Snore. Another “Jack has daddy issues” episode—though there is a nice twist on the old plotline in this week’s “The Lighthouse.” Let’s get right to it.

Mystery #1: Jack’s inferiority complex. Okay, not so much a mystery: We all know that Jack’s dad Christian Shephard browbeat Jack into thinking he wasn’t “good enough” at anything (a phrase that will haunt the doc throughout the episode). But now, we see the ramifications of that in Alternate Reality Los Angeles, where Jack transfers his problems to his teenage son. This poor boy is so scared of failing, he won’t tell Jack he has a piano audition at a big-time music academy. Instead, he sneaks off on his bike, in the dark, without leaving a note. (Insert fist shaking here. I don’t even have kids and that made me mad.)

So how does this help answer any of the show’s lingering questions? It doesn’t. But as we’ve seen so far, these Alternate Reality stories focus more on character building than big reveals; plus, it furthers the discussion of destiny versus free will, etc etc. And I’m sure the AR will matter more in the second half of the season, as we’re trying to decide whether Jacob manipulated the Oceanic 815, aka “his candidates,” all their lives, or if he just gave them a nudge in the right direction. Unfortunately, that leaves us with about half an hour each week to figure things out.

Mystery # 2: What has Claire been doing for three years? Island Claire has actual lines this episode, yay! For three years, she’s lived by herself in the jungle in a creepy Carrie-style shelter where she keeps explosives, rusty medical equipment, and a fake baby fashioned from a dead animal. Nice. She thinks the Others have taken her son Aaron, so she’s on a crusade to kill, maim, and torture as many of them as possible until she “find’s my baby!” Goodbye Claire, hello Rousseau. (“Clouseau?” I like it.) She also did time in the temple, where they tortured her to find out if she was “infected,” a la Sayid. This island is such a happy place… Oh! Almost forgot: Jin’s under Claire’s watch and hints that Kate, not the Others, took her baby. Claire thinks he’s lying, but calmly says that if Kate did take Aaron, she’d have to kill her. Meanwhile, Kate’s on a mission to find Claire and tell her she took Aaron. Uh oh.

Mystery #3: The lighthouse. At the end of last week’s episode, we find out Jacob has designated a handful of the Oceanic 815 gang as “candidates” to protect the island, and attached numbers to their names. I claimed it was an ordered list—close, but not quite. See, Jacob hung out in the island’s lighthouse (which, of course, we’ve never seen before), where he essentially spied on (manipulated?) his candidates through a mirror. The candidates’ names were written next to each degree of a sundial—next up, [Hurley] Reyes, 8—and Jacob would turn the dial to the number/candidate he wanted to see. Call it a looking glass, crystal ball, whatever. It’s weird. And it bothers Jack. Hurley, who’s chatting with dead Jacob, leads Jack to the lighthouse on Jacob’s orders. Jack sees his name and his childhood home in the mirror, realizes Jacob’s been messing with his free will, and smashes the mirror in a very petulant, childlike freakout. Great, Jack. Now it’ll take us even longer to figure out what’s going on. If Jacob really has big plans for Jack, I hope it extends beyond "leading people" on and off the island, because right now, he’s about as authoritative as Locke, season 1. Kate had the right idea going after Sawyer. Oooh I said it.

Final thoughts…

Jacob’s still dead, presumably, but Hurley can communicate with him; is Hurley the next top candidate? And when Jacob says “someone is coming,” I really hope he means someone other than the Locke-ness Monster, because that’s not surprising at all. Maybe Desmond? What do you think?