‘Lodge 49’ Rewatch: The Road Back

Written by John Edward Betancourt

How ‘Full Fathom Five’ Examines the First Steps Toward Healing

‘I don’t want to be a burden anymore.’
- Sean ‘Dud’ Dudley

Over the course of the past nine episodes of Lodge 49, we’ve dug into some deep philosophical concepts revolving around loss and trauma and life in general. Which has made for some powerful stories and some powerful lessons for the audience. But while it has been wonderful to ponder upon how life is chaotic and how we should deal with that, amongst other things, the show has yet to answer one important and critical question for the audience; what does it take for us to start healing in regard to the experiences that nearly broke us? Which is an important question to ask, simply because a series that offers us such poignant lessons, surely has to have a lesson ready for the very issue that brought us into Dud and Liz’s chaotic lives.
 
Thankfully, the show most certainly had one prepared, one that it saved for the season one finale and that made ‘Full Fathom Five’ quite the poignant and magnificent tale. Because this story, brought together every single lesson that we’ve learned in year one, in order to show us some potential steps for healing our broken hearts and really the first thing that this episode teaches us, is that eventually we have to face our pain and acknowledge it, if we ever want to return from the darkness swirling within. Which is why it was important to see Liz and Dud and Ernie try to do some of the things they’ve done this season, to make it clear that those are temporary fixes and eventually the joy and calm they bring us wear off, and that’s when we must face the facts and face the raw power of our pain and that can in fact lead us down an even darker path, albeit briefly.
 
Because what we carry in our hearts is heavy and tough to deal with. But when we hit that proverbial rock bottom with it, the healing can truly begin. Because at that particular point, we realize how much this pain has consumed us and our lives and we either do something or remain miserable and that’s really the biggest lesson that this episode teaches us in that; the road back begins with us and we have to decide that we want to heal. And once we do that, we can achieve magnificent wonders and for proof, well look no further than the Dudley twins. Because both of them found their rock bottom in this tale and made some conscious and powerful decisions because of it, and what they accomplished for standing up and saying enough was quite impressive to say the least.

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​Take Liz for example. Because once she was shut out of Omni and Shamroxx, she really didn’t know what she was going to do. She only knew that her self-destructive tendencies and fury over pain and loss had brought her to a sorrowful place, one filled with silence and no future, and that was the last straw for her. She knew she could no longer continue on this path and that something had to change and quick and that prompted her to do something outright incredible and truly the scene where she makes a settlement offer with the bank is just legendary and hilarious. But the act itself stands for so much more. Because in many ways, her father’s debts were an unhealthy tie to dear old dad and being rid of it, frees her from her pain and while her decision was extreme in nature, the lesson within it is clear in that; sometimes we need to make drastic changes in our lives to find peace and happiness once again.
 
But truly the centerpiece of this particular tale is Dud’s journey. For he is the character who needed to make the most progress out of anyone. Because there is no one else in this story who refused to heal more than he did, and he genuinely buried himself in every possible distraction to not deal with the reality that his father was gone. But the harsh reality that the Lodge might be closing, alongside the fact that his hollow pursuits yielded nothing, finally opened his eyes to the reality that he was searching for a quick fix to his problems, something that would never come. And that epiphany prompted him to finally face his pain and accept his father’s loss and take control of his life and truly, it doesn’t get more inspirational or beautiful than that. But truly the best lesson to come out of this part of the story, is that it outright encourages us to make mistakes. Because that’s really the only way we learn what we need in life and oddly enough this lesson yielded another important one as well.
 
Because this particular tale made it clear that the true magic of the Lodge was never that it existed, but that it served as a place for good people to come together and share in beautiful moments and that leads to another other key component to healing, which is to surround one’s self with good people and family. Because great human beings and blood, understand that we are going to stumble and fall, and they won’t judge us. They will only encourage us to succeed and reinforce the wonder of our good decisions and that’s a message that this show has hammered home from day one and it was wonderful to see it come around full circle here. Because now that the Lodge is saved, and Dud and Liz are ready to move forward, they’re not alone in their journey back and in reality, they were never alone, they just needed to open their hearts to the support already surrounding them. And now that this leg of their journey has come to completion, the time has come to explore another important question in regard to the road back, specifically; what comes next when we’ve started the healing process?   

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