Television Review: Everybody Hates Hugo (Lost, S2X04, 2005)
Everybody Hates Hugo (S0204)
Airdate: 12 October 2005
Written by: Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz
Directed by: Alan Taylor
Running Time: 43 minutes
With the second season of Lost now well underway, a distinct and disheartening pattern had begun to emerge for many viewers. The visceral shock and profound mystery of Oceanic Flight 815’s initial crash, and the raw, survivalist suspense that defined the first season, had seemingly evaporated. In its place settled a formulaic routine, a procedural slog through the island’s mysteries where revelations, when they came, felt less like earth-shattering discoveries and more like pieces slotting into a puzzle whose final picture was becoming worryingly predictable. Even when episodes executed individual elements competently, the overarching effect was underwhelming, a sense of narrative treadmills being run. Everybody Hates Hugo, the season’s fourth episode, stands as a prime and frustrating example of this early Season Two malaise—a solidly constructed but ultimately hollow instalment that highlights the show’s burgeoning creative conservatism.
The episode’s central flaw is telegraphed, ironically, in its very title. By framing the story around Hugo “Hurley” Reyes, the character universally beloved by both his fellow castaways and the audience for his inherent decency and comic relief, the narrative instantly gives away its hand. The title promises an ironic inversion, a situation where this gentle giant becomes an object of resentment. This setup removes any genuine suspense; the question is never if Hurley will be disliked, but merely how the plot will mechanically engineer that temporary state. It is a premise built on a foregone conclusion, sapping the storyline of potential tension from the outset.
The episode’s sole moment of genuine, disorienting intrigue occurs in its cold open, a cleverly executed dream sequence. We find Hurley amidst a vast, organised pantry within the Swan Station, blissfully snacking, only for the illusion to shatter into the far grimmer reality of his new duties. Jack, leveraging Hurley’s brief stint as a census taker, has burdened him with two odious tasks: aiding in the now-infamous button-pushing routine and, more critically, cataloguing and rationing the station’s colossal food stash. Hurley’s terror is immediate and profoundly human. He understands, with a clarity that eludes the leadership-focused Jack, that controlling the food supply is a direct path to becoming a pariah. His attempts to shirk this responsibility—culminating in a desperate plan to dynamite the pantry—form the episode’s A-plot. While Jorge Garcia’s performance imbues Hurley’s anxiety with palpable warmth, the resolution feels pat. A heart-to-heart with the ever-serene Rose convinces him to shoulder the burden, and his solution—a grand feast using all the supplies—is presented as a triumph of human spirit over petty conflict. Yet, it glosses over the profound logistical and moral dilemma it introduces: with the food now gone in a night, what happens in three months? The episode sidesteps this darker implication for a feel-good ending, a missed opportunity for genuine depth.
The flashbacks, written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, aim to excavate the roots of Hurley’s aversion to responsibility and change. They detail the immediate aftermath of his lottery win, capturing a poignant tragedy of good fortune. His desire to maintain normality, to keep his secret from loved ones, is tragically undermined the moment his wealth is exposed. The friendship with Johnny (DJ Qualls) is irrevocably altered, and his romantic advance towards record shop clerk Starla () leads nowhere. These scenes work effectively in isolation, illustrating Hurley’s deeply held belief that fortune corrupts and attracts resentment. However, they also feel somewhat recycled thematically, reiterating character beats established in his excellent Season One centric episode, ‘Numbers’.
Meanwhile, the much-anticipated revelation of the raft survivors’ fate unfolds with a thudding predictability. The revelation that Michael and Jin’s captors are not the mythical “Others” but fellow survivors from the plane’s tail section is the worst-kept secret of the season, heavily signposted by the earlier appearance of Ana Lucia. This plot strand, which should have carried seismic impact, is relegated to a B-plot, hurriedly delivering exposition through new characters Libby (Cynthia Watros) and the particularly welcome Bernard (Sam Anderson). While the confirmation of Bernard as Rose’s husband provides a lovely moment of long-awaited payoff, the twist regarding his race—that Rose, a black woman, has a white husband—feels like a contrivance. The producers’ later admission that they did it simply because the episode “needed a twist” speaks volumes about the narrative artifice at play, even if Sam Anderson’s brief performance is indeed strong.
Around these core plots, the episode scatters abortive threads that go nowhere. Claire and Shannon’s discovery of a message bottle, and Sun’s decision to hide it, is introduced and then immediately dropped. Jack and Sayid’s discovery of a concrete wall, hinting at a containment disaster on a nuclear scale, is treated as a chilling mystery box but lacks any immediate narrative consequence. Even Kate’s impromptu shower in the Swan Station, culminating in an awkward encounter with Jack, plays as transparent fan service, a visual distraction that adds nothing to her character or their complex dynamic.
This scattershot approach highlights the episode’s fundamental issue: a lack of boldness. The tail-section survivors, including the compellingly intense „Mr. Eko” and the pragmatic Ana Lucia, are given mere minutes of screen time, squandering the dramatic potential of their brutal story. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Cynthia Watros are left with little to do but deliver explanatory dialogue, failing to make the impactful introduction their characters deserved. More egregiously, the central conceit of food distribution—a ready-made metaphor for power, ideology, and survival ethics within the island’s micro-society—is reduced to a simple personal crisis for Hurley before being literally blown up and then partyed away. The profound tensions it could have explored are neatly avoided.
Everybody Hates Hugo is not a bad piece of television; it is competently acted, directed, and structured. But it is a definitively mediocre one, a “filler” episode that moves pieces on the board without injecting any real peril, mystery, or philosophical weight. It embodies the cautious, formulaic rhythm that had begun to bog down Lost in its second season. The puzzle pieces were being connected, but the picture they were forming, week by week, was starting to look frustratingly conventional, a far cry from the revolutionary, risk-taking drama that had crash-landed onto our screens the year before. The episode’s title, meant to be ironic, ultimately becomes a sad meta-commentary: by playing its narrative so safe and predictable, it risked fostering a sentiment the show could ill-afford—audience apathy.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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