ICantDoThatDave

Didn't have them at the top of my head, so looked up a few episodes: "Mad Dog" - Jack harasses a released prisoner so much that the guy re-offends. It's pretty clearly implied, even by the show, that absent Jack's harassment, the guy would not have re-offended. When even the show implies Jack can sometimes go "too far". There was the episode [EDIT: Found it: "Bodies", s14E1] where Jack indicts the randomly assigned Public Defender of a serial killer who (stupidly) went to the location of his client's bodies for "accomplice to murder" (Jack knew that was BS). That guy's life was RUINED b/c he (rightly) valued the Attorney-Client privilege more than his own liberty. Jack thought he would "blink", but he didn't, ruined the guy's life for abiding by his principles. In "Gov Lov", s7, Jack literally gets Gay Marriage overturned because he wants to convict someone & needs Spousal Privilege to not apply in his case. "Ramparts", s9, Jack tried to use the death of one person to illegally crowbar open some Vietnam-related files, not because it was legal, he knew it wasn't, but because he wanted to see them. "Rubber Room", s20, the one where teachers who have "attitude problems" get sent to a mandatory AA-style meeting building (which it turns out are often faked) - here's Jack to a completely innocent person, who he *knows* at the time is innocent: "You get no argument from me there. But if your obstruction allows a massacre to happen, I will crucify you, Mr. Kralik. I will charge you with negligent homicide, and after I convict you I will resign my job and represent the families of the victims in a wrongful death suit against you and the union. By the time I'm done, you'll be finished. So, my advice to you is GET OUT OF MY WAY!" I get that's over the top. But the point is he knows at that time the guy is just doing his job, does not actually merit that charge. It's probably the most outlandish example of what I'm trying to illustrate: Jack blackmails/extorts people all the time. It's what Jack does. He's essentially a Mob Boss with a Badge. As I alluded to above: "nice life you got here; it'd be a shame if I made up a charge against you, right?"

You're right about the plot points, but I'm interpreting them differently... Jack threatened him with indicting him. As I mentioned, even Jamie, who was a bit of a hard-ass herself, called him out on that. He threatened prosecution he never intended to pursue & knew couldn't be sustained. That's extortion & the type of behavior I never liked ("nice kids you got there, sure would be a shame if something happened to them"). Right, but that clearly shows Jack was just blackmailing the guy. He was guilty of it (he used the escort service to butter up clients), but Jack used the threat to get him to bring his daughter back to the US then dropped the charges! He was clearly using the charge simply as extortion. Agree to disagree is fine. I enjoy watching the show, but just thought Jack abused his office just as much as Cutter (which was where this discussion started). Cutter used under-handed tricks. Jack used blackmail/extortion by threatening to charge ancillary people with fake crimes & then dropping the charges when he got what he wanted.

This is where I think we disagree for the most part, & it's not that the people he was trying to get to testify were necessarily innocent, it's that the people he was threatening to indict (often for "conspiracy") were innocent & Jack knew they were innocent. It was legal blackmail - threatening to bring (what he knew were) false charges against a third party in order to compel someone to testify or take a plea deal. I can't recall most of the specific episodes off the top of my head, but I recall Jack threatening to indict husbands*/wives/sons/daughters, bankrupt businesses**, & take away/put into foster care children, using charges he knew were trumped up & bogus. * The first example I could think of was the one where an ex-cop/PI is found dead & it leads to a couple upstate housewives who are call girls. Jack threatens one of husbands with "obstruction of justice" & losing his kids when he knows that's BS. Jamie even calls him out on it after the meeting. ** I remember a specific example here with the father of the girl who was running an escort service with her college friends - he literally dropped the "enterprise corruption" charges as soon as he got his daughter to come back to the US - the charge was clearly just used as blackmail (Jack went back on his word later in the episode though).

Agree with all that (except see below*). Cutter used underhanded trick after underhanded trick to "win", no matter the legality or if the person was even guilty - I mean, they often were, but he clearly didn't care. *I will disagree with you on Jack though. He was just as bad, but in a totally different way. He used literal blackmail, extortion, just total scorched earth tactics. "We'll take your kids away if you don't testify!" "We'll bankrupt your business if you don't testify!" "We'll deport you if you don't testify!" "Your wife will be charged with conspiracy if you don't testify!" ** "Your child will be charged with conspiracy if you don't testify!" ** ** these were the worst examples Jack was the personification of Prosecutorial Misconduct. Cutter was just as bad, just in a different way, by cheating rather than blackmailing. They were both just awful in those respects. Fun to watch on a TV show? Sure. Want someone like that in real life? Absolutely not. Jack (& Cutter) are like the caricature of the "ends always justify the means" types that the whole 4th-8th Amendments to the Constitution are meant to protect us from. Still love watching the show, don't get me wrong, but the prosecutors give... well, prosecutors a bad name, IMO. EDIT: It's like how Batman is fun in a movie, but do I want an actual Batman running around? No, of course not.

I watched By Perjury, the one where the lawyer testified against his own client saying he didn't allow smoking in his office which led to his client getting the death penalty. Cutter's "trick" of smoking in the lawyer's office to show he committed perjury doesn't make any sense. Think about the amount of time that had to have passed since that incident: The lawyer testified that he didn't allow smoking because he had recently quit. So this incident would have happened before the client was even arrested. Then a whole murder trial takes place. Numerous appeals happen, then the execution, then several months. So we're talking years, at a bare minimum let's say 5 years have passed. "Your Honor, for a couple of years after I quit smoking, I didn't allow it in my office. I do now because it's been so long since I quit that it no longer bothers me." That simple. Done. He goes home.

That's certainly... a take. Is Connie Nielson not aware that... 1) Wonder Woman 1984 happened? I mean, Joker made a billion dollars, but there's certainly not going to be a Joker 3 either. 2) James Gunn is rebooting the whole DCU?

To be fair, in regards to the various Superman movies, he did do this in Superman Returns, where he spied on Lois's life. Granted I think that movie was... poop, so in general I agree that that's HOW he should be portrayed, but there are absolutely instances where he.... well hasn't been portrayed... well.

I quote myself, from back in 2023... stand by this. /\

Thank you. I honestly couldn't have illustrated my point better than you just did.

Of course they can. That's literally the whole point of fiction. Very much disagree. The more filmmakers allow the real world to constrict their story-telling, the more their story suffers, as we see here where the natural, expected "in world" story beat was simply not allowed to happen. Also: "...chose to act against it"? Act against what precisely? What "potential consequences"?

I disagree. Changing what makes the most sense in your fictional world (Dr. Strange investigates a huge magical disturbance caused by someone he knows) based on the real world generally results in bad writing. Anytime "why didn't this very logical thing happen in your story?" is answered with "because of real world issue X", you've undermined your story.

It wasn't that they couldn't shoot it, it was a Feige decision based on real world "optics". “Some people might say, ‘Oh, it would’ve been so cool to see Dr. Strange,’” Feige said. “But it would have taken away from Wanda, which is what we didn’t want to do. We didn’t want the end of the show to be commoditized to go to the next movie — here’s the white guy, ‘Let me show you how power works.’”

It is though. It's used in the exact same connotation - a dork who lives in his mom's basement & can't get a date. It's used in the same dismissive way "nerd" was used in the past, to imply the person is a loser & so can be dismissed. Consider the following two quotes... They convey the same meaning. Same bullies, new terms.

Are there any* fans of Stannis or Melisandre? I have not encountered them, fwiw. * meaning after that event, so present day - I grant they had fans before that Well, to be fair to Dany, she also had terrible writers crafting her story at that point.

To be fair, we only realize it (sorta kinda) because we're watching a TV show we can rewatch & connect the dots. And I doubt any of us could have predicted the actual events that eventually happened based solely on her words. She's "predicted" that for Aemond to gain a dragon he would lose an eye (waaay before it happened), a "beast beneath the floor" was a danger (way too vague - if this wasn't a line we were explicitly shown in a TV show, among the many things she must say every day that we don't get to hear, I don't think we would put much stock into it either), & she's afraid of "the rats". That last one, even with hindsight after this episode's events, I don't see anyone in-show making the connection. They are mostly only vague, weird things she says which we, the audience, can subsequently connect to events.

Yeah, "we beat Echo" is not quite the brag they're trying to make it sound like it is.

[decided it was better to just ignore it - my bad]

[decided it was better to just ignore it - my bad]

Why did you quote me on this?

Well, yes, but that's because that door only swings one way - we never get "male versions" of existing female characters. But if we did, they'd get the same pushback I believe. At least from me they would. Ooh, that's tough for me - I don't think my Supergirl-fanboy-ism can let me make that leap, even hypothetically. :) It influences my thought process on this topic too much, because: what the studios do is "take Superman, keep everything the same, but insert female actress = Supergirl!" And that's fundamentally not who Supergirl is. It really allows me to empathize with others who see their favorite characters get this treatment . But I'll go with it as best I can... I think portraying people using phrases like "delicate feelings of the fanboys" isn't helpful to the discussion. I feel like we're all having a good conversation here, albeit with different POVs of course. Still, let's just take Marvel movies-up-through-Endgame. Where would you rank Captain Marvel? Just take it in quadrants if that helps - would you put it in the top quartile, or even the second? I'd personally put it in the third quadrant - well above Iron Man 3 or Thor: The Dark World, but below even Iron Man 2 for me. It's certainly no Winter Soldier or Infinity War I think. Basically, I'm just saying: it got the reviews it deserved - a lot of people saw it in theaters, but it wasn't a real great movie in & of itself. IMO of course. The audience that saw it in theaters was ~2/3rds male. According to Deadline: 65% male. Women didn't show up for it either. Did they also have a pre-existing dislike of Brie Larson? Because that version of the character only showed up for something like 3 issues in an alternate universe "What If?"-style story, while the Norrin Radd version has existed for ~60 years over hundreds & hundreds of comics. As I've been emphasizing: that is someone's favorite character. And they won't get to see that character on screen. Anyway, thanks for the civil discussion, even if we disagree!

I honestly missed this my first go-round regarding gender-swapping, but for some reason (masochism?) I went back & re-read a few pages, & this illustrates a very important distinction, so wanted to address it (we're gonna disagree I think? but IMO we're still good - we've had some cool discussions, hear me out): I believe(?) I've illustrated above how Kara Zor-El is a very different character from Kal-El. She is exuberant, sometimes naive (regarding "our" world), revels in her powers. At least early on in her stories she has a whole "fish out of water" thing going on. Quite a different character from Kal-El. Basically, she has her own personality, with a different approach to her new world. She was in no way just a "gender-swapped" version of Superman (which was kinda my whole problem with The Flashpoint Paradox The Flash). And all that is why she's one of (maybe even...) my favorite characters. That's the difference IMO. They made her a new character. Not simply "a female version of Superman". I think that's what gets the pushback: "an [insert changed race/gender]-version of [existing character]". It's boring, pandering, & lazy, plus it justifiably alienates "that's my favorite character!" people. Whereas a whole new character (Supergirl, Gwen, Miles Morales for example) doesn't get that pushback, because they are new characters in their own right.

Oh, that is totally fair. I'm more referencing Steve "in universe" not making the connection, rather than an audience member who might jump ahead & figure it out. Like, totally off-topic, but way back when Sixth Sense came out (first analogy that came into my head), there were likely people who figured it out during the movie, but it doesn't undermine how in the movie Bruce Willis didn't figure it out. I fully believe Nat has intel sources that have heard of that name! 😁 just kidding on that, but good point So much agreement on this - they eviscerated Fury in Secret Invasion (AND Rhodey! EDIT: AND Maria Hill!) I choose to believe that whole thing never happened.

That's all I said: He suspected, maybe? Steve replies to Tony: "I didn't know it was him." Unless you think Steve was lying? Otherwise, I think we have assessed the situation the same.

I think it was... implied? but up in the air? I think the audience is in the same seat as Steve there - when you, as an audience member, saw that detail in Winter Soldier, did you immediately think "Bucky killed the Starks"? I doubt anyone did, even Cap, although it may have entered his mind. Steve knows what we know from Winter Soldier: Tony's parents were assassinated by an "agent of Hydra" (as opposed to a random car wreck, which is what Tony thinks) It's not until Civil War that even Cap starts to sorta suspect it was Bucky that killed the Starks, & that was due to Zemo's Zola's (EDIT: duh) plan. When confronted by Tony, he even says "I didn't know it was him" (& it's Cap, you know he wouldn't lie). He knew Hydra killed the Starks, but didn't know it was Bucky. Also clearly didn't know *why*? So I guess my take is: it was not supposed to be obvious. We, the audience, were "supposed" to be as... unsure, as Steve was.

Aye, I did. That was literally my premise: "I think the number of people who will go see Fantastic Four simply because "Silver Surfer is a woman in this one" is literally zero. But the number of people who will *not* go see it because of that change is greater than zero. You can disagree with them, but they exist:" Then that's your premise. But we both have the internet.