* The game that Jacob and MiB found and played was the Egyptian game of senet, not backgammon. Being ignorant about board games, I simply assumed it was backgammon because of the long association of that game with LOST.
* One of the most important things about "Across the Sea" is that it demonstrated that the Island is a magical place on its own, independent of the presence of Jacob and MiB. At the beginning of the show, characters (particularly Locke) and fans often chalked things up to "the Island", as if it were a sentient entity. As more about Jacob has been revealed, there has been a tendency to re-contextualize events in terms of the two Island antagonists. Now we learn that Jacob and MiB are just the latest (and perhaps longest-standing) principals in an Island drama that is presumably as old as humanity itself. The question, as Jeff Jensen put it, is whether the current iteration will simply end this particular battle (Jacob/MiB), or the entire cycle itself.
It may well be that having two opponents battling over the Island is not the norm, that the unique circumstance of the twins raised to compete for the role of Island protector is the exception. Each Island protector works under different circumstances, with a different antagonist. In the case of Mother, it appears that her antagonist was her own tortured psyche or her own status as a monster.
* As I just alluded to, a lot of people believe that Mother was a monster in her own right. How else to explain her laying waste to MiB's village and her dire warning to Jacob to never go into the golden cave as it would be "worse than death"?
I think this theory is probably accurate. But I also believe that there is no set monster quota on the Island. MiB didn't replace Mother as monster; he became a monster as well because that is the consequence of entering the cave.
This raises the possibility that the Lostaways will stumble across the golden cave (assuming that it isn't covered up by the Temple), and one of them will venture down. Perhaps Desmond can use his electromagnetic uniqueness to neutralize the energy, or perhaps you can only fight a smoke monster with another smoke monster. And can't you see a power-hungry character like Ben as a monster?
* On a related note, there is debate about the nature of MiB after entering the cave. Did he actually become a monster, with his soul or innate being or whatever you'd like to call it disembodied, or did his body somehow become a conduit for some other entity?
As you can tell by reading my other comments, I am 100% in the former camp. I believe that the Smoke Monster we know and love (?) is the MiB in all of his true essence, just without his humanity. I don't think that his subsequent actions or his assumption of Locke's body or any number of other things make a great deal of sense if you start with another assumption.
* Jacob seemed to be the aggressor in their childhood days, beating MiB when he tried to leave. Later, he administers another beatdown after MiB murders Mother and chucks him into the stream. This has caused the cottage industry of sympathy for the devil to rise up again in full force.
Jacob is not pure good (although I do think he's probably gotten a lot wiser and a lot more holy over these centuries), but that doesn't mean that his mission is not good. MiB may have gotten a raw deal from his mother and his brother, but that doesn't mean that he has free license to murder anyone he chooses centuries later.
* This episode gave us a big potential insight into why the Monster dealt so severely with Mr. Eko--serious unresolved brother issues. When Eko refuses to confess, "Yemi" turns away and sneers "You speak to me as if I was your brother".
Eko was responsible for his brother's death, just as Jacob was responsible for his brother's transformation. It explains the extent of psychological torment that the Monster put Eko through before killing him--it was play-acting what he had wanted to do for years to his own brother.
* I like the idea floated that Kate and Claire are not candidates, or were removed that Kate and Claire are not candidates (Sun, too, perhaps) because they are mothers or became mothers (this theory would also require that Jin be (42) Kwon). Given Jacob's own experience, he might feel that maternity and Island guardianship are a very dangerous mix. But perhaps what the Island really needs is a new mother-in-chief that would atone for the sins of the last.
* I admitted that I was disappointed with "Across the Sea", but I still rank it as the sixth-best episode of Season Six. I don't understand the massive backlash, and I think that it is probably a result of expectations. I think this episode will be much better received by folks watching the series on DVD five years from now.
A couple of gripes about the Adam and Eve reveal have really been bugging me. The first is the complaints that Jack, Kate, and Locke discovering the skeletons in "House of the Rising Sun" was re-shown. I agree that this was completely unnecessary, but some reviewers have treated it as unprecedented for the show. But we've seen Charlie's death replayed in a similar fashion a number of times, as well as Jin's presumed death in the Kahana explosion. There may be other examples that I can't recall, but that would only further buttress the point.
The second complaint is that Jack, in "HoTR", said: "It takes 40 or 50 years for clothing to degrade like this." People have jumped on this to complain that TBTB didn't know who Adam and Eve were back then.
To which I say, no, they probably didn't. Still, there's no contradiction--Jack did not give a formal, scientific, answer, just a quick answer to verify that it had been a long time. And what exactly makes a spinal surgeon qualified to date clothing decomposition anyway?
* To me, tonight feels like the last episode. We all know the finale is on Sunday, but this will be the final weeknight where we stay up late and theorize and wonder what's next. That process is such a part of the experience of watching LOST that the finale just won't feel the same.
Obviously, there will be a lot to process after the finale, and I'm sure people will be discussing it for some time to come. But I expect to be a little numb to it for a while and to not really break the episode down for some time.
