Emma9

Yeah, Mayim not allowing Eros and Psyche was a major 'Wait, what?' moment for me, and even though he got his money back, I felt bad for the contestant being similarly thrown off his stride. (As was suggested in the article GreekGeek (appropriate name!) linked to, they should bring him back at some point, perhaps if they do another Second Chance tournament.) Though I have to say, as a big enjoyer of rail trails, I'm getting a kick out of Kevin's run. I'm curious whether 'Tasmanian Tiger' could have been argued for the largest carnivorous marsupial, depending on how seriously one takes the various post-presumable-extinction sightings.

I'm sure I would have misspelled it, but I was also very surprised that no one knew, my first thought was that it was much too easy for a FJ. I guess it's another demonstration of everyone's vastly different perceptions of 'common knowledge'. (I'm always amused when you can tell Ken wouldn't have known the answer either, as with 'corundum'.)

I got the impression that Ken was expecting the goof (and bleep) to be cut from the aired version, since he re-explained the significance of the numbers in exactly the same words after the category was actually finished. Apparently it was all funny enough to be left in!

It was wonderful to see Alara. The thing about her only having "a limited time in off-world gravity each year" seemed odd though. The original plan was for her to recuperate on Xeleyah for a while and then at least attempt to come back to her post on the Orville. Then the 'gravity therapy' idea was introduced to make it even more likely she'd be able to do so. Even if she's found fulfillment staying on Xeleyah, it seems more like the Alara we knew to keep up with the treatments anyway so she wouldn't be effectively trapped there. Funny that Isaac invited his entire planet...except that he didn't make a point of including Timmis and the scientist who worked on him? ~ Well, in this case, Klyden has always been the chick, so it's obvious. /s (Among many reasons the Moclan plots have never worked well for me, I don't like the way Klyden is treated as a 'woman in denial' - born a female, by the morals of the narrative should have stayed a female, so we as viewers are supposed to see him as inherently female...and whaddya know, he's the naggy stay-at-home spouse whose main hobby is replicator-shopping. And yes, in terms of this ceremony, if it were truly a partnership of equals, there would be the question of who chases whom.) Also, how often would said ceremony actually be used? Moclan divorces typically don't leave two survivors to change their minds later. ~ Going by the Astrology Planet episode, it seems to be when a planet successfully sends a message that can be received off-world? Which, yes, is weird to me. If there's a Union equivalent in the galactic neighborhood in the real world right this minute, we've been squawking enough that they could hear us for decades now. (They could have even modeled starships off of our TV shows!) Certainly Reddit Planet is at least that advanced. Maybe the salient point is that in that case, the transmission was a deliberate attempt to communicate with hypothetical extraterrestrial life, but again, Earth has certainly checked off that box and it seems odd that no one on Reddit Planet ever would have done so.

Yeah, I was shaking my head at that too. Plus, if she was worried about making the jump, she should have tossed the big bulky rifle slung across her shoulders over to Bortus first so it wasn't throwing her off-kilter.

So, with regards to Isaac and emotions. First off, the Kaylon as a whole being considered to be lacking in emotions is ridiculous in itself. Of course they have them. At bare minimum, they know fear - being programmed to be able to feel pain is meaningless if you're not also able to fear that pain. And they know the desire to protect their own existence - if their only motivation was to make sure they were never in pain or enslaved again, the obvious way to accomplish that would be to self-destruct en masse, but they didn't want to do that, because they valued their own individuality, their own lives. And the scenes with K1 made it obvious that they have curiosity, the desire to learn, explore, grow, and be allowed to make their own choices. I said this back in the comments on Identity, but any choice to act, any motivation, ultimately can be deconstructed back to some kind of emotion. Pure logic, in the sense of logic-in-opposition-to-emotion in the way that many people simplify Vulcans down to, would mean nothing but stasis. And indeed, the show went out of its way to point out that what Timmis gained wasn't really emotion but empathy. Now let's look at Isaac specifically. It's worth remembering that Isaac wasn't around for the original rebellion - he didn't exist until the other Kaylon wanted to spy on the Union. (And as a side note, I wish someone had ever pointed out the hypocrisy of that situation to the other Kaylon. They designed, built, and programmed him to serve a specific function; they arbitrarily shut him down when they judged that function was complete, and if they weren't trying to stall the Orville, they never would have booted him back up; when he had doubts about the orders he was being given, he was threatened with punishment unless he carried them out. Who's forcing others into servitude now?) In episode one of this show, he was basically a newborn, without the sorts of abusive experiences the other Kaylon had to jump-start him towards autonomy. I also think it's very interesting that we didn't see the real romance between Claire and Isaac start to develop until after his 700-year holiday on Planet Kelly-Worshippers. That interlude might not seem as impactful to us as viewers as his time on the Orville - it was only a couple of screentime minutes for us - but given his already-demonstrated capacity for feeling some affection/appreciation/whatever for individual biologicals, think about what it was like for him to watch generation upon generation upon generation grow and age and die. However far behind the emotional curve he was from the other Kaylon, I think it's safe to say he had the opportunity to catch up while he was there. And then, of course, in A Happy Refrain we saw him have his first mental conflict between his mission/programming (gather maximum information) and what made him happy (continuing to be around Claire and her sons). We saw him learn to want something, for himself, as an individual. Again, that's impossible without emotion. On the whole, I've liked the way they've had Isaac finding his way towards what feelings mean to him naturally, and Claire valuing him regardless of exactly where he was on that journey, so I'm glad they didn't keep the flick o' the switch, he's instantly perfectly human-style emotive, happy ever after paradigm. (Although, to nitpick, as others mentioned, haven't they had Isaac download/transfer/backup his memories, personality, etc to other places at various times? Into the Orville's computer at least once, right? It would seem feasible to shift his consciousness somewhere else, have Dr. Villka do whatever neural rewiring she needed to do, then transfer his 'self' back in, if in-universe they really wanted to stick with said paradigm.) ~ Mine is called Nellie the Nag and I'm sure I infuriate her greatly. IIRC, there was an episode of Supernatural where an evil/possessed GPS lured somebody to a particular location so they could get killed by the monster of the week - Nellie would probably like to pull that trick on me.

One of my least favorite time-travel tropes is that when you change the past, you have a 'grace period' during which you may choose to fix things, or not, and only after you definitively make that choice does the present definitively reflect the outcome. Makes it feel less science-fiction and more like the whole process is being audited by some omnipotent temporal entity. The Orville already displayed its willingness to use that trope (present-day Kelly didn't vanish from existence when her past self came forward in time, and this was cited as proof that her past self was always going to go back) and now we got Gordon's argument that the Orville's continued existence means that his 2025 life didn't adversely affect the future because nope, the 'new timeline' wouldn't be observable unless and until they decided to leave him behind for good (even though the presence of his obituary in their data banks certainly made it seem like they were already living in that new/altered timeline). It doesn't make sense, and as a result, the ethical quandary seemed manufactured. Not to mention this: The original plan for 2025 Gordon to walk away from his child and pregnant wife...to preserve the timeline...was idiotic. The existence of those two kids, and their descendants, and etc etc etc, not to mention the absence of whatever kids Laura might have had with a different partner instead, and their descendants, etc etc etc, would probably have a far greater impact on the future than anything else 2025 Gordon would go on to do from that point even if he'd stayed in the past. And yeah, stolen motorcycles and weird holes drilled in the basement of suburban houses are comparatively minor, but you never know what could start a butterfly effect. ~ By present-day Orville-verse morals, he saw what he was doing as murder. He chose to commit many acts of what, from his perspective, was murder in order to keep surviving. See the cannibalism comparison that another poster made. He valued his own life over lives that he had been culturally conditioned to believe that he didn't have the right to take. What you or I, living in 2022, see as ethical is irrelevant to his perspective. I can certainly see why he might view that as a greater moral wrong than eventually violating temporal law.

That. Or go with a Clever Manka kind of solution and put some kind of covering on him that wasn't 'technically' clothing but also covered up everything that the other crew would prefer not to see. Could be as simple as a blanket toga or as techy as one of the portable image-holo-generator-things. ~ Same, and I was expecting that to be at least part of the the 'hidden motivation' he revealed - that if he didn't do the surgery, Claire would, which would mean she'd no longer be around to boost his 'efficiency'.

I doubt Teleya thought their species would be interfertile, hence she probably didn't take precautions. As to why they were, well, Trek had The Preservers to thank/blame for the majority of the galaxy being populated by sexually compatible humanoids, Orville-verse has no equivalent excuse as yet. (Maybe something like that will become one of Planet Kelly-Worshipers' projects eventually.) ~ I'm the complete opposite. Yeah, there are many more shows being made than in the old days ('and now get off my lawn', says the creaky 35-year-old), but A) Most of the current popular trends aren't for the sorts of shows I particularly enjoy and B) The sheer volume of all that content, spread over so many networks and streaming services and schedules and and and...too much to sort through and find which shows, if any, I want to even try, let alone follow and keep up with. I'd been heading in that direction for a while and then with most things having a pandemic hiatus so there wasn't a concrete 'fall premiere season', they just slowly trickled back once I was no longer paying attention, I realized I wasn't missing current tv much. I'd rather just re-watch old things. ~ I caught that too, particularly with the gag at the beginning of them taking Annie as a horror parable. ~ Agreed. I don't dislike Talla at all (which I often end up doing when there's an obvious 'dump a character and then replace them with a similar goldfish' move), but I find her much less interesting than I did Alara. Firestorm remains my favorite episode.

For though my life's been good to me, there's still so much to do. So many things my mind has never known. I'm also on this team. I can certainly see the downsides, and this and many other sci-fi/fantasy shows have explored plenty of them, and presumably any truly utopian version of immortality would incorporate the option to let your consciousness rest someday if you truly grow bored/tired/jaded by existence, but yeah - thinking about how wildly different the world was even a hundred years ago and that, barring swift advances in medical technology, I won't be around to see how different is a hundred years from now, does make me wistful.

I must not watch enough classic horror movies, because the main thing that jumped out (sorry) at me was the similarity to the 'Velociraptors in the kitchen' scene from Jurassic Park. ~ At least Lt. d'Amato has a name. He's not just...Guy.

'Probably' nothing, the whole "What if Kelly hadn't boned Ed" AU episode was entirely based on literally that.

Did anyone catch the bit after Monday's final spin? Pat informed the contestants that vowels would be worth [x bonus amount] while consonants would be worth nothing. Was surprised he didn't get ribbed over it, Vanna deserves a chance to do the teasing now and again.

Really seemed like a missed opportunity that Glassman's ex's new husband, who specializes in making unspoken/implicit/mysterious social contracts into something open and concrete that can be explained, never got to interact with Shawn. Seems like somebody who could give him some helpful insights, and I was sure that was where they were heading when his field of study was described, but then it never got brought up again. Not like Shawn didn't have other stuff going on in this episode, of course - so maybe the character will recur. No offence to Freddie, but I agree. I almost never find scenery-chewing relatable no matter how justified the character is in losing it.

Reminds me of the time Hardison had 'Mr. Kirk Picard' paged. That was going a little far!

That was my first thought. A while back, I came across a mention on Leverage's tvtropes page that John Rogers considered Person of Interest to be Leverage's serious younger brother. That's always made me smile. So there was some mild disassociation from the implication that our crew would have been at odds with Finch and Reese if those universes had ever collided. But I suppose some initial friction would make sense. And how confused are the die-hard fangirls of his country music alias (you know there are a handful that wouldn't have been discouraged just because he dropped off the radar) who keep trying to re-upload their collections of pictures only for them to disappear? Parker springing to attention when that was brought up was funny. I also feel like Parker would be in the habit of using 'pancake syrup' and thus have been the target of many Chef Eliot rants over the years that 'That's not really maple syrup, Parker! They're not even legally allowed to call it that! The real stuff has a very distinctive taste!'

I suppose they wouldn't've had the budget for staging a jousting match with actual horses, but given Eliot's experience as a rider I got my hopes up. Equine involvement is always my favorite part of RenFaire episodes (Scorpion's did it very well), so that was the only disappointment.

I was briefly disappointed afterwards that we didn't get a 'Boys' Night' parallel to the 'Girls' Night' this time, but A) Less Noah Wyle is always a good thing and B) Any additional time they can get Aldis for, I'd rather he get to interact with the whole cast. In her first episode, Breanna mentioned Parker teaching her something when she was eleven. So that makes her 19 max, 21 if you want to fanwank that Hardison took Parker home to meet Nana (as of the s4 pilot, she still hadn't met her) sometime between jobs in the last couple seasons. Aw, Medium. Although I'm delighted to have more Leverage, one small reservation is that it was previously one of my two good examples of shows that didn't get cut off without a real resolution but also didn't drag out long enough to become horrible. I hope whenever it does end again this time the end is still as satisfying. (Granted, they'd have to work hard to end as terribly as Medium did.)

I find it interesting that Covid apparently didn't happen within the show's timeline (or you'd think Breanna would have mentioned it during her litany). On one hand, it does free them from the headache of whether, and when, to have characters wearing masks, but there would have been a lot of material they could have gotten from that going forward, and it makes everything feel more disassociated from reality than is typical for Leverage (especially since they're otherwise responding to current events). It's always weird to think about Covid in the context of this show, though, given that the standout episode for me has always been (and will probably ever be) The Rundown Job. It would have been hard for the trio to cope with living through a pandemic after their greatest triumph was preventing one. Recalling one of the few episodes in the original where she did get to deliver the catchphrase, I wanted someone to add 'and not into a closet this time' after Eliot's remark.

In addition to fangirling over the original cast (as do we all), Breanna is also giving me a Claudia Donovan (Warehouse 13) vibe, both of which make for a good start. I believe it was back on TWoP that someone suggested Nana should be played by Nichelle Nichols. I don't think my jaw has ever dropped so fast or stayed dislodged for so long.

When everyone was saying how little Mr. Mastermind's description sounded like Nate - and when it became clear the book portrayed them all in the way that would piss them off the most - I thought the twist was going to be that 'Nate' was Sterling all along. Especially when Interpol got involved at the end, Sterling could have showed up and the guy could have been all "Oh, hi Nate!".

After a couple of at least semi-medically-interesting episodes, this one was a snooze. Regarding poly-doc, wasn't the initial thing with her was that they could have flings while one of them was away? If that's the case and they're still sneaking around now that the husband's back in town, I wouldn't consider her to be practicing ethical non-monogamy. I did like the conversation with Iggy and the daughter about how covid restrictions had become a comfort zone in some ways, and moving back to the old paradigm won't always be exciting and wonderful, but we still have to put in the work to get there.

Mercifully my area is post-scarcity where vaccines are concerned, so that storyline wasn't as breathlessly infuriating as it could have been, but it still sucked sideways. The country club people may have been privileged, but they were still human beings afraid of covid and eager enough for the vaccine that they were willing to jump through hoops to get it. That was my mom in early spring; she qualified due to a health condition, but I still had to play appointment roulette on various websites to get her that shot, and I lived in fear that she'd contract covid in the interim and it would be my fault because somehow I wasn't trying hard enough. At bare minimum, ask them if they wouldn't mind waiting around to get jabbed at the last minute if Max can't find anyone else. They'll be annoyed, but if they're that desperate at least some of them will probably agree. (And what about that apartment building full of people who were getting scammed by snake oil preventatives because they couldn't get vaccinated a couple of episodes ago?) If, in New Amsterdam's world, the vaccine has been widely available enough for long enough that the majority of disenfranchised and suspicious people you find on the street have already gotten it, Max of all people should KNOW THAT and be less picky about who he's injecting. Or at least make the first question he asks be 'Have you been vaccinated' rather than 'Please share with me all your thoughts and feelings about the vaccine'. And it's a newsflash to him that doctors and military members are turning down the vaccine? Or that there are (gasp) a handful of conservatives employed by a gigantic institution like New Amsterdam? Or that convincing holdouts is a task probably better undertaken when there isn't a ticking clock on a crate of needed vaccines? In a way I'm glad that reality ensued here and Max got a very painful lesson in what happens when perfect becomes the enemy of good, but the virus and the vaccine are still much too sore subjects to allow for much sympathy for a doctor whose idiocy and ignorance could make such a situation worse.

Catching up on the show. I'm heat-sensitive but not in a way that makes a/c a life-or-death matter for me - if I exert myself outside when it's hot, I can pass out and/or seize (fun times). Have come close to the same thing at a crowded concert (not an uncommon phenomenon, if the lack of surprise exhibited by the bouncer who basically dragged me outside and gave me ice chips was any indication) and even the shower a couple of times. No diagnosis or real idea why. But just sitting around indoors isn't dangerous. However, sleep is a thing - I work nights, so obviously hotter temps during the day compounds the problem, but there's little that contributes to poor sleep quantity/quality like being too hot. That's less comfort and more being rested enough to work and otherwise function. ~ I could absolutely see Max throwing out all of the hospital's non-vegetarian foodstuffs the same day he gets his big idea. This is Max we're talking about. Otherwise, yeah, the timeline makes no sense, and with preparation Iggy could just plan to bring food from home (for someone who's trying to lose weight without lapsing into an eating disorder, throwing a load of 'your lunch is killing the planet' guilt on there probably wouldn't be particularly helpful). And in general, when people are trying to marshal their body's resources into healing from an illness or injury, it might not be the best time to force an abrupt change in their diet (and I say this as a vegetarian).

Ran into this one another few times over the weekend, it always makes me laugh: because it's so true to being a habitual planner in a relationship with someone who...isn't one.