WowBobWow

Going back to Sonny Jim's gym set for a second: a couple of observations I havent' seen/heard anyone make yet - pardon me if they are old news to some of you. Swan Lake is sped up, as with the conga line music that the episode opens with. That horrible hip-hop thing that accompanied Lorraine or whatever her name was in ep. 5 and 6 had a sped-up loop, also. Something about the artificiality of this...I don't know. I still think everything happening in Las Vegas isn't "real". Other's have pointed out Sonny Jim's repeated loop of going through the gym equipment. I wonder how it would sync with "This is the water"/Sarah's boxing match if it were slowed to normal speed? Probably, we're just meant to notice it as a loop. Did Sonny Jim's choreography through the gym set remind anyone else of Cooper climbing around the white lodge or whatever it was in episode 3? Before he meets the woman without eyes?

I'm new here, so pardon me if I repeat anything obvious. I'm struck by the dreamy qualities of this episode. Moreover, I think Dougie/Cooper's whole storyline is happening in a dream of some kind. Sort of obvious with "wake up" and "don't die" (remember that old cliche, if you die in a dream....). Janey-E and Sonny Jim seem like dream figures - outlines of characters that are only sort-of real. Dougie is dreaming of magic powers and can only half mutter replies based on what he's observing. The little backwards moments have already been commented on here and elsewhere. The stilted acting, etc. And I keep thinking back to the heightened reality of FWWM's first sequence (aka "Cooper's Dream") which sees some stylistic similarities in the Dougie storyline. Or how the first half of Mulholland Drive is dreamlike and heightened. I'm also a dad, and I found the sequence with the truck collision disturbing, but also detached somehow. From the moment Carl looks up in the trees (anyone else see a face in the leaves?), everything gets dream-like: the weird game the mom and son are playing, etc. The way Carl looks at her and she almost seems consoled for a second... Perhaps that intersection is a metaphorical one. Anyone else think Lorraine's make-up resembles Robert Blake in Lost Highway? Anyway - great to read all of your posts! What a great show this is.