Latverian Diplomat

I like the premise, but the first episode was table setting. A lot will depend on what their goals are, and what obstacles/adversaries they will have to deal with. There are a few host complications that they didn't see to plan for/didn't know about? but there must be more obstacles on the way. It was also unclear how they could know all those times of death so precisely. Unless someone dies with medical staff in attendance, time of death is just an estimate, right?

I liked the idea that Raimy would have trouble with her mom's memorial service but the show's treatment of it didn't work for me. And people putting pressure on Raimy to attend for the benefit of everyone else? That seems completely upside down, morally speaking. Like the historian on Timeless, one wonders is Raimy is slowly going to go nuts from all these alternate timelines in her head.

I have to say I think this is, IMHO, extremely difficult material to adapt. In the books, you see things from Dirk's perspective, but on TV you are looking at him from the outside, and honestly, he can come across as quite an asshole that way. That was the main drawback of the 2012 adaptation with Stephen Mangan. (Again, IMHO). So it sounds like they've tried to make Dirk more likable, but still very eccentric, sort of a Matt Smith Doctor type?

Heh. Does it take any of the shine off of Magenta to note that her powers are magnetic? (Is dyslexia a superpower?)

I never cared for her either. I don't think she was particularly well written (I guess it was originally supposed to be a Devil Wears Prada kind of a thing?), and Calista Flockhart never seemed very comfortable or natural saying the lines as written. Melissa Benoist was doing so much better with Kara, it was painful to watch them do scenes together.

For that reason, it seemed more Sharper Image than Williams and Sonoma to me.

Butter is a complex substance that has proteins in it that don't really melt, they float to the top or sink to the bottom. If you are just going to pour it over popcorn, no big deal, but for spraying a thin, even coat on a pan, or other cooking tasks, it's better to use clarified butter, and people have been using clarified butter for centuries, and putting it in spray bottles since the invention of spray bottles. For that reason, I was wondering if keeping this Biem thing working and cleaning it will be a chore. I also wonder if cheaper materials would exacerbate these issues, making the "non-luxury" model a true PITA. He also seemed weirdly fixated on Mark Cuban for some reason. I wouldn't have gone in thinking it was Mark's kind of product at all. With the chocolate thing, I think the dad who owns the company knows they don't have a chance in hell of getting in to retail before the patent runs out, but his son was really jazzed about the idea, so he gave him the chance to get some life experience pitching on Shark Tank. Another issue that didn't come up, is a contract manufacturer like that takes a big risk becoming a competitor to vendors who might be contract customers. Why risk your core business on a big gamble?

I know that applying actual historical facts to this show is an exercise in futility, so I'll just give myself this one: Applied nuclear physics was not Einstein's area of expertise. His main contribution was writing a letter to FDR saying that an atomic bomb was possible and should be investigated (and even that letter was Leo Szilard's idea.) And then it took a ton of brilliant folks years of research to do it. But then, that whole plot point was a bit silly. If Eobard can pass out ray guns, I'm not sure why he can't pass out atomic bomb plans (or a bomb itself). Another unforced error from Ray (the suit being "less radiation proof" than he thought?). He was doing so well up to that point. Really tired of Damian Darhk (not a criticism of Neal McDonough, it's just that Darhk was on Arrow for what seemed like forever). But Sara makes everything better. I hope she gets to kill him, though I have no idea what that would do to the timeline or how they would handle it. ETA: It would be cute if someone uses "like one of the Einsteins" on a different Arrowverse show.

The pregnancy thing is killing me...we did not need another excuse for Weller to go full Neanderthal... Unfortunately, they bought their body armor from the same vendor that makes imperial stormtrooper armor...it actually attracts kill shots. More seriously, that was a ridiculous amount of firepower. They'd have done much better to ambush Team Weller on their way out of the building with the case, I think. The improvised molotov was also a bit too effective, huge bang, large cloud of smoke, and those guys never followed them.

It's been less than two weeks, on the show, if I understand the timeline correctly. Also some states give governors appointment power to replace senators, some require special elections, and if anything, special elections are required in even more states for House vacancies. It's true that the state leg's could quickly change those procedures and speed things along, but it's still early to have new congress people filtering in. Hopefully, we will start hearing about or seeing this happening soon. I'm a little more cynical about political grandstanding, so at least one governor being a huge dick I don't find completely unbelievable. And, to be honest, there's drama without conflict, so a story about the nation rallying around new President Kirkman would be pretty boring, even if more realistic.

I liked the pilot a lot too. But it had the luxury of being able to follow the movie (a well constructed story, as far as "time travel" stuff goes) pretty closely. I thought they might run into trouble when they had to stretch things out over a TV series. But I didn't expect things to go south this quickly. ETA: I found Raimy's refusal to talk to her mother utterly incomprehensible. It sabotages every single goal she has. The fact that Frank gives her the "I understand why you did that" speech right after is, to me, an admission by the writers that they knew it was weak, but they need the obstacle of Julia being out of the loop and thinking Frank is crazy and dangerous.

Remember the episode where Claire mirrored Alex's AP class schedule and realized how much pressure Alex felt, or any of the two or three other episodes with a similar idea? Yeah, the writers don't. Also Alex's obnoxious victory dance seemed really out of character for her. It's more likely that she just wouldn't enjoy Scrabble or similar games with Luke because it's no challenge. The main character trait Lily has is pointing out in various ways that Cam & Mitchell are terrible parents, so I don't hold the liquor bottle plot against her too much. No way Manny could get into Juilliard, and especially not as an early decision applicant. But if he wants to go to an arts school, that's the one he applies to because it's the only one the TV audience has heard of. With Jay's backing, there are probably dozens of perfectly wonderful colleges he could go to. The speech therapy stuff made Gloria look like a dope, but Sofia Vergara did a great job with it. I would like to think this is a step toward getting rid of the "Gloria has an annoying and/or unintelligible accent" bits, but I doubt it.

She didn't fall for a schtick, though. She demanded misery porn in return for an investment, and she got what she wanted, I guess. I thought Mark might have thrown him a pity deal, except for the conflict of interest issue? Or maybe Mark was just happy to have the excuse? That said, it's a nonstarter as an investment. The guy is 80, one serious illness and most likely the business collapses. Math is not entertaining, (but sob stories are, apparently). I can believe their gadget works better than rice, but the rice think is a) fast and b) cheap. And as phones move to being water resistant/waterproof, this problem goes away anyway. I'm surprised Barbara was the only one to allude to that. The fact that they took one of Kevin's elaborate equity/loan deals makes me think they were a bit desperate. I got a slightly different impression. sister-in-red understands they need the investment and just happy to stay in business, sister-in-white wants feels threatened at losing majority stake because she's the boss.

I thought Keaton deserved a better telling, especially toward the end when the Patrick Walsh started doing schtick about Keaton's Oscar speech. Also Walsh and Rutherford both seemed a little hostile at points? Maybe that was supposed to funny, didn't work for me.

I'm a sucker for the "plucky old time female reporter" type (of whom there were several real life examples) so I hoped they might save her, then take her into the future to avoid effing up a past where she didn't survive. But then they made a big deal about the timeship only carrying three people, so, it was pretty clear she was toast. Too bad it was more in service of a tired emotional beat rather than a "City on the Edge of Forever" necessary sacrifice. Good point made about the "future gun" and it's potential to change the past. Also, good handling of racism, I thought, hopefully we'll see some sexism bullshit of the past spotlighted as well. It's funny how TV sees teaching a low level class to a huge hall of undergrads as an important part of being a "fast track to tenure" professor. I liked this more than I should have perhaps. There's potential here, I think, but we'll see. I would like to see some time travellers from the future show up in an episode (maybe sweeps) to prevent "our heroes" from doing something really dumb, maybe? Sauce for the goose?

Somewhere, Jimmy Kimmel is tossing another one of his "hilarious fake pitches" into the waste basket. I was surprised that Robert didn't sneak in a plug for Tipsy elves during the lapels pitch, as he usually does with any kitsch clothing product. I'm not very interested in the Paleo diet stuff, based on pseudo-science and largely just a way of saying, "agriculture, was it a mistake?" (see all the gluten-free mania). But what sunk the guy was his crazy valuation. I always wonder in these cases if they deliberately sabotaged their own deal because they don't want a deal, just the free advertising. Daymond seemed like the logical choice for the fishing, with passion for the sport and lots of retail connections, I don't think Robert brings those to the table. But he never budges on valuing his own time (unlike Lori who folded rapidly on that). I think Lori's infomercial idea would be the right way to go, especially if the "fish call" doesn't actually work. :-) But if they believe in it, retail is probably a better route? Anyway, I was thinking the real, serious anglers were thinking "Great, another way for lunkheads to get more of my fish!".

Yeah, I suspect that it will be OK at helping out kids of generally good will in a moment of weakness, but it's not going to do much about someone determined to nasty.

It's been a while, but IIRC he seems to be a little pissed about getting shot all the time. (Even though he doesn't really "die", doesn't feel pain (?), wouldn't seem to have been programmed for actually winning a gunfight, etc. In that sense, his motivations are completely unimaginative, and makes the robots a pretty shallow metaphor for slavery, I suppose. The source of the self-awareness is completely unexplained, as is why it arises spontaneously in multiple robots at the same time (they don't seem to be "networked" in the way we understand now, because that was something that barely existed in research labs at the time the movie was made). Given that this was Michael Crichton writing and directing, you can also view Jurassic Park as his attempt to do a better job with some of the same basic ideas.

Did the "lesser" sharks band together and demand more appearances, necessitating the extra chair? I wonder. One of the principles of e-mail, is if you write one when angry or upset don't send it. Wait a while and come back to it. Very good advice. Of course the kids these days are all about texting, so everything is shorter and faster but the same principle applies. ReThink won't help with hard core, determined bullying, but it could help typical teenagers have a little more restraint. One thing that helps flower delivery is that there's a national network of local suppliers and delivery services. So they don't get killed by shipping costs. It will be interesting to see if people start using food delivery services like BiteSquad for "care packages", though, as there does seem to be something of a niche there. WTF with the iSlide guy turning down that offer?

FWIW, I think there was a distinctly "anti-modern" slant in the original movie. Regan's mom is a single, working mother, an actress no less, and an agnostic. Medical science is unable to help (and the hospital scenes are probably the scariest in the film).

Unfortunately, their ratings go up whenever something like this happens, and they will do anything to hold those viewers. So, they choose dollars over dignity. 24 hour news channels seemed like a good idea once, but it really seems like they have backfired, people who watch them tend to be less well informed than people who get their news elsewhere.

I think two people who love NYC would be that harsh about middle of nowhere in Florida, and even though Jake and Holt's appreciation of NYC comes from very different places, Florida is something they can agree on.

Or even just a dummy version of it with the real one hooked up somewhere else. They seemed to be completely caught off guard though, so it seems unlikely they thought to do anything like that. I liked that Ryo pointed out that someone else will develop the blink drive again shortly, and have the power to mass produce it. That seems especially likely given that at least a few people already know there's a working one out there. And it's good to see recognition that "breakthroughs" have a short lifetime before they proliferate. In reality, no reason Misaki wouldn't double tap Nyx once she was down. Honor clearly wasn't an issue, and Ryo would be unlikely to check her weapon, I think. But it does leave the possibility of Nyx's survival at stake. I don't know what Space channel/Syfy contract negotiations are like, but it seems like they set themselves up pretty well to write out just about anyone if they really had to. :-)

I get that, but that makes it seem like the plan was to get captured (except for five), which, is not usually a great plan, and not the kind of thing three would ordinarily be happy with, IMHO.

Good point. Still, it seems like having three or six along would have been a good idea normally. The Seers were pretty dismissive of her, which worked out well for her being off on her own. Was that lucky or good, in terms of planning the mission?