You can’t say the phrase ‘little FBI house pet’ and not expand upon it!! Say more, say more :0

now that i think about it, you could also say that the domestic Running Away Together AU is also two serial killers and their pet FBI agent, but what i meant was mostly just vague thoughts where Hoffman had a bit too much fun flirting through crime scenes with Strahm and now Strahm's hot on their trail and they need to do something about him quickly.

so after Lawrence thoroughly scolds Hoffman for fucking up so much, they end up kidnapping Strahm (because they can't just kill him, it wouldn't be very jigsaw of them y'know? no obsessive feelings there), framing him for the murders (more successfully this time since he's not dead and Lawrence is helping) and they take him to some safe house of theirs in the middle of nowhere. probably put some sort of shock collar on him to keep him from misbehaving too much. Strahm starts roasting them as soon as he wakes up because i think he should be the biggest bitch in the room when in potentially life threatening situations.

it's very much that dynamic like. Hoffman and Lawrence come back home after a job to a delicious dinner made by their beautiful pet husband and, smiling, they ask: "Poison again?" and Strahm smiles back :)

Okay here’s my little essay about why I think lawrence’s victory over hoffman in Saw 3D doesn’t make sense from a narrative standpoint.

I don’t claim to be a perfect storyteller or anything (like, at all), but while I like Lawrence, my bullshit-sensors are tingling every time I think about the conclusion of this franchise.

yeah I know, I'm looking really dumb trying to bring logic into the goddamn Saw-movies, but just hear me out...:

first of all, we need to talk about Lawrence in comparison to the other apprentices. I’m not the first one to point out that lawrence’s reasons for helping John are pretty much never mentioned ever. I made a post earlier on about how I felt it wasn’t meant to be that way (because it seemed like just another ‘BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING’-twist ending) but an anon clarified that there actually were hints through the earlier movies that Lawrence would become a jigsaw-apprentice, so that theory of mine was debunked, just so we’re clear.

ANYWAY where was I? yeah, about Lawrence. just like all the characters, he’s layered. he’s a regular joe just living life, trying to be a good person while still making bad choices. he’s flawed, but again, who isn’t? that’s why it’s so whack to see him return again in 3D, all slow-clapping and obviously villainous. like- I know it’s been a few years since the first movie then, but where the hell did that personality change come from? from getting a divorce? c’mon, anyone could see that coming even back in the first movie. move on, man. and aside from that little detail + the flashback of how John took him in and made him an apprentice, we don’t get anything else about how Lawrence’s life supposedly took a dive after all that. it’s just nada up until 3D.

now, to put things into perspective, think about how Amanda and Hoffman’s reasons for helping John both made a lot more sense given what kind of people they were (I mean yeah, hoffman was blackmailed, but he killed anyway before that). amanda was a vulnerable drug-addict, bent on self-destruction. until she died, working for John gave her a new sense of purpose in life; one she thought she could handle, even though she couldn’t in the end. it wasn’t meant to be, and she even admits it. of course her helping John at all after what he did to her is illogical, but if you think about the kind of person Amanda was, you can see why she would do that. that way, it makes sense.

now, hoffman is hoffman, I get it. guy’s a douche, but this franchise has a lot of those. his corruption-arc also makes sense though, when you take into account what he’s been through. his sister was murdered, the killer didn’t get punished, and he took the law into his own hands, and he just kinda kept going after that until John made him agree to be an apprentice.

what I'm saying is: Amanda and hoffman being apprentices doesn’t feel foreign when you think about their circumstances. now, Lawrence was traumatized after the bathroom, sure. he cut his foot off and got crazy enough to try to kill Adam. he “had” to make the choice between his family or killing Adam. given how he’s a doctor, knowing that he almost killed a man must surely keep him up at night sometimes. because he’s supposed to save people, not kill them.

it’d be helpful though, if we got to see literally anything of this. give the viewer a reason to believe why Lawrence, a well-off doctor, would do a heel-turn to help a serial killer who targeted him and his family. my best guess is that after Alison divorced him (and presumably took Diana with her), he just felt he might as well not gaf about being a good man anymore, because now he only lives for himself. his family can’t be in danger if they’re not even in his life anymore, right? i suppose that sort of spite could be enough of a reason for him to go off the deep end, but it’s still a weak reason to help the serial killer who had it out for you and helped put you in that situation to begin with.

this could be the reason, if it wasn’t for the fact that the first time he met with his family again after the bathroom, Lawrence had already been made into a jigsaw-apprentice. brainwashed or not, he’d already made the choice before a divorce had even happened, so that just adds another level of confusion to all this.

so yeah, the ending to 3D happens, and we return to where this all started; the bathroom. and this time, Lawrence is the one to shut the door on someone who, in a way, deserves it. Justice is served, and all that. but when you think about it... there’s not much poetic justice in Lawrence locking hoffman in there at all. why? because hoffman wasn’t involved in the bathroom-trap back when it happened to Adam and Lawrence.

wouldn’t it have come into a much more satisfying full circle if Lawrence had locked John, or even Amanda, in there, since they were the ones responsible for his particular trap? having him lock John in there would of course be the BEST option, since Amanda used to be just another victim as well. therefore, having John be put into a trap of his own, and by one of his victims no less, would just have been--  like, so good. just mirroring john’s actions at the end of 1 where he left Adam to die, thereby giving a nice little conclusion to how Lawrence felt about that too. Adam wasn’t given a choice in the end, so Lawrence will leave John there the same way. yeah, he’s dead since Saw 3, but just imagine a scenario where he’d stayed alive somehow till the end, where he wouldn’t have been able to die on his own terms. THAT’S poetic justice, baby!

but no, instead we get Lawrence taking revenge for Jill on john’s behalf, because...? why does he care about Jill? what’s stopping Lawrence from just bailing as soon as John died? Hoffman got the short end of the stick because he just wasn’t likable to enough people, I suppose. but when you think deeper about it, he has no connection to the bathroom whatsoever. there are no parallels to be had between him and that place. if we wanna be logical about it, have him end up in a trap of his own making instead, or better yet; have Strahm survive and be the one to put him in that trap of his own making, since they had their whole cat-and-mouse-dynamic going on. they had a history and it would make sense for Strahm to finally be the one to kill him. but who is Lawrence to hoffman? dunno, bc the movie doesn’t care to tell us that little detail.

i suppose the conclusion is that I can see why they would have Lawrence shut someone in the bathroom, because parallels n shit. my issue is mostly with how the one being shut in there never personally wronged Lawrence, afaik. hoffman has done a lot of shit to warrant punishment, but not when it’s dished out by Lawrence, because he never did anything to him. still, we’re supposed to cheer for Lawrence for this, when we barely know of his circumstances. all I see is a weird favoritism towards Lawrence from john’s side.  after all, he did always respectfully(?) refer to Lawrence as “dr. gordon”, while almost all his other victims were addressed by their first names. (very weird, since John was mad enough at Lawrence to put him in a trap. but go off I guess) not to mention, Lawrence failed to (attempt to) kill Adam on time, but hey, he cut off his foot in desperation to get out, so uh... guess that makes him worthy, in john’s eyes? doesn’t change the fact that Lawrence failed his “game”.

not only did he fail in that regard, but before then, he failed in his marriage, he wasn’t there for Diana as much as he should’ve been, he failed his crazy patient, and he failed Adam by not sending help back for him for some reason (that’s a whole different post that someone else has already made though, lol). throughout the whole series, Lawrence has been rewarded when he shouldn’t have been, basically. sure, he’s estranged from his family, but that’s about the only setback that he’s endured since John let him go that first time. by the time 3D rolls around, he’s cynical, but he seems to be doing just fine anyway.

and that’s the very long reason why I think that Lawrence essentially getting the last laugh in the original franchise doesn’t sit right with me. boom