I was just bothered about the whole continuity thing, and whether the writers make up Oliver's time away for 5 years as they go along, or if everything has been laid out already.

For instance, no way had I expected to learn for the first time that he hadn't spent all of his time on Lian yu, and we didn't seem to get any recognition that Oliver had seen Tommy in Hong Kong. (These are just a couple of examples)

So have the writers said anything about this?