Previously on Lost: Hurley is haunted by an enigmatic string of numbers. Hurley wins the lottery by playing those numbers, earning immense wealth. Hurley is cursed by his alleged good fortune. Hurley crash-lands on a strange island, never losing any weight despite a shortage of food. Hurley discovers Dharma Initiative-supplied foodstuffs, eliminating any petty grumbling about the weight issue. Hurley spends some time in a mental hospital, where he sees people who aren't really there and is visited by Lt. Daniels from The Wire. Hurley falls in love, then loses that love. Someone strangles a trombone player, producing an awful sound that provides a haunting transition from a tense moment to a commercial break.
Please join us as we take our place behind the Mr. Clucks counter, ready to serve out piping hot, extra crispy Answers by the bucketful to hungry, Question-bearing patrons looking to have their appetite sated after last night's Hugo-centric episode.
Who loves Hugo?
It's right there in the episode title, silly. "Everybody Loves Hugo." Don't believe us? Then maybe rewatch the slideshow at his award presentation, filled with images of the generous, universally adored local hero, that accompanied Hurley's acceptance of the coveted Lucite T-Rex statuette (the "Sexy Rexy," colloquially), which each year is granted to the fried chicken magnate whose dedicated flash sideways episode most needs a feel-good, story-establishing kick in its opening minutes.
So why does Hurley, so very wealthy and so very beloved, have so many problems in the lady department that he's depending on his mom to set him up on blind dates?
Don't be naive. The money attracts gold-diggers that the kind-hearted Hurley wants no part of. If he really wanted a piece of Los Angeles' materialistic, surface-obsessed dating scene, he'd buy a few VIP tables at the new Drai's Hollywood, make it rain every hour on the hour, and be buried under more aspiring actresses than a shady casting director with an office in the Valley. So if his mother thinks she knows a nice girl for her son, Hurley's going to listen, especially when she gets all pushy about it.
So who's this Libby person again?
Are you submitting these questions before watching the entire episode? Fine! Fine. Libby was the cute girl from the tail section who was supposed to have a romantic picnic with Hurley, but then she was gut-shot twice by Michael while looking for some picnic blankets because he was a little on edge after killing Ana Lucia moments before. Then she died, taking with her into the afterlife any chance that Hurley might get laid on the island. (Supply and demand problem, sorry, dude.) To his credit, Hurley did a decent job recapping this for us after talking to the cross of branches marking her grave.
Why should Hurley trust the ghost of the guy who killed Libby and Ana Lucia?
A well-known fact about ghosts is that once removed from the world of the living, they exist only to help the people they've left behind solve their problems*. So when the once-murderous (but misunderstood!) spectre tells Hurls that if he doesn't listen, people are going to die, you can bet that the roly-poly ghost-whisperer is going to take his advice.
(*Miles does not necessarily subscribe to this view of ghosts.)
How many stars on Yelp has Spanish Johnny's earned?
It's a three-and-half-star casual-dining option. Users seem to love the "way strong" margaritas and "super delish" Shrimp Johnnydillas, but find the Enchiladas Borges "more disappointingly realistic than magical." And some gripe about the crowd, which at times seems "full of mental patients out with their doctors on a trial social-readjustment run."
If an attractive woman sits down at your table -- which you're seated at alone because your blind date stood you up -- and asks if you believe two people can be connected like soulmates, how many seconds should elapse before you're making out in a bathroom stall to explore the depth of your mysterious connection?
Normally, about thirty, if Dr. C*ckblocker doesn't interrupt the greatest moment of your life. (Now you see why Hurley seems to have such difficulty dating.)
If a character gives a speech about how she's been training her whole life to protect the people on the island, and that if the guy who's the immortal right-hand-man of her god/boss tells her to go round up some highly unstable explosives to help protect those people's lives, she's gonna go fetch some sweaty, ancient dynamite, dammit, how much time does she have before the bag of deadly boomsticks detonates, spraying her well-intentioned innards all over her precious candidates?
According to the Arzt Countdown Clock that appeared in the lower right hand corner of the screen at the beginning of her speech, about ten seconds.
Once that nice protector lady gets Arzt'd, what's the next logical course of action?
Why, to find more incredibly dangerous dynamite, of course! That plane isn't going to blow itself up. If they don't find more dynamite, then Ilana died for nothing.
Now, call us crazy, but isn't another way to look at Ilana's tragic death as a lesson about the quite predictable perils of fooling around with old dynamite?
Shut up, Jack. No one listens to you anymore, even when you're making sense.
Why didn't Zombie Sayid kill everybody at the sub, like Smokey told him to?
Eh, he didn't see the point. He used to kind of like killing people, at least deep down in the darkest places of his compromised soul, but now that he can't feel the terrible electricity of choking the life out of somebody, it feels like he's just been going through the emptily homicidal motions.
What would local Los Angeles ABC weatherman Dallas Raines' life be like in a flash sideways?
He'd probably be working a construction job, oblivious to the meteorological glamour of his "correct" existence until a strange man with a Scottish brogue appeared at his doorstep during the 11 o'clock news, urging him to pay very special attention to that night's five-day forecast. Then, falling into a nearly hypnotic state while staring at the identical cartoon suns arrayed underneath the days of the week, he finally realizes that something is not quite right with his once happy-seeming life.
Who's that guy behind the Mr. Clucks counter?
It's Freaks and Geeks star Samm Levine! But you knew that already. This final season is a wonderland of amazing cameos.
So, Mr. Eats His Feelings Out Of Greasy Bucket of Fried Chicken, why so sad? We're asking for the aforementioned strange Scottish guy who keeps showing up to make people realize they're just trapped in the Sideways Matrix.
Because he met a girl, and she's crazy. But not regular crazy, she's crazy-crazy, like "lives in a loony bin where they only let her out to go hit on overweight, secretly rich guys at chain restaurants where they confuse 'Spanish' and 'Mexican' cuisines" crazy. But she seems to know him, and he can't shake the feeling that she's right, even though it's obvious that she's nuts. She's nuts, right?
How is he going to know if she's nuts or not if he doesn't follow his gut and really talk this thing through with herm, preferably at the loony bin?
That's a great point, weirdo Scottish guy who's weirdly invested in a stranger's romantic life!
What's the best possible argument to make about why an evil smoke monster obsessed with escaping his island prison should untie the person his greatest enemy transported across the world by submarine in an attempt to foil his nefarious plan?
"I have nowhere to run to." Really, there's no comeback for that.
Now that the island has messily disposed of Ilana after she fulfilled her expositional purpose and is no longer of any use to it, what's going to happen to Ben when his usefulness has expired?
A lady was just turned inside out and splattered all over her new friends, and all Ben can think about is what his own innards will look like dripping from some tree branches. Typical. (That being said, the island will probably break both his legs and then send an entire pack of hungry polar bears to feast upon the helpless schemer, whose desperate offer to help his ursine tormentors return to their icy ho
meland will fall on uncomprehending ears).
Remember when Richard was this smokey-eyed Man of Mystery who seemed to have all the answers, instead of a panicked, existentially adrift wuss who's always screaming about get me some explosives this and why the hell did you blow up my boat with all the dynamite inside it? that?
We miss that guy. We really do. But he's been through a lot lately, so we'll cut him some slack until he gets his sh*t together and reminds us of that macho, confident leader we all know and love. (Until he gets blown up trying to make a bomb out of some chemicals he finds in an conveniently abandoned Dharma lab.)
If Libby is a voluntary patient at the loony bin, why is Dr. C*ckblocker being such a pain in the ass about letting Hurley visit her?
Because he knows he can trick the kind-hearted lug into buying $100k worth of new ping-pong paddles, Candyland games, and finger-paints.
Who's that mysterious boy Smokey and Desmond come across in the jungle?
What boy? We don't see a boy. Oh. That boy! Just ignore the boy and he'll run away! See? He ran away, just like a boy who's definitely not the reincarnation of Jacob will when you ignore him.
How deep is the well that Smokey pushes Desmond into?
At first, it seems very deep, deep enough that if you toss a lit torch into it, or a electromagnetism-resistant troublemaker who's too eerily calm for comfort, you can't see either of those things hit bottom. But if you stick around for the "scenes from next week" segment, you can see that the well's not very deep at all, and the Desmond is just kind of hanging out in the bottom, chatting with Smokey.
If a smoke monster promises you that if your friends come out of the jungle, he won't immediately order his army of darkness to massacre all of you or turn himself into a billowing pillar of smoggy death, would you take him at his word?
Sure, why not. Things have been working out OK for Hurley thus far. Everybody loves Hugo, remember?
In the flash sideways, why does Desmond run over Locke?
He's either a) he's jumping around in space/time and still really pissed off about being tossed into that shallow well (in the dark, it looked really scary and deep!) b) he's just trying to reunite Locke with his long-lost love of being violently thrown from his wheelchair, or c) he knows something we don't yet about smoke monsters, host bodies, and the looming triumph of unspeakable evil if BMWs don't run over crippled teachers in school parking lots RIGHT NOW.
The Whispers: Satisfying resolution to a long-running island mystery, or "Whatever, hasn't everyone been saying for years now that it's just a bunch of frustrated ghosts with unfinished business yammering about being trapped in their island purgatory?"
Somehow, a little of both.