Mommaj

In my masochistic way, I don't think I've ever missed an SNL since it started, and I can say without hesitation that this was the best show in YEARS. I'd give my eye teeth to be at the post show shindig tonight.

Signing on to ALL the critiques here. I hate watched the whole season, but hated the finale most of all. I'll add this comment, which I don't think was made yet (though I may have missed it); Who has an outdoor wedding ceremony AND reception when it's 41 degrees outside??? And by the water it would have felt even colder. I mean, I can kinda of see wanting a romantic setting for a brief ceremony, but then why didn't everyone move inside for food, drink, and dancing? Surely that huge house could accommodate 60 guests. And if the producers wanted an outdoor setting, why not push the whole wedding story into a warmer month entirely? Another thing: Why was Noah teaching the dance? Is choreography a skill of his we somehow never learned about before now? On to EJ. First of all, no way two good looking people like Sierra and Vik would have produced a shlubby looking guy like that. What dopey casting. Second, why was it important to the story to have him in Montauk at all? Joanie could have hooked up with any random guy in town (as was her habit) who could have helped her solve the mystery of her mother's death. As for his supposed expertise in inherited trauma--what a crock, and an unnecessary crock at that. So Joanie was a mess because her parents DNA was forever damaged by Gabriel's death? Really? It wasn't enough trauma for a child that her mother left her for six months and then soon after left her permanently? We needed the medical gobbledygook? And how did EJ end up spending so much of his life in Montauk in the first place? Did Sierra just give up her acting career and follow Helen there when she reconciled with Noah? Was Sierra waitressing at the Lobster Roll? And lastly: At what point in his life did Noah decide to manage a restaurant, and what was he doing before that? (I'd think the Me Too accusations would have put a damper on his teaching career.) Was it while Helen was still alive? How thrilled would she have been to get involved with a location that saw the beginning of the destruction of her marriage! And why was Noah managing an empty restaurant in a town now devoid of tourists, living away from any of his children? Is there still lobster on the menu? Honestly, I laughed my head off when I realized the old coot was Noah. Dumb plotting makes for a lot of questions...Sigh. This show started out so spectacularly. it was painful to have it end with a whimper. Oh, and one more thing: Helen made some comment about what it was like when they were poor and had four young kids. When were they ever poor??? They has that gorgeous brownstone which, if I'm not mistaken, was a gift from daddy, and Noah was gainfully employed as a teacher. So no housing cost, and a steady income. Not poor. Also, the kids were spaced pretty far apart. It's not like Helen was buried in diapers and pacifiers for years. She was free enough to run her hobby business (while she could have had a real job, if they were so poor). Aargh.

I think the police subplot would have been better if Gilliard were a better actor. He just makes me cringe every time he's on the screen. He seems like he's doing his first reading of the script with every line. I appreciate the producers' loyalty in casting alumni of The Wire, but good grief, he's just dreadful as Alston. I don't recall his being bad as D'Angelo Barksdale, so maybe it's just not the right part for him, or the writing is poor, or he's being poorly directed, but his scenes lack authenticity and are by far the weakest part of the show.

Thanks, @ElectricBoogaloo. So even when Jack was alive Kate was going to apply to just one very competitive music school and that was it? No plan B? You'd think Rebecca would have insisted she enroll at least part time in community college just to engage in life in some fashion. Some time must have passed since Jack's death for Kevin to have met and married Sophie and for Randall to have established a relationship, but Kate has just been hanging around doing nothing but mourning and watching tv? Ugh, they've made her character so unappealing in so many ways right to the present. I guess there's at least some consistency there!

I very well may have missed this, but what was 18 year old Kate doing before taking the record store job? It doesn't seem like she was in college, and if not, why not? I guess Kevin abandoned the idea of college once an athletic scholarship was no longer in the cards because he was never much of a student, but Kate was on a pretty traditional path. So why was she just hanging around the apartment at age 18, not even looking for a job, when surely money was tight for the family at the time? My OCD side wants to know how you re-close a carton of ice cream after disassembling it that way. Unless your family typically puts away a half gallon of ice cream in one sitting, that seems to be a problem.

How many years has it been since Gilead was established? While Kiki/Rebecca was old enough to have remembered/recognized her father from pre-Gilead days, surely the younger kids would have no memory of their pre-Gilead families and were being taken away from the only homes and parents they knew--and yet not a peep out of any of them. I thought Luke's face as he looked for Hannah to exit the plane was heartbreaking. Of course, he didn't know that she'd been taken out of the Boston district and that June had no way of getting her out, so he must have expected to see her. That was just about the only moment of the entire hour that seemed genuine.

Ugh, missing Tim so much. He was able to combine constructive criticism with encouragement and a genuine affection for the designers. Christian just seems supercilious and a bit snotty. Tonight, when several of the designers were clearly melting down, he had nothing to offer them but an admonition to hurry up. And so far Karlie, who I know is actually a very interesting person, is a total cipher. I miss Heidi's poor taste and quirky comments, because at least they were amusing. Hopefully the Karlie-Christian team will improve with time.

This junk is what you get when you ask designers to produce a "royal ball gown" (whatever that is) in one day. All of the designers seemed so over the whole thing. I don't know who was more bored, them or me.

So were they all planning to stay there for weeks if the pregnancy had been maintained that long? What a suffocating family, Did anyone else notice that Madison didn't ask how Kate was or whether the baby had arrived, just dropped the bag and took off? What a stupid, boring episode. And that poor baby, having to live his life with the legend of Saint Jack hanging over him. I desperately wanted Rebecca to tell Toby to make sure the baby wasn't named Jack, since there could only be one Jack in this twisted family.

I'm most disappointed that the producers didn't see the handwriting on the wall early enough to fashion an acceptable end point "just in case". What a disservice to the loyal fans! Other at risk shows have managed to fashion a last episode that would work as both a show and season finale.

What a weak plotline. Instead of sending a bunch of cryptic postcards to Jack, why didn't Nicky just write him a letter explaining the accident if he wanted Jack to know what happened so badly? C'mon writers. You can do better than that.

Thanks!

Can someone remind me (I think I'm supposed to know) what the employees of the Interchange office think they're doing and what it is they actually do? Am I right that only the very upper echelon employees know of the Crossing? It seems crazy to me that the whole place could exist and yet word would never have gotten out to the general population that something unusual was happening there. And now that we've seen the origin story, I still don't get how the secret project run by the management crew became a government (or is it UN?) agency. Sorry, I'm just one of those people who gets annoyed when the details aren't pinned down.

It appears the ratings are tanking for the show, and I think it's because it's just way too hard to follow. I usually don't have any trouble with convoluted storytelling, but I find myself rushing to read a couple of recaps--and coming here to absorb others' thoughts--after every episode. The dual universes mixed with a complex plot and a ton of characters--well, I don't think enough viewers have the patience necessary to stay on board. It's too much work. I became committed to the show via Simmons' incredible performance(s) in the first season; now I'm just hanging in because I want to know how it all concludes. Justin Marks came up with a great idea, but I wish he had been reined by whatever the TV equivalent is of a good book editor. The show could have been made much tighter and more streamlined and would have been better for it.

So I assume Heidi dosed herself with the medication at the lunch just to get Walter to join in and overdose so he'd be released. What if he was too full and declined to eat more? Or only ate a little? And if it took six weeks of ever increasing dosages to bring about amnesia in the soldiers, why would a single dose wipe Heidi's memories so effectively (to say nothing of inducing catatonia)? Another plot point that confuses me is the status of the soldiers at Homecoming. They seem to believe military careers are over, yet once their PTSD is resolved, they are redeployed. Are they voluntarily re-enlisting? The show was well done, but the plot doesn't stand up to much analysis. My recommendation would be to watch it, but not think about it very much.