113. Signs

Dalton goes to a laundromat to make his phone calls. There’s no phone in his luxury barn, we know this from Emmett’s anti-sales pitch when he rents the place. Either he doesn’t have opening privileges for the Double Deuce or he wasn’t in that part of Jasper (the Auto Parts/Boat Sales/Hellhole district) when he needed to make the call. Either way, here he is, inside this beautiful laundromat that I’m almost positive you couldn’t find somewhere in California in 1989 or thereabouts, reaching out and touching his mentor Wade Garrett. He’s wondering if Wade’s heard anything about a guy named Brad Wesley, because (I’m inferring) any man who’d make trouble for a cooler stands a decent chance of having been watchlisted by veteran cooler agents across the country. Wade comes up empty, though using his cooler-sense he asks Dalton if he’s gotten into any kind of trouble. “Nothing I’m not used to,” he says, before adding with a chuckle “but it’s amazing what you can get used to, isn’t it?” Wade banters back, they say their goodbyes, that’s that.

But look what happens after Dalton says Brad Wesley is nothing he’s not used to.

Suddenly a sign appears where none had been before. The sign lists the cost of using one of the laundromat’s large machines: NINE QUARTERS. I never noticed this until just this afternoon.

So here’s the situation. You can choose to believe this is just the kind of harmless, almost invisible continuity goof that happens in nearly every movie.

Or you can take it as a sign [pause for reader recognition of the awesome implications of the connections being drawn here] that for dismissing Brad Wesley, a price must be paid.

Search your cooler-sense. You know what is true.

Tags: , , , ,