Monsters of Television

“Dead people more reliable than alive people.”

I don’t have a whole lot to say about “Everybody Loves Hugo.” This is probably for the best as I’m pretty busy (hopefully the unexpected Glee rant helped ease your need for a fix) and should really be doing other things.

It wasn’t that I didn’t find the episode enjoyable, I did, but it’s clearly the kick off to the tail end of the season as, finally, I think all the pieces are in place (there I go, assuming our characters are pieces in a chess game between larger than life entities…wait…), and I’d almost rather wait and see what happens next week before giving any thoughts about this week.

Hurley’s quote at the start of this entry kind of sums of this season. The dead have assisted the living in figuring out what they need to do. On the Island, Jacob and Michael have been guiding Hurley, and in the flash-sideways Charlie, Daniel, and now Libby have been doing their best to try and help those still alive come to a conclusion about the reality that they’re living in (with a little help from Desmond now).

The dead are ultimately what allow Hurley (or Hugo as is now universally being referred to as) to assume leadership of those not with Locke or Widmore. It’s a nice bookend feeling, complete with the title reference back to the episode in season 2, “Everybody Hates Hugo,” where Hurley wanted none of the responsibility of dividing up DHARMA brand food supplies among his community. Driven by experience (and the ghost of Michael), Hurley has accepted not only his role as the dude who can talk to the dead, but as someone who willing to make difficult decisions.

This circles back to my contention that this season really is about trust and leadership. Hurley, nervous that he bluffed his way to his position (and causing Richard, Ben, and Miles to splinter off in the process), wishes Jack had spoken up sooner, taken the authority role Jack had always taken. Jack, who clearly has come to an epiphany about himself after staring into the ocean, realizes that he can’t fix everything (FINALLY) and that he trusts Hurley to lead. It’s a wonderful scene, that both Garcia and Fox play with perhaps the clearest understanding of their characters I’ve seen from either of  them, and the work between the two of them this season has been really spectacular.

But the dead aren’t always more reliable (but perhaps they’re just more consistent?). Smocke’s pushing of poor, Zen’d out Desmond into a well has me a pretty serious state of denial about Desmond’s status. I will remain convinced that Desmond is alive and well (if electromagnetism doesn’t fry him, a little water isn’t going to do anything to him either) until I see a dead body. At the same time, it does show the lengths to which Smocke believes he needs to go to get off the Island. Why, exactly, he attempts to get Desmond out of the way isn’t clear. It could simply be that he knows Desmond is important to Widmore but not why and decides the best way to stick it to Widmore is to kill Desmond. I’m hoping it’s something significantly more grand than that, but we’ll see.

Speaking of significantly more grand, the revelation of the whispers being the dead trying to communicate seems a little, well, not only anticlimactic, but also kind of inconsistent. Why try and talk to Sayid before Rousseau captures him? Or the group that goes after Michael in season 2? It makes little sense to me, but I suspect that we’ll get very little in the way of elaboration.

One last thing before I wrap up: one of the criticisms about the awakening to the Island memories in the flash-sideways has been that it relies on each person having a heterosexual love/Constant. It’s a valid critique (made all the worse by the lack of a single gay character on the show, as pointed out to me by Chris Becker), but one that the show may want to complicate just a bit with Sideways-Locke getting hit by Sideway-Desmond’s car. In his near death experience, assuming that’s what they’re aiming for, who does Locke see? My money is on himself, walking.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• A little surprised at Miles leaving with Richard and Ben, though I think they’ll make a great 3-man band of snark and frustration. Ben is clearly aiming for being a spoiler in the roster of candidates, but I have a feeling Ben’s not going to survive this season.
• I wish I could say I was sad about Illana getting Arzt’d, but I’m really not. Also: why didn’t they make Richard carry the notoriously unstable dynamite? He is immortal, after all.
• The ABC press release for next week’s episode description is “Alliances are forged and broken as the Locke and Jack camps merge…”. I’ll let you insert your own Survivor joke here.