Part 8 - Gotta light? (SPOILERS)

[watergateburglar]

But it is weird in that the loaded gun doesn't fire. At all. It clicks as if it is empty. Mr C is typically good at predicting things that will happen, yet somehow has not foreseen this, being caught off guard and staring at his gun in disbelief (or confusion, or something - it's hard to read Bad Coop as he doesn't seem to do emotions).

There are lots of ways to modify a firearm so it won't fire. Easiest is to remove the firng pin. The bullets could also be dummies. Same weight and appearance as working bullets but no powder.

Fair enough. Still a little weird that his otherwise astute supernatural intuition fails him on this occasion.

It's possible that Doppleooper having been out for 25 years is getting cocky and overconfident, and overlooked either an empty gun, or one with a firing pin removed.

[dropkick23]

Whilst I suspect the warden might get blamed, I also suspect Jeffries was involved. There ARE bullets in the gun, because Bad Coop checks, but they don't even fire like blanks - so I suspect Lodge weirdness is somehow involved. Also someone has supplied Ray with a gun, so he's clearly being making a deal with someone (and since it was established that Jeffries wanted him and Darya to kill Mr Cooper it makes sense that he'd arrange to get him a gun. Whether he knew about Bad Coop's deal with the warden is unknown, but it seems likely he would know of some of it.

No weird stuff.Ray knew that the gun with Mr.C doesnt work.He himself says,"Tricked you,fucker!"

But it is weird in that the loaded gun doesn't fire. At all. It clicks as if it is empty. Mr C is typically good at predicting things that will happen, yet somehow has not foreseen this, being caught off guard and staring at his gun in disbelief (or confusion, or something - it's hard to read Bad Coop as he doesn't seem to do emotions).

Yes, Ray knows that the gun won't work - he's in on the con.

The 'trick' could have something to do with Red, who did the coin trick on horne. Ray and Red might be brothers/'familiars' that have magic powers of some sort.

[Coffee]

Wasn't the firing pin just taken from the gun, rather than something supernatural? (I don't know anything about guns so unsure if that would be possible with that particular model -- mind you I don't think you can get rid of bugs in the same manner that DopelCoop did! LOL!).

[dropkick23]

he also suggested that since the nighttime scenes are so dark that he couldn't see Bob emerging in part 8 that Lynch should have tested it out on poor tv's to make sure they can handle the black levels, which is totally ignoring that Lynch said he knows the limitations of cable but that he built this thing for movie theaters. He's frustrating to read because of that.

I missed Bob on my sister's $2,000 LCD TV. Saw it just fine on my $300 plasma. I'm gonna miss plasma when they are all gone.

That people have missed the Bob blob came as a shock to me, and it all started with me reading Sepinwall's post. Then I saw many others missed it too! The reason it came as a shock is because I saw it clear as day the first time through. I bought a 65" OLED to prepare for this, and spent some time looking for ideal settings. Even so, some of the black levels are still blotchy due to the stream...I hope. Sometimes digital photography still maintains some level of splotchiness. I hope the Blu-ray gives me the intended presentation.

Blu ray will look magnificently better than the showtime stream (OLED owner here).

[mtwentz]

Strikes me that a lot of people are probably watching the new series on uncalibrated televisions. Lynch (and all television/filmmakers) create their work on calibrated monitors. If you haven't already, then you should really look into getting a professional out to calibrate your television/projector or even try it yourself using a disc such as Digital Video Essentials or the Spears & Munsil calibration disc.

All of a sudden your black levels will reveal an entire host of new details that are MEANT to be seen. Plus you will be experiencing the art the way in which the artist intended it to be seen. Very important.

This also helps with the CGI effects also (higher dynamics and sets with interpolation settings turned on will make CGI look awful).

Thanks for the info. I had no idea about calibrating televisions. Looks like it is not cheap though.

[Novalis]

Even if the Convenience Store has no obvious upper level (I think they easily could have found a building that had an upper level if that's what they wanted), there is a TARDIS like distortion of space time established in some of these realms, as we saw when Cooper was in the Purple room. He was seemingly in another level of the same palace where the Giant and Senorita reside overlooking the purple ocean, but they climb a ladder and all of the sudden they are seemingly in space, or some kind of space like realm. So it wouldn't exactly be out of the question for there to be a stairway inside that leads to an upper level that you can't see from the outside.

Exactly. The relationship between interior and exterior spaces, and negotiating the transition between the two, are not simple matters in the Lynchiverse. We need only remember the house frontage on the set of On High In Blue Tomorrows, a flat facade 'where its real hard to disappear', compared with what goes on in Smithy's (Smithies?) "behind" the window. Similarly, when Phillip Jefferies asks us to 'listen up and listen carefully -- I've been to one of their meetings; this was above a convenience store...' then I see no reason to insist that he got to that location through the conventional means of climbing a set of stairs. He does, after all, get from Buenos Aires to Philadelphia (and back, in TMP) in an unconventional way. There's the possibility that 'above' is not to be taken literally. Then again there's the possibility that the meeting PJ 'has been to' occurred much later on in the historical timeline than the convenience store we see in the atomic bomb vignette; by then the original store could have been modified, and could indeed now be (perhaps in a Ship of Theseus sense) the store that the girl and boy walk away from in the 1950s. Last but not least -- is there any imperative to see the convenience store as a purely physical place, even now based on what we have been given? Maybe we need to ask: what is a convenience store? What is 'stored' (gathered) there, and how is it convenient, for whom, etc? In my experience of watching Lynch physical places are never just physical, but batteries that absorb the energy of events that happen there. Often bad places, soaked in all the badness of the events. Sometimes it's hard to decide if the bad place makes the bad event or the bad event makes the bad place, and maybe in the end its not necessary to decide, unless you're totally wedded to the idea of human agency making everything happen, and environment remains totally passive. I'm not convinced that's Lynch's standpoint however.

[HagbardCeline]

My Showtime feed from my cable box *says* it's 1080p, which is why I've been either watching it "live" on Showtime HD or DVR-ing. I have no idea what kind of compression my DVR introduces into the equation though. Furthermore, I don't know what kind of compression results from watching an episode "On Demand"

For episode 8, however, I watched a compressed streaming version and had no trouble seeing Bob either time. I was surprised when the Afterbuzz podcast people were convinced (except for one guy) that it wasn't Bob in the bubble, and a couple of them were adamant. I thought it was both clear as day and also clear that the Woodsmen had *removed* Bob.

In the episode where Leland is unmasked. He starts banging his head against the wall and flees Leland before the body dies. (He flies off in an owl doesn't he?). I always thought this meant that if the body had died with Bob in it, then Bob would have ended up back in the lodge regardless. What I don't get, though, is how DoppleCoop survived being shot. Clearly Bob doesn't make them indestructible or Leland wouldn't have been able to bang his head on the wall and kill himself. Since we didn't see the Woodsmen "acting" before we have nothing to compare what happened in Ep8 to. In the theatrical cut of FWWM there are two of them and they're just sitting there. Jurgen Prochnow's Woodsman has dialogue in the missing pieces only.

Speaking of the Convenience Store, I figured that the one in Episode 8 was not the one from FWWM at all. I thought it was a dummy store that was actually a part of the Trinity test. (Which is also why I didn't mind that it was clearly labeled). I don't think that the Army built any buildings for that test, unlike the later tests. It could be that the lodge spirits just had an affinity for these types of stores. After spending two summers working graveyard in a 7-11, I know there's certainly a lot of garmonbozia to be had.

FInally, I am starting to suspect as others have, that the 9 hour version of the script was going to be a lot more dense plotwise and have more narrative velocity than what we have. The expansion of the series allowed Lynch to do all of this visual art that he had dreamed up. Time will tell though.

[ryanmj1993]

I keep thinking about how amazing this episode would have looked on the big screen. Especially the atomic bomb sequence.

[Bookworm]

In the episode where Leland is unmasked. He starts banging his head against the wall and flees Leland before the body dies. (He flies off in an owl doesn't he?). I always thought this meant that if the body had died with Bob in it, then Bob would have ended up back in the lodge regardless. What I don't get, though, is how DoppleCoop survived being shot. Clearly Bob doesn't make them indestructible or Leland wouldn't have been able to bang his head on the wall and kill himself. Since we didn't see the Woodsmen "acting" before we have nothing to compare what happened in Ep8 to. In the theatrical cut of FWWM there are two of them and they're just sitting there. Jurgen Prochnow's Woodsman has dialogue in the missing pieces only.

First, I think the doppelgangers are different from human, resistance wise, Leland was human while Mr.C is a being from the Lodge. That being said I don't think DoppelCoop survived the shots, he did die. Then the Woodsmen came and performed that weird ritual and revived him somehow (that resurrection being related to the Borb removing is still unknow)

[LateReg]

My Showtime feed from my cable box *says* it's 1080p, which is why I've been either watching it "live" on Showtime HD or DVR-ing. I have no idea what kind of compression my DVR introduces into the equation though. Furthermore, I don't know what kind of compression results from watching an episode "On Demand"

For episode 8, however, I watched a compressed streaming version and had no trouble seeing Bob either time. I was surprised when the Afterbuzz podcast people were convinced (except for one guy) that it wasn't Bob in the bubble, and a couple of them were adamant. I thought it was both clear as day and also clear that the Woodsmen had *removed* Bob.

In the episode where Leland is unmasked. He starts banging his head against the wall and flees Leland before the body dies. (He flies off in an owl doesn't he?). I always thought this meant that if the body had died with Bob in it, then Bob would have ended up back in the lodge regardless. What I don't get, though, is how DoppleCoop survived being shot. Clearly Bob doesn't make them indestructible or Leland wouldn't have been able to bang his head on the wall and kill himself. Since we didn't see the Woodsmen "acting" before we have nothing to compare what happened in Ep8 to. In the theatrical cut of FWWM there are two of them and they're just sitting there. Jurgen Prochnow's Woodsman has dialogue in the missing pieces only.

Speaking of the Convenience Store, I figured that the one in Episode 8 was not the one from FWWM at all. I thought it was a dummy store that was actually a part of the Trinity test. (Which is also why I didn't mind that it was clearly labeled). I don't think that the Army built any buildings for that test, unlike the later tests. It could be that the lodge spirits just had an affinity for these types of stores. After spending two summers working graveyard in a 7-11, I know there's certainly a lot of garmonbozia to be had.

FInally, I am starting to suspect as others have, that the 9 hour version of the script was going to be a lot more dense plotwise and have more narrative velocity than what we have. The expansion of the series allowed Lynch to do all of this visual art that he had dreamed up. Time will tell though.

In your last paragraph, what do you mean by "time will tell"? How will we find out if that was going to be the case or not? By virtue of shoving all of these 18 hours into a 9 hour film, I think it's obvious that it would have moved faster, of course, and therefore felt denser. But I'm just wondering what exactly you're referring to when you say time will tell, and how time will tell.

[Xavi]

Now that I've digested episode 8 a bit, my mind goes back to Naido and the American Girl in that mauve world, where we also found that black atomic alarm bell device. The American Girl warned Coop that he had to hurry because "her mother" was coming. Somehow these two women represent opposites; Naido as a citizen of a land that was victimised by a nuclear bomb, and the American Girl as a compatriot of the creator of the atom bomb; Enola Gay was the name of the mother of the pilot that ... well, you all know the story.

[Mr. Reindeer]

In your last paragraph, what do you mean by "time will tell"? How will we find out if that was going to be the case or not? By virtue of shoving all of these 18 hours into a 9 hour film, I think it's obvious that it would have moved faster, of course, and therefore felt denser. But I'm just wondering what exactly you're referring to when you say time will tell, and how time will tell.

Presumably through the script being released or leaking? Every TP script except Episode 7 has found its way onto the Internet. I sure hope TR is no exception (once it fully airs, of course); I love comparing the script to the finished product, and it would be even more fascinating with this season. However, I worry that a leak is unlikely due to the huge huge cloud of secrecy and heavy liability for violating the NDA. I fear our only hope is an official L/F sanctioned release, and I'm not sure we'll ever see that. (DKL did authorize publication of the LH script back in the day, perhaps to let Barry Gifford collect some profits, but he generally seems to be very disdainful of scripts as free-standing texts, referring to them as "blueprints").

[wxray]

Now that I've digested episode 8 a bit, my mind goes back to Naido and the American Girl in that mauve world, where we also found that black atomic alarm bell device. The American Girl warned Coop that he had to hurry because "her mother" was coming. Somehow these two women represent opposites; Naido as a citizen of a land that was victimised by a nuclear bomb, and the American Girl as a compatriot of the creator of the atom bomb; Enola Gay was the name of the mother of the pilot that ... well, you all know the story.

Exactly.

And I can see the young girl (frog bug swallower) as a young American Girl.

[HagbardCeline]

In your last paragraph, what do you mean by "time will tell"? How will we find out if that was going to be the case or not? By virtue of shoving all of these 18 hours into a 9 hour film, I think it's obvious that it would have moved faster, of course, and therefore felt denser. But I'm just wondering what exactly you're referring to when you say time will tell, and how time will tell.

A couple ways really. As someone else replied, the script may eventually find its way to the internet. If we end up with a 900 page script that has zero of the metaphysical/surreal stuff in it, then we'll know. If, however, the 900 page script is released and these scenes are fully scripted, then again, we'll know. When all 18 hours are available, we'll be able to see if the scenes can be re-ordered into a linear conventional storyline, and then we'll know.

[Framed_Angel]

I'm thinking of Part 7 when DougieCoop defends himself from Ike the Spike's attack, the Arm-Doppelganger appears, and yells:
"Squeeze his hand off!"
In Part 8, the homicidal cigarette-nibbling Woodsman-ghost squeezes the heads of his victims as they react with pain. The Woodsman squeezes them to death with just one hand.
Back in Part 2, EvilCoop "squeezed" Jack's cheeks until he went numb/ dead.

And I don't know where else to take that connection I just made, or if it is a "connection" at all~