I've been watching the series now that season 3 is about to begin.
This episode used to be one of my favorites.
However, in the past 10(?) years I've started to see its faults but it still has been of the best episodes to me.
But this time, oh my, I was surprised how much I cringed through the episode...
The tilted camera angles are extremely distracting.
I
hate the part where Cooper explains how his dream connects to all of this.
"Robertson, son of Robert!" REALLY!?
I'm not even sure what I think about the bar scene either. So now Cooper thinks one of the people there is the killer. Leland looks like he's got no idea they are on to him even though he seemed to be really worried and starting to plan things when Donna mentioned the second diary to him. And Cooper really doesn't have one single clue about who the killer is but then Leland eats the gum and Cooper remembers what Laura said in the dream. I mean, I'm all for Cooper using weird "magic" things as his methods to solve crimes but this goes a bit too far in being essentially something where all that happened before didn't really matter and the answer is given to him without any real effort.
And then Leland offers himself to help Ben when he is accused for being Leland's daughter's killer. And somehow Cooper and co. think this is a genious plan. But it really isn't anything else than Leland (and Bob!) being unbelievably stupid right there. I think even stupidity and demon possession cannot explain that. It's just lazy writing.
There are some great moments though. I love the moment when Donna tells Leland about the second diary. I love Leland's expressions there.
But overall, while the next episode is arguably worse, I think I even enjoyed episode 18 much more than I enjoyed this. And I'm truly puzzled about this sudden turn of taste.
One thing I started to think in Leland's confession and death scene (and by the way, I think Leland goes a bit over the top during the confession - I'm not particularly fond of the WOO WOO WOO moment) was that when Leland talks about him not remembering when Bob was gone I'd like to think it's more like "willingly" not remembering things. Like, when we do things we wouldn't normally want to do but in the heat of the moment do - be it sexual things, crimes, hateful things or whatever else - we are not what we'd deep down like to be. And when the moment is gone we don't really want to remember that side of ourselves anymore. We don't want to remember how awful we have been. We don't want to know how much bad things we have caused to others. When we are back into being our "good selves" we wash those nastier moments away from our minds until we do it again. It wasn't
me who did it. That's what Cooper in fact actually suggests in the next episode where he says to Sarah that Leland didn't do those things, or at least not the Leland you knew.
So I'd like to think the death scene was about the battle of consciences. And Bob is also about a battle of consciences.
What I mean is, when we are in that heatful moment where we are about to do something we wouldn't normally want to do we first forget what we would like to be - our normal conscience is given to our other side. And when we are past that moment we forget we were what we didn't want to be. And perhaps Leland always remembered killing Laura but this was the first time he actually realized in with his normal conscience what he had done. Just like sometimes when we have done something bad to someone else we might go on normally for years and years until at some moment we have the realization of what it actually was that we did back then and we feel remorse and regret. But until then our conscience has been run by our other side at least what comes to that exact bad thing we did.
Rami Airola wrote:
Also, the moment when Bob screams and the lightning strikes, is very interesting to me. It kinda connects Bob to electricity for the first time ever. We hear his scream and see the lightning, and when it cuts to Donna, the lightning and the scream immediately stops. So this is all something that doesn't really happen in the physical world, but happens and exists in a more abstract plane. I kinda like to think that it means lightning could be the fury of Bob. "I have the fury of my own momentum."
Now, it could just be all about giving Bob's scream an effective, albeit quite clichéd, emphasis. Sure, there are tons of movies that have thunder and lightning appear when a character screams in torment without any sort of metaphysical context, but I like to think that's not all the added lightning is supposed to mean. Maybe when Bob screams a lightning strikes, or when a lightning strikes Bob screams. Do Bob and other "Lodge inhabitants" move through electricity, or are they in fact deep down electricity themselves? It's quite an interesting thing to think about this as the human brain works with electricity.
Wow, through that moment I was thinking that I used to have a theory about the moment lightning strikes and Bob screams but couldn't remember at all what it was.
I was very surprised to see my a few years old post about it here :O
Didn't remember this at all and now as I read it again I thought "yeah, that's how it goes!"