Gregg Nations and Melinda Hsu Taylor team up to write their second script (Eggtown was the first for Nations, The Little Prince for Taylor). If you love the Miles character you'll probably love Hoth; I personally prefer him as a supporting character and I'm a bit surprised they went with a full-blown centric.
Flashbacks take us on a brief tour of Miles' history and abilities. As a toddler he could "hear" a corpse in an apartment, then as a young adult he decided to profit from that ability.
Problem: In Season 4's "Confirmed Dead" Miles was able to issue instructions to a dead teenager with no evidence of a body (or even ashes) anywhere. In SLIH, after Miles' customer states his son's body was cremated and ashes spread over a football field, Miles replies, "It's much better if there's a body." We'd learn that Miles only said "much better" instead of "absolutely critical" because money was at stake. Money he earned by faking his ability at that moment.
Based on this I'm inclined to think the writers (not just Nations and Taylor but anyone involved) did not plan Miles' abilities very well. The necessity of a body is kind of a big deal as far as silly superpowers go.
The on-island storyline, which had been pretty intense the last few episodes, suffers a bump in the road with SLIH. If you didn't get the pun, Miles and Hurley spend a large portion of the episode transporting a dead body in a DHARMA van — the closest thing to a road trip you'll see in LOST. This sets up a series of male bonding moments, chuckle-worthy punchlines, and Star Wars references. Better yet, one of their stops is a construction site — where the Swan is being built.
The big reveal: Dr. Chang is Miles' biological father. At one point Miles actually sees himself as a baby being held by Dr. Chang; if I'm not mistaken this gives Miles the distinction of being the only character to see himself as a result of time travel (assuming you don't count fake-Locke seeing real Locke).
The cliffhanger: Miles never got around to erasing surveillance tapes showing Sawyer and Kate helping young Ben to safety. Big-time goof on Miles' part, the DI is not gonna like this.
When it comes to Ken Leung I run hot-and-cold for an average of lukewarm. He's at his best when he's playing a frustrated and confrontational smartass, but every now and then he throws out lines that sound so stilted it's almost embarrassing ("Okay... so what really happened?").
Luckily he and Jorge Garcia make a great comedic duo and play off each other really well, with Miles being the "straight man" and Hurley being the punchline machine. As long as you're not expecting a tour de force of acting in a Hurley- or Miles-centric, you'll likely be content with what you see.
It was fun to see Francois Chau in a comedic role, pausing each time before saying Hurley's name and barely tolerating his long string of questions.
Unfortunately this is one of the few cases where a child actor did what you might expect: over-act. Cruel as it may sound, young Miles was more of a distraction than anything else and it was a rough way to start out the episode.
I just scanned through the episode again in case I forgot an impressive visual or set, but honestly there's not much to discuss. The Swan construction site is a semi-impressive set, even though one of the workers tossed the Hatch door around like it was a frisbee (it took both Locke and Jack to slide it off to the side). Maybe the props folks should've gone with a steel door instead of foam to avoid that continuity problem.
It's interesting that the one real opportunity for neato effects — Miles sensing messages from dead people — offered no effects at all... unless you consider Ken Leung squinting and shaking his head an effect.
Even though I generally like this episode and enjoy the banter between Hurley and Miles, this is one I might be tempted to skip on a future rewatch. Miles was a bit of an enigma in that his character was initially a near-casualty of the writer's strike, then his abilities were presented with apparent contradictions over Season 4 and 5.
Presenting a Miles-centric this late in the game seemed like a stretch, especially since we already had an idea what his abilities were and knew he was in the business of exploiting people in mourning. Don't get me wrong, I'm always up for character development but not if it brings most everything else to a screeching halt. Other than introducing the Swan site and having Phil discover the surveillance tapes, there wasn't a whole lot of forward movement here.
When it comes to comedic episodes I don't really expect much atmosphere or emotional impact. They still managed to include a semi-emotional moment with Miles seeing himself with his father, a nice moment for both Miles the character and Leung the actor.
If there's enough humor in an episode I consider that a substitute for atmosphere, and there are plenty of lines in SLIH that made me smile. However, I'm a software developer and as such have grown very fatigued with two things: Star Wars references and Monty Python jokes. I get it, the LOST writers have a perpetual hard-on for Star Wars but you'll have to forgive me if I just roll my eyes at the four-millionth cross-reference.
