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Ikki

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Posts posted by Ikki

  1. Ruth is adorable. I didn't realize that she was played by twins until just now when I was trying to look up the age of the actress. It helps too that so far her dialogue seems fair for a three year old. A lot of the time the problem I have with child actors is that the writers give them lines that indicate they may have never met a child before in their lives.

    • Love 2
  2. 6 hours ago, illdoc said:

    Just before the MCJ began this season, there was an article in the Chicago Tribune with a brief paragraph on all 6 contestants from the area. I know there's one kid (maybe Mikey) who said that he was at a cooking camp when approached to be on the show and he didn't want to do it but his family talked him into it. Which is, I suppose, both "interested in cooking" (cooking camp) and "not interested" (didn't want to be on the show).

    Continuing this here-- I found the article in question and it wasn't Mikey who said that-- he actually talks about begging his parents to let him try out. The kid who was recruited from a cooking camp was named Luca and didn't make the top 24 (there was also another kid who mentioned being recruited and didn't make the top 24). Luca says in the article that it ended up being pretty fun for him, but it still seems crappy for me for parents to be pushing their kid to do a reality TV show when the kid really doesn't want to.

    • Love 2
  3. On 4/14/2018 at 12:32 AM, rhys said:

    How did the student get a lock of Miles's hair? Doesn't he live in Cali? Plus don't you need the root? Come on, science!

    Durbin's sleepwalking was disturbing (heh, that rhymes).

    Heather has been catfishing him since one of Jack's early plots for the kids. How you work, "Hey, send me some of your hair?" into a catfish relationship I don't know.

    But apparently Heather does.

    • Love 4
  4. I agree, this was a good episode. It helped that the side plots were tied into the main one.

    The party with the kids actually reminded me of something that happened during my senior year of high school; some kids in my social group had a party in one girl's basement, and there was alcohol, and it was a Big Deal 'cause we were nerds, y'all. I mean, my friends' and my format for a party throughout high school involved pinatas and silly string. So I found those parts funny and relatable.

    • Love 2
  5. 4 hours ago, SmithW6079 said:

    I think the book Jack was shopping to publishers was supposed to be good -- it was that manuscript that got the students talking. The shitty book was the "101 Smiles" that Jack wrote overnight by stealing Helen's folksy sayings.

    Yeah, it makes sense that it was "supposed" to be good, looking at the episode as a whole. Just, when he was initially writing it, from the glimpses we got and how he was selling it, I was fully expecting it to be rejected-- not because publishers wanted happy stuff, but because his book was terrible. Then the show did that thing of just referencing the supposedly "best" parts of the work in a way that indicates they were there without fleshing out what they were.

    Basically it falls under showing vs telling, and going forward I hope they get better at showing, and showing quality.

    I feel like there's not a lot of overlap between viewers of this show and viewers of Degrassi Next Class, but I'm going to make this comparison anyway: in one season of the show, this character Miles produces a play. And in parts of that season and into the next season, other characters reference the play in a way that makes it clear that in-universe it was supposed to be well-received. Thing was, the play was awful. Like, it was painful to watch, and we as the audience were only subjected to bits of it. 

    Honestly, that was a stronger case of what I'm concerned about than I can see happening here (I really hated that play, y'all). And it's possible they could have Jack espouse shitty philosophy that the kids take as mind blowing and play that as humorous, but I hope they don't.

  6. Stef, Mary, and Michelle add incredibly little to the show overall. Their plots often feel like a, "Meanwhile, elsewhere in the school..." that I do not care about. Durbin and Helen I'm okay with, and when they're at least connected to the main plot it doesn't feel like a waste. I wish the B-plots focused more on different students, and even better if they ended up connecting to the A-plots.

    The end of this episode seems like it could signal a shift for how Jack approaches the class, which could be interesting but feels like it should have happened sooner. Also, from the bits of the writing process that were shown, it seems like he wrote a genuinely shitty book. If this show does move into incorporating more philosophy, I hope it's in a higher quality way.

    • Love 2
  7. On 3/20/2018 at 8:28 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

    The are several separate issues with AP classes. Getting an A in an AP class gives you a 5 point A which boosts your GPA. Most college now look at the total number of AP classes you've taken. Those two things can help you get into college.

    The 5 point A thing depends on the school. My high school didn't switch over to weighting APs until I was in my junior year, I believe. Also, some colleges ignore AP GPA inflation when it comes to admittance and continue to look at it on a 4 point scale, though they will still note what classess you've taken, of course.

    The boost of your science GPA when going into med school or such is a good point. I'd also add that some might choose not to take an AP exam because having those credits can end up costing more. This is because it can bump up where you're considered to be in your undergrad experience, and courses can cost more for those further along.

  8. Haha, it's funny to me that people didn't know that ga-ga ball was a real thing. How weird that must have been during the episode.

    It's quite popular with kids around here, so I could totally see it getting a bunch of recess hype as the new thing.

  9. I'm currently binge watching the show for the first time on Netflix. I'm near the end of season four right now.

    One of my favorite bits of characterization is how much Archer loves (most) animals. Whenever an animal shows up, I get excited for him to interact with it.

  10. I watched this show while also doing other things, and I thought it was okay. Then afterward, I started thinking about it, and it's just really not a premise that's meant to be thought about. I'm a teacher, so there are (often major) details that raise a lot of questions for me. Like, I'm stopping myself from going off on a rant right now.

    Obviously with TV, there's going to be some suspension of disbelief needed. But while I find the show somewhat entertaining in parts, I don't know if it's entertaining enough to warrant the extent I'm telling myself not to think about things.

    • Love 6
  11. 2 hours ago, rhys said:

    I was disturbed to learn that Holt had a gambling addiction. Has that come up before?

    Holt's gambling addiction has come up before, as a matter of fact! (I'm excited about that because I love continuities like that.)

    It came up in season 2, episode 8, "USPIS." When they were trying to help Amy quit smoking, Holt says, "I don't like to talk about this, but many years ago, I myself overcame an addiction. I could not get enough of the ponies." And then...well, here's the clip:

    • Love 14
  12. 22 hours ago, Dee said:

    I loved that one of the main reasons Junior enjoyed public school was because he liked being with other Black kids and having Black teachers.

    It adds a nice bit of semi-generational contrast to the twins colorblindness.

    I liked that as well. Black teachers are so important, and it's interesting to me that there was the implications that there were none at Junior's private school. I've read various reports about the importance of Black students seeing/having Black teachers, though at the same time there are numerous factors that limit the presence of Black teachers. 

    • Love 5
  13. 3 hours ago, kathyk24 said:

    I didn't like this episode. I thought there was too much talking about JJ and not enough talking to him. I hated Ray trying to plan his siblings' life for them. Nora and JJ being nominated for homecoming king and Queen reminded me of Mack and Jodie being Homecoming King and Queen on Daria. Mack and Jodie are black while most of the students are white. It seemed patronizing to me.

    Well, the nomination was supposed to seem patronizing. It was, and that was kind of the point-- that people, both in shipping them and nominating them, were treating them as their disability rather than people. And their speech was going to criticize that, but then they didn't win.

    • Love 8
  14. As a public school graduate and current public school teacher, there were a lot of things that bothered me about this episode. In fact, some of the comments from the Johnson's reminded me of various racist comments I heard from various people when I was teaching in a predominately black (98%, I believe) public school. I suppose the source of the comments does matter somewhat, but still.

    The less serious thing that bothered me, though, was in the end tag when Junior and his friends were talking about movies from the MCU. They were talking about watching them in chronological order, and Junior suggested that Guardians of the Galaxy, because it was in space, could somehow be before Captain America: The First Avenger. Really? With how prominent 80s music and and nostalgia is in that film, not to mention the opening scene ON EARTH, Junior is really going to say it could have happened BEFORE a movie set during WWII?

    • Love 11
  15. As soon as Amy starting talking about how Jake could no longer surprise her when they were in the room with the belt, I knew he was going to propose. So I wasn't surprised at that moment, but I was ridiculously happy. 

    (Not as happy as I was when Ben proposed to Leslie, which actually made me cry, but still.)

    • Love 4
  16. Well, that was largely depressing.

    Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but it definitely seemed to be more of the "sad" side of the coin to me.  If I hadn't watched the previous three seasons, I probably would have found the wackier elements to be more jarring from an overall more serious show.

    That said, with my understanding of the show as a whole, I did love the clown dentists.

    I also really liked how they played with story form in how the episodes were presented. The biggest gut punch for me was the end of episode nine, "Ruthie," when it's revealed that her great-granddaughter talking about her was in PC's imagination. It really wasn't the biggest thing of the season, but I guess throughout the episode I was taking comfort in it the same way PC was, thinking, "Well, if her great-granddaughter is telling this story, things must work out." And then to have that taken away was just...really well done.

    Some of the asexual stuff seemed clunky to me, but on the whole I was just thrilled that there was so much explicit asexual representation.

    I also enjoyed hearing Captain Raymond Holt in some episodes.

    • Love 7
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