Before you go any further: Yes this is a post about LOST, so if you haven’t seen the last episode — and if you’ve never seen a one, for that matter — avert your eyes, maybe scroll down and bitch about/defend Yoko.
Anyway, we will always post about LOST whenever there’s a musical excuse to do so. And this week’s ep did provide one, during the “reviving Roger Workman’s VW” scene, which we liked better the first time we saw it in Little Miss Sunshine. Chasing down patchouli busses aside, an astute commenter to Pop Candy‘s weekly LOST recap-and-discussion post had some insight on the writers’ choice of song for the scene:
I love the Three Dog Night song that was playing during the VW ride, but I couldn’t remember the name. So, I researched it on the Internet, and it’s called Shambala. I then read the lyrics, and it was a perfect song for Hurley and his struggles.
http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/three_dog_night/shambala.html
Then, I realized I had no idea what or where Shambala is. So I did a little more research, and according to http://www.shambhala.com/html/about/defined.cfm (and pay special attention to the capitalized word)…
Internally, Shambhala is the DHARMA chakra, located in the heart of all beings. It is the symbol for mind, completing the trinity of body, speech, and mind.
Holy crap!!! This website mentioned Dharma!!!! Plus, with the lyrics and how this relates to Hurley, is this a coincidence? I don’t think so. These writers are GENIUS!!!!!!!
The ep also had a fleeting and totally tangential Ladytron reference. Remember when Hurley dismisses the two members of his wait staff? And he says, “Mr. Tron? Lady Tron?” Eh? These writers are GENIUS!!!!!!! Well it was nice to see the character bonding, but did anybody see anything to justify those “don’t miss this ep or you won’t know what everybody will be talking about the next morning” ads? Maybe they meant Sawyer’s “hooked on phonics” quip to Jin. That was funny.
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I was only psyched to find out that the episode had Sung Hi Lee as the reporter that got hit by the meteor.
BTW, happy birthday to Lou Reed!
Honestly, Scott, i’m thinking about washing my hands of this show until the dvd comes out or I buckle under and get dvr. It no longer approximates appointment television to me. I dug the desmond episode, but the last two weeks moved exactly nothing forward, and brought to mind some of the unexplained phenomena (the numbers, Rousseau) that remains unexplained. These writer’s are geniuses, but they’re also too concerned with job security apparently, and dragging this thing out for as many seasons as possible. I think i’m done.
Tricia Tanaka is dead.
sawyer calling hurley “snuffy”
had to be.
Hurley got the comeback. “Red… neck… man”
“What’s this head doing back here?” “Oh, that’s Frank”
Two things:
I’ve heard at least three people use the “I liked it better the first time when it was called “Little Miss Sunshine” quip. Please. Now every movie/episode that has a Volkswagon bus is ripping LMS off? That’s ridonk.
And one thing that really bugged me about the episode that no one has talked about: the fact that Hurley was listening to the song in the opening flashback, and that, by pure coincidence, it was on 8 track in the bus on the island…I understand that it tied everything together in a neat bow, but these unexplained coincidences happen far too often, and it’s starting to nip away at me. I’m probably just being touchy…
And ABC’s promo dept. can go screw themselves…after the “three questions will be answered” farce from last week, and the pretending that this weeks episode was anything more then a funny, light-hearted Hurley romp with a tiny little cliffhanger at the end – I’ve never seen such dishonest bullshit.
hey, three dog night is good. “never been to spain”, “celebrate”, “out in the country”, “pieces of april”, “serenade”.
just sayin’
It’s Roger Workman/Work Man, not Frank.
I thought this episode was actually pretty good this week. The rest of the season has been pretty shitty, but this was pretty good.
Wait… didn’t anyone else find this episode totally gay (in the non-sexual pejorative sense)?
i remember when the singer of three dog night came to speak at my school
and i kept thinking, who the shit is that
“Now every movie/episode that has a Volkswagon bus is ripping LMS off? That’s ridonk.”
I think it’s more the fact that it was a nonworking VW bus that was then pushed to get up to speed so the driver could then pop the clutch and get it going is what is prompting the comparisons. Oh and then didnt Jin and Sawyer jump in while it was moving?? Cmon. It’s a bit more than it just being a VW bus.
Yeah, this episode sucked. I’m glad I no longer to the promos false advertising. It was fun, but it’s time they start revealing some answers. 2.5 seasons in and we are still this in the dark? Please. Although, next week’s ep (eye patch man!) looks promising.
Hurley didn’t say, “Mr. Tron…” he said “Mr. Tran.” The Butler was an older Asian man, and Tran is a Vietnamese name.
Nice grasp, but you were reaching on that one.
Anyone who’s had a VW bus has had to at some point pop the clutch to get the thing going. When I was a kid it wasn’t foreign at all for either my dad or my mom to pop the clutch on our bus to get it going. We even had to do it on our mgbt.
i don’t even see how those lyrics apply to hurley. the other night’s episode, to me, was just another in a long line of dissapointments this season. and the whole relationship between kate and sawyer is just getting laughable…like bad soap opera or something.
the only redeemable quality the episode had was when sawyer called charlie jiminy cricket.
It’s inevitable – bring up Lost and everyone gets angry…
As I said on my blog, it’s Three Dog Night’s time. Not only were they featured in Lost, but last night those crazy American Idol kids sang “Joy to the World.”
Perhaps it’s effort justification at this point –
I spent x many hours catching up on LOST … now I’m gonna stick with it to the end. Like West Wing.
I think LOST has become too focused on the rabid fan base as oppose to keeping interesting for the person that watches it every week, but isn’t going to analyze every little detail. There are a lot of interesting details in the episode like the fact that Desmond is named after a philosopher that deals with the exact problem he is going through, same with Locke. However, it seems they are putting too many of these easter eggs in the episodes so it just drags out.
The lyrics “wash away my trouble, wash away my pain” also kind of relates to the very first song Hurley was listening to on his headphones (episode 103.) That was “Wash Away” by Joe Purdy.
fyi – Sawyer and Jin didn’t jump in while it was moving, it was idle and in park. In LMS they had to keep the van in 3rd gear, hence the running.
I’m not a “Lost”-obsessive or anything, but I do appriciate the underlying themes of the show (which I think is still great.) From what I gathered, the truth about the numbers *was* revealed: Hurley was using “the curse” as an excuse for everything bad that happened to him. He made his own luck and may no longer be “cursed.”
As for the numbers’ origin — each time the numbers were entered into the Swan’s computer, it sent out a message on the radio (Rousseau claimed she heard the numbers on a frequency). Hurley’s former inmate pal was scanning frequencies in the South Pacific, stumbled upon the repetitive transmisson, thought there was something significant about it, and went insane. Figuring it out for yourself is much more satisfying than being told it in an awkward narration.
You’re all going to feel really stupid when they reveal in the very last episode that everything was a dream.
They don’t know what they’re doing anymore. They just keep pretending they do so you’ll keep watching.
LMS is the most overrated movie in years.
And LOST is a pretty overrated show. So they have that in common too.
I feel like I just huddle in front on the tv every wednesday for an hour for absolutely nothing to happen.
I say LOST is still the best hourlong on network tv. And as S. Jerusalem pointed out, subtlety in the writing beats awkward, heavyhanded exposition all day long.