millahnna

This absolutely tickles me.

As I recall, the show was originally pitched as being about mental illness (like schizophrenia or extreme manic depression) much in the same way that Being Human was pitched as being about an addict, and anger management issues guy, and an agoraphobic (or whatever it was that Annie was a metaphor for). Keiran's zombie journey translates very nicely to the idea of a person who has been hospitalized for a violent outburst related to mental illness being released back into their community.

That is a damned good question. I'm not convinced that Miriam isn't working on behalf of Hannibal on a more conscious level than the brianwashing stuff we've seen of her. Just throwing that out there. So they might have been kept together eventually and for a time. I love that we still don't know for certain if Chilton is dead or not (I'm still assuming not). FOr that matter, we haven't seen Miriam since she shot him.

I seem to recall some of the specifics being left blank or perhaps a bit ambiguous, but yeah the basic gist is killed people in friendly fire as a defense contractor. It seems like the show itself has been a bit odd about it this season, though. Wasn't there something in one of the first two episodes that implied there was more to it than that? Or am I just thinking of various interwebz chatter and speculation?

I'm not sure they've laid it out explicitly (this show is so dense I often miss stuff and don't realize it until rewatch) but my take has been that 1) they're the unexpected twins 2) they're the clones who have been unmonitored and 3) they now know at least one of them can have kids (and since twins perhaps the other as well) which is unique amongst the clones. Imagine the clones at large as some animal other than human. One of your embryos split into twins and then both of those animals were smuggled out of the lab. Now they turn back up and that's a great opportunity to study them almost as a control group compared to your other clones (who have been monitored and sampled and whatever from day one). But surprise, these twins also have physical differences from your other clones that you didn't expect. One thing I keep thinking about... what happened to the monitors of the clones who are already dead at the start of the series (or soon into it like the German). I'm thinking specifically of the clones Helena killed... did she kill their monitors, too or are one or two of them still out there somewhere?

I'm with you. I'm also still on the "Paul doesn't like what he's doing but has some angle to try to help Sarah" train. I just keep thinking about the end of last season (him and Sarah in the elevator and then not) and how we almost seemed to time skip with him this season (suddenly totally with Dyad) and thinking there's got to be a beat we're missing. And Dylan Bruce has been playing his scenes somewhat ambiguously; I see reluctance in the performance. Which, honestly I think is kind of neat. I love that others think he's totally gone over to the dark side and that the scenes have lent themselves to either interpretation really well. But for myself, right now I'm taking it as super deep cover paranoia weirdness.

Oh I agree that the criticism has been valid. I'm just saying that the Laurel stuff has been so bad that I'm not sure anything will help to fix it at this point. Even if next season returns with some solid writing for the character that does a better job of building on what we've been shown on screen (i.e. addressing the disconnect), I think it might still be too little, too late for many. Like I said, I don't want the character off the show, just written better. But at this point the showrunners have done so much damage that it might be better for them to find a decent through arc to write her out.

Yeah I'm having a problem with that, as well. Before we found out that Sara has "died" twice just after her introduction, I would have thought they might kill off Sara heroically and have Laurel take up the mantle after a season or two. And I could have been down for that if the writing for Laurel got better. But a third death would feel really contrived. So maybe... If they spent the bulk of next season having her build up skills (more self defense classes would certainly make sense), they could do something like the above and have Oliver flat out out of commission for a bit right after. That could give her similar motivation to if they'd gone the Sara death route. It's too bad they've written the sister swapping so poorly; her having massive unresolved issues still over the cheating and other secrets could have made a nice juxtaposition for this. I'm a big fan of hers and yeah, right there. I don't want her out of the show; I just want them to figure out a way to do something that makes sense for the character (and they have many, many options to choose from that wouldn't require them to retcon massively). But the backlash against the character and the actress in the role has been so strong that I'm not sure that anything they did, even if it was super duper awesome and totally fit perfectly, wouldn't be too little too late.

I adored Helena's meet cute with the bar dude (who was seriously adorable). Tatiana's crazy chemistry with each clone's various romantic interests kind of fascinates me.

I have a weird soft spot for the gimmicky "we only put this audition in here so you can laugh at this schlub" comics, even though in general, that's not really my thing. One of them, Francois Fly (he was on the first year they weren't in a house anymore IIRC), was a dude I know from theatre in Sacramento (he's active in Sac and Bay Area comedy and I think does L.A. stuff sometimes) and while I knew he did standup, I had no idea he sometimes did the gimmicky stuff and I died when he was on. Ever since then I get a smile when the gimmick guys are on; I just have this hunch a lot of them have more conventional acts that are way more hilarious than we'd guess from the silly stuff we see in their auditions.

I lolled.

I'm a little fuzzy on the details but I took "had his reasons" to be a bit sardonic in intent; like she wasn't saying it with approval just noting it as a fact.

I don't think it matters if that guy was trying to Kauffman or not. It's a brain dead choice when your set isn't even 3 minutes long. Someone mentioned wonky editing, though, and I have to say there were some cuts that felt odd near his stuff. Maybe a bunch got cut and it was better than it seemed. But I totally thought the disrespectful thing was on point.

I fell in with Rosanne with that guy. I think, given the extremely short amount of time the contestants had for their sets, the particular gimmick he went with was really dumb. I totally agreed with the disrespectful to the audience criticism under those circumstances. It seemed like something that could work if you had more time but Russell was spot on that it was an old joke, so I guess maybe it couldn't. Compared to the last season of this I remember watching (which I know wasn't season 7 but can't recall when I stopped, 5 or 6 I think), I actually liked all three judges on average, and was pleasantly surprised to find Rosanne to be the best of the bunch. I think Russell and Keenan traded off on uselessness. One thing they kept bringing up that I thought was weird was wondering if the performers really talked like that or were portraying characters. I get that the character thing can be super gimmicky in a bad way but it seemed inherently dismissive and there have been some strong comics who made that sort of thing work for them. I'd be curious to see them really like a comic who did approach their set with a character and then see what they said then (surprise? noting an exception? whatever).

Yeah they really have set up an apt as hell comparison with him. It's kind of fascinating.

He sold me with the physicality. The high heels off drop to the knees thing kind of wrecked me, even though, yes, his material itself was a bit cliched. He committed to it so completely that it worked anyway, for me. I loved the atheist chick who talked about the angels putting her together all jacked up and the guy with the squeaky voice. THe black woman who got thrown out of white church and the cougar with Joan Rivers for a mentor stuck with me pretty well, too. I think the very first guy of the whole night might have been my favorite. Really the only dud I saw was the guy none of them liked; he seems like he could probably do a great set but the gimmick he went with was pretty off putting when he only had such a short amount of time to work with. I'm so glad this show ditched the "bunch of goobers live in a house" thing from the first few seasons. That was painful.

I really liked the kid in this one (the "person of interest" who wrote the mercury story). Other than when he stupidly confronted his teacher while standing with his back to a stairwell, I thought he showed a lot of smarts. Young and overeager but still a nifty character. I still haven't gotten over my amusement at the Alphas cast reunion.

I actually got a little sad in the very end bit with Claudia as the caretaker. Barring any artifact shenanigans (which, admittedly, are likely with this crew) Pete, Myka, Jinx, and Artie were likely long dead (I took it to be fairly far into the future). And since the scene faded from our gang just doing their thing like they always do into that, it sort of hit me double hard. Weird. It's funny how even though it was more poorly done due to rushing through a condensed season, the "getting two characters together romantically that I thought of as platonic" thing bothers me waaaaay less here than it does on the Mentalist. I can't really figure that out. I wish they'd handled it better but I can ignore it for the overall package of the show which was pretty awesome.

Funny that his hair looks thicker without the spikey goo in it; that usually goes the other way.

Sure but admit it; prior to last season, if someone had said, "There is an awesome tv show about clones where, in the season finale, the only clone able to have children kills her long lost evil twin sister in a shoot out after the evil twin kills their surrogate birth mother," a lot of us would have seriously questioned the judgement of whomever said that. It sounds ridiculous and over the top on paper (erm, screen?) but totally worked. I'm not saying I want Rachel to turn out to also be a twin, though. Amusingly, I think it sounds ridiculous and over the top (it also doesn't fit with everyone's surprised and curious reactions to Helena and Sara, so far). I'm just saying that if this show's writers went that way, I bet it would be way more awesome than it sounds.

I feel you. But in do find myself wondering about her childhood and her seeming obsession with it (the videos). She reads a bit as having drunk the koolaid but is maybe becoming aware of that. I wonder how much propaganda she was fed. I wonder how much of her anger comes from cognitive dissonance over her apparently loving family vs. Medical experiments. I don't like her but I do pity her.

Can we pm here yet? Message me all the spoliers you want. I'm curious how this central mystery fits with your comparisons.

I love Cherryh but haven't read this one of her's yet so I'm finding the parallels really interesting.

Oh I don't know. Being raised as a self aware clone who is subjected to invasive medical tests by your own parents who then die in a laboratory explosion might be enough to make a girl go a bit cookoo for cocoa puffs.

He looks it in that pic upthread with Lena (they're both grinning like charming loons). The guy is a truck. He's massive.