weathered1

For what it's worth, Jennifer Gareis, Sharon Case's longtime close friend, posted multiple fire emojis on a Halloween video of CH and MG that Courtney posted on her Instagram page. I kinda doubt she would have done that if anyone involved in, or otherwise connected to, the situation were harboring any negative feelings about it. As far as I'm concerned, kudos to CH and MG for not letting whatever's going on impact their onscreen chemistry. Back to lurk mode I go . . .

Well, it turns out my theory was apparently more fanfic than anything else. At least I noted that I was likely wildly off-base, so at least I got one thing right. lol Nick Offerman is a treasure, and this episode made me wish that his role in this show had been more significant. The Emma and Noah content was quite sad, and I think it portends her moving on by entering Pasaje and going . . . wherever. Or whenever, as the case may be. I'm just hoping that this show doesn't wind up like similar series where they set everything up to have major reveals and substantive answers, only for the end to be lackluster, at best.

First, I don't think I've ever seen Luis Gerardo Méndez in anything before, but he is wonderful. Second, this wasn't my favorite episode, but it did spawn some new theories: I'm now thinking that Emma's tooth symbolizes how her dissatisfaction with her life, along with her grief for her daughter (about which she doesn't speak), are slowly killing her, which will be what prompts her to time travel (leaving Noah, who is more content with his life, behind). I can envision a scenario in which Emma enters Pasaje and encounters Sam and Violet, who exclaims, "Mom?!" She then tells Emma that her mother (Emma herself) died due to extreme cognitive decline; so basically, what happened to Alex will happen to Emma. Emma then makes the choice to time travel anyway, knowing that it will eventually kill her at a fairly young age. However, she decides that being able to have Violet and having some years to make memories with her is worth it, since she was robbed of that with her first daughter. The beautiful and terribly sad irony about that is that she'd go back in time in order to have Violet and make memories, all the while knowing that those very memories will ultimately be ripped away from her. In this scenario, then, if Alex really is Sam, then he would have planted the phone for Emma to find knowing that it would be imperative for her to do so, so that she'd go on her quest for answers, and go back in time in order to have Violet, who would go on to be the one love Sam/Alex had. There are some holes in that theory, and it's entirely possible that I'm *wildly* off-base, but that's what I'm thinking as of right this moment.

Oh, I must have somehow missed that post. The more I think about it, the more I think this is the way they're going. Perhaps the time traveling (or whatever) takes a physical as well as a mental toll, hence her tooth. Given Noah's line about how seeing their daughter was a memory that Emma doesn't have, I wonder if there are other memories she doesn't have, or at least, doesn't have anymore.

^I wonder if they're going somewhere with that. This episode focused a lot on Violet losing her mom and Emma losing her daughter. It seemed significant that Noah said that he'd been able to see their daughter, so he has that memory but Emma doesn't. I did start to wonder if the show is going somewhere mind-bendy with that. Violet's mother's book included a statement about "meet me there," so I wonder if Emma becomes a time traveler or a parallel universe traveler, or whatever Alex is. There also has to be some kind of significance to her tooth problems, but I'm not sure what that's supposed to signify.

During the stream of consciousness thoughts (or whatever that was) that Alex was having at the beginning of the episode, he did confirm that his name was made up, with the verbiage being something like, "How the hell did you come up with that?" Given the effect everything has had on Alex in terms of his mind and memory, I wonder if he doesn't even remember that he's Sam (if that's the way they're going).

That is a really good theory. Didn't Baltasar say that no one knew where Alex came from - one day, he just sort of appeared? Then when Baltasar asked him where he got the skateboard, Alex said he'd had it since he was a kid, I believe. Baltasar dismissed that as just another lie, but maybe he was actually telling the truth.

The particular bit re: Cait and Camryn was in response to what I believe was the official Y&R twitter account trying to get some love for Chance after he was shot. Both of them replied to that tweet in a less than warm and fuzzy way. The other stuff to which I was referring was, at least at one point, on Twitter as well. I don't know if it still is or not, but it irrevocably changed my view of the guy.

Yeah. I don't usually post here (though I often lurk), but I had to chime in because I've seen some of the things he's posted and liked on social media, and he seems like a really nasty piece of work. I know that recently Cait and Camryn have made it pretty clear that they don't think highly of him, and I can't imagine that they're the only ones who feel that way.

This brings up another point. If all it took to end the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad threat to Ziva, Tally, et. al., was for Ziva to work with Gibbs and the team . . . why didn't she just do that in the first place? I realize that Cote leaving precluded that at the time, but surely they could've come up with something better than what we've been watching.

I wasn't ever a huge Ziva fan, but these episodes have made me actively dislike her. (And the deification of Ziva David by almost everyone was over the top and irritating in the extreme.) She's oh so upset (and blathering endlessly on about the fact) that Gibbs never looked for her, yet had he done so, those wanting Ziva dead might've taken notice, figured out that something was amiss, and, say, gone after her daughter just to flush her out. In other words, it seems to me that for Ziva's cover and plan (which was stupid, by the way) to work, every single one of her nearest and dearest had to be pretty certain that she was dead. Had that not been the case, it would've far too easy for said cover to be blown and her loved ones to be placed in great danger. Again. Some more. Then, too, she even said herself that a body wasn't found, so . . . how exactly was it that the bad guys were so sure that she was dead; so certain, in fact, that all of the threats they posed to her daughter were instantaneously gone? Why wouldn't the bad guys have gone after Tally and Tony anyway just because they wanted Ziva to pay and/or on the off chance that she really was still among the living and/or just because they're, you know, bad guys? For that matter, there was this gigantic threat that required Ziva to play dead for years, yet she never thought it would be a good idea to give Tony a heads up that super duper evil bad guys might go after their daughter at some point? In my view, this was just an exceedingly dumb, chock-full-o'-holes storyline that made many of the characters look pretty bad. The one bright spot was Ducky; but then, given the way this show has gone downhill, he's usually the lone bright spot, imo.

So, after all of this time and my super-long ranty post . . . I'm still upset. I don't know that I blame KB, per se, but her comments and reactions - from what I've seen and heard about, they've been pretty nonchalant and even kind of glib - make me veer a little bit in that direction. Many have said that RT and KB have long resented how popular Logan and the relationship became, and I think their comments since this all unfolded basically support that hypothesis. They want a cold, detached, fueled-by-constant-tragedy-and-pain Veronica, and their way of getting that was to deliver still another trauma by way of removing a feature from the show of which neither seemed to be a huge fan. That KB sees Veronica as a positive role model is kind of troubling. Granted, that's at least partly some spin because this is her character, she's promoting the show (and perhaps a future incarnation of it). The idea, though, that a strong, interesting female character is one who has to always be in pain and has to shed emotional ties, be closed off and nothing but sharp edges, and generally treats everyone around her terribly is awful and untrue. And there's some misogyny in the mix, too. To me, what would have played into Veronica dealing with personal issues, being forced to take a long hard look in the mirror at who she's become, etc., would have been to let the marriage stand because the bomb that was all set to explode said marriage? Was the relationship itself. As written, the two weren't compatible anymore because the characterization of each had gone in such radically different directions, which means that, as I see it, the marriage wouldn't have - indeed couldn't have - lasted. What's interesting about that, at least to me, is that when I decide to start shipping a pairing, I always want it to go the distance. In this case, though, I wouldn't have minded seeing LoVe come to an end because the relationship wasn't serving either of them particularly well. To that end, there were only a few ways it could have gone: Veronica would begin to chafe at the relationship and commitment which sort of fly in the face of the brittle loner RT and KB want her to be, so she likely would've eventually acted out and hurt Logan in such a way that the marriage became untenable. Other options could've been that Logan began to resent Veronica's endless campaign to bring back his inner "bad boy" and either he would realize that they were hanging on to a relationship that had run its course/perceptions of one another that weren't true anymore and he would've ended it, or he'd finally be pushed too far, his former impulsivity and anger issues would begin to rise to the fore, and he'd act out in such a way that Veronica would be hurt (emotionally), and the marriage would become untenable. The aftermath of any of those options could've, say, fueled Veronica's need to travel and work in distant locales, all the while checking in with family and friends, going home between cases, etc. During those times, she could perhaps be confronted with the reality of Logan moving on in his quest to have a happy, stable life, which could result in that aforementioned long, hard look in the mirror Veronica would need to take to finally start to work on herself so that she could stop operating as the sum total of her defense mechanisms. (Perhaps down the road, they could've reunited or both could have come to terms with the fact that going their separate ways was the right call.) All of that is to say that the ending was wholly unnecessary because if they really wanted more trauma and angst to serve as a driver for Veronica, the foundation had already been set for that, and exploring that would have let them have the Veronica they wanted (at least for a while) while also not alienating such a huge portion of the fanbase and cutting off so many interesting, complex, and yes, adult storylines in Neptune. That the ending that was chosen was just the capper to a season that was filled with shoddy writing in terms of characterizations, plot holes, and just a general lack of the cleverness, wit, and solid plotting that used to be hallmarks of this show makes me both sad and angry because it really didn't have to be this way.

I see what you're saying. He's clearly operating with a surplus of ego, but his comments have just been so pointed and patronizing to fans and so deliberately insulting to the LoVe fandom in particular that it seems to me that he's been outright expressing resentment of this portion of the viewership. I don't think he cares if he loses us especially since then he wouldn't have to deal with our so-called insistence on viewing "high school drama". I also think he believes that most viewers will be so drawn to his incredible, amazing writing (that's not at all hacky, misogynistic, and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of both relationships and the human condition in general) and the adventures of downtrodden, cold as ice, loner Veronica that his new version of the show doesn't need us. (I think he's wrong.) I have been kind of idly wondering about what impact (if any) this backlash will have. RT has said that Logan is well and truly and most sincerely dead, but he also - whether intentionally or not - did leave himself wiggle room to get out of that (and to actually do so pretty easily). I don't know if Hulu would particularly care, but let's just say that they dictate that a season 5 could partly revolve around his and KB's vision, but he would also have to undo the enormous mistake he made. Would he and/or KB just refuse those terms and, thus, VM is done forever? Would he acquiesce - having ostensibly (but not really) learned the lesson that viewers are sick and tired of showrunners treating us so shabbily and making such awful choices? If he did say that he'd undo the damage, would it then turn into a situation of be careful what you wish for in which he gleefully contrives of as many ways as possible of breaking the pairing up, ruining Logan, etc., just to punish the fans for "forcing" him to go against his wondrous vision? Again, I don't know if Hulu would care at all and/or if this backlash is just falling on deaf ears, but it's something to ponder. Or maybe my mind just can't fully wrap around the idea that RT did something so impossibly stupid and deliberately ruined the entire show for so many of us.

It's taken me a while to try to process this. I wasn't originally much of a Logan fan because they went a wee bit too far with the "obligatory psychotic jackass" thing (at least for me). Over time, I found myself really enjoying the character because, while Dohring isn't the world's best actor, he does have a certain charisma (maybe even a magnetism) that makes him so interesting to watch, and he really did manage to do a lot to redeem the character over the years. (The Scientology thing aside, seeing him so visibly crushed by this even while he's doing his level best to reassure the fans is so sad to me.) I also found myself drawn in by the chemistry. The relationship was problematic for various reasons, but I still bought that these two people would be drawn to each other and, in many ways, bring out one another's best and worst qualities. Perhaps RT and others (like KB) didn't anticipate the pairing's popularity and were even resentful of it, but the fact remains that the foundation was there, the chemistry was there, and it was built up over the seasons, books, and movie into something pretty great (imo). So this "shocking twist" is many things - hackery of the lowest order (and truly ham-fisted writing that required Veronica having to forget how to use her brain), embarrassing, short-sighted, an inconceivable waste of boundless potential, and proof positive that RT is creatively bankrupt - but good writing it was not. The more I hear/read from RT, the more I've come to thoroughly dislike both him and his so-called vision for this show. He somehow demonstrates an utter misunderstanding of everything that has set this show apart, made it special, and inspired such loyalty in a very large percentage of its fanbase. That he also blatantly used said large percentage of the fanbase only to turn around and patronize us, slap us in the face, and blatantly insult us (by intimating that we're only interested in "high school drama") is so far beyond the pale that I'm actually gobsmacked at the things he's said. This isn't an organic way to spur Veronica on to new adventures and experiences. This seems very much like a way for RT to punish the fans for not liking what he wanted us to like, for liking too much something he (and KB) didn't enjoy, and even JD for perhaps doing too good of a job with the character. Why he - and other showrunners who chafe at viewers being drawn to situations/characters/relationships on which they didn't intend to focus - couldn't have just been grateful that something unexpected happened that managed to capture the attention of so many of the viewers and become wildly popular, I'll never understand. So his great vision for VM involves pretty extreme arrested development for his leading lady who is evidently reveling in not being able to move forward and heal, and in so doing, has become so hard and embittered and bitchy to everyone. He wants her to cut ties with everything and everyone that gave her dimension and layers and vulnerability. He wants to excise everything that made her special and turn her into yet another generic PI who is dark, angry, untrusting, and cold (but not cold enough that she'll turn down hookups with random guys evidently). That sounds . . . ridiculously unappealing to me. At the end of the day, viewers know all too well how it feels to be disappointed, but this takes things to another level. RT couldn't have delivered a bigger FU to so many of us in the fandom, while also confirming that he's a hack - there were so many ways to scale back the relationship focus if he so chose - many of which have been brilliantly detailed in this thread. I'd even go so far as to say that Logan had outgrown Veronica, and him extricating himself from the relationship and perhaps moving on would've been one avenue to explore, as would his job forcing him to be quite literally unavailable much of the time, etc. etc.. There were many good options here, and far better ones, than the one RT chose, but he wanted to burn the relationship and its fandom to the ground, which is exactly what he did. If there is another season, I sincerely hope that the viewers who stick around enjoy it. For me, though, VM has been ruined and I'm officially done with it.

According to the actors on social media, it premieres on June 30.