Around the dinner table, the conversation was lively. Thank you but for now, the forum has been archived.
One thing that keeps bugging me is the relationship between Bob and the people who host him, as well as the nature of good versus evil.
Bob inhabited good Leland, making him evil and forcing him to do terrible things. We know this because when Bob left Leland's body, Leland suddenly understood what had happened and felt so devastated he died.
So, being inhabited by Bob makes a good person evil. We know this.
But, in the case of Dale Cooper, Bob inhabited the doppelganger. Does this mean the doppelganger was already evil but made even more evil by being inhabited by Bob? Does this mean that now Bob has left Doppelcooper, Doppelcooper will no longer be quite as evil as he was when Bob was inside him?
Might we now see some good in Doppelcooper? Might we see some bad in the "Good Dale"? It's worth considering because we know that the idea of Good Dale vs Bad Dale is a very simplistic way of looking at human nature. Nobody who has ever lived is 100% good or evil. The "Good Dale" surely must have bad points. He must have bad days where he gets road rage and swears at people who don't deserve it. Likewise, the "Bad Dale" surely must have days where he helps old ladies cross the street and rescues cats from trees.
And what would have happened if, way back in 1989, the "Good Dale" happened to escape the Black Lodge, but still got inhabited by Bob? If you think about it, just because we saw Bob in the mirror reflection, that doesn't necessarily mean it was the "Bad Dale". It just means Bob is inside him.
Then we've got "The Arm"/"Little Man". In the last episode of season 2, we see that he has a doppelganger. However, we know from FWWM that he was the evil part of Mike, because he was his evil arm that he ripped off. So does this mean "The Arm" is evil and his doppelganger is ultra evil?
And coming back round to Cooper, maybe in the final part it won't actually be a battle between Evil Cooper and Good Cooper. Maybe they will actually join together to become one, and we will realise that "Good" and "Evil" are both part of the real Dale Cooper.
To me, that would actually make more sense than the comic book style tale of pure good vs pure evil. The ultimate point of the story would be that we all have both good and evil inside of us.
By the way, it's very nice to meet you, and that outfit you are wearing looks very nice on you. You have a great figure. Have you been working out? It's just a shame your face is so ugly.
Ineresting stuff. I think you may be on to something. I wondered about the arm, too. Maybe evolving gave it a new perspective, or the creation of a doppelganger arm sucked all the evil out of it.
Another angle is, maybe the arm and Mike have a wider perspective on things and regard Bob as a liability, since he's not playing by their rules any more. They could be acting in a seemingly good way just for their own survival, after all, even the most evil characters would try to avoid their own destruction unless they're totally slippy in the head.
The more you think about it, the more complicated it becomes...
Now that you mentioned it, if we consider old Laura Paumer, who seems to be coming back in style, maybe the opposite of evil in the story is not exactly good, but innocence. In that sense, the current Dougie-Cooper is the character with the purest innocence of all, with Sunny Jim and other little children (the one Richard ran over, the one who spotted the bomb in the car) not far behind. The original pre-lodge Special Agent Dale Cooper was certainly a good person, like others are, but he was maybe as different from the completely innocent, pure-feelings (in the most literal of senses) Dougie-Coop as he was from the all-planning, ends-justify-means-100% Mr. C. Of course we had been seeing Mr. C being particularly evil too, but maybe that was more the BOB inside him than himself, and anyway it doesn't seem at all to be the same kind of evil Leland would do because of BOB. If BOB really left him now, maybe we'll have more to tell from.
Well, Laura was innocent once (as we all are to begin with), but had that innocence beaten out of her by her father. By the time she was 17, she was definitely no longer innocent. She was also not a good person by that point. She manipulated others - she was only with Bobby to get drugs from him, she was horrible towards James, she deliberately got herself into dangerous situations just for the thrill of it. She was a "wrong un" as us Brits might say, a bad influence. Hang out with Laura and bad things are going to happen.
Of course, she was only that way because of the evil things that were done to her. But isn't that true of all bad people? Weren't all abusers once abused themselves? In that sense, evil is like an infection that takes hold and spreads between people. I suppose that then comes back round to the idea from season 2 that Bob is just a metaphor for evil.
Bob's influence. If you asked Laura why she takes drugs, if honest she'd say to forget that Bob is in her life, and that "he wants to BE me or he says he'll kill me." Of course that is attempting to put out the fire with gasoline, it just makes her more easily manipulated by Bob. In a sense, it was lucky for her that Mike was around to help her.
Bob inhabited good Leland, making him evil and forcing him to do terrible things. We know this because when Bob left Leland's body, Leland suddenly understood what had happened and felt so devastated he died.
So, being inhabited by Bob makes a good person evil. We know this.
I think this is more complicated than that, especially when you take FWWM into account. BOB certainly had an evil influence on Leland, but was Leland totally innocent? I don't think so. I think that you can watch FWWM and make a pretty strong argument that Leland killed Theresa Banks without BOB pushing him to do it. He killed her because she figured out who he was and he couldn't risk being blackmailed or exposed. The diary pages Hawk and Frank read in Episode 7 lend even more credence to this, as Laura says "I know it's not BOB..."
Now, make no mistake BOB was certainly a big part of things, and his presence did seem to cloud Leland's mind to the horror of the things we has doing, but I question how innocent he was.
As for Mr. C the Doppelgänger, I am very curious to see what he's like without BOB inside him. I believe he will still be evil, for sure, but perhaps BOB was infusing him with some additional powers or knowledge that he will now be weaker for not having.
As for Mike and the Arm, I've always thought of them in terms of Dungeons & Dragons character types. If BOB is Chaotic Evil, then Mike and the Arm are Lawful Evil. Yes, they may have to do "evil" things, but there are rules to be followed and an order that needs to be maintained. BOB doesn't have time for that - he's eager for fun. He broke the rules, perhaps by "stealing the corn" as Mike says in FWWM and ever since then, Mike has been trying to reign him in. (And failing, I might add.)
Here's my theory, laughingatsky.
There is the universal rule that a double-negative becomes a positive, as they cancel each other out. So with the fact that DoppelDale is evil, and that Bob is with him, can only mean 1 thing : he's a triple-negative (or quintuple). Besides Bob, something else (or 3) is with DoppelDale. I'm thinking a bugfrog. Or three.
Kidding. ?
Fire walk with 
