"Soon, all of your answers will be questioned."

With just 3 1/2 hours of Lost left, it's finally time for all of our questions to be answered....right?!

Don't count on it. 

'Across The Sea' provided us with an entire hour of island flashbacks where we discovered the origins of Jacob and The Man In Black, how they came to the island, why they are on the island, and what it all means to the present day island inhabitants....right?! 

Anyway....

Personally, I was a little bothered with the casting choice of Allison Janney as Jacob & the MIB's "mother".  She's a great actress, but part of what always made Lost so unique was how they always managed to cast the rolls of all the characters - even down to the most  insignificant roles - with relative unknowns, which made everything seem all the more original.  Allison Janney has been in tons of TV shows, most notably The West Wing, and she would not have been my choice for the Mother Earth character (or whatever she was supposed to be).

It also kind of bugged me, after learning that Jacob and MIB are brothers, that MIB looked so much older than Jacob.  I guess that's what hanging out with sinners will do for you.  MIB even looked older than his mama in their final scenes together.  But then, I guess Mother Earth was not a mere mortal, now was she?!  Also, after Jacob put their dead bodies side-by-side in the cave where they were discovered years later by Jack, Kate and John Locke, it did kind of creep me out that Jacob never bothered to even bury them!  Yuck!  Wouldn't their rotting flesh stink up the cave quite a bit?! 

Given all of that, I thought the episode did a nice job of explaining these mysterious characters and their origins.  It might have been nice to give us a bit more info on Mother Earth, how she came to the island, how she managed to hide from everyone, and how she managed to massacre all those other Others and fill up their well, all while MIB was lying unconscious. 

I was actually sorry to see the death of the Man in Black.  In my opinion, his ultimate fate was not all that different from that of John Locke's.  Both men were in search of a better life, and yet both men ended up getting the royal shaft.  Then, in both cases,  Smokey steps in to suck up their souls and exploit them to his/her/its benefit. 

After watching this episode, I am still wondering what is up with that bloody Smoke Monster!  How was it possible he could be hanging out in the Cave of Light?!  I would think if the Light represented all that is Good in the world, then how could such a destructive force as Smokey be allowed to camp out down there?!  I think that bothered me more than anything in this unfulfilling episode.

And now that we know there is a powerful Light that shines from the heart of the island, we still don't know A) why that Light is there, B) how it got there, or C) how that area eventualy became a frozen wasteland (as shown in the Frozen Donkey Wheel scenes). 

Sure, we got a lot of answers in this episode, but with just 3 1/2 hours left, I would say to the producers the same thing that Ricky used to say to Lucy: "You got a lot of 'splainin' to do"!