Dobian

I don't care at all for the on-again, off-again soap opera between Peyton and Ravi. It's entirely manipulative and cliche. The latest where Ravi finally fesses up his true feelings and Peyton comes over to get back together with him...again...only to find that medical examiner woman in his kitchen...why would he even do that? The reason, of course, is so that the writers can have her bounce back to bad boy Blaine, who seems to be exonerated of his monstrous crimes simply because he lost his memory. "It's okay you murdered young boys and turned people into zombies, you can't remember doing it and you play the piano and are all sweet now!" Why is she even an assistant D.A., with that kind of attitude she should be defending serial killers.

I have mixed feelings about this episode. I liked the premise, the little a.i. robot was kind of neat, and it looked like the story was going to go down a dark road. But then all of a sudden it turns into this goofy teen comedy caper. The result was that the whole of it felt very disjointed to me.

This was a pretty typical Black Mirror episode, with near-future technology exposing long-existing human issues. I thought it was pretty clever how the episode exploited my gut reaction at seeing a very hot scene of this girl and this guy grinding on each other in a video game while saying "ewww noooooo!!!!" The story works because of the terrific performances of all three of the main actors. Danny is happy but bored in his suburban life and clearly missing something. Karl has missed his best friend for years since Danny got married, as the two have drifted apart, which often happens when one gets married and the other stays single. Theo wants to grow a family and get some affection, which can lead to problems when the husband has lost his sexual attraction for her. This is a natural development among long-time married couples. The scenes between Danny and Theo at the restaurant and Danny and Karl in the rain were well-written and acted. The episode did a good job at exploring the complexities of sexual desire and attraction. Danny and Karl aren't gay. Danny is attracted to a female in a video game, and Karl is excited at being a female in a video game. So we have a straight man and a transgender. And it's only with each other that they feel the intense connection because of their friendship and history with each other. They know each other and trust each other like no one else. Karl said as much when he talked about how he couldn't duplicate the experience with other people or a.i. online. The ending was fairly practical, with Danny and Theo agreeing that they both need something outside the marriage, her with the occasional bar pickup and him with Karl in the video game. So unlike other Black Mirror episodes, the ending wasn't especially astounding or revealing. It's a scenario that plays out all the time in our own reality. I still enjoyed it though.

I was rooting for Salome. She could have won if she got a couple more answers right or landed a daily double. She just happened to be up against two equal competitors. Emma now becomes a footnote in Jeopardy history, the player who unseated James. At least she can say she defended her title twice. I think the person who dethroned Ken Jennings lost the very next game.

I first listened to the album If You Could Read My Mind when I was a kid back in the 70s. Was a fan of his ever since.

I don't think Emma is going to last long. She caught lightning in a bottle on that one day, which led to James' downfall. But last night she didn't land either daily double in the Double Jeopardy round, and missed on the Final Jeopardy question, which was actually pretty easy to deduce. She pretty much limped home for the win.

I guess certain people haven't thought about why a guy would throw the game that would have made him the all-time Jeopardy money winner.

I didn't want James to win forever, I mean, I got really sick of watching Ken Jennings after awhile too. But I did want to see James break the all-time money record. Saying he threw the game is just stupid. His challenger landed both daily doubles in Double Jeopardy, it's that simple. On a typical day James would make about $30,000 off of those, tonight he made zero while she made about $11,000. He bet a small amount on Final Jeopardy because he was in second place. He had to position himself so if he got it wrong he would still be ahead of the third place guy, and if she got it wrong James would win because she had to bet big.

I think they're softballing the daily doubles to this guy. The first daily double of Double Jeopardy is always the question where he pulls away from the others. He'll jump from around $15,000 to over $25,000 and it's game over. But I've noticed that I've been getting a lot of these daily doubles right, and I'm not dumb, but I shouldn't be getting that many of them right lol. And the Batista one was about as easy as it gets for him. I know, anyone can technically hit a daily double, but he hits them far more and the producers know that. And they know he bets big. Missing a hard daily double is the difference between having $25,000 and having $5,000, which would make the Double Jeopardy round suddenly a contest.

It was good fun. Some actors were better than others. I thought Jamie Foxx and Wanda Sykes were terrific as the Jeffersons. Jamie's flub and how he handled it was funny, I saw Woody Harrelson turn his back to the camera because he was laughing. It reminded me of Harvey Korman and Tim Conway on the Carol Burnett Show. Woody Harrelson was okay as Archie. I didn't think he was the best casting choice, but he was adequate. Marissa Tomei was great as Edith. The guy who played Meathead just wasn't funny the way Rob Reiner was. Ellie Kemper didn't even try to channel Gloria. Gloria was opinionated but very sweet and had that high pitched warbly voice. I also saw Ellie break into her Kimmy Schmidt laugh at one point. And why no blonde wig? Will Farrell as Tom was mostly stunt casting. A much better choice for that part would have been Bob from Schitt's Creek. The guy who played Harry was okay. It was great remembering when Paul Benedict played the character, he was hilarious. The guy who played Lionel was very reminiscent of Mike Evans. I grew up watching these shows and actually remembered the episodes. It was a fun nostalgia trip, and pretty cool to see how people's views and understanding back in the 1970s were pretty close to our own, and the writing especially of the All in the Family episode is just as relevant and relatable today. And Norman Lear, 96 years old! He looks great.

Too much about race and gender is injected into opinions about this show based on people's real world perceptions and agendas. It's a fantasy show in a fantasy world. It's also set in a medieval time period where things like equality and social justice are at the bottom of the priority list, if they are even on the priority list. Bran didn't get the throne because he's a white guy. The person who either sat on the throne herself or controlled it when her children sat on it for seven out of the eight seasons was a woman - Cersei. One of the seven kingdoms is Dorne, which is the Westeros version of an Arabic culture. The show itself was never about addressing race or gender issues, and it was never the responsibility of the show to do that. Westeros didn't need to reflect our real world 21st century values, nor should it. If people want that sort of thing, there are a lot of shows out there which cater to that. Sansa was raped. It happens. In a medieval world like Westeros, it would happen a lot and be tolerated and even acceptable in places. Lots of shows depict rape and get lauded for it. GoT does it and it's misogynistic. Sansa said it was thanks to Ramsay Bolton and others that she is who she came to be. It wasn't a thank you to Ramsay Bolton, there was no admiration when she said it. She followed that statement by describing what she did to him in the end. Was GoT saying that a woman has to be raped to become strong and a leader? No. Arya wasn't raped. She turned into a deadly assassin. Cersei didn't become Queen of the Seven Kingdoms by being raped. Yara didn't command the Iron Fleet because she was a victim of abuse. Sansa wasn't like them, though. She was a wallflower who couldn't stand up for herself. She had no backbone. It took a severe trauma to change who she was. It also seems to be forgotten that Ramsay Bolton did even worse to Theon, a male. So what happened to Sansa wasn't about gender at all, it was about abuse at the hands of a sadist. And both her and Theon's stories were about rising above what he did to them and becoming something better.

Well they haven't done anything yet. Wait until they sack Riverrun and rename it Al Drogo, then people will start paying attention to them.

Everyone is talking about how Dany is the character that the writers destroyed, but I would argue that the character they really destroyed was Cersei. For seven seasons she was one of the biggest, and often *the* biggest, character on the show. But in season 8 she was reduced to sitting on the sidelines, literally standing in a tower staring out her window. Oh, except for one scene in episode 4 where she stands on a wall. Oh, and she sent Bronn to execute Jaime and Tyrion. Wait, wasn't Bronn Jaime's sidekick like out of a buddy cop show for a few seasons? It wasn't too hard to figure out who he'd side with if the money was right. He probably coined the phrase, "Bros before Hos" in Westeros. She had no backup plan, no exit strategy. She just looked smug until Drogon started torching the city and then she started blubbering. It was pathetic. She deserved better. Lena Headey deserved better.

Well they actually righted the wrong by doing an episode-within-an-episode several years ago where the Seinfeld cast did a reunion episode within the Larry David Show. And aside from being very well done, it pretty much supplanted the original Seinfeld finale as the finale. So I would just watch that episode. So lesson learned for GoT....just do an episode of Larry David where the cast reunites for a do-over of the season 8 finale!

Well, there should have been zero Dothraki and only a small number of Unsullied. An accurate portrayal of the remaining forces should have been an army of ten versus an army of eight.