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Hurley finds out that among the garbled and nonsensical items that comprise the Rousseau Papers is a sequence of numbers repeated over and over. Thing is, those are the exact numbers he won the lottery with not long before getting marooned on the island. So he sets off in search of Rousseau, much to the chagrin of Sayid, Charlie, and Jack, who go off after him because of all the danger and whatnot. And they're dodging spike traps and rickety bridges and explosions like they're a bunch of goddamn grown-up Goonies.
Hurley's more than a little obsessed with finding out the significance of those numbers, because the lives of his loved ones and even complete strangers around him have pretty much gone to shit since he won the lottery, even as Hurley's wealth continues to grow, to the tune of $156 million (if Shannon finds out, Hurley's in for some lovin'). In fact, the numbers are the reason he was on the plane in the first place, since he traveled to Australia to find a colleague of a man Hurley knew in a mental institution, Lenny, a man who repeated those numbers over and over again. And Lenny did that because of a long-ago radio transmission in the Pacific, which Rousseau tells Hurley she heard as well. I don't think that really explains the supposed curse on the numbers as much as it adds more weight to that theory, but all Hurley really wanted was to know that he wasn't crazy for thinking the numbers were jinxed. It sounds like a stupid reason to put himself (and others) in harm's way, until you remember that, having already spent time in an institution, Hurley clearly cherishes his hard-won mental health. And besides, when is it not a good time to risk Charlie's life? Really, if Charlie had been killed, in a preferably painful and speech-disabling manner, no one would suggest the trip had been a waste of time and effort.
And remember that hatch that Boone and Locke are whatevering? It has that same sequence of numbers. I wouldn't advise using them for your own lottery ticket, though. Not because they're cursed, but because even if you win you'll be splitting the jackpot with just about everyone who watched this episode. Then again, that could provide a much-needed boost to the oversized novelty cheque industry. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Lost: Sobell kicked ass. And I got married, so thanks to all those of you who sent nice notes, which I blatantly fished for in my last recap. Have you tried this marriage thing? I can't recommend it enough. Among other things, I always have someone to play Uno with, and I always will.Waves are crashing on the beach as Mercutio supervises Raft 2: The Floatening. Jin makes an urgent circular gesture in Hurley's general direction, and Hurley tiredly wonders if Jin wants him to make a snowball, which, yeah, I know Jin doesn't speak English, but I'm thinking Hurley might try a little harder here. Mercutio says Jin wants him to bundle the bamboo tighter, so I guess Mercutio's given up some of the raft-designing to Jin, the one guy who can't communicate with anyone other than his wife, to whom he's no longer speaking.
Jack happens along, as he usually does, to see how things are coming along, and Mercutio says they're coming. Jack for some reason reminds everybody about the last raft being sabotaged, and Mercutio assures him that the raft is being guarded 24/7 (one can only assume that the assaulting and kidnapping and killing of unguarded castaways will continue for the near future). So it looks like Locke didn't rat Walt out for starting the fire, even though we've yet to find out more about that. Mercutio says the chances of a passing ship spotting their raft are pretty slim, so he wants to be able to send out some sort of distress signal. Jack says he'll ask Sayid, but adds that even if Sayid can make something, he's got nothing to power it with. Hurley says he thought Sayid said "the crazy French chick" had batteries.
Whether she does or doesn't, Sayid categorically refuses to go back or to help Jack go back himself, even though Hurley offers his most sincere and pleading "dude." Sayid says he was unconscious when Rousseau brought him to her hidey-hole, and he was disoriented when he escaped, so he wouldn't be able to find the place again. That's no excuse for not calling her, Sayid. Hurley suggests Sayid just doesn't want to, and Sayid spazzes off on how Rousseau's maps and notes are a whole lotta crazy, mixing song lyrics with equations. Dude, that's no reason to crumple them up! Jack wants to use the map to find Rousseau, and he and Sayid argue about it, but Hurley tunes them out, as he's found, in the crazy scribblings, numbers printed over and over again: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. Hey, I don't suppose anyone's interested in taking a wild stab at finding some significance in those numbers? Didn't think so. Due to the ascending numbers, they immediately looked like lotto numbers to me.
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.
Sayid turns over in his sleep in the middle of the night, to find Hurley staring at him. "You awake?" asks Hurley, and Sayid says he was just asking himself that same question. Hurley starts asking, as nonchalantly as he can, about Rousseau's notes, but Sayid says that given it's the middle of the night, maybe Hurley could get to the point. Hurley's incapable of that, though, so he hems and haws and asks what Sayid came up with in terms of theories for the numbers that Rousseau scribbled over and over again. Sayid sort of sits up and says that at one time they thought they might be coordinates. Hurley asks about the cable Sayid followed that led him to Rousseau, and Sayid points out that the cable didn't lead to Rousseau, but to a trap that Rousseau set. And because Hurley is asking all these questions and is carrying a guidebook with The Lonely Planet Guide to the Crazy French Chick's Place emblazoned on the cover, Sayid wants to know why Hurley's suddenly so interested. Hurley says he's not, that he's just making conversation, and he lies about as well as I perform open-heart surgery. Sayid keeps rubbing his eyes, and Hurley walks away, spiriting some of Rousseau's notes under his shirt, which I imagine is an advantage to his size: Sayid's not really going to be suspicious of a bulge.
Flashback to a press conference Hurley's holding after claiming his lottery winnings, which Lost would have you believe would attract as much media attention as a Super Bowl or a presidential inauguration. Moreover, all of the reporters are as excited as they would be at the former, and taking this "story" as seriously as they would the latter. And they do that reporter-mob-television-hubbub thing that disappears instantly when a particular question is asked instead of just muttering rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb. Asian Reporter Tricia Takanawa asks how he came up with the winning numbers, like maybe he FIGURED OUT WHAT THE WINNING NUMBERS WOULD BE or something. "They just sort of came to me," says Hurley, after hesitating a bit. That was apparently the only question all those reporters could think of to ask Hurley about himself, so an earnest reporter in a suit asks Hurley to introduce his family. Hurley sweetly introduces his mom, Carmen, as a "bashful beauty," and then he introduces his brother Diego and Diego's wife Lucy, and Diego's got a shaved head, only judging from the pattern of head stubble, he's not bald entirely by choice. And Diego yells, "We're rich, woo!" and the reporters laugh dutifully, only I think Diego's a bit of an idiot, and Hurley jokingly tells everyone to ignore Diego, as he's a moron, and Hurley is way too nice and this is why everyone loves Hurley. This is also why: he introduces his grandfather Tito, who he says is the best guy he knows, and explains that Tito's worked three jobs for 52 years, and the closest Tito's come to a vacation is when he had a pacemaker put in four years ago, and this is all sweet, and the kind of story when you see on the news you're kind of glad this person won the lottery? I actually found myself going "aww," which I never do outside of when they retire numbers of my favourite athletes and the athletes have their kids there, and the kids are always sweetly amazed, like, you're doing this for my dad? He's just Dad! This is evoking the same feeling for me, only it's fake and now I'm annoyed. And Hurley's going on about giving his grandfather the rest he's earned, and then Hurley blathers on about how nice it is to do things for his loved ones, especially as he's put them through a lot lately, although he doesn't elaborate, and he talks about buying his mom a house, and then when his grandfather gets back from a cruise, they're going to do all kinds of things...only by this point Tito has looked increasingly uncomfortable before finally just keeling right over.
Back on the island, Hurley's filling up buckets of water at the stream, when Charlie unfortunately comes strolling up. He says hello, and Hurley all jumpy says, "What? I'm not doing anything!" and Charlie's all quizzical and notices Hurley packing away the water, so he asks if Hurley's going somewhere. Hurley says no, but then seems to realize that it kinda looks like he is, so he says he's just going for a walk, to scope out some new fishing area. Charlie wants to come with, and Hurley gets all antsy and says no, and his excuse is that he just wants some alone time right now. Charlie doesn't seem to believe this, but -- and I mean this sincerely, and I'm not saying it solely due to my ever-deepening dislike for the hobbit -- I'm guessing that lately, like before he even landed on the island, he's used to people making up excuses not to be in his company.
Out on the beach, Claire's doing what I think any nine months pregnant woman is entitled to do: lounging. And since Boone is nowhere to be seen this episode, which is nice (except maybe for the portion of the audience that's swayed by pretty blue-eyed men), Locke needs someone else to harass, so he strolls up and asks Claire if she's free to help him out, since he's working on a project that could use an extra set of hands. She points out her baby-belly-induced lack of mobility, and he asks if she can hold a saw, and she says yes, and he asks if she can move her arm back and forth, like so, and he mimes sawing, like I've never been to Australia but I'M WILLING TO BET THEY HAVE SAWS THERE, LOCKE, and she says, "possibly," and he says she's perfect and he helps her to her feet. She wants to know what they're building, but he doesn't answer her, at least not that we see.
In the jungle, Sayid confronts Jack: "Where is it?" Jack has no idea what he's talking about. Sayid's looking for Rousseau's map, and Jack says he doesn't have it. Isn't Sayid supposed to be smart? I mean, Hurley woke him up to discuss the notes and all that, so he'd be the logical suspect. Well, he is, but Sayid just thinks Jack was making Hurley do his dirty work for him. Jack gives him a blank look. "You don't know anything about this, do you," says Sayid. Fortunately, at least for Hurley-finding purposes, Charlie wanders by, and Jack asks him if he's seen Hurley. Charlie says he saw him a couple of hours ago. "Acting like a loon, I might add," says Charlie. Well, you would know, Charlie. "My god, he's going after her," says Sayid.
So the three stooges pony up to go after him, and Shannon asks when Sayid's coming back. "If we can catch up to him, before nightfall," says Sayid. Look, at the risk of sounding indelicate...I mean, it's not like I've run any marathons myself lately, but I can't imagine Hurley's making great time. Look! There he is! Just down the beach aways! You'll be back in twenty minutes. Sayid smirkingly asks if Shannon's worried about him, and she snottily asks so what if she is, and he touches her cheek and says he'll be fine, and I guess this is supposed to be sweet or something.
Hurley's trudging don't the beach, with some loud rap music playing with which I am not familiar, and it's "everybody with me" and "drinks on me" and this kind of thing and I tried to Google the lyrics, but was unsuccessful, although I did find what might be the only Website where someone has posted, for some reason, lyrics to songs by Toby Keith, 50 Cent, Kenny Chesney, and Eminem. Plus it has an eagle on it, that may or may not have clutched in its talons a missile that's being rammed up the butt of Osama bin Laden. But Hurley's not listening to the song; it's thumping out of the new yellow Hummer he's driving down the street, at least until his mom asks him to turn the noise down, and I have a hard time believing she didn't ask that before they were even to the end of the driveway. She looks kind of sour, and wants to know where he's taking her, since he knows she doesn't like surprises. Hurley, dressed in a stylin' yellow and black track suit (matches the Hummer!), says she'll like this one, especially with all she's been through, like "Grandpa." Mama crosses herself. At the funeral, Father Aguilar was apparently struck by lightning. "Man, that was a freak storm," says Hurley. But wait, there's more! "Diego moving back home, after Lisa left him for that...waitress," says Hurley. It's the pause that kills me, although Mama yelling, "Don't mention that whore to me!" was kind of funny. "I'm just saying, you deserve something good to happen," he says. Mama lifts her eyebrows in a way that says, "Yeah, I totally do, but I'm not going to say so." Hurley's quiet for a moment before pointing out that ever since he won the lottery, bad things have been happening. "Like I don't know, the money's cursed or something." Mama smacks him -- and man, nothing hurts like when your mom smacks you, does it? -- and calls it blasphemy, since they're Catholic and don't believe in curses. No, we Catholics believe in all kinds of crazy shit, just not curses. Hurley says he's just talkin'. Then he says they're almost there and gives his mother a red bandana and tells her to put it on. Holy shit! He took his mother to drive-by some Crips? Here I am going "awwww" again.
Hurley pulls up at this massive house, gets out, and hustles around to the passenger side to help his blindfolded mother out of the car. She's bitching the whole time, by the way, complaining about having to wear the blindfold. He tells her to take it off and get a load of her new house, but she apparently can't hear him over the sound of her own pissing and moaning, so she slips on a step and, if that ridiculously loud snapping sound is any indication, breaks her ankle. And we already know she's not one to suffer in silence, so here we go with the wailing. She stops long enough to sniff the air and ask if Hugo smells smoke. He looks up, and sees the reflection of flames in an upstairs window. He whips out his cell phone to call 911 (with his mom helpfully yelling for him to tell them about her ankle as well). But Hurley's barely dialed when he hears sirens and a couple of police cars pull up. Hurley looks at his phone like, "That was fast," apparently before realizing that a) he wanted firefighters; b) he had yet to tell 911 that he needs firefighters; and c) holy shit, these cops are pulling guns on him and telling him to freeze and all that. As they slam Hurley to the hood of his Hummer, handcuff him, and read him his rights, Mama hilariously looks at him suspiciously and crosses herself again. "No such thing as curses, huh, Ma?" he says. Commercials.
Hurley finds the cable on the beach. He yells out, "Yo! French chick?" This, not surprisingly, fails to elicit a response. So he picks up the cable and starts following it, hopefully to the old French chick who lives down the road.
Flashback Hurley is going over his portfolio with his accountant or broker or whoever it is that people use when they have way more money than I do. It looks like the bad luck of others around Hurley is continuing, and in ways that benefit him. Like his money invested in orange futures skyrocketed when tropical storms hit Florida. And his sneaker factory in Canada ("I have a sneaker factory in Canada?" says Hurley, surprised) burned down, but it was over-insured so he gets a nice cash windfall. Not to mention the settlement he reached with the LAPD for the false arrest. "You've almost doubled your net worth in a few short months." His accountant still can't figure out how the LAPD mistook him for a drug dealer. Perhaps they saw the same Curb Your Enthusiasm episode everyone else did. Man, Lost gives shout-outs to the best shows! (Also worth noting: Hurley is now the majority shareholder in a box company. Locke works -- worked -- in a box company. Coincidence?) Hurley's still on the whole "bad luck" thing. "Hugo, you are not the first lottery winner to believe the money's brought him nothing but trouble. It's all in your head." Hurley asks if his accountant believes in jinxes and curses. The accountant says, "I'm an accountant. I believe in numbers," then completely undermines that by excitedly asking where Hurley got the winning numbers. I don't get this. They're random numbers (I mean, not on this show, as it turns out, but lotteries in general), but people keep asking Hurley this, like maybe he's got a secret stash of winning numbers somewhere. Hurley starts to say, "It's just something I..." and then he trails off. Then he's all, eureka! It's not the money that's cursed, it's the numbers! The accountant is the middle of scoffing at Hurley's notions of curses when, with a YAAAAAAARGHHH!, some poor schmo falls the window, on his speedy way to the concrete below. Sorry. I know the guy dies, but that's funny. And the jaunty music agrees with me too. Let's all have a sense of a humour and not get all Sean Penn over here.
Back on the beach, Sawyer's reading A Wrinkle In Time right by the raft construction site, and Mercutio's doing some hammering, much to Sawyer's annoyance, and he says so. "I'm sorry, is my building a raft to get us rescued bothering you?" asks Mercutio sarcastically, and Sawyer gripes that it is. Walt wants to know why Sawyer isn't helping. Sawyer calls him "Short Round" and says he's "watching for arsonists," but it's certainly a good question Walt raises, and you'd think that if Sawyer wasn't going to help, then he'd be elsewhere reading, if for no other reason than the sound of the raft-building seems to bother him. Mercutio's in the middle of siding with Walt when one of the other...stick bundles or whatever falls apart, which sets off an argument between Jin and Mercutio, because Mercutio thinks Jin didn't do it right, and Jin because, well, Jin I imagine has a problem being yelled at in a language he doesn't understand, especially when it's for having problems doing something as a result of getting instructions in a language HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND.
Kate Beckinsale and Sun are down the beach watching the proceedings, and Sun says that Jin's never going to speak to her again. "He just needs time," says Kate, but she likes to shoot the men she loves, so what does she know? Sun thinks he'll need more than time: "I humiliated him," she says. So, an apology then? Just a thought. Kate has no answer, given that she's not holding a gun at the moment. "When the raft sails, do you think he's going to leave with them?" asks Sun, like how the hell Kate would have any clue I have no idea. Kate just says she doesn't know.
Hurley's followed the cable deep into the jungle, all the way to a dead boar hanging from a trap, complete with buzzing and feasting flies. Hurley finally starts to look like maybe he's thinking this wasn't the best idea he's ever had. But he continues on, at least until he puts his foot down and hears a slightly metallic clink. He looks down, and sees he's stepped on some sort of metal plate. Remarkably, though, he's about to carry on when Sayid yells, "Stop!" and the three stooges come out from the bushes on the side. Hurley's surprised to see them. I'm more surprised that they were following him, and probably should have come up from behind him on the cable, but instead they've come at from the side. Also, despite being in the bushes, Sayid managed to see and/or hear that Hurley's stepped on a pressure trigger, and if he steps off it -- Sayid points up -- he'll release that. Hurley looks up and sees some kind of spiky contraption. "Oh, man," says Hurley. So the stooges scramble around, with Charlie receiving orders to find something to replace Hurley's weight. "How'm I supposed to do that?" complains Charlie, and Hurley snaps at him. And...well, come on, Hurley. I dislike Charlie, but there are cracks about your weight and there are relevant observations. Maybe you'd prefer being impaled to getting your feelings hurt? But Hurley insists that he can get out of the way: "I'm spry, dude." And despite the stooges' protests, he ducks out of the way, and the spikes swing harmlessly by. Charlie asks what the bloody hell's wrong with him, and as far as I'm concerned, Charlie's the last one who gets to ask that question (see, Hurley? I'm back on your side again). Hurley says "nothing," and gets to his feet. Jack wants to know what he's doing out there. Hurley claims he just wants a battery, and Jack's all, seriously, dude, what's going on? "Nada," says Hurley, and asks if they're coming. They are. It's just like The Goonies!
Hurley flashes back, to a time when he was berating a nurse at some kind of hospital, because he's looking for a Lenny, and the nurse says she can't find this guy if Hurley doesn't know his last name. Hurley asks her how many Leonards can possibly be at this place, and he just wants to talk to him for five minutes. Meanwhile, in the background is this idiot maintenance worker who climbs up a ladder to change a light bulb, despite the ladder shaking like a groom waiting for the woman he loves to start walking down the aisle. "He knows me!" says Hurley to the nurse, who starts telling him about private records, but Hurley interrupts her to yell at the worker to get off the ladder and leave the bulb for another time, which the terrified worker does. And maybe I'm nuts, but this guy looks like the actor who played the head of that military school that Tony wanted to send A.J. to. But you'd think that guy would at least get a line.
Hurley's getting increasingly agitated, but luckily for him he's interrupted by a doctor who calls him Hugo and says it's good to see him. Over Hurley's shoulder, we can now see a sign that says Psychiatric Admitting.
We're now in the cuckoo's nest, and we hear the doc saying that he doesn't remember Hurley and Lenny being all that close, and Hurley lamely saying, "We hung." There's a guy at a table mutter-grunting to himself and playing Connect 4. Hurley approaches by himself (the doc having only been in this scene via voice-over) and asks if Lenny remembers him, and introduces himself as Hugo. He sits down, and then tries "Hurley," but still gets no response, and tries saying he was just in the neighbourhood. Still nothing. Hurley leans forward. "Look, Lenny, I gotta know. What do the numbers mean?" Lenny doesn't stop playing Connect 4, or look at Hurley, but that's his cue to start grunting with a little more enunciation: "Four, eight, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-three, forty-two," like this is any surprise. Commercials.
"Come on, Lenny. Give me something. Anything. Where'd you get the numbers? Is that why you're here, Lenny? Because of the numbers? Did they do something to you, Lenny?" Hurley continues on in this vein, blathering about how he thinks the numbers turned him into a jinx, but nobody believes him, but he knows it's true, ever since he won the lottery with those numbers. This -- the lottery -- manages to break Lenny's reverie, and he looks at Hurley clearly for the first time since Hurley sat down. "You used those numbers to play the lottery?" How awesome would it have been if he said, "Goddamn! Why didn't I think of that?" Instead of that, though, he says Hurley shouldn't have done that: "You've opened the box!" he yells, and tells Hurley it won't stop, and that he's got to get far away from those numbers. And he launches into a full-on freak-out, the kind that necessitates a Nurse Ratched, in the form of some big dude who starts restraining Lenny. Hurley continues to badger the mental patient, though, asking where Lenny got the numbers, even as Lenny's being dragged out of the room. And fortunately for everyone, Lenny is able to yell that he got the numbers from "Sam Toomey" who heard them in Kalgoorlie, where he used to work. The last thing Lenny yells is that Kalgoorlie is, naturally, in Australia. And yes, the town actually exists. It's a mining town in Western Australia, and the name comes from the local aboriginal language, and is said to mean "silky pear bush" to the Maduwankga people, I swear to god. Looks like Hurley's movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of silky pear bush.
Back in the jungle, the Goonies have found that the cable they're following goes into the ground. "This poses somewhat of a problem," says Sayid, dryly. "Guys, you should come see this," says Charlie, off-camera. Probably found some poppy fields.
Actually, he's found a rickety rope bridge that crosses a little chasm. The bridge isn't very long, but the chasm looks kind of deep. Jack says Sayid never mentioned a bridge, like he's SCARED OF BRIDGES or something, and Sayid's all, "I never saw this, because I was STRUNG UP AND THEN TORTURED BY THE CRAZY FRENCH WOMAN." One of them says there's no way she could have built it by herself, and then we're reminded that she came here with a team and they probably did it and blah blah blah and you're thinking, "Just get to the precarious crossing of the rickety bridge that we know always happens in these situations," and Hurley's obviously thinking the same thing, because he sets off across the bridge, much to the consternation of the rest of the Goonies. Hurley says he's just checking it out, and tells them all to chill, et cetera. You know, it does make a certain sense for Hurley to go first, because, as Charlie will point out, if Hurley can make it across, then the bridge should hold the rest of them, right? Hurley does make it across, and beams a big grin right across the crevasse to the wusses on the other side. Charlie sets out, and...well, Hurley seems to have forgotten all about the jinx that he's been obsessed with all episode, or you'd think he'd have urged a little more caution. Charlie does, however, make it almost all the way across before the bridge collapses, and it's just a quick hop for Charlie and a "you okay, dude?" from Hurley, and Charlie's lifting his arms over his head and yelling like he's the heavyweight champeen. Jack yells over for the two of them to wait there and he and Sayid will find a way around and meet up with them. "Nah, screw that! You guys stay! There's a path right here --" Hurley yells, but Charlie freaks out, yelling, "Hurley, will you shut up and listen to Jack? He said stay put! You're acting like a bloody lunatic!" Delivered hilariously and impeccably by Dominic. Just thought I should point out that it's Charlie I don't like. Monaghan ain't no slouch. Hurley just glares at him.
This lone shack in the vast wasteland of the Australian outback is, presumably, Kalgoorlie. I mean it, this shack is probably the whole town. Hurley knocks on the door, which is opened by an older woman whose Australian accent seems to have been gleaned by a steady diet of Crocodiles Hunter and Dundee. "If this weren't the middle of nowhere, Oy'd say you were lost," she says. Hurley asks for Sam Toomey -- "Oy'm his woyfe!" she says -- and that he'd really like to talk to him. She'd like that too, apparently, as Sam's been dead for four years.
Sitting on the couch as Sam's Woyfe prepares tea, Hurley relays that he knew Leonard Sims, and Mrs. Toomey says they served together in the U.S. Navy, and asks how Leonard is, and if he's still in the service. "He's, um, retired," says Hurley, and it'd be awful nice of Hurley to be honest with the woman he's going to pump for information. He cautiously says that Lenny told him about Sam hearing "something." Mrs. Toomey is startled, then says, "You're talking about the numbers." She explains that Sam and Leonard were stationed at a listening post monitoring longwave transmissions over the Pacific: "Boring job. Sam hated it. Nothing to do but listen to static." Shit. Try recapping 7th Heaven sometime. Then one night, about sixteen years ago, there was something in the static. "A voice comes through, a voice repeatin' those numbers over and over again." Then, a couple of days later, they're at the Kalgoorlie fair where some "wally" has a jar "as big as a pony" (really?) filled with beans. "Fella's [but it sounds like 'Phil is'] offering fifty grand to anyone able to guess how many beans are in that jar, within ten." Hurley guesses that Sam used the numbers. And he was right, to the bean. Four billion, eight-hundred fifteen million, one-hundred-sixty-two thousand, three hundred and forty-two beans. I don't bleedin' think so. Not even in this supposedly pony-sized jar. Anyway, Mrs. Toomey says the man had been running the same scam for 40 years and no one'd ever come close. But they won the money. If this was a scam, why'd the guy admit Sam nailed the bean total?
Anyway, on their way back from the fair, a pickup truck blows a tire, hits them head on. "Lost my leg that night," she says, lifting her skirt slightly to reveal a prosthetic leg. I am constantly amazed by the lengths some actors will go for their craft. I can see amputating a leg for a part on <The Sopranos, but for an episode of a network television show? That's dedication. Anyway, there wasn't a scratch on Sam, who didn't see his lack of injuries as good fortune. "He was never the same after that." Sam started keeping a record of anything terrible that happened to people around him, and he moved with his wife out into the middle of nowhere, hoping the bad things would stop. "Did he ever find a way to make it stop?" asks Hurley. Sure did. "He put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger," she says. Then she wants to know what it is Hurley ("Mr. Reyes") wants. He explains that he used the numbers to win the lottery, and now he thinks he's under the same curse Sam was. Mrs. Toomey reacts even worse than Hurley's mom did to the notion of a curse. "You'd think I'd still have my leg if Sam hadn't picked the right number of beans? You think that floods wouldn't have happened, that houses wouldn't have burned down, that people wouldn't have died?" Hurley's all, "Well, yeah." And I just have to say, floods? Houses burning down? Now I'm starting to believe. Mrs. Toomey says that he makes his own luck, and he shouldn't blame the damn numbers. "You're looking for an excuse that doesn't exist."
Back in the jungle, Locke's busy working away on some wooden contraption that seems to include a row of pointy sticks. Claire guesses that he's making some kind of animal trap, but Locke doesn't respond other than to ask her to pass him a coconut half, which contains gunk that Locke says is glue he made himself from rendered animal fat. Claire's rather amazed. So amazed, in fact, she says, that Locke "should have one of those shows where you fix up houses for people." Oh, and maybe they should watch that movie about the cartoon fish too, right? Shut up, ABC. Claire thanks him for inviting her along, since she's tired of trying to remember the stuff that's happened to her. "How's that coming?" asks Locke. "Bits and pieces, here and there. Nothing that makes any real sense," she says, providing a more succinct and accurate recap of every episode than I could ever hope to write. Locke says he can help, since putting together bits and pieces is something of a specialty for him. Locke's really kind of cool when he's not freaky mystic jungle man, isn't he? He smiles at Claire. She smiles back. She so pretty!
Sayid and Jack make their way through the jungle, slowly. Sayid pauses. Jack wants to know what's up, and Sayid says this area of the jungle is familiar. He thinks they're close. "How do you know?" asks Jack. "I thought she lived underground." He takes another step forward, and trips on a wire. Sayid can barely yell "Jack!" before there's a large explosion right behind them.
Elsewhere, Hurley and Charlie hear the boom. "What the hell was that?" asks Charlie. Hurley makes a face like the numbers have done it again. Commercials.
Jack and Sayid are going over the smoking rubble of Rousseau's hidey-hole. "Hell of a security system," says Jack. "Somebody trips a wire and the whole place blows up?" Sayid says there's nothing in the wreckage, no batteries or anything of that sort. Jack says that doesn't make any sense. Sayid surmises that Rousseau figured he'd come back and bring others, so she abandoned the place, booby-trapped it, and moved on. "Moved on where?" asks Jack, but something tells me we'll find out before the end of the episode.
Looks like Hurley isn't completely immune to bad luck; after all, now he's traipsing through the jungle and he has to put up with Charlie yammering away behind him. Hurley's doing his best to head in the general direction of where the explosion came from. Charlie can't stop complaining about what they're doing out in the middle of nowhere, and he doesn't believe that it's for some "stinking" batteries: "One minute you're happy-go-lucky, good-time Hurley, the you're Colonel Bloody Kurtz," he says. Heh. "Dude, you don't know me." "Well, all this time on the island you've told me nothing about yourself," says Charlie, who it seems to me has spent all his time on the island either doing heroin, trying not to do heroin, or lusting after Claire. The lesson, as always: shut up, Charlie. Hurley tries to chalk it up to "personal stuff" but Charlie ain't havin' it, and he makes a valid point that they're lost, and Jack and Sayid may be hurt or "blown to bits" and it's all because Hurley's acting like a complete "nutter." I hate to admit it, but Charlie's right on that score, only it's his use of the word "nutter" that gets to Hurley. Not surprising, since Hurley spent time in a psychiatric institution. "I'm not crazy," he says quietly. He starts to say that he has his reasons, and Charlie says he has a right to know what's going on. Hurley considers this, then finally he says he'll tell him. Only just as he opens his mouth, there's the sound of a gunshot and a tree splinters behind them. Startled, they turn towards it. But not too worried about the sound of shots whizzing by, apparently. "Is someone shooting at us?" says Hurley, and the words are barely out of his mouth before another shot rings out, hitting a little closer this time. And Hurley and Charlie scamper off in opposite directions, and I have to say that Hurley's going a lot faster than I would have ever figured, at least until he trips and falls flat on his face. And when he gets up, there's a rifle all up in his grill. It's Rousseau.
"You must be the French chick," says Hurley, wisely dropping the "crazy" from his vocabulary. She wants to know who he is, and he's all, "I'm Hurley. Friend of Sayid? Guy you tortured?" He reaches for the notes of hers he has in his pocket, prompting a little more intense rifle-pointing, until he tells her that he's just got some of her notes. He slowly pulls out the page with the numbers, and pleads with her to tell him why she wrote them. She says she doesn't know. Hurley doesn't take this news well, and he puts his arms down. "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 is even looking for us, yeah, that's weird. But I just go along with it! 'Cause I'm along for the ride! Good ol' fun-time Hurley! Well, guess what. Now? I want some friggin' answers!" He holds up the paper again.
Rousseau puts down the rifle. She says her ship picked up a transmission of those numbers, repeated over and over again. They changed course to investigate, and even after they shipwrecked, the team tried to find the source of the transmission. "It was weeks before we found the radio tower," she says. Hurley's all, "Radio tower?" and Rousseau says there's a radio tower up by the black rock (which is noted on the map Sayid had). Rousseau says that her team tried to determine the meaning of the numbers while they waited for rescue, and after "the sickness" wiped out the team, she went back to the radio tower and changed the transmission to the distress signal the castaways heard. Hurley wants to know if they ever figured out anything about the numbers, where they get their power. Rousseau's thinking, "Oh, and I'm crazy?" Hurley says the numbers bring bad stuff. "They're cursed. You know that, right? The numbers. They're cursed." Rousseau considers this, and says the numbers brought her, and apparently Hurley, to the island. And since then, she's lost everything and everyone she cared about. "So yes. I suppose you're right. They are cursed." Hurley looks like he might cry. "Thank you. You have no idea how long I've been waiting for someone to agree with me!" and he wraps her up in a big bear hug. Hurley, dude? This woman that you've just been validated by, you know she's nutso, right?
It looks like Sayid and Jack are scavenging whatever they can, like lanterns, from Rousseau's hideout, and Jack points out rather needlessly that they need to find Charlie and Hurley and get out of there. Jack says he just hates going home empty-handed. Sayid, however, appears to have found a fragment of his picture of Nadia, so I guess the trip wasn't a total loss.
"Fortunately," Charlie stumbles out of the bushes to announce that someone was shooting at Hurley and him, only it seems to come as news to Charlie that Hurley isn't right behind him. "He was right behind me, and then he just wasn't." Sayid says he'll go after Hurley, and Jack says they'll all go. Just then, Hurley himself wanders out of the bushes (from the other side Charlie did, so go figure). "Go where?" Charlie wants to know what the hell happened to him. Fuck, Charlie, the same as you! Someone shot at him, and he ran like hell! Hurley reaches into his backpack and pulls out a large battery, and gives it to Jack. "Need a battery?" he says. Then he looks at Sayid. "She says 'hey,'" he says, then turns to go. Heh. Even Jack smiles as the leave, but Sayid seems quite choked. Commercials.
The commercial for The Ring Two says that in 2002, The Ring was "the one that started it all." Started what all, exactly? People going to see The Ring, I suppose. Hard to argue with that. And what's the over-under on how many episodes Blind Justice lasts? If it's any more than five, I'm taking the under. ["If it's any more than five, you're watching me eat my hat, because damn." -- Sars]
Nightfall. The Goonies troop wordlessly into camp, and Sayid silently hands the battery to Mercutio. Oh, sure, so Sayid gets all the credit.
Locke's still working on his whatever, and asking Claire about her baby, like if she has a name picked out. She says no, and admits she had been planning to give the baby up. Locke says that must have been a difficult decision for her, and she says it was. "Well, doesn't matter now," she says, before revealing that it's her birthday. Despite what happens in another moment, Locke looks genuinely surprised. He asks her why she hasn't told anyone. She points out that she's pregnant, single, and stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, so it being her birthday isn't really going to make things all better. Locke lamely offers that at least she and her baby will have birthdays close together. He claims that's good luck. Yeah, clearly Claire's had all the good luck she can handle. And because we haven't had the whole luck thing hammered hard enough in the A-plot, Claire asks Locke if he believes in luck. "I believe in a lot of things," he says, before saying that his whatever is ready. Claire has no idea what it is, and Locke lifts it up and flips it over: it's a cradle. Claire melts. And again with the "aww!" He says "happy birthday, Claire," but I don't think he knew about that until just a moment ago when she told him. She thanks him. Hell of a lot better than imaginary peanut butter, if you ask me.
Hurley's got his shirt wrapped around a stick that he's holding over the fire. Charlie strolls up and jokes that he knows food's scarce and all... Well, big guy, full day of extreme physical exertion, shirt wrapped around the head. Do the math, Charlie. Charlie sits down, and is all, remember back in the jungle when you were going to come clean about our little quest and the crazy French chick started shooting at us? Let's get back to that. Hurley doesn't say anything for a long moment, before finally saying that he thinks the plane crash might have been his fault, due to the little black thundercloud that follows him everywhere. Charlie tells him not to be daft, that bad things happen. "Planes crash, people die," says Charlie. "You think you're the only person with baggage?" Charlie reveals that when the plane went down he was snorting heroin in the toilet. "I was such a junkie, I couldn't even take a plane ride without having a fix. I suppose that was your fault as well." Hurley doesn't say anything. Now, having opened himself up by revealing his biggest secret, Charlie figures that Hurley would reciprocate. Hurley thinks about it before agreeing. "Back home, I'm worth $156 million." Charlie looks halfway amused. "Fine, don't tell me," he says and stands up. Hurley gives him a sincere "dude," but Charlie isn't in the mood for sincere dudes: "I bare my soul, and all I get is bloody jokes," he says and stomps off. Shut up, Charlie stomping off. Hurley goes back to looking at the fire.
Cut to Locke and Boone's mysterious hatch. Looks like they've been doing some excavating, as the hatch is at the top of a larger metal structure. And stamped into the side, underneath the hatch are the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42.
Two days later, 1.6 million people split the lottery, winning five bucks apiece.