JyDanzig
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Posts posted by JyDanzig
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5 minutes ago, HunterHunted said:
You missed wknt3's joke that ALL season 8 episodes are terrible.
Oh, ha, I did miss that. Though I wouldn't say ALL the episodes in CI season 8 are terrible. There is... ugh, skimming the episode guide for that year... well, there is one episode that's good!
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2 hours ago, wknt3 said:
@WendyCR72 already said it was a Season 8 episode. No need to be repetitive.
I think you're confused. I was commenting on what I recalled of the quality of the episode and wondering if anyone shared that recollection, not discussing what season it was from.
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2 hours ago, WendyCR72 said:
In all seriousness, I never got why this franchise initially okays controversial episodes/plots, but then shies away later. Happened here and even happened with CI with an 8th season episode (Nichols/Wheeler episode) called "The Glory That Was" that surrounded The Olympics and the politics behind that. That episode, with the exception of very few stations which air repeats, is skipped depending on the network that holds the syndication package. (I see it listed for the local MyNetwork market here, but it is persona non grata in the wider/national syndication broadcasts.)
And that episode did not make streaming (iTunes/Amazon) or the US DVDs, simply says episode not available. (Except Fandango NOW has it for download.) The episode is on the European S8 set, though. So odd.
Maybe the same fate will hold true for "Unstoppable". The title now seems ironic as NBC is stopping it from making it to air.
That's interesting, I didn't know they (sort of) pulled that episode. I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but I think "The Glory That Was" was... terrible?
Original L&O pulled the episode "Sunday In The Park With Jorge" for awhile, after Puerto Rican advocacy groups complained.
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They really nailed it with that "Marley & Me" cutaway, that is exactly what that movie is.
Also, so many Gronkowski's listed in the end credits! Interesting that that was apparently the real dad and brothers doing those voices.
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Well, at least we're done with those awkward "everything all right with you and Tucker?" scenes they were randomly shoehorning in all season. The fact that they concluded they had to break up Benson & Tucker, in such a boring & unimaginative way, is yet another bad sign from the new regime. We've done 17 seasons and counting of romantic troubles for Benson, it shouldn't take much vision to see that the interesting route to take with this character now is letting her finally be in a committed relationship.
The detail that drove me nuts was all the title cards noting it was all taking place on a SATURDAY. Benson can't be in a relationship because she would occasionally have to be on the phone with her partner, thus leading to horrors like Noah not injuring himself while his mom is briefly distracted, but it's fine to spend her entire weekend in the office. OK. The Taking!It!Personally! Benson should have done this week was to reflect on her relationship with her nanny, not her boyfriend!
EDIT: oh god, is Tucker going to stick around, but become a villain again? You know, Benson's rejection has sent him back to being a diabolical asshole scheming away at Internal Affairs, that sort of BS.
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On 1/10/2017 at 9:07 AM, wknt3 said:
I would enjoy EVERYONE more if they added another character to interact with who would allow them to display all the aspects of their personalities. I actually like all the characters except Benson (and I do still like her sometimes), except when they decide to a story about Rollin's past or family (they rebooted her for a reason!) but there is a desperate need for another voice and someone else for the characters to play off of. Even if it was something like last year where they did it as more of a recurring character it would be better than what they have now. Of course that would mean not having Benson do everything herself and possibly having to do some actual writing for Fin so I'm not too hopeful.
So true. I like every character on the show right now, but it just feels short. They need one more cop in that squadroom.
Though, I prefer the current state of affairs to the last two Amaro seasons, when they clearly couldn't afford the full cast and almost every episode had at least one regular absent. But I have to imagine there's another Scanavino out there -- by which I mean someone interesting, good, and young/new enough to not already have a huge quote.
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2 hours ago, devious455 said:
I understand your point but I have a different idea. What about giving her a partner she would have some chemistry with?
You are certainly right that that would be better! I realize I was giving up hope of this ever happening, thinking to myself that Mariska was just never going to have good relationship chemistry with anyone long-term... I feel like similar things happened in her pairings with Hayden and Cassidy, the initial getting-together scenes are intriguing, and then the life just drains out of it so quickly. So I was ready to give up and largely cut away from the relationship, once established. But hopefully they do find someone who's a better match down the line (assuming this pair does in fact break up).
2 hours ago, devious455 said:I'm not for making her date somebody she hated three years ago. It's not good for her character, she went through a lot and she deserves somebody better. Not just washed out version of a person who made her life miserable for years.
I did think they did a weirdly good job with navigating this aspect of it, the redemption of Tucker. For me it worked, and I was highly skeptical when I first realized they were heading that way. And I suppose I was already trained to simply ignore the excesses of the later Neal Baer years. I remember thinking then that the show had been taken beyond the point of no return -- they had all become such consistently terrible cops, insufferably judgmental and aggressively incompetent. I felt the characters had been damaged so severely there was no writing your way out of it anymore. One of WL's best insights was that he didn't even try -- he just started (mostly) writing them as the competent detectives they were always supposed to be, and then that became the new reality of the series.
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8 hours ago, devious455 said:
This episode had no suspense and couldn't hold my attention. I also guessed the perp immediately. When I see Tuckson I start to worry if I will have such unromantic relationship in older age. Because somebody shoot me then. Or maybe it's just them. The Olivia drama is also tedious because we all know she won't retire.
What they should have done with Tuckson is barely let us see them together, but just portrayed Benson as happily coupled. Her character has more than enough angst, with her various Crusades For Justice, always being taken hostage, battles with corrupt city bureaucracy, and perpetually imperiled child. She doesn't NEED to have relationship troubles on top of all of that! Just let her have something to be happy about!
They could have kept it to three appearances a year from Tucker. One episode where he goes with her to one of those weird SVU parties they have from time to time, one episode where he is involved in some drama on the job that pulls in Benson, and one episode where he shows up on the scene to worry about her fate when she's taken hostage or abducted again.
But now they've shown us too many lifeless, no-chemistry scenes, so they have to just pull the plug on it.
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3 hours ago, Packerbrewerbadger said:
I wish SVU would feel bad about college stalker losing his job and that they showed them going to his boss and explaining he should have his job back.
It was more a trait of the Neal Baer years, but ruining the lives of uninvolved bystanders is what the SVU squad does better than anything else! This one I thought was pretty mild -- at least this guy was guilty of A crime, if not this week's crime, and he could get another job. Usually the life ruinings are irreversible, and the victims completely innocent of anything other than Benson or Stabler not liking them.
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5 hours ago, slowpoked said:
Actually, a lot of the people the cops talked to last night didn't seem to answer the simplest questions directly. Seems odd (at least to me) that all of them seemed crammed into one episode.
Yeah, the story itself was fine, but the actual writing of this episode was terrible. So many beats were presented in such false and contrived fashion. The church-y types who couldn't engage in a simple dialogue, the tortured rationale of the various stalkers, the clunky introduction of the criminal cop and his wife, the awkwardness of all Benson's personal reflections, the shapelessness of the work at the consulting firm. I felt bad for the cast, regular and guest. It's hard to perform when the writing is this muddy & unnatural.
Another notably bad episode bearing the writing credit of the new showrunner. I love this show, but this is a bad sign for the rest of the season.
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8 hours ago, DaynaPhile said:
This is a great list! Are they all S13 and beyond? I wish I knew where to watch earlier seasons since Netflix took them off, but even my possibly sketchy website resource only has 15 and beyond.
Hulu has the complete series -- that was basically the main reason for me to sign up for Hulu. There are those times when I need an old L&O-verse ep at that very moment, and these cravings always seem to hit in one of the 4 hour windows on any given day when no L&O reruns happen to be airing.
ForeverAlone has a lot of strong episodes on their list, but here's a few others I'm a fan of:
Season 13 (pre-Barba): I realize I love the whole 5-show block that runs from episode 6 through 10 this year -- it was a new writing staff, and after working out the kinks on the first few eps they had this great little run of really strong shows: "True Believers", "Russian Brides", "Educated Guess", "Lost Traveller", and "Spiraling Down". Later in the season I think "Hunting Ground", "Justice Denied", and "Valentine's Day" are all great.
Season 14: "Lessons Learned" (great Barba show!), "Criminal Hatred" (I like the defense attorney adversary for Barba in this one), "Born Psychopath"
Season 15: "Thought Criminal" (a return of the defense attorney from "Criminal Hatred", this is one of my favorite trial's in the recent years)
Season 16: "Holden's Manifesto", "Undercover Mother"
Season 17: "Transgender Bridge." Also, this may be an unpopular opinion, but I really like the two-parter that ends the season, "Intersecting Lives" and "Heartfelt Passages"
I kind of want to go to do my own mini-marathon now after writing that...
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I have a question...when and how did Mario get infected? Did I miss something?
At the end of 307, Mario is treating Jim in the hospital, he turns away and there was a Meaningful Close-Up of an Unexplained Band-Aid on his neck. Tetch had been in the hospital earlier, so I guess we are to infer Mario was injected with the blood then. I'd imagine we'll eventually have a flashback or something to make this explicit
The Gordon/Falcone relationship is perfect, all those scenes are spectacular.
This episode really sold me on Tabatha and Butch not only as a couple, but also as continuing characters on this show at all -- I'd been thinking it was time to write them off. They also really should not save her hand. It's too perfectly comic-y if they're a criminal couple who each have a fake hand! Don't let that one pass you by, show!
This Ivy-aging-up continues to be a disaster. Not Maggie Geha's fault, but I can't stop thinking how this is just a much better story with the original actress. The three kids together, Alfred trying to wrangle them. Clare Foley is 15, just put her in something other than that oversized shapeless sweater and you could have done the same basic arc of Ivy realizing how men are starting to sexualize her, and the power that gives her (and she wields her control through the plant toxins, you wouldn't have her actually sleeping with any of these adult men).
Of course, in that version you're legitimately doing a story about the creepiness of the early sexualizing of women/girls. To the extent that that theme is present in the existing story, it's only as a pretext to invite the audience to do the same thing.
Or you could have had Maggie Geha show up as Pamela Isley, and take orphan Ivy Pepper under her wing. Then you could have this cool sisterhood of plant-loving budding villains working together
It was just such a bad trade, dramatically. They lost a lot of interesting angles by aging Ivy up, and gained nothing but a hot woman of legal age they could put in sexy outfits.
Ugh, writing that out made me feel so bad for both Ivy actresses. They both deserve better!
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I respect the ambition of this season's concept, and it was well constructed... I just really did not like it. At the end of the day, I don't enjoy watching any of these types of reality shows, and I didn't enjoy watching AHS emulate the formats. I thought Chapters 6 - 9 were the best, I didn't mind that so much... but the other 6 episodes of the season, I really was forcing myself through. It felt like doing homework.
This, along with Hotel, would be my two least favorite seasons. It's interesting, what ruined Hotel for me was it's complete lack of structure, so many different ideas thrown together in such haphazard fashion.
But Roanake was ruined by too much structure -- where Hotel was underthought and consequently degenerating into an unfocused sprawling mess, Roanake was overthought in a way that kind of suffocated it.
Oh well. For me, swing and a miss, but nice try and I totally see how others would really like this season. I'll still be excited to see what season 7 is offering next year...
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I was just thinking how, not so long ago, when a promising gay-involved storyline was suddenly dropped or misdirected, you know the network had lost their nerve and swerved the showrunners away from where they really wanted to go. Fortunately, we have now progressed to the point where the mishandling of the fascinating Nygma/Oswald/Isabella setup isn't necessarily the result of executive meddling... it could just be plain bad writing.
I thought this ep was OK, but there were more interesting directions to take every one of these stories. This show needs to learn to not be in such a rush all the time! Every story is underperforming it's potential because they're rocketing thru at this accelerated pace. Take a minute to let some of these dramatic events breath! Play a little more back-and-fourth before getting to the climax!
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2 hours ago, DianeDobbler said:
I'm mad at the Petra stuff too. I feel ripped off. They shortchanged the character and her fans. Let's see, Michael nearly dies from a gunshot. People emote over it, and when he survives, he gets his moment to process it, react, and be consoled. Rogelio is kidnapped by his stalker, she almost kills him, and once he's rescued and back to "normal", it's allowed to back up on him and he has an emotional reaction/seeks comfort from Jane. The same is true for all the other characters when they've had moments of real crisis and pain. Petra's predicament was no more telenova than the others', but we get ZERO pay off.
2 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:I agree with this. I'm going to give them an episode or two to fully judge, because I have to believe that Petra will have a moment to break down.
I also have some hope that we will get Petra really processing the trauma of the whole experience (and I will be so disappointed if it never happens). In my ideal version, she's a villain raging at the world for two or three more episodes, but then she finally breaks down. Then we can get back to a more evolved, sympathetic Petra.
I was also wondering if it could be Stockholm Syndrome... Petra begins to identify with captor Anezka and her scheme, and misdirects her rage at other targets.
Interesting you bring up Rogelio and the stalker, I was thinking how that was the last story on this show I really disliked, for similar reasons: they were playing too much lightness in a story that was too far into true trauma. The emotional aftermath helped redeem it, though I was ultimately still dissatisfied with the whole arc.
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So, I LOVE this show, huge fan, it is absolutely one of my favorites...
But I really don't like this Petra/Anezka story! It's bothering me from so many angles at once. Being frozen like that for three months would be an unbelievable hell (that locked-in thing is absolutely my worst nightmare), and they've treated it with such lightness. It doesn't track for me that Anezka would have the emotional coldness to keep re-injecting Petra every 24 hours, it does not seem to fit with the rest of her personality. Nor do I quite believe Petra would come out of her paralysis with her vengeance fixated on Rafael... yes, he said something bad about her parenting, but also he was responsible for saving her, and I feel like she had the same doubts of her own mothering last season! (though I can kind of buy the anger at him for not noticing that it was Anezka and not her) Also, absolutely one of my favorite scenes in all of last season was Anezka's Mother's Day toast to Petra... I really thought their growing sister relationship was great, and I'm less interested in this poisonous version we're getting now.
I realized one of the things I love about this show is how they keep their characters and relationships evolving in a way that most shows do not. The love triangle being the best example... most shows wouldn't be able to help themselves from returning to it endlessly, but here they played it out, definitively resolved it, and now we are moving on to other issues and character dynamics. Petra seems like the only character where I keep thinking they have done such a great job of evolving her beyond her initial villainy, and then they backslide into it somehow. Let her really move on! Whenever she's having good relations with Jane or Rafael, I find those wary/friendly relationships so much more interesting than when she's in standard villain mode.
I'm just going to hope this is our last pass through Petra villainy before we move on to other things for her...
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It was nice to have an episode where Benson's moral outrage was appropriately sized and targeted. Every time she was disgusted and went off on someone, she was saying exactly what I wanted to hear. So satisfying! Quite a change from the rest of the dubious causes she's been running off on all season.
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14 hours ago, iMonrey said:
I think they could have gotten more mileage out of the reality show part and made if feel less rushed. And if they had showed less of the docu-drama part it would be easier to believe it was some smash success on TV.
You really hit the nail on the head with that one. For me, full stop, those first 5 episodes are the worst work AHS has ever done. The format just failed. Such a dreary, unenjoyable, boring, suspense-free slog. I was really forcing myself through, struggling to pay attention, in the hopes I would like the twist. And I did! The last 4 episodes have been flawed but much improved. But not so improved that they were able to dig out of the hole they were in. I'm surprised to see how many people love this season, in my rankings I suspect it will land as 2nd-worst (after Hotel).
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Man, this bums me out, but I just deleted Real O'Neals from my DVR. I thought it would wear off, but that Noah Galvin interview really did ruin the show for me! Which has never happened to me before! I've never found an actor so obnoxious it turned me off a project of theirs that I otherwise liked.
I've forced my way through every episode this season, and all I feel is a sad "I enjoyed this show so much, before I knew you were an insufferable dick" every time he's on screen.
If it gets a season 3, I'll be back to try again then!
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One little detail I found so heartbreaking: when Rollins proposes to the victim that she have a rape kit, and she breaks down as she responds with "I don't have insurance, how much does it cost?"
There were interesting ideas rattling around in this episode, though it was undercooked, and ultimately ruined by that completely unearned, out-of-nowhere ending.
I thought both the Janey and Ellis actors were so strong, I wish they'd just let it be a case where he truly believed it was consensual, and she truly believed it was rape, but the heavy drinking makes both of their views untrustworthy, and then really drill down and grapple with that. Cut the whole Benson-first-partner thing, save that for when you can get Meloni back for an episode where Dickie is accused of rape.
I also thought the ripped-from-the-headlines stuff really tripped them up this week. The real story of Brock Turner was a poor fit for the themes they spent most of the episode exploring... and then the tacked-on ending felt like a wish-fulfillment resolution for the real case, ignoring how badly it fit the episode.
Also, if we had to have climactic theatrics, I was hoping for a reveal that it was the angry cousin who had somehow masterminded the whole thing for revenge against Ellis. There was more set-up for that than the ending we actually saw.
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10 hours ago, PBGamer89 said:
Call me crazy, but I love the angle of going with a romance with Oswald and Edward. I think they should go there, because it works between the two of them. I always thought int he context of the characters, Penguin and Riddler lend themselves well to being in the LGBT group.
I never thought of it at first, but last week's almost kiss was too on the the nose for it to be just something random to be put in.
It's bold without going to far, IMO. Because there's an obvious chemistry between the two. Now just watch them ruin it with this Kristin lookalike. It won't end well for her. I agree with others who say she'll end up dead because she stands in the way of Oswald being with him.
Bold was exactly the word that came to my mind. I can't wait to see where they go with this.
Could the Kristin lookalike be one of Strange's reanimates? I can't recall where her body ultimately ended up. (I hate that this show introduced the power to reverse death, but I am hoping for some version of this woman being evil -- the better to drive Ed into Oswald's arms)
Liked the rest of the episode as well. My only real criticism is that Valerie's intrepid reporter shtick has seriously worn out it's welcome. Bantering and trying to conduct an interview while imprisoned by a homicidal maniac is not cute or endearing, it's frustratingly stupid. Help Lee pick the damn locks!
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I have a bit of a split-decision on this premiere... I thought this episode itself was really powerful and well-done, and they actually did convince me it was a good idea to cut last season where they did. That being said, I'm just not sure how interested I am in the story they're setting up going forward. I could see myself getting enormously frustrated by a protracted Negan arc... I keep thinking of how perfect the cannibals story was, precisely because they didn't belabor it. I'm not sure I can take a whole year (or more?!?) of this.
But they exceeded my expectations with this first ep, so I'm going to maintain cautious optimism. I was most concerned that I just wasn't going to be able to take JDM, because I find him intolerable in almost everything I've ever seen him in -- but finally I'm supposed to hate him, so that wasn't much of an issue!
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5 hours ago, Snookums said:
Totally agree. Kim's been a walking nightmare her entire adult life and it was bad enough when the show at least seemed to be on Amanda's side, as the "fixer" in her fucked up family. But now she's A) supposed to feel bad for not asking about a medical condition that was NEVER EVEN HINTED AT, not even at Kim's parole hearing and B) just go "okay, squaresies!" about her sister stealing everything she owned, setting her up to gun someone down, nearly getting her fired and almost sending an innocent man to jail?
God, this is driving me nuts, but didn't she SEND that innocent man to jail? I seem to remember a scene where someone was arguing that the man's criminal actions had only been undertaken after Kim drugged him, and Benson says "his defense attorney is free to argue that at trial", and I'm sitting there yelling at the TV: "BUT YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE! YOU KNOW IT WASN'T HIS FAULT!"
I had actually totally forgotten how disturbed I was at the end of that last Kim episode -- it felt like the whole SVU crew was allowing this man they knew to be innocent to be prosecuted, and likely convicted, because that would be easier on Kim, and thus easier on Amanda.
Now I'm wondering if I just read it wrong. Were we actually supposed to conclude that Kim's victim was somehow exonerated off-screen? Was he supposed to seem more guilty than my interpretation? Maybe it was just me...
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9 hours ago, SmithW6079 said:
I'll be honest -- reading that interview earlier this year and realizing Noah Galvin was a snot-faced asshole has affected my enjoyment of the show.
Me too! Which bums me out. I'm not usually bothered by that type of thing, I don't need every actor to be Julia-Roberts-likeable -- but I guess I don't want them to come off so aggressively terrible you suspect it would be intolerable to spend two minutes with them either. That interview stuck with me... he just seemed SO bratty, narcissistic, and unaware.
I hope the effect wears off! Watching the premiere, the only scenes I could really enjoy were the scenes without Noah Galvin in them.-
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Sweet Lady Jane Spoilers and Speculation
in Jane The Virgin [V]
This doesn't bother me about time jumps -- usually -- because most of the time I conclude there wasn't anything that specific going on in the first time frame, so it's easy to say that was the "past" and now, post-time-jump, we are synced up to the "present" for the first time.
And then this week had dialogue explicitly referencing Trump and Brexit as recent events! If they really do a time-jump in TWO EPISODES, that was terrible writing!
You think? When I saw it earlier I thought: that confirms it, these sound exactly like the stories you would do to re-set the table after a time jump. Jane being out of school and having a new career that is frustrating her. Presumably Petra ends up in control of the Marabella next week, so we'd be checking in to see how that was working out after some time. Whatever Rogelio and Darci's new arrangement is could also be a vehicle to explain to us what their arrangement has been for the first few years of their kids life. Ditto to Mateo's behavioral issues, a good way to show us where the kid is at now, at age 5 or 6.
Plus, doesn't next weeks release talk about Jane and Michael re-creating their first date? That's exactly what you do on TV right before you are tragically killed!
I don't like the idea of Michael dying, but I do really push back on the notion that it's coming out of nowhere. The narrator has been given us repeated ominous warnings. all the way back to early season 1. And every time this show tackles a story idea I hate, they somehow save it an episode or two later. So, assuming he does get killed off, I'm going to do my best to reserve judgment for a few episodes...