Ugh. My huge recap killed the thread. I hope at least Seska skims the last few pages. I included a non-religious analogy that I hope will help quell your disappointment.

Cindy, on the contrary; reading your recap made me want to watch the episode again, so I bought it from iTunes and watched it today.

And, I must say, when Desmond was pulling the cork out of the pool in the glowy mystical cave, I never once thought tampon, but now I will never be able to NOT think that. Thanks to you.

See -- one person CAN make a difference!

I want to post before I read the recap.

I'm with those in the "emotionally satisfying, intellectually dissatisfying" camp. I pretty much feel like six seasons and I still don't know what the hell the island is all about.

There are so many questions left unanswered, for example, if Jacob and Esau (Samuel?) can't get off the island, how did Jacob get off the island to touch his candidates? Just one question of many.

I would have liked to have seen a discussion on evil as it relates to the island and Smokey. Evil very much exists in the world, so how is it contained? What is the nature of purgatory/flash sideways?

For those who think the island was purgatory, they need to rewatch the pilot (which I did OnDemand after the fanale). I point to Jack. The first day, he's in a suit, and when he runs through the bamboo, we see a white canvass sneaker hanging from a branch. It's clean and fairly new. In the fanale, Jack is in jeans and tee shirt, and the sneaker is still there, but is now dirty and worn. Like it's been hanging there for six years or so.

I think only three years or so. Island-Present was 2007 by the end, I believe.

if Jacob and Esau (Samuel?) can't get off the island

Where was it ever stated, or even implied, that Jacob couldn't leave the island?

I think only Smokey was trapped. Hell, Jacob was the one who made it that way, if I recall.

Fern, I think a lot of the people calling the island "Purgatory" don't mean it in the RC doctrine place-you-go-after-death sense. They're being metaphorical, because it's a place in which the Lostaways got to burn off their sins.

Teppy, in one of my early drafts, I really expounded on that idea and then I grossed myself out, so I cut it out and reworked the whole section. I mean, I had a whole riff on Desmond getting * Toxic Shock Syndrome. *

And yeah, Jacob wasn't trapped. I think CJ is the one who told the MiB that he'd never get off the island, though (so I suspect it was her "rule" at first).

Cindy,

unfortunately, there are people who mistook the end of the series as saying that the whole series took place in purgatory.

I stand corrected on Jacob leaving, thought it was both of them. I think I need to watch from the beginning, and see what makes sense and doesn't. I also missed the end of season three and beginning of four. It's hard to keep track of everything that was said and what happened.

I've also added my own flash-sideways where Sayid works out his conflicted nature and ends up with Nadia. I think he belongs with her rather than Shannon, but in purgatory and heaven, anything's possible. At least in this athiest's version it is.

I realized that flash-sideways was not a "what if" reality, because the lives were too different than what we'd been shown during the flashbacks. There had to be more to it than flight 815 not crashing.

unfortunately, there are people who mistook the end of the series as saying that the whole series took place in purgatory.

Goobers. Wherever else Lost was vague, Christian's speech to Jack and Jack's on-island death seemed to leave no wiggle room to me.