Pogojoco

Even if Kelly (or gang) doesn't know about how Val was molested by her father, they do know he killed himself ( and I think she found his body.) So maybe Kelly, if she doesn't want to be an asshole, should lay off mentioning family stuff to Val. And maybe she's a little crazy because she has some unprocessed trauma. These characters are awful people. Also, two hottest guys in Beverly Hills? Valerie, you dated Jason Lewis on the show a minute ago. There are hot guys in BH.

That's actually something I kind of liked about DD2- IIRC, Daredevil can hear Karen's heart racing as the drug boat blows up and she thinks Frank is on it, she even cries and says his name a few times. All DD2, Karen's elevated heart rate has meant she has smooshie feelings. He kind of already knows about Karen and Frank but didn't have time to process it. He's not going to like it, but it's not like he's treated Karen particularly well. Karen/Frank do have one of the best relationships. I like Jessica and Trish, too, even though that's a completely different kind of relationship. Also, staring at her and saying, softly, "I will come for you" before Lewis takes her on the elevator is the most romantic things ever on any of these shows. And then he uses a corpse as a shield. Bernthal is just so good.

I remember when she She might not have the fighting skills, but she can handle herself. She is impulsive, but I think one of the things both Castle and Murdock respect about her is that she will always speak what she believes in and she'll fight for stuff. I think that's her key characteristic....that, and bouncy, bouncy hair. Karen's whole history, including how Wilson Fisk might be particularly pissed off at her sometime in the future, is probably going to be a discussion and I suspect it's going to be with Frank Castle. I think she can be honest with him in a way she can't be with Foggy or Matt.

I just went by what the shows themselves said.

People were asking me whether they needed to see DD2 before this. I told them not really but it does really inform the Karen/Frank stuff a lot. She was the only one who cared even remotely as much he did about what happened to his family. She broke into his house to find out stuff and she convinced Matt to take on the case and also convinced Frank to take Nelson and Murdock on as counsel. She's impulsive and kind of nuts, but there is a faith she puts in people, including Frank, that I could see people responding to. It's the same reason Matt Murdock was into her. She's also great looking, which helps. As Sam said re. Dinah sleeping with Billy Russo, "Pretty people rule the world." I just like Wohl. I've liked her since True Blood.

Curtis might be still trying to keep the fact that Frank is alive quiet- we don't know how soon the cops saw that dash cam footage before they talked to Curtis (who I love, btw.) I dunno. Maybe he passed out from his injuries? Or....they didn't believe him. Also, I'm guessing there are takes where Karen and Frank kiss in that elevator in case they wanted to push it that far because it definitely felt romantic. He might've been too bloody. Frank basically showed his hand when he yelled at David to help him find Lewis and said that Karen was for him equal to what Sarah was to David. Or the show did. Frank himself might not admit it but that was an awful lot of chair kicking.

I think they've done a really good job establishing this Karen/Frank relationship and sort of explaining their insane chemistry. Apparently, Karen wasn't going to be in this series at all but they put her in after they saw the Karen/Frank stuff in Daredevil, which really was some of the best stuff the Daredevil series has ever done. It's obviously complex because he's still hung up on his wife and she has, um reservations, because he's a killing machine but they have some intense feelings. They spark. Well, Bernthal sparks with everyone, but this is extra sparking. I laughed when Micro was like, "What's the deal with you guys?" because that is the question. The "Rashōmon" stuff was mostly well done. It's hard to do that in a short time frame. The blood spatter on the wall was way of establishing the timeline, which is fitting in this insanely violent show. The show's take on the politician was interesting. Is the message no one in charge is good? Is everyone a hypocrite?

I know it might be too on the nose, but I would've enjoyed it if Karen and the Senator had been on Trish Walker's radio show. Though I guess she wouldn't have had the same line of questioning. I know New York has more than one radio show, but it would've been a nice tie in. If we can't have Claire Temple... How does Bernthal have chemistry with everyone?

That was an intense episode.

First off, the title sequence is beautiful. I think it's the best one of all the Netflix Marvels, and there have been some great ones. Also, I knew the construction assholes were going to either get beat up or die. They kept messing with Frank and I was just like "Dude swings a sledgehammer for hours, do you really want to fight him?" And holy violent. It's an interesting detail that he lets them mess with him nearly all episode but doesn't fight them until they prove to be particularly nasty and try to kill the kid. Getting buried alive in liquid cement would be one hell of an awful way to die. Bernthal is great. Great and hot. He gives me pants feelings.

I often feel like I'm alone in loving Karen, but I do. Part of it is I like Wohl, in general. People get on her because she's kind of impulsive and tends to step in stuff. I like that she is slightly unhinged and she goes out and pushes stuff. And she and Bernthal have great chemistry. Even in that diner scene in S2 of DD when he was telling her she was in love with Murdock, they sparked. I actually hope Karen teams up with Trish from Jessica Jones, after they talked in that scene in the Defenders. The two of them can do an investigative radio show/podcast thing.

Frank Castle is "dead" to the wider story as of that drug boat blowing up in 2.11 ".380" Karen thinks he's dead until he shows up and saves her from the Blacksmith (or Mr. Crabs, as I call him in my head) in the next episode. She didn't know what happened to him after that. Daredevil knows he's alive because he helped him in the last episode against the Hand, by shooting ninjas. The events here happen "six months" after that. Which I guess is the time right before the Defenders where Murdock was just a lawyer and stopped being Daredevil (as was in the first episode of the Defenders.) Because Karen doesn't mention the stuff that happened to Matt Murdock in that series.

This was also meant for ep 1

It actually makes me very happy for Canadian TV. So well acted, so well written, so good looking. A Canadian story done in a way that stands up next to any American or British prestige TV.

I referred to the quilt motif in the book and the consistent mention of fabric and cloth. I went back and looked up the last part of the novel: "While I am sitting out on the verandah in the afternoons, I sew away at the quilt I am making. Although I've made many quilts in my day, this is the first one I have ever done for myself. It is a Tree of Paradise; but I am changing the pattern a little to suit my own ideas. I've thought a good deal about you and your apple, Sir, and the riddle you once made, the very first time that we met. I didn't understand you then, but it must have been that you were trying to teach me something, and perhaps by now I have guessed it. The way I understand things, the Bible may have been thought out by God, but it was written down by men. And like everything men write down, such as the newspapers, they got the main story right but some of the details wrong. The pattern of this quilt is called the Tree of Paradise, and whoever named that pattern said better than she knew, as the Bible does not say Trees. It says there were two different trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge; but I believe there was only the one, and that the Fruit of Life and the Fruit of Good and Evil were the same. And if you ate of it you would die, but if you didn't eat of it you would die also; although if you did eat of it, you would be less bone-ignorant by the time you got around to your death. Such an arrangement would appear to be more the way life is. I am telling this to no one but you, as I am aware it is not the approved reading. On my Tree of Paradise, I intend to put a border of snakes entwined; they will look like vines or just a cable pattern to others, as I will make the eyes very small, but they will be snakes to me; as without a snake or two, the main part of the story would be missing. Some who use this pattern make several trees, four or more in a square or circle, but I am making just one large tree, on a background of white. The Tree itself is of triangles, in two colours, dark for the leaves and a lighter colour for the fruits; I am using purple for the leaves and red for the fruits. They have many bright colours now, with the chemical dyes that have come in, and I think it will turn out very pretty. But three of the triangles in my Tree will be different. One will be white, from the petticoat I still have that was Mary Whitney's; one will be faded yellowish, from the prison nightdress I begged as a keepsake when I left there. And the third will be a pale cotton, a pink and white floral, cut from the dress of Nancy's that she had on the first day I was at Mr. Kinnear's, and that I wore on the ferry to Lewiston, when I was running away. I will embroider around each one of them with red feather-stitching, to blend them in as a part of the pattern. And so we will all be together." It's a glorious book. And I'm pretty thrilled with the adaptation and especially Sarah Gadon.

Sarah Gadon is amazing in this, in general. She anchored this entire thing and was a believable teenage Grace, more mature Grace and a believable Grace possessed by Mary.

I've read the book. Many times. And the book isn't entirely clear about all of it, either. The Governor's family (the house where Dr. Jordan and Grace meet) are a much bigger presence in the book and the spiritualist group the governor's wife is a part of is played up a lot more. The quilting is mentioned a bit in the show, but it's a wider motif in the book- fabric and clothing is discussed a lot but also this idea of patching together stories. The idea that Grace is an unreliable narrator is mirrored in Dr. Jordan's parts, too. He contradicts himself a lot. The pressure from his mother via letter to get married, he finds his landlady repellent but stumbles into an affair with her and the governor's daughter is also very interested. So again, this idea of different parts of his life getting stitched together. In the book I got the sense that Grace herself didn't remember exactly what happened but allowed Jeremiah (playing Dr. DuPont) to use her to expose their hypocrisy. Atwood did a really good job of placing this in it's time- this proto-psychoanalyst that Dr. Jordan is butting up against the spiritualists the Victorians were really into- the intermingling of the supernatural and science. And I never went away with a clear idea of Grace's guilt or innocence reading the book, but, as Atwood always does in pretty much every book she's ever written, she's examining this idea of how men control the lives of women and the hypocrisy in that. Even the idea of this gentleman Dr. spending hours of his time watching this female prisoner work as she tells him stories (facts. lies, some combo) is subversive. He becomes enthralled with her, and becomes more and more unglued as they get closer to the murders in Grace's story. I always got the sense that Grace confesses in the seance to mess with the upper class people present basically because she can. They have given her that power.

No,, Grace thinks she hears Mary say, "Let me in." Which is why she opens the window (it mirrors the scene in the boat when her mother dies.) She thinks she hears "Let me out" as in, let her soul out. That scene of her asking where Grace is asking "Where is Grace?" is either due to trauma/shock so she's forgotten herself or Mary got in.

Few things- I also binged the whole thing this afternoon. Will is the MVP of this season. It's a stroke of luck that he is smaller than the other kids because it kind of made me think that his development was slowed or suspended when he was stuck in the Upside Down, while the other three boys grew. It was another way he was set apart. Max's stepbrother- I kept waiting for that to go somewhere, and it didn't. I kept waiting for that animalistic sexuality to go somewhere, and it didn't. We just learned his dad is terrible. and that's why he is terrible. He's great looking, though. Lucas' sister is the best. "Code Shut your Mouth" Steve and Dustin amused. So did Bob the Brain (Sean Astin's ability to be in a cultural touchstone a decade is remarkable- Goonies, Rudy, Lord of the Rings, Stranger Things- is fun.)

The other thing about the current entertainment landscape is that quality tv is better and has more prestige than movies right now. Movies still make a lot of money, but they don't dominate the cultural conversations online or in conversations the way something like Game of Thrones or Stranger Things does. Other than something like Star Wars or a superhero movie- but those are franchises that are also series (in a way). The hype is pre-built in. I think someone like Richard Madden, who is doing a lot of interesting work in TV right now may benefit the most from the GOT buzz, as I mentioned earlier. He can benefit from the buzz without being tied to the schedule. Harrington has been in some crap movies, but may actually try to get another series in the UK after GOT. I think he should do more comedy because his tennis spoof was very funny. He's also likely made enough money from GOT and his various advertising campaigns to never have to work again. Clarke is super cute, but is not the best actor (I'm aware that some may disagree and that's fine.) She might have a big career, but maybe not.

Crazy, right?

That's a very sweet picture of him and North.

In case people were wondering (and I know that you are) the Allure cover story with Kim is one of the most boring articles I've ever read in a national magazine. They also listed her contour sticks as the "best contour" in their much coveted "Best of Beauty" awards. Which is total nonsense as it's been pretty much established that it's total overpriced trash. '

Bob McKeown's accent is so chewy. Also, welcome to the joys of the Fifth Estate, Sarah. It is a bit like the 20/20, but it's also quite a bit like Frontline. McKeown's chewiness is not as sinister/soothing as Will Lyman, those. And yeah, that dude who said, "eh". He basically had to be on the national broadcaster.

Dozens of artists have covered Billie Holiday's God Bless the Child- every soul singer has a version. Sam Cooke's version, even though the harps and the choral backing is a little too Lawrence Welk or something, the way he phrases this damn song and the way his voice just glides over it- it's just so clean and smooth. His murder was and remains total bullshit. "Lady, you shot me." are great last words, though.