The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary (SPOILERS)

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AgentEcho
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The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary (SPOILERS)

Post by AgentEcho »

I don't know if this should be the FWWM subthread because it largely revolves around events from that film, but it's also been made hugely relevant to season 3 by the discovery of the missing diary pages.

In the film, Laura discovers the pages of her diary missing fairly early on in her story. While Hawk could be wrong with his theory, it seemed like fairly straightforward exposition when he said Leland must have hid the pages when he was questioned about the murder of Jacques.

We aren't shown Laura's dream with Annie until later in the film, by this point the pages are already missing. This could be a simple continuity error, but I always like to try and make a potential discrepancy work story wise before I dismiss it as an error.

A couple of possible explanations: Laura wrote the passages in another diary and Leland/BOB found them again and removed that passage... I'm not to fond of this explanation as it's a little convoluted (though Laura was known to have multiple diaries).

The other is that, since Annie's message came from the future, perhaps the time we are shown it in the film isn't the only time Laura received it. While it seemed that the message may have a correlation with the Black Lodge dream, for which the photo may have been a direct antecedent, perhaps Annie's message was delivered to Laura and different times to increase the odds of her writing it down.

Or it's an error. One I can forgive. But in my head cannon I'm going with the theory that Laura received the message multiple times and had already written it down when the pages were torn out.
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary

Post by DeepBlueSeed »

Might there have been more pages torn out? That maybe the Annie page is just one that goes missing later?
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary

Post by IcedOver »

Yeah, it seems like just a flat error. When she finds the pages missing, she takes it right to Harold where it stays. It's only later that she meets Annie. It's incredible that they didn't go back and watch this to get it right. I'm sure that some fans are already trying to come up with an excuse.
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary

Post by LostInTheMovies »

Also, even if people try to find a way to rationalize the Annie pages being missing, we're also shown Laura's entry presumably written the night before she was killed ("I know it wasn't Bob"). So they seem to be forgetting Leland ripped the pages out a week earlier. Best to just think she wrote these pages elsewhere and - if it turns out Leland was the one who put them in the bathroom door - that Leland found these too on that last day. A more practical question: why wouldn't he flush the pages down the toilet?
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Gabriel
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary

Post by Gabriel »

LostInTheMovies wrote: A more practical question: why wouldn't he flush the pages down the toilet?
Because Lynch loves Hitchcock and we know what happened to Marion Crane's flushed paper. ;)

I also wonder whether Gerard could have taken them for some as-yet-unknown reason: we saw him in the Gents' when Mike took over.
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary

Post by IcedOver »

I mean, you could come up with any number of explanations considering how past and future sometimes don't matter in this show, or entities that can go anywhere, two of whom were next to Harold, but I'm more inclined to believe this was a lazy mistake. I doubt that the story of how these pages got in the door will be touched upon any further than it was in this hour.
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary

Post by gavriloP »

The fact that Leland didn't destroy the pages but hid them inside the door fits with the letters under the fingernails. One thing Lynch and Engels forgot already in FWWM was that Laura's secret diary was supposed to have been written by Harold Smith. In original series when Donna and Cooper get the last pages from real ms Tremond, they are written by Harold. And the last entry was from the last day of Laura. The whole diary business was always a mess from logical point of view because the published diary wasn't even canon, but I love it all still :)
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary

Post by 4815162342 »

Yeah, there's just no way. It's a continuity error. It happens.
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary (SPOILERS)

Post by Rami Airola »

One thing I got out of this is the realization that Leland might've had these pages with him for several days after murdering her daughter. He really kept these pages with him and obviously didn't want to get rid of them. He didn't hide the pages to get rid of them but to keep them safe until he can get them back. If he wanted to get rid of the "evidence" or something, he would've burned the pages already. No, he wanted to keep them and maybe read them over and over again. With this in mind it makes sense for him not to flush them away.

When we watch the season 1 again, we can now watch the Leland scenes with the thought of him probably having the pages with him possibly in every scene.

That's super deranged and I love it!
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary (SPOILERS)

Post by IcedOver »

Rami Airola wrote:One thing I got out of this is the realization that Leland might've had these pages with him for several days after murdering her daughter. He really kept these pages with him and obviously didn't want to get rid of them. He didn't hide the pages to get rid of them but to keep them safe until he can get them back. If he wanted to get rid of the "evidence" or something, he would've burned the pages already. No, he wanted to keep them and maybe read them over and over again. With this in mind it makes sense for him not to flush them away.
But if she gave the diary to Harold Smith before she even wrote the comments about Annie, Leland never could have gotten them.
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary (SPOILERS)

Post by DeepBlueSeed »

I think the pages would not have been destroyed because they spoke of future events in the Lodge that were yet to happen. And that BOB/Leland might need to wait for Dale and Annie to turn up to make better use of the information.
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary

Post by AgentEcho »

LostInTheMovies wrote:Also, even if people try to find a way to rationalize the Annie pages being missing, we're also shown Laura's entry presumably written the night before she was killed ("I know it wasn't Bob"). So they seem to be forgetting Leland ripped the pages out a week earlier. Best to just think she wrote these pages elsewhere and - if it turns out Leland was the one who put them in the bathroom door - that Leland found these too on that last day. A more practical question: why wouldn't he flush the pages down the toilet?
What is the indication she wrote that the night before she was killed? Was it the date?

I'm sure it was an error but I like to rationalize an explanation when I can. In FWWM she realizes who BOB is inhabiting after the pages were ripped out, so it definitely gets harder to rationalize that passage being in the original torn out pages.

One reason I like the idea of Laura getting the same message repeatedly is it fits with Lynch's use of repetition. Scenes in the Lodge repeat itself, and he loves using repeating dialogue ("Are you talking about that little girl that got murdered?" The Bad-Coop Gordon Albert scene from part 4, etc.).
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary

Post by LostInTheMovies »

AgentEcho wrote:
LostInTheMovies wrote:Also, even if people try to find a way to rationalize the Annie pages being missing, we're also shown Laura's entry presumably written the night before she was killed ("I know it wasn't Bob"). So they seem to be forgetting Leland ripped the pages out a week earlier. Best to just think she wrote these pages elsewhere and - if it turns out Leland was the one who put them in the bathroom door - that Leland found these too on that last day. A more practical question: why wouldn't he flush the pages down the toilet?
What is the indication she wrote that the night before she was killed? Was it the date?
The scene in which she sees Leland's face appear in place of Bob's occurs the night before she was killed - while she has suspicions earlier than that, it really feels to me like this entry is intended to take place after that particular trauma, her full "reveal" moment.
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary (SPOILERS)

Post by Wonderful & Strange »

Hawk is wrong that the pages come from the secret, hidden diary (Harold Smith's).

They come from the replacement found that Laura used to replace her original. She wrote this stuff down towards the end and Leland removed the pages before killing her.

She had two diaries. Why can't these pages be from the replacement?
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The timeline of the key passage from Laura's diary (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Wonderful & Strange wrote:Hawk is wrong that the pages come from the secret, hidden diary (Harold Smith's).

They come from the original one found that Laura used to replace her original. She wrote this stuff down towards the end and Leland removed the pages before killing her.

She had two diaries. Why can't these pages be from the replacement?
Based on all evidence from the original show, the second diary was used as a decoy, a fake. She didn't write anything about Bob in it. She expressly states this purpose in TSDoLP.

Also, as was noted in another thread, the entry about Nancy bringing Laura her stuff from OEJ in a plastic pumpkin is clearly intended as a torn-out page of TSDoLP (isn't it nuts that they went to this level of detail engaging with the tie-in books, yet Mark couldn't be bothered to remember that we saw Norma's mom in the original show?).
Last edited by Mr. Reindeer on Mon Jun 19, 2017 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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