Story Comments
A Wake cont...

Lars was truly ignorant of events, and Anna was played to perfection by Lono. The spilled glass and pills could look like Lars poisoning himself, but more obviously, Anna poisoned the bottle, believing Lars was in league with Vasco over the death of their father. She refuses a top up, \and sips only from her own, uncontaminated glass. Strangely Lars spills most of his drink, and so has probably ingested very little. Remi's dismembering actions put him into the Monster camp. Shepherd could have found Remi at any time as he was at home with Ma, which weakens the argument for him being the Saint, as Graves dealt with the Saint on his own. If he is the Monster, Remi's demons he's wrestling could be his obsession with chopping people up. There's a nice irony to placing him in a meat factory if his MO is to disembowel on a regular basis. As Shepherd explained to another of the Atlantic City sleepers, they were all given jobs Graves and Shepherd thought they'd like. Medici plays his hand well with the Trust by voting against the absorption of the Nagel assets, thereby achieving his aim, turning the attention of the other houses onto Graves whilst strengthening his own power base. The conversation between Graves and Ronnie echoes The Godfather series, with Don Vito Corleone picking up oranges in a street market. Graves' only possible reason for sending Ronnie to Italy is to recover Echo Memoria. They will have realised that Branch hasn't done as he was told, and selected Ronnie as a replacement.

Amorality Play Not a lot to offer the big picture in this one-off, but a little more depth and consequence to the contents of the attaché, to graves as he recalls a death, just one of many, but one which stands out for its absurdity, and to Lono, as he shows some restraint in his encounter with Tyler. Whether this restraint will prolong Tyler's life beyond the next few minutes is left open.
Punch Line There's a lot of symbolism in the cockfight against the context of the story as a whole. Parallels can be drawn with many of the key players. Lono continues to belittle Loop, which may eventually come to a head. The Simone family were Dallas based. Mia Simone's demise is pure comedy, but the literal impact of her arrival on panel leaves you wondering how exactly Remi executed this elaborate dispatch. Dizzy is the 120 pounds of flesh Wylie refers to. Does Graves' "one of us" death comment refer directly to the three of them assembled, or to the Minutemen as a whole? When Wylie says Graves cannot touch them, this suggests Graves' influence is worthless in Mexico. The fact that Graves will never go to Mexico is mentioned in several other places, so why is this? Wylie's reply to Graves' "We need you" raises questions of who exactly "they" are, why "they" need him, and why Graves needs Dizzy. Obviously Graves was the one who called Vic, knowing this would set Lono and Co. after Wylie in Mexico to recover Dizzy. At no stage does Vic name Dizzy, who's identity is still a mystery to Lono following Shepherd's dying conversation with him in Coda Smoke. The AC flashback begins to shed light about divisions in the ranks of the Minutemen regarding whatever it is Graves refused to do. The very nature of the MM and their reason for existing is at the core of this argument, and Wylie and Victor are correct in their assessment of the situation. Shepherd's comment on what job Lono is doing: "That would be his..." needs a resolution soon.

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