Bill C.

Have Jake hallucinate Hels way before the NB (unless it happened and I missed it?), just once or twice, urging him to do his "magic trick." Maybe have him actively do something kid-nefarious to ensure he'd get to do it before he freaked out at the NB itself, and the story would have been improved threefold at least. TA,AS. Hell, I actually like Bizarro Maxie and her story is a blazing hot mess. But yeah, she did refer to some boy in high school...though that doesn't mean she can't still be crushing hardcore on the Tree. It might be her one actual bit of relative sanity: "I can't be with Nathan, damn you Maxie, so I might as well see what Jeremy from Science is like now."

If the show hadn't had to have Valentin get shot (legacy karma for his part in all things Chimera, IMHO) he could have counterbalanced his wimpyness by going DVX 4 LYFE and straight up necksnapping Henchman #1. It's not like we needed that guy around anyway.

Yeah, the cutaways to Hels devouring scenery right at the camera were...okay, they were kind of hilarious early on, but they dragged on too long and just got stupid. That said... Honestly, considering the story, I'm okay with this too. Cliched as it was, Liz saving her kid probably was the nicest--and second sanest, since Laura wasn't involved--way for all this to end (I'm discounting everything with Helena's henchmen showing up after that, because duh). OTOH...Ava screaming bloody murder for Sonny and Carly to save her, and Carly being the one who waffled before the Scowl dragged her out of the warehouse, let alone "Our hands are clean"? Subtle as a Schlitz Chimera can, show. And how the fuck did Lulu change out of the Giant Pink Explosion so damn fast? For all intents, considering what Bizarro Maxie said in-show IIRC, it's supposed to be (b)...but seems to be skewing hard towards (a). Either way, the result's the same: people think the Tree is Man Landers and her fixation on him continues apace.

In theory Chimera is extremely contagious (again, as per Anna), so if it did get out it'd have a chance to spread... Hah. "If."

I would've thought Dante would have just attached some wheels to the hoop skirt frame Lulu had to be wearing underneath the Great Pink Explosion of 2017, but hey... Oh, for the love of Sonny...that just figures. OTOH, I'm assuming this is where the show shows its true colors: does it actually have a kid unleash an unidentified bioweapon on his own family, or go full Michael Bolton "Now back to the good part!" and hard 180 back to Sonny and Carly in a fire?

Jake is indeed Jake AFAWK, and thank God there's just the one, but he's most recently been hallucinating Helena urging him to do a "magic trick" involving opening the Chimera Project canister. CP itself is a biotoxin combo platter of some sort, as per Anna, but exactly what it does has yet to be revealed. And fter binging last week's episodes this morning--praise be, Hulu--I'm going to agree with the sentiment that the Nurses' Ball itself wasn't bad so much as kind of blah, the opening number and finale and perhaps Valentin completely hosing whatever evil side he had left by channeling Billy friggin' Joel aside (possible incoming legacy karma from Chimera notwithstanding). That said, Thursday's episode actually was a surprisingly well-paced and overall pretty good episode...even if it led to Friday's episode, where Sonny and Carly were in full-on self-righteous mode and blasting Ava for her current lingering misdeed. And in a bubble that worked, largely due to MW and LW, but it still bugged because (as multiple others apparently have said) they kept harping on how Kiki was an adult and didn't need to be protected while Morgan needed to be "protected"...which is both right and wrong at the same time, and damn you show for that. At least Ava got to throw that in their faces, if only the once, before she apparently lost her natural damn mind and tried and failed to throw a lantern at them. Oddly, the whole thing with Bizarro Maxie and the Tree and "Man Landers" came off as silly...but harmless, apart from Bizarro Maxie creeping just a little closer to stalker territory. Which is bonkers, but so very TFGH.

I'm generally inclined to give this episode a pass because it got most of its larger beats right, but it--even for SVU--was about as subtle as Carisi's Flanders haircut. Yusuf "randomly" (the quotes are intentional because, even though the show never went there, I couldn't avoid the thought that someone narc'd on him) being snatched up by ICE, who were utterly jerks on a level with Noah's bitchy case worker from a few seasons back; the random shots at the current administration--and its followers--albeit exponentially more so the later ones from the villains du jour (albeit perhaps being mitigated somewhat by Barba, or was it Dodds, saying that people feel "empowered" to say and do whatever the bleep they want nowadays); the vaguely Mothership-esque nuclear option of threatening to have Soledad deported if she didn't flip on her husband, who ended up getting killed anyway; and finally Liv's actual but virtually last-minute dilemma when the mother tried to throw her under the bus. I get why she didn't go ahead and back up that lie, it's Olivia Benson and she wouldn't do that...but I think the episode might actually have gained a little bit of karma back if she had actually gone ahead and backed it up and then flipped out on Barba later.

If somebody at NBC has half a brain, we'll all be able to buy an "I don't have a catch phrase" T-shirt any minute now... And I absolutely understand why it got pushed back, but IMO this episode made the Emily we saw in Van v Emily and Green Furious make more sense. This would have been our first real glimpse of Emily's suppressed inner over-it-all bitch (and, to be fair, a stronger glimpse than in either of the other two episodes), and it might have been more striking coming where it should have. That said, her going after Van and "Daft Punk without the helmet" Teddy and Wendy was still pretty glorious, as was the gang's saving her through the magic of karaoke. And that aside...Wendy's detailed description of being stuck on an island with Van almost stole the episode. And why couldn't they have gotten the actual writers for The Suite Life of Zack and Cody? It's not like they're doing anything right now...?

Apparently he was Mullins' helicopter pilot. I missed him on the first go-round, too. The major part got explained two episodes before this one, IIRC. The original kidnapping was to try to get Naseri to flip on Jihadi Pop; he never did, and DNI Simms...apparently decided to hold on to her instead of killing her, and stuck her in that pretty house outside of DC. A year or so later, and Naseri had assumed that she was dead.

I didn't mind most of this episode, TBH. This reluctantly includes Rebecca's death in and of itself. However, the thing that took me right out of it in a big way was Melted Jihadi Pop, with his one arm that was handcuffed to a frigging pipe and one eye, managing to whack Naseri (who at least was in the same big room) and Rebecca at range with an admittedly leftover gun. That was just a bit too WTF for me, even allowing that I was expecting some sort of swerve/counterswerve from the minute Eric got Naseri on the phone with Ara. OTOH, Ara lived. That said, minus the big dustup with Eric and Tony (which conveniently took out every redshirt in the place) I have to agree that as far as season finales go it was rather understated--I don't want to go all the way to boring, but predictable's definitely in play (which probably brings us back to Rebecca). Taking this season as a semi-reset to establish this new CTU, I guess it succeeded, but the whole thing seemed annoyingly...low-key? Kidnapping an innocent is one of the few things that is almost universally frowned upon, so that specific aspect would have definitely led to a media firestorm. Since he was still keeping Ara hostage in that pretty and now wrecked house (and this is where I again wonder why she was even still alive at this point), the firestorm would have been that much worse. The Jordanian embassy getting involved does lead to some different questions, though: how far would they take this with what they know (or could get out of Ara, even indirectly)? Would they keep quiet if the US government asked them to?

I think I'm appreciating Jackie's C-story more in hindsight, since it was so pleasantly gentle (yes, even Wendy), but the A and B-stories just clicked. Teddy's crush on Green Fury leading him to crash a focus group and use guyliner, Ron taking over from Jackie this week as the voice of sanity, Emily almost Emily-ing up summoning a superhero for her own gain (which kinda makes her a Wendy, but still) and managing to save the whole thing, Green Fury herself--who's apparently a little bit of a grump, but dating a guy who makes you call him Darkseid will do that--and the self-absorbed Olympian, let alone a supergadget. And there wasn't that much Van, either.

Like the DNI's going to do his own wetwork? He's too grumpy for that. :)

While Green Fury is certainly all kinds of hot, I did love how Ron was Teddy's voice of relative "Dude, so not in your league" sanity about her. That said, even though she basically caused Teddy's date with Hannah to implode after less than two minutes...was it just me, or was there a tiny amount of clickage? As for Emily Emily-ing things up with Van...thuganomics85 is/was exactly right. While to some degree it's been easier for the crew to just sort of massage Van's Giganta-sized ego, you can only take so much of it; conversely, Emily being so out of joint over the whole thing seemed a trifle sudden and a little weird. (Random abrupt character growth?)

Rebecca merely being involved in Operation East July is bad enough in-show; having her be the one who went "Okay, Naseri didn't flip on Jihadi Pop, his kid's toast" would be overkill, especially since Naseri already appears to think she was responsible for it anyway. The flip side of that is that it begs one rather big question: why is said daughter still alive at this point? Grumpy DNI had a last-minute attack of conscience? (And since it's officially a black op at this point, yeah--the minute it comes out, Simms is probably toast.) All that aside...and I'm even going to let the time dilation slide, since that was wrapped around a nice bonding moment with Eric and John and mostly after Rebecca straight up trying to kill herself...this episode earned a total pass the minute Mullins decided the hell with it, went CTU 4 LYFE and choked Pointy Headed Wannabe Boss Pang (Peng?) out. That was almost Jenkinsesque in its surprise awesomeness.

Up until this episode Action Bae Nicole was an okay, if occasionally whiny, addition to things. But then she shows up at CTU to see her man after all the shit they'd been through that day...okay, fine...and then she chooses that moment to drag him about not telling her about the job offer at CTU. That rang so utterly wrong and ham-fistedly "Girl, bye" that it almost tainted the entire back half of the episode. OTOH, with Isaac right there and straight up taking his shot at getting her back...I guess I can appreciate the writers' efficiency. By extension, however: the entire sleeper cell subplot was wrapped up in two lines of dialogue. Since the show kindasorta drifted away from that I get it, but at the same time it'd be nice to see or have heard some sort of nod to one of the cells going down in a firefight or something. Just so it wasn't so damn tidy. The thing with the grumpy DNI being dirty in some way needs clarification, IMO. If he's involved with anything that's gone on on this particular day, we really need to know why and we need to know ASAP. (It could go back to Naseri's remark to John that he didn't really know Rebecca, I suppose. Perhaps the DNI and Rebecca were in on some black op that went completely sideways and covered it up?) Rebecca's Hail Mary play to save John, as said by others, half worked...which means her track record is about as good as Eric's. But hey--Abercrombie and Fitch akbar, for Hipster Kid Terrorist is dead!...right after his melty-faced dad confessed to faking his death (maybe with a little less "fake," but still) and setting him up effectively for a loyalty test, and right before Melted Jihadi Pop swears vengeance blah blah blaaaarrrrrg. And I won't even lie: I laughed my head off when Luis freaked out and clocked Pa Donovan with a pot before making a run for it. Henry, you dumbass.