Where can I place a wager down that the moment Jack's patient/wife regains feeling in her lower extremities, John Locke loses his?
I'd bet a case on it.
I don't think so. When lock was in Australia he says hs'e lived that way for "4 damn years".
And your point is?
The Jack/Carol Vessey scenes seem to be have taken place longer than 4 years ago.
Based on what? How old do you think he is on the island?
Not sure how long he's been on the island, but I think the hospital scenes were older than 4 years back. Jack's hair looked awfully 80's to me, but that would make it 25 years ago, which is ludicrous. I still say that's either 8, 15, or 16 years ago to coincide with the numbers. 4 seems too short.
Assuming a doctor doesn't graduate until he's 25 or so, Jack wouldn't have become a doctor until then. And even then it would probably take him a while to be as prominently placed as he seemed to be. I say he was at least 30 in those flashbacks. He doesn't look much older than 40 now. So I don't think it was any longer than 8 years ago. Probably much less.
Doctors have to go to school forever to be a spinal surgeon when you count interning and residency (ie, only allowed to assist others and can't be the primary surgeon). A cracker jack whiz kid surgeon MIGHT get a shot at 34 at the earliest if he started school right at 18 and never let up and was better than almost all other surgeons. I looked it up
HERE, a neurosurgeon (neck and spine) would need 6 years of experience MINIMUM after med school.
So you are looking at . . .
4 years under grad
4 years med school
2 years of specialty med school
6 years residency/training
That's 16 years, making Jack a minimum of 34. And that assumes that Sarah was his first case, and if she was as bad as she said NO WAY do they let him do the surgery as a rookie.
If we want to call BS on the show for trying to fudge reality to make him a surgeon at 25, that's another debate on its own, but a "REAL" and experienced spinal surgeon would have to be around 40.
The issue that I have is that if Desmond is the guy in the stadium (which we assume he is and not a clone/twin/double/brother/etc.), then Desmond would have had to get from the stadium to the island, and as I mentioned earlier there's no way he got to the island 16 years ago as Jack would have to be almost 50 (minimum 34 + 16).
If we go backwards, how old do we think Jack is on the island? To determine when the Sarah accident was, we need to allocate time for him to have operated on her, have her recover, have them date, have them get married, and have them not be married any longer. That has to be several years, IMO.
As for Desmond, for those that have the DVD and just watched the first season, by any chance does anyone remember him being in the first season anywhere--even in the background? I suspect that he will start appearing in other scenes from other flashbacks involving other characters, and I'm curious if they already showed him last year and we missed it or did not pick up on it.