Something that I just realized is that just about every vehicle shown on or near the island crashes. The flight 815 airplane, the raft getting blown up, the sub, the Helicopter with Naomi, Ecko's brother's plane, the VW van. Even Ben's made-up balloon. The only one I can't remember wrecking is the Other's boat that Tom and crew used to steal Michael (And blew up the raft with). Could mesh with the C.S. Lewis premise above of people being "judged" before moving on to eternity.

Well, I am new to these posts and I am sure this topic has been debated, but from the beginning of LOST, I have thought they are in an "in between" earth and heaven place. Yes, I know the producers said it is not Purgatory, but that still leaves MUCH room for other possibilities. Ever read CS Lewis' The Great Divorce? It speaks of Heaven and Hell in different terms. People do not know they are in either place until they "grow" or "diminish" which is a painful process. Considering the parachutist said all people in Oceanic flight died at the end of tonight's episode...of course, she could be a plant to throw our "hero's" off, but I don't think so....

According to my Social Studies classes of yore, Brazilians speak Portugese, so, what are we going for here?

Brasil is closer to where the island probably is than Portugal is.

So Brother Campbell "fired" Desmond, because the latter had a "higher calling" of some kind. i.e. Campbell found out that Desmond was needed on the Island in the future.

Bash, I agree that the search for the numbers can go too far, but 108 does refer to the time reset in the hatch.

Just to be picky: Naomi actually has got a Brazilian copy of "Catch-22". The book is called "Ardil 22" in Brazil (which was the one shown on the show), but "Artigo 22" in Portugal. So that would make the men on Antartica Brazilian, not Portuguese (which is actually pretty clear from their accent, if you are familiar with the language...).

Oh wow, 108 is the sum of the numbers.

Anyway, there are obviously easter-eggs added in in post, so I can finally understand why this post is popping up every week. The picture on the monk's desk looked so totally fake and added-in digitally that it almost popped out of the TV when I saw the episode (like one of those 3D distortion-images it almost felt like the added image of the medium was hovering).

But the numbers... again, taking all mentioned values in an episode and chewing on them just long enough to produce ANY kind of reference to the numbers is just ridiculous. And every time you don't get any numbers at all during an episode you folks just give up and tell us "the numbers weren"t mentioned this week". I say WRONG. The numbers are mentioned EVERY week. You are just not chewing long enough. I bet if you count the times everybody says "one" and "two" as well es "too" and "to" you can somehow get to any of the numbers in that silly number-sequence. And if it doesn't work just calculate the sum, the square-root, cube, square or whatever. You'll get there. Whereever "there" is.

Ah well. Yes 108 is the sum of the numbers. Just forget about the stupid numbers unless the whole sequence is mentioned. ALL of the numbers themselves in an episode, in sequence. Maybe not in a whole sentence and next to each other but over the course of the episode. But everything else is no mention at all. I mean come on how ridiculous is it to count room numbers and dates or floor levels. Just stop it. Please.

I think everyone is looknig a little too much into the whole wine thing.

You are correct Jeff. Also, it wasn't that the monastery only bottles 108 cases a year, at the time Desmond had drunk most of the bottle they had only done 108 so far.