Here's a link to my recaplet (the short write-up). [link]

Blergh.

b) that the monster was already there, but that Jacob's brother's "soul" was absorbed in him?

Yep. Fate worse than death.

Did Jacob's adoptive mother have super strength and super powers? How did she raze a small village and fill in the underground cave and move the brother's body all before nightfall?

Maybe she was Smokey before. Hence how she knew about the fate worse than death.

I don't understand how she could have been Smokey before, because she had a living body that "Esau" was able to kill.

Yeah, I don't know how to explain that either.

Don't get me wrong, I don't understand anything any more than I did before the episode, but I found it compellingly watchable. I gave up on answers a while ago, I think.

I enjoyed it. I'm quite bemused as to why fans all over the internet are losing the plot (no semi-pun intended) over it. Yes, the light in the cave was a bit irritating at first, but by the end I was into the whole thing where the island is a Garden of Eden, source-of-all-life type setup. (I was less keen on the anvil that was the LOOK, THESE ARE THE ADAM AND EVE PEOPLE, NO REALLY, LOOK, THEY ARE ending. But you can't have everything.)

I think there are two kinds of LOST fans, and The Girl and I are the wrong kind. As we were just saying on the phone, we'd much prefer a LOST that featured no one but Hurley, Desmond, Faraday, Widmore, that spooky woman Fionnula Flanagan plays whose name I'm bored of looking up, and Jacob and Esau. And was all about the epic, not the adventure. We may be watching the wrong show. Just don't tell us that.

I'd have preferred to have had bits of this story play out over the season, instead of using up a whole hour of it when we're so close to the finale.

It's actually not all that unsatisfying an origin for Jacob and Smokey.

Also thematically, I notice that we have yet another mother willing to sacrifice her son. Also I guess the temple pool's revivication of Ben and Sayid must be connected to the Glowy Cave....

I'd have preferred to have had bits of this story play out over the season, instead of using up a whole hour of it when we're so close to the finale.

Someone mentioned on twitter that it was shown out of order. Apparently it was supposed to be shown earlier in the season. That would have made more sense. But yes, it would have worked better as interspersed scenes.

I feel like there's still more origin story to come. Let's hope it gets told quickly, if so.

Oh, huh, that would explain why it's not connected to the big events of last week.

What do Lost's mysterious Jacob and the Man In Black play when they're sick of black-rock-white-rock?