Throughout this first season of Lost, we the audience have been bombarded with a great number of odd coincidences - Hurley's ownership of the box company at which Locke works, Sawyer's encounter with Jack's father, Hurley and Sam Toomey's odd experiences after 'using' the numbers, Walt's reading of a comic book about a polar bear, only to be later attacked by a polar bear, etc. etc. The list is quite extensive, and I'm quite sure I've missed a whole lot of them.

As I read threads on these and other Lost boards, I see various posters convinced that these coincidences are meaningful, as opposed to just sheer dumb-luck. I see others convinced it's all just blind coincidence, with no meaning behind them at all.

And as I ponder this, I am reminded of a particularly poignant scene in the movie "Signs", in which Mel Gibson's character (Rev. Graham Hess) and Joaquin Phoenix's character (Marrill Hess, the Reverend's brother) are discussing this paradigm of finding deeper meaning in coincidences while watching footage of UFO lights hovering over Mexico City(The "Colleen" referenced is Graham Hess' dead wife, killed in a car accident):

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GRAHAM: (whispers)... There are all different ways you can tell that there's someone really there watching out for us. You see signs. Sometimes they're little ones. You think of someone. The phone rings. They're on the phone... Sometimes they're big, like fourteen lights hovering over Mexico City.

Sure, there are a lot of people watching this who think this could be a bad thing. But there are a lot of people watching this, who think it's a miracle. A sign of God's existence. It's all in how you look at things Merrill.

What you have to decide is what kind of person you are? Are you the type who believes in miracles and looks for signs or are you the kind who believes, things just happen by chance?

Merrill is deep in thought.

MERRILL: I was at this party once. I'm on a couch with Sara Mckinney. She was just sitting there, looking beautiful and staring at me. I go to lean in and kiss her and I realize I have gum in my mouth. I turn and take out the gum. Stuff it in my paper cup next to the sofa and turn around. Sara Mckinney throws up all over herself.... I knew the second it happened. It was a miracle. I could have been kissing her when she threw up. That would have scarred me for life. I may never have recovered.

Merrill looks at the TV screen.

MERRILL I'm a miracle man. Those lights are a miracle.

Graham smiles.

GRAHAM (whispers) There you go.

MERRILL (whispers) So which type are you?

GRAHAM (whispers) Do you feel comforted?

MERRILL (whispers) Yes.

GRAHAM (whispers) What does it matter then?

The two of them turn back to the silent screen of the television. It's a long beat before Graham speaks.

GRAHAM (whispers) Do you know what Colleen's last words were before they killed her?

Merrill turns and stares quietly at his brother.

GRAHAM (whispers) She said, "See", and then her eyes glazed a bit and she said... "Tell Merrill to swing away."

Merrill's mouth opens a bit. Graham turns and chuckles at his expression.

GRAHAM (whispers) Do you know why she said that?

Merrill nods, "No."

GRAHAM (whispers) Because the nerve endings in her brain were firing as she died, and some random memory of us at one of your baseball games popped into her head. (beat) There is no one watching out for us Merrill. We're all on our own.

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So what kind of person are you? Are you the type that believes that all of these things the writers are showing us have a deeper, more deliberate meaning, or do you think that things happen just by chance?

We know that Hurley is a believer in 'miracles'/'curses'. We know that Sam Toomey's wife does not. We know that Walt's step-father is a believer in Walt's 'supernatural' abilities. Are you?

What do you make of the coincidences? Do you dismiss them as dumb luck? Sheer coincidence? Or do they mean something more?

Well I guess all the coincidences in LOST are there with a purpose, because the authors say so (ok, at this point, could this thread cake move slightly the left, I can't type??). I nreal life I never believe coincidence is anything but a coincidence....if it was something else, we'd call it differently, wouldn't we? Now, as regards the ones in LOST, I think it might show up, that they have much more meaning then the characters might think, because it might be the one coincidence that happend that somehow changed things for them (like Sawyers' meeting with Jack's father). In some cases it could come up that was first thought to be a coincidende, was nothing of a sort.....But then again who knows.

Until it's proven otherwise, I have to believe (and want to believe) that the writers didn't get where they are by doing things like inserting a lot of sloppy coincidence into a story just for the heck of it, or by not bothering to do simple research on things that are going to turn out to be key points.* So I guess I believe in the writers, if that's the question.* *:)

All this events make me think about a magic trick, like in close-up : one hand is a diversion, the other makes the real trick.
I think some of the coincidences are diversion, while others are clues, the question is which one is what ?

Good point, crashover -- I do think this show is brimming with sleight-of-hand.

i dont believe in coincidences. in real life anyway. as far as lost goes... nope i dont. everything has meaning - but maybe not as much meaning as we keep reading into it.

and vertical - love the signs quote. one the best movies ever.

The writers are brilliant and give us great story lines to work off of. :) Which explains why somethings are coincidences. We look a lot into these things and we get a little freaked out by it all. :o But there is nothing wrong with that. :laugh:

Absolutely.* I think that both Kato and crashover have it nailed, Vertical.* I believe in the writers.* In their ability to take what seems to be small detail and weave it through a storyline to reach a crescendo at some point.* The "OMG!" factor.* But - in the slight-of-hand, which are the crucial details, and which are not?* Indeed they have succeeded in building intrigue and holding their viewer base quite nicely with it.

Obviously we're all hooked.* :-)

Sloppy co-incidence is definitely out, however I don't think that we can rule out a certain degree of possible continuity error (e.g. it being daylight when the plane crashed).* Sometimes it just happens.

So far in this thread I've seen mention of three kinds of coincidence

1. Apparent coincidence that really is more than coincidence.
2. Continuity error.
3. True coincidences (whether due to writer sloppiness or whether they really weren't all that remarkable in the first place).

There is also of course a fourth kind -- theme-and-variations. Candidate examples of that are:

A. Two characters who share somewhat unusual last names with famous philosophers.
B. Lots of characters who are con artists.
C. Lots of black/white references.

just sticking my head in hi

I know this isn't a whisper topic but this does bear on the is it planned theory:
thank you for the geniuses comment - of course, now i can't leave the house because my head won't fit through the doorframe!

the whispers are exactly what you hear on the screen - i know that sounds oblique, but if i told you what they were saying, then you'd know, and if i told you that they were just random noise you might not think of us as geniuses anymore!

trust me, you are seeing/hearing exactly what we want you to. kind of like the outer limits that way. we control the horizontal AND the vertical. the degree to which you want to investigate is up to you!

thanks for the question!

javi

ok i'm outta here

Thanks for the reminder of the great scene from "Signs," Vertical.

When it comes to television (or other types of fiction), I'm definitely a believer in the signs.

Why? Because in their fictional worlds, writers are the gods, goddesses, Three Fates, the Weavers, or whatever metaphor you choose. The threads of the plot are carefully woven, and there are places where the silk shimmers through. If the plot is well constructed, many threads will converge at the climax of the story. In series TV, of course, the climax keeps being put off when the show is renewed for another season, but I expect we'll see a climax of some sort and a resolution of at least some of the plot threads this year.

The character connections, in particular, strike me as plot threads rather than coincidences. The writers have been pretty explicit about telling us that they're going to show connections between the characters prior to the moment when they all boarded flight 815, so I think that's one area where we'll see things come together. The numbers, on the other hand, may turn out to be have less meaning than some of us have imagined (there's been some really wild speculation about those numbers), but they can't simply be coincidental or I doubt we'd have seen them on the hatch apparatus.

Some of the other details we've been noticing will, I suspect, fall into the category of continuity errors or things that fans noticed that the writers never even considered. Stuff like that won't get resolved, or even mentioned again. At this point, though, it's hard to separate which are real "signs," and which are only phantoms.

Templeton