Season 2 Investigations

In "Live Together, Die Alone", we learn that Flight 815 crashed on September 22nd, 2004 (as has been long speculated). Desmond looks over the computer printout from the PEARL STATION, and realizes the day he was late pressing the button and caused a SYSTEM FAILURE, is the same day the plane crashed.

It seems, oddly enough, the formatting of the print log has changed since we last saw it. When Desmond looks at the print out, he sees:

922044:16 which seems to indicate 9-22-04 4:16

However, when we first saw the print log, it contained numbers like:
41602068:29 which doesn't fit the same formatting (you can't easily turn this into a date). The closest would be 41 6-02-06 8:29, but, in this case, what is the 41 and why is the year 2006? This is most likely a continuity or prop error.

In "Live Together, Die Alone", Desmond comes up short on cash in a cafe in the states. A helpful customer loans Desmond the money - it turns out to be Libby. Desmond jokingly asks if Libby has another 42,000 he can borrow - which gets Libby's attention. The two sit together, and Desmond tells Libby how he plans to enter a sailboat race to win his true love back from her father. The only problem is, he doesn't have a boat. Libby tells Desmond that her husband died about a month ago, and that she has his boat, which is named Elizabeth after her. Libby tells Desmond he has to take the boat, that is what her husband would want. Desmond accepts, and makes a promise to win the race for love.

In "Live Together, Die Alone", we finally meet Desmond's hatch-mate, Kelvin. It turns out, Kelvin Inman is the man we previously know as Joe Inman from Sayid's past. Joe Inman was the CIA operative that trained Sayid in torturin in the Gulf War. It turns out, Joe Inman joined the Dharma Initiatve some time after the Gulf War, and was assigned to the Swan Station with someone named Radzinsky. Radzinsky eventually killed himself, leaving Inman alone in the Swan Station until Desmond washed up on the island. Inman was planning on fixing up Desmond's boat and leaving Desmond to push the button by himself, but Desmond found out about his plan. Desmond confronted Inman, accidentally killing him.

Many people have written that perhaps Jack is the Portuguese-speaking man at the end of "Live Together, Die Alone" who mans the arctic station. This was refuted by both producer Jack Bender in an interview, and also writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse in the official podcast. The former said that the language of Portuguese was chosen somewhat arbitrarily because both actors they found happened to know it; originally, Russian was the language they were considering. Given this, any Brazilian dialect may be insignificant to the storyline.

In "Live Together, Die Alone", Jack, Micheal, Sawyer, Kate and Hurley come across a giant bird that swoops down at them. As it flies by, it lets out it's "HURLEY" screech. This is similar to the Hurley Bird seen in the first season of LOST when Jack and company are on their way to blow open the hatch. In this second appearance, Hurley asks "Did that bird just say my name?" after it flies by.

Note: In the official podcast, Damon and Carlton said they brought back the Hurley bird at popular request, as an inside joke for Lost fans.

In "Live Together, Die Alone", Sayid borrows Desmond's boat and sails with Jin and Sun to the north side of the island. Along the way, the come across a strange finding. They spot a statue of a giant foot with four toes on the shore. The statue is broken, and all that remains is a foot. The statue is reminiscent of the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The statue also seems familiar to the statue described in this summary of "Headlong Hall" by Thomas Love Peacock:

[Quote]
"The place is quite a wilderness," said Squire Headlong: "for, during the latter part of my father's life, while I was finishing my education, he troubled himself about nothing but the cellar, and suffered everything else to go to rack and ruin. A mere wilderness, as you see, even now in December; but in summer a complete nursery of briers, a forest of thistles, a plantation of nettles, without any livestock but goats, that have eaten up all the bark of the trees. Here you see is the pedestal of a statue, with only half a leg and four toes remaining: there were many here once. When I was a boy, I used to sit every day on the shoulders of Hercules: what became of him I have never been able to ascertain. Neptune has been Iying these seven years in the dust-hole; Atlas had his head knocked off to fit him for propping a shed; and only the day before yesterday we fished Bacchus out of the horse-pond."

Here is an excerpt from the story in which the statue is mentioned, you can read the story here.

In the final moments of "Live Together, Die Alone", we learn there are a couple of guys in some sort of monitoring station in very cold environment. A blinking light on a computer interrupts their chess game. The screen indicates that an electromagnetic anomaly has been detected. They immediately look up the reference code, and call Penny Widmore. They tell her that they've found it. It appears that Penny is perhaps looking for Desmond and the island. Though, we have to wait until next season to find out what exactly is going on.

monitor, the number is 7418880 (which is the product of 4*8*15*16*23*42).