arc

That is absolutely not what “wide open” means. KD got a sliver of separation, but this is still a contested shot. And again, player tracking data shows most of his shots have low shot quality, meaning a defender is close and contesting the shot. He is efficient despite being tightly guarded. Curry also makes contested shots, miraculous ones even, but he actually does shoot a lot of slightly more open shots too because he is really good at getting open, whether by using screens or just one-on-one moves. But a lot of times KD just rises up because he’s that tall and that good a shooter. From 2013-2019, he was by far the most efficient scorer in the midrange, despite facing a contest on 95% of those shots. Now, I’m not saying KD is the best player ever. He can score over contests and double teams like few others ever, but his passing out of a double is not that great.

KD is (probably) seven feet tall, with a quick shot and a high release point. Of course he can hit a contested shot. What in the world. The first clip in the compilation below is him shooting right over AD, who is 6-10 himself. Well, to talk about his stats, he's the number one scoring option on every team he's been on besides the Warriors (1A on the Dubs). Some guys shoot 50% from the field because they only shoot at point blank range. Some guys shoot 50% from the field because they're catch and shoot specialists who make a living off the star getting doubled and leaving them open. Skipping over his Warrior years, KD generally does not get left open. His 50% FG% is a superstar's 50%, not a 50% of someone who eats from a star creating the advantage. He has to create the advantage. Look at the shot charts here. KD's shooting in the 2010s was elite; he was maybe average efficiency from 3 on the right side of the floor but above average efficiency everywhere else. And in the player-tracking era, where cameras and computers track where everyone is on the court, we know he's an astounding shooter despite being tightly guarded:

I was very pleased as a Warriors fan to see them beat the Rockets again. And even if the whole roster has turned over since the peak Harden days, the team has a few erstwhile Warriors rivals: Dillon Brooks, Steven Adams, FVV, and Ime Udoka. (now to not think about what will happen in six years when these young Rockets reach their prime while the Dubs’ big three are long retired.)

He actually got two fouls, thus avoiding the technical "trillion" (racking up zeroes in all the traditional box score counts).

I still don't think that applies if the character was created in the comics first. I don't think it's the same thing as a character created for a TV show. Anyways, what about Jarvis? Wasn't he first on TV in Agent Carter and then showed up in Endgame? (But of course, like Kingpin, he was created in the comics first.) So yeah, I think it's more likely that Sony claims Kingpin out of the Spider-Man characters it has licensed. At some point I think the lawyers actually went through and figured out who counts in which license. Kingpin was actually originally a Spider-Man villain, but ever since Frank Miller made DD a best-selling character, Kingpin has effectively become DD's villain first and SM's villain second in the comics. Of course sometimes characters get shared, which is how Fox -- back when it was a separate company -- had the mutants like Quicksilver and Wanda, but Wanda is also an Avenger. I think Disney and Fox actually brokered a deal they would both use them but not tread on the other's license (Fox wouldn't mention "Avengers" and Disney wouldn't mention mutants.) And then Fox never even introduced Wanda and Disney killed off Quicksilver in the movie they introduced him. So given Kingpin's long history as a DD villain, I don't think Sony could claim their license gives them exclusivity to Kingpin. As it is, though, Sony has rights to Spider-Man in movies and live action TV, and so they might have made some side deal with Disney where Disney can use Kingpin in the TV show but not in the movies.

It also strikes me that Infinity, as explicitly said by the flashback in this episode, isn't just an MMO that's as immersive as the Matrix, but Daly also developed the brain jack. (I guess there's a small possibility that he didn't, but Walton is such a dope that he'd never been interested enough to try one before.) If so, even without the servers offline, there's more than enough there to rebuild. The applications for fully realistic brainjack VR are incredible. Hell, we've had a real world tech CEO burn over $45B on mere goggles VR to get something with PS2 level graphics on the hope that he could manifest Ready Player One into being with sheer money.

Real Daly killed clone Tommy to punish clone Walton. He kept an inert copy around and also the lollipop so he could re-scan the DNA if necessary to make another one to re-kill. That’s why real Nanette was blackmailed by the digital clones to enter Daly’s home and steal enough stuff back (the backups and the DNA) that once the clones escaped, Daly wouldn’t be able to re-create them. The clones hadn’t planned on killing Daly. As for dropping the point in the sequel, well, real Walton doesn’t care too much about digital clones in general and real Daly is dead now. I could headcanon that maybe real Walton learned digital Tommy was already dead, in which case it’s a moot point, esp since real Walton presumably has real Tommy alive at home.

Well, according to Milchick in 2x01, but per 2x02, he was lying. Like he said to Drummond, "I had 48 hours to pull this together" (get the replacement MDR workers.)

Enjoyable romp, but I thought the heart of infinity was going to be like a kajillion Robert Dalys. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that they had just one of him in there. It also doesn't make a whole lot of sense that he had godlike powers inside the heart, but couldn't escape. It also also doesn't make sense that he couldn't have copied players* and/or made NPCs to keep himself company. Gotta say, overall Rick and Morty is generally better about taking its own premises seriously and fully extrapolating how they should unfold. * that brain interface seems to be able to do just about anything, so why not. It also doesn't make that much sense that the kill switch killed not only the live game but all backups. A competent company would have had offline backups as a last line of defense. On the other hand, Walton is clearly incompetent and outie Daly might have deliberately designed the kill switch to be maximally effective. As with the original, I have a really hard time buying that swiping someone's DNA lets you copy their consciousness. Esp since the copy is up to date with the time the DNA sample was collected. They were stuck with it this time, but I wish the original had just just the brain connector thing as a personality duplicator. Did Karl and Shania actually permadie? If innie Walton could respawn, did Karl and Shania? Did they respawn on the nearest planet? It doesn't make sense!!!! As a take on Steve Jobs, Walton was considerably dumber. But as a take on game company CEOs, or even general tech CEOs, it was pretty fair. A depressing number of leading CEOs in this industry are dumb as rocks.

I don't think Helena would have been so imperious back in 2x02 if that were the case.

In the teaser, it made sense that a beat-up Supes needed Krypto's help. But this sneak peek reveals there's a small army of Fortress robots who could have gone out and got him, and without unnecessarily aggravating his injuries. Maybe they're geo-locked to the Fortress for some reason.

A third of the way into the episode and I was already tired of oners for oners' sake. I've been low key annoyed with this technique/gimmick since the 2018 God of War game, which famously never cut. The technique gains so much by not cutting /but also loses so much/ with the obtrusive camera moves it needs to do in order to not cut. That said, it turns out the creative team at least had a reason for it besides "it's cool": "it gives you the feeling of being a panicked new studio executive" and "we had to do something cool to give ourselves the credibility to make fun of Hollywood" (I heavily paraphrase). I don't buy it; Action, from 30 years ago, and a network comedy at that did fine while using traditional cuts. But at least it's a reason. The Indiewire story I linked last paragraph also points out that if you commit to doing long takes, you have so much less opportunity to edit in the traditional sense of cutting and joining. They talked about having the editor on set to give feedback about doing a take with cut lines and what not, but still. Comedy is so timing dependent and it's such a major tool they've taken away from themselves. Should I grade this show on a curve and say they're doing great comedy for a show built on long takes? =/ Honestly, the Scorcese / Jonestown / Kool-Aid thing is only mildly funny. For one thing, the cultists drank poisoned Flavor-Ade at Jonestown (oh good, they referenced this), but Kool-Aid then and now was more well known, and two, there's no fucking way Kool Aid is going to sign off on this being the licensed movie. On the other hand, Matt completely panicking in the second meeting with Griffin was fantastic. Bailing on the Scorcese flick, having to backtrack and get the Stoller idea, and then finding it he might not have that either? Great stuff. I like that Griffin may be a guy with very bad ideas, but he's not a total idiot and he knows what's happening in his company when Matt spends $10m on a script. I'm not vibing with the sorta 70s-ish fashion choices here (so much brown!), but it's certainly an aesthetic. As far as I know, real Hollywood execs look a lot more like regular business people (grey and navy suits, nothing particularly interesting). Gotta be honest, I thought Sal was going to be more obviously backstabbing.

Off the top of my head, first-timers -- TV creators who hadn't been in writers rooms before launching their first show -- who were great: Dan Erickson, Dan Harmon, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobsen*, Liz Meriwether** * they had the Broad City web series, but a web series of that level is not the same thing as TV ** I think she had a pilot picked up before New Girl, but the show was not ordered to series, and before that pilot she had no writing credits at all. Anyways, Erickson didn't just have the idea of mentally checking out of work. In a very early version of the script, long before Stiller signed on, he had Lumon, MDR (then called "culling"), severance, Cobel's mother being an atheist and a Catholic, acerbic dialogue, Ricken making shit up for no reason, Mark as a former professor, Lumon and Cobel being crazy weird and scary, Mark in the depths of unmanageable grief (but it was a divorce, not being widowed). There's more than enough there to make me think Erickson is just who Apple says he is.

The show that started the second season with Mark's innie in full sprint trying to find his outie's wife ended that season with him getting his outie's wife outta Lumon.

We’ve had to buy since the pilot that the computers’ 80’s-looking interface somehow conveys emotions in the numbers, emotions that the refiners can feel, (and that the computers know which bin is the wrong bin to sort a bunch of numbers into, which implies the computers have all the information to do the sorting themselves without human intervention.)