Lost: The Dénouement (with Spoilers)

Television and movies have a tough time going about the long-foregone literary device of the dénouement. If you recall, the dénouement is that point of the story where the dust settles for the characters and readers—not necessarily where plot lines are tied. It is that point after the crisis (which television and movies have trained us to be The Ending) but before the ending which makes the impending ending appropriate.

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Numbers Comments On Lost (with Spoilers)

Tonight on Numbers, Charlie Eppes (childhood math genius now young, dynamic genius professor/mathematician) made an interesting statement that I think relates nicely with Lost. In this episode a soldier’s family was kidnapped to bring the soldier out of hiding (for some reason: presumably revenge). The Soldier came out of hiding to hunt down the kidnapper (presumably to get his family back then kill the kidnapper). But for some reason, the kidnappers weren’t killing the Soldier, just stringing the Soldier along. Eppes points out how the math is all wrong. Statistically speaking the Soldier should’ve been confronting his kidnappers already, and have been killed: yet he wasn’t dead. What’s going on?

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