STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

I was a little bored by this episode -- it was a little touchy-feely for me, though Rose's husband was really sweet. And I am disappointed that Jin's speaking English was just a dream.

And, random thing that's bugging me: Did you guys notice when Hurley's mom picked up the phone, she said ?Hola? Nobody here says Hola when they answer the phone...they say !Bueno! Is it a regional thing or did the writers mess up? Sorry, I know it has nothing to do with the intrigue of the show, but it bugged me.

Anyway -- Nylabelle!!! Your thoughts? Is that another hatch they were in? What happened to the rest of the survivors? Next week looks good!

See, I like it & thought it was good, but I find that every week I'm saying what halleybird said "next week looks so good" - but it's really just ok.

I thought the Rose husband thing was so sweet & shpgqueenet - I didn't see that coming either. I kept saying that they were showing her because her husband was going to show up - when he did, my husband said "she could have mentioned that he was white" - I said "she doesn't have to mention that!!!" - Him "she probably ought to if she wants people on the look out for him, hello!!" which i thought was funny & also true.....

Yeah, I'm irritated with the whole Ana Lucia thing - I can't believe those men all just caved & let her take over. While I'm all about strong women characters, I mean really, that's just kinda much!

I also want to know what happened to the rest of them & I must admit I'm scared for the 40 or so left if they all hook up. Is that another of the 6 sites for the experiment they are in?

Nyla, please please help us....

The only comment I have:  how did the gas station guy know that Hurley had the winning ticket??  Does he memorize everyone's numbers when they buy one?  Was he the only one who bought a ticket?

sigh, i thought it was a pretty boring episode, but kind of a nice change from the intensity of the past three eps. a few things i noticed or have questions about...

- definitely the tail survivors are in another hatch. the dharma logo was inside but it wasn't the same as the one in the swan hatch where the other survivors are.

- hurley's dream at the start - did everyone see walt as the "missing child" on the milk carton he was drinking from? who was the guy in the chicken suit? i need to go back and watch the ep again, but could it have been hurley's boss at the chicken restaurant from the flashback?

- question: why the hell aren't the tail survivors interested in going to join the rest of the survivors on the beach? seemed like when michael and jin went back to the pit to get sawyer out and michael said "it's ok, they believe we are also from the plane" that he was a bit too calm or like he knew something. i just don't understand why they wouldn't unite the two groups -- if you were a plane crash survivor on an island and you found out there were a bunch of other survivors somehow managing to live comfortably (i mean almost *all* of them are still alive -- wtf happened to the other 18 or so people from the tail section?), wouldn't you be excited and want to join them? i'm anxiously awaiting what happens when (i guess, if) ana lucia ever gets to see jack, since they had that exchange in the airport bar prior to take-off.

- question: how did the convenience store/gas station guy know that hurley was the winner of the lotto? i mean, i can understand that he's a pretty unique looking guy and you might remember him buying a ticket, but how would you remember his exact number selection? i guess maybe he was the only person who bought a ticket there. i realize this isn't really important for the flashback, but it bugged me a bit since they seem to be slipping a bit in their accuracy this season -- as a note, halleybird, i thought the same thing when hurley's mom said "hola" when she answered the phone.

- the chernobyl reference has got to be a huge red herring. i imagine lots of people will assume that some sort of nuclear reaction/explosion might have been the "incident" that was referred to on the training video, but that just seems totally off base. how would there be the vegetation and life that there is on the island. although i guess that could explain this mysterious "sickness."

- wtf happened to desmond? is he just running through the woods?

- question: who was on shift pushing the button at the end? it seemed like everyone was accounted for on the beach during the touching food segment, but i couldn't help but wonder who was on button duty... especially since elsewhere in the episode they made such a point of kind of keeping the hatch goings-on secretive from the rest of the people

- i was happy to see that bernard is indeed still alive, just as rose suspected - but we all knew that was coming, right?

i guess overall i am enjoying the season so far, but it feels a bit more haphazard and sloppier than last season.

i thought last night's episode was a bit boring, too.

i don't think these folks (ana lucia & co) are rousseau's others.  there are more people on that island.

jj - i just assumed that the gas station knew because hurley probably played the same numbers every week, so the clerk knew who it was.  i know stores are notified when they've sold the winning ticket.

lorelei - yes, desmond pretty much just ran off into the woods. 

i hurley.

eta:  i didn't notice walt on the milk carton.  and i forgot to comment on rose's husband - i had a feeling he'd be white.  not sure why, but when they first brought mike, sawyer & jin into the hatch and they showed bernard (i think that's his name, right?) talking to one of the folks who had brought them in, it clicked in my head that that was her husband.  i'd love to know how it is she's so sure he's alive and well, too.

-- Edited by asf at 13:09, 2005-10-13

ok, just watched w/ my coworkers at lunch & one girl claims that hurley's chicken shack boss is the same actor who played locke's boss from the box company.  she thinks that we are not supposed to notice it's the same actor since he had longer hair & a beard in locke's FB, but i'm thinking, can't LOST afford to pay two different actors?  if it's the same guy that's gotta mean something!  besides, it's quite possible it is the same guy since hurley probably gave him a job when he purchased the box company.  and btw, where's NylaBelle???

ETA:  okay, my boss looked it up and here ya go...

couldn't resist and looked it up:  actor's name is billy ray gallion and he's listed as "randy" in both locke's episode and last night's.
 
 
from epguides.com
 
 
 
4. Walkabout  (edit)

First aired: 10/13/2004
Writer: David Fury
Director: Jack Bender
Guest star: Meilinda Soerjoko (Chrissy), John Simon Jones (Travel Agent), Billy Ray Gallion (Randy), Stephen J. Rafferty (Warren)

Survivors are jolted awake in the middle of the night when wild island beasts (which are wild boars) invade the beach encampment. Kate and Michael join the mysterious Locke on a hunt for food -- and a shocking secret about Locke is revealed. On the hunt for food someone is injured. Meanwhile, some survivors are horrified by Jack's plan for the dead bodies still scattered among the wreckage -- he wants to burn them. Jack sees someone that's not there, and we find out that one of the survivors was not able to walk but now he can.

 
 
29. Everybody Hates Hugo  (edit)


First aired: 10/12/2005
Writer: Adam Horowitz, Edward Kitsis
Director: Alan Taylor
Guest star: Raj K. Bose (Pakistani shop clerk), DJ Qualls (Johnny), Billy Ray Gallion (Randy), Marguerite Moreau (Starla), Kimberley Joseph (Flight Attendant), Lillian Hurst (Carmen), Sam Anderson (Bernard)

Hurley struggles with an assigned task inside the hatch as he flashbacks to disturbing memories in his life before the crash. Meanwhile, Sawyer, Michael and Jin learn the identities of their captors on the island. Claire uncovers a startling piece of information about the fate of the raft.

-- Edited by crystal at 17:55, 2005-10-13

Tati wrote:

---

BargainQueen wrote:  I've noticed my Mexican relatives answer the phone "Bueno?", and my Central American (Guatemala, Nicaragua) relatives answer the phone "Hola?".  I think it is a regional thing. yup, we say "Hola"

---

interesting. I guess it is regional. Thanks!

Oh, and I was wondering about Desmond, too. Where the heck is he? I find him very skeevy.

i agree, this episode was on the boring side, and hurley is one of my favorite characters. i also thought it was a little weak how rose was only really included in two episodes last season, so when she popped up in this one and started talking about her husband again it was like "okay, here comes the reunion..." i was, however, very happy to see hurley successfully ask a girl out.

Here's the TV Watch update on this episode from Entertainment Weekly's website:



On ''Lost,'' Hurley has to choose what to do with the provisions in the Hatch; meanwhile, the raft survivors learn the identity of their captors by Scott Brown



MEAL TICKET Hurley became the peanut-butter dealer
Greetings, Los Losties. New guy here. Whitney filled in last week, now it's all me. Next week, who knows? Maybe you'll get Stephen King. No, you won't get Stephen King. Imagine EW as the Titanic: King is up on the promenade deck, near the three functioning lifeboats (which he doesn't need, because he's got his own personal pontoon made of woven $1,000,000 bills). You and me? We're down in steerage, son. So pull up a crate, and let's play that perky Irish jig known as ''The Gut-Level, Impromptu Lost React.''

I'll begin with a potentially controversial statement: I dig these Hurley episodes. Perhaps I'm influenced by my co-watcher, Liz, who adored huggy Hugo the first time she laid eyes on him. (Meet Liz, by the way: She'll be our copilot. She's cool — fried us up some excellent catfish filets tonight.) But durnit, I like Hugo Reyes, our chicken-stealing, number-hating Pagliaccio. And not because he's ''the heart of the show.''

Admittedly, Hurley's eps are not the best of the best. His origin story last season was an attempt to shift the show's increasingly somber mode into some sort of Pynchonian slapstick, and it wasn't 100 percent successful. And yes, this latest installment revived one of the least compelling Lost fallbacks, namely, the climactic I'm Okay You're Okay music video.

But Hurley is a great character, and for reasons beyond the obvious. Making the jester the curse bearer is a stroke of genius, as far as I'm concerned — one more way this show reinvents the television ensemble and fends off ordinariness. And as for the goofier flourishes — the wacky mechanics of the supposed ''curse,'' the digs about his persistent girth — Jorge Garcia earns them, baby. He takes a conceptually solid but potentially pat retroactive-continuity twist (i.e., that Hurley held off on collecting his lottery winnings because he wasn't really sure he wanted his life changed) and sells it as a quiet slacker tragedy (with some help from DJ Qualls, as his ride-along pal).

This is also one of those social-contract episodes (Have and Have Not, Distribution of Resources, Sword of Damocles stuff). Hurley is in charge of the Dharma larder, and Jack has charged him with inventorying — and withholding — all the goodies Desmond's been subsisting on between workouts in his Now Totally Disclosed Location. Naturally, some people aren't happy with that, and by ''some people,'' I mean Charlie, and by Charlie, I mean a character we're all getting increasingly impatient with: Baby daddy or no baby daddy, he's sounding more and more like a simple punk. Give me peanut butter! Tell me the truth! Pipe down, Li'l Liam Gallagher. Break out some of that Holy Virgin, why don't you? We all know it's coming.

But back to the social contract. As soon as the food dilemma came up, Liz declared, ''Oh, he should just give everyone a share and let them do what they want with it.'' Sounds like a cozy little bit of communism, right? Wrong!

''Liz,'' I said, ''you realize this makes you a conservative.'' Liz does not consider herself a conservative, and I thought I saw her move her hand threateningly towards her fork. I quickly clarified: We're talking the platonic ideal of a fiscal conservative, not the Tom DeLay reality. We're talking someone who believes in returning a surplus to ''the people,'' to spend as they wish. This gives everyone the opportunity to choose whether to be a pennywise ant or a profligate grasshopper. But this kills the collective's long-term social security — what if times get tough? Agriculture fails? (Sun's plants don't look capable of supporting the whole community just yet.) Boar futures dwindle? The bamboo housing bubble bursts? What then? Whoops! Somebody ate all the Apollo bars, and we're screwed!

Liz sulked a bit and said, ''I just think it'd be nice if everybody got a treat.''

''Well,'' I replied, ''that sounds very liberal.''

To which Liz replied, ''Give me a cookie.''

My point exactly.

Anyway, dense stuff, eh? And it does slow things down a bit. (Just in time, too — with all the Dharma developments, we may actually be in danger of learning too much about the mechanics of this island, which we're now being led to believe is a big psych experiment gone awry.) This doesn't mean the barreling mythology train has come to a halt, though we have been cut back to a strict diet of crumbs: We learned that the Supposed Others are the Actual Tail People, breakaways from the back end of Oceanic 815. We learned that Rose's husband, Bernard, is not only alive but ubiquitous character actor Sam Anderson. We had it confirmed that there are multiple Dharma stations on the island (though none so plush as the Swan).

And then there are the Easter eggs. The tail section had 23 survivors (jot that down, numberheads). Rose hums every song she hears — and some she doesn't. Did she get inside Hurley's head to hear Slim Smith's 1973 reggae ditty ''My Conversation''? Do these psychic tendencies explain her conviction that her husband is alive? Speaking of psychic visions: That's Walt's face on the side of the milk carton in Hurley's dream. Now, Hurley doesn't know that Walt is missing; he has no idea what happened to the raft. Does his subconscious know something he doesn't? And what's Sun doing without her wedding ring on? (Of course, she's got it back on in the next cut — kind of a glaring continuity error for a show that prides itself on the details.)

And then there's the matter of Randy. Y'all remember Randy, right? Locke's jackass coworker at the box company? Well, that's Randy running Mr. Cluck. Yup. Same dude, same character name, same actor (Billy Ray Gallion). Liz went back through her homemade VHS — VHS! — tapes of season 1, and she confirms it: same dude, same name, different hair. Now we know Mr. Cluck was hit by a meteorite after Hurley collected his winnings. And we know Hurley came to acquire a box company with said winnings. Connection? Of course there is, dummkopf! It's Lost!

What do you think? How do Hurley's backstories stack up against the others? Did they make the right decision about the food? And did this episode give enough clues?