Numbers (Lost)
Encyclopedia
"Numbers" is the 18th episode of the first season of Lost
. The episode was directed by Dan Attias
and written by Brent Fletcher
and David Fury
. It first aired on March 2, 2005 on ABC
. The character of Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia
) is featured in the episode's flashbacks.
in the Pacific, monitoring longwave radio transmissions. Most of what they heard was static, but at one point 16 years earlier (which coincides with the time that Rousseau was stranded on the island and one of the cursed numbers), Toomey picked up a signal of a human voice repeating the numbers over and over. After using the numbers to win a prize at a fair in Calgary, Alberta, Toomey experienced a steady stream of bad luck until he finally committed suicide
by shotgun.
(Naveen Andrews
) had found in Danielle Rousseau
's (Mira Furlan
) camp in an earlier episode
. The documents contain the repeated numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, the same numbers which Hurley had used to win a lottery jackpot. Hurley is agitated at seeing the numbers, and sets off on his own to find Rousseau, ignoring Sayid's warnings about the danger.
On the island, Hurley finds the same mysterious cable that Sayid had followed, which extends from an unknown location in the ocean, up into the island's hills and then disappears down into the underground within a few hundred feet of a ravine with a rope bridge across it. When it was first discovered, it was slightly damaged, revealing wires within it. Rousseau has set traps alongside the cable but Hurley seems to have no fear of Rousseau's boobytraps, which through apparent good luck, seem to keep missing him, although one almost kills him. Sayid, Jack Shephard
(Matthew Fox
), and Charlie Pace
(Dominic Monaghan
) eventually catch up with him at a suspension bridge. Hurley crosses the bridge first but it then collapses under the much lighter weight of Charlie and the group is separated.
Jack and Sayid, for their part, eventually set off another of Rousseau's traps, causing an explosion that destroys her old shelter. Sayid concludes that Rousseau knew he'd come back, and had set traps for them.
After Hurley and Charlie are split up while being shot at, Hurley encounters Rousseau, who threatens him at gunpoint. Hurley refuses to back down, and adamantly insists that she tell him what the numbers mean. Rousseau appears convinced of his sincerity and lowers her gun, but says that she does not know: only that her party was drawn to the island by the radio transmission of the numbers, but when they tried to come ashore, their ship was destroyed by submerged rocks. It took them weeks to find the transmission tower, which was near the Black Rock, but her team became "sick". As she describes it, after the last of her team was gone, she changed the message that was being transmitted into a distress call. Hurley and Rousseau conclude that the numbers are cursed, and Rousseau points out that the numbers that brought her to the island, were evidently responsible for bringing Hurley to the island as well, and that just as they had brought bad luck to him, the numbers had caused her to lose everyone and everything that she ever cared about. Hurley expresses huge relief that he has finally found someone who agrees with him that the numbers are cursed, and hugs her.
Hurley later makes his way back to Sayid, Jack and Charlie, giving them a battery he got from Rousseau, which can be used for Michael's raft. On the beach, Charlie talks to Hurley and reveals his heroin addiction. Hurley in turn tells Charlie how much wealth he possessed before the crash, though Charlie takes it as a joke and insulted, storms off. At the end of the episode, the numbers are revealed to be engraved on the side of the hatch that Boone and Locke found in a previous episode
.
While Michael is rebuilding the boat, Sawyer is seen sitting in a chair reading A Wrinkle In Time
by Madeleine L'Engle
which deals primarily with tesseracts and time travel, perhaps hinting at future events.
, as Hurley is mistaken for a drug dealer and arrested. In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jorge Garcia plays a drug dealer, and his role as the drug dealer got him the role of Hurley in Lost.
s review of "Numbers", in which Rousseau makes her second appearance, Carabott described Hurley and Rousseau's encounter as "the episode's best moment", as "Hurley finds comfort with someone who we would least expect." Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams commended Furlan for giving the character "heart and soul", and managed to make her "identifiable and complex".
After the episode aired, numerous people used the eponymous figures (4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42) as lottery entries. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
, within three days, the numbers were tried over 500 times by local players. Likewise, in the same period, over 200 people in Michigan
alone used the sequence for the Mega Millions
lottery and by October, thousands had tried them for the multi-state Powerball
lottery. The issue came to attention after a Mega Millions drawing for a near-record US$380,000,000 jackpot on January 4, 2011 drew a series of numbers in which the three lowest numbers (4-8-15) and the mega ball (42) matched four of the six numbers. The #42 is also the "Mega Number" in Hurley's "Mega Lotto" ticket. The players who played the combination won $150 each (or $118 in California).
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
. The episode was directed by Dan Attias
Dan Attias
Daniel Attias is an American television director and producer. Attias' career has spanned three decades and during this time he has directed a significant number of popular primetime television programs, including Miami Vice and Beverly Hills, 90210...
and written by Brent Fletcher
Brent Fletcher
Brent Fletcher is an American television writer. He has worked on television series such as Lost and Angel.He was a freelance writer for the first season of Lost...
and David Fury
David Fury
David Fury is an American television Screenwriter and Producer, best known for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Lost, 24, and Fringe.Fury was a Co-executive producer and Writer for the first season of Lost...
. It first aired on March 2, 2005 on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
. The character of Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia
Jorge Garcia
Jorge García is a U.S. actor and comedian. He first came to public attention with his performance as Hector Lopez on the television show Becker and later for his portrayal of Hugo "Hurley" Reyes in the television series Lost. Garcia also performs as a stand-up comedian.-Early life:García was born...
) is featured in the episode's flashbacks.
Flashbacks
In flashbacks, Hurley wins the lottery, and over the ensuing weeks, everyone around him seems to suffer increasingly bad luck. Hurley’s grandfather dies of a heart attack, his brother's wife walks out, his mother breaks her ankle while the house Hurley bought her goes up in flames, and Hurley himself is falsely arrested. He then visits a mental asylum where he apparently had resided for a time, to talk to another patient, Leonard Sims, who keeps repeating the numbers to Hurley. When Hurley tells him that he used the numbers in the lottery, Lenny panics and shouts, "The numbers are bad! You gotta get away from them!" As the hospital staff drag him away, Leonard calls out the name of Sam Toomey in Kalgoorlie, Australia. Hurley travels there and learns that Toomey had died four years earlier. However, Toomey's widow relates a story of how Toomey and Leonard had served together in the U.S. Navy, being stationed at a listening postNumbers station
A numbers station is a shortwave radio station of uncertain origin. In the 1950s, Time magazine reported that the numbers stations first appeared shortly after World War II and were using a format that had been used to send weather data during that war.Numbers stations generally broadcast...
in the Pacific, monitoring longwave radio transmissions. Most of what they heard was static, but at one point 16 years earlier (which coincides with the time that Rousseau was stranded on the island and one of the cursed numbers), Toomey picked up a signal of a human voice repeating the numbers over and over. After using the numbers to win a prize at a fair in Calgary, Alberta, Toomey experienced a steady stream of bad luck until he finally committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by shotgun.
On the Island
Hurley steals some of the documents that Sayid JarrahSayid Jarrah
Sayid Hassan Jarrah is a character from the ABC show Lost portrayed by Naveen Andrews.-Season 1:Sayid fixes the transceiver recovered from the cockpit, and leads a group into the jungle in order to send out a distress signal. Instead, he picks up a looping message . He tries to locate the...
(Naveen Andrews
Naveen Andrews
Naveen William Sidney Andrews is a British American actor. He is best known for portraying Kip in the movie The English Patient and Sayid Jarrah on the American television series Lost.-Early life:...
) had found in Danielle Rousseau
Danielle Rousseau
Danielle Rousseau is a fictional character on the ABC drama television series Lost, which chronicles the lives of over forty people after their plane crashes on a remote island somewhere in the South Pacific. Croatian actress Mira Furlan plays the scientist who shipwrecks on the island sixteen...
's (Mira Furlan
Mira Furlan
Mira Furlan is a Croatian actress and singer currently residing in the United States. She is well known for her roles as the Minbari Ambassador Delenn on all five seasons of the science fiction television series Babylon 5 , and Danielle Rousseau on Lost.-Early life:Furlan was born to an...
) camp in an earlier episode
Solitary (Lost)
"Solitary" is the ninth episode of the first season of Lost. The episode was directed by Greg Yaitanes and written by David Fury. It first aired on November 17, 2004 on ABC. The character of Sayid Jarrah is featured in the episode's flashbacks.-Flashbacks:Sayid is torturing a prisoner who will not...
. The documents contain the repeated numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, the same numbers which Hurley had used to win a lottery jackpot. Hurley is agitated at seeing the numbers, and sets off on his own to find Rousseau, ignoring Sayid's warnings about the danger.
On the island, Hurley finds the same mysterious cable that Sayid had followed, which extends from an unknown location in the ocean, up into the island's hills and then disappears down into the underground within a few hundred feet of a ravine with a rope bridge across it. When it was first discovered, it was slightly damaged, revealing wires within it. Rousseau has set traps alongside the cable but Hurley seems to have no fear of Rousseau's boobytraps, which through apparent good luck, seem to keep missing him, although one almost kills him. Sayid, Jack Shephard
Jack Shephard
Dr. Jack Shephard is a fictional character and protagonist of the ABC television series Lost played by Matthew Fox. Lost follows the journey of the survivors of Oceanic Airlines flight 815 on a mysterious island and their attempts to survive and escape, slowly uncovering more of the much broader...
(Matthew Fox
Matthew Fox (actor)
Matthew Chandler Fox is an American actor. He is mostly known for his role as Charlie Salinger on Party of Five, and for portraying Jack Shephard on the supernatural drama television series Lost.- Early life :...
), and Charlie Pace
Charlie Pace
Charlie Hieronymus Pace is a fictional character on ABC's Lost, a television series chronicling the lives of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island...
(Dominic Monaghan
Dominic Monaghan
Dominic Bernard Patrick Luke Monaghan is an English actor. He has received international attention from playing Merry in Peter Jackson's adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and for his role as Charlie Pace on the television show Lost....
) eventually catch up with him at a suspension bridge. Hurley crosses the bridge first but it then collapses under the much lighter weight of Charlie and the group is separated.
Jack and Sayid, for their part, eventually set off another of Rousseau's traps, causing an explosion that destroys her old shelter. Sayid concludes that Rousseau knew he'd come back, and had set traps for them.
After Hurley and Charlie are split up while being shot at, Hurley encounters Rousseau, who threatens him at gunpoint. Hurley refuses to back down, and adamantly insists that she tell him what the numbers mean. Rousseau appears convinced of his sincerity and lowers her gun, but says that she does not know: only that her party was drawn to the island by the radio transmission of the numbers, but when they tried to come ashore, their ship was destroyed by submerged rocks. It took them weeks to find the transmission tower, which was near the Black Rock, but her team became "sick". As she describes it, after the last of her team was gone, she changed the message that was being transmitted into a distress call. Hurley and Rousseau conclude that the numbers are cursed, and Rousseau points out that the numbers that brought her to the island, were evidently responsible for bringing Hurley to the island as well, and that just as they had brought bad luck to him, the numbers had caused her to lose everyone and everything that she ever cared about. Hurley expresses huge relief that he has finally found someone who agrees with him that the numbers are cursed, and hugs her.
Hurley later makes his way back to Sayid, Jack and Charlie, giving them a battery he got from Rousseau, which can be used for Michael's raft. On the beach, Charlie talks to Hurley and reveals his heroin addiction. Hurley in turn tells Charlie how much wealth he possessed before the crash, though Charlie takes it as a joke and insulted, storms off. At the end of the episode, the numbers are revealed to be engraved on the side of the hatch that Boone and Locke found in a previous episode
All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues
"All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" is the eleventh episode of the first season of Lost. The episode was directed by Stephen Williams and written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach. It first aired on December 8, 2004, on the American Broadcasting Company...
.
While Michael is rebuilding the boat, Sawyer is seen sitting in a chair reading A Wrinkle In Time
A Wrinkle in Time
A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy novel by Madeleine L'Engle, first published in 1962. The story revolves around a young girl whose father, a government scientist, has gone missing after working on a mysterious project called a tesseract. The book won a Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award, and...
by Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for her young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time...
which deals primarily with tesseracts and time travel, perhaps hinting at future events.
Production
A reference is made to Curb Your EnthusiasmCurb Your Enthusiasm
Curb Your Enthusiasm is an American comedy television series produced and broadcast by HBO, which premiered on October 15, 2000. As of 2011, it has completed 80 episodes over eight seasons. The series was created by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, who stars as a fictionalized version of himself...
, as Hurley is mistaken for a drug dealer and arrested. In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jorge Garcia plays a drug dealer, and his role as the drug dealer got him the role of Hurley in Lost.
Reception
The episode had 18.85 million American viewers. In Chris Carabott of IGNIGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
s review of "Numbers", in which Rousseau makes her second appearance, Carabott described Hurley and Rousseau's encounter as "the episode's best moment", as "Hurley finds comfort with someone who we would least expect." Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams commended Furlan for giving the character "heart and soul", and managed to make her "identifiable and complex".
After the episode aired, numerous people used the eponymous figures (4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42) as lottery entries. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, also known as "the Trib," is the second largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States...
, within three days, the numbers were tried over 500 times by local players. Likewise, in the same period, over 200 people in Michigan
Michigan Lottery
The Michigan Lottery offers numerous on-line and scratch-off games, giving players a wide variety of prize possibilities. Initiated under the authority of Public Act 239 in 1972, the games collect funds to support Michigan’s public school system.- History :...
alone used the sequence for the Mega Millions
Mega Millions
Mega Millions is a US multi-jurisdictional $1 lottery game. Since it replaced The Big Game in May 2002 , Mega Millions' advertised jackpots have started at $12 million, paid in 26 yearly installments , increasing when there is no jackpot winner...
lottery and by October, thousands had tried them for the multi-state Powerball
Powerball
Powerball is an American lottery game sold in 44 jurisdictions as a shared jackpot game. It is coordinated by the Multi-State Lottery Association , a non-profit organization formed by an agreement with lotteries. Powerball is a game whose advertised jackpot starts at $20 million and can roll into...
lottery. The issue came to attention after a Mega Millions drawing for a near-record US$380,000,000 jackpot on January 4, 2011 drew a series of numbers in which the three lowest numbers (4-8-15) and the mega ball (42) matched four of the six numbers. The #42 is also the "Mega Number" in Hurley's "Mega Lotto" ticket. The players who played the combination won $150 each (or $118 in California).