‘How I Met Your Mother’: Jorge Garcia makes a Thanksgiving visit

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Jorge Garcia just can’t catch a break. On “Lost,” his character, Hurley, was trapped on an island, haunted by the winning lottery numbers that brought down a hailstorm of misfortune upon him. On Monday night’s Thanksgiving-themed episode of “How I Met Your Mother,” Garcia plays Blitz, a similarly unlucky-in-life character.

“Blitz is a friend of Marshall and Ted’s from college,” explained Garcia when Showtracker visited the set of the episode, dubbed “Blitzgiving.” “He’s the guy who always would leave the scene right before something really cool happened. That became known as the curse of the Blitz.”

Off-screen, Garcia’s been more lucky. Since finishing “Lost” this year, Garcia lined up a guest spot on ABC’s upcoming comedy “Mr. Sunshine,” landed on the cover of a Weezer album, got cast in the Fox pilot ‘Alcatraz’ from ‘Lost’ co-creator J.J. Abrams,and was approached by the “HIMYM” team to play Blitz.

“They contacted my people. They said that they had this part that they liked me for and they sent the treatment for the story,” he said. “I thought it was a cute story and this would be a fun group to come and play with.”

Going from the heavy drama of “Lost” to the sitcom world of the CBS series was not as jarring for Garcia as one might expect. “I was on ‘Becker’, so this is kind of almost like a hybrid between the two,” he said. “It’s still three cameras, but there’s no audience.” And there was a familiar face on set in Jason Segel, who starred with Garcia in the 2005 film “The Good Humor Man.” “It was just this last summer, the night before Emmy party, that I saw him after all that time,” Garcia recalled. “So it’s been cool, in a way, reconnecting with him.”

Things start to look up for Blitz when the curse “ends up getting passed around during this Thanksgiving episode.”

“He gets to be a part of a lot of really cool stuff, including a skateboarding dog,” teased Garcia. (“The skate boarding dog’s been begging to be on the show a long time,” joked Segel. “We finally found a part for it.”) Amid all the fun, there’s even a wink-wink reference to those unlucky “Lost” numbers and the island.

Garcia has once again found himself in a world of mythology and mystery, something he’s no stranger to after six seasons on “Lost.” The mystery of the mother’s identity on “HIMYM” often spurs the kind of speculation worthy of a “Lost” episode.

“It’s funny because I was actually talking to Josh [Radnor] this morning about how they have such a diehard fanbase that has Internet forums and all that kind of stuff that talk about the show,” he said, “which I thought was pretty cool and kind of exciting. ... They were wondering if I was going to be the mother at the end of it all. I was like, ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be the case.’ ”

That would be a bold ending, but perhaps not as bold as the series finale of “Lost,” which still has some people conflicted. Garcia, for one, could not be happier about how the show wrapped up.

“I loved it,” he said. “Hurley ends up with the island. How could I not like that?”

And it came as a total surprise to him. “I didn’t see it coming that it was going to end up being that we had all died and this was somehow like the next plane of existence for us to find each other before we moved on to what comes after it,” he added. “I figured that it would something that was not going to please everybody with an ending like that, but it was bold. They made a choice. ... ‘Lost’ was always about kind of like going for something and taking some chances as to what they wanted to create with the story. I think they had to do that.”

Garcia also admitted that he misses working on the show. “It was a great group,” he said. “And working in Hawaii, there ain’t nothing like it.”

Sounds like a reunion with former “Lost” co-star Daniel Dae Kim on another CBS show, “Hawaii Five-0,” is in order.

“It’d be fun to pop in,” he replied. “It’d be worth the trip.”

Don’t forget to come back to Show Tracker after Monday night’s episode to check out my recap of “Blitzgiving.”

— Vlada Gelman (follow my TV musings on Twitter at @stayingin)

Related:
‘How I Met Your Mother’: Jennifer Morrison goes for laughs
‘How I Met Your Mother’ recap: Beavers, long division and space
Complete ‘How I Met Your Mother’ coverage on Showtracker