Ankai

I posted something similar in the episode thread, but is it possible to retcon that Paul actually knew about the clone project without losing anything in his actions or dialogue? He could have been lying through his teeth, feigning ignorance, or speaking cryptically to suggest that he knew nothing without actually saying that. The Afghanistan friendly fire incident may have been true, but misleading, with the male cloning project the main secret.

Well, it is science, at least. I am not sure what profit they got out of the cloning process yet. That fire extinguisher plan confused me too. Also, I thought that maybe they were trying to build a makeshift rocket that would create enough chaos in the room for Sarah to make her way out, but no. I didn't find that moment to be anti-abortion. It was probably a difficult time in Sarah's already difficult life and the questioner seemed rather callous with the question. Sarah may be tough, but I was personally okay with her not acting defensive about it at this time. More plot conspiracy stuff. I am not sure where they are going with Project Castor and I also have trouble figuring out how much Paul knew about each project at what time. I have no real feelings about it being Ari Millen instead of Dylan or Jordan, but we shall see how it goes. I wonder if the friendly fire story in Afghanistan was just a cover for him having stumbled across clones. Could TPTB retcon that Paul actually did know about the female clones? Did he actually say that he did not know in the first season? He said that his Dyad bosses did not tell him why he was monitoring Sarah, but he actually say that he did not know? It could very well be that he knew that she was a clone, but did not realize that she also knew until she told him. And maybe I am thinking about this more than the showrunners have. I just hope that the constant plot twists regarding the fallout of Project Leda will slow down, but I am not holding my breath. So, last season's finale had a contract and this one does as well. The reveal of a young clone is interesting, though I am not sure why there could not have been eight of them wandering around Marion's house. Speaking of Marion, I still don't know what to make of her character or what her role was supposed to be in the season. She had, what, four scenes before the finale, and all I got was that she was some big boss or something. I had only a vague notion of what Dyad is and now it is revealed that it is part of an umbrella corporation. All right, then. This episode just reinforced my wish that the episodes really were about an hour long rather than 43 1/2 minutes. That dance party scene was...fine, I guess. But there were three moments that I feel were sacrificed for it. The first was Cal actually meeting Alison and Cosima as opposed to saying goodbye. The second was Helena actually talking with Alison and Cosima...particularly Alison, since I would assume that Helena was going after both her and Beth when she arrived in the City. The third is a possible meeting between Art and the other clones, specifically talking about Angie with Alison. Really, I wish that Alison got more time.

Perhaps, but I deliberately did not include Morello, since it seems to me that she has psychological issues that might prevent her from really understanding what she was doing. As for the spoilers, I had figured that this thread was for the entirety of Season 2 and that the thread title itself was a spoiler warning.

Well, sure, there were a lot of characters who may have seemed to have the deck stacked against them or made one bad decision, but not all of them. Putting aside characters like Morello and Suzanne, there are at least a few characters who did not need to do what they did. We don't know how Rosa ended up with those guys or whose idea it was to rob a bank, but she most likely intended to kill that guy during the first robbery. Whatever her deal was, she did not need to rob that last bank on a whim. Cindy did not have to frequently abuse her position at the airport and she definitely did not need to steal that laptop just to impress her daughter or get back at her mother. Pennsatucky did not have to shoot that woman just for insulting her. Sister Ingalls did not have to deliberately try to get arrested for vandalism time and time again. The show may have sympathized or even empathized with them, but I did not see it giving them backstories that let them off the hook or softened their actions. In fact, a couple of them came off as worse to me.

That may be true, but I think that one reason for this is that the show provides absolutely no means of getting the prisoners to come to terms with what they did. Getting sent to prison was not so much a punishment, but a means of isolating them and their actions from society. Aside from that mock job competition, there did not seem to be much there to encourage them to modify their behavior except for the prison rules that do not apply to the outside world. I suppose that one could say that the counseling was an effort, but that seemed to be more about feelings than behavior. Being surrounded by other inmates gave each one of them little time for self-reflection and opportunities for such in solitary were undermined by the seemingly arbitrary nature of how inmates landed there. If the inmates could acknowledge that they did something bad, then they might accept that they belonged in prison, but it seems that anger over treatment by the prison (as well as by other inmates) is a distraction. Piper sometimes seems like she could come close to this type of acknowledgement, but she keeps wavering. She is not much better than she was before imprisonment and one might argue that she has become worse. Sure, it might be her fault for not actually becoming a better person, but it also suggests that this prison is no good when it comes to rehabilitation or reforming. The prison is not teaching them the error of their ways just by treating them like cattle or grounded children.

I realize that, but I did find it a little ironic.

On the one hand, I do agree that she changed quite a bit, but I got the feeling that it could have been due to her loss of validation and support. Angie and Leanne pretty much turned away from her and the other White inmates did not care for her either...or the rest of the inmates for that matter. Healy was sort of there for her, being a counselor and all, so she started to cling to him. And when Boo sort of opened up to her, even sarcastically, Pennsatucky kind of jumped on that.

For some reason, it really tickled me that her most active attempts to get at Vee's drug trade happened when she got drunk.

While I do kind of wish her backstory actually went into her backstory instead of adding a twist to Taystee's backstory, I did not mind not seeing her childhood. Edited to add: Now that I think of it, a lot of people in other people's backstories never got explanations for their being bad. Both the gangster and the robber in Watson's backstory. That Cesar guy in Daya's backstory. Gloria's abusive man. The Russian gangsters and their stuck-up wives. Miss Rosa's partners in crime. The abusive man who got Claudetted. Even Mendez and his lonely man problems did not really explain his behavior, let alone justify it. Perhaps Vee could have used a fuller backstory to explain why she was so bad, but she didn't. She just happened to be another one of those bad people; the main difference was that she got sent to this prison.

I suppose that the "just barely stepped a toe over the line" could apply to a few prisoners, such as Watson or Daya, but not all of them. Aleida, Alex, Cindy, Miss Claudette, Gloria, Red, Taystee, were already deep into illicit activity when they got caught. Both Morello and Pennsatucky almost committed murder for no good reason. Rosa could very well have killed that guard had her gun actually been loaded. Yoga Jones DID kill someone while guarding her illegal operation. Vee may seem to have been the worst of the bunch, but she is hardly an isolated case.

Can someone actually quit when his boss is fired? I was kind of that way too, but I also kind of wished that we heard that phone conversation between Cosima and Sarah. This was at least the second time this season where a conversation between the two of them about Cosima's illness happened off-screen.

Those promotional "One. Of a kind" posters...are they actual posters or just promotional images? I was hoping to purchase one, but I saw only some "rare" posting on eBay. Amazon.com has only some photo posters, that early image with a person who is not Tatiana, and an image of the DVD cover. The BBC store had only DVDs.

As much as I enjoy having the clones together, I was confused as to why Sarah had to go to the rehab center/centre if Felix had spiked Vic's tea. Did he do that before or after the call? Also, does taking part in that role-playing thing reduce one's stay at rehab? Otherwise, I don't see why Alison would have volunteered for that. I have not really been feeling the Project Leda backstory, partially since I was not that sold on it in the beginning. Not so much what it was, but the consequences surrounding it. When Amelia tried going to Sarah with a warning about Mrs. S, all I could think of was how they got in contact, for how long Amelia played along, and why. At that point, we knew nothing about Project Leda or those people in the photograph, other than Mrs. S was involved and it was probably taken in 1977. It was also implied to be related to the cloning experiment somehow. I guess that it was a plot twist hook regarding someone Sarah had known since she was a child, but the foundation seemed shaky already. Flash forward to episode two of this season. Mrs. S denies knowing anything about Project Leda, but then confirms that she knows about it. Episode four. There is a huge info dump, saying that they were married, they were Rachel's adoptive parents, the implication that they could have been Sarah's adoptive parents under other circumstances, that they were apparently loving parents, and that they died in a lab explosion. Episode five. Oh, wait. Father Duncan is alive. Leekie says that the lab explosion wiped out the...original...ge...nome??? Whatever it was, Leekie's efforts have been to get back what was lost or through reverse engineering or something. Sarah tells him that she knows that Ethan Duncan is alive, but Leekie's response is unclear. Episode six...so...Leekie caused the explosion? Because... Episode seven....because the Duncans were going to run off with the...stuff? Was this the same stuff that he was trying to reverse engineer? Did he decide that it was better to destroy it and spend the next two decades trying to recreate it than to let those two scientists run off with it? Maybe I should rewatch the episodes to figure this out, but it just seems like random plot twists. Well, whatever his motives were, the company has apparently rendered him expendable for some reason...aaaaaand he's dead for an only somewhat related reason. Right now, it just seemed to be going everywhere and nowhere until it turned into a way to make Leekie seem like a total bad guy before killing him off. So... Episode eight...is Rachel or Ethan or this new character going to go into more depth about Project Leda and Leekie's involvement?

Okay, so I did miss something. Thanks. Maybe it would have been more dramatic for her to be held captive for longer, but then it might have been too much of a coincidence for Jack to get her out just when everything is going down. Maybe she was captured because of Heller's visit; not necessarily directly, but something that she did involving the upcoming visit got someone's attention and they managed to track her down. Now, how Jack managed to hatch that really elaborate plan is anyone's guess. I wonder how he would have gotten in contact with her otherwise. He didn't know where the hacker headquarters was until Chloe went there, did he?

Apparently, this is loosely based on some experience (or multiple experiences) that he had in his 20s, though he did not accidentally punch the woman. I don't know if the story involved Jerry being horrible to him, though.

Lucky for me, I am out to work when the garbage truck comes along. Was it supposed to be a thread that Louie would not help Jane with her backpack and then later on hurts his own back for pretty much no reason?

I think that my favorite moment was when Mike vocally assumed that everyone at the dinner knew about his masturbation. It is an old joke, but I think that it was Ben's antics that sold it.

So, those fake American accents weren't so bad. I was expecting John Boyega to play a Brit, but he was not so bad as the drone pilot, minus a few missteps with the Rs and Ts. I am a bit confused about how things went down prior to the beginning of the show. These things might get clarified later on, but there is just as much of a chance that they will not. A) When and how did Jack find out about the threat to President Heller? B) How did Jack know that the threat was connected to someone who had worked with Chloe? C) How did Jack know what Chloe did? D) What, exactly, does Chloe's group do? E) What, exactly, does Chloe's group do that they (seemingly) did not find out about the threat to President Heller? F) A threat by a former member, by the way. G) When and how did Jack know that Chloe was in custody? H) How long had Chloe been in custody? I) Could Jack have used this trick to get her out at ANY TIME before this? J) If so, why choose now to do so? If not, why not? K) Does his associate have any connection to the Drazens?

I don't know. I am still trying to wrap my head around the notion that the Proleathians got to the Birdwatchers either right after Mrs. S. contacted them to take Kira away or at some random point in the past on the off-chance that Mrs. S. would do that. I am not sure what to think about Cal. He seemed a lot more comfortable in letting Sarah back into his life even after he received confirmation that she was still stealing stuff. As for why he didn't shoot, perhaps he does not usually use that gun on people and had trouble really wrapping his mind around it. Maybe. Did Felix simply not know that Cal was Kira's father or did he seriously not know about Cal at all? Was this one of those times when Sarah was off on her own? I am hoping for more in-person clone interaction. There was some in the previous episode, but all that we got here was a phone call from Alison to Cosima. On the other hand, I am not sure that we had ever seen them interact without Sarah there.

I liked the inclusion of Alicia and her daughter and...Dee? Another David Simon veteran, anyways. The Veep team got them on their side just in time, but kind of left them hanging right at the end. I don't know if that could come back to hurt Selina a little bit...or at least Mike. Maybe not. And what did happen to the coat? I found it a little amusing that the whole debacle concerned universal childcare, while Selina's care for her own child had been questionable at best. I was wondering if Catherine would have tied those two things together in her rant, but I guess that it was not meant to be so on-the-nose.

Edit: I have no idea how to use these spoiler tags properly. I meant to hide only the images. I don't remember Aidan Gillen's Irish accent being that noticeable in previous seasons, so I found Littlefinger quite distracting in that scene. It is has been a couple of years since I have read the books, so I don't quite remember much...except that the Sept scene was not quite like that. Anyways, I was curious about how many people Dany brought with her to Mereen. The screenshots seem to suggest that there were maybe somewhere between 8 and 10 thousand people with her. That means the Unsullied and maybe a one or two thousand more. Is that around the number that went with her to Mereen in the book?

It is not as if I "care" where it is set either; it is just that I am assuming that it is in Toronto until we are told otherwise. The scenes with cash alone make it highly unlikely that this takes place in the United States, though I don't remember seeing any cash past the first few episodes. I suppose that other things could be explained away, like talk of "feds" or the gun at the diner, but I am not sure why the creators would throw those things in if they knew that it would distract many Canadian viewers.

I know that. It's just that if Canadians don't use the term much, then it suggests that the show is set in the United States as opposed to Canada. Oh, how did Rachel know that when Sarah mentioned her family on the phone at the beginning, she was referring to Mrs. S and Kira, but not Felix? Did she assume that Felix was not included, since Paul knew that Felix lives elsewhere? When did Art learn about Maggie Chen's religious affiliations? Was it simply part of his off-screen detective work during the past couple of days?

Not just Koreans..."Both"... So, a solid start. I figured that those two guys at the beginning were part of a "religious" faction, since why would they be bothered with eggs that got interfered with? As for the gun, I was a bit skeptical, but the creators are Canadian and I am not, so I figured that they knew something that I don't. The musical play thing was amusing, but I am a little curious about the timeline. How long had this been going on for? What happened during the time that Alison went through a very public breakdown? What happened when she and Aynsley were on the outs? Did she recently return to the group? Is that why she mentioned it to Felix? And was it sheer coincidence that Cosima arrived in the city in time for the DYAD event or had she already known about that last season? Some people noticed that Sarah's lip injury was gone while she was disguised as Cosima, but returned later on. I could chalk this up to a bit of makeup instead of a continuity error, something that I could not as easily do with Delphine's actions during that conversation between Fauxima and Leekie. I did like that Delphine caught on at the mention of a personal lab instead of an accent slip and that not only did Sarah not recognize her (since she probably had never seen her), but acted pretty hostile towards her. Sarah has few people whom she can trust these days and Delphine is definitely not one of them. I guess that I should watch last season's finale again to figure out some of the timeline stuff. It seemed a bit odd that Felix would suddenly be at a club just hanging out and Alison seemed to be acting like months had passed since she last saw him. Also, how long has she known Ramon. Do Canadians use the term "Feds"? I had thought that "Federales" referred more to Mexican authorities, but maybe it could be a little jokey moniker for those North of the border...both of them.

I learned about Jewel in the Palace back in 2005 (also back when I still lived with my parents and the AZN network was still around). I got obsessed with K-Dramas back then, despite some misgivings that I had about the dead-space pacing and the occasionally awkward scene structure and the overly-bright lighting and the need to sap characters of their personalities when they finally fall in love. I kind of fell out of love with K-Dramas around 2010, but I will still occasionally give a snoop of a couple episodes on Hulu.