Lost 1:18, "Numbers"
Dammit! A show with a lot of Hurley dialogue! It's both important and damn difficult to transcribe the funny correctly, man! So you will have to bear with me if I can only paraphrase. One viewing, people.
Previously on: Locke and Boone stare at the hatch for five months in hopes it'll turn into a statue of David. Sayid goes looking for The French Transmission Woman and finds a tripwire. Oh, and the French woman. And then he steals her maps and notes.
The idyllic shores of Craphole Island. We got from waves crashing in a very From Here to Eternity fashion to... Hurley. He and Jin are struggling to communicate, but what's really funny is that Mercutio has to step in to mediate. They're working on the raft, so it looks like the Manly Building of Manly Things has brought everyone together. Here comes Captain Hero Dr. Jack, and I forget why this comes up, but Mercutio mentions that he has people guarding his raft 24/7 so it won't get sabotaged again. Someone--Mercutio? You know, it's really sad that I can't even remember who said what, y'all. I think I'm way overtired--points out that they're so off the beaten track that it would be good for Mercutio and his raft to have some kind of radio to send SOS transmissions. Jack says he'll ask Sayid about building a radio, but he can't just magic up a battery to go with it. Someone mentions that Crazy Rousseau had batteries. Damn, I need to take better notes next time.
Radio Shack, Sayidistan. "ABSOLUTELY NOT." Sayid is definitely against tracking Crazy Rousseau back down and asking her for a cup of battery. "Do you think she would give up something she needs to survive?" "Look," says Jack, "just tell me how to find her." Son, I don't think you and your crewcut are going to have better luck wheedling the Crazy than Mr. Sex over here. Rather than pointing this out (because Sayid is a modest Mr. Sex, after all), Sayid notes that he doesn't know how he found her in the first place. He only found a trap, woke up in New French Crazytown, and was sort of out of his own head with pain when he power-hobbled back to camp. Hurley's all like, "Don't know, dude, or don't want to?" Hurley? Are you listening to a word the man is saying? (No, probably not. I can't really blame him.) "Didn't you say the maps were pointing to something?" asks Jack (I think?). "I WAS WRONG!" shouts Sayid, who starts to toss a total hissy. He does end up pointing to one place on the map that is "probably" where the Crazy is, and it's called Something Something in French--"Dark Territory." "So you won't help," says Jack. "Oh, I'll build [the radio]," says Sayid, but something something Hurley is looking at the notes and omg numbers written over and over.
Flashback. "SWING YOUR PARTNERS ROUND AND ROUND!" Okay, this is sad. I can't remember what actual characters pertinent to the show were saying, but I vividly remember what was on Hurley's TV: square-dancing, terrifying '80s aerobicization, and someone cutting an avocado in half. Mama de Hurley comes out and expresses the hope that he's not watching "those g-string mujeres again." Hurley replies that he is not, although he hopes that Mama de Hurley will respect his privacy in the future (ew) if he is going to live there, which kind of sounds like he's living there at her request. I think he's wearing some kind of McJob uniform, but I can't remember. Mama de Hurley adds, "A grown-up man sitting at home on Saturday night watching TV! You should try to find a nice woman!" "I'll get right on that," mutters Hurley. "Try eating better," says Mama de Hurley. "You're gaining weight again." Is it terrible of me to ask how in the world she can tell? Hurley keeps channel-flipping... and comes across a lotto drawing. The Mega Number is 42 (well, of course. 42 is the answer to everything), which I suppose increases the jackpot, which is already at a "near-record" level because no one's won in sixteen weeks. (Why do I feel like "sixteen" and/or "sixteen weeks" is a significant reference or clue of some kind? Kind of like the number 815, or 8:15, or whatever, because that's the number of the doomed flight?) Anyway. Guess what? Hurley's got all the numbers on his lotto ticket. He goes down like a ton of bricks. And this time I actually mean "a ton of bricks."
Commercials: Oh, look, it's that plane movie they were flogging previews of during this very show late last year. It makes me sad that the lifespan of any movie would be shorter than half a TV season.
Be Cool: Put together everything you think people liked about Get Shorty and Pulp Fiction and Be Redundant.
"The Aviator! Won thebritishacademyawardfor BEST PICTURE! It won MORE OSCARS than ANY OTHER MOVIE THIS YEAR! Sob."
We're back. Sayid tosses in his sleep. Oh yeah, baby, toss harder, that's it... and just when you think the combined staring power of the readers of my journal has woken him up, he sits up to find Hurley sitting over him like a vulture: "You awake?" "I was just wondering that myself," blears Sayid. Hurley: "You and Shannon've... [I so thought he was going to go off on some non sequitur about them "getting it on" or something here] been trying to figure out some of this stuff, and I was wondering what you'd figured out... about... this stuff." Sayid's like, dude? It's three in the morning. "Take these numbers she wrote down a bunch of times..." Sayid says he thought they might have been coordinates, but no. "You said a wire led you to her?" "It led me to a trap," corrects Sayid. "But she was prolly pretty close?" "Why are you so interested in Rousseau?" asks Sayid. "Sorry, I was just trying to make conversation," huffs Hurley, but he pockets the stolen map while Sayid is trying to get back to sleep. Off wanders Hurley, looking haunted.
Flashback: a press conference in Hurley's front yard. "How'd you pick the numbers?" chirps a scary reporter chick. "They... just sort of came to me," says Hurley evasively. He introduces his mother Carmen, his brother Diego ("WOOOO! WE'RE RICH! YEAHHHHHH!"), and his Grandpa Tito to the reporters, and adds that abuelito worked three jobs for ("How long, Grandpa Tito?") fifty-two years, and the only vacation he had was the year he got his pacemaker. Hurley would like to give him the rest that he's earned, and so, basically, do things for the people he cares about. Meanwhile, Grandpa Tito? Don't look so good. Kind of green around the ventricles. He's clutching his left arm and ohhhhhh no. There goes Grandpa Tito (THUNK!). Hurley: "Grandpa...?"
The water fountain, Cavetown-on-Deadpool, the next morning. Charlie, strolling by, says, "Hey, man." Hurley: "WHAT? I'M NOT DOING ANYTHING!" Well, actually, he's filling several bottles of water. "Going somewhere?" "ME? NO." Charlie looks at him. "Well... yeah. Just thought I might ... take a walk... scope out some new fishing areas..." Charlie's all for it. "Dude, I could really use some alone time right now?" snaps Hurley. Awww, Charlie looks crushed. And then Hurley gets his backpack on and it bursts open and like seventeen bottles of water fall out. "I'm a big guy," Hurley says, in that little "I get cramps. What? Shut up" voice. "I get dehydrated easy." Hey, me too, man. Charlie still looks stunned for some reason: "Yeah. Yeah... okay."
Waves crashing in a picturesque fashion on the shores of sunny Clairwaii. Locke comes by and asks, "You got a second?" Claire's like, "No, sorry, I'm way busy sitting here trying to remember shit. YES, OF COURSE I HAVE A SECOND." "Free to help me with a little project? I'm building something and I could use another pair of hands." Claire points out that she is nearly ninety nine months pregnant and can barely waddle down the beach. "Could you hold a saw? Can you move your hand back and forth like this [makes sawing motions]?" Claire's like, uh... yeah? "You're perfect," says Locke cheerfully. "So... what are we building?" asks Claire. Oh, Claire. Don't you know that Sensei Locke has picked you out to be his next fixer-upper, and that if he told you what the hell he was doing, you wouldn't learn whatever character-building lesson he's got in mind?
Cavetown-on-Deadpool. "WHERE IS IT?" Oooo, Sayid, he angry. And at Jack, too. "You can't even do your own dirty work, no, you have to send Hurley to wake me up in the middle of the night and babble about nothing in particular and steal my map when I am TRYING TO GET MY BEAUTY SLEEP." Again, rough paraphrase here. Jack stares at Sayid dumbly. "You... don't know anything about this, do you?" says Sayid. Charlie comes bopping by again, and they ask him if he's seen Hurley. "Yeah, couple of hours ago--acting like a loon, I might say." And now we enter the Charlie Thinks Hurley Is Crazy portion of the storyline. Enjoy, won't you?
The sorrowful shores of Snickerbitchapan are Already Missing You. Shannon is all concerned about Sayid leading the Hurley search party: "WHEN WILL YOU BE BACK?" Sayid thinks they can catch up to Hurley by nightfall, which is... kind of odd, given the time this whole adventure actually takes, but okay. "Are you worried?" he adds. "What if I am?" Shannon semi-brats, because old habits die hard. There are glances, and they are poignant. Sayid caresses her face and says everything will be fine (I think?) and leaves. Shannon stares after him, and plainly written on her face is the cry, "NO! NOT MY ONLY SHOT AT NON-INCESTUOUS SEX! STOP THAT MAAAAAN!"
The beaches of Hurleguay. There is rap on the soundtrack (hey! I thought Hurley's Discman finally died!), and he's marching down the beach like Lawrence of Do-Rag. Then we fade into a flashback and discover that the rap music is playing in Hurley's giant new pimpin' Humvee or whatever it is (look, it's a big-ass vehicle of some sort. And yellow, too). Mama de Hurley makes him turn it off. He's gotten her a present "after everything you've been through... like... Grandpa." Mama de Hurley concurs. If she doesn't say dios mio, she uses a definite synonym, I tell you what. Hurley adds that it was weird, at the funeral, "Father Alguilar getting struck by lighting... That was a freak storm." But there's more: "And Diego moving back home after [his wife? girlfriend?] left him because of that waitress..." "DON'T MENTION THAT WHORE TO ME!" shouts Mama de Hurley. Heeeee. "You know," Hurley says tentatively, "ever since I won the lottery... it's like we've had nothing but bad luck. It's like... the money is cursed." Mama de Hurley punches him in the arm. Really hard, too. "WE ARE CATHOLIC! WE DON'T BELIEVE IN CURSES!" Hurley's all like, "OW! I'M JUST SAYING!"
So then he pulls out a red bandanna and makes his mom put it on as a blindfold, because he wants to surprise her with this giant, like, Spanish-style mansion he's bought her, and Mama is bitching about it (the blindfold, I mean) when she trips and falls and breaks her ankle on the curb, and Hurley's like, "I said you could take it off now..." "Do I smell smoke?" she says, wrinkling her nose. Jesus, his brand-new mansion is on fire. He's trying to call 911 on his cell when here come the police roaring up and he looks at the undialed phone like, "Dude, that is some service right there." And then the police grab Hurley and slam him onto the roof of his Whatevervee and start Mirandizing him apropos of squat. Mama de Hurley rolls her eyes and crosses herself.
The borders of Hurleguay-New French Crazytown. He finds that cable reaching from the ocean into the jungle ("Yo! French chick!") and starts following it into the jungle. Somewhere, my mother is screaming at the TV for for SOMEONE to find out how the cable is tied to... the ocean.
Flashback. "I would think you'd be happy," says Hurley's financial advisor dude. "Your orange stock skyrocketed after those tropical storms in Florida. And you own a majority of shares in a box company." Oh, and by the way, Hurley's sneaker factory in Canada burned down. "I have a sneaker factory?" says Hurley. "Well, had. Eight people died. But it was overinsured, so you're actually getting a windfall! Between that and the generous settlement from the LAPD"--who apparently mistook Hurley for a drug dealer...?--"you've doubled your net worth!" Daaaaamn. Hurley's all like, okay, seriously? The money is cursed. Financial Advisor Dude is all like, "Oh, pshaw. You're not the first lottery winner to think that his winnings were cursed. I don't believe in curses; I believe in numbers. By the way... where'd you get 'em? Someone's birthday?" This dude is way smarmy, by the way. "Just something that I..." In the middle of being evasive, Hurley's like, "THAT'S IT! It's the numbers! The numbers are cursed!" Financial Advisor Dude is like, "There's no such th--" And then some guy plummets screaming past his window. Yeah.
The raftalicious outpost of Sawyerland. Sawyer is visibly agitated because he is trying to read A Wrinkle in Time, thank you very much, leading me to suspect that, between this and Watership Down, his lending library is the summer reading out of some kid's suitcase. (As someone in the comments to the previous entry mentioned, it's cute how the island redneck is also the island bookworm.) "You wanna hit that a little harder?" he jackholes at Mercutio and Jin, who are beavering away on the raft. "Oh, I'm sorry, is my building a raft to get us rescued bothering you?" snips Mercutio (hee!). "At the moment? Yes," says Sawyer, who is supposedly on arsonwatch duty. And then Jin and Mercutio start arguing over the construction of the raft, which is impressive, given the language barrier. Sawyer makes the Excedrin Headache #492 face and stomps off. Meanwhile, Sun is watching the Manly Building of Manly Things with sorrow. "He will never speak to me again," she says softly to Kate. Get an eyeful, because this is your only visit with Kate this episode. (Amazing, I know.) "Give him time," says Kate. But she "humiliated him," Sun points out. "When they leave on that raft, do you think Jin will leave with them?" Kate does not actually say "Why would I know?," but God knows I would have.
The jungles of Hurleguay. He's looking for the tripwire that nailed Sayid. Given 1) the generally comic tone the show is using even for Hurley's misfortunes and 2) the show's general tendency towards affectionate fat jokes, I was so expecting a gag about how he hits the tripwire but he's too heavy and breaks the snare. But no. He finds a rotting boar hanging from a tree, covered in flies (ewwww), which I'm assuming set off the trap a long while back, and Crazy Rousseau hasn't been back to reset it. Hurley is, by the way, standing right now on a metal hatch. "DON'T MOVE!" comes a yell from the jungle. "Hey!" says Hurley, happy to see the guys. "You're standing on a pressure trigger! If you take your weight off it, it will release that," says Sayid, pointing to a ball o' stakes hanging above him. Oh dear. "We need to find something to replace his weight!" "How're we gonna do that?" asks Charlie (Hurley: "HEY!"). The whole thing is very Indiana Jones. "I can make it!" says Hurley. "I'm spry!" "HURLEY, WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?" shouts Charlie. And the guys keep shouting at him not to do it, while Hurley is clearly screwing up his courage to do it, and then he does it, and he totally leaps out of the way of the ball o' stakes. Heh. But then, we will find out that he knew he could make it. After some bantering about what Hurley is doing out here (To get a battery! No, really! Yes, really! What's going on! Nothing's going on!), Sayid decides that he will take the lead from now on. Charlie: "EXCELLENT NOTION."
Flashback. "I'm looking for Lenny, or Leonard, or..." Hurley's at what looks like a mental hospital--I say "mental" at this point because it doesn't have the sterile, frantic look of a purely medical hospital--trying to get the receptionist to tell him where this guy is and if he can talk to him. In the background, some janitorial guy is standing on a very tall, very shaky ladder, about to screw a lightbulb into a scary decrepit fixture, and Hurley keeps eyeing him nervously, until finally he just shouts, "DUDE! Do NOT do that right now! LEAVE the BULB for ANOTHER TIME." Heeeeee. The guy climbs down and wanders away. I guess he's used to the crazy. "Five minutes!" pleads Hurley. "All I need is five minutes!" And then some cheerful doctor comes up and is like, "Hey, Hugo, what are you doing back here?" (ETA: Or maybe he was a patient? See the comments to this entry.)
(We don't know why Hurley was ever there in the first place, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was probably some kind of volunteer work. A lot of people in high school used to go spend time with folks at retirement homes to get their Beta Club hours. The interesting thing is that the show--as with so many of these flashbacks--doesn't bother to try to think of a way to shoehorn tons of exposition. I mean, sometimes it does, but then you get tons of these flashbacks that have no context at all, and it's frustrating, but it's also sort of refreshing that the show trusts us to be like, "Okay, it doesn't matter why he was there. We can think of a reason he was there, and that's good enough for the moment. We can move on to actual plot points now." Not that it always works, but... you know.)
The doctor doesn't remember Hurley and Leonard "being that close," but he takes him to Lenny anyway. I half expect to see Lenny petting some mice, but he's muttering and twitching over a solo game of Connect Four. You know, the grid thing with the checkers. "Hey, Lenny, remember me? Hugo? Hurley? I was just... in the neighborhood and... Look, Lenny, I gotta know. What do the numbers mean?" And then we hear Lenny's muttering more clearly and he's repeating that series of numbers--4 8 15 16 23 42--over and over, ad infinitum.
Commercials. What does the little girl in The Pacifier shout, when they get to school? "LAAAAAND"?
We're back. "Come on, Lenny, give me something! Where'd you get the numbers?" Hurley is getting frustrated. "Is that why you're here, Lenny? Did the numbers do something to you?" He gets a grim look on his face. "They did something to me. They turned me into a jinx. People look at me like I'm nuts when I try to tell them, they don't believe me. But I know. I won the lottery with those numbers." This gets Lenny's attention: "You used the numbers to play the lottery?" Lenny is horrified. "YOU'VE OPENED THE BOX! It never stops! You gotta get away! You gotta get far, far away from the numbers! IT NEVER STOPS!" A nurse comes to drag Lenny away, and Hurley's all like, "WHERE'D YOU GET THE NUMBERS?" Lenny shouts, "From Some Guy! In Some Town! In Australia!" And then the nurse guy drags him away. I'm kinda creeped out in a real Stephen King way right now.
(I have "Santume" written down in my notes for "Some Guy," which I think turns out to be a guy named "Sam Toomey." But since "Sam Toomey" never actually appears, there's no actor/character listing on the IMDB; the guy's wife is only listed by her first name. So I don't know.)
The jungles of New French Crazytown. "Guys?" says Charlie. "You should come see this...?" Aaaaaand it's the Indiana Jones Memorial Rope Bridge. "You never mentioned anything about a bridge," says Jack accusingly. "I never SAW IT before," says Sayid. Hurley decides he's going to test out the bridge, because, you know, let's send the heaviest guy there out on the Dusty Ropes of Doom. But again: we find out later that he knew he could make it. The guys all start yelling at him not to do it and he's like, "DUDES? CHILL." Everyone stares in mounting horror (Charlie actually looks ill), but Hurley makes it across, all like, yay! So Charlie runs out to the bridge--"HEY!" says Captain Hero Dr. Jack. "Hey, if he can do it...!" says Charlie. So now just Jack and Sayid watch, looking sicker than ever, and Charlie hobbits across. (The way they're filming the bridge, the overhead shots make it look like the bridge is over a creek three feet below. Which it probably is. "No, seriously, those pebbles are boulders, man. BIG BOULDERS.") And then the bridge collapses right as he gets across. So... good. "I'm okay! WOOOOO!" shouts Charlie, not thinking of the obvious problem they all now have. "All right!" shouts Jack, somewhat crabbily. "You two stay put right there! We're going to walk ALLLLLL THE WAY AROUND and find a way to get over to you!" Hurley's all like, "No, you guys stay there, there's a path right back here!" and Charlie just loses it and shouts, "Will you LISTEN to Jack and just STAY PUT? You're acting like a bloody lunatic!" Okay, dude, for real. Chill with the crazy talk.
Commercials. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is having a Very Special Edition where they make over a home for sextuplets and their harried parents. But then, isn't every episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Very Special?
Flashback: House of Some Guy, Some Town, Australia. A woman who... actually looks a good bit like Hurley, with the triangular curly hair, really, opens her front door and says, "If this weren't the middle of nowhere, I'd say you were LOST." Oh, har. Apparently her husband worked for Leonard Sims, which reminds me a teensy bit of Dracula where Jonathan Harker's all like, "So you want me to go out to Transylvania? Because the guy whose job I got went crazy and got shelved away in the nuthouse right after he went? Okay, cool." Sorry--random, I know. Unfortunately, Sam Toomey is dead. How's Leonard? "He's, uh... retired," says Hurley, evading as he does so well. "He told me about Sam... hearing something." You're talkin' bout the numbers," the Widow Toomey says. "YES EXACTLY," says Hurley. Okay, this is one of the parts I couldn't transcribe quickly enough: Sam apparently invented some kind of listening transmissiony thing that was aimed at the Pacific (OMG) and mostly got only static, but one day a voice came through, "repeatin' those numbers." Hurley's teacup rattles in his hand, he's so nervous. Apparently when he got back to Australia, or something--seriously, the Widow Toomey's accent is so thick that I can just barely make out a story about how there was some jar/barrel/vat of beans or something and you got a prize if you guessed how many, right?, and he uses the numbers to guess correctly and win a bunch of money, I guess. "The answer was exact," she says, which means... there were 4,815,162,342 beans? Damn. The guy had been running "the scheme" (I'm not sure how it was a scheme, unless the container was bigger than it looked, or something) for forty years, so I guess he had a lot of prize money sacked away or something. Again: can't understand most of the story. Anyway, that night, they're driving home and their truck blows a tire on the highway. "Lost my leg that night," says the Widow Toomey, revealing a silver rod in a sneaker. "What about Sam?" asks Hurley. "Barely a scratch. Some would consider him lucky. Not him. He was never the same. Started keepin' a record of anything terrible that happened. All because he used those numbers. We moved to the middle of nowhere hoping it would stop." The idea, I might add, is that misfortune happened to everyone but Toomey. This is why Hurley will think--or know--that he could do all those things earlier (or would that be "later"?) without getting hurt. "Did he find a way to make it stop?" asks Hurley. "Yeah," says the Widow Toomey. "He put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger." You should see the look on Hurley's face right now, which is awful. My knee seriously started shaking here, for some reason. "What is it you're looking for, Mr. Reyes?" she says, somewhat grimly. "I used them. The numbers. To win the lottery. And now I think I'm under the same curse." "There's no curse!" shouts the Widow Toomey, which--what? "Do you think I'd still have my leg if he hadn't used those numbers!" Well... yeah. "You make your own luck, Mr. Reyes. Don't blame it on the damn numbers. You're looking for an excuse that doesn't exist." I guess the alternative is too awful for her to consider, and I don't blame her.
Home Depot, Locke Lomond. Claire is trying to guess what Locke's whatmathingit is: "It's a trap... for... catching animals...?" Nope. Also, Locke has made stinky glue from rendered animal fat, which impresses Claire muchly: "You made glue?" You're new here, aren't you? "You should have one of those shows where you make over a home for sextuplets and their harried parents," says Claire. Locke's like, "Nah." HA. "Thanks for giving me something to do," says Claire. "I'm tired of trying to remember what happened to me out there." "How's that comin'?" asks Locke. "You know, your memory of that whole crashing on a not-really-deserted island and being kidnapped by The Late Ethanator?" "Bits and pieces, nothing that makes any real sense," she says. "Well, maybe I can help, because that's what I do. I'm good at putting bits and pieces together," says Sensei Locke.
Back in the jungles of Crazytown. Jack notices that Sayid's spidey sense seems to have been triggered: "What?" "This is familiar, this area. We're close." "How do you know?" asks Jack. "I thought she lived underground." And then Jack hits a tripwire with his foot and shit go BOOM.
Across the way, back to Hurley and Charlie: again, the look on Hurley's face is terrible. I mean, the poor guy. "I used the numbers! My grandpa died, my sneaker factory burned down, my plane crashed in east of NOWHERE, and my only friends just got blown up by a crazy enigmatic French chick who likes to torture people! OH WOES."
Oh, but Jack and Sayid have survived just fine. "Hell of a security system--someone trips a wire and the whole place blows up? I don't get it," says Jack. So it is Crazy Rousseau's Hut of Mystery. "She knew," says Sayid. "She knew. She knew that one day I'd come back for hot bondage sex, and bring others for hot bondage sex. So she abandoned this place, booby trapped it, and moved on." Y'all, I think Sayid feels a little betrayed that she didn't wait for him.
Meanwhile, Charlie is going off on Hurley: "I want to know why we're here--you used to be Happy Goodtime Hurley and now you're Colonel bloody Kurtz!" HEART OF DARKNESS/APOCALYPSE NOW SHOUT OUT UNH. "We're lost out here, Jack and Sayid could be blown to bits, and just because you're acting like a bloody nutter!" Oh, now you've done it, Charlie. Hurley turns on him and grits, "I'M NOT. CRAZY." Then, more calmly: "I have my reasons." "I have a right to know," retorts Charlie, because he is, after all, following him around the jungle. So Hurley says, "About a year ago... " And then a shot totally whizzes past them. What I love is that they stand there going, "Hey, what?" and don't run until the second shot. But then they get their run on for real, and--oh no! Hurley gets cramps! And then he trips over... what? And he gets up, and there's Crazy Rousseau with her rifle in his face. Ohhhh no. "Who are you?" she demands. "Hurley," he says, like she's just going to know. I mean, of course that's what they talked about while Sayid was tied to that bed getting electroshocked: Hurley. He tries again: "Sayid? That guy you tortured...?" Oh, good one. "You were on the plane?" she says, piecing it together. He reaches for his pocket and she freaks out and he's all like, "Easy! Easy! I'm just getting your notes." He holds out the little piece of paper with the numbers written on it: "Please. Tell me why you wrote these. Tell me what they mean."
Crazy Rousseau: "I don't know."
"WHAT? YOU DON'T KNOW?" Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the losing of all Hurley's patience. Crazy's rifle is trained on him the whole time, by the way. "OKAY. That thing in the woods. Maybe it's a monster. Maybe it's a pissed-off giraffe, I don't know! The fact that no one's looking for us--okay, that's weird! But I go along with it. GOOD OLD FUNTIME HURLEY. BUT NOW? I WANT SOME FREAKIN' ANSWERS!" Crazy Rousseau puts the rifle down. I don't know if she's touched by his frustration or just scared. Very quietly she says--again with the paraphrasing here--"Our ship picked up a transmission, repeating those numbers. We changed course and went looking for the source. We found the signal's source at a radio tower on this island." Hurley: "A radio tower? On this island?" "At the black rock. Some of us continued to search for the meaning of those numbers. Then the sickness came. When my team was gone, I went back to the tower and changed the transmission." "That's the distress signal [the other castaways] heard?" says Hurley, doing the math. He adds. "But the numbers! Did you ever find out anything about them? Do you know where they got their power? They bring bad stuff to everyone around you. They're cursed. You know that, right?" Rousseau muses on this for a while, then says: "The numbers are what brought me here. It appears they brought you. Since that time, I've lost everything. Everyone I cared about. So yes. I suppose you're right. They are cursed." Awww. Rousseau and Hurley, being crazy together. "Thank you," says Hurley, just about weak with relief. "Thank you! You have no idea how long I've been waiting for someone to agree with me. Thank you! Oh God, thank you!" And Hurley totally grabs her in this giant bearhug. AWWWWW.
The ruins of the Hut of Mystery. "We need to find Hurley and Charlie and get out of this jungle," announces Jack. Thank you, Captain Hero Dr. Obvious. Sayid, meanwhile, finds his (now tattered) picture of Nadia that survived the explosion. Here's Charlie, stumbling in from the jungle: "Someone shot at us!" "Where's Hurley?" demands Jack. "I don't know!" "I'll go and find him!" says (Jack? Sayid?). "No, we'll all go," says (Sayid? Jack?). "Hey guys," says Hurley, ambling in. "What the hell happened to you?" they ask. "I got a battery," he says. "What about Rousseau?" asks Sayid, much perturbed. "She says hey," Hurley says placidly. HURLEY + ROUSSEAU 4EVAH.
Commercials. The Ring 2. Damn, that was three years ago? More like two and a half, but--damn. I remember running ads and giving away tickets to that on my site. That new John Stamos show... OMG JAVIER! I LOVE YOU, JAVIER!
Back on the beach. Mercutio and Jin are still arguing and working when the fearsome foursome return. Without a word, Jack pats Mercutio on the shoulder, and Sayid hands him the battery. Everyone stares.
Night falls on the Clairibbean. "You think of a name yet?" Awwwww, Locke has built her a crib! I think we're not supposed to notice this yet, because it's upside down, but... dude, it's totally a crib turned upside down. "I haven't been thinking about it much," says Claire. "I was going to give it away. You know, for adoption." No, Claire, to the baby eaters. (Mmm, baby sauce.) OF COURSE FOR ADOPTION. "Must have been a difficult decision," Locke says respectfully. "Well, it doesn't matter now," says Claire, adding, "It's my birthday today." Locke asks why she hasn't told anyone. "I'm pregnant, single, and on an island in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't really matter that it's my birthday, does it?" I'm not sure what "single" has to do with it, but... okay. Especially since Charlie would have made her imaginary peanut butter birthday cake and everything. "At least your birthdays will be close together, yours and the baby's, and that's good luck," says Locke. "You believe in luck?" asks Claire. "I believe in a lot of things," says Locke, adding, "That should do it," and he gives the crib a final... gluing, I guess. "Okay, I give up. What is it?" she asks. He turns it over, and it's so incredibly, clearly a crib. "It's a cradle!" cries Claire. Oh, hon. You're not the sharpest stake in the ball, are you? "Happy birthday, Claire," says Sensei Locke. So... did he really know it was her birthday or not?
The home fires of Hurleguay. "I know food's scarce," says Charlie, "but... your shirt?" Hurley is toasting a wet shirt on a stick: "When you find the laundromat, let me know." Charlie sits down beside him. "Back in the jungle, before we become target practice, you were going to tell me what inspired this little quest." Hurley puts shirt-on-a-stick away (hee) and says, "I think the plane crash might've been my fault." "Don't be daft," snaps Charlie, again with the crazy talk. "Hey, before we got here, bad things happened whenever I was around," says Hurley. "Bad luck?" "Yeah..." says Hurley. "Yeah, that'd be a... mellow way of putting it." "You think you're the only one with baggage?" Charlie--seriously, I am running out of ways to say "snaps at someone," y'all. "You know what I was doing, when the plane crashed? I was snorting heroin in the bathroom. I suppose that's your fault as well?" Jeez, Charlie is a Cranky Bear tonight. "So how 'bout it?" "What?" asks Hurley. "I just told you the biggest secret in my life. I thought you'd reciprocate." "Okay." Hurley sounds totally dead for some reason. Finally he says, "Back home... I'm worth 156 million dollars." Charlie stares at him. "Fine, don't tell me. I bare my soul, and all I get is bloody jokes," and he stomps off. I love you, Charlie, but: Ass.
Apropos of nothing much, we get a shot of what I think is Boone and Locke's metal hatch. In a very X-Filesish shot, the camera zooms in on something engraved in the metal: "4 8 15 16 23 42." Omg.
Previews: Oh, hell, it's stinkin' "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" again: once again, it is all about Jack. Although there is some nice Sawyer-Sayid action, I will admit. Oh, and the Near-Death That Done Killed the Internets.
What do you mean, no new episodes until April?!