TV Review: Lost Episode 2.18

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

From ABC: Libby lends Hurley support when he begins to think the island is having a strange effect on him, and Locke's sense of purpose is shaken when the prisoner provides new information about the hatch.

My Rating: 3 out of 4

This week's episode of Lost titled Dave is Hurley centric, and we immediately jump into things with Hurley admitting to Libby about his food problem. The island is not letting him lose weight he thinks. The two throw the food away in a sense, but this is just before Sun and Jin run by saying something was found. Libby and Hurley run after them, and this when they all find the food that had been dropped at the end of last episode. The islanders immediately go crazy, and Sawyer calls for order.

After a few snippy comments, they all suggest Hurley to take care of the food, but he wants no part of that job again. While this is happening, he sees a man just on the fringe of the group, and he runs after him. However, all he ends up finding is a man's shoe. Afterwards, him and Libby discuss the irony of them ridding him of his stash and getting new food to replace it.

Back at the Hatch, Jack is working on Locke after his injury last week. It appears he has a small hairline fracture to his leg. Locke tells Jack about Henry staying to help him. We learned that the man saying he was Henry Gale was actually part of the search party sent out to find Henry and they found him with a broken neck, but that is a lie too. Sayid found a note to Henry's wife on a twenty dollar bill. Turns out "Henry" is one of the others, and he continues to lie. Sayid has enough and tries to shoot him, but Ana Lucia deflects the shot.

We finally see Eko again this episode, and he is building something, which Charlie starts to help him with. We jump back to the jungle, and once again Hurley sees Dave. This time he looks very real, but Charlie and Eko don't see him when Hurley chases him out of the forest. This causes Hurley to turn to Sawyer to ask him for the meds he used to take. However, Sawyer jokes with him, and this sets Hurley off. He attacks Sawyer, and everyone lets him get a few punches in before pulling him off. In fact, it amuses people on the island more than anything.

Libby comes to Hurley's tent to find him leaving. He is on his way back to the caves to live alone where he can't bother anyone. He leaves, and once again he sees Dave in the jungle, and once again Dave tells him he is real and there on the island. As it turns out, Dave isn't real at all, so it is very likely he is real to Hurley because he has always been real to him. Dave tries to convince Hurley he is actually still at the hospital, and none of the events since the crash have occurred at all. Dave tries to convince of this and then also to jump off the cliff on the island in order to wake up from whatever coma he is in.

We finally return to the hatch to find Locke talking to Ana Lucia about "Henry." He wants to talk to him, but Ana Lucia doesn't want that to happen at first. He convinces her to give him just five minutes. Locke asks him for his name, but he wants to still be called Henry. The man tells Locke what happened when the counter went down to zero. Nothing happened at all when he didn't enter the numbers or press the button. The countdown simply restarted itself.

Back on the cliff, Libby finds Hurley, and he is curious to how she found him. She tries to help him, but he keeps backing away from her. He tells her she isn't real and he made her up, but she comes back at him with her own experiences on the island. The couple ends up kissing, and she proves she is real to him. However, in a shocking surprise it turns out Libby does know Hurley from before. She was in the institution with him.

Since this is a Hurley centric episode, we get flashbacks of his life. We learn that Hurley was put in a psychiatric facility by his mother for his weight problem, and the man he saw on the island was actually someone Hurley was friends with there, Dave. The doctor's feel Dave is a negative influence on Hurley. It appears he is when Dave seems to try to go against the hospital at every turn. He tempts him to eat when he shouldn't, and tries to get him to avoid his medication. We also learn that Hurley blames himself for the death of at least two people when a deck collapsed that he walked out onto. The deck was meant to hold only eight, so it would have collapsed whether or not he walked out onto it.

I always enjoy Hurley centric episodes, and I did enjoy this one. They don't go as deep usually, but this one did, and I liked the increased insights into Hurley's character. I think he is central to the events happening on the island. Libby also shocks me here because now we have to wonder if Hurley has himself a stalker. Good news here is we have yet another new episode of Lost next week, but the following week we know there isn't any episode because it marks the return of Alias.