I finally saw this week’s LOST.
Nestor Carbonell LIT IT UP for an hour. Get this man some serious movie work. He was amazing. Wow.
As for what the freak is going on with the show, I don’t know. Spoilers below.
I’d been thinking since the first episode of this season that it was all actually a Paradise Lost scenario, with Smokey being Satan and wanting to go home (to Heaven). That might still make sense but it’s hard to fit Jacob into the cosmology. He’s not God, though his attitudes (“why should I have to step in?”) seem like stock theodicy tropes. And what of the fact that he brings people to the Island to basically prove things to Smokey? Very Jobish.
Chris Cocca 
I agree. Nestor Carbonell was pretty incredible.
I think you’re probably close with the Paradise Lost scenario. Except, I don’t think LOST is going to adhere too closely to any single story. It is going to borrow heavily from the themes and scenarios of famous work, I think. It’s exploring philosophy, really, and has given us lots of hints and things to think about- dropping in Locke and Rousseau and showing Jacob reading Flannery O’Connor etc. Just like, of course, those philosophers borrowed from the Bible or even older philosophers.