Perfect Xero

Can't believe that they had Sharee in an episode, catering the baby shower for Toby's child no less, and didn't even have them in the same room together.

Well, the show probably won't go this way but ... Regina's daughter was switched at birth and not just with anyone, but the daughter of a star baseball player who would go on to become a state senator. There were two successful books about it, one of which is being made into a movie. There was at least one story about it with photos in a magazine or newspaper. John and Angelo sued the hospital and won and during the trial in came out that Regina had already known about the switch. Daphne staged a protest at Carlton that people around the country took notice of. Kathryn wrote a high profile book about the sex lives of baseball players. Regina went with her to the book party for the launch of her second book and kissed her in front of everyone. In the real world, Regina and Daphne would both be minor celebrities, and there would be a decent chance that any random person they encounter would have heard about their story on the news, in a magazine, in a newspaper, on Sports Center, and possibly seen a picture of two of them at some point and would recognize one or both of them.

On the one hand it was very jarring to see a grown man slap a teenage girl, on the other hand ... Forget Reggie, at the end of last season Selina was hunting Gordon down and delivering him to Fish at gunpoint so Fish could murder him. If the worst thing that happens to Selina is a slap to the face then she's pulling a real karma Houdini.

The writers had to find a way to bring the story back to Kathryn's dance/musical/sex book fixation that has dominated her storyline for seasons now, I'll bet that the next twist is that the stripper has to bow out of the videos for some reason, and Kathryn "has" to step in as the lead polerina dancer because they can't afford to hire someone else and their whole financial future is riding on it.

In sit-com New York like on Seinfeld and Friends, no one locks their doors or their windows so their friends and neighbors can burst in whenever they feel like!

That's where I thought they were heading, Riley's spirit would impress the squad/coach and they'd offer her the role of mascot. Couldn't believe that they had her make the team, even as an alternate, when she was shown to be comically unqualified. The other cheerleaders could have offered to help her train for the next year's tryouts after practices if they needed a teens solidarity against evil coach ending.

I don't know about that, he has some advantages where he is, in KC he's got friends and connections in the music scene that he's built up for years, and his last name carries some celebrity. In London he'll have to build all those connections from the ground up, and no one is going to care that his father played baseball in the 80s/90s. There will be more gigs in London, but also stronger competition. I read their scenes around that as her having a foot out the door, not because of the other guy, but because she didn't respect Toby's lack of a traditional career path and was realizing that he was barely out of his teens and still very much in the feeling out/college age stage that she'd left behind years earlier.

I'm sure that living in London would be cool, but being unable to work and having your residency there tied up with a woman who was basically ready to dump you before she found out that she was pregnant would be less cool.

Can you share that information with me? I haven't been able to figure that one out yet.

My guess, Katana Girl isn't "real" her father is the real "Evo" he created her as a game character and then pulled her out. I gave up on original Heroes at some point in Season 3. Didn't really find anything here all that interesting other than HRG and Penny For Your Thoughts guy, not sure it's worth sticking around. I thought he was clearly their version of Daredevil, right down to the meeting with the Catholic Priest. Of course, Daredevil is basically a cross between Spider-Man and Batman, so you're not wrong.

My issue with Travis and Bay is that neither girl on this show can have more than 2 scenes with a guy without him falling for her. That, and they're really nearing critical mass on the soap opera style romantic drama at this point. Travis has now been interested in both Bay and Daphne, both of whom have been involved with Emmett. Travis has something of a father/son type relationship with John. Emmett cheated on Bay with Toby's girlfriend. Daphne and Melody both hooked up with Chef Jeff. I swear, we'll find out that Skye is Tank's cousin or something, and this whole thing will collapse in on itself.

I was a bit put off by the "flashbacks" because it was framed as Riley telling a story about her parents, yet she and Maya were acting like they could actually see young Cory and Topanga. They could have at least had them looking at old photographs or something. The "impossible" shot that Farkle had Lucas make was the sort of shot that we used to attempt for fun at the end of every practice. Not that they were easy shots, but it wasn't exactly rare to make one either.

Even Bay was thinking of Daphne as a "sister" well before Daphne came around to that way of thinking. Though, I'd argue that Toby has never fully embraced Daphne, at least not to the extent that he puts his relationship with her on the same level as his relationship with Bay. Granted, the writers and all the other characters tend to forget that Toby exists when he's not on screen, so it's easy to miss that bit of the family dynamic.

I didn't mean to imply that it is, just that Daphne was being clear.

I think that Daphne being pro-choice politically but anti-abortion personally is a lot more nuanced than what they were going for here. Daphne doesn't deny it when Bay starts to call her pro-life, she brings up the other ways that she is "pro-life" (vegan, anti-death penalty). She made it clear to Bay that her issue with Chip Koto had been contraception. When Bay brought up the morning after pill, Daphne made it clear that it wasn't "an abortion pill". She refused to acknowledge abortion as even being an option for Lily, which IMO is very much denying that Lily should have that choice. I think that they just ignored how they'd written her in the past so she could have a pro-choice Vs pro-life debate between Bay and Daphne.

Seriously, Bay took the fall to keep Daphne out of prison and now Regina has made her an accessory to a kidnapping?

Manager of the school's baseball team would almost certainly be a full time, salaried position in the real world. During the season he would be running the team, during the off-season he'd be busy with scouting and recruiting. In John's case, I guess they could say he was only an interim manager for the remainder of the season and they decided not to continue on afterwards, but they haven't bothered to actually indicate that on the show that I recall.

I had that thought as well, presumably it's a check made out to the IRS, so I don't know how much this guy could do with it, but John is taking an awful lot on the word of this one accountant that he just started working with. You'd think he'd get a third accountant in to verify. Also, is the previous accountant dead or something? You'd think that John would at least try to contact him just to chew him out for screwing him over.

Her brother has an (unnamed, I believe) genetic disorder.

Indeed. Also, while John is probably based on Brett, he's 10 years or so younger, and would have actually made a lot more money in his career because of the way salaries exploded in sports in the 90s and early 2000s. Just based on his age and the type of player they've indicated he is, I'd guess he probably made $70-$80 Million over his career in salary alone (Craig Biggio, who is a year or two younger than John made over $80 Million in salary over his career). Brett made $23 Million by comparison. John and his family live well, but they don't act particularly frivolously with their money. In order for John to be tapped out, it would have to be more than tax problems, his accountant would have had to have been stealing large amounts of money from them for years.

John seems to be sort of the SAB equivalent of George Brett*, star third baseman who played his entire career for the Royals and was a prolific doubles hitters. Brett also lives in Mission Hills, Kansas, and judging by his house he's also done pretty well money wise. Playing salary + endorsement deals + smart investments would fund their lifestyle. Back in early season 1 they said that John owned a whole chain of successful car washes in the KC area, but that seems to have mostly fallen away and they've focused on just one car wash. *A picture of Brett in uniform signing autographs helped inspired the Lorde song, Royals. I've always wondered if in the SAB world a picture of John ever inspired a hit pop song. He was still the head coach at the end of the previous batch of episodes and they haven't said anything about him losing that job. He might also still be a state senator as well. College baseball managers don't make huge salaries like football and basketball coaches, but at most schools his kids would probably be in line for discounted or free tuition because of his position on the coaching staff.

The major problem I see is that they're giving the night Marion died as October 1999, to match with CeCe being around 12 that night based on a 1987 birthday for CeCe and most of the dates being given in the pre-show timeline are based on this being assumed as CeCe's age because it's been very strongly indicated on the show that Jason is the same age as Melissa and Ian. The problem is that CeCe also directly states herself as being 5 when she went to Radley. So, based on the 1987 birthday for CeCe she's 12 in 1999, but and it means that Alison was 4 or younger during that flashback with Toby and Marion. Where, yes, they talk about Toby's toys, but they're set up more as a display rather than toys that are played with and Toby says as much. Toby also instantly knows what time it is when Marion comes in and quickly picks up on something being wrong with his Mom and expresses it to Alison, which is all really advanced for a 4-5 year old. Based on CeCe being 5 when she went to Radley, that would place her birth in 1990, if she's 12 when Marion died that makes Marion's 2002, which makes Alison around 8 or younger during the flashback. It's still ridiculous that they'd have used Sasha and Keegan in that flashback, but at least it makes their behavior somewhat more believable. Of course we're told in The First Secret (which takes place in October 2008), that Toby's mom died a year earlier (2007). This would make Ali 13 or younger during the Toby flashback, which makes it much more believable that they'd use Sasah and Keegan, but means that Charlotte was either 20 or 17 on the roof. IMO the easiest way for the timeline to do anything close to working is to assume that CeCe's version of the timeline around the night Marion died was screwed up by all that medication she was placed on right after Marion's death. She was 17 on the roof, but pictures herself as younger and more innocent in her flashbacks, and was only on heavy medication for a few weeks or a month at most and she was quickly taken off once Wilden managed to get it ruled a suicide, it just felt like years to her. In the span of that next year or so, she manages to transition. Then at 18 she gets out privileges, and starts attending U Penn. Then she gets bored, meets Jason, starts (ugh) dating him over the remainder of his Senior year (which would now be the same year that Alison was a freshman), and spends that Summer with them at Cape May before the night of the yellow tops happens. This screws up the idea of Jason being the same age as Ian and Melissa, but we can sort of fudge things so that he was a freshman while they were seniors. It still has problems, but it's the closest I can get to the timeline making sense after 610.

I'm a sucker for any of the interactions of the screwed up Hastings and DiLaurentis family dynamics. Spencer/Alison Spencer/Melissa Spencer/Jason Jason/Alison Mrs. D/her irrational hate-on for Spencer

It tuns out that John's car wash was just another front for Heisenberg's meth operation. I think that Bay's been getting in to the LSD laced garlic knots again. Also, did I just forget something from the last batch of episodes? Why was Travis's arm in a sling?

Don't get me wrong, I thought that the Reverse Flash future room was lame and completely unnecessary, but, end of the day, it's mostly just a stylistic choice, that scene could have just as easily played out with a regular TV monitor and a laptop or two. I consider Mrs. Grunwald and her psychic visions being the reason that Alison got pulled out of her grave That Night to be a much bigger strike against the show and the story than anything that happened in Game On, Charles.