That was a very difficult episode to digest. I'll have to watch it once more before knowing if we took a step forward or a few back.

Instead of being all-knowing, we saw that Jacob is really like Sergeant Schultz: He knows N.O.T.H.I.N.G! Unless his centuries on the island has taught him something, if he really doesn't know, how will we?

Could MIB have all the answers? Like OFG, I thought of Plato's cave but wondered if the only creature that had been inside the cave is the one that knows everything of the outside world.

The question raised from this episode was: Is Smokey MIB or is MIB Smokey? I mean, was that MIB coming back as Smokey or was Smokey already inside the cave and he burst out after MIB was pushed in and will he claim him now that he has a dead body? Didn't the light go out when Smokey came out of the cave? If so, what is Jacob protecting?

When I saw Claude digging the hole and being covered in dirt, I thought we were supposed to see that all the "Bad people" had been claimed just like Sayid. They were bad because Smokey had them under his control. But then, how did "Mommy dearest" kill them all? I suspect she was a white smoke monster. There needs to be balance after all.

I found it interesting that Jacob looked exactly like Sawyer beating up Jack when he was punching Claude. Another parallel.
Jacob protects the island but he doesn't know a thing about what he is protecting. That's a lot like Desmond when he was in the hatch punching numbers. Desmond only wanted someone to come take his place so he could leave the island. That sounds more like MIB than Jacob however. Richard wanted to die instead of leaving the island, sounds a lot like CJ who thanked MIB for killing her. I'm starting to wonder if there is only 1 very troubled character.