How much do you need to know about LOST to feel fulfilled? I ask you this question. Tomorrow night we’re getting an episode tots dedicated to Jacob and MiB, and I’m worried. Why? I’m worried because I don’t need to know their entire backstory. I really don’t. In fact, I think I would prefer if they left parts of it in the dark. Seriously.

I don’t need to know about the midichlorians.

Do you?

Listen, I’m totally cool if we’re given an episode where we see Jacob and Smokey’s intellectual duel throughout the decades. Centuries even. They’ve shown in the teasers what appears to be little Jacob and MiB running around all snotty-nosed and covered in grime. And that’s cool.

But there’s a difference between demystifying a character and showing character interactions, you know? I don’t need to know specifically how long MiB and Jacob have been on the Island. I don’t even need to know literally what Smokey is, or how he got there. I don’t know, am I the only one?

I don’t need to know about the midichlorians.

I’ll give the writers some credit. They’ve pulled off two enormous reveals to my satisfaction. They’ve told me what Smokey was, and what the purpose of the Island is, and I’ve loved both of those reveals. So why am I being so pessimistic? Perhaps I’d love the backstory between the two of them.

I could!

I really could.

But I don’t know, something about having to put the pieces together myself seems more interesting. LOST has always straddled the line, or uh, is it lines between a) telling us nothing b) telling us too much c) telling us enough to figure it out ourselves. It’s like the television equivalent of the Four Corners or some shit.

But I don’t need to know how Smokey got to the Island, I don’t even need to know how many bodies he’s taken the form of, or if he was ever truly human. I say let that shit sulk in the dark, away complete exposition.

I don’t need to know about the midichlorians.

Where do you stand?

Thwack and kapow! Smokey this week laid down the meanest of pimp hands I had seen in a long god damn time. It was honed to a perfection that only living for hundreds of years can give you. I mean, I’m sure we’ve all imagined giving a pimp hand at some point in our lives. For some reason, the idea of slapping someone across the face just seems enjoyable. It’s probably all the television and violent cartoons we were raised on.

Smokey has officially begun to freak me the fuck out. While I’ve never been on the “This Guy is Sweet, Jacob Is Dick” train, if I had been, I would calmly requested that I be let off at the next stop after this week. I mean, I know that Claire is insane, and she has shitty hair, and she builds baby cribs out of animal skeletons and shit, but if you missed the foreshadow that pimp hand wrought, yeah I don’t know what to tell you.

You want to bring that Jacob is a deceiver heat? Get the fuck out of here. Smokey is just as grand a manipulator as Jacob, and how! I mean, seriously. Jacob presents people with choices, offers them destinations. Smokey gives you the illusion of choice. What MiB spits is tantamount to “I’m not here to tell you what to do. But if you don’t come with me, I’m going to smash you into paste as a billowing cloud of crackling smoke.”

Yeah dude, freedom of choice right there.

Smokey spent this entire episode using the oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer. If you wanted insight into how he’s able to manipulate people with impressive effectiveness, just check out what went down. Smokey takes everyone aside and beguiles them with sugary promises and rhetoric. He’s good man, he’s like, real good. In a revealing conversation with Kate, the dude even lays out how he bent Claire to his will. He gave her someone to hate, and by hating them, she really worked out his objective of throwing down those dickheads who lived in the Temple of Doom.

His methods are awesome, and I say that with no sarcasm.

It’s continuing to all be so Locke versus Hobbes that if you’ve missed it by this point, I don’t know what to tell you. The appeal of MiB versus Smokey at this point isn’t really deciphering their motives, but watching them play out. We get it, yo. Free Will and the belief that humanity will do a solid versus the whole Humanity is a Dung Heap and needs to be controlled. Yep, got it. I got it a season ago. But you know what? I don’t give a fuck, I’m a philosophy geek.

There’s something so alluring about Smokey; but there’s always something so alluring about the darkness. The promises of what ever you want. I’ve seen Star Wars though, I know how this fucking shit ends. You fight Mace Windu in some shitty office apartment, and then you sire a son who kills your crippled ass. I mean, do we really think that Smokey wants to get them off the Island? That he really cares about them? I sure don’t. But I also think there’s really some uncomfortable side to Jacob, the God that Failed.

Poor Sawyer. Even in LAX, he’s haunted by the demons of Anthony Cooper. Sawyer’s a tricky cat to peg on LOST. He always seems one step away from either redemption or full blown moral collapse. As the episode unfolded in the main reality, we saw Sawyer once again walk this tight-rope over the precipice. And as usual, there really was no denouement. I really have no idea which way Sawyer is going to go on the Island, other than apparently back with Freckly McHussy. Oh god dammit, Kate.

I dug how Sawyer is a undercover detective, which means that even in LAX he’s a con man who gets to sleep with tons of women. His monologue explaining the thin line between criminal and cop was interesting, even if it smacked of a thousand cliches.

As a brief aside, last night I realized something. Sawyer has to be a genuinely hunky dude. Why? ‘Cause if he wasn’t, we would totally fixate on his hair. I mean, it’s fucking dumb. It’s all like, flinging around and awkward, and I can’t tell if maybe it’s a mullet, or maybe it’s just oddly coiffed. But it ain’t usual. No sir. I was watching him clunk about the detectives’ offices and I was like, what the fuck? How did I not notice that hair before?

But yeah dude, what are you going to do? I need to know. The world holds its breath. Maybe there will never be any resolution for him, maybe he’ll always be torn by those demons. If LAX a reflection of the consequences of one’s behavior on the Island, it would seem fitting that Sawyer is once again pigeonholed between happiness and totally byronic brooding. You go ahead and seethe, Sawyer. It’s what makes us swoon for you.

Let me ask you something. WHERE THE FUCK IS FARADAY!?

Everyone has fucking shown up in LAX save for my boyfriend. I need to see him. We’ve seen fucking Artz, Charlie’s dumb brother, Boone. What the fuck is this dog shit. Last night we got Charlotte. But no mullet-rocking fucking physicist? Who is so adorable in his quirkiness? Kiss my ass, LAX. I want to put up some fucking Scorpions, sit around with Faraday, and have temporal abnormalities affect my perceptions of reality and give me nosebleeds and crap. It’s hogwash.

Also, I can’t help but feel that it’s almost too convenient that everyone is showing up. They’re all concentrated in Los Angeles? It really makes me wonder if this isn’t some bubble reality that all of the people involved on the Island are somehow transported to.

Everyone, save for my boy.

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