'Numbers' was the last of the four episodes of Lost written by David Fury. While 'Special' isn't all that great, 'Walkabout', 'Solitary', and 'Numbers' are all character-defining masterpieces. As someone who still considers Season 1 to be the show's best, I think subsequent seasons could have benefited from Fury's…

John Terry was also on season 2 of 24, although he had a most unfortunate goatee.

Both of these episodes have prominent examples of the Locke-as-"island life coach" plot thread that permeates the first season. Again and again we see him trying to help the other characters self-actualize, with Jack ('White Rabbit'), Charlie ('The Moth'), and then Boone, Michael, and Walt in these two episodes.

That image of Susan Lloyd and Brian is a funny choice: there's a crew member visible on the extreme right. Maybe Walt has the power to cause production goofs?

I wasn't a huge fan of Troy but I would support Sean Bean to reprise his role as Odysseus. Bean, Eric Bana, and Peter O'Toole were the only ones in that film to really nail their characters, in my opinion.

Now that I think about it, there's a hilarious parallel between the tail section survivors getting quickly killed off and the Stamford branch employees all quitting/getting fired in S3 of The Office. In each case the sole long-term survivor is a Bernard.

Giacchino is great, and you didn't even mention my two favorite scores of his (The Incredibles and Ratatouille).

Agreed, the Aaron reveal is cool. I just think the courtroom stuff was horribly executed. They needed to resolve Kate's legal issues somehow, but I would have preferred some throwaway dialogue to "Lost-does-legal-drama."

Regarding The Economist, I feel it particularly suffers on repeat viewings, when you know that none of this corporate espionage ever leads anywhere. The same could be said of a number of episodes, but this one sticks out to me.

LOST is one of my favorite shows ever, but it definitely had a few clunkers. In order of air, here are the 15 "turd-borderers" (in my opinion):

Another almost real-time movie: 12 Angry Men. As I recall there is just one time jump following Henry Fonda's conversation with Juror #6 in the bathroom.

One little thing always bothered me about "Branch Closing." Jan literally spends her entire day driving back-and-forth between Scranton and Stamford. IIRC she makes two separate visits to both places. Hopefully she can expense her gas/tolls.

As a DC resident I'm nitpicking this way too much, but they didn't actually film this scene in the Metro. It looks like they dressed up a Baltimore subway station with signs naming it "Cathedral Heights", which is the name of a DC neighborhood but not the name of a Metro stop. I thought for a second that it was…

Relevant: he owns the film rights to Infinite Jest.

Luisa Miller's Crossing
Otello, Where Art Thou?
Rienzi Arizona

Amadeus is the movie I've spent the most time and effort recommending. Many folks seem to suspect that I'm trying to feed them a boring history/music appreciation lesson (and with so many mediocre period pieces in existence this suspicion is admittedly justifiable).

To expand on your point about the titular opera, the aria playing throughout the scene is "Voi che sapete che cosa e amor". It hits a little more thematically 'on the nose' than most diegetic music in Mad Men. Here's an English translation: