Lost 2x18 - "Dave"

This was a fun episode. I really like Hurley's character and the way the actor delivers his lines; it's quite natural. While many of the other characters seem to make a concerted effort to convey their personalities, Hurely is just himself. Now, whether that's intended to be part of the characters' premises or simply an indication of their acting skills, I'm not sure. But it does give the show a little something extra.

Anywho, observation/question/rant/witticism time:

• Yes, Hurely, we know you have a problem with food, but did you have to destroy all of it? I mean, you (and 40 or so other people) have been stranded on a creepy, inexplicably uncharted island for the past two months with seemingly now hope of rescue and very few supplies, you dick.
• And did all of those other survivors just run past Libby and Hurley and not notice the tremendous amount of wasted food all over the place? Supply pallet or not, WTF?
• And another thing, 5 gallon drums of salad dressing and mayonnaise? Jeez Hurley, I can understand the peanut butter, I think, but what the hell were you gonna do with all that mayonnaise? That's just wrong.
• So, the supply drop seems to be a somewhat regular occurrence. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that. I mean, yeah, giving the characters food saves us all from having to endure episodes about food shortages and other mundane shit like that, but I can't help but feel that having some sort of spooky corporation dropping a steady stream supplies takes some of surreal allure away from the island. Granted, it raises its own questions and mysteries, but I think I would have almost preferred the show leave things slightly more supernatural, or at least ambiguous.
• No one seems to have seen or heard the plane(?) that dropped the supplies. If that's true, then from where did they come? Something to do with the giant electro-magnet, maybe?
  
• Ok, we got a fairly large question answered in this one: Why was Hurley in a mental hospital? Well, he was in a mental hospital because he had a breakdown and developed an eating disorder. This was brought on because he feels responsible for a fatal accident in which a deck collapse claimed the lives of 2 people. The deck, which was already overburdened (built for 8, was holding 23), gave way soon after Hurley walked on to it. His mother had him committed when she realized he had a problem.
• It seems that Hurley also developed an imaginary friend, Dave, as a manifestation of his guilt. See, Hurley subconsciously decided that the punishment for his perceived crime should be to gain even more weight as a means of assuring that he would 1) be eternally unhappy with his physical appearance and 2) be constantly reminded by that appearance of what he had caused. Dave's role in this was to assure Hurley that his current behavior was perfectly acceptable, therefore continuing the implementations of his self-imposed punishment.
• Yeah, I know, it's complicated, and I'm sure my explanation sucks, but, I promise, it made pretty good sense in the show.
• Ok, so the show is not a dream or an hallucination. If it is, the writers are a bunch of dicks for having Dave just reappear and tell us like that.
• Hurley sure did beat the hell out of Sawyer. Everyone's reaction to it was great, too; Jin just laughing, especially.
• It's both very sad and very funny that Hurley had convinced himself that he was hallucinating based on the fact that a pretty girl like Libby had the hots for him. Definitely some of the most telling insight into the character.
  
• Ok, so Henry's been lying, and tries to keep lying, but gets caught in it and then seems to have a bit of a breakdown.
• Henry really did seem scared shitless of talking about the Others. It was almost as if he believed that they would somehow know that he had betrayed them. More credence to my remote viewing theory, eh?
  
• When Sayid was about to shoot him, Henry had a look of disbelief on his face when he said "but I'm not a bad person." More evidence of his connection to the Others, or at least the group that attacked the Tailies, if they're not one in the same.
• Do you think Sayid and Fiesty McBitch planned the shooting thing? Good cop, bad cop, maybe? I've heard the idea floating around, but I'd have to see the scene again to really form an opinion.
  
• The others seem to be directly responsible for the real Henry Gale's death via a broken neck.
• "Zeke," the bearded guy who we've seen as the others' leader, is apparently just some middle management schlump who answers to an even scarier figure; someone to whom they seem to refer as "Him."
  
• And if Henry is to be believed, the dead man's switch is just one big mind fuck. He didn't enter the code and everything reset back to normal, except before it did, the big electro-magnet spurred up for some reason. I kinda get the feeling that something similar happened to Desmond right before the crash and that the activation of the magnet is what brought the plane down.
• Henry might still be playing everyone, though. He dodged Locke's question about his real name.
• And poor Locke, he almost ended up back in that wheel chair. Good thing they just happened to have a set of crutches with then, huh?
• But one more thing about Henry; his comment about how God has no idea how long he's been on the island or even where the island is really makes me believe that, no matter how involved he is now, Henry Gale is not, or at was not originally, a willing participant in the Others' plan. Couple that with Alex helping Claire escape and I really gotta wonder how many of their number are being forced in to these actions.
• As hokey as it might seem, I think Eko is building a church. And I think Charlie kinda gets that feeling, too. He's helping Eko with the church as some sort of subconscious means of atoning for his sins.
• So Libby was a patient at the same hospital as Hurley. I was expecting her to be one of the doctors that was treating him rather than a fellow nutball (and from the looks of it, she was, in fact, a nutball). Did she claim to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist when we were first introduced to her? I suppose she could actually be either of those two things and still haven ended up in an asylum, but it kind of defies logic. In any event, I get the feeling that this purpose of this episode was as much a means of setting Libby's story up as it was of further explaining Hurley's.
• Speaking of past character connections, I wonder if the real Henry Gale has shown up on any of the previous episodes. We know what he looks like from the driver's license photo. Maybe he'll show up in the future.
  
• And on a final note, I'm left with the interesting possibility that Dave's appearance on the island is not actually Hurley experiencing a psychotic break, but rather the most recent occurrence of the same affliction that has been haunting some of the other characters since the beginning of the show. Jack's dad, Locke's visions of the plane and his mother, Charlie with the baby, Boone's vision of Shannon's death, the visions of Walt, and even the black horse and the polar bears, to some degree. Is the island conjuring these things? Are they getting the sickness?
  

With that, see ya next week.

Technorati Tags: Television, ABC, Lost, Entertainment