Bob

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DoppelBocker
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Bob

Post by DoppelBocker »

As we all know, Bob was the overarching big bad in the first 2 seasons. A lot of mystery surrounding Bob as there is for other lodge entities as well. We don't know a lot about Bob's history but he seemed to be around a summer cottage that Leland went to as a kid at least as far as his 90's origin goes and worked alongside Mike for who knows how long or how many hosts.

In TSHOP, Frost did seem to open a door to add to Bob's background referencing a human named Bob disappearing near owl cave in colonial times (demon's or spirit often do take likeness of person once lived suppose).

I read in another thread how perhaps the Return can be viewed as a new Lynch work simply referencing something in the past as opposed to being a direct continuation of it. The Return seems to take a different route with Bob showcasing him as a face within a metaphysical orb that is puked out by mother/experiment along with bunch of bug eggs after first atomic bomb test. While he doesn't appear much in the Return, I really did like how Lynch played with the camera showing Bob's likeness superimposed over Mr. C's face while in the jailcell. Other than than, Bob just simply seems to be passively dwelling in Mr. C only coming out as an orb after Mr. C. is shot.

Was Bob done justice in the Return or should he have been left out? After sleeping on it, I for one think things played out kind of anticlimactically where Dopplecoop and Bob are concerned. While the new big bad Judy was interesting I didn't like the whole Freddy with a green glove punching a ball with Bob's face on it. It seems like something a comic book would do where upon announcing a new shadow villain (in this case Jude), all other stuff is done away with just like that which conversely makes me less interested in Jude. The only thing untypical I suppose is Freddy with green glove thing which doesn't seem to jive all that well with me either.

I'm kind of thinking they should've just left Bob out of the Season entirely (Freddy with green glove thing perhaps re-written as well). Perhaps Mr.C communicates with Bob through mirrors or perhaps Mr.C. creates a home for Bob through Richard I think would've worked better. Lynch sees no reason to wrap everything up so could've just alluded to Bob doing other things or perhaps tiring of earthly garmanbozia and going into hibernation for while... I just don't like what we got. Anyone else feel differently about this or somewhat kind of annoyed as well?
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Bob

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

I think overall they did the best they could given that they couldn't shoot any new footage of Silva, and I for one appreciate them not doing a recast, since Silva's visage is such an integral part of the Bob character. I like the way the character was handled overall (particularly having Mr. C take on Bob's appearance, and the mirror shot), but the orb/green glove battle was sure an unfortunate choice. I think once in awhile L/F egg each other's worst tendencies on a bit too much, the one downside to the partnership.
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mtwentz
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Re: Bob

Post by mtwentz »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:I think overall they did the best they could given that they couldn't shoot any new footage of Silva, and I for one appreciate them not doing a recast, since Silva's visage is such an integral part of the Bob character. I like the way the character was handled overall (particularly having Mr. C take on Bob's appearance, and the mirror shot), but the orb/green glove battle was sure an unfortunate choice. I think once in awhile L/F egg each other's worst tendencies on a bit too much, the one downside to the partnership.
I don't know- the orb/green glove battle did not bother me at all: I thought it was actually kind of fun. But I can definitely see it being polarizing.
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IcedOver
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Re: Bob

Post by IcedOver »

I don't believe that Silva's face should have been used as part of a climactic battle. They could have found some other way of doing it, like changing his face to something else within the orb. The scene might have worked if not for that. Same thing with Davis and Briggs. If a season 4 should happen (unlikely), we'll have Mrs. Tremond as a character, with unfortunately the same situation.
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FlyingSquirrel
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Re: Bob

Post by FlyingSquirrel »

Reposted from the Freddie thread: I'm comfortable viewing the green glove/Bob-ball scene as a sort of abstraction or representation of what's "really" happening, kind of like in "Flatland" where the two-dimensional people can only perceive two dimensions of the three-dimensional being. I think Freddie's glove and the BOB-ball were our (and the characters') three-dimensional perceptions of the who-knows-how-many actual dimensions of the supernatural realm. And Cooper asking if his name was Freddie (indicating that he knew of the White Lodge's communication with Freddie, or perhaps even initiated it himself) partly redeemed it for me by helping paint the picture of Cooper's involvement with the Lodge forces, as opposed to having it just be another thing that Lodge entities made happen for unspecified reasons.
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Saturn's child
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Re: Bob

Post by Saturn's child »

It's probably been mentioned, but at the very least I feel the BOB boxing is foreshadowed by Bushnell the boxer, the looping fight on Sarah Palmer's TV, & even the arm wrestle to some extent.
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Novalis
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Re: Bob

Post by Novalis »

Saturn's child wrote:It's probably been mentioned, but at the very least I feel the BOB boxing is foreshadowed by Bushnell the boxer, the looping fight on Sarah Palmer's TV, & even the arm wrestle to some extent.
Definitely. There is this. Also I think a very visual pun on the strong arm / fist (let's not forget that little doggie Armstrong) tactics of a would-be hero, which is what Cooper essentially is according to many interpretations of the ending I've come across.

On that account, it might be said that you don't defeat evil by punching it in the nose, any more than you can save someone from (what seems to be) an irredeemable fate by dreaming/splitting yourself off. I don't actually like this supposedly 'spiritual' message: that fighting an opponent is always an illusory battle with oneself. Actually-existing historical Buddhism in its own native countries -- in distinction to the Western new-age appropriation of it -- has often accompanied and encouraged rather than dissuaded military service, discipline and action, honing a state of mind where killing or fighting another was not an act of the purportedly illusory self or personality in conflict with another but a way of dissolving the self into the onflowing of the weapon's dance upon the wheel of time. Western 'oriental' spirituality likes to censor most of that, in order to overcode Asian religions as psychotherapy.

Apropos all this external-conflict-originates-in-the-mind, in maya, or whatever attitude, in reality I think that punching evil on the nose is the only way to combat it. But obviously, I mean something a lot more involved than physical combat: I mean politics, and collective social action. Let's not go any further with that here. We're talking about supernatural BOB in a made-up world after all, and not political evil in the real world. But still, this cod-psychotherapy side is one of the facets of Lynch that bores me and, to be frank, very much dates his vision.

Paradoxically, I think Lynch's long term 'it's the journey, not the destination' talk is pretty inconsistent with all the interpretational emphasis, on the part of fandom, being placed on what happened in the last scenes of the Return. If it's 'chopping wood, carrying water' both before and after enlightenment then enlightenment was never the point: the point was getting that wood chopped and that water carried. Still, what do I know; I'm a materialist and a simpleton. :)
As a matter of fact, 'Chalfont' was the name of the people that rented this space before. Two Chalfonts. Weird, huh?
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powerleftist
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Re: Bob

Post by powerleftist »

I don't know what's the problem on recasting people. Donna was recast on FWWM, so what? It's done all the time. And given all the supernatural stuff, you can just say 'oh, now he looks different, because magic' and everybody's happy.
Cipher
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Re: Bob

Post by Cipher »

I'm pretty happy with both Bob's birth and death, as presented in The Return.

On the one hand, he's done justice for the threat he represented in the original run via episode 8. I absolutely adore the connection to the atomic bomb, grafting the personal cruelty that affected Laura onto this large-scale historical one. (What's the difference, really, in terms of how they subsume the lives of their victims?) And so Laura's struggle and acceptance become larger than life once again.

I also feel that, as a way to provide some sense of narrative closure, we were really promised Bob's death, wrapping up the cliffhangers of the original run and all the long-simmering Lodge conflicts surrounding him. Bob, as we understood him in the series' mythology, was also an untenable figure.

But it would be too pat to do away with Bob if he were still the series' singular totemic evil. So he goes, but it's in as silly a way as possible. Demystified by twenty-five years of lore and iconography, he's only yesterday's demon, in the end.
Last edited by Cipher on Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
whoisalhedges
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Re: Bob

Post by whoisalhedges »

It doesn't matter how BOB was "defeated," because he was un-defeated when Cooper cocked everything up.

February 23, 1989, he kept Laura from meeting Leo, Jacques, Ronette. He kept her from dying *that night*, which we saw as her body flickered out of view.

He did NOT undo anything BOB/Leland had done and was doing to her, he did NOT undo BOB's desire to possess her. All he accomplished was to keep her from her opportunity to BEAT BOB; he kept her from her destiny, which was to receive the ring from MIKE and die, freeing herself from her horrifying existence and keeping BOB out.

Laura never got the ring. Laura never had the chance to choose. BOB went into her, maybe even that very night; he had his prize, Coop never came to investigate Laura's murder, BOB never inhabited DoppelCoop, Freddie neither came to Twin Peaks nor defeated BOB.

At the end of Part 18, BOB was still very much in the story.

He was in Carrie Page.

:(
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powerleftist
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Re: Bob

Post by powerleftist »

By saving Laura, he probably dooms Ronette to a certain death. Way to go, Cooper. Way to fucking go.
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Saturn's child
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Re: Bob

Post by Saturn's child »

powerleftist wrote:By saving Laura, he probably dooms Ronette to a certain death. Way to go, Cooper. Way to fucking go.
That would put a whole different spin on American Girl's "My mother's coming." I sometimes see 'Mother' as a kind of diametrical opposite to an individual's birth mother; she is the one who births us into death, so to speak. So in that light, if Ronette is doomed, this mother's certainly coming for her.
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