Black Knight

I still can't get over that. The sight of Jackie's frozen corpse propped up like a ragdoll was just so disturbing. I knew they wouldn't be able to bury her because of the ground being frozen and it being too difficult to find enough rocks underneath the snow to build a cairn, but jeez. I thought she'd be laid out with her face covered. Initially I felt that Shauna would want to keep Jackie to herself, especially since by the end she was the only one who still had affection for Jackie, but they did show us that Shauna has the means and opportunity to do what you're suggesting. None of the others go to the meat house, even when they're feeling impatient and starving, and who can blame them. I can't believe they let Shauna keep the knife, though. I wouldn't necessarily think of her potentially slicing up Jackie and serving her, but I would certainly worry she's a danger to herself. She'd be on 24/7 suicide watch, no sharp objects allowed, if I were there. Ben could train someone else to dress and cut up the animals, just like he did Shauna. By this point nobody's squeamish anymore about that kind of thing. I noticed that too. Travis was clearly open to the possibilities. Adult Natalie was in denial. Travis even got aroused while Lottie was touching him, so I'm thinking Jackie isn't going to be the only other girl besides Nat that Travis had sex with out there, and maybe that's got something to do with Adult Natalie not wanting to admit Travis was at least open to the supernatural stuff. She seemed off to me too, but the show has done such an amazing job of casting that I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe the actress killed some of the stuff they need her to do later and that's why she got the role. This is one of the buzziest shows right now, so casting can't have had a shortage of actresses wanting the part. I don't think we saw the real Adult Lottie in this episode, if that makes any sense; she was just putting on a show for her followers. Maybe that's why she felt off.

Looks to me like there would have been enough there to at least match that tray of reduced rations Shauna served. And it's not like Jackie's ear offered a lot of meat either. (A sentence I can't believe I just typed.)

I can't believe Simone didn't confiscate Steve when she was yelling at Tai! Tai, please just hand him over. He was supposed to be for Sammy anyway. It's interesting that Nat came out of hiding once Lottie showed up. She's not scared of Lottie even though she is outnumbered, and was kidnapped and held prisoner. That made me reconsider some things. I felt for Lottie when she was getting electroshocked. Her father sucks. His daughter miraculously turns up alive after 19 months missing and presumed dead, and he's still such an asshole! I tried to tell myself, when Misty was crying about her "best friend" leaving, that I just didn't want her to give up and thus not rescue Natalie, but the truth is I genuinely felt sorry for the little murderous sadistic psychopath even though I know she's a murderous sadistic psychopath. Christina Ricci is just so good in this role. I think they managed to handwave Crystal bonding with Misty now decently. Crystal's habit of humming/singing is the sort of thing that seems like it would be okay early on but would start annoying people once winter forced them to stay inside constantly, and so Crystal has now become an outsider. I admit I screamed during the Shauna/Jackie scene when the camera first cut to a frozen dead Jackie. Holy fuck. And then to learn from the other girls that Shauna has spent two months hanging out with Frozen Jackie? I feel like almost all of Shauna and Jackie's conversation confirmed that she's just a manifestation of Shauna's subconscious. (I'll get to the one part that gave me pause in a second.) So now we have confirmation of how Shauna/Jeff started, and on his side it turns out to indeed be the simplest and most banal thing: Jackie wouldn't give him sex and Shauna would. In a way that makes me feel bad for Shauna, but OTOH she clearly had her eyes open about it, so my sympathy is limited. Plus, while it seems that Jeff probably wouldn't have given Shauna the time of day if Jackie had been sleeping with him, I still don't think Shauna would have given him the time of day if he hadn't been Jackie's boyfriend, so one can argue these things balance each other out. The one part that gave me pause was the part when Jackie and Shauna were playing the little game about Shauna's future. NJ housewife, marries Jeff...and has one million dollars. We've speculated before that the survivors got settlement money, probably from the company providing the plane since we've had indicators the plane wasn't up to snuff maintenance-wise. One million dollars would pay for the expensive wedding Shauna and Jeff had, that house, and set up the furniture store, with money left over, but still easily be gone in the 25 years if they were foolish about it. So, does that million-dollar tidbit mean it's Jackie's ghost who can kind of see the future? It's odd that Shauna's subconscious would come up with that detail, not to mention making the rest of that her future. Did she feel like, because in a way Jackie's death could be blamed on Shauna and Jeff's affair, that she needed to marry him so that it all would have been for something? Last season when Shauna and Jeff's therapist told them to share fantasies, we got Jeff's boring furniture store fantasy, but we never heard anything from Shauna. Now, I didn't believe it for a second when she told Jeff that the thought of him being with someone else always scared her - we saw how she reacted when she thought he was having an affair - but I did somewhat believe it when she said it also turned her on. That would tie in with him having been Jackie's boyfriend. What's interesting is that she maybe is taking Jeff's words in last season's finale about them always having been these terrible people to heart, and is just embracing that. I couldn't believe it when Natalie and Travis found the fox and didn't consider taking it back with them. But Natalie insisted on marking the spot. So they could still go back and retrieve the fox. I wonder if that's sort of how it'll all start. Shauna knows, on account of eating Jackie's ear, that meat can be thawed and consumed. So if Natalie mentions the fox, Shauna should be able to let her know the fox probably could be thawed out and consumed. And then maybe that starts putting the idea of Jackie into the other girls' heads. I don't think Shauna would make that particular suggestion; I feel like she'd want to keep Jackie for herself. It's interesting to speculate if we should read anything deeper into Shauna literally consuming Jackie than her just being really hungry and eating for two. (I cannot imagine how she's sat at birthday brunch with Jackie's parents for 20+ years!) I wondered last season if Jackie was the first girl to be eaten, and if her necklace ended up being used as a way to mark the next person to be killed and eaten because Jackie was the OG, and now the first part of that theory has been confirmed.

Why did I have to move to the east coast? LOL Staying up until 9pm to watch is easy for me; staying up until midnight to watch? I'll try, but I'm likely to fall asleep before then!

Oooo, when you click on the Click Here button and go to the next screen, don't just close it out right away. Give the page a little time...that's all I'm gonna say.

I think Gregory being all “You’re already dating someone when we just broke up??” with Amber rules out the theory that he and Janine are seeing each other. I rolled my eyes at Gregory as it was, considering he kissed Janine hours after the breakup, but if he were also secretly seeing her he’d be doubly ridiculous to be complaining about Amber having a boyfriend. It would also be disrespectful of and hurtful to current girlfriend Janine. So I don’t think they’re seeing each other right now. Janine would never be able to keep that secret anyway.

Elliott isn't really worth the money of his current contract. But it's actually an option that the Cowboys re-sign him, just for something more reasonable. It was a mistake to invest so much in Elliott to begin with, on account of the position. It's why I'm hoping the Raiders won't be idiots and give Josh Jacobs a huge extension. RBs are fungible, and a great OL can make a pedestrian RB look awesome. And a great OL has other important benefits, so it makes sense for a team to invest their money in the OL rather than in a RB, because it's more bang for the buck. It may be a bad move for him, but I also don't know if he had much in the way of options, especially assuming he wants to be a starter. With the Bucs, he will have the chance to win the job. What other team would be bringing him on as anything other than a backup? The teams who need starters have either already signed them or are going to be picking a QB in this year's draft. Are there any teams left besides the Bucs for whom that's not the case? The Jets, I suppose, but it seems fairly certain at this point even though Rodgers is still dragging his heels on actually signing the paperwork. And Baltimore is also basically set; Jackson will end up playing on the franchise tag for them. No other team is going to be willing to pony up both the 100% guaranteed contract he wants plus the picks they'd have to send Baltimore.

I think the Packers pretty much got AR to rule that out as an option when they made it clear they're not interested in having him back. It would be too humiliating to force his way back and face the likely possibility that the Packers would start Love over him. I think part of the problem AR is having is that whatever he says about it not being a factor, he doesn't want to retire the same year as Brady. I think if not for that, he'd happily hang up his cleats. So you have a player who doesn't particularly want to play anymore who nevertheless feels for an outside reason he should hang on for one more season, but also knows his own team doesn't want him. He saw what that was like when Favre was in his shoes and he was in Love's, and he's not going to put himself in the position of getting told to kick rocks, Love's the starter now. So if he's going to play another season, he has to move. So he's trying to make the one final season more appealing for himself by getting the Jets to load up the team with his best buddies. But all the same, he just doesn't seem like he really wants to play another season of football, and that's why this is all dragging out somewhat. If he was really interested in playing and winning, the Jets are pretty much a slam dunk. All they really need is a QB. Making the playoffs shouldn't really be an issue (there's always the wild card if Buffalo wins the division), and that's enough to make his final season a success rather than an embarrassment. Brady helped smooth the way in that regard by retiring after a season where he didn't win a Super Bowl or even get deep into the playoffs.

It's hilarious, if true, how Rodgers is telling the Jets to sign all his buddies first before he'll commit.

I think they have to, for at least the ones we know already survived. Most notably, it's just too tricky to continue telling the story of Shauna and Jeff's marriage without seeing what happened when Shauna came home and everyone learned Jackie was dead. My guess is by the end of the second season we'll have Shauna's backstory from the point she came home filled out: How it is that she didn't go to Brown, how it is that she and Jeff married.

And finally, as Joe said to Marienne, Rhys had done bad things and gotten another chance. And then we see what Rhys did with that second chance: He became popular and beloved across the spectrum, with everyone wanting him to run for mayor of London. Joe ends this season in something of a similar position, as he's getting publicity now for being a wealthy philanthropist. I can't make up my mind about Kate. Her dad accused her of making sure to name-drop Adam to him so that he'd kill Adam, and it seemed like Kate might have done the same thing with Joe, telling him all about dad and making sure to mention the refurbished airport so that Joe would kill daddy for her. The main argument against this in my mind is that, if she really has no problem with killing, then she's just Love II. The other possibility for Kate that we've been presented with is that she's willing to let Joe's past misdeeds go because she has past misdeeds of her own, but that her agreement with him is that they aren't going to commit any new ones, and that she truly wants to be good going forward. We don't know if she knows that Joe killed Eddie and framed Nadia for it. My feeling is that we're not going to know who Kate really is until Marienne and/or Nadia approach her. They have to. It's very risky and could blow up in their faces the same way it blew up in Candace's when she went to Love (but then that would be the show just doing Love II), but I don't see what other choice they'll have. As Joe noted, he has all kinds of resources now that protect him. But those resources are through Kate. She's not even married him yet - and I kind of suspect that, having witnessed what happened to Phoebe when she married Adam, Kate never will marry Joe, she'll always make up an excuse. So to take Joe down requires getting Kate to cut off Joe's access to her resources, and to use her resources to take him down. Joe himself certainly seems to have no intention of sticking to the agreement with Kate. In his VO at the end, while he noted he has other ways to handle problems besides killing, he never said anything about never killing again. And he further noted, chillingly, that killing is easy for him now. So this season is an important inflection point for Joe. He's no longer in denial about who he is, and further, he's comfortable with it. Next season is probably going to have a high body count. It should also be the last season IMO. The show began in NYC; it seems fitting to have it end in NYC. Full circle.

No, she did, at her sister's final line about how they were doing just fine. But she knew it would really set her sister off if she said "bullshit," so she settled for a raising of the eyebrows. It was thrilling to see Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall acting together again. Of course the writers made their characters sisters to forestall any urging from fans to pair them romantically a second time, heh. But it was such a nice gesture to But I'm a Cheerleader fans for Lyonne to save DuVall for the season finale, and to cast her in a role where she can be brought back periodically. Can't wait for S2!

Entirely possible, but that would only implicate members of the cult. I don't think all the survivors were members, and there has to be something that implicates both cult and non-cult members. Leaving someone behind in the woods would fit the bill. You make a great point about Tai being a high value target for the cult now that she's been elected. If she attributes her surprise win to the sacrifice of the dog, then she'll be tempted to keep tapping into that to gain more power. If not, the cult could resort to blackmailing her - perhaps with something to do with covering up Adam's murder.

There's been nothing in the show per se to indicate it, but since we don't have full lists yet of who died in the woods and who was rescued, it's certainly a possibility. I've spent a fair amount of time contemplating the possibility of one or more people having been left behind. The reasons why the show might do this: One, it'd be shocking. Two, it would certainly explain why all the survivors are so concerned about whatever happened in the woods being revealed, because such an action would implicate everyone, not only those who were part of Lottie's cult. I don't think all of the survivors were part of the cult; Nat said, for instance, that Travis never believed any of it. Nat herself seems really unlikely to go in for something like that. I'm 50-50 on Shauna. Tai I think probably got pulled in to a degree by Van and then extricated herself. We know Misty was part of it, but whether she really bought into it or she just saw it as a way to form a connection with other people after having reverted to her outsider status is still an open question.

Rodgers won't be a FA this season, even if he decides he's not going to retire but doesn't want to play for the Packers anymore. Then he'd be traded. It will be interesting to see what price the Packers set should that happen. And if Rodgers isn't willing to commit to playing at least two more seasons for his new team, that will cut down on the teams willing to trade significant assets for what could be a one-year rental.

He was generally considered the best of the QBs available in free agency this offseason, so within that context, yes. Of course there have been more exciting slates of FA QBs in other years...

Max was an older man, and a lot of older people don't have family to speak of anymore. The older generation of relatives - parents, aunts/uncles, if any - are often dead. In the person's own generation, there may not be any siblings, if the person was an only child or their sibling(s) have already died; same for cousins. He didn't have any children from his marriage to Laura, or we would've heard about them. There might be some blood relatives scattered around who are cousins of some degree, but if they're not close or in regular contact, then it wouldn't be much of a thing. (Technically I have a lot of blood relatives, but once my parents depart this earth, the likelihood of any of my remaining relatives being interested enough to challenge an apparent suicide is nil. I'm not close to or in regular contact with any of them.)

On balance, I actually like this season's cast of characters better than any other season's. Kate's my favorite of the women Joe has slept with. I love her acerbic humor, and then there are her moments of badassery like going out with the ax or saving Joe and Roald from the fire. Gemma was just so wonderfully terrible and set Joe up for some of his best lines. Her murder was quite satisfying. Phoebe is very charming and likable. (Although I'm intrigued by the theory that she's Rhys's accomplice!) And Adam pairs well with her. Nadia of course is a scene-stealer. And I think there might be more to her, too. Joe never actually read that letter she wrote Malcolm, and Nadia just seems too smart to have been emotionally invested in a guy who probably couldn't go 5 minutes without saying something demeaning, racist and/or classist to her. I could listen to Rhys read the dictionary all day long. And after three seasons focused on Joe stalking women and being mostly in control, I think it was high time to reverse the formula and put him in a situation where he's constantly off-balance and not in the driver's seat.

Hulu has had a weird issue with captions for a while now (at least for some users, like me), where when I first start playing something the captions are totally out of sync as you describe. The fix is to start playing the ep, then immediately close it, and on the Hulu screen choose again to play it. The captions will sync correctly then. Yes, which is why Gregory was careful to point out this season that Amber's kid was no longer his student, having aged out of Gregory's 1st grade class. But if he does become principal somehow, all teachers and all parents will be off limits for dating. I still fully expect that to be the next roadblock for Gregory and Janine. I don't see him being willing this early on in their relationship arc to turn down being principal. He likes Janine, but is not in love with her yet. I thought his complaining about always being the one who gets dumped wasn't really on point. He had decided to end things with Barbara's daughter; it's only that he delayed it because he was trying to figure out the best way to handle it that wouldn't create an issue with Barbara, and then found out from Barbara that her daughter also wanted to end the relationship. So that was really a mutual dumping.

I agree that Mutiny may well not have been able to be saved whether Cameron stayed or not. Most likely, aside from everything else, it was simply too early an entrant into that space. That doesn't change that Cameron was correct that the company was going downhill, nor the negative effect her departure had on the IPO. Investors don't like to see founders leaving a company right before an IPO, and Donna's interviews didn't work to reassure them that this wasn't a sign of a doomed company. My feeling is the smart play would have been to keep Cameron over Donna, let Cam mess around with the code for a couple more months, and then do the IPO with a pitch of an exciting new iteration of Mutiny without any messiness of the founder of the company being gone. That would likely have allowed the IPO to hit a share price where they'd all get rich. If Mutiny still ended up tanking afterwards, oh well. The point for people like Diane in particular was to make their money and get out, not to sustain a company for the long haul. That was the story with many tech IPOs, the IPOs making the original founders, employees, and investors rich while those who rushed to purchase the stock eventually took a loss as the company tanked afterwards. Played right, that could have been Mutiny's story. It could be argued that Cameron was just never going to be satisfied enough with the code, but she'd shown herself to be practical before: First with accepting that Mutiny was now about Community rather than games, and then that other thing I don't remember the details of now, something finance-related (credit card payments?) where she didn't want to do it and then she went away for a couple of days and came back with an elegant solution. Cameron was never completely inflexible and incapable of adjusting. I think Bos and Gordon would have been able to bring her around to the necessity of launching the IPO with an updated version of Mutiny even if it wasn't perfect, since it would have been a scenario in which they didn't vote against her - something they would have been able to use in conversation with her later.

It would have diluted the Donna vs. Cameron story and made the fallout for Mutiny much murkier, removing much of the heft of the fateful meeting in which Cameron was voted out. By not involving Ryan in Mutiny's downfall, it's made clear that Cameron was correct when she said that the company needed to innovate, and that her ouster hastened Mutiny's demise because investors were doubtful that the company could or would make the necessary innovations without her and were not reassured by Donna's interviews. Ryan was outside Mutiny after Joe poached him, and I don't think it would have been the best storytelling choice to make him important to its downfall. If Mutiny had been going along just fine, then yes, that would have been interesting to suddenly have it decimated thanks to a former employee's actions, but when so much of the season focused on the internal conflicts tearing Mutiny apart it would have felt off to suddenly have Ryan impact things.

Charlie explained in the pilot that everyone lies so often, and usually about completely stupid shit, that it's just noise. She has to have some reason to think that a lie might actually be important. So she goes through life handwaving away most lies. I don't think it really has anything to do with whether she likes the person or not. She really should stop telling anyone about her being a cancer dog, but I saw in this episode that she is learning to make that work for her though by insisting on a direct answer to a direct question. Since the other person knows about her, both of them understand that to evade the question is an admission of guilt. It makes the situation much clearer than one where the other person does not know about her and might not be answering the question directly for some other reason that doesn't have anything to do with being guilty. I was wondering why the writers just had Katy in a coma instead of being dead, when it's not like they've been shy about killing off even very sympathetic and likable people, and Charlie having to settle for unnerving Davis into losing his flow explained it.

Hey, the firefighter captain was played by Mike O'Malley, aka Kurt's dad Burt on Glee! He's aging very nicely. Gregory is definitely positioning himself to step into Ava's job, and certainly he would do a better job at it. I do wonder if he's realized though that if he becomes principal, he would not be able to date Amber anymore and he would not be able to date Janine. So it feels a bit like the show lining up its next way to keep Gregory and Janine from being together. The montage of the counselor meeting with each of the teachers was quite funny.

I personally consider the Chiefs a dynasty now, but I wouldn't argue with those who think the Chiefs need one more Super Bowl appearance in the next couple of years to solidify it. I think this SBNation write-up was an excellent article about Eric Bieniemy, which includes a couple of things I hadn't known already and knocks down a couple arguments. But for me it really comes down to: I've seen plenty of white OCs declared offensive geniuses for 1 season of having a great QB and getting a HC job out of it, and "He's from the Coach X tree!" is also something that is seen as a positive when it comes to white OCs. Yes, sometimes it really is the QB and the HC, but white OCs are routinely given the opportunity to prove that right or wrong well before they've compiled anything close to Bieniemy's resume. Andy Reid says Bieniemy deserves a HC shot, and he would know better than anyone, methinks.

I applaud the rule myself. They needed to do something to put a ceiling on OT, like other sports have. It's just a basic recognition that it's not fair to ask players to play on and on and on, nor is it a great experience for most fans to have games going too long and late, forcing them to bail on the game. At that point, who is all this for?