so much.
Anyway, I’m going to have to watch again. This time looking more closely for clues about The Dharma Initiative and The Hanso Foundation, the symbolism (black & white), and literary references and all the other goodies that this show is chock full of.
The trouble is I know that when (if) this show ends that the solution to the mysteries of Lost can’t possibly live up to my or most anyone else’s expectations for it. And also I imagine that as long as the show’s popularity remains pretty constant, the network will want to drag it out as long as possible, inexorably entangling it in so many intricacies that it collapses in on itself. Hopefully not. Hopefully the solution/s will unfold themselves in a nice timely fashion. I wouldn’t bet on it, but I hope so.
Now then, back to the clues… let’s see Sayid Jarrah is an anagram of… Sad Hairy Jar…. that’s it! … brilliant!
Welcome to the latest and greatest thing to obsess about.
One interesting thing about The Numbers:
They’re all Jerseys retired by the Knicks. Or the Mets. Or some other sports team in New York. Or Boston.
Whatever.
I don’t follow sports.
Yes, I read that somewhere. The show’s creators got them from the jersey numbers retired by the New York Yankees. Although they’ve retried more than just those 6. The players were:
4 – Lou Gehrig
8 – Yogi Berra
15 – Thurmon Munson
16 – Whitey Ford
23 – Don Mattingly
42 – Jackie Robinson
I’m not sure if 108 is officially a number or not, but I see that it was featured in last night’s show on the tape being played for Sayid. The number on the lower right hand part of the screen was 23108-42 IIRC.