Lost S 02 E 04 Everybody Hates Hugo - TV Tropes (2024)

Lost S 02 E 04 Everybody Hates Hugo »

Season 2, Episode 4:

"Have a cluckity-cluck-cluck day, Hugo."

In flashbacks, Hurley quits his job at Mr. Cluck's Chicken after winning the lottery, and is joined by his friend Johnny. Although Johnny promises the two will always be friends, he grows resentful when he learns of Hurley's newfound wealth.

In the jungle, the Tailies release Jin, Sawyer and Michael from the pit. Sawyer clashes with Ana Lucia, who is their leader. They are brought to the Tailies' hideout at an abandoned DHARMA station, and are introduced to the full group: Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, Libby, Cindy and Rose's husband Bernard. Although they started out with 23 survivors, only five remain.

At the Swan, Sayid and Jack investigate the station's magnetic properties. Hurley has been charged with taking inventory of the food supply and distributing it fairly, but is apprehensive about having to make unpopular decisions, especially after Charlie finds out and wants special treatment due to their friendship. He tries to use dynamite to blow up the food supply, but is talked out of it by Rose. He convinces Jack to allow him to just give everyone what they want straight away. At the beach, Claire finds the bottle of messages from the raft washed up. She tells only Shannon and Sun, who decides to keep it a secret, and buries the bottle.

• Bad Liar: Hurley was told by Jack to keep the food pantry a secret until they can figure out how to make it last. Unfortunately, Hurley sucks at keeping secrets, and Charlie instantly sees he knows more than he's telling.
• Blatant Lies: When Randy says that Hurley owes the company for an eight-piece combo, Hurley angrily says that he didn't eat eight pieces. Randy offers to watch the whole tape and Hurley clams up, suggesting that he's lying.
• Brand X: Most of the food in the Hatch's pantry is in white Dharma-branded packaging that describes what's inside "Ranch dressing composite", "Cereal", etc. The exception is the Apollo branded candy bars that Hurley recognises.
• Brick Joke: Claire finally gets a jar of peanut butter, which she had been missing ever since the crash.
• The Bus Came Back: Cindy, the flight attendant who gave Jack two bottles of vodka on Oceanic 815, is revealed to have been one of the tail section survivors after having not been seen since "Pilot, Part 2".
• Continuity Nod:
  • Charlie recalls the time Hurley told him he was worth $150 million. Hurley corrects him that it was actually $156 million.
  • Jack uses the key to the gun case that he still wears around his neck to showcase the wall in the Hatch with electromagnetism behind it.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Kate reminds Hurley what the Numbers are, still not knowing that those numbers have ruled Hurley's life for the past year. Hurley only bitterly comments that he remembers them just fine.
  • Hurley and Johnny spend time in a CD shop talking about how Drive Shaft sucks, with Hurley unaware that he'll go on to become best friends with its lead songwriter.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Charlie spends the episode angry that he's not considered important enough to be kept in the know about everything happening at the Hatch just because he didn't go to the Black Rock with everyone else, even though he spent the time rescuing Aaron. To his credit, when Locke takes the brunt of that complaining, he tells Charlie everything about it instantly, going against Jack's orders.
• Face on a Milk Carton: In Hurley's dream, he drinks from a milk carton that has Walt's face on it. As part of the Mind Screw, at this point in the season, Hurley has no idea what happened on the raft.
• Fair-Weather Friend: Inverted. Johnny sticks by Hurley when he quits his job at Mr. Cluck's, but becomes resentful of his good fortune when he finds out about his lottery win.
• Fat and Skinny: Hurley and his friend Johnny (played by DJ Qualls) were this before their friendship ended.
• Foreshadowing: Eko tries to rein in Ana-Lucia's violence before she attacks Sawyer, but goes along with it when she beats him up. That tension between the two will reach a breaking point later in the season.
• Good-Times Montage: The ending of the episode is a montage of the various survivors eating like kings and thanking Hurley for making it happen (including Charlie giving him a big hug), while on the other side of the Island we learn that Bernard, Rose's husband, is alive after all.
• Hyperventilation Bag: After quitting his job, Hurley tries to calm down by breathing into a Mr. Cluck's bag.
• Immediate Sequel: Hurley's flashbacks take place immediately after he found out he won the lottery and before his string of bad luck. We actually see him crush the coffee table when he faints.
• Irony: Randy taunts Hurley, who just won the lottery, by asking him if he's made of money and suggesting that if he is, then he probably doesn't want to work there anyway. Hurley quits on the spot.
• Jerkass Ball: Charlie grabs this one. First he uses Aaron to force answers out of Hurley who - for once - doesn’t spill them easily. Later after he learns of the Swan hatch from Locke, Charlie demands peanut butter for Claire. Hurley tries to explain why he can’t only for Charlie to snap at him.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Randy is as rude a boss to Hurley as he was to Locke, but he's not wrong when he reprimands Hurley for eating chicken while he's working.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The stress of having to inventory the food closet and keep it secret from everyone gets to Hurley very quickly, and by the end of the episode he attempts to outright detonate all of it with dynamite out of pure stress. Rose convinces him not to blow it up, and he later convinces Jack to cut the issue out entirely by giving it all away that night.
• Kick the Dog: Quite literally. Right after Sawyer gets pulled out of the pit, Ana Lucia notices he’s hiding a rock and gives him a 3-count to drop it. She doesn’t bother getting to 3 before she beats him up, even stomping on his bullet wound. Given what we learn about her 4 episodes later, among other things, it’s no wonder why she had so much hate among the fanbase.
• Language Fluency Reveal: Subverted. Hurley hears Jin speak English but it turns out it was All Just a Dream.
• Loved by All: When Hurley's worried about how managing the food supply will affect his popularity with the group, Rose points out that that's a non-issue because he's just about the only person on the Island everyone actually likes.

  Hurley: Everyone's going to hate me, Rose.

  Rose: Now that's just plain silly. You're about the only one on this island that everybody loves.

• Message in a Bottle: Claire and Shannon find the wine bottle full of messages that was on Michael's raft, alerting them to the fact that something has gone wrong with the vessel. They bring the bottle to Sun who decides to bury it so the rest of the castaways don't lose hope about being rescued.
• Mind Screw: Hurley's dream at the beginning is weird. It starts off with him binge-eating in the Hatch, but right after he drinks milk from a milk carton with Walt's face on it, Jin arrives speaking English. Then Hurley starts speaking Korean, and all of a sudden there's a man in a chicken costume there too. As the alarm for the Hatch rings in the background, Jin tells Hurley to have a "cluckity-cluck-cluck day", then the mascot speaks with Kate's voice before he wakes up.
• Mundane Solution: As Hurley points out, the amount of food in the closet is enough to feed one person for about three months, but nowhere near enough to sustain the group in the long-term. His conclusion is that they can either go through a whole lot of pain and stress trying to ration it out and hope that the survivors can live with whatever they come up with, or they can just say "screw it" and give it all away that night in a giant feast before going back to how they ate before. Jack chooses the latter, and the survivors eat like kings.
• One Degree of Separation: Randy, Locke's jerkass boss from "Walkabout", is revealed to have also been Hurley's boss during his time working at Mr. Cluck's.
• One-Hit Wonder: In-Universe. While in a music store, Hurley and Johnny find Drive Shaft's album in the bargain bin.
• The Reveal: Turns out Rose was right, her husband Bernard is still alive among the Tailies.
• Running Gag: Once again, Jin is asked to pee on something, this time Sawyer's bullet wound.
• Shout-Out: Charlie refers to Jack's core adventure group as "The A-Team", which was quickly latched onto by the fandom.
• Silent Credits: The usual percussive sound that accompanies the title card at the end of the episode is absent, reflecting the gentle ending of Hurley giving away the food and the revelation that Bernard is alive.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Sawyer pulling a bullet out of his shoulder with his bare hands seemed like a Moment of Awesome at the time, but since the wound hasn't been treated properly, it's starting to become infected.
  • Jack puts Hurley in charge of taking inventory of the food and figuring out how to make it last. Hurley determines that it can feed one guy for three months, but won't work for a large group. So he decides to just give it all away in a big feast.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Charlie gets Locke to tell him everything about the Hatch, and then Hurley still tries to pretend he doesn't know anything.

  Hurley: Locke's, uh, lying.

  Charlie: Was he also lying about the button you have to push every 108 minutes or the island will explode?

  Hurley: It's not gonna explode.

• Undying Loyalty: Eko stops Jin from interfering when Ana-Lucia attacks Sawyer despite trying to caution her against it seconds prior.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Locke innocently tells Charlie that Hurley was put in charge of managing the food in the Hatch. Charlie's subsequent actions and Locke's refusal to give Hurley a break drive Hurley so mad with stress that he almost blows up all of it with dynamite.
• What You Are in the Dark: Sawyer refers to Michael and Jin as his "friends" when he doesn't know they can hear. Michael bitterly lampshades that he didn't know they were friends now.