arc

Finally renewed!

Remember the trailer for Dark Knight 3 (I forget the exact title, but it was the third Nolan Batman movie)? Bane's voice was incredibly distorted. It was outrageous. Then in the final cut, the voice distortion was toned down significantly. My pet theory is that Nolan's hearing is incredibly good and he apparently doesn't take this into account when dealing with the final sound mix. I saw this for the first time tonight, with a friend who watched it for the second time. She said the dialogue was much more audible the first time (in a different theater), and we speculated that either the speakers weren't that good or the graphic equalizer, if movie theaters use such a thing, was off. But reading all these, maybe her experience was the outlier. Anyways, I really liked the movie as I watched it, but then my friend and I discussed a lot of the movie and I liked it less and less. Here's a plot problem that nagged at me even when I was watching it: it was really awesome that Team Cooper took off from Earth with a full-on three-stage rocket. But then the little Ranger 1 craft gets to orbit and above from the two planets (Waterworld and Hoth) without it, so why did they need the booster rockets? The rest of my gripes mostly occurred to me later: 1) only tiny amounts of data could be sent back through the wormhole. Bullshit. They could literally see through the wormhole to the distant galaxy, so the wormhole was exchanging vast amounts of information in both directions the whole time. Secondly, even if the wormhole didn't act like that and there was some handwave explanation for the bandwidth limitation, use "sneakernet" (well, "rocketnet"). If they could send ships through at will, and apparently they could, they could have sent tiny drones packed with SD cards from the relay station parked just on the far end of the wormhole[1] to a relay station on this side. [1] this is how they initially determined the state of the three planets as soon as they got to the other side. 2) "No parent wants to see their child die". OK, that is a truism for a reason, but when your child has lived to be approx 100, esp because you've time-dilated skipped most of that, I think you'd want to be there for her passing. I actually did miss the passing of my father through bad luck, and I know that's not quite the same thing, but still. 3) "Go to Brandt", sez Murph. Wait, you mean you "solved gravity", got a lot of humanity into colony cylinders over the last 80-so years, but you guys never sent through anyone else to catch up with her? Really? That's kind of monstrous. She was gonna have to raise 10 babies all on her own. 4) "Murph is too old to be transferring cylinders, but she's [humanity's savior]. She'll be here in two weeks." OK, even granting that she solved gravity, that probably means she's in another colony cylinder in Saturn's orbit. Why did you pack so many colony cylinders around Saturn? There's a lot less sunlight out there. The only reason to abandon Earth was the blight, and the only reason Saturn is interesting (from a survival of the human race standpoint) is that the wormhole is there. That makes it a rest stop, not a final destination. 5) But the colonies seem to be where humanity has stopped. Were they waiting for Coop? Because IMO, the savior of humanity does not wait around on a colony cylinder at her advanced age if they haven't found colony-worthy planets. And the savior of humanity's childhood home wouldn't have been brought to a colony cylinder if there was a more viable planet-based colony. AND and and, why the hell is the savior of humanity's childhood home on a different cylinder than the one she lives on? And why bring her to see her dad when she's old and frail and her dad is a fresh time-dilated 37-45???? And did she make all her extended family come to her deathbed on a different cylinder? 6) Mann developed his "space madness" (term from The Toast) in two years! It might have been 33 years objective time (10 years plus the time dilation spent on waterworld), but he only had supplies for two years worth of awake time; so therefore the rest of his time was spent in hibernation. 7) [this one I didn't think up, I got from an AV Club comment] If Murph "solved gravity", enabling mankind to build those cylinders on the ground and launch them with magic anti-grav instead of regular rockets, then why would they need centrifugal spinning? Just use your artificial gravity! 8) [via a diff AV Club comment] Plan B depends on producing enough food for all those babies on the new planet, because they only packed the frozen embryos themselves and not supplies for the babies...

So friction from superspeed travel can light things on fire! Just, y'know, Felicity's blouse and not her skirt or hair or skin... (BTW, Barry's move in that situation was to ineffectually try to pat it out? You'd think a guy with super speed could have super-sped to the nearest fire extinguisher or gotten a glass of water or something.) And how did he get out the farmland in his regular clothes and those didn't catch on fire????????? Bigger fail: America's been watching crime procedurals for decades. I mean, at least the Flash had his suit's gloves on, but Cisco just grabbed that murder weapon with his bare hands. And BTW, even if I buy that red under Bivolo's control induces rage, how would that make his victims' eyes glow red?

I was thinking about Soylent as soon as Holt said that! And I assume they wrote that line as an implied reference, but I remain disappointed Boyle didn't mention it in response, even if in disapproval.

A map of Broad City's New York, drawn by Abbi.

He also super-sped around Iris a few episodes ago in his regular clothes. Mostly to talk at her in "bullet time", but he did zoom around to a few different spots. I guess one could fanwank that those each were short enough to not burn off his clothes, but what about his boxer briefs in the Plastique ep?

I thought I read somewhere that the Arrowverse shows can mention Bludhaven but not Gotham or Metropolis... I kinda doubt the DC brain trust is orchestrating a MCU type dealie (but with a multiverse) for their tv licenses.

But the sound of those doors opening would also arrive after the Flash did. Nothing the Flash does to cause sound while moving past Mach 1 will make a sound that arrives at Tony' location before him.

Lot of stuff happening in this episode, but I liked it all. Didn't really miss the boss public defender (Burt?). Did kinda miss Maria Bamford, though.

Almost definitely. Also, when they were holding hands while hiding out from Blackout, it was a really weird editing choice where at first I wasn't even sure if she was holding her own hands in nervousness or what. I'd assume the director and editor are competent, so it might have been a "these two have too much chemistry right now, let's edit that down a bit" kind of choice.

For me, it's more like this one accident has given a small number of people very disparate superpowers, so maybe there are other ways to induce metahuman-ness. Maybe some of them have occurred in the past. More generally, I don't like how Smallville and The Flash push to have all superhumans generated from a single event. It's way too neat.

Barry could even have just thrown a ball bearing at the guy at supersonic speed. Speaking of throwing a piece of metal at supersonic speeds, you know what else is a lot like that? A bullet. I mean really. Also, please stop having Barry ask team Science how fast he'd need to go. He needs to go really fast. In fact, given how every other week he needs to go faster than he's ever gone before, he should be working out on the super-treadmill to build up his powers... BTW, now that I think about it some more, there's no way he runs out of a room in the blink of an eye from a dead stop but it takes him 5.3 miles to get from over 100 mph** up to supersonic. Hell, that ep a few weeks ago where he talked to Iris in quasi-frozen time, he packed a minute or so of monologuing into a fraction of a second so brief she didn't even notice, so he was probably moving faster than the speed of sound there already. ** wild estimate here Wells and Joe West: "well, it couldn't have been metahumans 14 years ago, because there wasn't a particle accelerator back then. Do you remember any storms before my industrial radiation accident?" ... What? You're a man of science, you've clearly seen that metahumans are possible, but you suggest that only your particle accelerator could induce metahumanness? That's like discovering fire and thinking only your flint could make fire. And also you think that metahumans never leave a city once they've gained powers, so whoever killed Barry's mom had to have gained his powers in Central City? How does any of that follow? Joe is a very dumb detective if any of that fooled him.

If the key plot point to defeating the metal guy is to hit him with a supersonic punch, where the Flash is literally travelling faster than the speed of sound... Then the metal guy is not going to hear Allen coming, because Allen will be there before the sound gets there. But he does! He actually turns his head because he hears something! Come on!

I'm 99% sure this was originally written to go earlier in the airing order. It's the fourth episode before her first jury trial? Boring Larry is introduced in this episode instead of episode 3, where he first appeared? The paralegal (?) from the pilot re-appears despite not being in eps 2 & 3? Sure, I get that juries convict or not based on factors like the defendant's "scariness", but... I kinda hoped Nina could win on the facts of the case too. The entire A-plot felt just a little more cartoonish than the other episodes so far in how it treats Nina's skills and esp her inability to read the jury and see if she's got them or lost them.

Multiplex from ep 2 had "cell-cloning" powers that also "cloned" his clothes. (sigh) So I don't think the exemption is that costumes aren't affected. If anything, it's more that costumes will do whatever to avoid onscreen nudity. (see Magic Pants, I guess.)

I think it's just criminal underground money. Actually, I can't 100% recall if the hotel rent is paid in gold coins, but the killers themselves are paid that way whether they're full time employees (as Wick used to be) or freelancers... maybe. I mean, the contract on Wick's life was set at "2 million", probably dollars and not coins, but OTOH Wick offered that other freelancer a coin to hold the female assassin captive for a day and that guy definitely wasn't either freelancing to work the Wick contract nor a mob employee. Similarly, the cleanup crew was paid in coins and presumably they're not directly part of Viggo's empire. I wonder if the writer or directors ever drew out org charts for the world of this movie.

Gil is the poor person's Max Blum, Dennah is kind of the poor person's Alex Kerkovich. Kay is barely there, unfortunately. I liked it, but it wasn't as formally interesting as the curse episode. The mother-in-law plot felt pretty by-the-numbers and Gil's B plot started out really solid but ended with a whimper, in that the underground "speakcheesy" was a lot funnier for me than the human cheese.

Bye Felicia sounds an awful lot like Girlfriend Intervention:

Damien Chazelle wrote and directed; Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons star. It's weird, on one hand I distinctly thought to myself about halfway through that it was well acted and written and directed but somehow I felt a kind of emotional remove from the onscreen proceedings that I'm sure was not quite intended. But then again, by the last quarter of the film, starting with him being late to the competition, I was so gripped by the movie that I had to remind myself to breathe. It's compelling -- and I always think about that Oscar Peterson quote I heard somewhere, that he wished he'd started a family later in life because his music was that much more important to him* -- but I don't think I agree with the sentiment that genius is best evoked by brutal bullying. I will say that this has been one of the few films that make me go out afterwards and devour additional content, like filmmaker interviews and good reviews, and one thing I came across was that the Charlie Parker anecdote was kind of twisted to fit the film. In real life, Jo Jones didn't "nearly decapitate" Bird, he (playfully?) humiliated him. And as a New Yorker piece points out, Bird spent that year of work practicing, yes, but also listening to music and studying music. Not just technique, but the performance and point of music. That said, as much as I think Brody (of the New Yorker) and Wickman (of Slate) are correct, I liked the movie a lot and would recommend it to anyone. The initial rehearsal scene, when Neyman is first called up to studio band, and the final performance scene, are as gripping as anything. * I'm probably butchering the sentiment from memory, but last time I tried to find the quote online, I couldn't.

There's a pretty arbitrary distinction in comics between super speed and super strength, despite both powers involving generating tremendous force (equals mass times acceleration).That said, I think safely catching a falling person probably would be well within Peak Flash powers, where he would probably just reduce their speed via Speed Force powers. (I'm not a big fan of the Speed Force.)

Her exact words were "It's basically 500 proof", which I guess could be argued as either the character's hyperbole or a writer mistake.

You're The Worst is 100% a romcom, and it puts every other romcom TV show in the shade by miles. It is hard to overstate how much more I prefer it A to Z or Selfie. Anyways, I do want to watch What If/F Word. And They Came Together, which I believe is more of a send-up of romcom cliches than a pure romcom.

Oh, that might be it. I think I actually read some of those old comics, old enough that they were before she moved over to being more of a Captain Atom supporting char than a Firestorm villain, and I think she was Quebecois? But I think that's only half the weirdness. The other half was in how stilted everyone came off when addressing her, as if the director was concerned the audience wouldn't remember her name and told every actor to hit the name hard.

So, since Wells brought up his and Eiling's history with mind control experiments (WTF?), was Wells just being regularly persuasive when he told Plastique* to go kill Eiling, or was he using mind control powers? * and why did it come off so weird when everyone called her "Beth"?

At this point I think the forced secret identity stuff must be imposed from above by idiotic executives at CW or Warners/DC. It makes no fucking sense, as you point out, and the writers have been relatively good about everything else (some science goofs aside). Y'know, I've heard that elsewhere (that the Flash is pretty good, acting-wise, for this network) and it's probably true, but I don't watch a lot of CW genre shows. By the standards of TV as a whole, the CW lines up some truly dreadful (but good-looking) 20-something actors, and the Plastique actress was in line with that.