AllyB

Ricky Gervais' After Life has been nearly universally lauded and that's just basically the first few minutes of Dead To Me (angrily grieving a spouse) continued for the whole series.

I don't think I can watch this anymore. Rafael is mentally and emotionally abusive and we're set up now to watch Jane plead with her abuser to love her and finally see her end up with him. It's beyond messed up. I've never, ever quit a show so close to the end (I'm still watching iZombie because even though it's dire now, the end is in sight) but this is literally a romance about what is in no uncertain terms a highly abusive relationship with the certain potential to only get significantly worse. I was more than happy to see Jane and Rafael end up together, I think their romance had grown believably and healthily in S4 but they've destroyed his character in a way that means it's a long, long, long time and a tonne of therapy and self-realisation before any woman should be in anyway involved with him.

I liked the show a lot right up to the end but I think the comparisons to Unreal are very apt. Great leads and acting, reasonably well plotted first series but really and truly has the potential to go totally off the deep end if the writers get too enamoured with their 'clever' twisty plots instead of leaning harder into the strengths of the performances and the very real emotion that's on display. Tbh, the shooting at the end has already started the show into that ridiculous territory for me. I had been hoping that the Chekov's gun would actually be a misdirect and the real thing to 'go off' in the final act would be the other contents of the safe. That Jen genuinely had no idea of the code but would manage to get into the safe in the final episode and there would be something unexpected in there. I'm not enthused by the obvious but total melodrama plot line we actually got.

I loved the title of the youtube video at the end. "Local Dorks Lie to Reporter."

Daniel and Sam have essentially the same personality. They are both completely convinced of their own righteousness and the wrongness of their nemesis without ever looking to their own negative role in the relationship. Sam 100% blamed Tory for everything she could without ever thinking about she wrongly accused her of stealing Amanda's wallet. Of course Tory was going to be pissed at her for that, Sam was completely in the wrong as there is a massive difference between taking a bottle from a free bar and stealing someone's personal belongings. And once Sam found out that Tory was completely innocent in that situation she owed her an apology. Tory is clearly a damaged and aggressive teen so may have continued the grudge regardless of any apology, but as it stands Sam wronged her yet continued to act like she was the injured party. It's just like how Daniel is with Johnny. Johnny is far from perfect and makes plenty of mistakes but Daniel is the aggressor in their adult relationship but is utterly secure in his persona as the good guy. Even right at the end, Johnny immediately realises his own culpability in the fight at the school and feels guilty. While Daniel, who is in all honesty far more culpable because he started the rivalry, is acting like he's the virtuous hero and Cobra Kai is still the villain even though it was a Miyagi Do student who may have caused a fatal injury to a Cobra Kai student. And even worse, he's justifying it by blaming Robby when he's the idiot who saw an vulnerable and extremely troubled teenager and decided to teach him to fight and move him into his home and have him train extensively in physical contact with his teenage daughter. Two attractive teenagers constantly working in adrenaline fuelled physical contact while soaking wet, is really going to end only one way you utter moron. But really it was just Johnny's bad genes influencing Robby that lead to all the trouble. Daniel is such a jackass I don't know how Amanda stands him.

I haven't even watched the whole episode yet and I'm livid at the situation. Rafael's behaviour towards both Jane and Mateo is emotionally abusive. He's being emotionally abusive towards her in all of their interactions because she dares to have feelings for her back from the dead husband even though she chooses him. And he's being even worse in how he's treating Mateo. He's using his small child a weapon to punish Jane. Poor Mateo, his behaviour is awful but his father should be doing absolutely everything to diminish his hurt and insecurity. Mateo needs to know that no matter what happens between his parents that their love for him is secure, Rafael is doing the opposite. He's awful. I was in favour of Jane and Rafael ending up together but after this nobody should end up with that awful abusive man. I don't care what he does from here on out. His behaviour here is irredeemable.

I wonder if it was relevant that Kim said she wanted to be a teacher while on Schooled Lainey is a teacher? Or maybe Barry's RL wife is a teacher and it wasn't a plot point.

Gypsy wasn't 18 at this point. She was a few weeks off 24. Her mother was keeping a very adult woman stunted, isolated and, to all intents and purposes, imprisoned.

The con aspect of it all feels so odd to me. I can kind of accept the idea of Munchausen by Proxy as a mental illness. That the parent, usually mother, is wedded to the personality of a parent of a sick child. That she thrives on the attention and sympathy and feels an inability to function without it. But when that comes alongside a series of lucrative cons that result in being given a house and a comfortable stream of income I have a very hard time as seeing that as part of an illness. It's just out and out premeditated criminality.

Like a lot of others I feel totally 'meh' about it too. The ending itself was fine but the whole lead up to it was just terrible. Rebecca's songs being toned down to near elimination since her diagnosis undermined the ending completely. The realisation that Josh and Nathaniel had both fixated on Rebecca for reasons that had little to nothing to do with her would have been an excellent storyline if it had been explored for more than one scene each in the last episode. "Greg's" return added absolutely nothing to the final series. If they felt a need to bring him back it should have been done without the romantic element. Rebecca said she found his recovery and evolution inspiring but couldn't we have actually seen that happen instead of the stupid love of his life stuff? Couldn't he just have been someone who she saw changing his life and drew hope from. His acceptance of her as someone he could have as a loose friend in spite of their (and Marco's) history be a way to help her accept herself too. And even right up to the end I would have liked to have seen their relationship be completely platonic. There was a great season in there but it was lost in all the stupid bachelor stuff. The ending could have been great but the lead up to it was so poor it made it hard to care.

The thing is that their shared memories are of an absolute shit show of a relationship. It truly was a horrendous nightmare of a series of interactions. They had great chemistry and sex, they might be each other's type, but their history means they should at best be pleasant acquaintances for the sake of their shared friends and as owners of similar-ish businesses. Especially once you factor in Rebecca having sex with Marco.

Tbh, at the end of the last season I kept thinking how very, very glad Greg must have been to have escaped the unimaginably worse shit show Rebecca was living and I was happy for him that he'd made the healthy choice to move on with his life in S2. I think that going back to Rebecca is an inevitable disaster for him. Maybe not at first but eventually, there is just too much water under their bridge. It's also really, really pathetic for her to be the love of his life. OG Greg's main "relationship" with her just lasted a few days. The NuGreg and Rebecca dated for what, a couple of weeks?He couldn't and shouldn't love her at all. The whole bit with them ordering food and her complaining about how he always gets and changes their order hints at a familiarity that absolutely never existed between them. It's totally false. I like it far better when Greg was living a new healthy life off screen than this total retcon of him and their relationship.

That's not the Greg of S1. OG Greg was snarky and superior in part because he was genuinely unimpressed with the type of life he was living and in part because he was hiding from his own insecurities (I Could If I Wanted To). But he was also shown to have a variety of interests and passions. When Josh's "crew" planned a day at the beach Greg tried to talk them into going to a museum exhibit instead. Despite his lack of enthusiasm about going to the beach, he didn't sleep in like Hector and he'd gone to the trouble of creating a playlist of cool new songs from cool new bands for the road trip part. So while he's not necessarily got classical tastes, he is shown to be interested in music and branching out with what he listens to. When he and Rebecca were initially together, they were playing online Scrabble he was shown to be highly literate. The "I Hate Everything But You" song was absolutely nothing at all like the character of Greg we saw for a season and a half. New, evolved, happier Greg shouldn't really be like that either. Finally moving on out of West Covina and getting the chance to take the college place he gave up on. It should have helped with his insecurities while giving him a chance to explore the things he thought he should like and see if he actually did enjoy them or not. And maybe relax a bit and find that he could occasionally enjoy some low brow stuff too because as much as he used to grumble, he still did hang out with his crew. Part of accepting he could be happy in West Covina is accepting that he doesn't have to be one thing or another. But that's all just another flaw in what has really been a very flawed season, where so many characters act in poorly written ways. It's why I just can't see NuGreg as Greg. It's very little to do with the actor change. I think that in a show like CXG that could actually have been done extremely well. But it hasn't been. It's just been super poor writing and this character bears no resemblance to the nuanced character of Greg, instead he's like he's been written by someone who just half watched the first 3 episodes and has based him on that.

Jason has been living in Montana for years. I think it would have made sense if during those years he had actually fallen in love with someone too. It would give the show plenty of drama and conflict. Jason's desire to regain his full sense of identity threatens his relationship in a similar way that his reappearance is threatening Jane and Raf's. His inevitable recovery of those memories leads to a potential reunion with Jane. Eventually they realise their years apart have changed them, Jason is a part of Michael and he truly loves Jason's partner, Jane is also a different person who loves Raf. They bid a bittersweet but positive goodbye to what could have been and move on happily. I still wouldn't be 100% surprised if Jason does turn out to have a partner, maybe even a wife, but the whole attraction to Petra thing makes that less likely.

I wonder why, as DeeDee was stealing prescription pads (and possibly buying drugs online?), she didn't acquire puberty blockers for Gypsy. It strikes me that their existence would be like a dream come true for DeeDee.

I just cracked up as the gang stood together to watch Chase's performance. Brooke and Lance hold hands. Carey notices and smiles indulgently. Streeter and Pat hold hands. Carey notices and his smile changes to slowly dawning horror.

Was there really a Scott? Or other men who Gypsy had fledgling ‘relationships’ with who he is an amalgam of? Or was that totally made up for the episode?

Gypsy Rose was only given an extremely limited view of the world and her mother did absolutely everything to minimise her development.

I couldn't get past the idea that Adam, Jackie and Dave managed to design, animate and program a complex, multi-level, incredibly well animated (for the era, obvs) game in a day or two. It completely and utterly shattered my suspension of disbelief as it was such utter nonsense. If the characters had spontaneously developed super-powers for the episode it would have been more believable. And to have such nonsense be written in as clearly nothing more than a vehicle for a load of meta jokes was just narcissistically self-indulgent.

I have a slight issue with this. In what world is Shannen Doherty/Brenda Walsh average looking? I think she's very pretty most of the time but when she gives a big smile she's utterly beguiling.

I think it really is. This was our 'coming of age' series. I was 12 when it started and I remember being sort of half dismissive/half intrigued as when it started. I was a comic-book reading, Star Trek fan and I wasn't going to be drawn into a teen soap, but I was. It played a part in drawing me into the teen girl culture of the 90s. I also remember going back and watching from the start when it was re-run a few years later and at that point my life and Brenda's were weirdly aligned and as a result I've always been Team Brenda and more Branda/Dylan fan-girly than I care to admit. I heard the news on the school run this morning and it definitely was a bit of a gut-punch.

Obviously, you can't see the minutia of the nearly 30 years the children lived for. But there is no way that a nanny lived in that house and was unaware that those children were living in abusive conditions. There is no way a nanny worked in that house and didn't participate in perpetuating that abuse. Just because we only saw Vanya being encouraged to eat her oatmeal at the point where she repeatedly snapped doesn't mean that the nannies were innocent. They simply couldn't have been. They were abusing the children for money and they got no less than they deserved.

He arrived in the US in 1928. It was stamped on his immigration docket. And while his attire looked more mid-19th century, the people around him, looked 1920s with the women and girls in cloched hats and higher hemlines and the men in 20s era suits. We also see a car synonymous with that era on the street. The more modern era is also spelled out with the children born in 1989 and the Handler at one point talking about Number Five jumping into 2019. The series just exists a world without our communications technology.

I have a hard time feeling sympathy for the nannies. Each one of them was complicit in Reginald's child abuse. They treated those children in ways that anyone with half a brain, never mind a trained childcare professional in the 90s, knows is abusive. And they did it for money. Reginald was an abusive 'father' but at least he had the excuse of someone who appeared to know the world was ending and was desperate to prevent it. He was doing it in the worst possible way but saving the world is at least a noble goal. The nannies were just abusive for money. And I just really can't bring myself to feel that anyone willing to abuse seven 4 year olds for cold hard cash doesn't deserve to be flung out a window by one of the kids.

Erica's hair and style always puts me in mind of Mallory Keaton on Family Ties. Her hair was never super '80s' like Jennifer's in later seasons. It was always a bit more preppy and wouldn't look terribly out of place now.