wayne67
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Posts posted by wayne67
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I'm curious would Rebecca be considered the feminine version of the Nice Guy phenomena that seems to be so popular to ridicule?
She has essentially been friendzoned and is constantly trying to make Josh like like her while passive aggressively undermining his current stable relationship because of her wants and desires with little to no regard for how that might effect Josh.
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Despite my complaints about the TW writing in general, I'm liking this half season more than than I've liked TW in a while. The only episode I didn't like was the Skinwalkers one—the pacing dragged and that subplot was pointless. I recommend waiting until the finale and bingeing through. Just FF through all parts in the Southwestern desert unless you are okay with turning your brain off and enjoying babes in rawhide bikinis.
Thanks for the info. I used to really love this show but the poor plot resolutions and disappearing characters kind of removed it from the must watch pile and now it's on the I'll get around to it later pile.
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The barista comment, as has been mentioned is pretty much "Nothing in my life has prepared to do this stuff that we're doing. I was a normal person who really wishes she could have stayed a normal person." Of all the "Legends" Kendra is the only one who didn't on some level choose to be what she is. Ray built the ATOM suit. Rip chose to be a Time Master (as far as we know). Sara chose to join the League of Assassin and eventually to become White Canary. Leonard and Mick chose to be supervillains. Jax and Stein chose to be Firestorm (granted that Stein would have died otherwise, but choice was still involved).
Another thing about Kendra is that she's in a similar situation to that of Jax and Stein - part of an intimate partnership. From what we know, the Hawks are born, find each other and then die together at the hands of Vandal Savage, who absorbs their power to continue living forever. This is probably the only time that Chay-ara has been without Khufu for any length of time, so she's literally unbalanced. Sara, with her bloodlust, is also unbalanced. Presumably Rip's idea is that these "unbalanced" women would be able to balance each other. If it leads to Sara and Kendra hooking up, I won't be sad...
The problem isn't so much the inference that she's just a normal person in an odd situation dealing with odd things. It's that it's so specific and repetitive. We get it Kendra, you were a barista, we heard you the first time and it's even less interesting the second time around. Probably doesn't help that it seems to be in the previouslies a lot. I just hope it doesn't become some kind of catchphrase. "I used to be a barista."
I do find it amusing to think of Kendra and Sara hooking up, not because I'm into that personally but because Hawk man would probably be so annoyed when he finds out whenever he reincarnates and or is revived or whatever. I can already hear the dialogue in my head
"You hooked up with another woman? What about our great love spanning millenia?"
"I was bored, we were on a break. Shut up already. You're making me wish you were dead again."
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It's a shitty writer thing. Tv writers, in general, are bad about characterization, continuity, growth, plot holes, etc., and the Teen Wolf team seems particularly clueless. There's this fear that you have to "keep up the mystery" and "can't let your character be too powerful." Meanwhile your characters look like idiots because they haven't asked or been told by the experts at hand what their powers can do. (Or they're inconsistent. Kira has gently lit a room of light bulbs, stopped Scott's heart, and I don't even remember what all else with electricity.) A good writer can have the characters act like people actually would in the situation, and still work enough drama into the story with the challenges they face. But the TW team spends all their energy coming up with the weirdest monsters and craziest twists, instead of stepping back and looking at their characters. So you end up with bullshit like "Meredith heard Crazy-Coma-Peter and years later made Brunski set up the deadpool from a hidden computer to kill all supes, like herself." And meanwhile Lydia still didn't know how to focus her power.
Probably why I abandoned this show when Parrish started piling up bodies on a tree stump... for reasons. That and I'm so frustrated that no one is interested in figuring out what the full extent of their abilities are. Not the True Alpha, Banshee, Kitsune or whichever new one they added. Chimeras ? It's like they're all content to just find out things out at the last minute usually at the expense of a dozen people dying each season.
I came here to lurk to see if anything interesting has happened ? Has it ? Would anyone recommend this or any other episode this season as being of particularly high value to watch ? Or would I be better off trying to find a decent Sterek or Liam/Scott compilation video for funniness/sweetness ?
Probably Off topic but I'm not sure where to post this. Sorry in advance.
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Well, if we can believe the exposition we got from the Dean (and his attempt to help Quentin by dropping vital wards to help him at least somewhat demonstrates his goodwill), the way magic is taught matters - that being taught the wrong things in the wrong order leads to problems. I forget the exact quote, but it is along the lines that learning and using magic changes you and it needs to be done the "right" way.
The exposition came in a montage feature of Julia learning spells out of a book the hedge witches had, presumably to demonstrate that Julia was learning the "wrong" way.
I think the gist of it was supposed to be that having a power of a God without having the discipline and patience to use it properly can lead to bad things... like beckoning to otherworldly Beast or trying to provide a body for a homicidal spirit or trapping someone in a nightmare forever as a 'prank'.
One of those "just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should."
For instance Marina boosting Julia's magic without providing her with any foundation on why she's learning it or what can go wrong or even providing a decent reason as to why she should be bothered learning that particular spell.
Personally I'm not sure what an appropriate way of dealing with psychotics with magical powers is. I mean if mind wiping doesn't work and is morally questionable. What are the other options? Allow them to use magic unchecked ? Magical police ? Magical jail ? Executions ?
In this episode alone Marina and Julia committed telepathic assault with indifference to whether it'd cause insanity or death and we have no indication that there will be any consequences or punishment for either.
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Honestly, Julia's little ATM trick also was illustrative of another. Someone mentioned that "Oh, those things are always under video surveillance" but if they've got something to manipulate a machine into spitting out cash, I have to imagine they've got something that can disrupt the video feed.
Unfortunately it's unclear whether she was blocking video surveillance or not since we never saw her learn that spell. So it's unclear whether she was doing magic recklessly without considering consequences or whether she was doing so out of a lack of morality. We've never seen Julia have a job or working so it's unclear how she paid for things prior to learning ATM stealing magic.
Also if Hedge Witches fund their life via theft that could be another reason Brakebill students think less of them as a group.
We don't really know what effect magic has on this universe. Does it poke holes in reality, is it consequence free, are there unforeseen supply chain issues eg people losing their jobs because of discrepancies in bank accounts and or an overflow of gold in the markets.
At this point I don't even know if the spell Marina and Julia used on Quentin is black magic or whether they have such a concept in this universe. The Dean seemed kind of unruffled by a spell that essentially traps someone in a never ending nightmare. It would be good to have some indication of how difficult/complex that spell was. Could Julia have cast that spell on her lonesome ? Or did she need the magical power of a more experienced Hedge Witch.
This stuff bugs me because it's hard to be invested if I don't really know what the stakes are for the characters most of the time.
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Taken from the episode 4 topic, because it is not episode-related. In the books,
Brakebills fits the worst take on college: you graduate and... nothing. Nothing at all. You are not prepared for life. There are no rules, no agenda, no cause to align with, to care about, to work towards. It's in no way like Harry Potter, where there is job counseling and there are actual jobs in a magic world with its own infrastructure; Brakebills graduates live in the normal world. Magicians as a whole are very rich, and individuals are taken care of financially, no matter what they do. Magicians who have to or want to live in the normal world, like Emily, are given a cushy job in a firm with magician funds; she doesn't have to know anything, have skills, do anything to keep it except keep her cover by actually going to work. The adults we see are busy with caustically pointless research (i.e. academic research grants), and it's mentioned that the ones that do get involved in muggle affairs seem to do it as a game (and not in the fun way; think psychopathic hedge fund managers too rich to even be motivated by the money anymore). It's a wasteland. It's why everyone, not just Quentin, is eager to go to Fillory when there is a chance: they hope they actually have something to do there.
Spoiler tagged to be safe, but it's just world building and a bit on Emily (which is only a spoiler if the show revisits her character).
Well that just makes what I suspected worse.
The whole magical community is suffering from ennui. That would mean the Beast is literally the only thing to stimulate Magicians to do anything and most of them can't or won't be bothered to do anything about it.
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At least in the Harry Potter books, they established that there were other schools that taught magic. So far on this show, it seems the options are official magic learning at Brakebills or groups like Marina's hedge witches. And in Harry Potter, we understood that there were consequences for unauthorized magic because there was a separate magical governing body. On The Magicians, it seems that there is no consequence for doing harmful magic (like hurting others) or doing magic in front of humans. The only consequence we have been told about so far is that if you get kicked out of Brakebills, they take away your magical memories.
I'm not saying that the world of The Magicians needs a ministry of magic, just that since there don't appear to be any consequences for non-Brakebills people to teach/learn/do magic, why wouldn't people like Julia or Marina keep trying to learn through unofficial channels? But I also don't think that makes them cooler than Brakebills magicians. That's like saying someone who didn't go to Juilliard is automatically cooler than someone who did. Similarly I don't think that Brakebills is awful or the establishment just because they have rules and teachers and structure. If they just had a hundred kids running around campus in a magical anarchy, it would be a mess so I understand why a school has a schedule and a hierarchy and rules.
Yeah it would be great to get some world building info on if there's any rules about magic use in the Muggle world or not. At this point it comes across as half baked. Magicians learn magic at Brakebills or if they get kicked out or rejected they end up as Hedge Witches and ... unknown what or where they go from there.
Do classically trained/ self taught magicians have covens where they cast higher order spells? Do either side have a over reaching agenda? Global conquest? Accumulation of magic/power?
So far all I learned from this episode is that Brakebills needs a more effective method of dealing with ex students and they have shitty security. Also how does Kady keep her double agent status secret from all the telepaths at that school ? That and according to Marina post memory restoration, the hedge witches are a league behind what the Brakebills are offering in terms of magic.
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Spells are quite literal (ask McDuff or anyone who's dealt with a djinn) -- "untouched by woman" doesn't mean "hasn't had sex". So I contend that there would have been quite a few in the bar who meet the criteria.
Well if we're being really pedantic about literal meanings than we'd need a greying man who has never been touched by a woman in any way... It's probably best not to overthink this. Otherwise we'd have to wonder why that guy thought it needed a grey hair in the first place as the final ingredient.
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Bottom line is that Greg doesn't have the high ground here. Rebecca and Greg are both (in the words of the great Charlie Murphy) habitual line steppers. Greg is well within his rights to feel offended at being used, but he is just as much of a boundary-ignoring drama queen as Rebecca, so to make a big show of pulling back from Rebecca's horror show of the moment and asserting boundaries rather than sucking it up, taking his offended feelings out of the equation, and dealing with Rebecca's pain as any compassionate human being uninterested in fucking her would (and as Rebecca once did for him in 1x06 despite him ignoring her boundaries on that occasion) was extremely hypocritical.
Greg is snarky and often insensitive to how his attitude affects people while Rebecca ditched her job, moved, bought a place all to stalk her ex boyfriend. In this episode alone she trespassed, commissioned a crime of vandalism, lied, lied some more, lied to a police officer and dumped out all her emotional baggage to a delivery boy. Greg probably does have the higher ground. He may be a foolish narcissist but I don't remember him committing any crimes or engaging in elaborate antics just to get Rebecca's attention.
I don't see any reason why Greg should have to tolerate Rebecca's self indulgent self loathing. Especially as she has at least one of those moments a week. Usually resulted from a failed scheme to get Josh's attention and she never learns anything from it.
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Of course he's going to be a sad, dejected mess. I hate seeing reviewers interpret this as "boredom" on the part of Duchovny and not recognize it for what it is--a character whose passion has run aground and has no further resources buttressing him.
Personally I just find the whole depressed questioning the meaning of his life often dull to watch. I watch shows to be entertained. Trying to do a serious arc with only 6 episodes really only sometimes work with British shows like In the Flesh. With this it feels like those people you knew ten years ago have shown up on the door and won't shut up about their missing child that you never liked and it's just awkward and tedious.
Then again maybe it's just me but I really hate when characters go on and on about their offspring without doing anything productive about it eg Harpers Island, Lost. Either pay attention to your offspring or shut up about them. I have no interest in William. I barely remember him.
I also wasn't fond of the resolution of the trash monster. That trash monster killed the woman that filed the injunction trying to stop the homeless from being transferred to that old hospital. Sure she had her own selfish motivations but I got the impression she had a child who is now motherless.
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And Dagda Mor is way better at this whole strategist thing than Allanon.
To be fair on Allanon, he's relying on teenagers who are all hormonal about each other to finish a quest while the elves ignore everything he says and literally stab him in the back.
It was nice to see Will bonding with One Ear Elfman and using his plant based knowledge to help that guy out.
I wonder if that Ear trade was the original reason that Elfs and gnomes fought.
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I'm so glad that Prince number 1 is dead and the Changeling is presumably dead dead.
Unfortunately the princes gave the bad guy his sword which probably increases his power somehow. *sigh*
These elves aren't doing well. I liked that one eared elf, ruthless but efficient, sliced that elf murderers throat so they could move on.
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I found the episode amusing but I'm still not sure if this season/revival is going anywhere so it kind of felt like filler. Also in some ways like a british Skit for some reason with everyone going off in random directions and being snarky.
*shrugs*
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I am not ashamed to admit that I squeed when Zero kissed Jude in public. Then I laughed at all the non facial reactions everyone had about them kissing. Does anyone there even know Zero was bi ? I honestly can't keep track of who knows what on this show.
It will be interesting to see what kind of blowback Zero gets for doing guys and girls. Will he get more gay fans or less ? due to the whole bi thing.
I'm so curious to see how Jude will react when Zero gets gay men throwing themselves at him. He was hilariously snippy to a coat girl when she was flirting with his man.
Lionel's faked "you hurt me so bad" was so EPIC. I love her. She's hilarious. She really put Pete in his place. What a drip thinking he was responsible for Lionel's attitude. She's merely trying to hold onto the team she blackmailed her way into control of by telling people the truth. It's not exactly kicking puppies Pete.
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If they were the same age, it would make the fact that one is "Man" and the other is "Girl" even more ridiculous and insulting. Though if Carter had been called Hawkboy, I might have at least been able to laugh at him instead of just thinking he was terrible.
They'd be better off if they just forgot about Hawkman, and quietly let Kendra move on from that part of her supposed destiny.
It's weird but Hawkboy even with the same character would have been more tolerable simply because I could have spent the time thinking about how he's really pushy on the whole we've been in love for thousands of years and we're destined to be together routine and been giggling at what a silly super hero name he had.
I think Girl and Boy is more tolerable when they're children/teenagers than when they're adults. It just comes off as weird that they never update/change their names.
I'm so glad I've never tried to keep track of the DC comic universe. It sounds ridiculously confusing. Not that Marvel is much better...
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Julia, having realized that she has not played some malicious, but intended to be only one night's bad dream, revenge play on Quentin....in response to Quentin's own "I take revenge upon you for never returning my romantic feelings by making you live with the knowledge that you couldn't get in (see who's not special enough now?!?)" petty bullshit....which I'm willing to forgive on both sides because it does seem to be fairly age appropriate jackassery on both their parts, if overly cruel as a punishment in both cases. Anyway...the problem I had was that Julia realizes that Marina not only decidedly did NOT give even half a flying fuck if she'd basically tricked Julia into extinguishing Quentin's participation in the world....damning him to some hellish coma-world...that Julia didn't make great tracks to get the fuck away from Marina.
That's not "Hey, it's magic, I can see the appeal...." that's "don't stand next to the powerful psycho with a now proven track record of lying to you....haul butt to anywhere but there...."
The editing had Julia complaining about not knowing Quentin would suffer that much to let's get on a field trip to get more magic. Not exactly showing much contrition for her actions. Maybe if we had a voice over from her POV or she had a sounding board I could take her actions to mean "I'll do a Richard Reeds and try everything I can to fix what I sort of unintentionally did to my best friend". Unfortunately it just came off as while she didn't mean for it to go that far she didn't really care enough to harass Marina into fixing it immediately.
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I honestly can't think of when that's happened, I've never seen her earn unearned forgiveness. Paula was mad at her once, but for no good reason (Paula is a TERRIBLE friend/person too she's encouraged Rebecca's obsessions to benefit her own empty life), so I don't think she needed forgiveness, and I can't think of when Greg has forgiven her, either he gives her no end of shit about being hung up on Josh, while also toying with his feelings for her. Josh hasn't forgiven her because he rarely even perceives her behavior to be problematic, and in this episode when he finally DOES see her for her lies/manipulations he does not forgive her at all.
Honestly it's less about what she's currently been allowed to get away with, the stalking, breaking and entering, spending large amounts of money just to be near Josh, the infiltration of his friend group and more that its probable that by the end not only will Josh ditch his current girlfriend for her. He'll completely be fine with all the lies and erratic behavior because he likes her too... *GAG*
It just brings back too many bad memories about watching Ally Mcbeal where she'd hallucinate in open court and everyone would be like oh you're so wonderful and magical. Everyone enabled her psychosis. It was worrying. The constant back and forth I need a man, oh here's a perfectly good one, wait he's bisexual, I can't deal with that was also terrible.
Personally there's only so much "I'm doing incredibly stupid things over and over again and end up feeling miserable because it's all so juvenile" that I can stand before all that negative reinforcement has to have some sort of effect on her behavior. It's not that she hasn't become a perfectly rounded person by episode 11 it's that I think she's actually get more erratic and obsessive over the season.
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Well this episode was the most I laughed. Surprisingly enough from Quentin. He got some really good moments this episode.
"Penny a dick in every reality." Is definitely amusing
Then the terrible renditions of Taylor Swift songs. Hilariously bad. Like real karaoke. Also the magical impotence when he was trying to show off his miniature sun.
As for Julia and the hedge witches they're dead to me. Psychic rape is so not cool. It's worse since Julia knows what it's like to have her mind tampered with and yet she decided messing with her supposedly best friend's sanity because he was callous to her about her rejection and she's beyond the moral horizon for me. The fact that it took her so long to do something about Quentin's condition makes it worse.
I think it's more that she was so wish washy about it. If you're going to screw over your friends go all Mystique and ditch them completely don't snipe at them and then be all pathetic about the consequences of your own actions.
I honestly don't know where Kady ended up. I guess it really depends on whether she's alive next episode and if we ever get an explanation for her being an errand girl to Marina.
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Like he said, this was partly on him. He doesn't have to leave Heather's place in a way that goes by Rebecca's back yard. (To be honest, that seems like a kinda sketchy townhouse setup to me. I would have thought the townhouses wouldn't have gates in their backyards that can be opened from either side unilaterally.)
Yeah at least he's being honest about that. He does keep getting sucked into her psycho drama even though he knows he shouldn't. Hence why he had been trying to avoid her since the beach party.
Admittedly that town house set up seems weird since from what little we saw of the outside there was a wall blocking sight of the glass door hence why Rebecca was doing the panicky backtracking explanation to Josh about guilty vandals. I don't know. I guess it doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny.
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I was angered when Chloe cut him off when he was trying to tell her about the agent's phone call that he found on the victim's phone. One of the oldest TV tropes evah - pissed off partner refuses to hear.one.single.solitary.word. Ugh. Absurd. Totally unnecessary.
Yeah I wasn't really happy with her cutting him off repeatedly though it makes it more obvious why noone wants to partner with her. She's not very perceptive. Hey this guy keeps telling me he's the devil and he got shot 6 times I wonder how he survived... *yawn*
Tiresome.
I like the Devil but he's already become too soft too fast and it's kind of sapping the fun out of the show. It doesn't really leave him with much room to grow when in episode one he's driving one dude insane and by episode 3 he basically gives his imposter a free pass for impugning his rep with the ladies.
Oh well. The really funny thing is I still find the child actor completely tolerable. She's probably second after Tom Ellis as far as enjoyable characters.
I'm not really sure what's up with Maize. I'm kind of hoping she tries to take Lucifer's place in hell because she seems wasted being his frustrated sidekick.
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That would be fine if not for the fact that for every black-ish or Mindy Project, there are a dozen ELR or Seinfelds. Look at the number of blacks and Asians (especially black women) in lead roles and seriously ask "is there a problem"?
Moreover, this is moving the goalposts. The characters here are not cemented into any coloring, and in some cases, any gender. Note that it's only when a white male character is replaced by a non white male that "I don't care.." crowd rapidly changes their tune.
I don't care about the characters genders, sexualities or races as long as they're interesting. One of my favorite characters is a blue female plant off Farscape. I don't care about quotas. I care about an interesting and entertaining show. Some shows can get a diverse cast eg Selfie and do so seamlessly while others fail miserably at being a good show by trying to be 'diverse' and progressive eg Glee.
I haven't seen anyone complain that Jax took the place of a white dude. From what I've gathered most of these characters are based on 50 year old comics or a more recent show so it can be difficult to do the race and gender roulette well. Especially since they seem to be going by Star Trek rules and having a cast of 9 people.
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It was so good to see Josh sort of getting a clue about Rebecca's behavior at long last. Hopefully he won't do the standard thing of forgiving her immediately because she starts crying or spinning another sob story. This is the second time she's been trespassing like a loon.
It was also good that Greg got a chance to vent about Rebecca using him as a consolation prize any time Josh rejects her because it's not really fair on him.
I'm really getting over the rinse and repeat nature of Rebecca's obsession and self pity sessions.
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This episode was great as long as I focus only on the banter and not on all the terrible decisions that everyone minus Cold and Sara make. Heatwave is also fairly competent despite his preference for mindless violence.
Sadly most of the team are still dealing with their own personal issues or letting their egos get in the way of the mission.
I did find it weird that 22nd? century time ships could be damaged so easily by 1980 missile tech.
I liked that the Russian scientist wasn't a patsy and knew exactly what was going on with Savage and the project.
As for Ray, he's quite amusing with Cold as a companion but he really needs to shut up and do what he's told by more worldly teammates once in a while. He always ignores Cold advice much to the team's detriment.
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S01.E11: That Text Was Not Meant For Josh!
in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend [V]
· Edited by wayne67
I'd imagine if you were a relatively nice person and saw someone going out with a complete asshole you'd wonder why they were interested in that person when they could be in a relationship with someone who wanted and treated them well.
Of course this is all conjecture for me since I openly ask people whether they want to hook up and if they reject me I'm like "ok that's cool. Have a good one" and off I go. Sometimes I get annoyed if someone rejects me in a particularly mean or condescending way, especially in bars where the expectation is to get drunk and hook up and people act like that's a foreign concept to them. It's so disingenuous but that's life. Some people are just going to be unnecessarily stupid or frustrating.
Though in highschool I did pine from afar for both a boy and girl (weird time highschool) and I didn't act on either of those because one was a apparently straight boy and the other was in a relationship with some guy and back then I was socially awkward (or more so than now). I didn't have a low opinion of her for dating some one else, it was just inconvenient for me and her bf seemed fairly decent so I didn't really have any objections to them dating. It was just kind of unpleasant to watch sometimes when they got lovey dovey and it sent little daggers into my feels. Lol adolescence.
Personally I think there's a fine line from unrequited longing and being a creepy stalker who intentionally invades someone's life in order to manipulate them into liking them. Rebecca is so over that line, if she was a man she'd be openly vilified for stalking Josh.
P.s Loved the comic, it was a good way of describing how some people take advantage of others through manipulation instead of engaging in healthy adult behaviors like open and honest communication.