Subject: Re: Wanna know where BOB went?
From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Date: 1990-12-04, 09:34
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

In article <1990Dec4.143244.23022@watserv1.waterloo.edu> broehl@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl) writes:

> >In article <48964@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> cromwell@acsu.buffalo.edu (mark j cromwell) writes:
>> >>  I still interpret the ending of the last episode as BOB, having departed
>> >>Leland, entering the body of an owl.

> >Actually, I hadn't thought of this interpretation.  Makes sense.  Of course,
> >what's the bright light the owl's coming out of?

Isn't that odd?...  That's absolutely the first interpretation that
occurred to me, and still seems the only possible one, just blindingly
obvious.  Consider:

Truman's final line, which went something like "What I want to know is,
if Bob IS real, and he left Leland...where is he now?"  And that
question is immediately answered by a point-of-view shot from BOB's
"eyes" zooming through the woods looking for a place to alight.  He
zooms ahead of us, makes contact (the blinding light), and his new host
flies into the shot:  an owl.  "The owls are not what they seem."  After
an episode so full of intensity, that last touch just surprised the
willies out of me.  What an ending!

And my interpretation of the final cell scene is a little different from
some I've seen.  I thought BOB took off pretty soon after he announced
he would, leaving Leland more or less comatose.  The sprinklers woke him
up, now (for the very first time) will full memory of all he'd done, and
he went berserk at the horror of it.  He killed himself deliberately, by
smashing his head repeatedly against the door.  (i.e., BOB's hosts do
not necessarily die when he leaves, but this one wanted to)  We saw
Albert give a quick headshake at one point in the scene, as if to say
"He's not going to make it," so his injuries must have been fatal to a
doctor's eye--it wasn't a mystically induced death as some are
claiming.

> >Unless they switch from "one day per episode" to "one month per episode" :-)

Well, the lack of clarity about what day it is, is almost inevitable as
we proceed in the series.  All soaps (which I don't mean negatively,
simply in the sense of "continuing drama") have to fudge the passing of
time to some extent, because days pass for the characters while weeks
pass for us, yet somehow they have to stay in synch with the general
passing of time.

Jon Alan Conrad