Mentalgongfu

It would be horribly disappointing. While Lynch certainly doesn't seem to base his decisions solely on audience desires, I know he is better than this. Frankly, I think all of the dream/alternate reality theories that posit much or all we are seeing is a fantasy are just lack of imagination. A lot of commenters seem unable to accept the idea that someone like Dougie could exist without everyone around him freaking out, so they fall back to the tired "it's not real" trope. While some of the obliviousness of characters around Dougie pushes the limits of believability, a dreamworld is the easy way out. Not only do I think it's a horrible idea from a writing standpoint, there is no evidence for it other than people saying, ""This isn't how normal people would act."

Someone pointed out elsewhere the honking woman said she had to get home for dinner, and wondered if there is a connection to Dopplecoop's message to Diane, "Around the dinner table the conversation is quite lively."

"Viva Las Vegas" Bright light city gonna set my soul Gonna set my soul on fire Got a whole lot of money that's ready to burn, So get those stakes up higher There's a thousand pretty women waitin' out there And they're all livin' devil may care And I'm just the devil with love to spare Viva Las Vegas, Viva Las Vegas How I wish that there were more Than the twenty-four hours in the day 'Cause even if there were forty more I wouldn't sleep a minute away Oh, there's black jack and poker and the roulette wheel A fortune won and lost on ev'ry deal All you need's a strong heart and a nerve of steel Viva Las Vegas, Viva Las Vegas Viva Las Vegas with you neon flashin' And your one armbandits crashin' All those hopes down the drain Viva Las Vegas turnin' day into nighttime Turnin' night into daytime If you see it once You'll never be the same again I'm gonna keep on the run I'm gonna have me some fun If it costs me my very last dime If I wind up broke up well I'll always remember that I had a swingin' time I'm gonna give it ev'rything I've got Lady luck please let the dice stay hot Let me shout a seven with ev'ry shot Viva Las Vegas, Viva Las Vegas, Viva, Viva Las Vegas

^^^ Yes. The Black Lodge is the "shadow self" of the White Lodge, and the doppleganger is the "shadow self" of the person.

@SuperBiasedMan Good point.

The White Lodge speculation is interesting, but it doesn't gel for me with what little we know about it, although we admittedly know VERY little. In the original series Hawk says the White Lodge is a place where the spirits that rule man and nature reside, and that every spirit must pass through the Black Lodge on its way to perfection. This impiles to me that the spirits in the White Lodge have already attained perfection. Hawk also says the Black Lodge is the shadow self of the White Lodge, and that those souls who confront the Black Lodge with imperfect courage will be "utterly annihilated." It is dangerous to take this mythology too literally, but it seems to me the 'shadow self' aspect of the Black Lodge is what explains DoppleCooper. Here we have the duality. Bad Coop is Coop's shadow self, a point upon which I think most viewers agree. It doesn't make sense to me the White Lodge inhabitants would have separate dopplegangers apart from the Black Lodge. The only dopplegangers of the White Lodge are the denizens of the Black Lodge, the shadow selves of perfected beings or, perhaps, those on their way to perfection. Of course, considering Hawk's line about those who confront the BL with imperfect courage being utterly annihilated, it does raise the question of how Cooper himself was not annihalated and has come back into the world in The Return. The common assumption is that Cooper was trapped in the BL because he came with imperfect courage, but since he still exists, perhaps he actually succeeded in the confrontation and was trapped by some other trickery, allowing him to now return and complete the circle of attaining perfection. Damn it, now I have to go Rewatch the last few episodes of season 2. I got stalled in my rewatch ahead of the new season during the middling episodes of James Hurley's adventure in Great Gatsby land. --- As for Candie, I interpreted that scene as Paul Smith did above, assuming she actually was talking about the weather and pointing out the AC vents in the casino. "Version layer" is odd, however. Googling it brings up only fruitless references to this Twin Peaks episode and random graphics software. Knowing Lynch is into TM, I added "buddhism" to the search string and did find a couple interesting tidbits that are intriguing, though the connection is perhaps grasping at straws. The "Narakas" are a kind of purgatory, and there are both 'cold' and 'hot' Narakas, the hot version of which is strongly associated with fire, like the Christian Hell. There are many layers, and time spent there is measured in millions and billions of years. Beings suffering in the Narakas are similar, but different from, a cosmological being known as a Preta, which sounds a lot like Bob and, unlike someone in a Naraka, is able to move outside the subterranean world: "Pretas are believed to have been false, corrupted, compulsive, deceitful, jealous or greedy people in a previous life. As a result of their karma, they are afflicted with an insatiable hunger for a particular substance or object. Traditionally, this is something repugnant or humiliating, such as cadavers or feces, though in more recent stories, it can be anything, however bizarre.[2]" ---- And then there is the concept of the nine consciousnesses, some of which seems to echo what we see with Dougie Coop: "The first five of these consciousnesses are the familiar senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. The sixth consciousness is the function that integrates and processes the various sensory data to form an overall picture or thought, identifying what it is that our five senses are communicating to us. It is primarily with these six functions of life that we perform our daily activities. Below this level of consciousness is the seventh consciousness. Unlike those layers of consciousness that are directed toward the outer world, the seventh consciousness is directed toward our inner life and is largely independent of sensory input. The seventh consciousness is the basis for our sense of individual identity; attachment to a self distinct to and separate from others has its basis in this consciousness, as does our sense of right and wrong. Below the seventh consciousness, Buddhism elucidates a deeper layer, the eighth or ālaya consciousness, also known as the never-perishing or storehouse consciousness. It is here that the energy of our karma resides. Whereas the first seven consciousnesses disappear on death, the eighth consciousness persists through the cycles of active life and the latency of death. It can be thought of as the life-flow that supports the activities of the other consciousnesses. The experiences described by those who have undergone clinical death and been revived could be said to be occurrences at the borderline of the seventh and eighth consciousnesses." (Apologies for the length and any poor formatting. Still getting used to this forum software)

I would believe Diane is working for the wrong side before Albert. Even then, I, too, have trouble reconciling her reaction in the prison scene with the idea that she is aiding Bad Coop. Maybe Jeffries, but that hasn't been developed at all either. Some people have speculated Gordon could be up to something nefarious, but I have trouble with that idea as well. He obviously knows more than he lets on, but without him and Albert as protaganists the whole thing gets really messy (moreso than already, that is). Clearly there is something amiss, and unless it is some sort of convoluted Reverse Double Cross involving Gordon, I will assume Diane is hiding something until shown otherwise. I have faith it will be resolved in the next few weeks, but I'm truly baffled at what Diane could be up to because the prison scene was sooo convincing to me. The obvious explanation is that she has been acting since Gordon and Albert showed up and has been in communication with Bad Coop for some time, and knew she would be surveilled during the prison meeting so put on a show. But that seems unsatisfying to me. If nothing else, it has added some more mystery and suspense, but wherever it's going, I hope Lynch and Frost handle this part of the story carefully because it seems really easy to screw up by making it either too complex or too simple. The show is definitely playing with the concept of time in both obvious and subtle ways, so maybe that has something to do with Diane's behavior? On another (possibly related) note, the FBI is now going to make its way to The Zone with Hastings (who saw and spoke to Briggs there), while Hawk, Bobby and Truman are following Briggs' direction to a site near JackRabbit's Palace. Is it the same place, either geographically, or separate entryways into some other space/time where they will all cross paths?