Because it’s a mash of monsters. Get it? Shut up.

OKAY, so I previously covered Jeffries’ ordeal here but skipped over the details of ‘one of their meetings’. That’s what this entry is about here. Let’s get right into it then. First off, a quick rundown of the function of the spirits:

MIKE and BOB: Head honchos. BOB was MIKE’s familiar but is getting some dangerous ideas. The Little Man, though separate from MIKE, represents him in most cases. MIKE himself is never seen outside of his host, Philip Gerard.

The Chalfonts: Messengers and couriers. They deliver information or warnings (as when they spoke of Harold’s suicide and sought to alert Laura about Leland’s possession) and also handle delivery of the ring, hence their presence in Fat Trout Trailer Park right until Teresa Banks’ death.

The Woodsmen/Electrician: Spirits whose primary charge is to operate the conduits between realms. Wood, electricity and such. These are related to but different from those entities in The Return. We’ll get to that. The Electrician is the same as a Woodsman, the title only unique because he works with electricity instead of wood.

The Dutchman/Jumping Man: A direct extension and servitor of JUDY, somewhat analogous to the Little Man for MIKE. We’ll talk more about him soon too. Regarding the double name, given his place in “the Dutchman’s”, I have adopted this name in place of the old one. It seems more definitive of his role.

All caught up? Cool. Now to the meeting:

We begin with a shot of the #6 pole, representing as it does a base, material space – as of a place where the inhabitants are driven by harvest and consumption. “They sat quietly for hours.” – They obviously did NOT sit quietly, and it wasn’t “for hours”. My conclusion has always been that wherever Jeffries went was an in-between place, not Earth but not strictly the 'other’ place either. Wherever he is, he gets the distorted time of those realms (similar to Coop spending hours for his few minutes in the Lodge back in season two) but has an incomplete sensory perception - he cannot hear the inhabitants of that space.

Before we continue, I’m going to detour for a moment to clarify a few observations. Here is a wide shot of the meeting and its attendees.

The smoking box resembles the smoking facade of the Convenience Store in Part 15. This is another tie between the Dutchman and JUDY, albeit a mere visual-symbolic one.

The garmonbozia feast. BOB’s portion is larger than the Little Man’s. MIKE may (or may not) be stronger than BOB but BOB is the greatest power presently in this room, outranking the Little Man and commanding the larger share. This holds some small relevance later as the Little Man demonstrates some semblance of fear in handling BOB himself.

A bucket, perhaps containing garmonbozia, sits at Pierre’s feet. Mrs. Chalfont sits not on the couch but on the arm of it. Both of these suggest that, contrary to what their apparent ages might suggest, Pierre is the stronger of these spirits. This is supported as well in the series by her refusal to touch the creamed corn while Pierre hordes the lot. By all evidence, she functions as his familiar.

The Woodsmen here all have a noticeable trait: Incredibly fake beards. David Lynch is a very attentive fellow. If he needed heavy-bearded cast, he’d have gotten them. The falseness, I conclude, is intentional: These are spirits whose human souls are yet intact…But not much. They are on the very cusp of becoming Woodsmen proper, dark agents of the negative power that is JUDY.

He speaks of ‘chrome’ but I don’t believe it’s so literal. BOB finds himself reflected in a mirror as Leland peers into the surface. The takeaway here is that there are methods that can reveal these spirits on Earth. Mirrors are one such method. Chrome may in fact be another but we do not see this. A line in the script, which did not endure to reach the film, states “Our world. With chrome.” While the canonicity of non-final script material is questionable, this meshes interestingly with the present line. Our world—Chrome. The Black Lodge is full of shadow selves (which, you’ll recall from my post about Dale’s season two Lodge ordeal, are the figures he encountered there) and doppelgangers while the Dutchman’s resembles actual physical establishments in the human world. Their world–chrome–reflects our image.

The Dutchman, pictured, screeches throughout the proceedings. Take note of his characteristics: His face is Pierre’s mask. His suit, the Little Man’s color. His skin (except his face), dark like the Electrician. Especially note his wooden implement. In Part 15, a Woodsman utilizes a wooden rod to call down a second Woodsman from what appears to be a ‘higher’ space in the store. I believe the tool here serves a similar function: It interfaces the dimensions. The Dutchman is an amalgamation of the Lodge entities because he is an extension of JUDY itself, and they are JUDY’s ‘children’. The tool there is a perpetual link to the void-realm JUDY actively inhabits – it is literally JUDY’s link to the Convenience Store, and the Dutchman cannot exist here without that link. (Also, to further the direct-avatar-of-JUDY angle, the Dutchman is viewed extensively in a fish-eye perspective connotative of ‘otherness’ even in this already ‘other’ space.)

Speaking of JUDY, we need to discuss the monkey. The monkey appears twice in the series. The first time, the monkey appears behind Pierre’s mask which is in this case symbolic of the Dutchman’s face. The second time, it appears as the Little Man is consuming his garmonbozia and whispers “JUDY.” There are two associations to be made here: Their consumption of garmonbozia feeds JUDY. And the Dutchman - limited to little but jumping and screeching, his very being merely a twisted, cobbled expression of the Lodge’s creatures - is essentially the Black Lodge equivalent of a monkey. If JUDY wound a tiny hand-cranked music box, the Dutchman would dance and collect coins. The Little Man is at least capable of his own will, though he often chooses to serve MIKE. The Dutchman has no such capability. His will is bound and chained. His screeches are an outlet for an existence tormented by its very nature.

“Electricity…” - The prime conduit of the spirits. They travel through it, interface with it. As I’ve shown in the image, they’re also seen to interface through pigment (as they work through Laura’s painting) and fire (the Chalfont trailer leaves the Earth scorched, as does the travel of Jeffries’ tulpa). Not shown in the image though is their working through wood. As noted in the prior section, wood can serve as an interfacing tool as well but it can too be a travel conduit: I believe that this is how Margaret’s log operates, her husband trapped wandering to-and-fro from Lodge to log. Her cryptic advices are from the Lodge itself, through him. Wood is also operated as a conduit by Josie though, in her case, it is more akin to a prison cell as she is simply locked up in the fixtures of the Great Northern. Pete sees her once. Moving on…

This is straightforward. People often try to associate ‘pure air’ with Buenos Aires by translation but seriously…They literally descend from ‘pure air’. They’re spirits. ‘Up and down’, between the worlds…It’s their mode of existence.

This line is in the script and I presume was filmed because this shot is available online. I consider the absence of this bit from the film one of the series’ mistakes. It perfectly clarifies the nature of these entities and the Little Man’s just-prior lines. Whatever else that they are, they are non-physical. Even their forms here are illusion. They have only willed themselves into quasi-physical state by manipulation of atoms. Their true states, their actual forms, I do not think we ever see. And regarding MIKE, we never even see one of these quasi-forms but only the human host. While the Chalfonts use these quasi-forms on Earth - presumably a choice which also enables them to manipulate wider environments, as they change up entire trailers and such thanks to not having their powers bottled into humans - MIKE and BOB favor human hosts.

‘The owls are not what they seem.’ — One of the ways they engage in “intercourse between the two worlds” is through animals as the Electrician notes here. Owls are a favorite of BOB and perhaps others.

Pain and sorrow. The sustenance of the Black Lodge. Notably, as the Little Man refers to this, BOB is seen looking…Discontent. I have no doubt that he associates a deep disdain with that substance: Namely, that most of his harvest gets claimed by MIKE.

At this point, one of the Woodsmen performs a gesture. This held little apparent meaning until The Return, where the Fireman raises his hand similarly…And indeed, as BOB begins his outburst at the meeting, the Little Man acts similarly. The Fireman’s gesture proceeds the materialization of a device. The other two have no apparent effect but one which may be extrapolated. I believe this gesture is another interfacing mechanism but where the Dutchman’s tool opens doors between realms, this gesture accesses energies. For the Fireman, it taps into creative energies - present in the sea outside his fortress - to provide the device. For the Woodsman, I believe it is but a demonstration tied to the Electrician’s statement. ‘Animal life’, being lesser and simpler than human, may be utilized without actively being on Earth by merely latching upon their life energy. For the Little Man, I believe it is merely a fearful gesture. BOB’s outburst puts a look of some slight shock upon his face. I think he’s threatening BOB in a sense. He himself is weaker, of course…But MIKE is not, and I believe the Little Man by virtue of being “the arm” can borrow his master’s power if necessary.

Formica was originally produced as a substitute for mica (a substitute ‘for mica’–Formica) which was used as electrical insulation. That’s the key: Formica is electrical insulation. Green…The color of the table, but more importantly the color of the ring. The ring is electrical insulation. It prevents electrical current from flowing through something. How do the Black Lodge spirits move? Through electricity. So, say, if a girl wore the ring, ‘electricity’ would be barred from her. A spirit would be incapable of inhabiting her.

As BOB begins to grow aggravated, the electronics in the room malfunction and the Dutchman screeches. BOB’s fury is a powerful thing. Of note here is that this machine reappears in The Return. There, it appears to alert the Dutchman to Mr. C’s arrival. Here, it appears to pacify the creature as, once the device is handled, the Dutchman goes from an aggressive stance to merely howling at the sky. The spirits are ‘electricity’. The machine may serve as a modulator, being the only way the others are able to commune directly with the Dutchman on account of his being essentially just a dumb puppet for JUDY.

Here, BOB is just setting a challenge. The Little Man thinks he can rein BOB in, bar him from doing as he wills. He angrily denies it. He has a will and it shall be done. Momentum. As he throws the figurative gauntlet, the Little Man is seen performing the hand gesture mentioned earlier.

Much is debated of these three words. Are they past tense? Are they a command? Are they a warning? I think they’re an observation. The tense doesn’t work for that, you’ll notice, but time is a funny thing in this place. Pierre is saying that BOB felled a victim—only BOB hasn’t done it yet. But he will, and so he basically already did. Time is a funny thing in this place.

In response to Pierre, the Little Man’s expression becomes one of…Surprise? Disappointment? Resignation? In any case, he has little choice. BOB must be brought to heel. He plays his move: The ring. It will insulate its wearer. It will demand its share of garmonbozia. BOB will steal nothing anymore.

They ‘share’ a laugh of opposing expression. The Little Man thinks he’s won the game. BOB derides the very notion that he could lose. Neither concedes anything in this moment.

The meeting concluded at a stalemate, though each believes it a victory, the Little Man chants and BOB casts a portal of fire to exit the convenience store.

The two descend together into the Waiting Room. It is this point which ‘Jeffries’ refers to later with ‘I followed.’ as he tracks them back here prior to being caught. And thus this is the point where Jeffries’ recollection ends and, his purpose done, he is pulled back through space to Buenos Aires.