Captain I0

I know they touched on it a little by the end of last season, but I'm still suprised at how well the almost heel to face turn they did with Howard has worked. You really see now that he really does have some respect for Jimmy, and does see his value but just has been playing the bad guy for Chuck for so long. And even though he still seems to have deference to Chuck and almost a certain amount of fear, he's up front and honest about things..."I didn't stand in his way". Even suggesting to Chuck's face that he knows Chuck wants him to stand in the way of Jimmy's success.

Don't forget that she's only pregnant because she lied and said she was on the pill to trap a kid, who was going to use a condom, into knocking her up. It's sad that they wrote such a drastic change in her when she got into puberty, but she's really been nothing more than a sexual predator for three straight seasons at this point.

I don't understand why so many people give Carol such a pass for her shit. It's not just Sam's breakdown, the kid may have freaked out without her, but she set so many of these events off in the first place. She started when they got to Alexandria by playing Rick not only against the town, but playing him against the rest of CDB too, trying to get him not to trust anyone. She then delibrately pushed prochdick in the incident that set him over the edge to get all throat slicey on Deanna's husband. And as dumb as what Morgan did was, he was right that in the middle of the Walker attack was not the time for Carol to try to deal with any of it. So much went to shit because of the things she did. She's really only had one redeeming moment in years (albeit a big one, in the terminus rescue) I'm ready to see her die.

Anyone who defends Carol in this ep is as batshit as she is. Whatever you think of Morgan's dumbassery over this unfair Wolf, he was right about one thing. "now is not the time" And Carol just effed it up the whole way. There was no need to kill this guy in the middle of a walker horde attack, or really for her to kill him at all. All she would have had to do is tell Rick and she would have gotten both of her wishes granted with a dead Wolf and exiled/dead Morgan. And even if she was convinced that he had to die RIGHT NOW, she still was a moron for trying to attack Morgan with a knife. She could have called his bluff. She could have tried to go for the Wolf and seen if Morgan was really willing to kill her over him, but instead she goes after somebody bigger and stronger than her with a knife...mensa material there. But, really, I won't go as far as to say it's out of character for her. She's been nuts since the Prison. Taking it upon herself to kill people in their group and burn them, without consulting anyone was bad, but it was understandable. Rick was still crazy and the group didn't have any real leadership. She crossed a line, but you could understand the thought process. But, the only redeeming thing she's done since then (which was a big one) is the attack on Terminus. Last season she went Yoko, trying to get Rick to break up the band. Whispering in his ear and trying to isolate him from the rest of CDB. She also intentionally set off Porchdick M.D, likely in an attempt to get him to do just what he did and get himself killed..taking someone else with him. So, no, I wouldn't say this is out of character. She's proven herself to be working a different angle for CDB than anyone else in the group and doesn't really have any interest in doing what's best for the group, or even for herself, at any given time.

Parkman was working for Renatus last episode. This was the stupidest "reveal" ever, not showing his face for like 2 minutes, as if it was supposed to be a shock that it was him.

"Deadite" is first used at the end of Evil Dead 2, when Ash is sent back in time. In fact, assuming the issue is legalities over the rights to AOD, there isn't much to worry about in regard to referencing AOD, with the exception of S-Mart. If they can use anything from Evil Dead / Evil Dead 2, we already see Ash get sent back in time and be predicted to be their savior...After ash shoots the demon in the past, they say "Hail he who has come from the skies to deliver us from the terrors of the deadites!". So as long as they don't say any proper names (Duke Henry, Sheila, S-Mart), they should be able to reference basically what happened in AOD.

Why do people keep saying that Morgan letting the wolves live lead to this? The timeline doesn't work. We saw in the previous episode that it was Carl's girlfriend that led the wolves to Alexandria. She was marking the trail for them to follow. And she was there before Rick's crew arrived. Which means she had already marked the trail to Alexandria before Aaron and Darryl went out, and left Aaron's backpack. Sure, we'll have scenes of Aaron feeling responsible and Morgan too in the coming episodes. Before the eventual reveal (to the group-we've already been shown) that it was coming regardless, because of whatever that teenage girl's name is and they'll have to figure out what to do with her.

Why are people upset with Morgan over Glen's death? He just let a couple random wolves live. It's Carl's girlfriend that led them to Alexandria. I hope Glenn is dead. I like him and all, but it would be a cheap, lame and unbelievable misdirection if he survived. Even if it was Nicholas neing eaten in that scene, his ability to survive under a pile of a hoard of walkers just diminishes the zombie threat.

But this is a bit of a circular argument that fails to connect with your original reasoning, is what I'm saying. You are claiming that it only matters what Joe thinks of Anita. So, from Joe's perspective, if Anita can't consent due to programming, then she's simply a programmable appliance. If she's more than that, then she has some ability to consent, which he asked for.

This sounds like a very strange definition of rape.Joe thinks she should be respected but has sex with her anyway after checking if she objects? I just fail to see this adequately explained as rape. Adultry? Maybe. Creepy? Perhaps. But rape? I can't see anywhere in which that fits the standards of rape. Lets say it was his cousin rather than a machine. Or his coworker. Both would be considered innapropriate relationships. Both might be women he thinks should be respected. But having sex with them wouldn't be rape, unless they objected to it. Which we've edtablished Anita didn't.

The problem is that your analogy breaks down because there is no raping or molestation taking place vis a vis Joe & Anita. We have been provided pretty clear context in this show. There was a molestation attempt by Toby. There was a rape attempt by the teens at the party. There was a "rape" attempt by the John at the brothel. There was also unwanted sex at the brothel. However, none of that is the case in the Anita/Joe situation. Again, in this case consent was clearly asked prior to even accessing the adult features and consent was asked after enabling them. Reciprocated actions were given prior to enabling adult features, by Anita, suggestive of "desire" to participate as much as a robot would be capable and once those features are enabled, it's not a matter of "not minding", but having the personality of wanting to. We've been given a clear range of different sexual interactions and I would say that Joe and Anita's was clearly meant to show another case, which wasn't meant to be at all like the unwanted examples above. The question of what being programmed to want this means can be explored, but if we accept being programmed to do anything as them not really "wanting" to do it, then you've deconstructed things too far as there is really no point to their existence. Your question "is it rape if they are programmed not to mind"? Is a loaded question. I'm assuming intentional, but maybe not so. However to answer it anyway. If the issue of sentience is not a question, then the answer is an obvious no. A machine can't be raped any more than a vibrator can, which is also programmed to give sexual pleasure, just not as sophisticatedly programmed .

This is way off-base. What the kids in the party were going to do is akin to be being a "roofying rapist". No matter what Joe thinks of synth's level of sentience is, what he did is not. If you knock someone out with a roofy, it doesn't make them want to have sex with you. It makes them unconscious. Joe had the capability to make somebody want to have sex with him & then had sex with her. To bring it back to your point, he either thinks the synth is an inanimate object and therefore was masturbating with an adult toy, or he thinks they are sentient and what he did was commit adultery. But he didn't rape, or force himself on anyone. He first verbally asked for consent to turn on her adult options and then verbally asked for consent to have sex. That's pretty far removed from roofy rape on the spectrum of sex crimes. There was not even any reason shown to think that Anita didn't "want to" have her Adult options turned on as she initiated physical contact with him many times throughout their conversation before he went through with it. In fact, there was certainly some suggestion leading up to this point in the series (I haven't watched past this episode) that Anita was actively trying to (and wanting to) replace Laura in many ways in the family and this would be another logical step for her to take. So, if you take the "He thinks she is sentient" stance, many of her prior actions could even be construed as attempts to seduce Joe. It's science fiction, so there isn't an apt allegory in real life. And rape certainly isn't one. Now, because we, the audience, know she actually has a fully sentient personally hidden underneath her synth one it certainly creates more uncomfortability in how we see her treated than other synths we know to not have emotions. And I imagine this will set up issues down the line when Mia gets control of her body back, but I have to totally disagree with your characterization of this situation.

A habitual user, or even someone just used to coke binges (actually, probably even more so, somebody that is used to binges) could definitely handle that much coke. It's a lot, but that happens all the time. He's definitely playing with fire, and a batch that's more potent than he's suspecting could end him any night, but the odds are he's not going to go into cardiac arrest on any one given bender like that. The comedown was him crying and breaking shit, so I wouldn't say he was perfectly fine at all from it. The effects of Coke are very short lasting. We got the high and the comedown all in a few hours.

There's no doubt that it's extremely short-sighted and petty by the ex-wife, but it doesn't have to be about challenging his parenthood, per se. I think it's mostly about severing the connection between Ray and her son. But, I don't think it's that well thought out by her. Why she wants her son to find out his biological father was a rapist is cruel and unusual. Not to mention, the rapist could, in theory petition for some parental rights himself. He probably wouldn't get them and likely wouldn't want to, but he could try and make things messy if he wanted to.

He is most certainly listed as father on his birth-cert, so yes, it's not as simple as one paternity test can remove all his paternal rights immediately. However, Ray has other issues that have already restricted his visitation rights. Hence why he's also being drug tested. And she hasn't turned him in for it, but she also knows he brass-knuckle beat a kid's father at Chad's school. We don't know if anything happened between them when they were married. But Ray certainly has more than a little temper and it wouldn't be that hard to argue that he's a threat. We've seen him yelling at Chad and scaring him early on in the season. I'm no lawyer, but if it also turns out he's not even genetically his child, I'd have to think they could come up with a pretty slam-dunk case to take away most, if not all, of his paternal rights. Furthermore, Chad believes Ray's his father. Take that away and Ray's not much more than this scarey guy that yells at him at his Mom/Step dad want him to stay away from. Chad's just a few years away from being able to make some decisions on his own about if he wants to spend time with Ray or not.

If they want to go the cliche'd "Dectivite Story" route (which they may)... Ray will be depressed after getting swabbed for the paternity test, do something reckless at the end and get killed. After he's dead, his ex will get the results back showing that Ray actually is the father.

Except that a paternity test wouldn't show that. Key word in the test there is "paternity". They aren't taking a maternity test. They won't even be taking any swabs of his ex wife or check her dna. Having him not be the ex-wife's kid makes no sense in this story, because there is pretty much no means on anyone's radar by which anybody could even find out.

No. Chad being Jordan's doesn't make any sense. But, there has always been interesting symmetry between Ray and Frank in regard to paternity issues. Frank didn't want to consider adoption, because he had no interest in raising another man's kid. Jordan has convinced him to soften a bit and consider it. Ray desperately doesn't want to take a paternity test, because he's afraid that Chad isn't actually his. Not that it matters to him personally, he considers him his son no matter what, but is ex will use that to take him away from him permanently.

I disagree. The lack of outcry with most of this is not about how far removed in time we are, but how they aren't offensively caricatured. As you said, their pain and suffering is of little importance to the protagonists in these movies. This would have been accurate to a time when slavery existed. The people of a higher status likely wouldn't have cared about their pain and suffering much. The problem with how it's portrayed in GWTW, for example, is that it isn't portrayed realistically. Not that they keep slaves, but that they are portrayed as being happy, willing participants. And otherwise better off with their masters than free. The issue is that the book/movie portrays that fantasy of the happy slave to actually be the case. I don't think anyone is suggesting anything like that with GWTW. Which is why, as I pointed out, it is our response to it, that I take issue with, more so than the source material itself. I certainly have no issue with the source material existing, or having been written. Ban it or vault it forever? Never would I want that. The issue is that, it shouldn't have been held in reverie and read/watched in classrooms without treating the backdrop and subject manner in a mature and modern way, a half-century after it was created. It's much less of an issue today, with easy access to a lot more perspectives on the world and on history. But pre-internet, fiction like Gone with the Wind really did serve to shape a lot of people's opinions on what life must have been like "back then". I am reminded of this story: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8847385/what-i-learned-from-leading-tours-about-slavery-at-a-plantation And I have to wonder how many of these people just watched a few movies or read a bit of fiction on Pre-Civil war days and never really thought to question it further. As they've grown up, the idea is cemented as we generally become more rigid in our thinking. This isn't just about a book or movie that was written before the Civil Rights movement. But about how we treated it, decades after the Civil Rights movement, and how we often failed to give it any kind of mature perspective when introducing it to young people as recently as the 70's, 80's and 90's

Yep. I was actually aware of that. Which further supports my point that we really should have known better, even accounting for the time period.

Except that Schindler's List did deal with Nazi Germany in a mature way. Whatever you think of Oskar Schindler or how he was characterized, the movie addressed the realities and horrors of what was being done to the Jewish people in Germany. Nazi Germany wasn't presented as a fairy tale land. The movie was done in black in white to further represent how dark and foreboding the time and place was. In contrast, here's the "Old South" in the opening words. There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.. The two really aren't comparable. If you want to say that Oskar Schindler was whitewashed in the movie, that's a discussion we can have, but Nazi Germany and the ideas it represented was not. Whereas, Gone With The Wind really was meant to romanticize the era of the Old South and paint it as a fairy tale world (with "Knights and their Ladies Fair"). So perhaps I shouldn't have stated my lack of "blame" for the author and producers so completely. But I'm a champion of freedom of speech, and I think they have every right to write and/or make whatever they want, which is why I put more emphasis and "blame" (so to speak) on the how the rest of us treated the material. Again, this is something that was so loved it became required reading for many students for decades. So, I do find myself more upset at the teacher who made hundreds of kids read this, or watch this, decades after they likely would have done so on their own, than the author. Unless of course, the teacher was using it to show examples of how things get whitewashed, or showing how it was horribly inaccurate and how it was basically Confederate Propaganda. Which, I never really heard of any teachers doing.

The thing is, that the issue isn't the way the movie was made, or the source material, per se. It's the way that it was (and it) received and has been internalized by our society. As I said in my final paragraph, I wish I could see the movie (or book) as simply a period piece that was a product of it's time. And, ironically, though what you say is true in that it could never be made the same today, if it would have been made today just the same as it was, this wouldn't even be an issue. Because the general audience would have seen through most of this. What I was speaking to is that the danger in GWTW (and like minded fiction) is what it did to our country's collective memory and psyche is glorify, romanticize and fictionalize the Old South in a way that has stayed with many people even to this day. I'm not even suggesting that it's the "fault" of the producers or the author. It's part product of the time and part fluke that the time period is considered "the Golden age of movies", which in reality just kind of means that it was among the era when everybody first started going to see all the major movies. And it obviously played to ideas already held by many people of the time. However, people in Germany don't create romanticized fiction pieces set in the 1930's, where they look back wistfully and portray their people as good, decent folks caught up in the times. "Oh Ashley! I love you Ashley, please tell me you love me!" "I can't Scarlet. I am marrying Melanie. And now I must go off and do my duty for our country and haul off Jewish children to concentration camps for the Fuhrer". My point is that we really shouldn't be doing the same with the Old South and, even as a "product of it's time", we shouldn't have done so back then. It was nearly a century removed from the Civil War and the end result is that he prominence and revered nature of GWTW (both book and movie) has helped to whitewash the time period in many people's eyes. When I was a kid in the 80's, Gone With the Wind was required reading in some classes. Some others showed the movie. And they all just talked about the plot and characterization without discussing the background issues of slavery, racism or the Civil War in a mature way. Again...it's as if the movie is propaganda about the Old South, when we really should be seeing that era for the horror that it was and those that wanted to destroy our country to preserve the practice of slavery as enemies of our way of life. Not heroes, nor even "benign Monsters" as you put it, because there's nothing benign about it. And this movie goes even a step further, since it actually portrays the Union soldiers and generals as the monsters and villains. And yes, 1939 was a much different era, but like I said, that's 80 years after the Civil War and should have been time enough for our country to bury the idea that there was good, worthy of being romanticized, in the Old South.

By chance, I took it upon myself to rewatch Gone with the Wind this weekend, in it's entirety which is something I haven't done in probably 25 years when I was a kid. I am left with a number of disturbing thoughts First off... Scarlette O'Hara? I realize that we look at life through a much different lense today, but she is simply an absolutely horrible person throughout. I find it hard to fathom that she could be found likeable (or root-for-able) in any era. Even in the reimagined fantasy Old-South that's portrayed, people still tell her she's a cruel, horrible person. She literally beats a horse to death, giving it the killing blow while within 100 yards from Tera, while saying "move Beast!" I know, I know. Horses were beasts of burden then, but the inclusion of that scene is simply strange and can only be seen as a way to further cement her as ruthless and horrible. And yet, she's the "heroine" of the story and I have to believe you are supposed to root for her on some level. I just never could. There is a slight hint of female empowerment with her character, but it's so greatly overshadowed by everything else negative about her as to make it nearly worthless in that regard. And with how much of her gain is taken at the expense of other women, it's hard to see much redeeming there even in terms of any female empowerment. I had a ton of other thoughts about it, but most are related to this main point. It's anti-American, confederate propaganda. I find it fascinating and disturbing that we allowed it to be such a wildly herralded piece of Americana(from a cultural standpoint, not a freedom of speech one). Just imagine how present day flag waving conservatives talk about various pieces of art, or fiction, or speech that paints any kind of negative light on things America has done in the past. This piece literally paints General Sherman as a monster, while holding up those that took up arms to try and end our country as heroes. It shows our country's enemy combatants as folksy, well mannered gentlemen and the Union soldiers (otherwise known as American soldiers) as rapists, murderers and thieves. Try to imagine how conservatives (or conservative southerners) would feel about a movie that gave the same treatment to Iraqi soldiers, or Iranian or one of our enemies, while portraying American attacks as destructive slaughter. And the thing is, this type of confederate propaganda has worked. They introduce the carpetbaggers with a literally singing "Uppity Darky", portray the freed slaves as idiots that have their votes bought by free handouts from the Union government, and propagate the idea that the slaves were too stupid to make it on their own, and were happier and better off with their white masters who knew better. Considering the modern political "Southern Strategy", really the undercurrent of this is that this type of propaganda has managed to keep the idea of the Old South alive and the same fallout from the Civil War and many of the same attitudes about the Confederacy and blacks going strong 150 years later. Many people today still support political ideals based on believing in the fantasy of the "Old South" that was portrayed in this movie, whether they do so conciously or not. I would like to see GWTW as a simple piece of fiction, with a backdrop set around the Civil War, like I did when I first saw it. However, i can't... and it's not. It's not "Birth of a Nation", but it may have been more harmful because it is seen as so harmless for so many people that it was so reviered for so long.

That's why they made a point of showing us her stash of oranges. http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryhowtoguide/a/fruitbattery.htm

I don't think of Saul as a super "bad guy", but as I pointed out in a few episode threads, this just isn't true. Saul, in BB is a criminal and saying he works on the edge of the law is a complete whitewash of the character. We don't even very often see him do any actual "lawyer-stuff". He launders money. He sends thugs to intimidate people. He arranges meetings and introduces criminals to each other for drug deals. He steals (the ricin cigarette). He arranges for someone to obstruct justice by going to jail in place of Walt for money. He illegally wiretaps and stalks people....need I go on? I like him. I think he's pretty loyal, as far as criminals go and certainly in comparison to Walt, who we see him interact with most, he seems like a "good" guy. But the idea that he's just a lawyer operating on the fringe of legality is hilariously off-base. Breaking Bad's Saul Goodman is barely a lawyer and mostly a criminal.