Lost - "Some Like It Hoth"

Episode Title: "Some Like It Hoth"

 

Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: This week's episode title is the first so far this season that has obvious pop-culture references. There have been some minor "deeper meanings" to the episode titles this season, but for the most part, they've been pretty straight-forward descriptions of the episodes. To recap, thus far we've had:

1. "Because You Left" - line from the episode, Ben to Jack.
2. "The Lie" - main subject matter of the episode, Hurley living the lie.
3. "Jughead" - object in the episode, the nuclear bomb on the Island.
4. "The Little Prince" - minor reference to the book of the same name (CFL's Crew Debris), mostly about Aaron - who really has no tie-in to the book.
5. "This Place is Death" - line from the episode, from Charlotte… who also died.
6. "316" - minor Biblical reference to John 3:16, number of the Ajira Flight that brings the Oceanic Five back to the Island.
7. "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" - pretty obvious here.
8. "LaFleur" - Sawyer's new alias among Dharma, also means "the flower" in French… which has no relevance to the episode.
9. "Namaste" - "welcome" to the Island for our Oceanic Five, now in Dharma.
10. "He's Our You" - refers to the Dharma "Torturer".
11. "Whatever Happened, Happened" - Faraday's catch-phrase to explain time-travel.\
12. "Dead is Dead" - line from the episode, Ben to Sun, referring to Locke.

 

Huh. Looking back, it sure does seem like I've wasted my time each week in coming up with a "Deeper Meaning Guess" when in reality the episode titles haven't really been that deep… until this week. We finally have a "fun" episode title to breakdown!

 

"Some Like It Hoth" appears to be a combination of two things:

1. "Some Like It Hot" - the 1959 comedy classic starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon.
2. "Hoth" - a planet from the Star Wars universe.

 

Unfortunately for me, I've never seen "Some Like It Hot" and have barely seen "Star Wars" (I'm not even sure if I've seen all three movies, to be honest with you). Thank God for Wikipedia!

 

The storyline behind "Some Like It Hot" is as follows:

 

Two struggling musicians witness a gangster murder… but are spotted by the gangsters. The two flee town and jobs in an all-girl band headed to Florida… in Bosom Buddies / Ladybugs style. They both fall in love with a (real) girl in the band, a millionaire falls for one of them (thinking they are a real girl), and wacky hijinx ensue. The ending involves the object of the millionaire's affections pulling off his wig and yelling "I'm a man!" to which the millionaire responds "Well, nobody's perfect."

 

Hilarious.

 

The storyline behind "Hoth" is:

 

In the fictional universe of Star Wars, Hoth is the sixth planet of a remote system of the same name. It is a world covered in snow and ice, with numerous moons, and pelted by meteorites from a nearby asteroid belt. Native creatures include the wampa and the tauntaun.

 

If you're anything like me, you have no idea what the heck a "wampa" or "tauntaun" are. Apparently, wampas are fictional predators resembling Yetis. Tauntauns are bipeds that look like dinosaur-horses.

 

Weird.

 

How does any of this relate to Lost?

 

It's pretty easy to see how "Some Like It Hot" could tie in - based on the episode description below, you'll see this episode will feature Miles and Hurley tasked with delivering a package to an important Dharma official. For starters, we already have Miles and Hurley pretending to be Dharma to avoid being killed by them (or the Others) - just like the characters in the movie pretended to be women to avoid being killed by mobsters. Secondly, if Hurley and Miles are involved, wacky hijinx are almost a guarantee, aren't they? Perhaps we're in store for a little buddy comedy - which will provide a relief from the "heavy" storylines we've had thus far this season.

 

But none of this helps us with the "Hoth" part of the title. I suppose you could say that Smokey is a "fictional predator" that lives on the Island, like the wampas that live on Hoth - and maybe the task of delivering this important package involve traveling through "dangerous territory" on the Island where Smokey could be involved. It's a stretch, but based on my limited knowledge of Star Wars stuff, it's the best I can come up with for now.

 

 

Big nerds out there, this is your chance to use that worthless Star Wars knowledge for something worthwhile! Help finish the deeper meaning of this week's episode title in the Comments Section!

 

 

Guest Stars: Francois Chau as Dr. Pierre Chang, Marsha Thomason as Naomi Dorrit, Doug Hutchison as Horace Goodspeed, Patrick Fischler as Phil, Jon Gries as Roger Linus, Eric Lange as Radzinsky, Leslie Ishii as Lara, Brad William Henke as Bram, Dean Norris as Howard Gray, Tim DeZarn as Trevor, Lance Ho as young Miles and Linda Rose Herman as Evelyn. "Some Like It Hoth" was written by Melinda Hsu Taylor & Greggory Nations and directed by Jack Bender.

  

Guest Star Breakdown: Once again this week, the episode guest stars give us a good idea of how the episode will unfold. Based on the episode preview and description, this week will be a Miles-centric affair – which marks the first time we get flashbacks about one of the Freightors first introduced at the start of last season. It’s about damn time!

 

Naomi’s inclusion means we’re likely to get a pre-Island flashback between her and Miles. Although we know that Abaddon somewhat forced her to include Miles on her team, perhaps we’ll find out HOW she talked Miles into coming along… or perhaps WHY Abaddon showed an interest in Miles in the first place. Was his ability to communicate with the dead widely known? What is the extent of his powers? How did he come to acquire these powers? Was it standard superhero style involving radiation, or inherited from a long line of dead-people-talking ancestors?

 

Speaking of ancestors, this week should also confirm our suspicions that Miles is the child of Pierre Chang (who seems to feature prominently in this episode based on the preview). With “Young Miles” and Lara (aka Lara Chang) guest starring, it should be pretty obvious if we see a little Miles running around the Island in 1977… although that might bring the whole “rip apart the space time continuum” potential into play if Regular Miles were to interact with him.

I almost get the impression that Pierre knows full well who Miles is (kinda like Faraday thought Ellie “looked familiar”), which would explain why he would be trusted to deliver an “important package”. In fact, Pierre discovering Miles is from the future could explain why he started to build the Orchid and know so much about the FDW in the first place. Remember that video from Comic-Con last summer, where Chang was fully aware that the Purge was going to happen? Well, if he starts talking to Miles and Co, it could explain HOW he knew all that and why he might start trying to find ways to escape the Purge and survive. Although it seems like Horace Goodspeed is in charge of Dharma on the Island, it seems like Pierre Chang is the one that actually knows what’s going on…

 

Interestingly, Bram (the Shadow of the Statue behemoth who’s BFF with Ilana) is guest starring this week… but Ilana is not. Does his mean that we’ll see Bram off-Isalnd? Or will the Shadow of the Statue storyline continue with Ilana absent from the action? Speaking of the Shadow of the Statue, check out the chalkboard behind Jack in the episode preview… all about the different eras of ancient Egypt. Either the show’s creators are throwing a big red herring at us, or we are onto something when we theorized the Shadow of the Statue have some connection to the Ancient Egyptian Culture on the Island.

 

Episode Description: Suspicions about a possible breach intensify after Ben is taken from the infirmary, and a reluctant Miles is forced to work with Hurley when he's asked to deliver an important package to a top Dharma official.

  

Episode Breakdown: It looks like time is running short for Sawyer’s perfect life inside Dharma. This episode seems to take place concurrent with the events from “Dead is Dead” – but this time from Dharma’s perspective, where suddenly Young Ben has vanished from the infirmary, and Juliet and Sawyer (along with a Dharma Van) are suddenly missing. Given Horace and Phil’s suspicions about those two during “Whatever Happened, Happened”, it should take long for them to start placing the blame on the “new recruits” among Dharma.

 

But the main storyline of the episode appears to revolve around Miles and his mission to deliver an “important package” to a top Dharma official. The two big questions? Who is the “important package”, which I’m assuming is this fuzzy-faced dead body pictured below? And who is the “top Dharma Official”? There are a number of additional guest stars that we have yet to meet, any of whom could be a member of Dharma… but assuming we’re also getting some 2008 Ajira 316 scenes, they could just as likely be members of the Shadow of the Statue. What would be especially shocking would be to find out that someone like Ellie / Widmore were actually covertly working with Dharma all along, explaining how the “truce” came to be… but even more shocking would be for this top Dharma Official to be someone like Christian Shephard. How? Why? I don’t know, but you have to admit it would be fantastic.

 

As for the dead body of the episode, I’m reminded of what happened with Paul died… and Amy was insistent that they bury the bodies of the Others and take Paul’s body back to the Dharma camp. There might be something weird going on with dead bodies on the Island (being possessed by Smokey?) that requires them to be handled very specifically – or perhaps Dharma just came across a dead Other, and they intend to use Miles to find out all the secrets that the Others know.

 

But enough guessing about the episode. It’s the opening night of the Dave Matthews Band Spring Tour! Time for me to cuddle up with the computer and hit F5 repeatedly for the next three hours watching the setlist be revealed.

 

Until tomorrow!

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