It was always refreshing to get a lighthearted break from the insanity and lore on Lost. That was particularly true by season five, when you also had to keep track of who was where, when, how, and why — not to mention who was who (any character could be possessed, dead, or a hallucination). In episode two of its fifth year, Lost gave us less than 15 seconds of comedy gold in the form of Hurley throwing a microwave-fresh Hot Pocket at Ben Linus and missing wide right.
Real-time screenshotting and GIF-ing TV scenes on Twitter hadn’t yet become the norm, so the moment wasn’t memed into virality back when it aired in 2009. But the assorted fandom sites dedicated solely to Lost ate it up, with one Television Without Pity commenter summing up the general feeling: “All the crazy things in this show, I focus on the hot pocket, lol.â€
The show’s marketers knew there was something special about this seemingly random scene — the season-five DVD menu background on disc one plays a shot of Hurley putting the Hot Pocket in the microwave. If you idle there long enough, he comes back to get his snack.
But while that savory, sauce-filled pastry splattering against a kitchen wall holds a special place in the hearts of many fans, the cast and crew had no idea the random gag would have such staying power. When Vulture tracked down several of the people responsible for Hurley’s inept Hot Pocket defense — co-writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, director Jack Bender, editor Mark Goldman, sound designer Paula Fairfield, and Hugo “Hurley†Reyes himself, Jorge Garcia — they had, at best, fuzzy-yet-fond memories of its creation and filming.
“I said, ‘I think they’ve got the wrong writers. We never had Hurley throw a Hot Pocket,’†Kitsis recalls. “And Adam goes, ‘We did, and that was your idea.’â€
Deep in the Mythology
First, though, let’s back up for a refresher on what’s happening in this episode, “The Lie,†which was the second half of the season’s two-hour premiere. At this point in the series, the castaways on the island are stuck jumping through time against their will for reasons too complicated to recap here. (We’re deep in mythology,†as Garcia puts it.) Off the island, in 2007, the Oceanic Six — Hurley, Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sun, and Claire’s baby, Aaron, who returned to the mainland at the end of the prior season — are explaining away their miraculous survival with a bullshit story that prevents villain Charles Widmore and his henchmen from learning the island’s real location. That’s just the setup for this episode, which centers on Hurley and his struggles to maintain the titular fib.
Hurley is hiding out in his mansion when he’s approached by Michael Emerson’s Ben Linus — who, the audience knows, is actually on the Oceanic Six’s side, working with Jack to get them back to the island because the mystical powers that be demand it. Ben sneaks around back into the kitchen, startling our hero into throwing his hotly anticipated snack at the intruder. Like many things Lost, the Hot Pocket had a deeper meaning beyond the bit.
In an earlier version of Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz’s script, the snack symbolized the bond between Hurley and his mother. “We wanted something that would evoke Hurley growing up with his mom, like he would come home after school and she would make him a Hot Pocket,†Kitsis says. “Each character dictated the tone of their own episode, and Hurley episodes were best when they had a great dose of humor plus heavy emotion. Adam and I, at that time, really found it funny, the name ‘Hot Pocket’ — it was an inside joke and it worked perfectly with the emotion.â€
The Hot Pocket’s connection to Hurley’s mom got cut in rewrites but the duo were able to deploy the snack when they needed an amusing way for Hurley to react to Ben’s intrusion. “He’s not a character who’s ever going to hurt someone. Even if he hit Ben it still wouldn’t have hurt him,†says Horowitz. “It was always about finding that line — funny enough without crossing into the too-absurd.â€
Why choose a Hot Pocket over, say, a generic frozen burrito? “They’re just inherently funny,†he says. “They’re sleepover foods when you’re a kid. They’re stoner foods when you’re in college, or now. Hot Pockets are like a Swiss Army Knife of snacks.â€
“I Didn’t Really Have Hot Pocket Experienceâ€
On Zoom, director Jack Bender rewatches the scene on YouTube to refresh his memory. “There’s the Hot Pocket! I totally remember it!†he exclaims. “What’s great is the juxtaposition of using a Hot Pocket as a weapon — it’s very Lost-ian. As much as we dug deep emotionally, suspensefully, and philosophically, there was also that left-of-center humor. And using a Hot Pocket as a weapon is something Hurley definitely would have done.â€
Bender immediately recalls wanting to open the scene — which follows Jack reviving Sayid from being shot with a dart full of sedatives — with a transition to a POV shot from the microwave’s interior. “Look, it’s not reinventing cinema. Over the years, I and other directors have shot inside the refrigerator. I wanted to be inside on a wider angle, see that stupid Hot Pocket going around, see Hurley’s face come in because I knew that would be a great way to start it.â€
To accomplish this, the props team removed the back of a working microwave and its heating element, allowing the camera to shoot through while the carousel and other electronics functioned normally. “It lights like it would, which makes it even goofier,†Bender says. “We made sure it wasn’t going to be a steaming-hot Hot Pocket.â€
Bender and Garcia remember filming that day had an upbeat, lighthearted atmosphere — and not only because Garcia got to wear his “regular clothes instead of island clothes.†Given a fake pastry made by prop master Rob Kyker, they did take after take, with resets to wipe down sauce from the wall or wherever the Pocket landed when Garcia missed.
“It was so silly, throwing that rubber Hot Pocket. I had to do it a lot,†says Garcia. “Fake food is always entertaining to look at and play with. I didn’t really have Hot Pocket experience, but it had a decent enough heft. It had a little bounce to it, so sometimes where it would go after it hit the wall was pretty funny. Trying to get the precision on that, when you hit it, you’re really proud of the smear — ‘Oh, that’s the one!’ That was fun.â€
There was one drawback to using a Hot Pocket as Hurley’s weapon of choice: Without a product-placement deal set up, the Lost team wasn’t allowed to mention its brand name. “There was a great line — as it slides down the wall, Ben turns to Hurley and goes, ‘Well, that’s just a waste of a Hot Pocket.’ Michael took this line and hit it like a home run,†Kitsis says. “We had to cut it in editing because it’s like a free commercial.â€
After the splat, Emerson’s unnerving, unflappable gaze switches the atmosphere from comic relief to white-knuckle suspense. But it’s not just the acting — a lot of credit for keeping viewers uneasy goes to the pacing and shot selections by editor Mark Goldman.
“It’s Hurley’s scene, so by keeping the cutting simple and using the camera angles that move with him, you’re thinking it’s a domestic scene. Ben entering throws it off,†he says. “If we played it as strictly a scare moment and had the music go ‘dun dun dun,’ some of the humor of the Hot Pocket would have gotten stepped on. I’m a firm believer that a show is more engaging when the tone shifts, and Michael is so compelling that cutting to a medium-close shot of him shifts the tone right away. He’s Mr. Cool, the calmest person around, whereas Hurley is throwing Hot Pockets.â€
Very Great Drama
The microwave-to-countertop segment plays out realistically, calming the viewer with its sense of familiarity. On Lost, the scripts, performances, editing, visuals, and audio were all executed with the idea that the show had to feel real so audiences would put themselves in the castaways’ shoes, or lack thereof.
“We tried to make the show about real people living through confusion, fear, and, Where the fuck are we? How did we get here? Monsters are chasing us!†says Bender. “What I always pushed for — and the actors’ instincts were the same — was ‘Let’s make this real so that no matter how preposterous it goes, people relate and care.’â€
In this instance, you’re meant to wonder how you’d react if you were in Hurley’s position — and you wouldn’t be doing that if the little details didn’t add up. For Paula Fairfield, the episode’s sound designer, that meant making sure elements like the Pocket cooking were realistic to the ears. After all, if it sounded like the pastry was being grilled over coals, the viewer might get stuck on that incongruity and miss the action.
“Sizzle, ding, open the door, close the door, and then bam — it’s got to be very naturalistic, kind of understated but very specific,†she says. “I think I recorded the ding but the other stuff I had in my sound library. The sizzle was a tamped-down bacon sizzle. The Hot Pocket hitting the wall has a little bit of a slap, slightly wet, a little crunch, and a little weight to it. It can’t sound too hard. You don’t want to push something too much because it’ll pull the viewer out.â€
Clearly, the moment landed as intended, then and now — it still pops up in tweets and gets thoroughly discussed on Reddit threads. “We never thought that in a show that won an Emmy for very great drama, the Hot Pocket would rise to meet Locke in a wheelchair, no,†Kitsis says, laughing.
“We knew the weight of ‘not Penny’s boat’ and ‘The Constant,’†adds Garcia. “The show is surrounded with so much intensity, the moments of levity become very appreciated by the audience. It’s like when Hurley makes a golf course. People responded to it and talked about it as the ‘Hurley makes the golf course’ episode. But I’m like, ‘No, that’s the Sayid gets captured and held hostage episode! I’m the B story!’â€