AllyB

I just can't get over Cameron owning 90% of the company. I know it was just my assumption but I always figured that for what she was putting into it, Donna would have something like a 30% stake. Without that sort of stake, why the hell was she putting her family's money into the company? Why wouldn't she have just accepted that Cameron wanted to cut Community and then go strike out on her own? Why would she even have thought she had the authority to demand Cameron stop making unilateral decisions? Because as much as Cameron is a bad company owner, if it's 90% her company, she can hire whoever the hell she wants. If Donna isn't a partner of significant standing, she doesn't get a say in who Cameron hires. I do quite like this show but I don't feel like the writers think things through enough. Instead of seeing a show with logical character progression we are treated nearly each week to Mutiny either being pioneers of or outright inventing another mainstay of 21st century tech. It's irritating. Especially when last season's wunderkind Cameron's OS wasn't actually something that took off. The only 'computers' I've ever owned that have any kind of conversation with the user are my son's Vtech and Leapfrog learning toys. Joe was right in his speech at Comdex, adults don't want to be friends with their computers, they just want them to carry out the required functions as quickly and as easily as possible. Cameron got that very wrong but she is still utterly married to the idea and resents everyone who questions her vision.

That was the weak part of the episode for me too. Maybe on some level he knows that his girlfriend is unfaithful when he is away and was actually ok with a bit of payback.

Stasi tech guy(Fuchs?) speaking about the IBM pc that he's just gotten: "It's so cool!" Schweppenstette: "Don't say 'cool.' " Tech guy: "Okay." Schweppenstette: "Don't say 'okay' either."

It's only 2 episodes in but I'm absolutely loving Deutschland 83. As a fan of The Americans, I especially love that the opening scenes of the pilot are the exact same moment that S3 of The American's just ended on, Reagan's Evil Empire speech. I can't help but think that Martin could have been the crossing guard who let Elizabeth's mother through to the west when she was brought to Paige and Elizabeth. It's a different series to The Americans in that Martin is not a committed professional spy and as such he makes mistakes and doesn't have the same level of commitment as even Philip. But the series is only 2 episodes old and I like it an awful lot more than I liked The Americans after the 2nd episode.

I know Piper and Larry talked a lot about her being gone for 'a year' in S1 but I was basing the 15 months on Kerman's RL sentence, 15mo of which she served 13. Piper's sentence has never changed in length in OITNB. She was offered her immediate freedom at the start of S2 if she testified against Cubra. When she didn't the penalty was having to complete her sentence. At this point it is at least July and she'll be out in time to do her Christmas shopping. The panty business storyline makes no sense, she's on the home stretch of her sentence.

Piper has what, 3-5 months to go on her sentence at this point? She had a 15 month sentence, went to Litchfield in and around September and 'celebrated' her June birthday early this season. Not only is the panty scheme nonsensical but Alex would never have forgiven her for ensuring she was sent back to complete her multiple years sentence just so Piper can hang out with her for her last 6 months inside.

That's kind of the point though. The US has 1/3 of the world's female prisoners despite having only less than 4.5% of the world's population. Seeing as how the rest of the world doesn't just leave it's criminals roam about wily nily, it can be taken that the vast majority of those women should not be in prison and wouldn't be if they lived in much of the rest of the world.

There was a lot to love about this episode but it was also the first where I disliked the writing a lot in certain scenes. First off I thought it was a bit weird that Lito was so happy to watch Wolfgang murder 5 or 6 people. I can understand Wolfgang's motivation and he himself took more of a grim satisfaction in what he did, whereas Lito was whooping it up like it was an action scene in one of his movies. Maybe that's something that will be explored further in the series but coming right off Jonas telling Will that humans find killing easy as they can't feel like the Sense8s do, it felt a bit jarring. The other scene I really hated was Nomi's birth. As the births were happening I was most intrigued by the idea of Nomi (Michael) being born. Watching her mother birth and greet her son would have been such a powerful contrast to the lack of acceptance she showed that child when Nomi could no longer live as Michael. Having hers be a c-section birth felt a bit like an easy way out of a thought provoking scene as it gave her a detachment in that moment that mirrored her later detachment from who her child really is. And was also a bit insulting to c-section mothers as the circumstances of Michael's birth were almost an explanation of the conditionality of her love. I'm also intrigued to know if waterbirth was really an option in the GDR.

Not just a husband, a husband and a baby who was either stillborn or died shortly after it's birth. There were two names on the gravestone, her husband's and a baby's called something like Lunas with a surname which was a patynomic of the husband's. The baby was born and died on the same day as her husband. (I'm also guessing that the husband was Sven's son and that's why Riley's father expected him to go to their graves with him?)

When Jonas appeared to Nomi, he more or less told her that the doctor is a bad guy. So from the audience point of view he is most likely one of the men who he and Anjelica discussed being out to hunt down and destroy the 8, and in league with the man Anjelica shot herself to avoid being captured by. Presumably by the way that the Feds have taken over Jonas' arrest these 'hunters' are powerful people with control of many government organisations and had the ability to make it look to the legitimate hospital staff like what they were doing to Nomi was all above board. What happened to Nomi was just an example of how powerful and ruthless the enemies of the 8 are rather than a plot device for drama. The one thing that I did have a problem with during this episode was the way time was displayed during the song. I took it to mean that it was all happening at the same time. That at the exact same moment as Wolfgang chose that song to sing, Riley chose to listen to it and everyone else ended up having it as an earworm. The thing that threw me out of it was that the rotation of the earth seemed to have been going backwards if that was the case. It was night-time in Mumbai and Berlin, yet dawn in London and seemingly the middle of the day in all scenes in the Americas. I'm not sure what time it was inside the Van Damme but presumably it was no later than the early part of the night as Capheus hadn't delivered the crimelord's backpack. So either the Wachowski's have never heard of how timezones work (or how to google correct time zones) or my assumption that all the singing was happening at the same time was wrong. That was either a confusing or annoying scene to me. Also it's the end of June, while London won't be as hot as Nairobi, it does have a micro-climate that can make it very hot and humid during the summer months and it's worse at night as the concrete acts like a storage heater. I have a friend from Mumbai who can't bear the close heat of a London summer, so Capheus immediate declaration of how cold he was in Riley's side of their vision felt like a really lazy trope about British weather.

Can anyone point me in the direction of good material on Lona and Morris Cohen (aka the Krogers)? What I'm especially intrigued by with them is the time they spent in the USSR in the 50s. I can understand why an American couple, especially where both of them were the children of Russian/Eastern European parents had come to support communism when the realities of life in the USSR were unknown. Their beliefs would have come from idealism and a genuine belief that they and the people around them would live better lives under communism. But after their time living in Russia, first under Stalin and then through the political chaos following his death, I find it hard to imagine how they stayed so loyal as to continue their commitment to communism when the reality of it meant an oppressive way of life and a pretty basic existence for ordinary people along with the hypocrisy of the ruling elite who enjoyed far more luxuries. To go from life in the US to the USSR must surely have been a viscious culture shock. To then move to middle-class suburban London and a return to a place where people enjoyed political and religious freedoms (along with consumer choice and certain luxuries even the elite in Russia would have struggled to obtain) and even certain benefits of socialism like the NHS and for them to still feel that the Soviets would bring a better way of life to the world is mind-boggling to me. Even if they were still 100% convinced in the principles of socialism how could they believe in the version of that which the Soviets had created? So I wonder then if they were extremely sheltered in Russia? If they had no contact with the real world there? Or did they experience the realities of Russia and they are an extreme case of cognitive dissonance; ie - those who have heavily invested in a position may, when confronted with disconfirming evidence, go to greater lengths to justify their position. I'd also love to know more about their last decades in Russia. Though obviously after years apart in a British jail where they were held as traitors, life together in the USSR where they were held in good regard would have been considerably better.

Just on the Stan, Oleg, Zenaida, Nina plot. I've never been convinced that Stan is telling Oleg the truth about trading Zenaida for Nina. He wants to know the truth about Zenaida and when searching the places she's been alone, like the bathroom, got him nothing more than a bruised crotch he needed a better plan. So he decided to use Oleg's feelings for Nina to his advantage. I don't really believe he is that invested in freeing Nina. If he can, well and good, but that will be a byproduct of his scheme not the aim of it.

They could try to get Martha to make Clarke invite his sister and mother around for dinner and nab the three of them.

With regard to Martha I understand her entirely. For years I was married to an alcoholic and I can feel the parallels with her denial of the obvious and the eventual acceptance of what had always been obvious. With me my husband had been sober for years and when I got the first clues that he had started drinking again I was so desperate for it not to be real that I was willing to accept the flimsiest of explanations. If my husband's excuse could potentially be true, no matter how unlikely, then I believed him. And that's where I've always seen Martha. Of course Clark's story and actions make no sense but they just might, potentially be plausible. It isn't completely impossible that he's lying, so without even knowing that she's doing it. Martha has been clinging to that fraction of a percentage of a possibility. Eventually in my life something really awful happened that woke me from my denial. I could see then that there had never been any "clues" that my husband was drinking, there were just 100% obvious examples that I allowed him to explain away because it was easier. But even then I couldn't quite get my head to accept what that meant for my life. I sort of mentally detached from it and kept 'gathering evidence' in order to be able to eventually act. And that's what has happened to Martha in this episode. The situation has caused her a trauma which despite causing massive emotional trauma, is also giving her the ability to assess her situation like someone outside it would and that's let her see what she has purposefully ignored for so long. She's now got a part of her looking at her situation from the outside. She tested Clark when she demanded to see his apartment straight away. But instead of simply reassuring her and making her feel bad for doubting him, which is what would have happened the day before, the detached part of her is halfway to figuring that Clark having a genuine apartment all ready for her to see could actually mean the opposite of reassurance. Of course rather than get her head around the fact that her recovered alcoholic husband is no longer recovered, which is life shattering but actually an everyday occurrence around the world, Martha has to realise that her fellow government employee husband is actually an enemy spy and her whole relationship with him, including her meetings with her in laws, were a ruse to use her as an unwittingly traitorous asset, which is utterly fantastical. I see Martha going through complete mental turmoil here but it's absolutely believably spot on from my perspective.

In that case it's a week to Christmas. Would there really have been no festive decorations anywhere? I know Christmas wasn't as ott 30+ years ago but I was just turned 4 and I remember our tree being up a week already at that point. Did decorations go up later in America?

I just hope for the charity's sake that Ruke are still a couple until the Christmas special gets to air. It would sure suck for them if Ruke split before Christmas and their chance to reach donors is lost. Since the Micah introduction I keep on waiting for someone to reference the very similar Deacon/Maddie situation. You'd think that Gunnar might have a range of complicated emotions about discovering he has a 9 year old son that his ex never told him about. And having a close acquaintance who only last year discovered he has a teenage daughter that his ex never told him was his, would actually be helpful for Gunnar.

What he could do is go home. It's late 1924, the Irish War of independence ended years ago, the Irish more or less won. Tom's arrest warrant is wastepaper and has been for a couple of years at this point. The civil war that followed the establishment of the Free State ended about 18 months ago. Tom could go home whenever he wanted. If the actor wants to stay on the show, it could be written that Tom somehow gets a job in the Irish diplomatic services due to his connections to the British aristocracy. And he could be based in London and see characters there or visit Downton regularly. He'd be happy in service to the country he was once supposedly so passionate about but able to navigate the Crawleys' world and stay in touch with his in-laws while having a respected role in their world, rather than that if an outcast/pitied interloper in his and their circle.