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Lodge 49 S02E01 All Circles Vanish

Last season’s alchemical element was the feminine element Water. It was about getting in the flow of inspiration, but it was also about finding a way through, even if it was just a pinhole to drip through drop by drop until you were on the other side. It was also pooling your resources together, and finding your level.

This season’s element is about the masculine element Fire. Fire is love, passion, anger, hate, all of which are animating the cast in this episode. But it is also warmth providing shelter from the cold, light in the darkness, compassion, and friendship. Dud post-shark is more animated, but he is the warm coal that will provide gentle heat throughout the night, not the flash of fire that will quickly burn itself out.

Dud has traded a poisoned, weeping injury that never healed for a clean injury with a horrible scar. "Shark bite healed my snake bite."

I broke out Dud’s spinning dream sequence on its own As multiple others have pointed out, it is similar to the spinning Orbiscope view Connie saw. (a fictional device similar to a praxinoscope.)

Liz’s interaction with the beggar is a commentary on institutional power. People tend to be on average generous with each other, as a woman who was living on tips from customers knows. But once you add an institution in an intimidating building filled with faceless people in uniforms, we fear and respect it. The community shifts to serving the institution’s needs at the expense of personal connections, atomizing us. Liz knows without Dud, she will be all alone, and she fears this.

In contrast, Fraternal Lodges exist as institutions in intimidating buildings filled with brothers and sisters in uniform who grant us honor and respect and connect us through true friendship, while building up and serving the community.

Liz is aware that her window to have a family is closing. (The newspaper headline says Dud is 30, and they are twins.) Her quirkiness and her problems first attracted, then burned through a good, if bland, man. But if she can’t have a family of her own, she will at least respect other people’s marriages, and strongly rejects becoming a home breaking gal-on-the-side.

As we can see in the park bench advertisement behind Liz when she tackles back her $3, Fydro is fire (alchemical symbol an upward pointing triangle in red or orange) and water (alchemical symbol a triangle pointing downward in blue). Combine the two triangles together, and you get the Seal of Solomon, which King Solomon supposedly put on a ring that allowed him to control Spirits. Or in the case of fydro, possibly following the example of Bakersfield and injecting steam into exhausted oil fields to stimulate them back into production. Which is why California is the third largest oil producing state in the US.

The owl clock Dud buys Alice refers to the Owl of Athena/Minerva, which connected the goddess with two names to Wisdom. The Owl only spreads its wings to fly at dusk, and is able to see in the dark, flying through the black of night safely through trees and other obstacles. It also is a symbol of inspiration through dreams. Many, many fraternal orders have used the Owl as a symbol of Wisdom, from a low level degree in the long gone Barvarian Illumaniti to the Old Order of Owls, to the modern Bohemian Club.

Daphne means “laurel tree” and Larson means “Son of a man from Laurentum”, which in turn means “One who wears the laurel wreath”. People keep giving Daphne laurels, and she’s stopped fighting them. “So, you’re a lawyer.” says Dud. “Call me whatever you want.” replies Daphne. The costume shop however has given her square glasses to make her look more Thelma Dinkley than Daphne Blake.

Kimbrough means “from the royal field”. Ludbrium is a variant of Ludibrium, which is an object to both mock and scorn –which Mr. Air-Finger-Quotes Leo does from the instant he walks in the reception room. His name is the 5th sign in the zodiac. Booie is just a homonym for “Buoy” –he just floats there.

Connie walking in the basement has Michelspacher's Cabala prominently displayed next to elevator. It shows the seven alchemical steps of Calcination, Sublimation, Solution, Fermentation, Distillation, Coagulation, and Tincture that go into making spiritual mercury, which is at the top in the form of the phoenix, uniting the sun and the moon, centered between the spheres of the four elements in the corners, and encircled by the zodiac.

As Blaise says, this episode is about gathering together the ingredients before starting the Great Work. Soon, the Fire of Calcination (which has already started with Connie) will start to heat up the characters one by one as the Fire melts their minds, reduces them to ashes, and otherwise begins to reduce them in the first step of transformation.

Liz is following Dud's path of being given her own endless, mindless repetitive task as her first challenge on a new path. It would be much faster to just burn everything, but she's going to be paid to shed these boxes one. sheet. at. a. time. While Blaise and Dud face coded writing, Liz faces coded language, and will have to learn what "you are the pudding toad" really means.

Liz is going from being constantly surrounded by people in a lively environment, to being isolated and alone in an empty room. The urns on the wall hint that this office is an urn for her, in which she will be eventually clarified and improved, like wine. But why are they only on the Ludbrium Associates side of the room?

Buying the lot out of receivership means the previous owner was on his way to bankruptcy. Greg and his beautiful wife Greta not only own three other Pool Party franchises, but they also buy the real estate each franchise is in.

Blaise's worm now is in a specimen jar on the lodge library table.

The Sovereign Protector uniform Scott pulls out of the officer's uniform room was last dry-cleaned by Wallace Smith's dry cleaning shop. So it's been hanging there waiting to be worn by someone of Scott size since 1962. Lodge's typically get a price deal when they buy a set of officer uniforms in a span of different sizes at the same time. This also means it's already hanging on a rack waiting for the next elected officer of that size on their first day in office instead of ordering it custom after they're elected, then waiting months into their elected term for it to be sewn, constructed, and arrive. Man those tassels at the bottom of his sleeves are distracting!

Bar tabs in fraternities with taverns are always limited by their Grand Lodge rules to a maximum of the yearly dues, which means a max of $200 for lodge #49. But most fraternities also have an additional, lower bar tab limit written in their house rules, usually matching the annual dues in the year it was last changed. Which is how lodges will end up with a max bar tab of $31.75.

When members are cut off from their cheap fraternal rate on drinks for being over tab, they first vow they're being jipped and will never come back. Then they go out to a public bar, pay $12 a beer, nearly faint at the bill, and return humbled, deciding that quietly paying off their tab to restore their rights is the wiser option.

What lodge #49 hasn't had yet is the intergenerational battle over which beers to have on tap. Old members want cheap industrial beers. Young members want craft beers that cost 2-3x as much. The correct answer is "both", but drilling holes in the bar to add more beer taps is upsetting change. And the length of the bar is a hard limit on how many different beer kegs you can fit underneath.

Lodges can also have beer brewing clubs. You can't sell it, but members go in on supplies (usually $30 for 5 gallons), and the brewing club members are allowed to give it away for free to their friends (coincidentally, the entire lodge), with the lodge charging a mug washing fee or similar corkage fee. Since each member can brew 100 gallons per year tax free legally, this can result in some really premium beers for members (and the brewers get a place to store their brewing rigs), sometimes also resulting in nominal brewers in the club who ceremonially pitch the yeast to increase the Lodge's quota by another 100 gallons (Or, they can just pay the taxes). Merrill most likely brewed the beers for the first Lynx tavern back in the day, as did most tavern owners. But outside events like a wedding are still going to want commercially available beer varieties, so you still need your distributors driving by weekly to swap out your commercial beer kegs.

Wyatt Russell recently emphasized that The Dude was a passive, unwilling participant in a story he doesn’t want to be part of, while Dud is the active searcher, moving forward, seeking out the next zig and zag. He very much respects Bridge’s performance, but feels they are different characters. He also claims Dud doesn’t do drugs or smoke weed. But in the hospital Blaise handed him a big velvet bag of …supplements from his apothecary.

He also felt that small details important to the plot might be missed by those watching on their phones instead of a larger screen where it's more easily seen.

(Like in the cold open the "scrolls" Dud and Ernie save is Dud's wrapper of discount toilet paper, making this likely a one off joke.)