The Pie?
What was the deal with Ralph and Sam over the pie? That made absolutely no sense to me.
shareWondered the same thing in a viewing just last night.
My opinion was it was about power and authority, who had it and when.
Power without authority leads to dictatorship, authority without power leads to anarchy.
Of course the deputy had power by virtue of position, uniform, gun and badge, but Ralph challenged his authority, which is different than power, by calling him by his first name instead of his title.
The gun represents power, the badge authority.
Ralph used the pie as a way to show himself, mostly, and Sam that he too had power, to serve the pie, to hide it, to taunt him with it. And his authority was by virtue of being in charge of the truck stop on that shift.
Sam had power, the gun, but his authority of the badge was overridden by Ralph's power to determine if pie was truly available for sale/eating or not.
Makes sense. Thanks.
shareWell, yes, it is about power, but remember, "The Chief likes his deputies to be in shape" or something like that...Sam came by for pie and coke every night, but was resented in Sparta because he was a "local boy who made good." Anyone who had a real job and some authority in Sparta was disliked by the locals, especially since he used that "authority" and lorded it a bit over the rest of the people he grew up with. He was police, and that scares everyone.
Remember the resentment by Delores Purdy about his "fine, shiny car" and so forth.
Small town jealousy...but it is all based on the fact that the Chief does not want fat deputies, even though he has a bunch of them!
No, the guy is reaching.
As far as i'm concerned, it's either of 2 things (or both):
1. It's supposed to depict the relationships that naturally occur in every community, people pull jokes on each other and have affinities or enmities based on year-long stories and relationships. It's purpose could be to show that this is a a small community, they know each other a long time and this little prank is one of their routine.
2. It is a foreshadowing of the end of the movie and in this scene the viewer gets to see that they have a history together that we haven't been told yet. Only later we understand why Ralph resents Sam.
It's either supposed to be a little comedic scene to show idiosyncrasies and mentality of people who live in a small town or an unseeming clue for the viewer in the context of what happens next.
People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefsī²