I truly wanted to love this episode and learn from it. But twas not to be. This is what I got from the episode:
___________________________

A pregnant lady named Claire -- no, Claudia -- washed up on the same beach where our 815 survivors would someday camp. I'm guessing that the primeval shark that will eternally swim with the DHARMA logo busted up her vessel.

Claudia is helped by CJ. OK, she has no name but dabo says she'll always be CJ to him. Claudia and CJ speak to each other in another language that sounds vaguely like Latin. Once Claudia says her name, CJ speaks English to her. She says Claudia is a lovely name. (Claudia means "lame" or "limping" and we have our first self-referential moment of the episode.)

CJ snaps that questions only lead to more questions and only if Hurley had said it could they have inserted a more blatant "listen up" to the viewers.

Claudia goes into labor, naturally, and somehow CJ seems to have delivered babies before in spite of the fact she lives on an island and never knew anyone but her own mother. Claudia pushes out baby and says his name is Jacob. She had that one ready. Her stomach is just as huge as ever, so it's no big surprise that baby #2 comes along. CJ swaddled Jacob in white but ran out of white and swaddles #2 in black.

Claudia has only picked one name and needs CJ's help for name #2. CJ prefers to bash her head in with a rock. No name for you, baby #2, and in spite of the many times we hear Jacob named, BIB (boy in black) is never named.

CJ raises Jacob and BIB speaking English, which explains Jacob's American accent. I thought the Latin might have explained why Alpert and his people spoke Latin, but since Jacob speaks American and Richard is from Spain -- you got me.

Mommy, how did we get here? My mommy raised me, and her mommy raised her. We learn this is some kind of immaculate matriarchy. I see a problem here because with two boys it looks like there will be no more mommies, but the great thing is we finally have two characters with no daddy issues.

But soon we learn these kids are prototypes of Tom and Dicky Smothers. Jacob has a Tommy Smothers complex. Dicky is special and Mom has always liked him best. BIB finds a game and thinks he can pull one over on CJ by hiding it, but turns out she was testing him to see if Jacob could lie or something,which he can't.

BIB has never seen a game or heard of one, but he knows it is one, and he makes up Rules. Jacob asks why BIB gets to make up the rules and BIB tells him when Jacob manages to make up a game he can also make up RULES and make everyone follow them. WELL, that explains how we all end up in the mess that is Season Six.

Now the boys chase a boar because that's LOST move #2 to get people from point A to point B. CJ tells her boys that people are bad and always the same, just like MIB tells Jacob centuries later. They ask her a question and she says it's not time yet, and I swear I wait for her to say that this is only Episode 6.16 and if they are patient the Finale will explain everything.

Instead she blindfolds them and leads them to the magic Disney cave. There was a guy named Plato who wrote about a cave and maybe this is it. After CJ tells the boys that the light could go out, I half expect to see Tinkerbell fly by and ask if we believe in fairies to clap our hands. If we still believe in LOST, clap our hands, or all the fairies will die!

BIB becomes a teenager, sees his real mom's ghost, and we learn that Jacob cannot see dead people because he's not as special. Teen in black moves to the other side of the island with the bad people, but he and Jacob keep playing the game.

Then one day they are thirty years old, only Jacob is still a mental age of about ten. No name guy has stolen the missing part of Jacob's IQ and is off inventing what will be the frozen donkey wheel so he can get off craphole island.

When CJ shows up, he is down in some kind of underground well that might be one of the big holes they built looking for the "places metal behaves strangely." He tells her that she sucks for taking him to a light river cave that he can't find ever again but he has learned to find the light by looking in a different way.

We learn that he can take a little wedge of rock out of the wall and the magic light shines in like a sunbeam projected through Newgrange and lights up his wheel. He says that the men are going to help him make a bigger hole so they can let in more light which will make the system work as a transporter. Now all I can think is didn't the men build that stone wall in the first place, so why now do they need to take the rocks out to let the light in, I mean why didn't they just build a nice arched window or porthole in the first place.

But yeah, questions are bad.

CJ does her apology thing which means she is about to bash your head on a rock. Somehow she kills everyone and fills in the hole in the ground after bringing her son above ground because she didn't want to actually kill him but just wanted to bash some sense into him?

CJ takes Jacob back to the magic cave and he whines and says he doesn't wanna look after it, but she gives him some wine to drink after mumbling some spell, and we all get to see how the wine is in a bottle just like Jacob showed Richard and said that was the island. We hear absolutely nothing about the island is a cork, nothing about evil, and I think that Darlton maybe had amnesia when they wrote this.

But .. Jacob is clearly mentally challenged and my guess is that he barely remembers what Mom told him and he got mixed up and thought the wine bottle was the island and his brother was the evil, when clearly his brother is just a victim of Mommie Dearest's "you will never leave the island" obsession.

Now Dim Jacob is the caretaker and will probably not age and will inherit the ability to make Richard Alpert immortal and transport himself off the island to touch people in his own special way, but that wasn't explained in any way.

Back at the home cave, CJ tells Jacob to go get firewood because the plot requires him to be off stage so that MIB can sneak up behind CJ/MOM and shove a short sword through her back and out her stomach, which is not at all disturbing and do you watch this with your kids?

CJ thanks MIB and dies, none too soon for me, but Jacob is royally pissed and beats up on his brother for like the third time in spite of Mom's you can't hurt each other rules. MIB points out the RULES say Jacob can't kill him and Jacob says he won't. Jacob then drags MIB to the water cave and sends him over the falls -- and the light must be like a splitter that parts body and soul. Soul gets spit out the front as a smoke monster, and body gets spit out the back of the cave as a sort of cleansing flush thing ... dead.

Um, Jacob didn't kill his brother; the light did? Is that a loophole?

Jacob feels bad and lays bro next to mom in the cave, where Kate and Jack are waiting -- oh wait, this is a forward in time flashback reminding everyone about Adam and Eve. Wow. That was jarring. Wow. There's Locke when he was Locke. I miss Locke.

At the end, I have not learned how Jacob came to live in a statue of Tawaret, but I totally understand why MIB came and asked Jacob if he had any idea how much MIB wanted to kill him. I really do get it, and I would like to kill Jacob myself. Go Ben!

It would be wrong to say I learned nothing from this episode. I finally figured out why the recurring references to Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." Jacob is a Lenny, a man with quick fists and limited mental ability. Seriously, he was straining to understand Mom and bro the whole way through. And his smarter better half just had to put an end to him, but because of Mommy's Magic Wine it wasn't so simple as taking him out and shooting him. Which is a shame really.

Pass me the magic wine, will you?