VHS NOTES: Ads for Avatar coming out on Earth
Day of 2010 on DVD, promotions for Iron Man 2 and the reboot of Nightmare
on Elm Street, which for all intents and purposes killed the franchise.
There’s also more than a fair share of previews for ABC’s Comedy night
featuring Modern Family (soon to win the first of its five consecutive
Emmys for Best Comedy) and such lesser gems as Cougar Town and The
Middle. We also see previews for V, Flashforward and the new series Happy
Town which didn’t last beyond its first few weeks.
It’s fitting in more ways than one
that the last flash-sideways episode focused on a single character is
Hurley-centric. Hurley has been the most beloved character on Lost almost
since the start and that shouldn’t come as a shock because even before we knew
who he was, we’d seen his type before.,
Particularly during the first
decade of the 21st century some of the greatest series of all time
had characters that were critical to their stories who spent a good part of
their run as audience surrogates. Much of the time they were comic relief and
they also frequently never valued who important they were to the dynamic of the
group they were part of. J.J. Abrams’s himself had made one of the most
important characters of Alias Marshall, Sydney Bristow’s tech wizard who
was so much of a fanboy he even loved to describe his incredible gadgets that
often did more to save the world that even Sydney herself. During Buffy The
Vampire Slayer’s run, Xander Harris made very clear from the start how
little he offered the Scoobies, but with each successive season it was very
clear that Buffy couldn’t have saved the world without him at her side. And
while the body count as CTU was horrible day in and day out, the writers never
even considered killing of Chloe O’Brian as they knew her brusqueness and
incredible tech savviness were going to get Jack Bauer through each day.
Similarly if you ask which death on 24 fans consider the most shocking,
it would be not David Palmer or Michelle Dessler but rather Edgar Stiles, the
portly tech server who was just as capable as Chloe and when he died in front
of her – and the entire world – was absolutely heartbreaking.
Hurley has had that same role
since the moment Oceanic 815 but the writers of Lost were far subtler
about it with their plans going forward. It always seemed like he was there for
the voice of the audience and to make sure everybody was never worried too much
after a plane crash on an island that got stranger and stranger each day. His
job seemed to be the officer of morale and he was so good at it that as early
as Season 2 Rose made it very clear that he was immune from all of the
grievances that everybody on the island seemed to have with each other. Hurley
was the sidekick, the good friend, the loyal follower and might have been the
best leader all along because he never had any desire for it.
The biggest obstacle to this was
Hurley himself. We thought for much of Season 1 that he was as much the
ordinary guy off the island as on. But after Numbers we learned that life had
been just as cruel to him off the island as it would be on.
Hurley’s family life, compared to
most of the other characters we’ve met, has actually been relatively positive.
He had the obligatory parent trauma when his dad left his family as a child and
he spent the rest of his childhood eating his feelings. But his Ma has been the
one parent who has always loved her son without question and cares about him
unreservedly. If she puts pressure on him, it’s because she wants what’s best
for him, not because of anything else.
Then when Hurley was attending a
party, he stepped on a deck that collapsed and two people died. That the deck
was already had more people on it that could support him and did nothing to
stop him from blaming himself: he went into a fugue state and did nothing but
eat. His mother was worried about him and put him in Santa Rosa for his own
good and eventually he did make a breakthrough and got out of the institution.
But there has always been a fear underlying his experiences that he’s crazy and
that he’s never been able to let go of.
When he was in Santa Rosa he made
friends with Leonard, a man who said nothing but the same six numbers over and
over. On a whim, he played them in the lotto and he ended up winning the
jackpot. Yet from the start he believed that they were the beginning of his
problems, not the end. He actually hid them from his family initially, scared
things would change. They did – his best friend Johnny ran off with the girl
he’d been crushing on all his life.
Once he won the money he tried to
use it to bring good luck to his family, but from the moment he started
celebrating people started dying and the people he loved started getting hurt.
He came to the conclusion that it was the numbers that were cursed and that the
only answer was to find out what they meant. Before he got on a plane to
Sydney, his mother tried to convince him that the numbers were good luck
because his father had returned after seventeen years. But his father
disappointed him – even though he cared about him – and Hurley got on a plane
to Sydney hoping to find out the source of his bad fortune. Then the plane
crashed and he became convinced he was the cause, thoughts that only seemed
more evident when he learned that the numbers had brought Rousseau to the
island and that they were on the hatch as well as in it.
Hurley spent his time on the
island unable to keep anyone else’s secrets but holding on to his own. He was
more honest about his past than almost everyone else but Charlie thought he was
lying to him about his darkest secret and Jack thought the source was a sign of
his craziness. The one person he told most of his secrets to was Libby during
Season 2 and when she was killed by Michael – due in part to a mistake on his
part – he no doubt thought that was proof of his curse. The island seemed to
keep reminded him of his bad fortune, whether it was through the numbers or the
food he couldn’t escape and when at the end of Season 2, Michael was forced to
bring him to the Others for the sole purpose of turning around and telling
everybody not to come after his friends, Hurley must have felt truly unwanted.
Hurley spent much of Season 3
pretending he wasn’t afraid because all of the leaders were gone and he knew
morale was bad. He spent much of Season 3 still trying to help others, whether
it was by helping fix a Dharma van so that they could have fun, persuade Sawyer
that he could be a good leader, or helping Desmond trying to come to terms with
his gifts and Charlie with his fate. In the final half of Season 3, after
helping save the group at the beach from the Others he felt like a hero and
that the curse was finally behind him.
So at the start of Season 4
certain he was going to be free, he did a cannonball into the ocean – and the
moment he emerged Desmond came out, told him Charlie was dead and that the boat
that was going to rescue them was not what they said they were. Since that moment Hurley believed that he can
never truly beat the curse as there will always be some horrible consequences.
Hurley was at his lowest point
when he ran into Locke who offered a sympathetic ear. Since Hurley was always
willing to give people the benefit of the doubt he never thought for a moment
Locke was manipulating him to his own advantage. By Season 4 everyone had no
reason to trust Locke but Locke knew no one would doubt Hurley.
Hurley’s speech at the start of
Season 4 was more responsible for the fissure that season then anything else.
It was the first time people listened to him – and before they’d gone a hundred
feet, he and everyone who went with Locke knew they were following someone
dangerous and crazy. Hurley had the most doubts about him from the start and
while he stayed at the Barracks, he was clearly scared of Locke. He carried the
deaths of everyone the mercenaries killed far more heavily then the other
survivors and it didn’t help there was nearly a gunfight over whether Hurley
was going with Locke.
Hurley carried that, Sawyer
jumping off the helicopter, the freighter blowing up and the decision that Jack
made that they had to lie all the way back to civilization. He continued to
be a bridge, coming to see Sun when Ji
Yeon was born and holding the group together. And then he started getting
visits from the dead.
It's clear now that the ghosts
Hurley saw were not incarnations of the smoke monster so what are they? There’s
a possibility that Hurley was special even before this – he’d been able to find
the cabin when not even Locke could, and while that wasn’t Jacob’s home, he’d
clearly lived there once. But Hurley saw this as a sign that this was insanity
and he went back to Santa Rosa. When Sayid came for him at the end of Season 4
he wanted no part of the manipulations of Ben or Widmore.
And then Jacob himself came to see
Hurley. Alone among all the survivors and really everything one else, Hurley is
the only person who ever talked with Jacob and received instruction from him.
Jacob chose to visit him personally and told him the one thing he needed to
hear: he wasn’t crazy. Jacob was the first person since the crash who ever
considered the strange things happening to him as not a sign of insanity. That was enough to get him on Ajira 316.
Jorge Garcia never got the credit
due for his incredible work on Lost, perhaps for the same reason that
neither Nicholas Brendon did on Buffy or Mary Lynn Raskjub never got an
Emmy nomination for her work on 24. Critics tends to never appreciate
the ‘everyman’, the person who seems ordinary on a show where terrorist threats
are real or you’re going to high school on a hellmouth or in the case of
Hurley, the survivor of a plane crash on a mystical island.
But with each season as the
pressures of the death and trauma took its toll on him Garcia’s work only grew
more powerful, in large part because he was the everyman and the viewer wanted
good things for him more than anyone and he kept suffering more and more. Now
as the final season begins Hurley finds himself in the most unexpected place of
all: leader. And the reason is baffling to him: the thing that he was the most
sure was a sign of his insanity – the fact that he kept seeing the dead – is
now a vital asset in the war against the Man in Black.
In a sense the most important
conversation in this episode comes after Hurley has just blown up the Black
Rock. Everyone is incredibly scattered – Richard is understandably
disturbed – but the one who handles it the best is Miles. “A little warning
would have been nice,” he tells Hurley in a conversational tone.
“I did tell you to run,” Hurley
says just as conversationally.
When Miles asks why he did, Hurley
does what he almost always does: he tells the truth. Michael told him to do it.
He then tells Miles who Michael is that then tells him that the dead come by
and yell at him. (He said this to Miles a few days ago – or thirty years ago –
but a lot’s happened since then.)
Miles ignored the reality of this
and asks a practical question: “You always do what they tell you?” And Hurley
says: “Dead people are more reliable than alive ones.” And that sums up so much
of what Hurley is in any world. In the sideways world, it takes him very little
convincing to think that a delusional woman he’s just met might very well know
him and might actually like him. On the island he sees Michael – the only
person he’s ever met who he understandably holds a grudge against – who tells
him that he has to act because people are listening to him, and he doesn’t
hesitate before following through.
Hurley is like so many other fan
favorites because he has always been completely with guile. The running joke of
the first few seasons was that if you wanted to keep a secret, you didn’t tell
Hurley. He would either blurt out horrible truths at inopportune times or was
so awful at keeping secrets that he could be read at a moment’s notice by
anyone. (The only reason more people don’t know his complete backstory is
because they are all fundamentally incurious.) Everyone on the island is
secretive by nature and it became clear that while they all withheld
information from almost everyone else, Hurley was the only person who regularly
called them on it. He was so fundamentally honest he couldn’t understand why
anyone would keep secrets, particularly on a place where secrets could kill
you. We’ve seen this happen so many times on the series that it’s kind of
impressive its taken the survivors until the final season to learn that lesson
– but that may be why so few of them have survived. Hurley’s known the truth from
the start about being honest and open and it may only because of that people
are listening to him now.
But the dead have no reason to
lie. I think that’s the real reason that we can say the dead that we see in the
mainland are not manifestations of the Man In Black. All of the manifestations
we have seen make their appearances to manipulate the people who see them into
doing their bidding and as we’ve seen time and again, that’s only to serve the
Man in Black’s agenda. But the ghosts that Hurley has seen over the two
previous seasons were only telling the truth: Charlie told Hurley he had to go
back to the island and that he was avoiding it; Ana Lucia told him he had to
try and get off the street to protect Sayid, Michael tells him what he needs to
know to stop people from dying, Isabella told Richard (through Hurley) that he
had never lost her. Jacob is the only person who hasn’t been completely honest
so far, but its mainly through withholding information. Perhaps he knows that
the dead are incapable of lying and so he chooses his words carefully, even in
death.
Miles as we know has spent much of
his time on the series also being the voice of the audience, albeit in a more
snarky way than Hurley has been. Like Hurley he has the ability to hear the
dead, so understandably he takes Hurley seriously. But Miles has always been
far more cynical then Hurley, maybe because Hurley’s only become aware of his
gift fairly recently and even more recently come to accept it as one.
What’s perhaps the most enjoyable
thing about Hurley in the sideways world is that while everyone else is
different in a noticeable way that makes them (usually) happier Hurley is
essentially the same person. As we learn in the teaser (narrated by Pierre
Chang himself!) Hurley is the same generous, warm and caring person he’s always
been and money has done nothing to change that> Indeed, the major difference
is here the money has allowed him to do on a larger scale what he’s been doing
his whole life: helping people. It’s clear his luck was good even before the
lottery win, that his family life is just the same as ever, and he’s the same
warm-hearted person we’ve always known. But the difference is, he doesn’t seem
to have any close personal ties other than his family.
Now to be fair, we never knew for
sure what Hugo’s personal life was like before the numbers brought him such
good luck, but we don’t see any sign of Johnny or anyone else from his old life.
And I can believe that Hurley’s afraid of dating in both worlds. It took the
possibility his old life was going to be torn out from under him to ask the
girl he was crushing on for years on a date (which he never went on) and Hugo’s
never had any ego and major self-esteem issues in the real world too. Why
shouldn’t he have the same kind of self-doubt with Libby in the sideways world
that he did in the real one?
Hurley has always been the most
open-minded of all the characters on Lost which is why it takes so
little for him to realize the existence of the other world. He doesn’t need a
near-death experience or be zapped with electromagnetism. All he needs is a
kiss. Nothing more. It makes perfect sense as the worlds begin to merge that
Hurley needs no convincing and will help bring people together in both worlds.
Dr. Chang tells us that there is
one truth in this world: Everybody Loves Hugo. They should, if for no other
reason then that there’s no proof anyone else does. Richard is still hell-bent
on blowing up the plane to make sure that it never leaves the island. That this
will essentially strand all of them on the island with a homicidal smoke
monster seems to be something Richard hasn’t considered – and still isn’t
considering when he convinced the group to split and head back to the Barracks.
Ilana’s death came as a huge
disappointment to many fans of the series mainly because after nearly two
seasons of building her up as somehow critical to the endgame of Lost, she’s
so perfunctorily removed from the board before it can even begin. And in such a
ridiculously unoriginal way: this is how Arzt was blown up way back in Season
1, and that was as much for comic relief purposes than anything else.
Considering everything else that’s wrong with Season 6, this seems like yet
another example of how the writers truly messed up the final season.
But if we consider Ilana in
relation to the island and Jacob, then her character takes on a tragic arc.
Ilana is another version of so many characters whose lives have been wasted by
Jacob in service to the island. Jacob sought her out at a certain point, told
her to devote her life to his service and the island, and didn’t even allow her
the privilege of coming to the island until now. He gave her this vitally
important job but didn’t give her any vital information to execute it. She knew
that John Locke was one of the candidates but not what he looked like and
critically, not that he had died. This would have allowed her to know
immediately what ‘John Locke’ was and to alert everybody who might know.
Then she and her fellow protectors
(who followed her but didn’t know any more than she did) to go on a mission to
the statue with Locke’s body. They arrived outside Jacob’s sanctuary when it
was too late to stop the inevitable and her soldiers went in and were
slaughtered. Even then, she decided the only thing to do was to follow Richard,
despite the fact that he was clearly frantic and disturbed.
Ilana is like everyone else we’ve met who has blindly followed Jacob
for decades, if not longer. They have all been willing to play their parts in a
long game but none of them know more than a handful of the details or even what
the stakes are. All of them have sacrificed everything for some kind of larger
purpose and they don’t understand what it is. As Ben points out as he walks to
the Black Rock, once she did her part “the island was done with her.”
Ben actually seems even more broken then
before as he realizes yet again he’s been following blindly. That he chooses to
follow Richard is perhaps more due to their long friendship of thirty years
than any true idea he knows what he’s doing. Miles’ decision to go along is
keeping with his personality: Miles has always been practical and he’s seen
first hand what the monster can do. It’s hard to know if he made the wrong
choice because I’m not sure there was a good one.
But the critical decision is
Jack’s. Jack agrees to follow Hurley despite Hurley’s own doubts about his
actions mainly because Jack knows he can’t trust his own any more. Jack is
admitting his failures in a way he’s never been able to before and it’s actually
moving he knows that there are difficult decisions to be made, but he also
knows that he’s been making the wrong decisions all this time and he has to
hope someone knows what they’re doing. Jack probably wouldn’t listen if he
thought Jacob was telling him what to do. Its because it’s Hurley that he can.
But the most interesting
conversation is going on between UnLocke and Desmond. UnLocke has been
apparently serene in the face of the increasing impatience of Sawyer and the
certainty of Kate that the rest of the group isn’t coming. Then he finds
Desmond tied to a tree. And despite being captured, Desmond is as calm as
before, utterly unphased at the fact he’s looking at a dead man.
Unlike everyone else UnLocke has
encountered so far, like Hurley, Desmond answers all of UnLocke’s questions
calmly and with no guile. And for the first time all season UnLocke is clearly
unsettled. Throughout the season he’s been offering his hand to various
survivors and they keep refusing it. Desmond is the first one to take when its
offered.
The scenes between them are
brilliant because UnLocke has Desmond at his mercy, can destroy him at any
moment – and Desmond doesn’t seem to care. Finally near the end of the episode
he asks the question he’s been wondering: “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
Desmond’s respond is simple: “What’s the point of being afraid?”
UnLocke is struck dumb, opens his
mouth, then closes it again. The smoke monster has been operating on fear its
whole existence and now that everyone knows what it is, UnLocke no doubt
assumes that the reason the people who are following him are doing so in part
because they’re afraid. He assumed as much in the season premiere when he
called them weak and irrevocably broken; Sawyer implied that the actual Locke
‘was scared, even when he was pretending he wasn’t.” And given the reactions of
Richard, Ben and Miles when they march off into the jungle, it’s clear they’re
terrified of what it can do.
But that’s not why any of the
survivors are following him right now. They may all be terrified of what
UnLocke can do to them, and they sure as hell don’t trust him but something
stronger is motivating both camps: the desire to reunite. Sun wants to be with
Jin again (you can see the disappointment in her eyes when she looks across
Locke’s camp and doesn’t see him) and go back home with their daughter. Jin
clearly wants that too. Kate wants to take Claire back to Aaron and Claire
wants to see Aaron too. Sayid is clearly holding on to the promise to see Nadia
(though watching him in the last few episodes, it’s very clear that there’s
nothing left to offer her). The island has nothing to offer Sawyer any more.
Jack is still trying to find out why they were brought here. And Hurley wants
to protect his friends.
UnLocke has been saying that the
only way they can leave the island is ‘together’. We still don’t know why he
has been insisting that they do so as a group but its possible he’s relying on
their bonds over the last three years to help him realize his goal. Hurley
wants them to be together too, but for less insidious reasons: he just wants to
help everybody and he doesn’t want anybody to get hurt. A lot of things have
changed over the last three years but Hurley remains the same. He is capable of
forgiveness in a way the rest aren’t. When he leaves Michael behind, the last
thing he says is typical: “Is there anything I can do for you?”
And so in the final scene we get
what we’ve been expecting for much of Season 6. Almost the entire group of
survivors: the Oceanic 6 (less Aaron) are altogether. Kate hasn’t seen Sun
since the Ajira flight; Sawyer hasn’t seen her since he jumped off the
helicopter.
And of course despite everything
we are drawn to the inevitable: Jack looks across the scattered survivors and
his eyes are drawn to the man in John Locke’s body. Jack spent his entire time
on the island in conflict with Locke, engaged in mental, verbal and physical
altercations and refused to ever acknowledge Locke was right about anything.
Even after three years in which he’d been seeing his dead father, when Locke
showed up Jack immediately went to his default position. Then Jack did exactly
what Locke told him to do and he’s back on the island – looking a dead man in
the face.
The survivors are finally together
again. But are they capable of leaving together?
IF YOU BELIEVE THE ENDING: The way
that Libby knows the sideways world isn’t real doesn’t coalesce with any of the
other ways that we find out. It makes sense if you believe that this is an
alternate world and that Libby can see because of her delusional state. But
compared with how the rest of the ending plays out, there’s no logic connecting
this and everything we see here. It might play out in the idea of the general
theme such as Dan spotting Charlotte, but considering how the ending plays out
that doesn’t make sense either.
As for Desmond hitting Locke with
a car…well, that does make sense. Given the critical difference between how
Locke gets to the end and everyone else, sadly, I don’t think there’s any other
way this plays out. Poor Locke still can’t catch a break.
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