clack

99% of the bright, charming, attractive, promising teenagers go on to lead ordinary lives with ordinary careers. Because Rory, in the end, doesn't amount to much as a journalist, does that make her a permanent failure at life? If, say, her memoir is published and she gets a job teaching at Chilton and raising her daughter in Stars Hollow, I'd say she had done well in life.

The whole idea of romance between post-biological people is silly. Why are high levels of dopamine and norepinephrine being released in non-existent brains for the non-existent biological purpose of mating and producing children? But then, we never do get a clear picture of the physicality of the afterlife. Do spirits have digestive systems? Hearts? Blood? Can ghosts get pregnant? I don't get the insistence on "soul mates". Mating is biological. Why would souls need to pair off for an eternity?

That's a lot of "probably"s.

John gossips as a way to connect with the world of celebrity. Becoming a part of that world, which he does by becoming friends with Tahini, is what he has always wanted, and what gossip has substituted for. He has mocked the glamorous because he wanted to be one, and now that he has, he no longer has any urge for mockery. I don't see that as praiseworthy. What would have been worthy of points is if he'd become friends with Chidi and enlarged his interests to include the world of the mind.

Throughout the previous 7 episodes, we never did get a precise sense on what traits the new subjects needed to improve upon. Something like, Simone needs to become less judgemental, Brent more self-aware of his own shortcomings, John needs to mind his own business and respect the privacy of others. Instead we got the overly generalized motive that they just must become better people, which could mean almost anything. So, when we saw the final scorecard, I had no idea of how or why. Why was Brent so much worse than he was when alive? Simone struck me as about the same as when we saw her on Earth. Was she really 40 points better, or whatever the score was? And wasn't John, when push came to shove, still a tattletale? Why did he get so much points?

I've always had a problem with Jason's lack of dimension, but he's entertaining comic relief. Seems like every comedy has to have the dumb guy. And there's a sense that the writers have affection for him. Tahini is fleshed out a bit more. She's a snob, but insecure. And her ethnicity -- Indian? Pakistani? -- gives a novel twist to the British upperclass snob stereotype. Jason and Tahini are types, but not stereotypes. John and Brent are stereotypes.

John and Brent are stereotypes -- bitchy gay man, country club Republican. And that's all the characterization they get. Flat characters -- Mindy, the demons -- work just fine as long as they remain minor characters. My problem with John and Brent was that they were asked to pull too much thematic and plotting weight for how flimsily portrayed they were.

I don't know which speaks worse for the writers -- that they tried to create interesting new characters and failed, or that they thought it a good idea to spend much of the precious screen time of their final season with new characters that they purposely made in order to bore the viewers.

As shallowly written as Brent is, John might be even more superficially imagined -- a stereotype of the bitchy, gossipy gay man. If this is the last we see of Brent and John, then they were the final season's most disappointing feature. I would have liked to see their characters examined in the light of Chidi's moral philosophy seminars.

My understanding is that FF, Deadpool, Blade, and Nova are in early stages of development, with Silver Surfer and Thunderbolts next in new IP queue. Since Feige said that we wants at least one non-sequel movie per year, it seems Fantastic Four is a possibility for 2022.

Yeah, she's supposed to be on various charitable committees, but I don't believe the Emily we see would have ever been accepted amongst such circles in real life. Snobbery and even bigotry is one thing, but being charmless, without conversation, rude to the help, and openly ungracious to her "social inferiors"would have made her persona non grata in charitable circles -- unless maybe she were filthy rich, which she is not.

Probably unintentional, but Rory does have a coherent character arc. High school : big fish, small pond. Yale : mediocre fish, medium-sized pond. Adult, working world : small fish, big pond.

Emily never made sense to me. She's a socialite with zero social skills.

I miss Chidi's moral philosophy seminars. For Brent, philosophical discussions on racism and sexism would be a bit much for a light comedy, but for John? Gossip ; moral or immoral, truth telling or violation of privacy, and so on might have proved interesting. Instead we got some banal psychology -- he gossiped about celebrities out of insecurity and envy, or whatever. Any show can give you psychology, but only the Good Place gives the viewer moral philosophy.

Eleanor knew when she was being an asshole, she just didn't care. But that degree of self-awareness makes her oddly sympathetic. Brent has no self-awareness, which might make him less culpable morally ( could make for a good discussion with Chidi -- is it worse when you do wrong knowingly, or when you do so through complacent ignorance?), but also makes Brent less appealing.

Ant Man 3 is filming early '21 for a '22 release date. So far for '22 we have Black Panther 2 and Ant Man 3 confirmed -- with one or maybe 2 more on deck. Speculation is that Fantastic Four and/or Deadpool 3 might also appear in '22, with Blade also a possibility.

Season 1 Eleanor was as big of an asshole as Brent is. And pre-deceased Jason was much worse than either -- a stupid, violent, bomb-throwing criminal who was lucky he didn't wind up murdering someone. And yet, if Chidi had decked either Jason or Eleanor it would have damaged the tone of the show, because the writers had empathically imagined the characters. Brent, as presented so far, is a failure of the writers's imaginations.

The Brent problem is killing this season. I want to watch how the core 6 characters relate to each other, and how they develop as individuals. Instead, the writers have created this human piñata stuffed with every negative attribute that they can imagine. Too much of the precious remaining time left to the show has been spent bashing this cardboard character, but to what purpose? I keep waiting for some compelling twist or intriguing development in Brent's characterization, but maybe the writers are just venting their political anger, and that's all that's going on with this final season.

Masked vigilante family tree: Scarlet Pimpernel > Zorro > Lone Ranger > Batman Really, I don't know how someone could look at the Lone Ranger and not see how he was inspired by Zorro.

That's an internet myth, a myth that makes no sense if you give it a minute's thought. A radio scriptwriter invented in 1933 a fictional Texas Ranger who survives the massacre of his ranger company, dons a mask, and seeks to bring to bring the perpetrators of the massacre to justice without resorting to killing. Bass Reeves was not a Texas Ranger (who were a pretty racist bunch, btw), did not wear a mask, did not have an Indian sidekick, and killed people. And there is no evidence that the Lone Ranger's creators had even heard of Bass Reeves.

Not what I am saying. I'm not saying that arrogance doesn't exist. I am saying that Tahini is also arrogant, entitled, and superior but she's sympathetic and entertaining because she's just not a collection of negative traits. She's allowed to be a person. Brent is not fun, imo. Some may enjoy his appearances on the show, I don't. He annoys me.

Brent is a conglomeration of all the negative cliches a political progressive might hold about a certain class of white male. He's a satiric target, not a person. That's why he's coming off to some of us as flat and lifeless. He has the crassness and selfishness of the old Eleanor combined with the entitlement of Tahini, but with none of the contradictions and nuance that make those characters fun.

It's a bit of a mystery up to now who has had final say in the comics division. It hasn't been Perlmutter (the politics of the comics are uniformly progressive, anti-Trump). It isn't C.B. Cebulski, the nominal editor-in-chief, whose decisions as to which low-selling titles to cancel are frequently over-ruled. Joe Quesada maybe? Anyway, it's been a long time since Marvel has created characters as compelling as those created decades ago by Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and Wein. Maybe that's an area upon which Feige can concentrate.

Time was that a writer would have to prove herself/himself on indie comics before being hired to write for Marvel. Last few years, they've hired people whose only writing experience is blogging, or writing a book of poetry, or self-publishing a YA novel. (Real examples). It's a good idea to hire outside the group of usual suspects, but if Marvel does so, it needs editors with the time and ability to develop inexperienced writers -- writers who may have never read a superhero comic before. (Real examples). DC and Marvel publish about 50 titles a month each. Selling these books in airports or train stations is not an option (though cutting back on the number of titles might be).

Only a #1 issue will sell in the 250,000 unit range. Subsequent issues of even a Marvel top seller will ship around 120,000. For contrast, X-men #1 sold well over 8 million copies in 1991. The comics division could definitely use a shot in the arm. Perhaps Feige can help provide it.