they're dead. When I first saw these two characters introduced into the show I thought "Great. Two more mouths to feed." There are enough characters on this show that I care about. Adding more would just use up valuable time and character development would start to get spread a little thin. Plus, I heard that the writers of the show promised more sex and romance in this season and I thought maybe Paolo and Nikki were inserted primarily as eye candy.
I liked this episode, because it uses a lot of good murder mystery themes. The murder is discovered at the beginning, the clues slowly unravel, suspects are interviewed, and everything merges at the end. The way Lost does flashbacks was a great way to apply time in this episode, constantly switching between the past and the present, gradually leading up to the point in time that you've already been shown at the start of the episode. It's all very Hitchcockian. There's a MacGuffin: the bag of diamonds. The plot device of paralysis being mistaken for death has been used by Hitchcock (perhaps he was even the original author). There's an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that Hitchcock directed himself, though I don't remember the name of it. A guy gets in a bad car accident and is completely paralyzed (just like from the spiders). The whole episode is narrated only by his thoughts. Everyone thinks he's dead and he eventually winds up in a morgue. At the end he is being wheeled away on a cart and he starts blinking to show he isn't dead. His blinking is discovered by the mortician and he's saved and begins to cry. OK, so I guess it's not exactly the same ^_^
I liked this episode, because it uses a lot of good murder mystery themes. The murder is discovered at the beginning, the clues slowly unravel, suspects are interviewed, and everything merges at the end. The way Lost does flashbacks was a great way to apply time in this episode, constantly switching between the past and the present, gradually leading up to the point in time that you've already been shown at the start of the episode. It's all very Hitchcockian. There's a MacGuffin: the bag of diamonds. The plot device of paralysis being mistaken for death has been used by Hitchcock (perhaps he was even the original author). There's an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that Hitchcock directed himself, though I don't remember the name of it. A guy gets in a bad car accident and is completely paralyzed (just like from the spiders). The whole episode is narrated only by his thoughts. Everyone thinks he's dead and he eventually winds up in a morgue. At the end he is being wheeled away on a cart and he starts blinking to show he isn't dead. His blinking is discovered by the mortician and he's saved and begins to cry. OK, so I guess it's not exactly the same ^_^