Lost Recap Part 4

Whew, so many flashbacks!  All right, I'm going to just briefly describe each flashback here.  In order, I watched:

The Incident Part 1, with a flashback to James Ford at his mom and dad's funeral, and Jacob appearing to comfort him(!!).  He's Our You, where in Iraq a young boy called Sayid shows he's capable of killing a chicken without thinking.  Some Like It Hoth, where a young boy named Miles reveals he can hear the dead speaking to him.  The Glass Ballerina where a young Korean girl named Sun breaks a glass ballerina and then lies about it to her father.  The Variable, with a young math genius named Daniel playing piano, and his mother telling him that anything other than math and science has no place in his life.  Tricia Tanaka Is Dead, where a young boy whose name I'm not sure of has a tender moment with his dad (played by Cheech Marin!!) and then watches him drive off, with the assumption being that he's not coming back.  And finally, The Incident Part 1 again, where a young girl named Katie tries to shoplift, is caught, and then is rescued by Jacob (again!) who pays for the item for her.  Whew!

This was all actually very riveting, but man was there a lot to keep track of!  No less than seven new characters introduced here.  I have a feeling that the majority of these flashbacks are going to mean more when we meet the characters as adults, but there are certainly themes that are similar: piano playing, math and science geniuses that don't want to just do math and science (see Jake from the last recap), bad or overbearing parenting.  The two that seem most significant to the big picture are of course the first and last ones, as they both feature Jacob comforting two kids.  How is Jacob off the island here?!  Why isn't Richard doing this?  I'm sure this will be at least somewhat explained, but right now in the narrative I've followed so far this is utterly baffling.

So, most of the characters are either superlatively gifted or are important to Jacob.  Very intriguing indeed.  See you likely tomorrow with the next recap!