OUT OF THE TREES: "LOST"/"OVER THERE"

The multi-millionaire Lottery winner Hugo Reyes, known to one and all as "Hurley" (Why? He's not telling!) has been 'Lost' for over a year, after the plane crash of Oceanic Flight 815.

Whew! Let me catch my breath. I'm too out of shape for such run-on sentences.....

Anyway, once he won the Mega Jackpot by playing the numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42), Hurley's luck changed for the worse. His grandfather died; his new house burned down; he got mistakenly arrested as a drug dealer; his mother's ankle got twisted.

And then he got on that cursed flight out of Australia and was never heard from again - by anybody in the outside world.

But that doesn't mean the curse isn't still plying its evil ways on his family back home!

Over this past summer, one of his cousins, Enrique Reyes, was killed in the line of duty 'Over There' in Iraq. Enrique left behind his wife Ana and a baby.

I'll have to find some site that doles out plenty of 'Over There' trivia to see if there's a timeline as to what day or month Enrique Reyes died; what was his platoon, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some of those cursed numbers were involved.

Do you think it's too much of a coincidence that Hugo Reyes might be related to Enrique Reyes? Or even to FBI Agent Monica Reyes from the last seasons of 'The X-Files'? Then you haven't been paying attention to the minutiae of 'Lost'. The TV Universe is built upon coincidence, but 'Lost' goes into over-drive to keep it all connected.

And it's the type of theoretical link that should be fairly safe. By the time Hugo gets home - if ever! - neither show will probably be around long enough for him to discover that his cousin is dead. Nor is there any reason for us to see such a scene, as a matter of fact.

Not that one would be necessary. Lots of stuff happens off-screen which we are not privy to, but we still have to accept it on faith that they happened.

Just ask Chekov and Khan when they met again for the first time in "The Wrath of Khan".....

BCnU!
Tele-Toby