I can sum up this episode in one word: midi-chloreans.
Once upon a time, Jacob and his nameless twin brother were a couple of bad child actors. They were born to a hot Spanish lady who shipwrecked on the Island and had the misfortune of running into creepy Island witch Allison Janney. Similar to how Luke and Leia were born, the hot Spanish lady popped out Jacob and named him thus, and then popped out a second baby... and then died. Only she didn't get to name the second baby, and in Revenge of the Sith the medical droid didn't say "I'm sorry" and crack Padme's skull with a rock.
Actually, I feel like Allison Janney spoke the Man in Black's name after he stabbed her and before she thanked him, but I couldn't hear it even after a couple of playbacks. I'm sure the Internets will provide it soon enough if she did.
I'm trying to think of what in this episode worked for me and I'm coming up pretty empty. A lot of stuff distracted me: like how when they became adults both Jacob and the Man in Black must have visited the Island stylists to get their modern haircuts, even when they had the more period-appropriate long hair as children. Or how the "Others" on the Island who were on the same ship as Jacob's mother spent 43 years on the Island and never, ever encountered Allison Janney or found her cave, even though she and Jacob often spied on them, usually out in the open.
I thought Allison Janney was also secretly a smoke monster, but I guess she wasn't. So how the fuck did she alone bury the wells dug to find the electromagnetic energy and then burn the "barracks" and kill all of the "Others"? I guess she really must have been a witch.
These seem like petty complaints but what tends to happen when you're not entertained by a movie or television is you start to ask questions and pulling at the seams. For the ante-penultimate episode of Lost, not being entertained - especially by an hour-long download of Island mythology and backstory - was really the last thing I expected. But now we definitively know who "Adam and Eve" really are, so that's something.
Actually, I liked that Jacob was the neglected brother and the Boy in Black was Allison Janney's favorite son, the "special" one she handpicked to be the Island protector. I liked Jacob telling her that she wanted her favorite to be the protector and now she's turning to Jacob because he's all she has left.
I also liked the Boy in Black's line to Jacob about the rules of backgammon and how Jacob can always make up his own game and make up his own rules. It would have been better for the lives of countless people in the future if Jacob was just allowed to cheat at backgammon as a boy.
So it was The Man in Black who built the wheel beneath the Island and who somehow knew via the extremely forward-thinking wise men amongst the "Others" he lived with for 30 years that he could leave the Island by turning the wheel. I wonder if the Smoke Monster ever learned from Jacob or anyone else who actually turned the wheel in all the years since that it magically transports to Tunisia? Not that the Smoke Monster would know where and what Tunisia is.
Wacky theory number one - and this is conjectured entirely by the actors' hair color (and the fact that season one Jack had the exact same haircut as the Man in Black) - even though Sayid said "It's going to be you, Jack" before he took an armful of C4 and Arzted it up, that was all a ruse and it will be Sawyer who becomes the new Jacob when it's all said and done.
Wacky theory number two - the light inside Marcellus Wallace's briefcase in Pulp Fiction is actually from that magic cave on the Island that we'd never, ever heard about before now.
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