MasterMastermind wrote:N. Needleman wrote:It begs the question, though, if BOB ever leaves a host without completely destroying it. I don't know that I believe that. I don't think most people who have Lodge spirits in them tend to just walk away and pick up their lives. Gerard has lived with MIKE for years.
Personally, I can't see BOB giving up Leland for Laura so much as having Laura, and keeping Leland too somehow. He had been with Leland for the better part of Leland's lifetime.
Interesting. If he didn't plan to keep Leland, aybe he planned to take over Laura and kill Leland as her?
I joked about that recently with someone - what if Twin Peaks opened with Ray Wise's body washing up on shore, wrapped in plastic, and the next several episodes saw Sheryl Lee weeping and dancing and singing around town?
But it is an open question, really. I think that route would be a bit more implausible (for one thing, Laura's murder of Leland would seem more justifiable than vice-versa) but maybe he could have her kill Ronette and then in the next day or two, a vacated, shellshocked Leland commits suicide at Bob's behest (basically as he ends up doing anyway in ep. 16)?
This would still be consistent with the idea of him "setting up base camp" more or less in one host at a time (even though he can obviously act out beyond the physical limits of that host - see him tormenting Laura in her diary or appearing to Sarah and Maddy in visions). And it would hold water as a real-world cover-up too. Maybe Leland's involvement of the death of Ronette would even be exposed - maybe connected to Teresa's death (the "R" that ended up in Laura's finger would have made a perfect fit for "R"onette after "T"eresa). The whole town would have been abuzz about how a serial killer could have lived in their midst all this time, even as the real killer lived under their very noses.
Come to think of it, this is almost a perfect alternate reality (hmmm....). Bob's big plan could have been to hop from Leland, a host who was starting to crack after 40 years, to Laura whose beautiful looks and popular persona made her an even better disguise. Of course this doesn't address any designs he might have had on Cooper (as hinted by the book, among other things - and possibly the "Pittsburgh" line in ep. 16), suggesting instead that he was - in true Lynchian fashion - a Plan B that ended up being even better than Plan A.
Something else, and maybe this is a topic for another thread, or at least another message, but I'll post it here. It used to seem like the murders were, at the very least, the moment where Bob was most at the fore. Even considering Leland's responsibility for and knowledge of Laura's abuse, as revealed in FWWM, I thought that maybe it was Bob who was the real killer (if not the real - or the ONLY real - abuser). Now I almost see it the opposite way. It's Leland who has the clearest motive to murder Teresa, Laura, and Maddy - all young women that he thought he controlled, only for him to have them defy his will. It's not so clearcut with Bob.
The murder of Teresa does help Bob (by preventing an exposure of his host's sins and thus blowing his cover). And the murder of Laura works as Bob's punishment for her emphatic refusal. But Maddy? Killing her ultimately brings more heat on the murder case and on Leland, and leads to Bob losing his host within a few days. I know Bob thrives on fear & the pleasures (and possibly pain & sorrow) in an almost animalistic fashion, but he also seems to be pretty clever and calculating. It's not as if he's been on a rampant killing spree as Leland for 40 years, at least not that we know of (and there's really no reason to believe otherwise). His enjoyment of Leland seems to be less about using him as a vehicle to kill than feeding off his sick desires and fear of exposure as well as that of his long-term victim, Laura, both through him and perhaps independently. It's about sustaining the suffering, not quick fixes.
A few options occur to me:
- Bob is simply along for the ride and while he can "steer" Leland in a certain direction he can't fully control him. Leland is getting out of hand at this point and even going rogue. But I don't really buy this because, among other reasons, Bob certainly seems "into" Maddy's murder; plus, he picks the white fur off the fox in Ben's office (the night before Leland gets his own motive, which is Maddy announcing she's going to leave - so it seems like Bob already has this in mind and is waiting for Leland's own motivation to arise so they can work together).
- Bob wants out of Leland. This is consistent with the idea that his plan was to get Laura to kill Ronette and, her suitability as a host proven, simultaneously snap Leland so that he could kill himself and be out of the way (I like N. Needleman's suggestion that Bob's hosts don't get out alive although that certainly sounds ominous for Cooper). The Laura part failed but maybe the Leland part just took a little longer than usual and - especially after glimpsing Cooper (or, having known about him all along, realized that he is positioning him for a fall) - Bob is as much sick of this host as he is ready for a new one. Actually, the ep. 16 monologue in the jail cell suggests as much. (That speech too raises all kinds of questions about Leland's relationship to Bob which are best addressed elsewhere.) So the idea would be that Bob wants Leland to kill Maddy not only for the quick harvest of fear but because it will hasten his host's own end.
- Bob is not necessarily looking to get out of Leland (after all, it's probably easier for him to groom & eventually hop into Cooper while out in the world with a human host than having to work behind the gates of the Lodge) and he has his own reason for killing Maddy. Maybe it's becoming a new or resurgent addiction for him (apparently he and Mike killed together for years and maybe he was starting to miss it when Teresa came along) and just as Leland is cracking apart as a host, a glutted, greedy Bob (who has been hoarding all the garmonbozia) is falling apart too. Or maybe there's something else I'm missing - it seems like, aside from the pain and/or fear it generates - Bob has additional reasons to kill Teresa & Laura. But with Maddy it just seems like pure "I wanna murder" on his pat. Hmm.
- Maybe Leland HAS killed many times before. In fact, maybe he and Phillip Gerard killed together when both were possessed, and Mike's story in Cooper's dream isn't an ageold metaphysical story as we've all assumed but something that happened pretty recently for both spirits? It's just an idea, and one I'd never considered before writing it down just now, but it does intrigue me. After all, the scene where Phillip Gerard races up to Leland in traffic and assaults him always had me wondering, does Leland REALLY have no idea who this guy is? Or do they know each other? And does the fact that Al Strobel is using Phillip's rather than Mike's voice signify that this is as much about Phillip confronting Leland (somehow knowing about the murder of Teresa, maybe even helping him set it up) as it is Mike confronting Bob? I always love the idea of everything working on two levels simultaneously. This is admittedly now on the level of complete headcanon, but what if the lawyer and shoe salesman frequented the same prostitutes or attended the same parties and ended up being into some of the same kinky, twisted stuff? I don't know, there's room for a whole side-story here.
Ok, on that note I'm gonna finally try to take a break from dugpa at least for a little while. Damn Michael Ontkean & Bob theories...