Episode Report Card Daniel: A- | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The hand that Lockes the cradle
By Daniel | Season 1 | Episode 18 | Aired on March 1, 2005
And here's the thing about interpreting the numbers, which has turned into this whole cottage industry. I understand that it's fun for people, but numbers are endlessly manipulatable, and there are ultimately only ten numerals and various cultural and spiritual significance attached to all of them if you look hard enough, so multiplying and subtracting and adding digits is more like finding numbers that fit your theory, rather than finding a theory that fits the numbers. It kind of reminds me of -- remember the band Presidents of the United States of America? Yeah, me neither. But they had that one song -- well, they had "Lump," which was a little piece of greatness, but they also had that other song, "Peaches": "Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches." And a friend of mine posited that the song was not actually about eating peaches, that it was about eating something that, while not without its charms, technically was not a food. Not that I was by any stretch an expert on, um, peaches, despite possessing the rather common college guy's obsession with them, but the theory seemed to fit, especially, as my friend pointed out, you substitute the word "peaches" with the other possibility.
Well, university is nothing if not a forum for relaying knowledge and the spread of ideas, so I naturally shared the "not really about eating peaches" theory with my best friend and roommate. He considered it, didn't seem quite as taken with it even after "peaches" was replaced, and pointed out that pretty much any song, when you replace the lyrics with something you've chosen yourself, will now be about the thing you've replaced it with. And he was right. For me, when it comes to these numbers, this is kind of like that.
And we flash back to a Hurley who, if I'm not mistaken, actually looks a little slimmer than Island Hurley, although Flashback Hurley is sitting on a couch with a bucket of chicken on the coffee table, flipping through the channels, which include aerobics, avocados, a hoedown, and hockey, like they EVER show hockey on television in L.A. His mother yells from the kitchen that she hopes he's not watching those "G-string [Spanish word that clearly isn't complimentary to the women his mom thinks might be wearing said G-strings]." "Look, Ma, we talked about this. You want me living here, you gotta respect my privacy," like if I were Hurley's age and living at home, I can only imagine my mom deliberately invading my privacy nonstop until I got my ass out of the house. And not satisfied with Hurley's response, Mama comes through the door to tell him that it's Saturday night and he should be out finding himself a senorita. Then she submarines his self-confidence by pointing out he's gaining weight again, an observation I find odd for a couple of reasons. I mean, Hurley's a really big guy, and she's either A) just noticing that, or B) fine with him being, say, 300 pounds, but if he edges up to 305, it's a concern? He ignores her "help" with a countenance that indicates he's heard this before, and instead flips to the televised lottery drawing, which produces those same numbers listed above. Flashback Hurley, of course, doesn't know yet about Rousseau's notes. But he does know, as he checks his ticket, that those are the numbers he picked. And upon realizing this, he faints, as the television bobbleheads talk about the near-record jackpot due to this being the sixteenth week without a winner. Commercials.