Ab Aeterno

Tonights episode was called Ab Aeterno. A recap of all the commercials might be more fitting seeing as they had a longer air time than the actual show. This is really bothering me with only 7 episodes left. If they are going to have this many ads we need WAY more information than they are giving us. We found out nothing new until there were only 10 minutes left in the show. "The time is now" my ass...

Seeing as they are clearly not going to answer most of our questions unrelated to Jacob and the Smoke, we might as well focus on these issues. So tonight we are told that the island is sort of a giant cork keeping evil from entering and spreading into the world. Hell was referenced an awful lot considering the writers say it is not biblical.

Besides this, we now know Jacob and the Smoke are in some kind of disagreement over whether or not there is good in people. Jacob believes that people can understand right and wrong without his guidance, where the smoke monster believes people will choose evil over good. Jacob brings people to the island to prove him wrong... and has ended up killing all but a few that he has brought. So who is good and who is evil? Jacob's decisions have gotten tons of people killed, and we've seen many people die at the clutches of the smoke. Neither seems very good.

One thing that does seem to make sense is why Jacob let Ben kill him. He said in this episode he can't interfere with people's sins. He would have been interfering had he gone all kung fu on Ben like he did Richard in tonights episode. Jacob wants people to "help themselves" and choose the "right" path on their own, thereby proving smokey wrong.

What does this all mean in a larger context? It is clear that Jacob and the Smoke are not the highest powers, but we can assume that little blonde boy may be. Unfortunately they would rather show us commercials than any info on this. I'd like to think the Smoke somehow escaped from Hell but the island is acting as some sort of purgatory with Jacobs powers keeping him out of the real world... or maybe until he proves to Jacob there is good in him.

Final note. There is a major inconsistency in the show, but the writers couldn't have screwed up this bad, could they?
When Jacob and Smokey are sitting on the beach in the season 5 finale, the Black Rock is drifting slowly in the ocean and it is a sunny day. In tonights episode we see it crash on the island at night during a thunderstorm, smashing the statue. This one completely escapes me. I hope this is intentional or I think all Lost fans will be very angry with the lack of attention paid by the writers.

Hopefully next weeks episode gives us something worthwhile instead of trying to please "new" viewers that haven't invested 6 years of attention into the show. Suddenly ignoring all the details in a show which has survived on continuity and thick plot construction just to gain new viewers is bull shit. I hope that ABC realizes what they are doing.

No trailer or sneak peeks yet, but it's probably better that they don't bring our hopes up just to let us down.