- Lost in TV Land-
Dave
 
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Fantasy Island - The Incredible Hulk - Lassie - St. Elsewhere

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Some noted the story of Hurley's time in Santa Rosa Institution resembles the plot of a Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode entitled "Normal Again" (from season six of Buffy)

Synopsis:


Quote:

Warren, Jonathan and Andrew unleash a demon whose powers make Buffy believe that her friends are figments of her imagination. Eventually Buffy attacks her friends, locks them in her basement and unleashes the same demon on them. Tara eventually finds them and Buffy recovers from the Demon's poison by drinking the antidote.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an American television series inspired by the 1992 movie of the same name. The original concept, screenplay, and TV series were created by writer/director Joss Whedon under his personal production tag, Mutant Enemy Productions. The show's title is often abbreviated simply to Buffy or BtVS.

The series follows the day-to-day life of Buffy Summers, a teenage girl chosen by fate to battle against vampires, demons, and other supernatural foes. She is "chosen", someone called a Slayer. She is often aided by her Watcher and her loyal circle of misfit friends.




 

Fantasy Island

Sawyer calls Charlie Tattoo.

Quote:

CHARLIE: Locke said some kind of blast doors trapped him in the hatch. Maybe it was because of this -- so no one would see who dropped it. Any of you guys see a plane last night? SAWYER: Yeah, I saw it, Tattoo. I just decided not to tell.

Possible Parallel:
There have been theories about our mysterious island also granting our lostaways their wishes, such as Locke being able to walk again and Charlie getting his guitar back.

The Incredible Hulk

Sawyer tells Kate that Hurley "hulked out" on him, a reference to the comic book character The Incredible Hulk, also a TV program and cartoon series. The show ran on CBS from 1978 to 1982, and starred Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner and Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk.

The origins of the Hulk in the TV series differ greatly from the original comic book. David Banner is a physician/scientist who has been traumatized by the loss of his wife in a fatal car accident and his guilt over his inability to save her from the burning wreckage. He begins to conduct research into strange phenomena in which human beings temporarily display superhuman levels of strength, trying to understand why others faced with a traumatic experience similar to his own were able to save themselves or their loved ones while he was not. He concludes that high levels of gamma radiation from sunspots are the cause. To prove the theory, he bombards his body with gamma radiation to see if he can endow himself with temporary superhuman strength.

Lassie

Sawyer says a line to Kate that references the show Lassie.


Quote:

SAWYER: Try to contain yourself, Freckles. KATE: What? I'm worried. You look like you got your "rear hanging mandango" kicked. SAWYER: Don't you got an adventure to get to? I think Timmy fell down a well over that way.

Lassie was a long-running television program.  There were a few different owners of Lassie throughout it's run with Timmy being one of them.

In the spring of 1957, Lassie brought home Timmy (Jon Provost), a runaway orphan who eventually joined the Miller household. Timmy was usually seen wearing black high tops as were most of his friends or acquaintances appearing on the episodes. Sometimes they were chucks and sometimes they were PF flyers or other brands. In the fall of that year, Gramps Miller passed away, and Ellen realized that she and Jeff could no longer work the farm by themselves.

To read more on the series of Lassie and her many different owners go the Chuck's Connection.

St. Elsewhere

Some have compared the storyline in DAVE to the final reveal in St. Elsewhere; wherein Dave suggests to Hurley that everything taking place on the island is actually being fabricated by Hurley himself.

The series was set in a decaying urban teaching hospital called St. Eligius, in Boston's South End neighborhood (said at the time to be based on Boston City Hospital, now Boston Medical Center), and took its name from the hospital's nickname, "St. Elsewhere", a dark, old medical industry slang term for poor hospitals which serve patients not wanted by the more prestigious institutions. As a medical drama, St. Elsewhere dealt with serious issues of life and death, though episodes also included a substantial amount of black comedy. The series ended with the revelation that the entire course of events in the series run was all taking place in the imagination of an autistic boy.   The jaw-dropping climax culminates in a blue-collared dad placing his young autistic son Tommy Westphall's miniature St. Eligius snow globe on the living room TV set, having summoned him to dinner. "St. Elsewhere's" entire six-year saga had all been a figment of little Tommy's imagination!

The reveal of the fabricated St. Elsewhere universe takes place with a snow globe. Note Desmond's lines in LTDA:


Quote:

DESMOND [laughing]: Do you think I did it on purpose? I was sailing for two and half weeks, bearing due West and making 9 knots. I should have been in Fiji in less than a week. But the first piece of land I saw wasn't Fiji, was it? No. No, it was here -- this, this island. And you know why? Because this is it. This is all there is left. This ocean and this place here. We are stuck in a bloody snow globe. There's no outside world. There's no escape. So, just go away, huh. Let me drink.