stagmania

I see this narrative pushed often in online forums-but agree that it's not the show's intent. It mostly seems to come from Sansa fans who argue that she should be the one with elevated power and Jon did her wrong somehow. I've never really understood that argument. I just rewatched season 6, and she isn't particularly helpful to Jon as they plan to fight for Winterfell. She makes speeches about how she's valuable and he should listen to her, but when he does she doesn't tell him anything of value, or with any clarity. He's open to listening to her counsel and trusting her, but she doesn't give him the chance. And of course, in the end she sends him and their army into battle completely outmatched and lets a bunch of them get killed because she didn't want to tell him she had another army up her sleeve. I really don't want to see that power struggle dynamic dragging on too much in the new season; they've never written it well and it reflects badly on her character in ways they clearly don't intend. I think the "Jon is dumb" thing is also fueled by people who felt the same about Ned and Robb and want to draw parallels about the Stark men.

I guess it's you and me. I really did not like the second half of this episode, or the last several weeks. And I feel oddly guilty for not liking it, I think because this show feels important, or at least like it should be.

Well, that was...fine? I found the first half, with the face off between June and Serena Joy, far more compelling than the second. I sense that I was supposed to be very moved and inspired by the rock dropping scene. I was not. Always a bummer when a show displays a smug self-satisfaction over a moment that didn't actually work. Maybe if they'd pelted the rocks at Aunt Lydia and the guards, it would have felt like the big rebellion they wanted it to be. I also thought the way they got to the ending was weird. It felt abrupt and disconnected from what came before. Missing some connective tissue. I think overall my reaction is kind of a shrug. Which sucks, because I was all in on this show at the start.

Popping in halfway through the episode to say: holy shit, Serena Joy is truly a monster.

Laser-focused doesn't mean no ambiguity. It means concentrated on one specific thing; in this case, Offred's experience. I understand that when they made the choice to make THT a long term series (a bad choice, IMO), it necessitated that they expand the universe and flesh out other characters. But I don't think they're doing a great job of it on the whole (Emily being the exception), and it's taking away from the part of the show that initially did seem perfectly calibrated. This story is meant to be short and pointed and brutal.

I'm just catching up on the last two episodes, and this bothered me so much. They have Jezebels styled like a generic high class prostitution establishment you'd see on any given pay cable prestige drama. Way too glamorous, way too clean and pretty, and the way the women were shot by the director felt completely driven by the male gaze. I mean, gratuitous tit shots, really? June in a cocktail dress with perfect hair and makeup, Moira with some fancy fetish head gear and a nicely fit, very expensive looking ensemble. COME ON. They completely missed the point of what this place is supposed to be. Their few attempts to undercut the titillation in later sequences didn't make up for it, IMO. They've been losing me since the mid-point of the season. I don't think either of the male character-focused episodes were executed very well, and there's some fuzziness I can't quite put my finger on around June. I just don't feel like I have a strong sense of who she is and what she values, aside from her daughter. And even that doesn't come across to me as her sole driving force, and I think it's supposed to. Some of the plot decisions, like excising Econowives from the universe, are just bizarre to me. I don't know, man. This show hit me so viscerally for the first few episodes, and I thought it was something really special. With each passing week and each attempt to widen the scope of the story and stray from the laser-focused book plot, that feeling lessens.

They didn't give any clear hints about the time lapse, other than that Kevin, Sr is still alive and 91. He's in his mid-70s in present time (at least, the actor is), so that's where that estimate comes from. If y'all could stop using the word "hag" to describe women, I'd really appreciate it.

I think the first time he said it was meant to confuse both Nora and the audience-wait, are we in an alternate timeline? Did Kevin lose memory after one too many trips to the other place? Is he just fucking with her? But over the course of their conversation on the porch and then at the wedding, I thought they gave us plenty of hints as to what he was doing. He kept having emotional reactions that didn't make sense with the story he was telling. The most clear being "I thought you'd be there" about Matt's funeral, and saying he hadn't ever moved on because he was still holding a candle for her. He was slipping up constantly. By the time they were dancing, Nora (and we) knew full well that he remembered everything and was just misguidedly trying to give them a clean slate. She rejected it, choosing to confront the truth. Sidenote: if Justin Theroux actually ages the way that Kevin did, KUDOS.

This. In the end, whether life was worth living came down to the personal connections these damaged people made with each other. We don't need to know if Nora's story was real, or if Kevin's alternate universe was real, because that's how faith works. You don't get to know, you just believe. Or you don't. The theme song of this show is called Let The Mystery Be. Every religious and supernatural element of the story along the way has been loaded with ambiguity. No one has answers about the huge questions this show addressed; we all have to stumble through life desperate to know and destined to never find out. If you went into this finale expecting definitive answers, you failed to listen to what the show's been telling you all along.

Wow, I really recommend going back and watching the entire series. There's so much depth behind all we saw with Nora and Kevin in this ending.

They did that very intentionally, because whether Nora is telling Kevin the truth about what happened is an open question that will never be answered. Not a coincidence that this episode featured an awful lot of convincing lying.

That was beautiful. What an absolutely singular show this has been.

I assume this is going to be part of the story next season, now that Kimmy is coming back into prominence. Philip has kind of been coasting with her, which makes sense given where he's been mentally, and that he was planning to leave. Now that her dad is a much more important target that they'll want to secure access to for the long term, and given that Kimmy's aging is inevitably going to change the situation, I assume Philip will have to make some changes to his approach. It might not actually be the big break he's hoping for. That's how Philip got in with Kimmy in the first place-by approaching her group of friends and offering first fake IDs, and then pot. They've always known about "Jim". If any of them ever compromised him, Jim would cease to be and the Centre would come up with another way into the house. Kimmy was an unusually young target that required a different approach, but the fundamentals underlying the operation with her are the same as they are across all their work.

As soon as Philip said the decision was made, followed by a montage with my favorite Elton John song, I knew it wasn't made and they weren't going anywhere. I didn't expect the deus ex machina to come from the Kimmy plot, though, so they got me there. I liked this season overall, though I share some of the frustrations of everyone else. I think this idea of focusing on P&E's burnout and depression probably would have worked better if the rest of the compelling cast of characters we knew were still in place and fueling the story. As it was, they set this emotionally remote and downbeat tale against the backdrop of a bunch of new characters we don't care about, and so much of it fell flat. But I appreciated the evolution we saw here. Elizabeth is truly changed; she's barely recognizable as the woman who began the series, and that change is borne of allowing herself to love and trust Philip, and as a result open herself more emotionally to others. Her steely core is still intact, but the way she sees her family, the people they work with, and her life is fundamentally different. I think her speech to Tuan about needing someone was both spot on and also a portent of doom for her plan to shoulder the burden for herself and Philip moving forward. It's touching that she wants to save him, but they've only made it as far as they have because they've been in it together. I also really appreciated that lovely grace note for Martha, and I truly hope it's the last we see of her. It's a better ending than I ever could have imagined, and I'd be very content to picture her living a quiet, happy life with a daughter that will fulfill her more than Clark ever could.

This isn't a Lost forum, so perhaps grievances about that show can be aired somewhere else. I'm wondering how much closure or lack thereof we might get in the finale. There seems to be a Future Nora story in play, but hard to say what we'll get for the other characters.

Very late to this one, and my main takeaway is that I'm just not that into Luke. I knew they'd need to do some padding to take the book plot through the end of the season, and that's what this felt like to me: mildly interesting filler. Looking forward to getting back to June.

I've seen every episode of Lost and I rarely think about it when watching this show. Some people are very fixated on hating Lindelof (it's what drove him off social media). I'm wondering about this, too. With Kevin, while there is some mystery about whether he really has a divine connection or a mental illness (or both), there is no mystery about his apparent inability to physically die. I hope we'll see it addressed again in the final episode, though I wouldn't be surprised if we're not given any sort of definitive explanation for it.

Welp. Can't unsee that one.

I laughed out loud at the bits with Patti's glasses. Just the perfect little tension breaking moments. Yes, all dead, but they were also all people he knew were dead. He had no reason to see Laurie there, because he doesn't know what she did. This place, whatever it is, is shaped by Kevin's experiences and losses.

So Kevin realizes he wants to stop running...just as Nora decides to annihilate herself. I can honestly say I have no freaking clue what's going to happen next week, but it looks like the world didn't end after all. It was strangely exhilarating to see Patti and Meg again. Anyone else get some outside discomfort from all the talk of the radical American president, Russia and nuclear holocaust? I wonder how long ago they planned the details of this last little journey to the other side.

Yeah, this is the only explanation for his affect that really makes sense to me, but I'm still not really satisfied with how they're doing it. Perhaps if other characters noted the change in him, it would feel more deliberate. As it is, it almost feels like fanwanking to tell myself it's a choice to highlight his depression, as opposed to just a function of the overall drab feeling of the entire season.

I am way late to this episode and unfortunately don't have time right now to read through all four pages of comments, but something specific is bugging me about Philip. He seems so...muted? I don't know if that's the right word, but I've had a creeping realization coming across the season and it really hit me in this one: his reactions to everything that's happening are understated to the point of being inscrutable. We often have nothing but the (generally excellent) facial expressions of Matthew Rhys to go on to determine what's going on in his head. And this is connected to the larger issue that they have stopped showing us some of the really meaty emotional stuff with P&E. We've seen few intimate scenes with them this year, and it seems we are meant to assume they're very tight, connected and on the same page without being shown that. We also keep getting these scenes where there's a revelation, or something that indicates a big change coming (like the car scene last week), and then the next episode it's referred to obliquely, but we don't really get to dig in and see how they responded to it and worked through it. Did P&E both immediately agree that they would go to the Centre and request that they be allowed to end their tours? Was there any discussion of wanting to stay in America? Did they agree about how Paige and Henry might respond? Was any consideration given at all to trying to leave without going through the Centre? As someone whose primary interest in this show is all about the characters, their emotions, their feelings about the work they do and their sense of family with each other, I find it frustrating that they're not showing us this stuff, especially when so much screen time is being devoted to the ongoing Oleg and Stan plots, which, frankly, I find pretty boring. I have enjoyed this season a lot more than most on this forum, and I am still all in on this show and this story, but I am puzzled by some of the choices the creative team has made about where to focus story time this year.

They have a really nice, easy chemistry that gives you the impression they've known each other forever. I don't detect any passion between them (which tracks with the story), but the affection is palpable. It was a strange woman he had just met, but yeah. To be a little crude, she literally disappeared while he was inside her. That's gonna mess anyone up. This is literally what the entire show is about. I think they've done a pretty thorough job of exploring the psychological effects of the Departure and showing us what it brought out in people and why. As @Helena Dax mentioned, these were not typical losses; it was a cataclysmic event with no explanation that shook humanity to its core.

His entire family fell apart in the aftermath. His father became ill, his wife withdrew and became suicidal and joined a cult, his son ran away, his daughter started acting out. And while his family was falling apart, he was grappling with immense guilt over how he took them for granted and how ambivalent he felt about being with them before everything changed. On top of that, he began struggling with his own mental health and experiencing either deep delusions or some kind of divine connection. Seems like plenty of reason to me.

Yep. This show always gets the little details right.