Previously on LOST: Charlie collected notes to send to loved ones before the raft set sail and the people on that doomed raft got captured and thrown in a pit.
We open on Hurley inside the hatch, turning on the record player and staring wonderously at all the food in the pantry. Stereotypically, he goes straight for the candy and potato chips. As he chows down on some ice cream, he is interrupted by Jin who, oddly enough, is speaking English. Or make that, Hurley is speaking Korean. Next, a man in a chicken suit is standing next to Jin, so Hurley asks about him. Jin says that everything is going to change. Then, the chicken man speaks in Kate's voice, which wakes Hugo up from his dream. He fell asleep at his post and the counter is now under four minutes. He enters the numbers into the computer and the counter resets.
Over in the underground cell, Sawyer, Michael and the real Jin are pondering their miserable fate until the door opens and a rope is dropped down. The big black guy motions for Jin and Michael to climb up. Ana-Lucia says she will shoot Sawyer if they don't. Sawyer thinks she is bluffing and takes a rock to the head. Mike and Jin obey and the door is slammed on a muttering Sawyer. Cue creepy LOST title screen.
Hurley flashes back for the second time to the exact moment when he won the lottery, but this season, the scene continues. Hugo's mother slaps him out of his fainting spell and asks what happened. Hurley hides the lottery ticket and says 'nothing', which makes his mother skeptical and angry. She tells him he has to change his lifestyle for health reasons, but Hurley argues that he likes his life the way it is.
At the shore, Charlie finds Hurley and strikes up a conversation. Seems the rocker would like to know what was in the hatch. Hurley stumbles through a lie about how it's just a bunker, which makes Charlie skeptical and angry. Hurley says he would never lie, so Charlie reminds him about the time he said he was rich. He stalks off in a bad mood.
Hurley lumbers over to find Rose, making her triumphant return to television, humming and doing some laundry. He is surprised that she doesn't ask or care what was in the hatch. She says it won't help get the laundry done, but Hurley, remembering the washer and dryer, says that it just might.
Hurley leads Rose through some thick brush in the jungle and finds the front door to the bunker. Rose stares in wide-eyed wonder at everything inside as Jack walks in and scolds Hurley about telling someone. Hurley swears he didn't tell anyone else and that Rose won't tell anyone either. Rose says that she doesn't know what she would tell.
Elsewhere, Claire is taking a walk on the beach when she finds something washing ashore. To her horror, it is the bottle filled with everyone's messages home that was on board the raft.
Back in the hatch, Jack gives Rose the tour and reminds Hurley of what his job is. That is, to inventory all the food so they can keep track of it once they tell everyone about it.
So Hurley and Rose sit down to the task at hand. Hurley opens a box and finds Apollo candy bars, which neither one of them has heard of. Rose says her husband, Bernard, used to say that candy is candy. Hurley is sorry for her loss, but she reminds us again that she is sure Bernard is fine. Hurley confesses that everyone is going to hate him, but Rose assures him that he is the only one everyone likes. Kate stops in to steal some shampoo so Hurley meekly tells her she can't have it. She ignores him and Hurley tells Rose that this is how it starts.
Hurley flashes back to his job at the chicken joint when his boss called him into the office to show him surveillance video of Hurley eating a bunch of chicken. The boss rants about how the company is not made of money, but Hurley, who actually is made of money, turns in his hairnet and quits.
Outside, Hurley is barely avoiding hyper-ventilation when his friend and co-worker, the dorky guy from Road Trip, comes out and announces that he too, has quit. They decide to go out and celebrate their day off.
In the jungle, Locke is doing some tracking when he announces to whoever is following him that they might as well come out. Charlie comes out of hiding and demands some answers because he saved Claire's baby and is just as important as some of the other people. Locke simply asks him what he wants to know.
In the hatch, Sayid is trying to break through some of the more secluded parts of the bunker but is having no luck because it is all concrete. Jack comes along and shows him the magnetic reaction his key has to the wall. Sayid lifts up a grate and suggests that they try going underneath.
At the cell, the rope is dropped again and Sawyer is let out of his solitary confinement. Michael explains that it was all a misunderstanding and now their captors believe that they were also on the plane. This does not stop Ana-Lucia from continuing her role as bad-ass prison guard as she punches Sawyer and demands that he follow her orders. Sawyer says that if she hits him again, he'll kill her. And with that happy exchange, the new band of super friends head off into the jungle single file.
Elsewhere, Charlie expresses his disbelief at Locke's story of Desmond. Locke figures Desmond took off because he had found his replacements and unfortunately, he did not leave much of a trail to follow. Charlie asks about Hurley and seems shocked to learn that he is in charge of the food.
Charlie immediately teleports over to the beach to call Hurley out on his lie. Charlie asks if there is any peanut butter for Claire. When Hurley refuses to hand it over, Charlie accuses him of changing and becoming "The Man".
Hurley flashes back to a record store where he and his pal are checking out Driveshaft from the Clearance, One Hit Wonder Rack. [Ha Ha Ha] Hurley heads to the counter to flirt with a cute girl and even works up the nerve to ask her out to a concert. He seems shell-shocked when she accepts. On the way out, his friend asks why he is suddenly acting on his crush and Hugo says that he wanted to do it 'before...' He doesn't finish the thought, but we know he means before everyone starts treating him differently for being rich.
Deep down in the bowels of the bunker, Sayid and Jack find some more impenetrable concrete- a dead end. Sayid speculates that the power source is somewhere behind all of it. Jack asks what he thinks about everything. Sayid says that the last time he heard of everything being covered in concrete was Chernobyl. They are distracted by a loud noise so Jack goes off to investigate. It was just the pipes. Jack climbs up to find Kate getting out of the shower. Oh baby- sexual tension!
On the jungle trek, Michael is introduced to Libby, who asks how many survivors there were from the front of the plane. Michael's team wins forty-something to twenty-three. Ana-Lucia pushes some brush aside and gives the secret knock on a metal door. They are let inside and the rafters are shocked to see that the number of people in there is not 23, but more like 5. They exchange worried glances.
Over at the rarely seen Sun's Magical Garden, Claire, Shannon, Aaron and Vincent regretfully show Sun the bottle of notes. They think she should decide what to do with it.
Inside the bunker, Hurley is angry that Locke told Charlie about the food. He is worried that things are going to change but Locke says that change is good. Hurley does not agree, saying that he is going to be the bad guy in all of this. He tries to quit but Locke says that he is not allowed to quit. This snaps the crazy twig in Hurley's brain and he goes off into the jungle to dig some dynamite out of its hiding place.
He flashes back to the night he and his friend got revenge on their boss by writing CLUCK YOU with lawn gnomes in his front yard. Humorous, but hardly a scathing blow on the revenge scale. During the getaway, Hurley is so happy that he makes his friend promise to never change no matter what happens. His friend says he will even drink to that.
Back in the bunker, Rose catches Hurley wiring up the boom sticks to detroy the pantry and he tells her straight up what he is up to because he "can't let it happen again". In his flashback, they pull into a convenience store to find a commotion of reporters. Hurley says they shouldn't go there, but can't stop his friend from getting out to find out what is going on. Hurley stares at his winning lottery ticket with sadness and regret.
In the present, Hurley's plan has upset Rose so she tries to talk him out of it. Flashbacks intermingle with the present now- Hurley yells at Rose about how the food will cause a rift and he'll be caught in the middle- the hated one. At the same time, he is remembering his friends betrayed reaction as the crowd of reporters flock around Hurley once they learn he is the one who won the lottery.
During the last commercial break, Rose talks Hurley out of blowing up the pantry- the show is so busy that things have to happen during commercials now- I was really hoping for some pearls of wisdom from the seldom seen Rose. Anyway, Hurley tells Jack his plans for the food. There's no way to make it last so the only thing to do is blow it all at once by having a big party.
And the plan works. Everyone has a really good time, especially Charlie and Claire when Hurley presents them with their beloved peanut butter. Most importantly, nobody hates Hugo. In fact, they all pat him on the back and love him for the party idea. The only one not in the mood to party is Sun, who goes off by herself to bury the bottle of notes in the sand.
In Bunker #2, an old (white) man approaches the newcomers and asks them about a woman named Rose. When they assure him that she is fine, he cries and thanks them. Then he introduces himself as Bernard.
Back at the party, the suddenly not crazy Rose slips an Apollo candy bar in her pocket and clutches the wedding ring around her neck with a smile.
Next week: Michael runs off to find Walt, which the tail survivors think is a very, very bad idea. Yes, it's time for some Others action!
I feel this episode really spoke to me...when I become rich and famous I don't want things to change either! :)
