Part 10 - Laura is the one (SPOILERS)

[DeepBlueSeed]

I think Steven Burnett is acting like pre- season 1 Leo (Leo used to act nice, which is how he got Shelly to marry him) while Richard Horne is acting like Season 1 Leo (dangerous, abusive, criminal, with no redeeming characteristics). So I think they are too similar since they both remind me way too much of Leo. I personally feel like it makes the two characters similar. Only one ideally should be reminding me of Leo.

I really think Richard Horne was almost beyond Leo from the introduction. Yes, Leo was a scumbag, but apart from beating his wife, he kept his shenanigans (including murders) to the underworld. Richard goes for the innocent ones.

I agree. Stephen looks guilty of domestic violence, yes, but Richard is a whole other level. Sadly we've seen too little of the married couple to really get to know them, but Richard is clearly a psycho who barely keeps a lid on things.

[DeepBlueSeed]

Somebody recently mentioned that in ep 29 Coop entered the lodge having lost a coat in the process. It could also be that a person entering the lodge "checked" his coat/physical body/mind (not soul) at the "door."

I like this, Ed!

Me too. But it does make me wonder if there's therefore more relevance to his shoes getting left behind. Will someone need to go back into the Lodge and bring out his lost property from the cloak room before he's himself again?

[DamnFineCreamedCorn]

I really like how Lynch and Frost continue to subvert my assumptions about the characters.

After we were introduced to Stephen, I had the impression he was more a weasel and the local loser than an abuser. So his reintroduction in full-on, snot-faced, out-of-his-mind rage was maybe the biggest shock for me in Part 10.

The Mitchums were introduced as one-dimensional violent mobsters. So their unexpected tenderness towards Candie even as she hurts and frustrates them ("she has nowhere else to go") was a beautiful thing to watch.

And Richard, who's a monster, is also just a scared kid when he's in the company of Red.

This is great writing, casting and acting.

[DeepBlueSeed]

Annie's physical body went into and back out of the Lodge, right?

Annie went into and out of the lodge. We have no idea if this involved her physical body as well. The fact that 'Lodge Annie" blinked in and out with Windom's wife (forget her name - Caroline?), supports the idea that Annie was not "physically" in the lodge.

Or, perhaps, that she was lost in the Lodge somewhere and it was Annie's doppelgänger. As we know, from this season, doppelgängers can sometimes change their appearances within the Lodge (the Evolution of the Arm's doppelgänger disguised as the statue).

Lodge Annie does seem to have been a weird version of Annie, in any case. A doppelgänger from the White Lodge? Or was Laura somehow reincarnated through her, with the golden orb spirit within her?

[Troubbble]

Somebody recently mentioned that in ep 29 Coop entered the lodge having lost a coat in the process. It could also be that a person entering the lodge "checked" his coat/physical body/mind (not soul) at the "door."

I like this, Ed!

Me too. But it does make me wonder if there's therefore more relevance to his shoes getting left behind. Will someone need to go back into the Lodge and bring out his lost property from the cloak room before he's himself again?

I'm not confident necessarily, but during the "red shoes" scene with the electrical outlet from Episode 9, that was my thought.

[Pinky]

I wish I'd read those Lynch quotes back in the '90s! Where are they from? Would have made things clearer for me. I didn't really grasp the doppleganger concept until this new season began. I spent 25 years thinking Real Cooper's body had come out of the Lodge possessed by BOB, just like Leland was and that his soul was stuck in the Lodge. It's only 25 years later that I understand that Evil Coop is a separate physical entity, and Real Coop's actual body, not just his soul, was stuck in the Lodge. Or, that's how I interpret it, anyway ...

BOB possessed Leland's body out in the 'real' world. Coop's situation is different as his doppelganger managed to get out of the Lodge, but I always assumed that DoppelCoop took over Coop's body. The fingerprints suggest that this isn't the case, though. Either that or some doppelganger effect has warped the body somehow. Either way, I don't think DougieCoop is Coop's original body, but who knows?

[Jasper]

I like this, Ed!

Me too. But it does make me wonder if there's therefore more relevance to his shoes getting left behind. Will someone need to go back into the Lodge and bring out his lost property from the cloak room before he's himself again?

I'm not confident necessarily, but during the "red shoes" scene with the electrical outlet from Episode 9, that was my thought.

Let’s see…shoes have soles (souls?). There’s the saying, “Walk a mile in my/his/her shoes.” The prince doesn’t find the true Cinderella until he discovers the person whose foot fits the slipper, at which point she ascends to her true place (royalty). Dorothy needs the ruby slippers to get home (wake up).

In Get Smart the suit-wearing secret agent has a shoe-phone. (Hey, I’m trying. )

[DeepBlueSeed]

I wish I'd read those Lynch quotes back in the '90s! Where are they from? Would have made things clearer for me. I didn't really grasp the doppleganger concept until this new season began. I spent 25 years thinking Real Cooper's body had come out of the Lodge possessed by BOB, just like Leland was and that his soul was stuck in the Lodge. It's only 25 years later that I understand that Evil Coop is a separate physical entity, and Real Coop's actual body, not just his soul, was stuck in the Lodge. Or, that's how I interpret it, anyway ...

Ehhh, I think it was just Cooper's incorporeal self stuck in the lodge, but as Ed said, don't ever expect a Lynch mythology with iron-clad rules.

The way I see it is that there were two Coopers in there, and one came out with the physical body, which was sort of transformed in the process. (These differences, namely the eyes and fingerprint, seem to be new ideas for The Return.)

Cooper was supposed to switch places with the doppelganger, but the doppelganger created Dougie, apparently so that Cooper would have what's basically a clone body to occupy (and in which to be killed). That body, Dougie's body, was also transformed in the process, now having Cooper's haircut and fit figure.

As Gerard said, it's a problem that there are two physical Coopers in the world, and one must die. There should only be one physical Cooper.

I've always seen it as much more literal than that - that going into the Lodge involves physically going in, that the body therefore transforms into a spiritual form. Given the themes of alchemy that seem to be creeping in, I still think of things this way.

When Good Cooper is drawn through the plug socket he brings with him the suit and clothes. We never see Dougie transform into Good Coop, we only see Good Coop as a distorted version of himself, before he assumes a proper physical form again.

[DeepBlueSeed]

I do find myself wondering if, somehow, Janey-E is a manifestation of Dale's need to do stuff. A projection of a mother figure (although that's drifting into weird Oedipus territory), or just the feminine side of his psyche. It'd be interesting to see what comes up if they trace her records, to see if she existed before 1997.

Yeah, the thought had occurred to me that Sonny Jim and Janey-E were parts of Dale that had to be combined to make him whole again, but the more she turns into an interesting character, the less likely I find that concept.

However.. Dougie was a manufactured version of Dale. It sounds to me like he was missing parts of Dale's psyche, preventing him from being a full copy of Dale or his shadowself. Depending on how he was made, of course.

I suspect that's why Dale doesn't seem so instantly WRONG to Dougie's friends like Doppelcoop does. Dale isn't missing anything Dougie had.

Would it be so hard to believe that just as Dale is drawn to his old identity, Dougie was drawn to people who represented those missing parts of Dale's psyche?

Nope, not hard at all.

A misreading of the above has made me wonder if we'll have any scenes where DoubleCoop is mistaken, not for GoodCoop but for Dougie. I can imagine what would happen if Anthony decided to tackle the doppelgänger.

[BGate]

This is a little thing, but did anyone else notice that Becky is credited specifically as "Rebecca (Becky) Burnett"? Probably means nothing important, but it seems unique to her character. Could it be as simple as "Rebecca" being a reference to the Hitchcock movie, a la Laura?

[DeepBlueSeed]

Me too. But it does make me wonder if there's therefore more relevance to his shoes getting left behind. Will someone need to go back into the Lodge and bring out his lost property from the cloak room before he's himself again?

I'm not confident necessarily, but during the "red shoes" scene with the electrical outlet from Episode 9, that was my thought.

Let’s see…shoes have soles (souls?). There’s the saying, “Walk a mile in my/his/her shoes.” The prince doesn’t find the true Cinderella until he discovers the person whose foot fits the slipper, at which point she ascends to her true place (royalty). Dorothy needs the ruby slippers to get home (wake up).

In Get Smart the suit-wearing secret agent has a shoe-phone. (Hey, I’m trying. )

Heh.

The shoe thing (and the sole/soul) has been on people's radars for ages, of course, but I wonder whether it's more than a metaphor, that he actually has to reclaim those shoes somehow.

With the whole Dougie thing too, going into the Lodge instead of BadCoop, I wonder if the shoes only got left behind because something went wrong, or whether he'd have always left his shoes behind. Because if it was the latter then presumably he'd always have come out 'sleepwalking'.

[Nighthawk]

I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, but when Richard pulls up to Miriam's trailer, he is driving a beat up Saturn. There is a Saturn symbol on the Owl Cave map so I wonder if the car make was chosen deliberately to indicate that Richard has connections to the Black Lodge.

[Manwith]

She said she talked to the police and didn't understand why he hadn't been arrested. I guess we can assume she talked to Chad?

That plot seems a little unlikely. Wouldn't she naturally just call dispatch and tell them? Chad wouldn't be able to cover it up.

No. It doesn't work that way. If/when she notified the police, they would have sent an officer to talk to her.

They would have sent an officer to talk to her, but if she called 911 and said she knew who ran over the boy it would have been recorded. Further than that, the dispatch, if they assigned CHAD, would know WHY Chad went to talk to her and Chad would have to write it up. And other officers would come to talk to her as followup, so if Chad lied about the write up, it would come out. Chad had no idea she was going to get killed as far as we know, so it doesn't really make any sense that he would have buried it, but I guess it's possible he's the one who tiped Richard off, though it seemed like Richard already knew from exchanging eyes with Miriam who spotted him)

The only scenario that makes sense to me is she did not call 911, she just told Chad on the street somewhere. Then there's be no paper trail. Or she just happened to not tell 911 who ran over the boy, even though she feared enough to write a letter to the sheriff?

(And in real life, police get anonymous tips and such on the phone, so it's not like people never provide details of crimes over 911. If she was worried about Richard killing her, instead of writing to the sheriff she should have just named him on the 911 call. I still think it's likely, if she was worried about being killed, that she would just say it on the phone rather than write a letter to the sheriff. The plotline seems a little convinient is all, but it is a TV show ).

(For that matter Richard is so incompetent, she could have ran for her phone and dialed 911 when she saw him outside! He didn't even sneak up on her!)

[Nighthawk]

The only scenario that makes sense to me is she did not call 911, she just told Chad on the street somewhere. Then there's be no paper trail. Or she just happened to not tell 911 who ran over the boy, even though she feared enough to write a letter to the sheriff?

It seems to be a weak plot point, not very well thought out. One other possibility is that Miriam, fearing for her safety, bluffed about talking to the police to make Richard think that the cat is already out of the bag and killing her would serve no purpose other than to make his situation even worse. Richard then correctly deduced that all she did was send a letter, which didn't arrive yet, because otherwise he would have already been arrested.

[eyeboogers]

I think you are just overthinking it. She called the police station. Chad in one way or another made sure no one acted on it. Then Miriam sent a letter. Seems like simple and good plotting to me.