re: Why is everyone so mad at lost

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The episode clearly indicated that Jacob had been watching the Romans that his brother was with for 30 years. Jacob said that they really didn't seem that bad and he told Brother that we wondered whether Other Mother was right about mankind. This is the origin of the game between Jacob and Brother/MIB.

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You must have missed OM Landshark and Freauzen's comments in the Lost thread because you are answering the wrong question. I'm not asking what happened, but why. Why does he love them?

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I'm not asking what happened, but why. Why does he love them?

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That's what I'm asking too.

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I'm not asking what happened, but why. Why does he love them?


That's what I'm asking too.

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There's really no plausible explanation based on we have seen so far. The writers simply did not develop a compelling case for Jacob's motives.

Mother and MIB obviously had disdain for humans. Jacob's observations of the Roman's interaction with his brother hardly seemed inspiring. I could see if Jacob had fallen in love with a pretty Roman maiden or if one of them had saved his life or simply befriended him or if Mother on her death bed expressed a change of heart and suggested to Jacob that humans were worth saving then I might could see it. But as is we are left with inexplicable motive for half of the game. Maybe we will get a better explanation in part of the finale but I have a feeling that the writers really needed at least one more episode to create a fulfilling back-story for Jacob and MIB.

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Mother and MIB obviously had disdain for humans. Jacob's observations of the Roman's interaction with his brother hardly seemed inspiring. I could see if Jacob had fallen in love with a pretty Roman maiden or if one of them had saved his life or simply befriended him or if Mother on her death bed expressed a change of heart and suggested to Jacob that humans were worth saving then I might could see it. But as is we are left with inexplicable motive for half of the game. Maybe we will get a better explanation in part of the finale but I have a feeling that the writers really needed at least one more episode to create a fulfilling back-story for Jacob and MIB.

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I agree with this. The writers had two simple options.

1. The easy way: Make Jacob, who has believed his mother's every word, behave consistently with his mother's outlook on humanity. And make the MIB behave consistently with the idea that he realized he wanted to be human and could see the value in humanity.

2. The difficult way: Make the MIB change his mind after living with the liars, cheaters, and thieves of the human race for 30 years. Have Jacob change his outlook on the human race because he falls in love with a human woman or has a human make a selfless sacrifice in an attempt to save Jacob's unknowingly immortal life.

Either one of the two would have been consistent and not that hard to pull off. Instead, the writers chose one from each option and ended up with an incoherent story.

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To understand Jacob's motivation, you have to understand the island, and to understand the island you need at least a coherent basic understanding of the light and the water. A little bit of the light is inside of every man. What does that mean?

If it represents the lifeforce itself or is the source of goodness, then you could at least rationalize Jacob's behavior. For example, if it were the lifeforce, you could rationalize that Jacob is trying to prove to MIB that humanity is worth saving because there is good in man. If goodness, it would be to show that there is light in all men.

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Agree and if Jacob had acknowledged/recognized the light/goodness in humans then I would be fine with the motivation angle but all he said to MIB was "they don't seem so bad" or something like that. Then MIB proceeded to tell him about the lying, cheating, etc./character flaws of humans.

Maybe all this was by design to demonstrate the shades of gray aspects of motives but in my opinion is weakened the plot by not establishing strong motives both ways. Really when you think about it, other than MIB's rant to Jacob, we saw no evidence to support MIB's disdain for humans. In fact, you would think the revelation by his real mother's ghost, Claudia, would have established closer affinity with his fellow Roman castaways.

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The real problem is how do you jump to insert a wheel and device made by some really smart people and you can teleport to Tunisia or time travel. It's this meeting of mysticism and the pseudo science of scifi that is completely incoherent. I think the writers recogonize this and their solution is to take a Wizard of Oz approach to the mysticism; i.e. pay no attention to logic holes here.

I don't think they did this on purpose to screw with the audience as has been suggested by many. I just think that they are not very good big picture kind of people who were also arrogant enough to think they could write their way out of any problem. They can't.

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Other than the confusing motives, the technological explanation of the donkey wheel connected to the light source enabled by "smart people" was a noticeable weakness in the plot. Again, I think the entire back-story would have been a lot more credible if the technology had been explained through an advanced Atlantis-like race which would fit perfectly with submersed island or maybe people from the future going back in time to develop a technological means to protect the island and save humanity. Yes, this too would raise more questions but imho it would have been more credible than smart Romans.