Kel Varnsen

This show started really strong for me and is still kind of interesting (I want to know who died) but there is also a lot of annoying dumb crap that really bugs me. Like how so much time was spent this episode talking about how they would arrest Lenovo but no one really talking, or looking into who hired him. Not to mention if the whole point is how diplomacy and building relationships is important, where was the US ambassador to France? And how did French intelligence figure out that Lenovo was going to get assassinated and not the CIA. And lastly no Kate the foreign secretary probably wasn't a diplomatic staff person because his main job is as an elected member of Parliament.

I have been enjoying this show, but the fact that we are this late in the season and they are now at "maybe it is not Russia" is super annoying. Especially since several episodes have been all about drawing up plans to respond to Russia, some of which would have started World War III. And it was all based on one piece of information from a guy who died before he could give any actual evidence, from a country who didn't want to be blamed. Did no one bother to try and get any other evidence? Because all you apparently has to do was talk to the Russian ambassador. It all seems very stupid. If we end up back at the point where the attack from the mercenary was backed by Iran I will be super annoyed.

The obvious plan would be to use one of those closing portals to chop his head off. The same way Wong chopped the other guy's arm off. He said he saw something like 14 million scenarios and only one worked. Although with how long the time period between infinity war and End Game was shouldn't there have been an infinite number of scenarios?

I really liked this episode because I was super into wrestling at the time and can remember how fast Dwayne's star took off once he turned heel. So it is interesting to see it from his perspective. One thing I find really interesting is in that post-kayfabe era, while it is hard to deal with being a celeb, Dwayne doesn't have to maintain character all the time and fans are cool with it. Compare that to his dad's era and guys how to be in character all the time, and The Iron Sheik gets fired for travelling in a car with someone who was supposed to be his enemy (yes I know there was drugs in the car). I think there is still lots of room. With how fast they run through storylines it wouldn't surprise me if we start to see him doing some acting stuff. At this point we are only about 2 years from his appearance on That 70's show (playing his dad which I would love to see home recount). And if we can have a fake Chunk why not a fake Ashton Kutcher. Plus the timeline of this show has always been weird. It seems like they ran through his whole university career in one season, so there are probably a lot more stories to tell. Plus high school aged Rock is big enough to be a believable university student. The bigger issue is little kid Rock. WrestleMania one has already happened for him. But in season 1 WrestleMania 3 happened for high school Rock in Pennsylvania. And then in season 2 High School Rock's story went backwards to Memphis. So does that mean in like 1-1.5 years the little kid Rock will be doing middle Rock Memphis stories?

Which of course is basically the same reaction he had when he found out that Ego killed his mother. So regardless of it being good or bad, it is entirely in character for the Star Lord that Gunn created.

Now that I think about it that was weird. I would imagine that a CIA station chief would have their entire life exposed to their bosses. So how exactly do others not know? What is weird to me is there hasn't really been any indication as to why Russia attacked the UK. Since an attack on a NATO member would be a pretty big deal wouldn't it? And I am no treaty expert, but if the UK said they needed help in defending themselves don't the other NATO nations have to do it?

I have never really watched any of the Star Wars cartoons (other than Ewoks and Droids back in the day), but is that blue guy really what we have to look forward to. Because even by Star Wars standards it will be hard not to make him look ridiculous. And they should expect a lot of "I just Blue myself" comments and episode review titles.

I am trying to figure out if when the Prime Minister showed up and said that he was the one who was elected was just to show that he was kind of an idiot, or if it was bad writing. Because in the British parliamentary system the Foreign Secretary would also be an elected member of Parliament just like the PM.

Does it matter what he says. I mean it's not like he is ever going to make another MCU movie.

I wish they showed more of Roy's press conference. His answers were hilarious and I really wanted to know more reporter nick names. I did like his scene with Rebecca though. She is right he is full of shit about wanting to be left alone. Because if he did, well he is rich enough to go live in some isolated village out in the country somewhere, where people won't bother him. The Nate stuff still bugs me though. I liked Jade seeing right through Rupert almost immediately. But if she is that good at reading people, why hasn't she picked up on how Nate is still kind of a jerk.

This show is getting better. Now that I know the names of all the major players that really helps. That was probably the most frustrating part of the pilot, figuring out who they were talking about all the time. Only one small nitpick though. Would the US ambassador to the UK not have a private washroom in her office. Her having to leave her office to pee seemed weird. Especially since the Embassy looks like a relatively new building.

Would that be possible? Most of my knowledge of that kind of thing comes from shows like Dragon's Den. So my assumption is that Jack bought a percentage of KJPR with her money, and that money was used to grow the company. But I don't think those kind of purchases come with money back guarantees. So if she wants her money back she would need to sell her percentage I think. Unfortunately the only two people we have met that could have the funds to buy it would be Rebecca (good) or Rupert (so very bad).

I am trying to remember, at the start of the series was Keeley still an actual model or was she at the "former model" stage of her career by that point. Even if she was still modelling, I never got the sense that she was some kind of huge super model like the woman Nate went out with. So her biggest claim to fame in the last few years was probably Roy's and before that Jamie's girlfriend. And her and Roy broke up months ago, and he was hardly the guy who spent a lot of time in the public eye. And they even said this was some huge hack of many different celebrities. The more I think about this storyline the more I think it could have been a perfect way to show how Keeley is great at her job. If she is supposed to be this super great PR person, who especially is good at doing PR for celebrities (and is really connected to celeb culture); she should know this is far from the first phone hack like this. And she should know what kind of response works and what doesn't. And then when you have Jack coming in with her dad's lawyer response, you could have Keeley say something about how if Jack doesn't trust her to know how to respond to this, then she probably doesn't trust her to run KJPR.

They have talked about trying to rebuild US foreign relations, since I think a previous administration. So I assume that Trump, or a Trump-like president happened in their world.

The Kree Supreme intelligence is still out there and combined with the Kree military empire they should still be a threat.

I was thinking about that and I kind of wish Nate would realize he is in kind of a good position with respect to Rupert and stop kissing his ass. Because as far as we know, right now West Ham is at or near the top of the standings. Rupert firing Nate right now would look really bad. Plus if Nate's coaching is actually working then it could also hurt the team. Plus if Nate gets fired while being a winning coach it would make him very attractive to other teams who might want to hire him. Especially since convincing the public that Rupert is a rich asshole and terrible boss, probably wouldn't be that hard.

I would say he has a chance if he really wants one. Sure he could probably find some idiot to fund a little indie movie where he plays the lead in a Barack Obama biopic. He wouldn't of course go to jail for it. But the question back to him would be why would you want to play a Black man, and what do you think would be the public response if you did?

Plus it seems like Nate is still being a jerk. Sets up a fake, seemingly forced, diamond dogs and then when one other guy there trys to talk about his personal problems, Nate shuts him down. Then when Henry, Ted and Beard show up at the West Ham match, Nate can't even bring himself to wave, to a kid. So nothing has even really been fixed, it is more like just that everything is going Nate's way (great job he is doing well at, boss bought him a fancy car, and he has a hot girlfriend who he previously had a crush on).

I liked this episode and Kate was really good. Especially the part at the end where she told Hal that all his actions were fucking with her head so much she couldn't think straight. Since that is sort of how I was feeling. I especially didn't see the point of the called off assassination attempt. Because either Kate and Hal trust the Iranian guy or not. Saying you called off an assassination doesn't really mean anything since you have no real proof they had planned it in advance. I am hardly a fashion expert. But I feel like if you are a short relatively skinny white person with short black hair, you should never wear a grey suit with a bowtie. Since even if the bowtie isn't red you are going to look like Pee Wee Herman.

But that was less mall culture and more that malls were places where it was easy for teens to find jobs. Most of the mall scenes take place while the characters are working. The only things I think that really wouldn't fly would be the abortion like you said, and Spicoli's anti-gay slurs. Stacey with the older guy might work if he was younger and she was older, since the plot of that was more that they had sex and then he blew her off. The bigger factor is I think that Hollywood doesn't really make R-rated movies about high school anymore. And even though it wasn't an American Pie style gross out comedy it's still something where I don't think it would be good if rated PG-13.

I get that, but has there ever been a situation where people have tried to protect their jobs, in spite of technology changes that has ever worked. I watched the Light and Magic documentary in Disney Plus a while back and in the last episode they talked about how ILM changed from a company that did models, and stop motion and matte paintings to a digital effects company. And the effects artists who were able to adapt and apply their previous skills in creature design and movement and learn computers were very successful. The ones who didn't pretty much lost their jobs. I am sure even for writers it was something similar. Back in the days of typewriters, there were probably admin people around to retype scripts when notes and changes were put on them. Now the script is on your computer and you don't need someone to retype the whole thing when you want to change it. Just like the studio accountant doesn't need an army of accounting clerks (with little green visors) because excel and other spreadsheet program put them out of work. I used procedurals as an example because those seem like the most basic shows that would be easy for an AI system to copy. So if you want to keep your job you better be able to write something more original than that.

Yea I get the not over working thing, but it also seems like in any job, if someone can do the work of two people then then paying them more should also be an option (not just automatically hiring more people). The no AI scripts thing seems interesting too. Because from my understanding of AI it can only create things based on data that is fed into it. I heard an AI version of a Nirvana song on the radio a few weeks ago and it sounded like a Nevermind outtake, not a new song Kurt might have created. So if you fed every drama script into an AI script generator, you wouldn't get something original like Lost or the Americans or something. You would probably get a boring episode of Law and Order or NCIS.

The whole Keeley storyline this season has been weird. Each episode they spend so much time at her office but we have no idea how her company is doing. The stuff with Nate kind of bugs me too. Like how is his relationship going so well, and how has he kept himself from exposing his asshole tendencies to Jade. Like what if he goes to her work now that they are a couple, what happens when she is too friendly to another patron for his liking? Or if she laughs when he does something embarrassing. I liked when right before they went to the West Ham game, Beard said he had to make a stop. And then he was wearing all his Richmond gear. But was Ted's home always that big. I also thought it was just a single storey apartment, not a house with multiple levels. Too bad Keeley doesn't know someone else who is super rich who might be able to fund her firm. Some googling tells me that the English Premier League team with the lowest value is still worth around 200 GBP. With Richmond being in London I would assume it would be worth more. So if Rebecca wanted to fund the KJPR office to get it running, it would take what a brief phone call?

If that is happening that's obviously not good. But at the same time making a rule where you have to have a minimum number of writers would work a single writer or team of two writers who are able to write a whole season on their own. If the union rule says there has to be four writers in that situation those people would probably be paid less. Plus the WGA represents movie writers too. So if the goal is to just get more writers working, why not have the same rule for movies. Kill Bill 1&2 were about the same length as an 8 episode sitcom season. Would anyone think of telling Tarantino that her needed to hire a second writer to work with him, rather than writing the whole script himself?

But doesn't the showrunner (usually the head writer) have at least some power in determining who gets credited as a writer on a specific script? My favourite show of all time is Deadwood and I remember watching a bunch of the behind the scenes stuff, and more than one writer talking about how David Milch would basically re-write every line of their script, but then still give them sole credit for writing the episode. In a way the whole thing just sounds like some crooked Sopranos style union thing. Where like Tony comes over and says your window repair job will only need one person, but because of union rules you are going to have to hire 3 carpenters, 2 labourers, a foreman, a safety supervisor, a plumber and my cousin who will never actually show up.