Fat makes people stupid
Other people’s fat, that is.
It’s the only possible explanation for last night’s episode of “Lost.” Apparently, Hugo Reyes has one consistent character trait, and one only: he is fat. Or so the writers seem to think.
Spoilers below the break:
So in the alternative universe, everyone is in different circumstances, yet fundamentally, in most ways, the same. Jack is a spinal surgeon with a bad relationship with his gifted son. Jin and Sun are having an illicit affair instead of a bad marriage. Locke and Ben are dedicated, but frustrated and scheming, high school teachers. Sawyer and Miles are a wackily mismatched team of detectives.
And Hurley is the CEO of a worldwide fast-food empire.
Yes, Hurley, a likable character with good people skills, no known ambition, virtually no formal education, and a vocabulary that consists primarily of the word “dude.” I work at Harvard Business School, I’ve studied CEOs and met some, and this is not what they are like. Maybe, in the Alternaverse, Hurley still won the lottery, bought the franchises, and got lucky enough to hire good people to manage them for him and take care of his financial portfolio. So he could be just a figurehead who does the commercials and gives money away to worthy organizations.
But even in the Alternaverse, Hurley can’t meet women. “Look at me,” he says. Do the writers honestly believe that a philanthropic billionaire with a gentle and humorous personality would have a hard time finding a woman to love him because he’s fat? He might have a hard time trusting that a woman would love him for himself and not his money, but I don’t think he’d be so desperate that he’d get stood up for a blind date at “Spanish Johnny’s.”
Jorge Garcia, at least, knows better. Mr. Garcia has a girlfriend, and a darned cute one at that.
Dear Television:
Fat people are lovable. Fat people have sex. Fat people have boyfriends and girlfriends and wives and husbands who themselves may or may not be fat.
Also, fat CEOs who eat when they’re depressed probably don’t do it in their own fast-food chains. Bad for the business image.
Being fat is not a character trait. Please stop letting fat make you stupid, Television.
Thank you,
Robin
P.S. Oh, you know what else a fat rich person would never, ever do? Fly coach, morons.
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Robin, you are a fantastic FA ally! That’s not new information, but it needed to be repeated.
As a fat woman who is not trying to lose weight and whose cardiovascular health is to be envied, I find it frustrating to live in a culture where I’m expected to want to lose weight, and where I’m expected to be unsexual. I’m pretty damn sexual–I have a significant other, he finds me attractive, and we have a great sex life.
But television likes to pretend that people who look like me are uncommon, are excellent as punchlines, and have no other personal attributes besides being heavy. Awesome.
Fat is a physical trait, not a personality trait.
But then, the writers on Lost are occasionally really lazy about character development. Why develop when you can say Hurley is fat, Kate is an attractive unattached woman (who therefore must be desirable), and Sun is Korean? Every stride they make in developing these characters is undone in a later episode by lazy writing.
brava!
I don’t remember the last time I saw a TV show where the writers didn’t rely on some sort of stupid generalization or stereotype and call it character development at some point.
It’s related to yesterday’s discussion about being a person with an illness/disabilities instead of an ill/disabled person. For whatever reason, we have this need to give everyone a label and use that to define them, applying sweeping generalizations in the process. “Oh, you’re , you must ….” Most people don’t like having one thing define them, but they feel compelled to define others by one thing. I think that’s why it’s a common occurrence on TV programs.
Argh, the software must have thought I was attempting HTML – my statement was “Oh, you’re [ black/white/fat/thin/male/female/gay/straight/pregnant/a parent/childless/Midwestern/an amputee/diabetic/Martian ], you must …”
At least Hurley has a love interest who’s genuinely interested in him, perhaps even more so than vice versa (she gets flashes of memory when she sees him, which in the past have seemed to be caused by Twoo Wuv, and his don’t come until much later). But I have found myself saying “come ON, show” a lot more often this season than… well, since the “Hurley compulsively eats Dharma ranch dressing” plotline.
Of course, some fat people — and some not-fat people — do eat compulsively. But treating it a) as comic relief b) as though it’s the only possible explanation why someone would be fat (as it’s usually presented on TV, and certainly here) is not exactly the most sensitive way of handling that eating disorder.
And yes, the idea that Jorge Garcia, in anything but his affable-loser persona (because I would be a little worried about pre-815 regular Hurley’s maturity levels) would be chronically undateable? Poppycock.
I for one would love to meet a Midwestern diabetic amputee Martian.
Granted I haven’t seen Lost since season 2, because I realized my life would go on without it (and The X-Files turned me off to serialized dramas), but none of the male characters were exactly guys I’d want to end up happily ever after with or even know casually for a night.
Now the guys over at Seattle Grace Hospital make me want to be a TV doctor/nurse/intern/med student/crazy patient on Grey’s Anatomy. Although it’s probably good that my real life doctors have never been eye candy for me.
To me, Hugo IS the personification of happily ever after material – and the only one of the male characters I’d consider, since Bernard is taken ; ) The only thing that might give one pause are the in-laws….
Ajay — Yes, I wouldn’t want his mom for a mother-in-law, either! I mean, if you want to give Hugo relationship issues, there are at least two good avenues you can go down: 1) he’s afraid women are only after his money, or 2) his father disappearing and being raised by such a demanding, controlling mother has left him commitment-phobic.
FJ, he did start out as fairly immature and slackerish, which is why I never really bought the Libby/Hurley romance. Libby was a graduate student in psychology; I don’t think she’d have been interested in a guy who didn’t even know the Korean war was real, and who was perfectly content working a counter job at a chicken joint. (Juliet/Sawyer had similar class/education gaps, but Sawyer, despite his lack of formal education, is very self-educated and a thoughtful person.)
Veronica, you’re serious? NONE of the eye candy on “Lost” appeals to you? Dang, girl, you are PICKY.
Bluemoose, you are of course right. I think Sawyer, Jin, and Sun are really the only consistently well-written characters on the show. Even with Sun, though, WTF was up with her being a farmer and knowing all about herbal medicine? Do all “Orientals” just magically know that stuff? Because Sun is wealthy, materialistic, VERY urban, and the kind of person who’ll watch your kid in her hotel room for you because she has “cable and a minibar.” She’s about as likely to know gardening and alternative medicine as Carrie Bradshaw.
Sorry Robin…but its possible that the male characters are coded in my brain as their previous characters if I knew them in another series or a movie.
There’s a hobbit. Charlie from Party of Five (which we jokingly nicknamed “why Charlie cries”). CAG Boone from JAG.
I’m really not that picky, but the eye candy/plot quotient on Lost was probably not enough to keep me watching.
Let me know if they ever explained the polar bear monster thing from the first few episodes. That’s the only LOST question I have…
More Jorge Garcia awesomeness:
http://www.complex.com/CELEBRITIES/Mantras/Jorge-Garcia
[...] we all leave the island for good, I suppose I should reassess my earlier criticism of how Hurley’s alternative universe was played out. Since the alternaverses were only mental [...]