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.

I rather liked this episode, low-key as it was, though I couldn't help thinking: "Why is Crimson Fox pulling a LeBron, anyway?" And like swimmyfish above I do hope this means we get some sort of extended, if likely background-noise-level, look at post-signature-hero life in Charm City...the city that had to beg for a WNBA team. Ouch. Jackie moonlighting as an Uber driver (and I'm a little surprised they actually went with Uber, but IIRC the show invoked it a couple of eps back...?) to get some extra money for grad school because the hell with Van was a nice touch, even if it was mainly a reason for Emily to...Emily...it up in the name of helping her friend. It was the softest touch we've probably seen out of Jackie so far, even counterbalanced by her possessing those mad armlock skills. As for the #2 plot...I did love how all in they went with it pun-wise, even to the point of invoking a ukulele jingle. The ukulele is the real MVP.

That right there, Tobin. All that. We've had maybe two or three modest character moments with Eric, IIRC, but not really anything truly big apart from perhaps not killing Ben when Gabriel was threatening him. (I kinda want to say, and the irony is so not lost, that we've probably had more character moments with Isaac.) That's leaving a hole the show hasn't been able to fill yet. On the assumption that Eric is our new hero des jours, however...we probably need one halfway, truly significant character moment to solidify that this is our Black Bauer and he's got this, but when the heck is it coming?

Eric's "default" face kind of trips the entire character up. It's annoying. But I digress... One good redshirt cop (poor Jenkins, on the bridge) is offset by one utterly stupid redshirt cop (Steven, cheating bastard). OTOH, points for the minor swerve with him and Rebecca at dueling gunpoints--it looked like Hipster Kid Terrorist was about to have a golden opportunity to snatch Steven's gun, he never did, and instead Steven gets it in the head from Team Naseri. And as much as I loved how swift and surgical Naseri's snatch and grab was--let alone his team dealing with the cops in the tunnel, which was oddly Team Almeida-esque--the thing that just wouldn't leave my brain was this: how the hell did Naseri have intel on, apparently, a senior security officer at CTU? Let alone his having a mistress? Either CTU indeed has a mole (and this loops right back to that mysterious "data pack" Mariana sent out to parties unknown last week), or security has gone completely to shit post-Bauer. Action Bae Nicole not being aware that Eric had a job offer from Rebecca was probably a sort of cherry on top of everything else that's happened to her this season. Isaac getting more growly (in the down-low sense) as the episode went on was just a perk. And Eric being walked through disarming a bomb was a surprisingly neat and tightly-paced bit, if probably inevitably handicapped at the end by Real Jennifer whatshername freaking out (versus Fake Jennifer, who was like a bugfixed and more awesome Amira). Honestly that never occurred to me with our good Hipster Kid Terrorist, but last night there were a couple of shots where I could see it. If anything, though, I was thinking Oded Fehr with the stubble was looking a lot like an evil(-er) Carlos Bernard.

Hipster Kid Terrorist proving he was the smartest man in the room was actually unexpected and rather impressive. (Andy officially becoming the new Chloe, a little less so...but still. Dan Bucatinsky basically has to be expressive enough for two people, Andy and Eric, and he's actually doing it.) That said, as perhaps inevitable as it was, Action Bae's big "Family used to mean something" speech to help Isaac rally CTU: Urban Division was just a bit too sledgehammerily schmaltzy for my taste...see also HKT's entire monologue to Eric, also inevitable as that was. OTOH, the shootout between CTUUD and HKT's men was fairly well done...even allowing for Isaac just striding in like a boss with a shotgun. Because of course he would. Pa Donovan not giving anything up to Rebecca and Almeida...I don't know where that leads at this point, apart from the fact that John's uncle whatshisface's involvement in all of this still hasn't been outed yet. But with the events in the rest of the ep, it ultimately felt like space filler and that wasn't cool. And yet the entire episode kind of got eclipsed by Wait, That's Not The Big Bad After All, This Is! (but, hey, Oded Fehr!) and that split-second shot of Mariana transmitting a "data pack." Mole check?

I won't even lie: Andy's "That's kind of a big ask" was hilariously understated, and perhaps the one thing that distracted me from trying to figure out the temporal mechanics of when/how Rebecca and Tony "Used To Be A Bad Guy, Now I'm An Asset" Almeida were a thing. (I'm guessing somewhere before Day 7, or possibly before Day 3. I still need to confirm the time gaps.) At least Locke actually got to hold up his end in a fight with Eric, brief as it was. He probably needed the cred. That aside, Hipster Kid Terrorist (and his hipster posse in the junkyard, which amused me to no end; they're the most well-dressed terrorists I've seen in a while) earned some points for blatantly going back on his deal with Eric right after Isaac and Action Bae got out of there. If you're going to be ruthless, then own it...even if it's not necessarily impressing your hostages. ITA. Rebecca was apparently held in high regard when she ran CTU, so that works...and, if this iteration of the show's going to persist, with or without Eric, it kind of needs a Chloe. A slightly nerdy, gay, male Chloe probably completes some sort of character bingo card, but hey... ETA: Eric convincing Andy to go on this suicide mission with/for him was probably the most Jack Bauer-ish he's been in the show to date--utterly insane as it was--and for that alone it gets a pass.

This was a pleasantly low-key episode. Not much Van, or Jackie or Wendy for that matter apart from Jackie's ominously-voiced flashback (which probably was the highlight of the show, considering her status as a sort of cynical baseline normality), a little superpowered mayhem in the background, poor Ron's sled, and a little The Good Place-ish (Tamila, albeit somewhat inverted) character development for Teddy. Not to mention the fact that androids exist in this universe now, which probably opens the door for the thing I'm really waiting for: Evil Twins. (Barring parallel universes, which is probably another thing this show will likely address if it gets that far.) Flip side, Van getting involved with a woman whose daughter is apparently an entitled princess in her own right makes utterly perfect sense for him. The only way it would have been more appropriate is if we'd seen the girlfriend and it was one of the actual Real Housewives of Wherever. As for the bagging on Florida... Yeeeeaaaaah, I'mma let it slide.

You're likely right, DrScottie. It doesn't quite explain the footage leaked to the media (going off the camera work shown it was ground-level footage--but that doesn't rule out Mariana tipping off a stringer), but it definitely explains Action Bae and Isaac getting jumped. And since we have to have one CTU mole per season or thereabouts, and Pa Donovan averted that...

Major points to poor Papa Chechen for almost literally being the sanest person in at least the past two episodes of this show. And a few points to Show for actually swerving me about the fate of Mr. Harris, let alone Amira and Jenkins the bridge cop (who came dangerously close to stealing the show from Amira; the bridge sequence was surprisingly understated and effective). OTOH...I need the show to explain how the hell Hipster Kid Terrorist knew where Action Bae and Isaac were, because barring another mole that made negative sense and damn near torpedoed the episode.

Dare I say that in some ways this felt even more like a Mothership episode than the apparently unofficial premiere episode did, and that's not even including Robinette showing up (complete with defense attorney surprise motion flyby--drink!). The thing that really worked against it, IMHO, is that it directly crossed over with CPD; not that that was bad per se, because it wasn't. It's not the first time it's done it, either, but it still feels weird to play that card this soon twice in a newborn show (especially considering how things almost turned out for Atwater). OTOH, after last week I was wondering if Ben Stone was still alive and this answered that question surprisingly gracefully on top of its embracing its L&O-ness even harder than last week, so...halfsies?

I'm still undecided about this after watching this episode twice (or rather once somewhat closely, though I still missed that the judge was Danielle friggin' Melnick--how the hell did that happen, L&O-verse?!?), but it surprisingly felt a lot like the Mothership in places. A somewhat glossier and shinier Mothership, but still. Philip Winchester came off a little more McCoy-esque than Stone-esque, IMO, if decidedly more square-jawed than either. And I couldn't help thinking that the perp du jour looked a little too much like a young Donald Trump to be coincidental, but I can't figure out why that would have been. That said, I'm at least curious to see if it can maintain its L&O-ness...so game on, show.