“Lost” Season 2 (2005-06, ABC), episode 1 – “Lost” is not the best show on TV (it’s not even the best show in its time slot). The weaknesses became apparent last season when Claire (Emilie de Ravin) was kidnapped and Jack (Matthew Fox) and his gang couldn’t be bothered to seriously search for her even though they didn’t have anything more pressing to occupy their time. (They eventually found her while searching for Walt’s dog.)
But it is the most ambitious. It emphasizes characters (or rather, the dozen or so characters it chooses to emphasize; the show blatantly ignores about 30 other survivors) and explores them in detailed flashbacks — this strategy of moving the story forward by moving backward is undeniably innovative. Meanwhile, the question of “What the heck is going on on this island?” looms over everything.
The most buzzed-about flashback has been last season’s Hurley (Jorge Garcia) tale, where we learned that his cursed lottery-winning numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) were also popping up all over the island, including on that blasted hatch. The numbers are also all over the Internet, where mathematical theories abound. My personal favorite is the Genetic Mirror Theory, which posits that everyone has a genetic twin somewhere in the world; it explains how Desmond could meet Jack in the 2000s and also be sealed in an underground bunker since the ’80s. B
– John Hansen, “Why are these castaways smiling?,” Brainerd Dispatch, Sept. 29, 2005