Short Version: Jack Shephard had daddy issues. The boy in black had mommy issues. Go figure.
Longer Version
The great thing about Lost was its ensemble. Even conceding the mythology was complex for a television show- if you’ve spent your life steeped in spec-fic, well, *shrug*. The science was wonky, the fantasy clunky. The only reason I followed the show (in fits and starts- I watched all of season five and six in three nights) was that you had your pick of hero: Doctor Jack, Hunter Locke, Brooding Sayid, Cowboy Sawyer, Happy Hurley, Complex Linus, Genius Faraday, Romantic Desmond. However you like your eggs, you could be sure Lost had the recipe. When it came to the the women, sadly, the pickings were ever slim and the stereotype thickly laid on. Primal Kate, Civilised Juliette, Happy-Married Sun, Willowy Shannon, Crazy Claire. The cryptic ones- Eloise Hawking, Ilana, Ana Lucia- disappeared almost as soon as they arrived. Lost was not, for all the gun-toting damsels, a woman’s show.
Lost consistently thrust its protagonists into the heat of battle. Its heroes are the ones who’ve stuck out all the fights, either by wit or by gun or by compromise. Its god, by contrast, hides and shirks human contact, and its devil is scary smoke-monster, the big bad who can be any dead person it wants. On the whole, one feels compelled to come out for smoke-man, who is defeated by the first clause of evil: embodiment is death. Any Buffy fan knows the best way to overcome something is to define it, and the minute smoke-man appropriated a corporeal body his game was up. Insofar as his point is that Jacob cruelly uses his candidates to no discernible end, smokey is right- Richard being the best example. After declaring to the man that all he wants is for humanity to tell good from evil for itself, Jacob then turns around and appoints Richard as his ageless intermediary. Yeah, that’s not controlling at all.
