Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Just for the hell of it, here are all the ways Al Strobel has been credited:
One-Armed Man (Pilot, E1, E2, E4)
Phillip Michael Gerard (E8, E10, E15)
No character name listed (promoted to Guest Star: E13, E14, E16)
Philip Gerard (The One Armed Man) (FWWM)
Phillip Gerard (P2, P3, P4, P6, P11, P16, P17, P18)
So which one's the official version??
Regarding that:
1) I like the whole official vs unofficial motif, it really works for me in some nebulous way. One thing it sometimes makes me think of is Lynch making distinctions between a script & its filmed version; the script is one thing, but it's not fully realised until filming, editing, etc are complete, at which point they're two different beasts (prominently seen in the disparity between ep 29's script & the finished product).
Adding onto that, as we know Lynch was largely dissatisfied with Peaks S2, so it could be a case of his version of Twin Peaks being unofficial in that it differs from the Peaks canon available to us, the viewers (which is official in the sense that when you watch Twin Peaks, you also see all the stuff that Lynch isn't a fan of). So does Gordon know the unofficial version in the sense that he 'knows' the heart & soul of Twin Peaks vs the whole version? I can only imagine (& he's said as much in interviews) that his head-canon is quite different to the complete Z to A...
Anyway, that's not necessarily my take on the whole official vs unofficial thing, just something that floats in my mind from time to time.
2) Going back to the obscure motives of the lodge entities (which -- coincidently or not -- are echoed in Al Strobel's naming ambiguities), I've always taken them as modern gods of a sort, & in much the same way as many traditions feature deities with seemingly incomprehensible motives/actions, so it is in Twin Peaks. Which has always worked well for me, since I imagine any non-human entities would likely have non-human logic behind their actions, perhaps in a way that is ultimately unable to be rationally digested by humans. I really like not knowing if any of them are 'good' or 'bad'. I mean, Bob seems pretty despicable, but maybe he just feeds on what he feeds on? As humans we generally consume life when we eat (even if we're talking vegetables), which could arguably be seen as bad by some outside being that somehow didn't have to subsist on life.