LOST season 6, ep# 11 "Everybody Loves Hugo"
1) The local movie theatre Chunky’s in Nashua,NH and Pelham,NH will be showing the finale for free! You might want to check your local small theatre for the same.
2) Ilana: Guess the island was done with her. The book that Hurley found in her belongings was Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground: considered to be the first existentialist novel. The author's philosophy of the mind: tortured and tumultuous, torn between action and passivity, a collection of conflicted voices that has been likened to schizophrenia. The protagonist reflects on an event and comes to conclusions about himself and his relationship to society, art and any number of things. An important theme is the attempt to take control of one's life, to manufacture experience into identity, birth consciousness out of suffering, and then live to fail and learn anew.
3) Michael: The whispers - "we're the ones who can't move on." Can they not move on because the flash-sideways world was created or is it because they have done something bad/ wrong/ immoral? So, is it Purgatory? The show's creators have said that the island is not Purgatory... did they lie to throw us off? Maybe the LOSTIES are not in purgatory, but people who died on the island are? However, what Michael said doesn’t really jive with the Catholic belief of what Purgatory is.
4) Hurley:
* It seems that the ones who can trigger the island memories in the flash-sideways world are the ones who have died on the Island. First Charlie, then Daniel, then Libby.
* Never lingered on his own reflection like the other flash-sideways characters.
* Remember the reason Hurley was in the mental institution? He had come to believe that his weight was responsible for a deck collapse at a party that killed two people. He blew up the Black Rock to prevent people from getting themselves killed (as Michael warned would happen). Hurley has guilt issues, to say the least.
* Found the bag of Jacob’s ashes in Ilana’s belongings.
* Hurley didn't remember anything until he was placed into a situation familiar to the island timeline. Once he had the picnic, once he kissed Libby, that's when he remembered. This is exactly what happened to Desmond last episode. His memory was triggered by an event that occurred in both timelines: seeing Charlie through a pane of glass, underwater. It's also what happened to jog Charlie's memory: doing drugs in the bathroom of Flight 815 was the connection for him, because it's something that happened in both the flash-sideways and island worlds.
5) Libby:
* So why hasn't Libby visited Hurley, as a ghost, on the island? Because she had been allowed to move on? Was she allowed to move on because she didn't meet the criteria to be an Island-bound whisperer: she lacked a burden of guilt, had nothing to atone for?
* In the flash-sideways, she tells Hurley she was watching a Mr. Cluck commercial when the rush of emotion struck her. This screams back to the first time we saw Daniel Faraday off-island, sobbing as he watched footage of the crash of Flight 815. Daniel cried back then without even understanding where those emotions were coming from - just as Libby did here.
6) Desmond:
1. Flocke offered his hand to Desmond to help him up...Desmond accepted it, which Sun and Kate both refused to do in earlier episodes. What does it mean?
2. The cut on the right side of his flash-sideways forehead is the same as the one he has in the flash-sideways. See attached photos (kinda hard to see b/c the island is dark or shaded in most photos).
3. When Ben asked Desmond his son’s name there was no hesitation when he answered “Charlie.” Flash-sideways Desmond of course has no son. It seems that Desmond is fully aware of his other life and that has a lot to do with his lack of fear towards Flocke.
4. The license plate on Desmond's car changes from one scene to the next. When he drives away after watching Libby and Hurley on the beach the plate on the car was 4PCI264. When he drove through the parking lot to mow Locke down, the plate read 2FAN321. Was it a shout-out to a fan or something more perplexing? (Both of these plate numbers are different than Desmond’s plate last week, which was the same as Jack’s and Nadia’s in previous weeks).
5. Why did Desmond run over flash-sideways Locke? One possibility is that Desmond tried to kill Sideways Locke to prevent Smokey from migrating into Sideways Locke's body… although it may be cruel that Desmond would basically murder an innocent man just to prevent his future corruption… just like how Sayid shot young Ben.
6. Have we been being shown two sideways worlds?
· At Mr. Clucks, Hurley doesn't recognize Desmond. At the airport Hurley very clearly recognized Desmond from the plane. However, at Mr. Clucks even after Desmond mentions flight 815, Hurley shows no recognition at all.
· Then there are the two different license plates on Desmond’s car…
· Hurley tells Desmond in the airport that flight 815 luggage is at baggage claim 4, but then Desmond and Claire get their bags at baggage claim 2.
· On the plane with Jack, Desmond is wearing a wedding ring, but in the car with George Minkowski, he's not married (Minkowski even points out “I see you’re not wearing a ring” before offering to get Desmond a “lady”).
· "The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with "what if" scenarios where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes."
Note: The butterflies in the drawing on the wall behind Libby at Santa Rosa, the butterfly on the Black Rock with Richard, "For want of a nail" is actually a poem describing the chaos theory which was also referenced by that same scene.
7) Jungle boy: Clearly aggravates Flocke. The boy's smirk before he ran off had to mean something, like he was pleased. Why does he have blond hair sometimes and brown hair at other times? See attached photos…
8) Flocke: John Locke's mannerisms have been shining through Smokey lately... same expressions, phrases, stick carving. Maybe he can't suppress certain aspects of John's persona from exhibiting themselves and that will help lead to his downfall?
9) Previews: Next week's previews were played with the Willie Wonka Rowing Song in the background (very creepy)... here are the lyrics:
There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing
Is it raining? Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a-blowing?
Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Yes! The danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing!!!
Remember that, like Jacob, Willie Wonka was looking for a replacement too.
10) Seinfeld shout-out: Hurley and his mother were going to another award ceremony for Hurley's contribution to the Human Fund. The Human Fund was a charity George Costanza made up so he could give a gift to his boss & others without spending money.
11) Bruce Springsteen shout-out: Spanish Johnny is the restaurant where Hurley was supposed to meet his blind date. It's also a character in the Springsteen song ''Incident at 57th Street,'' in which the young romantic is described as being ''dressed just like dynamite.'' You can find the song on the same album that includes the song that shares its title with the name of the woman Hurley was supposed to meet at the restaurant: Rosalita.
12) Work theme: Fugitive Kate runs. Pregnant Claire carries a life. Locke lost his job, felt emasculated, scrambled to get one back. Jack, Sayid, Ben, Sawyer, Jin, Desmond: career-absorbed men. We often see that the sideways characters are largely defined by what they do — by their business/ work. The cost of all this struggling and striving has been a diminished ability and interest for introspection. The characters that have had mirror/ reflection moments have detected something worth thinking about, but don't. One of the concerns of existentialist literature — especially Dostoyevsky — was how both Communist and Capitalist cultures left their citizens too fatigued for the work of personal enrichment, i.e. enlightenment. The psychologist Erich Fromm saw an even more profound problem: he believed a culture of work was crippling our capacity for love. It's interesting that the sideways character that has come the closest to having a self-generated moment of clarity while looking in a mirror was its only unabashed romantic, who was not defined by her work: Sun.
Enter Sideways Hurley, who both subverted and affirmed the theme. We met him as he was being celebrated for his work as... a giver. Hurley didn't get a conventional mirror moment. Instead, he got a short film praising his extraordinary and extensive philanthropy.
13) Saint Sebastian hospital: The hospital where Jack works, where Claire is getting her baby checked out, where Jin is taking Sun (gunshot wound), where Charlie is getting treated (car accident), where Locke is, probably, on his way to.... The story of Saint Sebastian has many LOST links. If you are interested in reading about him go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Sebastian
14) The Well: There seems to be some confusion about which well this is. I believe this was NOT the well that Locke traveled down to turn the wheel. That well is under the Orchid Station, in the jungle. This well, was in a clearing, no Orchid Station.
There is a Chinese folk tale called ''The Man Who Was Thrown Down a Well'' that tells the story of an unredeemed soul who gets unjustly thrown into a well where he encounters spirits who are trapped and yearn to move on into the afterlife. They help do his penance and become a better person, and then after three years (the same amount of time Desmond spent in The Hatch) the man returns to the surface world, forgives the man who threw him into the well and fulfills his promise to help free the lost, trapped souls.
15) Angstrom the bunny: Angstrom the rabbit from last week was, most likely, a reference to the comic book villain Angstrom Levy from the Invincible series. He is a character who has the ability to travel between different realities.