Episode 4 - Everybody hates HugoThis was a Hurley centric episode and focused on the hours after Hurley won the lottery. The show starts with Hurley standing in the storeroom with all the food – looking like erm..excuse the pun, but looking like he’s won the lottery. He proceeds to stuff himself with everything in sight, including a hot meal of steak and mash, and ice cream. He’s suddenly interrupted by Jin, who’s speaking English.
“You speak English Dude” asks Hurley. No, Jin informs him, he (Hurley) is speaking Korean. He says to Hurley “Everything's going to change. Have a cluckity cluck-cluck day, Hugo.”
Anyway, like I stated earlier before I was rudely interrupted by the image of the man in the chicken suit, the flashback centers around the hours after Hurley won the lottery. He doesn’t mention it to anyone, not even his mother – who seems to always be on his case about loosing weight and bringing home a nice girl. Hurley was working at a fast food place – a dead end job with a dead end boss.
Hmm… if you are wondering why his dead beat manager looks familiar, it’s because I believe that this Randy is the same Randy who worked with Locke and gave him such a difficult time too. So Hurley quits his job and so does his mate Johnny. They hang around all day – looking at cd’s at a record store (note that they looked at “Driveshaft” in the “One hit Wonders” section), Hurley finally asking a girl on a date, stealing garden gnomes etc.
Hurley makes Johnny promise that things between them will always be like that…that nothing will change. Almost immediately, they pull over at garage where there is a news crew. Johnny goes off to investigate and tells Hurley that somebody’s won the lottery. The clerk recognizes Hurley as the winner and the reporters swarm around Hurley. Johnny is stunned and more than just a bit hurt, and despite his promise that nothing will change, we can see that everything’s now changed.
What I want to know is just how did that clerk recognize Hurley. I mean, there are millions of tickets with millions of variations of numbers sold…so how did he recognize Hurley??
A friend said to me the other day that he hates these flashbacks and hoped that they would just focus on the island itself, but I find the flashbacks so interesting. It’s an integral part of this show is as well, because we can see why these people are the way they are.
We would never have known why Hurley was acting so strange when assigned the task of stock-taking and rationing the food then. Hurley starts panicking when he is assigned this task, and goes off to the beach, where he is confronted by Charlie who wants to know what’s in the hatch. Hurley stonewalls him but then confides in Rose.
She accompanies him to the hatch and helps him with the task. Meanwhile Charlie follows Locke, probably hoping to be lead to the hatch. Locke naturally realizes that Charlie is following him, so Charlie asks him what the hatch contains. Locke tells him. Later, Charlie then asks Hurley for a bottle of peanut butter for Claire. But Hurley refuses. Charlie gets upset and tells him he’s changed and storms off.
As the episode progresses, Hurley becomes less and less certain of his ability to successfully complete the task. He tries to quit, but Locke refuses to let him do so. In desperation, Hurley decides to blow up the storage room with some of the unused dynamite brought back from the Black Rock. Rose intervenes and Hurley tells her that the food will change everything. It’s like a newfound wealth and everything will change and that everyone will hate him. Rose calms him down.
In another part of the hatch, Sayid and Jack attempt to excavate the sealed-off portion of the hatch. The wall seems impenetrable and the strong magnetic force seems to be contained behind the walls. Elsewhere, Claire finds the bottle of messages that the raft guys took with them. She confides in Shannon and the two of them take the bottle to Sun, saying that they would like her to decide what to do.
Meanwhile, Hurley tells Jack what he plans to do with the food, and much to his surprise, Jack agrees. So Hurley hands out the food to people randomly, giving Charlie a bottle of peanut butter for Claire. It was quite a teary scene to see how happily they were all sharing their food and just for once actually enjoying something. But while everyone was enjoying the moment, Sun buried the bottle on the beach.
Awww. Didn’t that episode just warm the cockles of your heart? I actually got email from a friend of mine this morning who asked if I got all teary eyed. Hehe. How well do they know little soppy me!
I really feared for Hurley’s sanity here. Charlie and Hurley have a friendship, one that’s been building slowly (even though Charlie refuses to believe that Hurley is worth 155 million dollars). While I absolutely adore Charlie, he was really harsh with Hurley. But I guess it’s understandable. We’ve all tried to cadge something off our friends when they are in a position to be cadged off. Their friendship is not as strong as Hurley’s and Johnny’s was, but it’s a friendship none-the-less, and it was what was needed for Hurley’s paranoia to reach a new level. I’m glad to see that they reconciled tho, judging from the monster sized hug Charlie gave him.
I must add here too, I loved that the peanut butter thing materialized. For all Charlie’s faults, he’s just the sweetest thing – his heart is in the right place. I know I’m in a minority here, but really, I don’t care. I loved it! I breathed a sigh of relief, however, when Hurley seemed his usual self. He’s a very likable character, and one that seems to be popular on the beach.
Was I the only one who thought that Claire looked very rounded? In other words, a bit chubbier than last season? Sun, I think, did the right thing by burying the bottle. Sayid said, in the pilot episode that hope is a very dangerous thing to loose. While she keeps no hope for herself, she keeps the others hopes alive. Very admirable and brave.
On the other end of the island, the rafties are still in their pit. Jin and Michael are then taken out of the pit, eventually Sawyer is lifted out as well. But being the hotheaded guy that he is, he speaks out and is beaten up a bit by Ana-Lucia. Michael tells him that they believe that the rafties where on the plane.
They hike through the jungle, and they learn that there were 23 survivors from the tail section of the plane. They arrive at what is most definitely one of the Dharma Institute facilities. The logo is visible on the walls. They see that there are only a handful of survivors left…including Ana-Lucia and Ecko (I think his name is), there are just about 5 or 6 left. So, where are the others? Dead? Lost? In a nice twist to end though, Rose’s husband Bernard is one of those survivors.
I’m not sure I like Ana-Lucia very much. She’s very much the leader of the group. But we should ask ourselves just what have these people faced that she is so very strong willed and determined to keep them alive. She seemed genuinely concerned when they got back and most of the tail enders were not there. Just what has happened to these people?