Thoughts on the finale of season 5 of Lost ran amok in my mind last night as I tried to sleep. I am sure that's what caused me to dream about Stephen King throwing a boot full of green pudding into a crowded auditorium and hitting my friend Matthew in the face with it. My response in the dream was to comfort him with a rap: "your situation does suck, i presume / Stephen King kicked you from across the room."

Anyway, on to the thoughts on Lost, in random order.

Jacob and Esau on the beach. One light, one dark. Rivalry. The conflict? Free Will vs. Determinism/fate. Esau says "it always ends the same," showing him as the proponent of predestination. Jacob, on the other hand, says "it only ends once, and everything else is progress..." which I take to mean that things can be changed, people have a choice... and sometimes, as he told Jack, they just need "a little push." This is why Jacob interferes in the Losties' lives.. to give them a push towards making the decisions he wants them to make. To what end? Perhaps just to make a change in the timeline such that Esau does not win the war for the island? Perhaps he knows that the Valenzetti equation is actually a series of variables, and by manipulating the characters he hopes to change the outcome.

What I like a lot about this is the overarching idea of the show has finally emerged for me- the notion that w are all slaves to our pasts and our memories. Although we all make choices and are free at any time to change, all of these choices are informed and directed by the events of our past. That's why we spent so much time with flashbacks of each character, learning what in their past causes them to make the decisions they are now faced with. It's not just character development for narrative purposes, but actually a key to the theme of the show- an exploration of the concept of "choice."

Other cool things:
Jacob, in all of his meddling scenes, made a point to touch each of the people he visited, and in most cases gave something tangible to them - a pen, a lunchbox, a candy bar, a guitar.

Also, Jacob did NOT visit Juliet in the flashback where we see why she makes her decision about James and the bomb, and this may ultimately be important... if indeed jacob wants to stop the bomb from going off, he should have stepped in to nudge Juliet in her earlier life. But if he NEEDS the bomb to go off in order to change the course of events and avert the Incident (or something else), then his absence in Juliet's life makes perfect sense.

I am also getting the feeling that Esau has been grooming Ben to be his loophole for a long time. If Jacob can nudge people towards his ends, then its not a far stretch to imagine that the dark one has been manipulating Ben long before he appeared on the Island as the false Locke. Perhaps this same force has been Christian Shepherd? He's certainly been messing with Locke's destiny, having Richard convince the Real Locke that he needs to die in order to bring people back to the Island and providing the compass as a trans-temporal token of Locke's supposed leadership.. all of this to get Ben ousted and prepared for the act of killing Jacob... we know he cannot do it himself, possibly due to a lack of corporeality? (the same way "Christian" couldn't help Locke up off the ground in the frozen donkey wheel room). Esau is probably also the phantom Alex, though she was certainly able to interact with the living when she pwned Ben in the smoke moster chamber.

BTW, the casting for the show is phenomenal- young Kate looked EXACTLY like kate. amazing.

more thoughts to come, i am sure.