Top 5 Worst Flashback Stories

Kate Robs Bank For Model Plane - Whatever The Case May Be

It gets worse with hindsight, this flashback story. Kate becomes the lover of a man purely to use him to stage an armed robbery to obtain a model aeroplane locked in a safety deposit box. She went through all that for THAT. You think to yourself that this model aeroplane must have one hell of a story attached to it to justify the lengths Kate has gone to. I mean, it's not as if Kate's an idiot, right?

RIGHT!?

Eventually we learn the model aeroplane is some old toy of Kate's childhood sweetheart (Tom Brennan, a family man she met back up with and RUINED HIS LIFE) and serves as a reminder that she killed him. . . But come on! To go sleeping with another man, convincing him to take part in ARMED ROBBERY? To shoot this man and his friends (albeit not fatally) just so she could get her hands on this aeroplane that holds nothing more than sentimental value? To risk being captured when she was on the run? Give over. I'm not having that. She didn't need a model plane to remind herself of Tom (the fact that the plane was the last thing she saw when she abandoned the car with the dead, bullet-ridden Tom beside her ought to have been enough to make her never want to see the thing again). If Tom meant a lot to her she could remember him the old-fashioned way: IN HER HEAD.

Michael’s Custody Battle - Adrift

This is what we knew about Michael and his son Walt prior to this flashback story. Shortly after Walt's birth, Susan (the mother) and Michael (the father) split up and Susan went to Amsterdam with Walt. She met a new man, Brian Porter, and further down the line they ended up in Australia. In all this time, Michael had never seen Walt, had never spoken to him on the phone (which is BIZARRE) and had never had any of the letters he sent replied to (because Walt never got to see them due to Susan's interception). It was only until Susan died that Walt was given over to Michael, and on their return to America from Australia they boarded Oceanic 815 and ended up on the Island.

That's what we knew about Michael and Walt's pre-Island life at the end of the first series.

After this second episode of the second series, this is what new things we learned about Michael and Walt: Michael tried to get custody of Walt only, when Susan told him he stood a good chance of getting custody but didn't have the ability to look after him as well as she could, he gave up the battle and let Walt go.

That's it.

Hurley Wins The Lottery - Everybody Hates Hugo

Let's get something straight: Hurley being a lottery winner is a good story. Hurley winning the lottery using the 4 8 15 16 23 42 numbers is a great story. Hurley having pots of money and yet lots of bad luck is a neat story. But the story of the time between Hurley winning the lottery and it becoming common knowledge is a big old pile of crap.

Hurley won the lottery and then next day quit his job when his boss gave him some grief. All the time keeping his win a secret he spends the day with his friend Johnny, asks out a girl he fancies (she accepts) and hopes his friendship won't change. He fears that the lottery win will change everything. He's probably right, but that's no reason to be such a dunce about it. It would have been better to tell Johnny, surely, about his lottery concerns and THEN they could talk about how they wouldn't let it affect them. Better yet, if he was feeling so bad about it all, Hurley could have just give Johnny a million dollars. Problem solved.

Instead Johnny finds out about it by accident and then - for some inexplicable reason - gives Hurley a look like he'd just shit in his mother's mouth. I don't know about you, but if I found out my best friend had won the lottery my instant reaction would not be to GLARE AT THEM WITH HATEFUL DISAPPOINTMENT. Anyway, the 'good' friendship never recovered and Hurley was all miserable about it. . . Except we had already seen Hurley giving a press conference after his lottery win with his family around him, where he was talking about how happy he was, and how he was going to do good with the money. . .

Where the hell was the miserable, angst-ridden, friendless Hurley then? Nowhere. So chronologically it doesn't fit. The tone of Hurley's mood throughout this episode felt shoehorned in to the plot on the Island about what to do with the food he had been put in charge of. Apparently, having learned his lesson of winning the lottery Hurley went and distributed the food.

Except HE DIDN'T. Because he went and fucking HID a load of the food for HIMSELF. Thus he had not really learned a thing about his apparently painful lottery win, further rendering this particular plotline even more redundant.

Bernard Meets Rose - S.O.S.

Why couldn't Bernard and Rose have been together for a long time prior to the crash of Oceanic 815? If this was supposed to convince me that their love for each other was strong because they fell in love and married quickly then it didn't. I find it more believable that a couple who have been together for years will have a depth of love beyond that granted by two people who have only recently met.

So I ask the question again: Why couldn't Bernard and Rose have been together for a long time? Because all that happens after they have met is they get married despite Rose having told Bernard she has cancer. He then sets out to cure her. She doesn't get cured, but lies to him. WHERE was it essential in that plotline for them to have only just met? Surely it would make more sense that a woman who had been with one man her whole life would lie to save him from the knowledge that they would soon be eternally parted. Surely it would make more sense that a man who had been with one woman his whole life would do everything he could, including going all around the world, to save her. The desperation for the pair of them would have been more acute that way.

And what really bugs me about this flashback story was that it cheapened the previously heartbreaking moment when they re-united after being separated on different sides of the Island. Before this shitty flashback, I liked to think that Rose and Bernard had rarely spent a day apart. Turns out, thanks to this meeting-when-digging-car-out-of-snow-bullshit, no such enduring love existed. That pissed me off. Seriously, WHY couldn't Bernard and Rose have just been together for a long time prior to the crash of Oceanic 815? Would it have KILLED the writers to come up with that?

Jack and Sayid - Stranger In A Strange Land/Enter 77

I’ve picked two flashbacks from season 3 on equal strengths of badness for the same reason of inappropriate stupidity. Namely:

What the fuck is Jack doing in a fucking beach hut in Thailand in a fucking stupid Hawaiian tee-shirt?

And what the fuck is Sayid doing working as a fucking waiter in the tourist hell of fucking city centre Paris?

Fucking hell FIRE!