Blakeston

I thought this was easily the funniest the show has ever been. For the record, I’ve never heard Kool-Aid stereotyped as a “Black drink.”

Ava was right that the wine o'clock joke was absolutely terrible, but the "who would ever want to live in Sweden" joke was terrible, too. And a visual aid showing Sweden looking pretty wouldn't make it any funnier, just more confusing.

As someone who's completely unspoiled about future plot points, what I'm assuming is that the nurses who survived the Salt Lake bloodbath chose not to tell the dead fireflies' kids the truth about how Joel killed their parents to stop them from killing a child to harvest her brain. So they told them that Joel was a maniac who killed 18 fireflies for no good reason - possibly because he's a pro-government extremist. The kids probably heard some rumors that there was a girl who was immune to the fungus, who may or may not have been connected to Joel. Like they said, they don't think it matters anymore, because Abbey's father (the firefly doctor who they believed could help defeat the fungus) is dead. I have no idea if this is what actually happened in the story, but it makes sense to me, for whatever it's worth.

I adored the first three seasons, but this one feels a little underwhelming. Ava and Deborah clashing at the beginning of the season but bonding as the season progresses feels very formulaic. Also, Deborah's standup jokes are worse than ever, and we're supposed to think she's doing really well. Deb just told us that late night is for mechanics, and that Ava's niche style of feminist humor is wrong for it. But it seems like the jokes we're hearing are mostly Ava's typical socially conscious gags about women being undervalued. Isn't that specifically what Deb doesn't want?

So is Val (the deadpan Pacific Islander nurse) gone for good? I hope not, but I suspect that’s the case. As with most episodes, I found Bruce cringey and unfunny.

I think the idea of a celebrity getting in trouble for bringing their employees to a strip club came from Lizzo, who was sued for bringing her backup dancers to a live sex show in Amsterdam. You would think that Ava might have realized how inappropriate that was from a sexual harrassment standpoint, but she isn't as tuned into these things as she'd like to believe she is.

I adore my mother. That doesn't mean I want to hear that the person I'm sleeping with is just like her, though! It's great that Gregory saw it as a positive thing, but not everyone would.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I wouldn't have a particularly good reaction to someone pointing out that my significant other is just like my mother. (And I say this because my husband is a lot like my father, and the realization was not a pleasant one!)

I guess you've seen more entertainment than I have featuring filmmakers on tight schedules going berserk when a shot gets ruined over and over again as time runs out.

The comic tone was the same to me, with the clock running down, and the veneer of professionalism wearing away until the characters got into "if you stop me from getting this shot I'll fucking kill you" mode.

Ellie may not care about her own life, but she should care about Dina’s. (Especially after what happened to her last girlfriend.) Speaking of a different character, I realize we’ve barely seen Abbey (Kaitlyn Dever’s character), but what we were shown makes her seem an awful lot like Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey’s character) last season - a grieving woman who cares about brutal revenge far more than she cares about leading the survivors.

Deborah told Ava over and over and over again that you have to be a shark to make it in this business, and now she's apoplectic that Ava took her advice.

Ellie being so flippant about entering a den of the infected wiith her new love interest was especially irritating because that's exactly how her last love interest died. I don't care how well-trained she is, that's just stupid. She should be on gate duty for a long, long, long time.

I feel like at the end of each season they want us to think that Kayla has matured, and then the next season begins with her being as annoying and chaotic as ever.

Am I not supposed to be thinking of Eugene Levy every time Catherine O'Hara refers to her husband Eugene?

Palm Springs is currently represented by Ken Calvert, a very anti-LGBT Republican. It's a sprawling district, and Palm Springs is just a small, unrepresentative part of it. I hated the part where the politician changed her mind (because it seemed so unrealistic) until I realized that it happened because of blackmail. That's the only way a major politician would make such an abrupt change on a social issue, particularly when the new stance would leave them extremely vulnerable to a primary challenge. On a side note, I was disappointed to see Stephanie Koenig in this episode as the politician. She's talented, and she's good on the show English Teacher, but the controversy over the show's star (her real-life best friend Brian Jordan Alvarez) has reavealed that Alvarez is a sexual predator, and that Koenig does everything in her power to excuse his behavior and gaslight people into thinking it's not a big deal.

After Talley left Vogue, he wrote his memoir, had a radio show, and continued to work in the industry. He was never anywhere close to working as some shop assistant, and he never would.

We don't know for sure whether Belinda will open a spa or not, but I think Mike White wants us to believe that she won't. He went out of his way to compare her to Tonya in this episode, with the scene where she disappoints Pornchai being quite similar to the scene where Tonya disappoints Belinda. At the end, when Belinda and Zion were chilling on the boat while Pornchai looks on awkwardly, it seemed like the message was, "Belinda is the newest member of the careless, self-centered rich." This message wouldn't make sense if she turned around and built a spa for working-class women soon after she got back to Hawaii. I don't think she's as bad as Tonya (especially because she never made an agreement with Pornchai), but the finale cast her in that light.

I assumed that he and Frank were hitmen in this life, and that's where they got the money to live the way they do. Frank provided the gun off for Rick in a very professional way that made it seem like they were used to that kind of thing.

It's not that she made the same offer to Pornchai that Tonya made to her. It's that when she was telling Pornchai that she was no longer interested in opening a spa together, it was reminiscent of the scene where Tonya said that to her. Belinda was being awkward much in the same way that Tonya was, standing there and stammering while Pornchai pretended he was't hurt. It had to have been a deliberate parallel on Mike White's part. What makes Belinda shitty, IMO, isn't that she did anything terrible to Pornchai. It's her hypocrisy in that once she got some money, everything she said about how important the spa was to her went out the window. Her opening the spa was supposed to be the one good thing to come out of Tonya's death (and a way of honoring Tonya). And now we're left to wonder if she even cares about it at all.

A few scattered thoughts on this season: - I guess we just have to fanwank that Lochlyn didn't need medical attention, and the family was dumb enough to think, "Hmm, maybe the coconut milk was bad after all? Whatevs!", and nothing clicked even after they found out that Tim knew his life was falling apart. - The three friends storyline was probably the weakest on any of the three seasons, in my opinion. Laurie's had her friends' ugliest qualities rubbed in her face all vacation long, but she nonetheless has this realization that time and friendship are the only thing that matters? That didn't match what we've seen of her personality at all. It would have made more sense if she had that reaction after they survived a shootout together. - The extra episode this season was a bad idea. So much was dragged out unnecessarily - multiple episodes of Chelsea wanting Rick not to go on the trip, endless shots of Tim being anxious and stoned, and the friends talking shit about each other over and over. - Parker Posey was absolutely hilarious. When Piper talked about being unhappy at the meditation center, Victoria looked like she was having an orgasm. - I think it was a mistake to show Lochlyn staring at his brother's ass multiple times (in one case with an aroused look in his eyes). It would make the "he lacks an identity and he's a people pleaser" explanation for the handjob a lot easier to believe. - Jim knew Rick was his son, and decided that the way to handle the situation was to tell him that his mother was a slut? He got exactly what he deserved, and Rick getting killed served his dumb ass right, too. It's just a shame that Chelsea was collateral damage. She was pretty dumb in her own right, but she didn't deserve to die. - Why, oh why, did they make such a big deal about Fabian singing?

It's pretty hilarious that Belinda lived to become Tonya. She blew off Pornchai's business plans the same way that Tonya blew off Belinda's.

I was really worried they were going to reveal at the end that Megan was genuine, and I'm glad they didn't go there. It wouldn't have been believable at all. This was easily the most sympathetic Joyce has ever been.

I found this way too cringey to be amused by it. Also, it felt like a ripoff of the extended scene in Babylon where the shooting of the talkie is flubbed over and over again while the powers that be flip out and curse like sailors.

I don't think they ever said the counselor wasn't happening. I doubt they would have made the request for the counselor a significant plot point if nothing ever came of it.