Season 1, Episode 18: Numbers

Those big bets Hurley has been making in backgammon with Walt? Yeah, he ain't been bluffing. He owes the special little 10-year-old $80,000 at last count, but he's good for it as a Mega Lotto Jackpot winner. Of course, Hurley won using numbers he came across in the ramblings of a fellow psych ward patient at the asylum where he was at for unknown reasons. Now, he's convinced the numbers and, by extension, the money are cursed.

MAJOR PLOT POINTS

4-8-15-16-23-42 ... It's an endless refrain by Lenny in the psych ward where Hurley spent some time. He used those numbers to win the lottery, but immediately bad things start to happen. At the press conference where he unveils himself as the winner, Hurley's grandpa Tito keels over and dies of a heart attack. A priest is struck by lightning at Tito's funeral and his brother's wife leaves him. The house he buys for his mother also burns as he takes her there for the first time (when she sprains an ankle on the curb getting out of his giant yellow Hummer). At the scene, Hurley also is mistaken for a drug kingpin and falsely arrested.

In every instance, Hurley actually profits — the house was over-insured, the cops paid a settlement, etc., but Hurley becomes suspicious of the money. He's goes to find Lenny, hoping to learn the origin of the numbers, but he's aghast that Hurley used them to play the lottery and insists he "must get away from those numbers or it won't stop." Eventually, he winds up in Australia trying to find Sam Toomey in Kalgoorlie, an old Navy buddy of Lenny's. The two heard the numbers over and over and over as they monitored communications at a military listening post in the Pacific. Like Hurley, Sam won money with numbers, but insisted it was cursed money when bad things — a wreck the cost his wife her leg — started happening.

Upon finding the numbers ... 4-8-15-16-23-42 ... scrawled on some of Rousseau's maps, which Sayid stole weeks earlier, Hurley becomes obsessed with finding her in the hope she can explain the numbers' meaning or at least ease his mind. Hurley, who owns the box company Locke works at and was on a TV in the background the first time Jin confronted the environmental minister in the prior episode, sets out to find Rousseau on his own, but Jack, Sayid and Charlie follow shortly after.

Hurley hates the thought that he's crazy for thinking the numbers are cursed. When Jack and Sayid are separated from Hurley and Charlie at a suspension bridge, he presses on trying to locate Rousseau. In the ensuing melee, Hurley comes face to face with Rousseau, who also believes the numbers are cursed much to Hurley's relief. It was that voice repeating those numbers that prompted her ship to change course and run aground, but she has since changed the message. It's now the message the survivors originally discovered in French.

In yet another cute twist, Rousseau gives Hurley a battery, which will be used to power a radio on the raft that could be used to call for help. It's ironic because the final scene of the previous episode shows the batteries in Hurley's CD player dying as he sits on the beach listening to music. Not so cute is the fact Hurley believes he caused the plane crash and the numbers, we discover at the end of the episode, are stamped on the outside of Locke's hatch.

Elsewhere, Locke asks for Claire's assistance in a woodworking project and helps her begin to piece together her past as he assembles a cradle for her unborn baby. It's her birthday, but it's not a happy one because she worries the baby will know she wanted to give it up for adoption. Locke assures her it will also know it wants to take care of it now.

QUOTABLE

"There's no curse. Bad things happen. You make your own luck, Mr. Reyes. Don't blame it on the damn numbers." — Martha Toomey, when Hurley comes to her claiming he's been cursed by the numbers 4-8-15-16-23-42