Part 15 - There's some fear in letting go (SPOILERS)

[alreadygoneplaces]

All I can think of is that DKL very graciously agreed not to pursue his slam-dunk defamation case if MJA would just shut the hell up in the future, and MJA's lawyer wisely locked all his social media accounts in compliance.

That's the way it is, Michael... that's the way it is...

[mtwentz]

Speaking of MJA, he's been strangely quiet since the new series began, hasn't he?

I wouldn't be surprised if someone told him to shut up about the new show or he'll be sued or blacklisted or something like that.

I don't believe there's anything they could legally do to him for talking shit about the quality of the show. But it is fascinating that he's been in radio silence since the show debuted. I kinda wanted to see him seething about the Evolution. All I can think of is that DKL very graciously agreed not to pursue his slam-dunk defamation case if MJA would just shut the hell up in the future, and MJA's lawyer wisely locked all his social media accounts in compliance.

Technically, you are correct. I do know that a big corporation with deep pockets and a team of lawyers can be awfully intimidating, even if their case has little-to-no-merit. At the very least, it's one hell of a hassle.

[baxter]

Did my rewatch of 15 last night. Part of me now thinks that Cooper won't actually wake up. You can clearly see him just fall on the floor after electrocuting himself, so its not like he has passed through the socket or anything. I suspect this will just be another incident in his ongoing life and he will be in hospital or something.

[Esselgee]

Not specifically related to this episode, but if Chet Desmond was part of the Blue Rose task force, what was he doing busting hookers on a school bus in North Dakota? Shouldn't he have been looking for Jeffries or something?

[ScarFace32]

Not specifically related to this episode, but if Chet Desmond was part of the Blue Rose task force, what was he doing busting hookers on a school bus in North Dakota? Shouldn't he have been looking for Jeffries or something?

Doubt they only worked Blue Rose cases.

[ScarFace32]

I was thinking maybe Cooper is "under cover" as Mr. C, but I guess that doesn't really make sense at all. Is it possible when Cooper wakes up it will be as the body we see now as Mr. C?

If we take things literally, we have to conclude that Mr. C's body is a different body. It's a doppelganger with a backwards fingerprint and black irises (and those are only the differences of which we're aware).

If Mr. C had been pulled back into the lodge when he was supposed to have been, I think we would have seen the formerly-trapped Cooper lodge body materialize in place of the doppelganger, much like Cooper materialized in Las Vegas with his own body, rather than the body of the real Dougie Jones, who was doughy and had different clothes and a different haircut.

It's become clear that while there is only supposed to be one Cooper-like body out in the world, whichever emerges gets a body tied to its identity. Mr. C has a doppelganger body with dead eyes and a screwed up spiritual fingerprint. DougieCoop has Cooper's exact body, sans identity/memory/agency. Add to this the fact that Mr. C is the "shadow self", and we have good justification for considering DougieCoop to be the real Cooper, or at least the real external Cooper, who represents the place where the whole Cooper belongs. DougieCoop is like a Cooper-shaped glass pitcher, and his missing elements are like water to be poured into the pitcher. We cannot say the same of Mr. C. I don't think that we can pour the real Cooper identity into the unholy vessel of the doppelganger.

It may turn out that Mr. C, as the shadow self, is a necessary part of Cooper's unconscious mind, but we cannot simply say that he is Dale Cooper.

Again, this is looking at the story literally, and for the most part leaving aside other valid points of view (purely psychological, spiritual, etc.).

It's interesting because we should have all known that Cooper wouldn't return til the end because we got Mr. C. Can Cooper with regained consciousness & Mr C. exist at the same time in our "dimension"?Frankly I think it's far more interesting to see the Doppelganger in the world than it would be a whole season of Coop

[AgentEcho]

There was so much great in this episode. Ed and Norma almost seem like an afterthought to me to be honest (don't get me wrong, it was lovely, but there's a lot of other things that stand out). The Convenience Store scene, Gertsen and Steven in the woods, Dougie and Sunset Boulevard, and of course the very real death of Margret Lanterman.

And even with all those great scenes I'm not sure my favorite scene wasn't the one with Ruby in the Roadhouse. And honestly I've been ambivalent at best about all the other roadhouse scenes. Most of it falls into a small pile of things about the series I'm not enthusiastic about but don't want to rush to judgement until I see the whole picture. But like almost everything about this episode it struck the right emotional cords. It works on a lot of different levels. It was the right level of catharsis after an episode that had so many emotional extremes in all different directions. It is absorbing as an isolated tale of loneliness and anguish (Ruby is the one random Roadhouse character I want to see in Season 4 if there is one).

I've also been enjoying the reading of several characters being surrogates for the audience, and especially the ones expressing extreme frustration. The crazed woman in the traffic jam is a surrogate for the audience frustrated that the story is spending time on random side excursions when we have reunions we need to get to. Audrey of course exasperated with having to wait and not getting answers. And along those lines, perhaps Ruby was waiting for Dale Cooper.

[Hockey Mask]

And even with all those great scenes I'm not sure my favorite scene wasn't the one with Ruby in the Roadhouse. And honestly I've been ambivalent at best about all the other roadhouse scenes. Most of it falls into a small pile of things about the series I'm not enthusiastic about but don't want to rush to judgement until I see the whole picture. But like almost everything about this episode it struck the right emotional cords. It works on a lot of different levels. It was the right level of catharsis after an episode that had so many emotional extremes in all different directions. It is absorbing as an isolated tale of loneliness and anguish (Ruby is the one random Roadhouse character I want to see in Season 4 if there is one).

The Ruby scene was perfect. The music grinding out, her performance, the crawling, the scream. All of it was perfect.

[Rik Renault]

To go from the Becky shoots the door sequence (and RR scene) to Becky calling Shelly to Steven in the woods is not great storytelling. There has to be some literal missing pieces there, some kind of exposition.

Agreed. The way that narrative thread is presented makes it hard to care about any of it.

There's a lot of problems with the narrative in the new series. A lot of lazy writing and strange editing choices. They're discussing the Ed/Nadine stuff in the disappointed thread, which is another good example of this - no build up to this story (within the current series), we didn't even know they were still married! There's been a lot of strange choices in the narrative. Only so much can be put down to style/artistic choices imo. Some of it is just shoddy. And I think some of it is due to 1.) the increase to 18 episodes despite a 400 page script more suited to a tighter 9-episode season and 2.) focusing on more off-the-wall scenes (such as the vacuuming scene). There's a lot of sparks of genius in this new series, but I think by the time we look back on it as a whole, it will be considered even weaker - in some respects - than Season 2 as an overall narrative. Then again, the finale could be so amazing that maybe not. Hard to tell. But there's been a lot of poor narrative choices made and a lot of weak characterisation.

These are my feelings exactly. I mean we're all presumably L/F fanboys and girls to some extent, but I think the enormity of the project has overwhelmed them with some of the narrative and editing choices. It's such a shame because I feel like I could have been so much more invested in Stephen and Becky, Red, Ed and Norma, etc but they've all had nevessarily short and shallow arcs due to the miniscule amount of scenes we've had with them - and there's surely not enough time to satisfactorily appease this.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[The Gazebo]

And even with all those great scenes I'm not sure my favorite scene wasn't the one with Ruby in the Roadhouse. And honestly I've been ambivalent at best about all the other roadhouse scenes. Most of it falls into a small pile of things about the series I'm not enthusiastic about but don't want to rush to judgement until I see the whole picture. But like almost everything about this episode it struck the right emotional cords. It works on a lot of different levels. It was the right level of catharsis after an episode that had so many emotional extremes in all different directions. It is absorbing as an isolated tale of loneliness and anguish (Ruby is the one random Roadhouse character I want to see in Season 4 if there is one).

The Ruby scene was perfect. The music grinding out, her performance, the crawling, the scream. All of it was perfect.

I'm critical of many things about the show these days, but that was a mighty fine end to one of the better episodes of the season.

[mtwentz]

Please vote on the great question of the day if you feel so inclined.
viewtopic.php?f=29&t=3775

[Framed_Angel]

Did my rewatch of 15 last night. Part of me now thinks that Cooper won't actually wake up. You can clearly see him just fall on the floor after electrocuting himself, so its not like he has passed through the socket or anything. I suspect this will just be another incident in his ongoing life and he will be in hospital or something.

I dunno. Didn't Dougie end up lying on the carpet unconcscious, before he got whisked away to the Red Room? Who knows what's next for DougieCoop?! ; )
As an aside -- when I re-watched, it amazed me how much cake he was eating. I was gonna feel badly for Janey-E if feeding him all these sweets, and I doubt he's working out or such, ruins that manly physique she's been getting used to!

[Framed_Angel]

And even with all those great scenes I'm not sure my favorite scene wasn't the one with Ruby in the Roadhouse. And honestly I've been ambivalent at best about all the other roadhouse scenes. Most of it falls into a small pile of things about the series I'm not enthusiastic about but don't want to rush to judgement until I see the whole picture... The crazed woman in the traffic jam is a surrogate for the audience frustrated that the story is spending time on random side excursions when we have reunions we need to get to. Audrey of course exasperated with having to wait and not getting answers. And along those lines, perhaps Ruby was waiting for Dale Cooper.

I would say it's by far the most intense Roadhouse clip since we saw Richard intimidating Charlotte?! All the others have had so little context to shape meaning from.

In a weird way I've thought how Ruby's unlikely release of screams would've been the logical reaction of Gersten in the woods to her lover's gunshots. In the big open woods, screaming in her agony (after the dog-walking passerby had departed of course) there would've been no inhibitions. But Gersten had instead the kind of reaction I'd normally associate with someone like Ruby getting displaced and humiliated: looking around, waiting for anyone to care or wondering who would care. It's interesting to me to consider swapping those settings. Gersten was a keyholder; Ruby was the rightful 'owner' of the seat she'd taken first. I hope the key around Gersten's neck is given some meaning before this is over, and as someone else here said, I hope we do get to see what's up with Ruby beyond as just a Roadhouse visitor.

[Esselgee]

As an aside -- when I re-watched, it amazed me how much cake he was eating. I was gonna feel badly for Janey-E if feeding him all these sweets, and I doubt he's working out or such, ruins that manly physique she's been getting used to!

Yeah, with all this food he's eating, is he able to properly clean himself after using bathroom, assuming he does more than just urinate? Or does Janey-E have to do that for him?

[BGate]

Lynch did say "necessity is the mother of invention" with respect to the arm-tree, so I think they definitely planned on using MJA at some point. Maybe they caught wind of his issues before they finished the script.

Sources say he dropped out the day before filming Ike's attack on Dougie, which was to be his first day on set.

He never "dropped out" because he never signed on. The intel (I think from Arbogast) on the day of the shoot was that MfAP was scripted to be in the scene but that MJA still hadn't signed on, and Arbogast wasn't sure if it was a recast or what (he was intrigued by the Ike actor being on set, which hysterically turned out to be a coincidence ).

Interesting. Maybe the arm-tree was always there but originally meant to have MJA's face/head instead of the meaty blob? So his presence in that scene would have been CGI anyway.

It's also interesting that they didn't credit the voice of the arm-tree like they did with Bowie's impersonator.