LOST: "The Beginning of the End" [RECAP]

Bungle in the Jungle

Let's get this story out of the way first, as it wasn't really crucial to the overall theme of the show, and really will play out over the rest of the season:  The arrival of Naomi's freighter crew.  Now, I could go into a lot of detail on this, but I'll just skim over the key points.  Long story short, Jack is pissed at Locke and Ben, and it seems like Jack is hell bent on getting off the island, and is losing sight of the other picture:  His relationships with people on the island.

But, it seems that Naomi (I'm not dead!) was only mortally wounded, and has managed to pull a Mikhail and crawled away (I think I'll go for a walk!) when nobody was looking.  Actually that was my first thought, "Oh, sh*t, we've got another Mikhail on our hands!"   Problem is, she's got to tweak the sat. phone so that Minkowski can better lock onto its signal.  So, Jack takes off with Rousseau, and Ben in tow and goes off searching for her.  Kate pulls a fast one on Jack, and nicks the sat. phone from him, and goes off in a different direction with the same goal.

Guess who actually finds her?  That's right, it's Kate.  After a bit of mistrust and explaining about the entire Locke situation, Naomi finally agrees to tweak the phone, calls Minkowski to confirm, says something like "tell my sister I love her" and then finally, absolutely, definitely keels over.  We think.  (So who's the sister? Hm....)

Cannonball!!!

The flipside to this story is Hurley, Sawyer, and the rest of the gang still on the beach.  Again, I'll go into the detail on the important bits, and skim the rest.

They're all cleaning up the mess left over after the Others' beach raid, and there's a bit of a celebratory moment on Hurley's behalf.  He gets all joyous and does a cannonball, in a great bit of slow-motion, build-me-up-before-smashing-me-to-bits acting....

...and then he sees Desmond returning from the sea...without Charlie.  He goes over to the crew hauling the boat up onto the beach.  "Where's Charlie?!!" he demands.  Of course we know, and Desmond knows.  And now Hurley knows.  The crash from the previous exuberance is astonishing.  From this point on, Hurley is pissed.  Flat. Out. Pissed.  At Jack, at the world, at everything.  He learns about Charlie's final messages, "Not Penny's Boat," and he vows to not let Charlie die in vain.

The entire group heads off towards (what I'm assuming anyway) the cave/water hole and the other wreckage section.  At least it looked that way.  Along the way Hurley is sulking, and surprisingly Sawyer tries to cheer him up.  Well, at least be a friend to Hurley.  An unexpected twist on Sawyer, but Hurley wants none of it.  He straggles behind, and predictably gets separated.

And then things get a little strange.  I'll get into more detail in the analysis post.  He starts to yell "help!" to the other castaways, still wandering in circles.  Finally he comes across none other than Jacob's little shack, which would appear to be out of place from the hilltop location Locke and Ben found it at.  He peers inside to see the same table and chair, the dog painting, and a lit lantern.  Suddenly a figure appears in the chair (still can't make it out!) and an eye pops up at the window.  (Is that Locke? I couldn't tell!!!)  He runs in a panic, and turns to see the same shack, where it doesn't belong.  "It's not real!" he closes his eyes and repeats, reopening his eyes to find its not there.

Suddenly there's a fire appearing from noplace, it's Locke!  "Hello, Hugo," he says.  Locke starts asking a lot of leading questions in a somewhat "otherish" fashion, including one which I'll touch on in the analysis, "Were you out here shouting for help?", with a grin on his face.

Hurley and Locke decide that they appear to be on the same side, but for different reasons.  They can't leave the island with these new people, Hurley for Charlie's sake, "If we can't talk him [Jack] out of it then Charlie will have died for nothing!"

Hurley finally catches up to everyone at the cave. There's a bit of a confrontation with Locke, about the submarine, about the usual stuff.  Then the radio tower group appears, and everyone, well almost, is happy at the reunion.  Excepting Claire, who looks around in vain for Charlie.  In a bit of acting that was some of the best I've seen on the show, Hurley goes to her and tells her about Charlie.  Damn, that was a good moment.

There's a bit of a time lapse, and we return to Locke explaining how he was only trying to help, when out of the blue he gets cold-cocked by Jack.  Jack grabs Locke's pistol, and points it at him.  "You won't shoot me Jack, just like I wasn't going to shoot you." CLICK Jack pulls the trigger, and an astonished Locke tells him, "It's not loaded."  Damn, Jack is losing it.

Locke continues to explain his side of things, and Kate returns, with the news that the rescue crew is on the way.  At this point (I'm skipping the details) a line is drawn in the sand by Locke.  The LOSTies are splitting into two camps, with Locke and Hurley on one side, and Jack on the other.  A few of the no-names side with Locke, and Sawyer even steps over, along with Alex and Karl, Claire, Ben (who humorously asks permission from Jack first!) and Rousseau....  This is only going to end badly.

Hurley, Locke and their new company leave to take up residence in the Others' barracks, for security reasons.  Later, Jack and Kate are talking, "how did this happen?!" when they hear another helicopter.   It's flying erratically, and I'm not sure it made it out, but another jumper has arrived!!  "Are you Jack?" he says?  And we BONK out for this week.

The Ghost of Charlie Future

But none of the above can come anywhere close to the meat of the episode, the Hurley "flash forward."  Holy crap, dude!  Talk about a mind bender!

The episode starts with a scene of a pile of papayas against a clear blue sky.  We can only assume this is on the island, right? WRONG!! Suddenly a red early-70s Camaro blasts through.  It's Hurley! driving his dad's camaro!  He's in a high speed pursuit with the cops!  We even catch a glimpse of a respectable looking Jack watching this on TV, "Dammit!" he says, knowing who that is.

He finally crashes into what looks like a Chicken Shack, and tries to run.  He's finally taken down.  "Do you know who I am! I'm one of the Oceanic Six!!"  (Insert your own LOST BONK at this point.  More in the analysis post!)

He's taken in, and who should be running the questioning but "Big Mike" Ana Lucia's partner.  For some reason, Hurley lies about knowing her!  Whoa.  Mike shows Hurley some footage from a convenience store, where the chase began with Hurley just plain flipping out.  He leaves, telling Hurley he'd better come up with a good reason for what he did.

Hurley stares into the one-way mirror (Looking Glass? Hm...) on the wall (Which BTW looks strangely like the Hydra station, with the greenish dirty walls and all.)  Suddenly, it turns into a window to the ocean, and he has a vision of Charlie swimming towards the window.  It breaks, and the room starts to flood.  He flips out again.

Mike breaks back into the room.  "Do you want to go back to the nuthouse?"  "You can do that?!" Hurley exclaims.  "Thank you!!"

Apparently Hurley takes him up on the offer, and we return to the future to find Hurley playing Connect Four (ha, 4!)  He has a visitor.  It's a respectable looking guy in a suit, claiming to be an attorney for Oceanic airlines, Matthew Abaddon. He wants to upgrade Hurley to a better facility, with an ocean view if he wants it.  "No ocean!" Hurley cries out.  Hurley seems to like it fine where he is, and asks to see some sort of credentials.  The man can't produce any (I seem to have misplaced them!) and he leaves.  But not before saying something.  Something I couldn't quite make out.  It sounded like "They're still alive."  Dude!  A Dharma rep! The mind explodes.

Sometime later, we find Hurley sitting outside on the lawn.  A guy comes up to him, "hey that dude over there is staring at you," and quickly walks away.  Who should walk around a car, but a cleaned up Charlie!!  Hurley starts to wig out again.   "Don't run, I want to talk to you!"  It was Charlie that Hurley ran from in that store which started the police chase.  "You're dead! What do you expect me to do!  I know you're dead and I'm not having an imaginary conversation!"  "I'm dead, but I'm also here.  You have to do something, you're hiding from it.  They need you, Hugo."  Hurley refuses to believe he's having this conversation, closes his eyes, counts to five... reopens his eyes and Charlie is gone.

All the little bits of my mind that exploded earlier have little tiny explosions on the floor.  Dude.  This is getting trippy.  And if Charlie is a ghost, how did that other guy see him!?? Argh!!!

Tell.  Tell WHAT?

Again, later, Hurley's shooting some hoops in the gym.  He has another visitor, this time, it's future Jack!  They make a bit of small talk, including a comment from Jack about growing a beard, which places this chain of events before Jack's meltdown.

"Why are you really here, Jack?  Just checking to see if I went nuts?  If I was going to tell..."  "Are you?"  (Tell what?!!)  "I'm sorry for going with Locke, Jack.  I don't think we did the right thing.  I think it wants us to go back.  Never say never, dude!!"

And so ends the Hurley flash-forward.  All I have to say is a big Hurley-esque, DUDE!!!

Check for the analysis post coming soon.  I gotta contemplate some of this a bit!  But holy crap!  I was expecting a more material shocker, something to do with the freighter crew, or Locke and Walt, something on the island, but not this.  It's rare that the core of the episode has to do with the off-island story, but man.   I wonder if this is an omen of things to come with the show?  Where the future holds more to the story than the "present?"

Time will tell.

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