Hey all! This is my very first post. I can't believe it's been 4 years since this premiered. I feel like I'm still only beginning to grasp certain details.
The image I attached is a screenshot is from the first moments of Part 5. At the beginning, we get a couple of colorful, neon-laden establishing shots of the Vegas strip, and then this, before cutting to Gene and Jake out front of Dougie's sex house. I noticed this at some point in the last year and wanted to share. I did my best to try to see if this had been mentioned elsewhere, to avoid repeating old news, and I wasn't able to find anything.
Can we discuss?
These are some of my immediate thoughts for the sake of discussion, but I'm curious if anyone else noticed this, what people think, etc. Obviously, it could just be an interesting, subtle, but ultimately unimportant detail. I do feel like it's safe to say that it's not nothing, as they clearly had to put some thought into this.
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Some thoughts I've had so far...
This image immediately made me think of:
- when Dougie's limo driver says "It's hard to see colors at night" (2x)
- the opening Rancho Roso logo of a bulb (usually in color) flashing (waking up?) over a black & white background
There are also implications about the reality DougieCoop finds himself in in part 3. Throughout season 3, black & white scenes are usually associated with the past. I've also seen cinematographer Peter Deming describe the black & white scenes in interviews as a "third reality." Another association to consider are the many shots of b/w surveilance footage at the casino, which relate back to Cooper seeing a double of himself in the surveilance still of Jeffries's entrance in FWWM. We also see how black and white changes to color when Coop brings Laura away from death and over to the 13th sycamore.
I think we can also associate black and white with Judy/the Experiment/the inside of Sarah Palmer in Part 14, as well as with the Fireman's mansion.
Perhaps this shot is a clue that DougieCoop is actually in the black & white place, whatever it actually is. Maybe Naido pulled the lever on the electrical machine so that DougieCoop would be able to perceive color when he enters the black & white reality through the numbered socket. After all, the color palette and the perception of time within the post-Naido box-in-space change so that they align with the "reality" that Coop is more familiar with. Due to the presence of the blue rose in the new version of that room, coupled with Major Briggs's "blue rose" warning just moments before, I'm now thinking that Coop was being cautioned to take what he experiences on the other side of the socket with a grain of salt. Where he goes is perhaps not "real" or "present" in the way Cooper might think. All of this could therefore be further clues about what Cooper eventually gets wrong, particularly when he creates another tulpa.
Phillip Gerard does ask Coop at the beginning of part 2 (and the beginning of part 18), "Is it future or is it past?" The question is asked twice, so it is therefore quite important, and perhaps meant to be a piece of guiding advice for Coop before he heads out of the waiting room. We also have the Giant's warning or set of clues, and then the warning or clue of Major Briggs, all of which could be fundamentally the same: don't get seduced into the wrong reality.
Anyway, this could also simply be a flourish that adds some thematic, metaphorical nuance to the Las Vegas sequences. For example, the black & white could represent the drab reality of the Rancho Rosa estates and perhaps even of life itself, whereas the illuminated, colorful billboard represents the subjective dream that we project onto the harsh truth of existence. It could also even just be a reference to the fact that we see color because of light, and that without light (the Laura orb?) the world really is just shades of grey.
Regardless of whether or not this shot "means" anything, it really resonated with me.