Blakeston
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Posts posted by Blakeston
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5 hours ago, ICantDoThatDave said:
While I agree with your assessment of the episode overall (especially on the "shoot" sketch being painful), I thought they very much shied away from "Sydney's hot" or "Sydney's a bimbo". Given recent episodes that centered almost entirely on "OMG the male host is hot" they really seemed to avoid that topic even in her costuming, other than the one Hooters sketch.
Not saying they *should* have leaned into that, just that I didn't see them leaning into that at all other than one sketch. It was still mostly terrible, just not for that reason, IMO.
I said "bimbo" because she played a lot of vapid, annoying characters. The cheerleader was too clueless to figure out that Air Bud is a dog. The character in the judge sketch was dumb and trashy. The Hooters waitress was completely incompetent, as was the "shoot" woman. The NYPD intern was competent, but it was the same kind of vocal fry character she played on The White Lotus. I was hoping she'd get to show more range.
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I thought this was terrible. Sydney played a bimbo over and over again, and I didn’t laugh at much of anything besides WU.
The “shoot” sketch was just painful.
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1 hour ago, cinsays said:
is there some current meaning for fleabag or fleabaf or fleafag that some of us are unaware of?
I have to assume it was "fleafag," which I took to be a way to call someone a fleabag and a *ag at the same time.
Publicly throwing the f-slur at someone isn't a reasonable reaction to a breakup, even if they tried to annoy you.
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I'm not crazy about them making Zach out to be a psycho. He had reason to be pissed, but ruining Jacob's clothes, and writing something about him called "Flea*ag?" That's troubling, to say the least.
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I don't think the sub being non-binary had anything to do with Janine's mistake. Janine just assumed that Geoffries was spelled with a "J."
I'm glad they had a character who just happened to be non-binary, but I admit I was distracted by it. I kept expecting one of the teachers to make a faux pas related to it, and I was waiting to cringe.
I loved seeing a different side of Barbara, but I was practically screaming at the TV for her to just find a new church already!
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"Elementary school principal caught talking about microdosing in teacher's lounge" could easily be a TMZ headline. Fox News could also easily go nuts with it, particularly because it involves the Black principal of an inner-city school.
There are parents who would flip out if their kid came home from elementary school and showed them a viral video of their teacher (or principal) talking about smoking weed, taking edibles, or microdosing - regardless of whether it's legal.
I suspect that people are probably less uptight about this in inner-city Philadelphia than in more conservative areas, but I also think that school administrators in general would have an issue with this.
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1 hour ago, meep.meep said:
One way this series could have worked better is showing the contrast between the Swans and the women in his life who Truman did have a good relationship with, notably Harper Lee. I imagine her estate shot down any thought of including her as a character.
There's nothing Harper Lee's estate could have done to bar the show from depicting her. If such a thing was possible, then Slim Keith's family would never have allowed her to be depicted as Bill Paley's extramarital lover.
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I'm thrilled that the writers were willing to call out D.A.R.E. as total BS, and that they were willing to acknowledge the reality that there are responsible professionals who use drugs. (Even - gasp - people who work with children!)
But realistically, I think it would be a very big deal if there was a viral video, shared widely among the students of an elementary school, showing teachers discussing what drugs they take. Especially considering they were talking about it in school.
I would expect there to be a certain amount of heat on them from the district, if nothing else.
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I think Jeannine's complaints about the subs were pretty legitimate. Her methods weren't just unorthodox, she was straight-up teaching them to write improperly. And it sounds like Jeannine is going to be teaching these kids again, and she'll have to deal with them calling her by her first name.
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15 hours ago, shapeshifter said:
But didn't Melissa only get involved in the teen romance when the student was in tears?
— which was a result of Gregory getting involved in the teen romance?I don't think the writers would have given Melissa a line about managing a million pre-teen relationships if they wanted us to believe that she only got involved in that girl's relationship once she started crying. Especially because she was involved in trying to get the boyfriend to buy a new chain.
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11 hours ago, Madding crowd said:
How did the scientists get blown out eardrums and scratched corneas? Are we supposed to think they were unable to come back and get their clothes due to an immediate avalanche?
I think maybe the idea isi that the scientists went berserk and died of fright before the cold could kill them. Scratching out your eyes could be a result of hypothermia - or losing your mind because you believe that a vengeful spirit has come for you.
I'm not crazy about them giving us "the scientists appear to have died before they froze to death" as a clue, when it really told us nothing. I don't like having to fanwank theories like this.
And Lund surviving several days naked in the ice was a totally unnecessary, unbelievable plot twist. Also, didn't they say in episode two that he was being taken to a hospital in Anchorage? They made it seem like Danvers and Navarro drove to the hospital when he woke up, and it's not plausible that they would have driven from north of the Arctic Circle to Anchorage.
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I liked the golf episode a lot better than the lawn jockey episode. The lawn jockey plotline was contrived even by the standards of this show. (Larry could have easily explained the situation to the store clerk in a couple of sentences. And he could have just reimbursed Susie for her deposit, or any other fees she had to pay.)
I, too, was relieved that the dog survived the episode. The way Larry and Jeff handled the dog situation really made them seem like psychopaths, though. It didn't even occur to them to use their cell phone, to ask if the dog was okay?
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2 hours ago, peeayebee said:
Quoting myself to say that I read an interview (posted in the Media thread) with Issa Lopez where she offers one possible explanation: The scientists killed Annie and called the mine to clean it up. Hank was sent. He dumps Annie's body where protests have been in order to make it look like it was connected. He abuses the body, kicking it and cutting out the tongue, to continue with that ruse. The women of the village find the tongue and keep it as an act of reverence, keeping it in a freezer. When they come to Tsalal to get the scientists, "they leave the tongue as a sign that now is the time of the truth of storytelling." I accept this answer.
Why would the cleaning women deny any involvement with the tongue, though? They had no problem coming clean about everything else.
It would be interesting to see a re-telling of this season, where brilliant scientists find a miracle particle that can solve climate change, but a local activist destroys it in a fit of vengeance, and all involved die horribly before they can save humanity.
A few lingering questions I have:
- So Clark had some sort of supernatural understanding that Annie was "awake." But what he was sensing was that the cleaning women were on their way?
- How did Annie, who was a layperson, figure out that the scientists were harming the community? Did they leave some forms lying around that said "Falsified Pollution Records?" Or was she secretly a tech whiz, and a chemistry nerd?
- Connelly knew that the scientists had killed someone, and that the mine arranged for the police to help cover it up, and that Peter's father was promised the chief of police position in exchange for his participation. So why on earth would he give the chief of police position to Danvers instead? If anyone would be dogged enough to figure out the truth, it would be her.
- And finally, how does Ennis have so much stuff - like a crematorium, a rehab center, and an ice skating rink? The biggest town north of the Arctic Circle is Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow), which only has 5,000 people. I don't expect complete accuracy, but it was really hard to suspend reality for this.
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2 hours ago, violet and green said:
I found the romanticisation of suicide throughout the series - from the opening credits track, Julia's death, Travis's death as told by Rose, and Navarro's ambiguous ending - pretty reprehensible. Didn't get a warning on any episode, or the usual hotline numbers afterwards, either.
I definitely remember a trigger warning about suicide at the beginning of the episode where Julia killed herself. It made her death even more predictable than it would have been.
I agree completely that this show depicted suicide in an indigenous community in a very, very odd way. I have no issue with the depiction of a character like Navarro killing herself - these things happen in real life all the time. But it was presented as if suicide was the ultimate way for her and Julia to be in touch with their indigenous roots.
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On one hand, I'm really glad that they gave us some solid answers to the mysteries, rather than some "was it a microbe that drove everyone insane, or was it supernatural divine justice? Who's to really say?" nonsense.
But there still are a few things that were very silly to me. Such as the cleaning women revealing what they did just because Navarro mentioned her indigenous name.
And Rose is just a ridiculous wish fulfillment character. Knows everything about the physical and spiritual world, is happy to help hide a body in the middle of a blizzard, cooks an enormous feast for Christmas even though she lives alone, etc.
Also, it's kind of messed up that the cleaning women tortured and killed seven people based only on the evidence of them having a star-shaped drill, and that this was presented as "hooray for these brave heroines!" We know that the scientists all killed Annie, but they certainly didn't.
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On 2/17/2024 at 4:39 PM, babyhouseman said:
The book implied he was a companion for Babe and not a threat since he was gay. Maybe TC was a distraction so Paley could have affairs even though I know Paley didn't need that.
This makes total sense. But the way it was portrayed on the show made it seem like Bill and his guy friend were totally enchanted by how fun and witty Truman was.
And Truman didn't say anything particularly witty, unless they were bowled over by his comment about how you'd want to fly into the Bermuda Triangle if you had to listen to Harry Truman talk about economic policy.
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On 2/16/2024 at 11:28 AM, MicheleinPhilly said:
Eh. I didn't take any of the kids' "romances" seriously and I don't think Melissa and Ms. Barbara do either. To me it was just a further demonstration of how involved in these kids lives they are and how much they care about them.
Melissa said she was "managing a million pre-teen relationships." Managing students' relationships is a fool's errand for any teacher, and it's not appropriate, either.
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I think my biggest issue with this season is that they really haven't shown why people were so drawn to Capote. He must have been witty, but we're not seeing much of his wit at all - not even in the scenes here he's in his social-climbing prime.
I mean, I get why the swans might have been entertained by a sassy brunch companion who's full of gossip, but why on earth was Bill Paley so taken with him, to the point that he wanted to invite him to everything? It's not as if Truman said anything in that scene that was particularly funny.
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26 minutes ago, Snapdragon said:
Honestly, I was bothered by how much the teachers were getting involved in the romantic relationships of middle schoolers. I'm with Gregory on this one.
I was really irritated that Melissa was yelling at him for daring to tell an eighth-grade boy that he shouldn't buy a gift for himself for his girlfriend's birthday.
Melissa's students are pretty young. It's absolutely disturbing that she's "managing the love lives" of eighth grade girls. That sounds like the kind of thing that she should be banned from getting involved in.
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I don't find Tariq nearly as likeable as others do.
I certainly don't hate him, because he has some good qualiities, and he has no malice. But he's a selfish con artist/manipulator, and I don't think he cared much about Nick at all. If he did, he wouldn't have forgotten his name, and he would have noticed how much Nick hated being called TJ.
What Tariq cared about was a) forcing Nick into the role of his mini-me, b) enjoying the status of being a parent, and c) using "I do the parenting" as a justification for Nick's mother paying all of the bills.
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My assumption was that Gregory turning down Janine happened when the school year started back up, around September. So a few months after the Franklin Institute. It seemed like Janine took the position after Gregory rejected her, and that she took it at the beginning of the school year.
I agree that Gregory's reaction wasn't realistic. Janine basically told him "I want to be with you so badly, but I need a little time," and then Gregory tells her, just a few months later, "I've moved on because when you turned me down, you put a period on it." Yeah, sure, writers.
They didn't even need to show us that conversation in the first place. Janine could have just taken the district position, preventing things from moving further between them.
Re: Gary and Melissa, he absolutely should not have proposed publicly - especially in front of her students! - when he wasn't sure of the answer. But it was foolish of her to tell him that it would "take a miracle" when she really meant that it wasn't going to happen. He was so googly-eyed that of course he would take that as a challenge.
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1 hour ago, Snazzy Daisy said:
Peter Prior is the ONLY true detective here. He’s the only one who does the police work - finding facts, connecting dots, checking backgrounds etc.
He was tech-savvy enough to get into Annie's cell phone almost immediately, and he single-handedly uncovered the truth about Tsalal's funding. Yet he's dumb enough to use his son's birthday as his password for his work laptop? That was a pretty big contrivance.
Also, did he have a document saved on hs laptop with the title "The Reasons Why Wheeler Couldn't Have Killed Himself?" Or was Hank so brilliant that he figured out clues like the victim's photos being flipped, in the very brief time that Peter lived with him?
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48 minutes ago, Galileo908 said:
On that same note, Jacob teaching elementary school kids about the Korean War.
His students are significantly older than the other main characters' students. If I recall correctly, they're young teenagers.
Jacob's admiration for Mr. Johnson is one of my favorite parts of the show.
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On 1/21/2024 at 11:47 AM, iMonrey said:
She didn't murder him. She booby-trapped the bathroom and he slipped and cracked his skull on the toilet. Yes, she was responsible in the same way she was responsible for the death of the hospital patient but it's more of a gray area than actually straight-up shooting someone and slitting someone's throat. Everything she did was in self defense, in contrast to the people Roy killed.
Who said it was murder, or unjustified? I specifically said it was justified.
The only things Dot did that weren't 100% justified, IMO, were a) setting up the cancer patient to be abducted, and b) failing to let Wayne and Scottie know the danger they were in by staying in their home.
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Curb Your Enthusiasm - General Discussion
in Curb Your Enthusiasm
This was the best episode of the season, by far.
I really wish they hadn't given us those close-ups of Richard. It was so painfully clear that he was in horrible condition. In the previous episode, it wasn't nearly so jarring, because the camera wasn't right in his face.