BonusWavePilot

Hmmm, I suppose it does lean a fair bit on the old seasons, but we did at least get his "Nothing going on here" interaction, and his sad evening of burning things while staring at his glitchy reflection at the Gas Farm. Granted the latter was short on detail about what was motivating it exactly, but it did look like big Ed was lonely.

@UnpopularTrousers Yeah, I would tend to agree - I think there is just more commonality of pacing in any two scenes of a similar length than people realise. (That, and we humans are very good at spotting patterns and correlations even where none were intended.)

You may well be right, but if he's coming back at all, it'll have to be soon. Only 3 episodes left!

Also, I reckon we're due to get Goodcoop back next episode. Dougie's reaction to Cole's name on TV was stronger than anything we've yet seen from him, and his fork-in-the-socket some of the most self-driven and purposeful action we have seen Dougie take. (Though at this point, while I would love to see McLachlan get a chance to play some OG Cooper, I will be sanguine even if he never comes back.)

Yeah, my TV has somewhat crappy brightness and I had a lot of trouble making out the darker stuff until I turned off the lights in our lounge. There was a lot of dimly lit stuff in this episode - I am also looking forward to getting a chance to rewatch with better screen options at some point. The way Freddy's face-punching was handled was good I thought - the combination of the musical skip with the unornamented straight punch in the face gave it impact and a bit of comedy, but then the 'his eyes don't look right' response was played as midway between whacky eye-rolling cartoonish and horrific induced brain-injury territory. I think the interaction James has with Renee that kicks off the fight with Chuck & co was very much a 'classic James' moment - we get to see that in some ways he still hasn't caught a clue. He walks up and earnestly, nervously says hello to Renee - his being besotted with her written all over him, either not anticipating Chuck's reaction, or just not caring in the moment. It seemed like something teenaged James would definitely have done too.

Ah yes, I used to use the hair-tie trick: am a former long-hair owner myself - probably still would be if my genes had not determined that mine was to be the life of a baldie... These days I either just accept that I must do my share of thieving to maintain the correct lighter distribution, or sometimes just buy one that is unwieldy or ugly enough that it doesn't easily slip into the usual attention void that these things occupy. I used to live with someone who was a sink for lighters - she often had voluminous pockets in which things would go missing, so she never had a lighter she could find, but when she borrowed one she would invariably absently drop it into those pockets. We used to have a margarine bucket by the washing machine that she would fill up with lighters when emptying her pockets before doing a load...

@Mentalgongfu - I appreciate the recommendation! Got a copy of Rahula's 'What the Buddha Taught' recently as my intended starting point, based on a recommendation from a friend. As regards losing the books: I have had many books go the same way (well, not being eaten, but loaned and never returned), but if I am honest I must admit that there are also quite a few on my own shelf that were borrowed from people I have lost touch with, or which I know were originally someone else's but can no longer remember whose. For a few years now I have followed the philosophy of presuming that books do not follow the usual rules of ownership: I lend books without being too worried about whether they come back. I find a similar outlook on cigarette lighters helps to minimise the irritation when your lighter goes missing *again*. That said, under this new regime I probably would not be prepared to lend irreplaceable stuff or books which have serious sentimental value.

@Vellan said: "I'm also concerned that putting someone in a cell is Andy's idea of keeping them safe. We know that the Woodsmen a) bump people off, and b ) have no trouble getting in/out of gaol cells, head or no head." True, but given that they seem to just descend from the sky, can become invisible at least temporarily, and have super-strength and a willingness to use it to murder people - there probably aren't many places that would be safe. @Marblize said: "Also, Monica Belluci's "Ancient Phrase" is apparently a loose translation from the Upanishads, and I think similar lines of fragments of these lines are said at some point in Inland Empire." Yup, seems to be from the Aitereya Upanishad specifically - Thomas Egenes' translation has it as: "We are like the spider,” said the king. “We weave our life, and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream." Which seems to be making an interesting point about the weirdness of the phenomenon of both creating a dream-world (as the 'dreamer') but also being conscious within that dream-world ('living in the dream'). To the extent that I feel confident claiming to have understood it, I believe the point is about how what we perceive as the world is actually just our own thoughts, having already abstracted away the reality of the world into concepts by the time we can reason about it. (But I am no religious scholar, and have not read much of the Upanishads, although this kind of makes me want to)

"Wilson, how many times have I told youuuuuuu! This is what we do in the FBI!" Oh I love how I never see this whacky shit coming. Also I loved that Freddy's story incorporated introducing James to the term 'jobsworth'...

Thanks Jake! (Woah, never used an emoticon on this forum before: weird selection)

@Jake! Where is the episode 14 thread!? How can I possibly watch a new episode without having somewhere to post my hot takes? Oh, the humanity!

I think the visions we've seen indicate that Mike is assisting from the Lodge, but it isn't clear if all of Dougie's luck originates there - certainly the slot machines seemed to have a Lodge-y vision floating over them, and Mike directly gestured Dougie into the cake shop etc, but then pre-Lodge Cooper often used intuitive methods, so maybe it is partly just a more literal demonstration of his own luck...? (In this interpretation, maybe having less rationality to get in the way actually helps?)

Hmmm, re-reading that I don't mean to be an arsehole at the end there - my point is not that your opinion is wrong or that you shouldn't be watching or anything: I just think that the show's a lot more fun if you abandon the idea that it is going to be anything but slow-paced and sometimes not forthcoming.

"...very difficult to think he is not making specific choices to an end." Of course! So given that we presume there is some kind of plan afoot here, it seems like a massive, Byzantine effort to have this many plot threads and interesting moments in service of nothing more than withholding some notional other version of the show that only exists in the expectations of the audience. "...who won't leave so the audience can't get the information it wants..." or so the audience can have a giggle at how over-the-top and drawn out it was, or so we can see how Albert responds when you push his patience far enough, or so we can see that Lynch is leaning into the 'dirty old man' character of Cole quite heavily. Regarding the idea that we're the dupes, on some occasions we are, maybe. But a lot of the time we know at least a couple of things that the characters we are watching do not, even if we need them to lead us to how those things fit together.. I don't see how we'll ever get a version of this show where the pace moves along snappily without distractions or strangely drawn out sections or disturbing mood-pieces, because Lynch has no interest in making such a thing. Maybe someone will make an edit after all the episodes have come out that is closer to what you are after, but I can't imagine it would be a better series at that point.

Noice.

Well, I suppose a lot of those adjectives are 'in the eye of the beholder' type things, but I would say that the Dougie storyline is interesting because of the way the people around him react. Probably he'll transform back into Goodcoop at some point towards the end of the run, but what is intriguing is how people simultaneously are prepared to help Dougie do the most basic things, and still somehow see him as a hero, or a competent worker. To have long conversations with him despite his contribution being entirely echolalia. It raises questions about whether original-seasons' Cooper was effective as an investigator because of his intelligence, methods and awareness or if he was always just a lucky magic guy and would have been just as successful regardless of what methods he employed. This is emphasised through dramatic irony since the audience knows the 'old Cooper' and sees how far from that point Dougie is, but the other characters interacting with Dougie see nothing wrong. As for important... I think that is harder to call until we've seen the whole run, because we don't yet know which elements will be vital to the climactic scenes. I have no problem with this, as the alternative is that we *do* know which bits are important, which would mean that the progress from this point would be as predictable as lesser TV. On 'innovative' - how many other shows have you seen with a central character like Dougie? We can argue whether or not it works effectively, but I don't think you can really claim that it is ordinary. Really I suppose it comes down to what you mean by 'moves very far'. Does it have to be straight-up plot to qualify? Like, 'character X goes and does impactful thing Y'? What about finding out more about character X after she has already done thing Y which makes you realise that the meaning of thing Y was much different to your expectation? Does that count as movement? What about something weird or abstract that isn't clear in itself, but has such a clearly menacing tone that it affects the scenes that follow? As for 'funny', that is very subjective, but I've found the Dougie slapstick stuff to be pretty high-quality overall really: the flopping sex arms, walking into the door etc. I get your frustration in terms of 'stuff actually happening', but I think tone and character are important too, and I love how unexpected this series has been. Even having been prepared by the episodes before, this show so often surprises me when most TV is so formulaic. (Not that there aren't a lot of shows that I enjoy, but it is very often possible to make a mostly accurate prediction on the entire course of an episode based only on the first few minutes).

Yeah, I was quite surprised that it hasn't leaked into the interwebs as well (or at least not so far as I have seen. I haven't gone to any great lengths in this pursuit, but I did look in a couple of the usual spots.) Might just be a definitive sign that streaming is trumping piracy at last. (Though I can't see Australia abandoning its enthusiasm for piracy until a few more of the bullshit digital oceans have disappeared)

It looked like he was repeating the "so much" from the end of Janey's "I love you so much" to me, but I haven't been able to lip-read for many years. (Apparently I could as a kid for a while because I had a bunch of trouble with my ears which left me functionally pretty close to deaf for a while when I was young, but I have lost the knack)

Found this week's episode most entertaining! Glad to see Audrey & Charlie's bit pushing more in a sinister direction (as opposed to just being a shitty life, acted melodramatically), loved the Mitchums - as always, etc. We got another couple of Goodcoop inflected bits of Dougie dialogue during Anthony's confession I thought - his "confess" and "thank... Dougie", as well as his position behind and to the side of Anthony both gave me the impression of interrogation familiarity, but as ever it might be wishful thinking. Given the crowd reaction at the roadhouse, I guess I can't argue with the consensus: James has always been cool.

Oh man, it is going to be tricky not to... 'procure' that episode before its official release next week...

Just saw this mentioned elsewhere, and realised I forgot to bring it up. I loved this dialogue between Gordon & Albert: Gordon: We'll figure it out, but now I'd really like to get back to this fine Bordeaux. Albert: What kind is it? Gordon: 11:05. As I took it to be Albert being a smartarse about the fact that what Gordon wanted to get back to only peripherally involved the wine (to the degree where he probably couldn't name what he was drinking), and Gordon in turn pretending to mishear him.

Oh definitely, especially when he follows it up by being more swept up in his own bike story than anything else that's going on. (I suppose a charitable read would be that he was reflecting on how he had failed to stand in as a father for Richard, and thus helped him go astray in some fashion, but I don't think so.) The Audrey scene felt an awful lot like being trolled - to have such a barrage of unknown stuff to try to track, then have Audrey stand-in for us waiting to figure out what is going on at last through that drawn-out phone call to have her husband, and the scene, both stonewall... (To be clear, I don't hate this, but I will admit to a spirited "oh fuck you!" which was half aimed at the character and half at uncle Dave himself.)

Hmmm yeah just got to the wound bit as well. What the heck? Do they not have band-aids in Thumbs-land or something?

Yah, am looking forward to a rewatch down the track without the blocky artefacts in large patches of darkness (like that in the woods as you mention).

Yup! His delivery was really excellent.