According to AMC’s new series Lodge 49, the modern-day alchemist need not hole up in some clandestine laboratory, performing experiments and trying to transmute lead into gold. Today’s conjurer could do just as well with a metal detector and a pawnshop. That’s how we meet Sean “Dud” Dudley (Wyatt Russell): metal detector in hand, scouring the shores of Long Beach for valuables.
In the alchemical tradition, perfecting metals is an allegorical process by which one also perfects themselves. Even if Dud doesn’t know it yet, he’s looking for more than a piece of gold on the beach; he’s looking for a piece of himself, and the ring he finds there is only the first step in a long, strange trip of self-discovery.
Lodge 49 has been touted as The Big Lebowski of television: a surreal romp, helmed by a shaggy, down-on-his-luck slacker with a SoCal drawl. Even the protagonist’s name, Dud, echoes Jeff Bridges’s “The Dude” from the 1998 film. But the similarities are cosmetic at best. The Dude, enthroned by the definite article before his name, is completely at home with himself, content to abide the shifting winds of life from his lackadaisical vantage. Dud, on the other hand, is lost, fearful, and determined to do better for himself. His name connotes someone who has yet to amount to anything, and Dud feels that failure deeply and regrettably.