I like making these right after I watch it since its fresh in my mind. The whole bottle of wine thing was pretty cool and it helps understand what the purpose of the candidates are for.
I believe that MIB influences people to try to get his way (as he always has). We have always known that Jacob was not this way, however, in this episode we saw that he allowed Richard to take a role for him that would rival MIB. I think this is the same for Hurley, since he can see dead people. MIB was able to show Richard his wife. Jacob was not able to do this, but he allowed someone else (Hurley) to do it for him.
In this episode Jacob says he doesn't intervene with people and tell them what to do and that they should figure it out for themselves. However, I feel like with the Candidates that are still around now, he did intervene in there life to make them make a decision. Thoughts??
Lastly, this was definitely one of my favorite episodes ever. It was so unlike almost all of the previous episodes of LOST just with the whole history and everything. I don't know why but I assumed someones relative would be a part of Richards backstory, like Hurleys great great grandparents or something. Still though it was a fantastic episode.
I know I only addressed a couple things from this episode, but feel free to comment about them and also add in your own thoughts about the episode