That's what I meant by the next one. I'm just horribly unclear when I'm sure you people are reading my brain.

P-C, I use that quote whenever things go unbelievably, wonderfully right (usually for a change).

" Just this once! "

the Haitian dude

...look, this has been bugging me. It might just be a reflection of my own cultural-centric-whojamaflipness, or something, what with Haiti being nowhere the hell near my country, and thus my exposure to Haitian dudes being zilch zip zero nada not a bean.

But - WTF is with everybody describing him, just from a wee glance, as 'the Haitian-looking guy'?

What is so screamingly Haitian-looking about him that every person, regardless of their social/cultural/blahblahblah background describes him thus? That nobody just said 'scary black guy' and left it at that?

I just - I don't get it. Some people saying 'Haitian dude', fine. But nobody saying 'black dude'?

I mean, okay, in Britain we've got a higher proportion of us who are of Indian/Pakistani/Kashmiri/OtherBitOfTheIndianSubcontinent extraction than you have across the pond, so I get that most of the viewers of LOST don't stare blankly at the screen and say 'but...why is everyone calling Said an Arab as soon as they see him? He looks a damn sight more Indian than Arab. WTF?' And the answer is, I guess, that most of the viewers don't see the difference, although it seems honkingly obvious if you're used to seeing Indians and Arabs that they don't look the same. (I can handwave it, because there are plenty of variations of physical type in the Middle East, and okay, Said could look like that and still be from Iraq - but Neveen Andrews is not an Arabic looking guy, so having people assume he's an Arab on the basis of skin colour and features was always a bit bemusing.)

...So is this Haitian thing an equivalent? Am I being the LOST viewer person here now? With the not-noticing-a-hugely-obvious-thing that EVERYONE in the US would see at once? It boggled me a bit.

WTF is with everybody describing him, just from a wee glance, as 'the Haitian-looking guy'?

That's how he was identified by IMDb, and then it was revealed that he had a Haitian accent.

I think Eden also referred to him at one point as "the Haitian."

They refer to him as the Haitian in the show. My city has a huge Haitian population (including my SIL), and I didn't think Haitian when I saw him.

Of course Andrews being Arab is another matter all together. As in, huh? Didn't I read above that Ando is not Japanese either.

I don't know if Haitian dude is really Haitian, or just scary black dude.

I seem to remember Ted(radioactive guy) telling Matt about meeting a Haitian student just before the blackout that brought out his powers. I'm assuming he actually talked to the guy.

But - WTF is with everybody describing him, just from a wee glance, as 'the Haitian-looking guy'?

As said before, no one actually said looking at any point. Ted evidently talked to him and Eden (who worked with him) referred to him as Haitian. No one's come to that from appearance.

Didn't I read above that Ando is not Japanese either.

He's Korean.

But he has some Japanese connections -- like he was born in Japan or something so it's not a complete stretch. (George Takei said that he was doing his Japanese lines completely phonetically but I had thought that he knew some Japanese.)