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On further thought, while I felt the PTSD thing came on a little too fast in the story, the resolution felt far more unearned. Summer manipulated the fake world into war and put Morty in there because he couldn’t die and thus was a cheat code for war? That’s horrible.

Very solid episode. I think Morty's PTSD was a little forced for the plot, though. I'm sure "trapped in a simulation" has been done in SF a lot, as you mention 1x04 (M. Night Shaym-Aliens!) but this show did it again in 6x02 (Rick: A Mort Well Lived) when Morty got stuck in the Roy videogame. Also 7x10 (Fear No Mort), the one with the fear hole.

But Yelena was freed from the Red Room's mind control in 2016. Remove five years due to getting blipped, and with estimates that Thunderbolts is in 2027 MCU time, that's still five-six years free of Red Room mind control, where she chose to use her Black Widow skills (in part) as a contractor for Valentina. And also Eleanor Bishop, maybe?

That's fair, but I enjoyed Wicked pt 1 as a story in its own right, far more than Dune pt 1. And I say this as someone who doesn't know the Wicked story, book or stage show, and who has read Dune. But I came to the Dune movies late and watched them one after another just a couple of months ago. I would have been so mad if I watched Dune pt 1 in theaters, whereas I felt pretty satisfied with Wicked pt 1.

There's a nice AJ+ short documentary by Dolly Li about the Chinese Delta community on Youtube. Coogler then hired Li as a consultant for Sinners. And even if none of that got them, the wretched economics under Jim Crow of a juke joint for sharecroppers who mostly only had plantation scrip to pay would have gotten them.

New poster too!

I’ve always liked Kenny Atkinson, but he should have to give back the Coach of the Year award after what happened in game 4. Esp because with three minutes to go in the first half, Indiana only had 61 points. They had a 19-2 run to close the half.

My take is WB knows the previous DC movie brain trust was flat out terrible so pushing Gunn is their move to sell to the audience that things are different now.

I choose to believe games 2 and some of 3 were feel-out games esp because Kerr had to adjust to not having Steph. I think they can get it back to 2-2. But I’m worried Steph won’t be back for game 6.

AV Club: Spoiler Space: Thunderbolts*' big twist hides deep connections to its comic book roots

For the series, Steph led his team in points, rebounds, and assists, becoming the oldest player in league history to do so. Rebounds! He’s 6-3 and he’s 37 years old!

🙏😴. The Warriors knocking the Rockets outta the playoffs is my favorite sports tradition. TBF Houston would be incredible if they had a half court offense.

Warriors-Rockets game 5: uggghhhh. The only silver lining is that even in a blowout, the Warriors scrubs made Udoka play his actual rotation, so the Warriors starters should go into game 6 with a little more rest than the Rockets. Letting Luka walk would be more catastrophic than Dallas trading him for AD; at least Dallas got AD. Luka isn’t an unimpeachable superstar, but even with Lakers exceptionalism, there’s no way they can sign a better player on the free market. The inexplicable Luka trade aside, Luka should normally be in the tier where those guys are too good to ever get traded. Even getting 100 cents on the dollar in a hypothetical trade, few teams who have a comparable player would want to make the deal, because a good team with a top tier superstar should be constructed around him (like Dallas was) and the fit after a trade would be suboptimal.

The implicit premise behind these “Warriors couldn’t have hacked it in the 80s or 90s” takes is that the rest of the NBA forgot how to grab guys (or yes, hand checking is no longer legal), and it requires ignoring that Curry actually already does get grabbed all the time. Also, the skill level in the league is much higher now than back then. We don’t even use the term “7 foot stiff” anymore because those types of guys are nearly unplayable. A rotation center can shoot, dribble, and pass now. “Defense-first” guards like Tony Allen get played off the court because they’re so ignorable when they play offense that their team can’t sustain playing 4-on-5. (I suppose the old rules limiting zone defenses also contributed to this, a sort of implicit subsidy for defense-only players.)

PHEW. I'm actually kinda glad I missed the Warriors-Rockets game. I was stressed just watching the box scores online at work.

Houston gotta give up that "Clutch City" nickname.

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.