Revelations:
- MIB is, like Smokelocke, a dead guy the monster impersonates.
- He and his adoptive mother, Jacob's predecessor, are the Adam & Eve skeletons in the cave from season 1.
- Jacob is the dick who let the smoke monster out, apparently.
- Jacob has been there since classical times, if that was Latin they were speaking (I could barely hear the initial conversation between the mother & Claudia)
- Some scientific types were the first to discover the magnetic anomalies and MIB built the donkey wheel for the exact use Locke puts it to. He built it to leave the island.

Questions:
- The inability of MIB to kill Jacob is still inexplicable. Initially a red herring was thrown out where Jacob & MIB's mother told them she had made it so they could not kill one another. No evidence is given for the veracity of her assertion, but since MIB was killed by the Smoke Monster, even if that was true, it is now irrelevant, unless he is trapped by the same restriction with his taking the form of MIB.
- If MIB is, like Locke, a dead guy whose appearance the smoke monster can take, why is he allowed to appear as other people? According to Ilana, once he has taken Locke's form, the smoke monster cannot appear as anyone else. Why?
- WTF is this mysterious power? Why is anything seemingly justified in the name of protecting it?
- WTF is the smoke monster? All of a sudden it just pops out of the magic cave after Jacob throws in MIB, and it tosses out the body. So was it there all the time, and the reason why the mother told Jacob never to go in - it would release the smoke monster?
- If MiB built the donkey wheel to leave the island, why does it make the island move?
- If the mother filled in the well, who excavated it again, built the well around it, and then filled it in again? Does Jacob keep trying to get his minion groups to block it up? Does that mean he did NOT start trying to have minions with Alpert? Or did he actually try the direct leadership method and give up after failing, and decide to try the aloof means when Richard's arrival presented him with an accomplice?
- Does anything in this episode clarify why the hell we should give a damn about the interests of Jacob and/or the island, beyond their ability to screw up the lives of the characters in whom we are invested? Still not knowing what the smoke monster is, beyond what we see of the ass-holish character of his jailors, why are we supposed to believe his escaping the island would be a bad thing?
- Is anyone else getting annoyed with things that are in the episode for no reason other than messing with our minds? The most accurrate title of this episode would be "The Skeletons' Backstory." Like the origin episode for Richard, the origin of Jacob is an interesting standalone story and tremendously irrelevant to the big picture and whole mystery underlying the show & its setting & mythos. Jacob was more of a cypher and peripheral character - the main characters of this episode are two people who are DEAD, and have been for centuries. It is possible that the episode could be helpful in understanding Jacob by showing the most important figures from his formative days, but there is nothing to connect point A to point B. It would be like showing the beginning of a game and the closing minutes and expecting us to infer from that how the score and game-situation of those final minutes came to be. According to his mother, his tenure as guardian will entail a development process, so why are we supposed to be satisfied with this pittance, this portrayal of a man who has a long way to go before he develops into the character who affects the lives of the central characters whom we have watched develop for six years? It's all very well to show this sort of thing about Jacob if there was another year or two to go, or even another dozen episodes. With three left, this is crap.

Other thoughts:
- Watching the cast names appear during an episode which I knew none of them would be appearing in was amusing (unless that was new and not archive footage of Jack & Kate finding the skeletons).
- Why do they get actors who look to be such different ages to play twin brothers? Even if they ARE similar ages, ye Titus Welliver's hair or something so he doesn't look like Jacob's father (I assumed he was the blond guy's elder or boss or something in his first appearance). Unless the brothers issue was made up later...

EDIT - Things I noticed looking back:
If Jacob's brother died and his corpse was found in the cave, why does Smokelocke say he had a crazy mother? He has no reason to present himself to Kate as MIB, since she doesn't even know that guy existed, except for seeing his bones. So does he think he was the guy raised with Jacob by that woman? Is he the spirit of MIB, rather than an imposter?

In the same vein, why should the visions of the kid trouble Smokelocke so much? Assuming that kid he sees is the young Jacob, I guess I have to go with him genuinely believing (correctly or not) that he is Jacob's twin brother.