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LOVED how everyone just went right along with Coop speaking in full sentences (commenting on but not being shocked by it). The Mitchums agreeing to immediately fuel up the jet and head to Spokane was just *kisses fingers* Audrey coma is weird because she must have gotten out of her old coma, had a baby, and got back into one? Maybe being with Bad Coop did something to her in the way that him "being" with Diane did. Angry accountant was appropriately weird but having a machine pistol in the trunk, I dunno. Chantal's "What if I am?!" was so perfectly delivered, I was delighted. BAD BINOCULARS!

Morn from Star Trek DS9 is another great example of this, I agree it is very good.

I think this is true but the role-reversal isn't really necessary at all. How would we react if Beverly fucked Johnny? If he was portrayed with a confused smile on his face as she rode him? The only real difference is the show inexplicably portrays everyone as assuming Dougie has some sort of agency while portraying Johnny as someone who needs to be constantly cared for. Dougie is portrayed as someone who literally doesn't know that he needs to eat or use the bathroom, he has the agency of an infant. I sincerely doubt the show will ever get into Dougie's internal life and whether he ever understood what he was doing, based on the fact that everyone in the fiction assumes he's making his own decisions and is somehow living a life (what exactly has he been doing at work every day?) Because of this I think it's less of a problem in the world, i.e. a legalistic argument about sending Janey-E to jail is pointless, but the concern is what's being portrayed by Lynch as a fun goof where you strip down the mentally disabled and do with them what you please.

This is exactly what I thought of after admittedly finding the sex scene funny. If Coop came around and remembered, he wouldn't find it funny at all, based on what we know about his character and relationships with Audrey and Annie in S1 and S2. I'm sure the scene was written so we could see Dougie/Coop discovering another physical pleasure, like peeing or drinking coffee, and there may even be some commentary there about how one should treat sex as lightheartedly as the others, with which I definitely disagree precisely because multiple people are involved and consent is important. I do think Janey-E's consent is a bit more complicated based on how she started trying to get Coop into bed by saying "Do you find me attractive? I find you attractive." This was of course a ludicrous thing for a wife to ask a husband if they have any sort of sex life at all. We've also had basically zero evidence that Janey-E loves Dougie, she spends all her onscreen time berating or dismissing him, and only seems to show affection for him when he's doing Coop things (disarming Ike, being hot). It would not be unreasonable, I think, to suggest that Janey-E is falling for Coop, not Dougie, though of course from her point of view she's just discovering new things about her husband that are reigniting the spark.

Naomi Watts has been brilliant all season and this was a really great ep to cement that, not just her discovering HotCoop but the full news coverage clip (I think it was cut off before).

Agreed, that scene was when I think I started to appreciate Tammy so much more. She's an awkward dork who uses this persona to cover that up, which I think helps to reconcile her onscreen performance with her role as the Secret History compiler. It also really helped make her feel like a Twin Peaks character, she's cool in the way Johnny is cool. It reminds me of Audrey doing something similar to try to distract from her youth whenever she was around Cooper. It was nice to see her get some agency in the scene questioning Hastings, particularly since she was basically just answering the phone for Gordon the rest of the ep. It was notable too, I think, that Gordon was able to get a positive response from Diane by taking a drag from her cigarette and noting that they used to smoke together a lot. He sort of set up a "Fuck you, Gordon" response from her but she defied that expectation.

His name is Duncan Todd and his assistant is Roger, so that's a loose one. It seemed obvious at first that Duncan hired Ike but that does throw it off a bit maybe. Been thinking a bit about Garland and his perfectly accurate prediction of when and how the fellas would come to Mrs Briggs for information. The only plausible explanation is the running idea that the lodge/other place exists out of time such that one could observe parts of our world in different times, and he saw an opportunity to make a change by planting the info for the sheriffs. He then relies on Bobby to remember exactly where the Jackrabbit's Palace is, which did feel in character for Garland but was pretty impractical. Normally I'm inclined to not overanalyze something if it is narratively interesting, but this is exactly the opposite, they are just given the answers through a deus ex machina rather than any sort of interesting detective work. It's right up there with Hawk following his magical heritage coin and having a crazy hunch to rip a door apart or Dougie's coincidentally ducking a sniper rifle. The more I think about it the more I realize I liked getting fed bits to move the story along but most of it was maybe pretty bad? Ah but then the marble exchange was so good!

It does feel weird how on the nose all the exposition is, obviously particularly compared to Part 8. If you looked at Bill Hastings last appearance and this one you'd have expected him to have 4-5 scenes between the two to develop from unwitting victim to exposition machine (who already knows Ruth is dead and does a very convincing job pretending that he doesn't and is not at all bothered that the woman he loved was killed by Zone creatures). It's ALMOST as if they filmed two versions of this plotline where they tried both of these states, then "found it in the editing room." That said jeez Matthew Lillard is putting in an amazing performance which is a sentence I never thought I'd write. I wonder if The Zone is a reference to the Tarkovsky film Stalker. In the film The Zone is (from wiki): "an area in which the normal laws of reality do not apply. The Zone contains a place called the "Room", said to grant the wishes of anyone who steps inside. The area containing the Zone is sealed off by the government and great hazards exist within it." Of course we could take that Bill and Ruth would use this name because they are into sci-fi, and Bill notes he reads a lot (Stalker is loosely based on the book Roadside Picnic). Still it may be a nod from Frost or Lynch to an inspiration for the lodge.

Late to the party here, just heard the latest episode and saw the thread. 12 Bottle Bar is a great blog that attempts to create a large variety of great drinks using a very limited selection of spirits. Of their 12 bottles, they offer great advice on budget options vs premium, and picking things from their list means being able to access the various super-solid recipes they publish. Their book is excellent too, exploring way more than just a recipe list. http://12bottlebar.com/bottles/ I'm a bartender, cocktail nerd and longtime thumbs fan so if anyone has questions about how to make their ideas into real, delicious stuff I'll keep an eye on the thread Here's the birth of the cocktail-in-ice-ball, at The Aviary here in Chicago: And here's someone breaking into the thing in actual service, complete with cool slingshot glass attachment: It should be noted that this is super cute but a properly mixed cocktail with fresh clear ice will ALWAYS deliver superior results. The crushed ice ball dilutes super quickly because it has a ton of surface area and air bubbles (see how cloudy!) so you end up with a pretty watered-down warm drink much faster than a traditional decent preparation.

Patrick was talking about Highlights magazine, not sure if that was hot anywhere else but it was huge in Chicago Also this is a review on Shari's Berries:

It's so hard that you'll likely need to repeat it 20 times to finish it, thus desensitizing you to torture!

The IGN game is fun! It reads like a parody of itself, from reviewing a "blatant Pokemon ripoff" and then writing a guide to it, to typos, to awesome game ideas for 7 more Lords Managements, to . And this just from the front page....

Anyone been playing through this? I found chapter 3 really great as it was just about proper resource management without much RNG, but chapter 4 (the survival bit from the web game) is so bleak and depressing it's hard to want to go on. Are the remaining chapters worth slogging it out?

Hello! I've been listening for a year or so now after always hearing people mention the Thumbs on other podcasts. Been lurking in the forums but decided to register because there's no Star Wars Galaxies thread and that is tragic.