Why Is Everything On Television Referencing ‘Star Wars’?

By Dave Itzkoff

Look, we love George Lucas’s “Star Wars” movies (the first three, anyway) as much as the next guy who ever asked his wife if he could name their first child Boba Fett. But even this may be too much.

To wit, here’s Hugo “Hurley” Reyes’s monologue from Wednesday night’s “Lost,” delivered to Miles Straume and urging him not to turn his back on his estranged father, which ran on our television at about 9:56 p.m.:

That was Luke’s attitude, too. In “Empire,” Luke found out Vader was his father. But instead of putting away his lightsaber and talking about it, he overreacted and got his hand cut off. I mean, they worked it out eventually, but at what cost? Another Death Star was destroyed. Boba Fett got eaten by the Sarlacc and we got the Ewoks. It all could have been avoided if they just, you know, communicated. Let’s face it. The Ewoks sucked, dude.

That was followed not 10 minutes later by the following scene on “South Park”:

We get it: you guys like sci-fi, your viewers like it, too. Now can we all please move on, or at least update our references?

(Incidentally, the “South Park” episode was one extended homage to the movie “Star Trek: First Contact.” Also, incidentally, Hurley’s speech contains at least one major factual error: in “The Empire Strikes Back,” Luke Skywalker doesn’t learn that Darth Vader is his father until after Vader has cut off his hand. Maybe this is one of the edits that Hurley is making to his revised “Empire” script?)

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