CrashTextDummie

The world hasn't gotten any less crazy since the show went off the air, which affords the Kings to double down on the craziness in TGF. I thought it was pretty damn glorious. The reveal of Kurt's shooting buddies left me as gobsmacked as it did Diane. Anything is possible now in this universe. And none of it will be more ridiculous and unbelievable than reality. I had to laugh when Diane was looking at Kurt's bruises as if she was gazing into Trump's visage, and then the damned thing actually started talking. Truly inspired. The #MeToo storyline was nice and complicated, and handled delicately. I thought it was particularly effective in further illuminating the history and relationship between Adrian and Liz, which was already quite nuanced. And there was good balance between the corporate angle on such a potential scandal and the personal feelings of the people who were close to Reddick Sen. It also planted seeds for further media storylines, which surely must factor in as a major focus of the season. Not much for Maya and Luca yet, but they'll get their turn. Very, very happy the show is back.

I can agree with that. Norman Reedus and the writers have managed to successfully elevate Daryl into a leading role in short order. I also have a suspicion that they are shooting him differently. He has a main character aura that wasn't present before.

I am saddened that one of the best shows on television is not popular enough for its own forum.

The entire A Plot (Eugene rescue effort) worked REALLY well and the graveyard showdown was the best and most suspenseful stuff TWD has delivered in years. Amazing what a bit of fog, an unpredictable herd and an actually shocking character death can do. There is still every chance that the Whisperers stoyline will turn out to be dumb, but if the show could maintain this kind of energy and tension year round instead of for 5 minutes at the end of a (mid-season) finale, I would very easily find myself back fully and enthusiastically on board. As it were, I'm actually fairly excited to see where it goes on the strength of that final scene alone. That was an honest-to-god well executed cliffhanger. I didn't think they had it in them. The rest of the hour was mostly The Walking Dead at its Walking Deadliest, but I'm willing to look past that. Still, you almost have to be thankful they offed Carl so he doesn't have to suffer through the trite teenage stuff they are writing for Henry now. Speaking of Henry, I find him more tolerable now that he's not just a replacement moppet anymore, in spite of the triteness. There are shades of an actual character, there is still hope for him. I also like the new people. Yep, I'm actually feeling not too unhappy about the show at the moment. And I didn't see that coming. Edited to add: I will also give a shout out to the cinematography in this episodes. There were several establishing shots, especially of Hilltop, that gave off a classical horror vibe. This show has never been particularly strong at doing horror (a bit ironic, considering it's a zombie show) and I thought they were pretty dang successful at establishing a sense of foreboding dread that fed really well into the final scene.

Ah well, it was an embarrassment. I read the AV Club review and it basically covers everything that was wrong with this episode so I'm not going to belabor the point. What I will say in the shows favor is that they managed to deliver a piece of striking imagery that was far more poignant than anything I remember ever seeing from TWD: Rick Grimes standing in a sea of dead people. People, not walkers. Zombie fiction (TWD included) tends to gloss over the fact that all those hordes of the anonymous living dead are made of the previously living. On a show where no dead body stays that way for very long, seeing that mass of humanity lost was a weirdly pleasant and soothing visual. The 6 year time-skip (or however long it'll be) means we're gonna skip all that boring society-building stuff the show has been about this season (and improved for it, mind you) after all, but whatever. At least I still have hope that Tara is gonna die off-screen in the interim.

I will say that this show has become more watchable this season than it has been in a while, but it has developed a fundamental problem that is hard for me to look past, and it's sadly the walkers. Now this is still at its core a zombie horror show so you must have them in every episode, but at this point, the characters have been at it for so long that really the walkers have been figured out and everyone should know how to deal with them. As a result, it has become a recurring theme that all plans must fail and every big walker set piece is built on a foundation of utter incompetence. It was bad last week when they decided to cart a heavy piece of equipment over a death pit of walkers instead of, say, sweeping the basement first so that in the inevitable case of someone getting dangled down there, no walker would be left standing to try to have a nibble. Or really any other precautionary measure that any reasonable person could have figured out many of easily. This week, apparently the plan was to first turn the herd towards the bridge, before turning it away again with a second siren. The show never really bothered to explain why this made geographical sense in the first place (like, why not turn the herd away from the bridge with the first siren?) but even if we give the characters the benefit of the doubt on this, wouldn't you want to check if the second siren is ready to go before you direct death towards all your people? The show wants us to hate long-haired savior dude for either maliciously or unwittingly causing Aaron to lose an arm, but really I was waiting for the scene where Daryl punches Tara in the face for failing to take basic safety measures and clearly being the one ultimately responsible for things going south. Though in fairness to her, in what world does it make sense to leave a single person responsible for overseeing and coordinating such an incredibly risky, life-and-death operation while everyone else just goes about their business willy-nilly. These people have such an unreasonable "what could go wrong?" attitude that no one working on the bridge was even aware that 1 siren = walkers coming our way, 2 sirens = walkers not coming our way.

I enjoyed the brief moment of panic during Aaron Crow's performance when Simon wanted to change his mind and Crow had already committed to whether Simon's "choice" was getting the hatchet or the glasses. It was actually the only thing I enjoyed all night.

I guess I have some thoughts on individual performances. I was significantly more impressed by Mochi than I was by his audition, perhaps because I paid more attention. His timing is really impressively on point, and the red diabolo made it (a bit) more easy to appreciate. The size of the screen he performs in front of is still overwhelming and somewhat masking what he's actually doing, but knowing what a diabolo is and how it works I was able to tell the amount of skill involved. Also the entire performance was visually pleasing and I found myself really enjoying it despite my previous disposition towards him. Dancing in stilettos may be a talent, but it's a stupid one. There are two kinds of performers of stupid talents: Those that know their talent is stupid and play up the silliness of it (case in point: Human Fountain, whose main appeal at this point for me is the fact that so many people are seriously appalled by it). And those that expect me to take them seriously despite how stupid the talent is and be impressed by it. Life seems to have gotten really tough for dance crews recently, as it's apparently not possible anymore to get a spot on this show on dancing talent alone. These days, you have to feature a pre-schooler in your crew, incorporate haphazard storytelling and costumes, or do it all in stilettos. I'm sorry Junior New System, but that's stupid. I can certainly see how Courtney Hadwin is a controversial performer because her style is polarizing. But I really don't think you can deny that she deserves being on this show and is rightfully considered a front runner. The girl owns the stage and clearly belongs on a stage. I am impressed more by how self-assured she is and by how she expresses herself without inhibition than by her singing. But being able to perform is also a talent and on those merits, she wins the evening for me.

A general note on the production. I noticed it during Shin Lim's performance, but it's true for all acts: The camera work and editing was miles beyond what we get for the taped episodes. One uninterrupted camera shot of Shin Lim's hands. 100% of Mochi's performance on screen. No shots of or quips from the judges during the performances (except for red Xes). Minimal reaction shots of the audience. Every year, AGT transforms from an overproduced, manipulative crap shoot during the auditions/judge cuts into what it is supposed to be during the live shows: A celebration of the acts on stage. I think I should finally learn to just skip everything before the lives.

I hate the unfair "but can you take it to the next level" trope as it pertains to acrobats on this show, but when you flat out say that you're going to perform your most dangerous trick blindfolded, you're kind of asking to be cut.

The spitting act was hilarious. In terms of comedic value, they have 99% of stand up comics that have appeared on this show beat. But alas, humor is subjective and clearly I'm in the minority thinking this. Shin Lim is still the best magician who has ever given his time to this show. Another stunning performance. Could watch him for hours. The choir sang an amazing song. "Baba Yetu" was originally the theme song for the video game Civilization IV and was the first such song to win a Grammy Award. It's too bad they completely botched it. Musically it was a disaster. I guess this is what happens when you force a bunch of geezers to perform a haphazard choreography while they are singing, in an attempt to make the act "more TV friendly".

Kind of a sad sentiment. Choirs are awesome. I sing in a choir. Lots of people pay (good) money to see us. Not the kind of choir that performs on talent shows though. Nothing but (badly) transcribed pop songs and the occasional gospel. I guess the sentiment is that classical music is too boring for TV. It makes me wonder though, I'm willing to bet there's pretty significant overlap between people who watch AGT and people who enjoy classical music. And there are plenty of amazing choral works (also short ones, fit for a TV show segment) that I'm willing to bet would move an audience more than the sappiest of sappy sob stories when sung well. I suppose it's a general reflection on a weird bias these shows seem to have against musical acts that aren't solo singers (or, very rarely, a band). You never see an amazing violinist, cellist or even pianist on AGT. The few ones they have always need to have a gimmick (i.e. violinists that also dance and prance). Maybe it's because the really good ones, good enough to make a living off of it, are already doing just that, and we can't have professionals competing with singing dogs and cute singing kids. But then again, I'm pretty sure that 99% of acrobats on this shows are also just that, professional acrobats. Anyways, just a bit of musing triggered by my reflexive need to defend choral music. I guess I do have something to say about the episode, speaking of singing dogs. I loved that act, same as I loved the piano-playing chicken of a past season. Reason is simple: it's more amusing to me that all the stand up comics combined.

Gosh you guys are harsh. To me the golden buzzer act was good. Definitely the best act of the night. She owned the stage and put on a proper performance. When I searched her afterwards and saw that she was on Voice Kids UK previously, I knew she was going to be controversial. I don't care about that. By all means put acts that were successful on a different show on every "___ Got Talent" show there is. AGT is made for an audience that isn't familiar with this girl so it really shouldn't matter. All the fakery is unfortunate, but that's on the show's producers and not on the performer. Having said that, the episode was marginally better than last week's, but that's not saying much. I felt genuine second-hand embarrassment for the parents of the 5 year old. Bored to tears by tourette's comic. I'm glad they had Mel B. say "this is funny" midway through the act cause I temporarily forgot I was watching a comedian. Scorpion escape guy was just a bad act, I'm sorry. Predicable and lame. Dance troupe lost me by including a 7 year old who danced as well as you would expect a 7 year old to dance. The quick-change couple was competent but I simply can't muster much enthusiasm for a quick change act. I low-key loved Neal from Glee because they genuinely treated the fact that Glee ended as his sob story (also he really was pretty good). I liked the multimedia act better than most even though I'm generally not very high on multimedia acts. They had cool 3D effects and I appreciated that the person who (I assume) made the animation actually got on stage as a talent. But yeah, all in all this season is shaping up to be quite dreadful.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel would be my summary of this episode. I have no desire to see ANY of these acts again. The animal sounds girl was charming and the belly sound guys where amusing and acts like that should have a place on the show, but as filler and not the only remotely good thing going. 3 acts were offensively terrible this week (the two stand up comedy acts and the geriatric dancers) and I really don't quite understand why they are even showing stuff like that to us. Is it supposed to be entertaining to watch people bomb on stage? Would the general audience tune out from boredom if there weren't several acts just there to be buzzered out? The rest was average at best, including all the singers. I didn't even get to enjoy the circus artists because I'm sorry but dropping your partner during your finale is just a no no for an audition. As for the diabolo guy, while I have a certain amount of respect for someone who is a master at diabolo, this dude was just the latest in a line of annual "______ in front of an animated screen" acts and that just serves to mask the talent rather than enhance it.

I love the way Noah puts his thoughts on the garage scene in the interview posted up-thread: That perfectly matches my own read on the scene. Stan was never going to shoot Philip or any of the Jenningses. The only way Stan ever catches them is if they actively surrender to him. It's reflective of the imbalance in the relationship (that the Jenningses knew the true nature of it all along while Stan didn't) that Philip ultimately gets to decide how that final confrontation ends. It always felt to me like Stan handled his affairs as an FBI agent differently from how he handled his home life. At home, he wasn't "Stan Beeman, FBI Agent". And we have clear precedent that when the personal and professional do bleed together (i.e. the Nina situation), it's not "Stan Beeman, FBI Agent" that gets to make the decisions. Stan wasn't the kind of man that upon learning his best friend was a Russian spy all along could just throw a switch in his head and now see that man as the enemy. The way he tried to protect Oleg and refused to exploit the rapport he had with him further established that even on the job, his actions were governed by principles and morality. He was far from a ruthless automaton, which at times helped or hindered his effectiveness as an agent. It's clear to me that Stan didn't want to let the Jenningses go. But I also don't think he was at the garage to arrest or stop them. If that were the case, he wouldn't have gone there alone. What he was there for was the truth. "You made my life a joke" is what he tells Philip. That is such an earth-shattering, devastating sentiment. He needed confirmation. The person who showed up in that garage was not "Stan Beeman, FBI agent", it was Stan Beeman, the man. People have speculated what his future in the FBI would look like, but this whole situation cuts much deeper and takes on a existential dimension. I thought it was made pretty explicit that Stan didn't trust anything he was told in that garage. It was clear to me that he knew they killed people. In that vein, I don't think Philip convinced him to let them go, per se. They simply forced his hand by refusing to get on the ground and surrender. Stan didn't do what he was unable to do. There is so much you can interpret into the situation and so many things are left not spelled out. But that simple truth I thought was absolutely perfectly in line with what we learned about Stan, and is enough to make the entire scene work. He was never going to shot Philip. The opposite holds true as well, btw. Elizabeth would have totally killed Stan though if Philip hadn't managed to defuse the situation. As an aside, I do think the relationship between Stan and the Jennings kids was established well enough and to me was completely believable. At times, it felt like they practically lived at Stan's place. The show didn't spend too much time on this (although I do remember quite a few Stan/Henry scenes), but I thought it came through strongly that the relationship Stan had with the kids went way beyond just being a good neighbor.