Cthulhudrew

Or men, which is the usual way that comment is used IMO, particularly given the context of the scene (sleazy guy hitting on a woman, and a gentleman stands up for her. "You're one of the good ones." cf, a mother complimenting her daughter's boyfriends "You got yourself one of the good ones!")

During Priest's Black Panther run in comics, it was revealed that the Resurrection Altar in Wakanda was or could also be a portal to alien worlds (a group of aliens imprisoned on the Earth during the Maximum Security mega-story used it to escape). I've been wondering for a while now if the monolith is supposed to be the MCU version of the Resurrection Altar, or if it is just its own thing.

A good example of the acting/writing dichotomy in this show - for me - is Strand. He's a really horribly written character; needlessly oblique, not really (thus far) serving much point in the plot. Yet Colman Domingo brings a real gravitas to the part, so that it seems like he's saying something profound and meaningful when he's not really saying anything. His performance lends the part as written much more depth than it would in the hands of another actor. They need more performers like that on this show, if they're going to continue to underwrite the thing.

So will we eventually see Joker Mania vs. the Red Hood Infection? Gotham Season 3: Clash of the Ideologies!!!!

There's an idea. How about next season they turn into a comedy about a misfit crew of survivors and their pirate radio broadcast from their tiny little yacht off the coast? Zombie Radio! Given how the writers seem so keen on stereotyping authority figures in the post-Apocalypse world they have created, I'm guessing it's racial profiling.

In fairness, this is southern California. My friends will throw on a jacket when they're cold in spite of the fact they're walking around in shorts, an incongruousness that still baffles me after living here nearly two decades.

While I agree that the writing is certainly sub-par, and even good actors can only do so much with bad scripts, the obverse is also true, and bad actors can kill good scripts. Neither is mutually independent. A good actor can often still turn in a good performance from a bad script, if allowed to do so (and this goes beyond the writing as well, and into the directing and editing purviews.)

Yeah, but after that, he hears a scream and asks his mom what's going on, and then he seems to be looking at something and arguing with her when she's telling him everything is okay, as if he can see something she can't.

Every time in an episode that Gordon holds a phone away from his face and stares at it with a constipated expression: 2 drinks

1) Plot 2) Characters 3) Zombies :D

1) Why is the kid with the Bieber-hairdo mad dogging the Asian girl that gets on the plane? Weird. 2) Are we going to get a glimpse of what the kid is looking at in the terminal that freaks him out so much, or did production not get enough of a budget to show zombies (much like FTWD)? 3) I hope Bieber isn't going to be the breakout star of this web series that goes on to be a cast member of season two.

BTW, was I the only one wondering why Chris was sitting in the driver's seat when we had already been told that he can't drive, and that if they had to make a getaway it would be Alicia driving? "Oh, crap! We have to get out of here in a hurry, Chris! Time to play Chinese Fire Drill!"

Then we can have a Zombie Jamboree!

That honestly smacked more to me of "hey - remember that cool tracking shot of the lone zombie against the fields of Atlanta? Let's do something like that, but West Coasterly." Which is really funny, considering how the franchise booted Darabont.

I got the impression from his deliberately opaque dialogue with Nick that he thinks that hiding away from the apocalypse in his souped up mansion will only inure him to the reality of the new world they're living in, and make it all the harder for them to adapt when the inevitable time comes that the generators fail, they run out of food, and/or the zombie hordes batter down the doors. Not sure that packing away a bunch of nice suits exactly equate to giving up comfort in order to adapt, but maybe he doesn't own any practical or casual wear.

Strand (or at least the actor playing him) seems like he could be a pretty good character, if only they didn't saddle him with the mysterious man who talks very little and then only in zen koans, or whatever. Because having characters who never actually communicate with one another isn't just the laziest bit of writing ever. :( None of the emotional moments in this episode really took, for me, and I think it has to do with several reasons: 1) A lot of them were poorly edited or cut off. Ofelia is shot, and rather than actually have any of the other characters respond to the moment, all we get is Travis and his sudden cracking up into brutality. Which is fine- they've sort of been building to him having a moment like that- but absolutely no one else has any kind of moment there. Not her father - who should be most affected (and has thus far been the best performer in the group) - not anyone else. Hell, it isn't even entirely clear that she survived until several minutes later, when they've already started into the final act. There were other moments like this, some bigger, some smaller (the pilot in the crashed helicopter; that shot of his face got suddenly cut off before it could resonate, IMO). The "death scene" was the same, and it, too, was yet another "Oh, woah is Travis" moment. 2) The bigger reason is that we were never really given much reason to care about these characters. Travis is devastated by his ex-wife's suicide by ex moment. Waah. But the most emotion or affection we ever saw between the two was in a few minutes in the first episode, and that was it. 3) The show didn't follow through at all on its premise. Liza got bitten, so she wants to kill herself. Okay, this is something that we have seen on the mother show (TWD), and it makes sense... there. There, where we've seen what happens when people get bitten and turn. Where we've seen the suffering. Where we've been shown and told that becoming zombified is inevitable for everyone. We were never really shown that in FTWD. Any information about the plague seems to have largely come to the characters off-screen if at all. The show seems to be relying on the audience's knowledge of zombie lore and in particular the lore of the Walking Dead-verse from the original show. But the characters in the FTWD universe don't have the benefit of that knowledge; they have even less of an understanding of what is going on than Rick and Co. and yet they were in a position to have had firsthand knowledge of it. We should have seen and more importantly seen the characters learning this information and attempting to reconcile that with what is going on. Instead, we got a decided lack of any real breakdown of society except for a few Youtube videos, some sick days, a small riot, and then a 9 day gap in which time everything went to hell, virtually the entirety of Los Angeles- about 10 time as large as Atlanta- was vacated, with (as was noted above) very little in the way of traffic jammed highways or mass migratory movements. Worse yet, our plucky bland of adventurers remained pretty ignorant of what was going on around them and why it happened. Glenn and the gang had more knowledge about what was going on when Rick showed up than this group did. Even with a three hour time difference between the east and west coasts, that's pretty unforgivable. :p So what are we left with? The series that was supposed to provide us something different from the other show ends up not really demonstrating a difference (well, I guess it was less interesting), and the second season will end up just being the same thing as TWD- survivors of the plague trying to survive. Except they may be on a boat. For a little while at least (I'll give it two episodes). Production costs would certainly be cheaper if they keep it that way, and that seems to be the priority of AMC.

That makes me think- I'm kind of surprised they didn't go with a variation of the Mockingbird/Phantom Rider storyline from West Coast Avengers with the Bobbi/Hunter/Ward thing.

I don't know (though I'm still trying to score some tickets for something!), but I believe I heard that Christina is back. Back on topic, was it just me or did the girl who sang Brand New Key (Julie Broadus, I think) sound a lot like Melanie Martinez? I swear I saw Adam perk up as if he thought so, too. They actually film them over several days, and the coaches have to wear the same thing each time, so that they can later edit them together for the airings. My friend who went the day before I was supposed to go in July (when they completed their teams), said the only act she's seen so far from her taping was the duo that got engaged.

Forgot about the knockouts. :(

If not for the shot of the two planetary bodies in the sky, I'd have guessed the Kree's Blue Area of the Moon. As is, I'm not certain if it will get named, or- if it is- if it will have any particular significance (probably significant to even less of the 25% of the audience, I'd guess). It probably depends on what the monolith is supposed to be for. If it was just supposed to be some kind of link back to the "motherland" for some reason, then the planet may turn out to be the Kree homeworld of Hala. If it's supposed to be a portal to some kind of prison for wayward Inhumans, then the sky's the limit. I'm assuming the Negative Zone is not an option due to its Fantastic Four ties. Maybe it's the same planet as Tobias Ford's Hell?

The blinds are taped several months ahead of the rest of the show. The battle rounds are taped afterwards, and then the live shows follow directly from there (and are, of course, live, although certain segments are taped. When I went a few years ago for the quarter finals, they taped the Killers performance with Cassidy Pope, even though that performance didn't air until the following week. I don't know if that's standard- I assume it was either a scheduling issue with the group, or else the fact that they couldn't fit the setup of the band's equipment, etc. into the middle of the live show.). (Matter of fact, they're taping the season 10 blinds right now, while they air the pre-recorded season 9 blinds before heading into season 9's battle rounds and live shows. Just missed my chance to get one for next weekend, actually. :( )

They shot it all in June/July. I was supposed to attend the last day of blinds on July 8, but they finished picking their teams on the 7th. (My friend told me- she went on the 7th). Dangit. As I recall, the whole Blake/Miranda thing was unfolding right around then, or possibly just after?

She is the last of her race, but she was actually saved from death by Thanos, so that he could raise her and train her to be an assassin to take out Adam Warlock's evil future-but-sent-to-the-past counterpart, the Magus. True story.

Jemma would be lucky if she were on Gamora's homeworld. Her race, the Zen-Whoberians, were a bunch of peaceniks. At least until they were all wiped out by the Universal Church of Truth (or the Badoon, depending on which timeline you're in. Long story. :D)

Sometimes I enjoy Monaghan's Joker?, but other times I think he's just ridiculously caricaturish. Oddly enough, even at his worst hamminess, he's still a better actor than Ben McKenzie's Gordon?. (And he demonstrates a masterful control of his facial expressions/muscles, while Ben McKenzie bloated, bug eyed expressions just border on the Z-grade of comical.)