Black Knight

I kept falling asleep during this episode. At one point I woke up to find Daryl choking Rick, and briefly was intrigued by the idea that Daryl had turned traitor. Of course, after rewinding I learned it was just a stupid fight, because Daryl and Rick are children. In an episode that was the dullest of the season (and it's had some serious competition for that dubious honor), I did laugh at Carol being described by the dying Savior as the "short-haired psycho woman." Danai Gurira must be thrilled that she wasn't available for most of this shitshow of a season. It's her gain and our loss.

Who thought it was a good idea to have Missy Peregrym come on this show? It's almost painful seeing how much better she is than Overton in every way, from acting ability to charisma. I could kinda sorta deal with Overton's Vanessa when it was just her, but I'm not sure I can deal with having to think every week about how Peregrym should've been the one cast as Vanessa. Although if they end up using this as an opportunity to change the titular Van Helsing lead from Vanessa to Scarlett, I'll take it. I won't even complain about how it's cheating because Scarlett's really a Harker. Vanessa can join her daughter and this show can finally have a really great lead. It was nice to see the actress who played Susan come back for a brief bit. She's really the only one Vanessa ever seemed likable with, not so grimdark all the time. For that reason I always thought it was a mistake to kill Susan off. And now that Axel is human again, the show is making no bones about its plan to go with the predictable, generic, chemistry-free Axel/Vanessa pairing, when Axel/Doc would be so much more interesting and complex. Another pity. Doc and Axel's journey this season has been one of the better plotlines, even if the wandering in the woods did go on too long. And for the love of all that is holy, would they please end Sam already? He's beyond tiresome. He's a one-note psychopath. I'm not saying that all villains need to have a backstory explaining why they are the way they are, or some kind of nuance, or any other interests or goals besides killing, but I think that villains who get as much screentime as Sam does do, because otherwise it just becomes boring. And it's crossing the line into gratuitous torture porn, especially the stuff with the teens that went on for so long yet didn't tell us anything that we didn't already know - that he's a total psycho. I am not looking forward to the upcoming Sam and Mohamad scenes. I really like Julius and I hope that he survives.

That in itself still isn't any justification, because Sami's certainly had opportunity to call him. And there's every reason for her to and no reason for her not to - not wanting to tell him the good news over the phone doesn't hold water, because she knows he's drinking himself into oblivion out of pain. It's far better to just tell him over the phone than to let him continue to suffer, and he could potentially help with jarring Will's memory. It's nothing more than what I said above, about Writer Fiat because they want the focus on Sami and Sonny. They haven't set up an organic, in-story reason for Lucas to still be so out of this. What kills me is that they could have come up with something - like, Lucas drinks too much, gets alcohol poisoning and goes into a brief coma. They could even have made it into a nice bit where Lucas wakes up to see Will sitting at his hospital bed. But that would require the writers to care about Lucas.

Writer Fiat is all I can think of. They clearly want Sami and Sonny to be the main ones interacting with AmnesiacWill and they don't want to have Lucas there to take focus from Sami and Sonny, but of course if Lucas knew he'd be on the first plane to Memphis, so he has to not know at all. The show has never really appreciated the Lucas character, and especially not for himself - only when Lumi was one of the show's major rooting couples was his status temporarily elevated. Then EJami and Safe came along, and he went back to what he was, an underused and undervalued character and actor.

I don't think a formal written statement exists. He would only have given that once the immunity agreement was finalized, not before. But of course he would've needed to at least verbally indicate what he'd be making a statement about and whom it'd implicate for them to agree to give him immunity. The DA has always wanted Annalise, so it's reasonable to assume that he at least told them he'd give them her. I don't see, however, how he could only give them her, at least not without putting his precious immunity agreement at risk. If he's caught lying, his immunity agreement would be void. And he'd have to lie extensively, because Annalise didn't do a lot of the shit, and she especially didn't kill anyone. For her, that's the difference between some time in prison and a lifetime in prison, or even possibly death row. Expecting both that Annalise would stay completely quiet about anybody else's involvement given the difference it makes to her, and that nobody else in the group would break and help her, would be an unrealistic gamble on Wes's part. Connor has always felt the guiltiest of everyone, and Frank and Bonnie are obsessively devoted to Annalise, so that's three weak links right there. They'd probably turn around and say that Wes did everything and is trying to shift it off on Annalise, and it wouldn't be hard to get Asher and Michaela, at minimum, to back them up, since otherwise it means Asher going down for his murder of Sinclair. I honestly don't really know what Wes intended to do, in the last hour of his life, and he's dead, so I don't know that we can ever get any more information about what he was thinking, unless that ICE call Milaxx mentioned comes back into play and they have a recording of him saying whatever it was he was finally going to do. My issue is more that the group certainly ought to at least think about the possibility he was going to throw them under the bus, given that there is evidence for that (the immunity agreement), and give the audience a few lines to explain why they have apparently ruled that out. At least one person in the group should be a skeptic, thus enabling that kind of discussion/debate. I get why Laurel would be pro-Wes since she was in love with him and wouldn't want to think that he would ever implicate her in anything, but he wasn't as close to the others. Michaela especially would consider it, I feel, since she always tries to look at all the angles.

But people don't get blanket immunity, as Wes was demanding and being given, unless they're agreeing to turn state's evidence against someone else that the state wants more. We saw Wes negotiating this last season, and we saw the moment again via flashback a couple of episodes ago when Laurel was explaining why her father ordered Wes's murder. So I'm still confused as to why the others would think Wes was intending to save them. If he was going to take the fall himself, there would have been no immunity agreement, just him giving a confession.

Also, it's easily passed off as being alphabetical for Winfrey and Witherspoon. It's not uncommon, especially in TV, for the top-billed actors to be listed alphabetically and then the second-tier actors to be listed alphabetically in their turn. As long as they're just pushing forward the well-known adult actors for the promotions while the actual movie remembers the lead character is Meg, this should be fine. I'm not too worried, since this is such a beloved book that naturally the adult actors would want to be attached to the project for nostalgic reasons, as opposed to making it a vehicle for themselves. I'll be interested in the overall feel of the film, because while I love the book - read it a billion times as a kid/teen and all that - I suspect it's increasingly dated. It already felt somewhat dated to me when I last read it a couple of years ago, and I decided I'd never read it again because it would probably feel even more dated as time passes and I don't want to do that to myself. I recently re-read Wind in the Door and didn't have the same issue with it. I have Many Waters somewhere and will try a re-read of that too when I find my copy of it. I'm not sure if I even have A Swiftly Tilting Planet - it was always my least favorite of the four books. I don't remember much of it at all, but I vaguely recall the issue for me was Charles Wallace as a POV character. He's such an unusual boy and I think L'Engle does better with more typical teens.

I think Annalise probably still is in denial, actually, but I did mention "unacknowledged" guilt, which I probably should have stated slightly differently - that is, "subconscious" was the better choice. As for Bonnie and Annalise's dynamic, I agree with Neurochick that it's a combination of all three of the possibilities (mother/child, friends, erotic/romantic). I don't think the erotic/romantic aspect is the dominant one, but it plays a part, especially on Annalise's side since she kissed Bonnie and is the one always going on about the other having sex and is the one who has been shown to be interested in women. For Bonnie I think it's more family, but she's willing to go along with Annalise. (Though I can't be sure what exactly she was saying with her speech to Annalise tonight about loving her...) Annalise seems to have a pattern of conflating mother/child and erotic/romantic especially, given that she also saw Wes as a surrogate child but was inappropriately handsy/sexual with him. Annalise and Bonnie both being sexually abused by adult relatives probably factors into their difficulty with defining their relationships with clear/appropriate boundaries. Good point about Wes. I actually thought last season that it would turn out to be one of the show's typical fake-outs, but after Laurel (apparently) figured out the motive this season and the showrunner commented how he thought previous seasons were too convoluted in the plotting, I've been thinking that we're to take Wes at face value. If the characters are taking his departure from the police station as evidence he wasn't turning, there really should be a line about that, considering it's the motive for his murder.

I like Quinn, and I especially like Quinn/Charlie, but Marcus would have the least dirt on his hands. And after him, Abby (which isn't saying that much). I don't recall her ever torturing anyone. And actually Quinn isn't much better than Huck at all - and her beloved Charlie really isn't any better than Huck - but I am subjectively biased towards her because of Huck torturing her and the fact that Olivia blew up her entire life in the first place. (And the Charlie actor is a million times better than Guillermo Diaz.) That said, her reaction to Yasmeen's murder proves there's a seed of decency still in her, albeit likely hypocritical because her fiancé murdered Amanda Tanner, who didn't do anything other than have a fling with Fitz and so is almost as blameless as poor Yasmeen. But if I had to pick one of the crew to go to, well, it'd be Marcus first, and then Abby second. The quartet of torturers/murderers of Huck/Quinn/Charlie/Olivia are in a tie for last. I happen to like Quinn and Charlie more than I do Olivia, and much more than I do Huck, but I don't think there's really much difference between them morally. They'll all be in the same circle of hell. I'm good with that. As long as somebody then kills Cyrus for all the people he's had killed, starting with Amanda Tanner in S1 through the unlucky people he set up to be killed to facilitate the nomination of Vargas. Really, this show should end with all of the regulars except Marcus dead. I actually like some of them, but morally almost all of them are awful, awful people. Normally, the fact we weren't shown Quinn's body would make me completely certain that she's not dead. I still think she's probably not dead. But the combination of it being the last season and her being nine months pregnant makes me set the odds as more than zero that she's dead. The network may not have been okay with the idea of showing a nine months pregnant woman dead, and with them winding down the series, there's certainly plenty of room for them to kill off series regulars. It also depends somewhat on what Olivia's endgame is supposed to be. I'm also not completely sure that her endgame isn't supposed to be her as Command, with us seeing that she's given up her humanity to be it - if that's the endgame, then Quinn being dead would make a lot of sense. If she's going to ultimately pull back (for the zillionth time) and be "white hat" again, then Quinn's alive. And again, I think that's the likelier option. But I can't completely rule out the other. Mellie and Olivia's scene was interesting. It was practically like a wedding. I knew what Mellie said would drive Olivia's decision, but I wasn't sure in which direction, since she covered both the country and being personally worth it. I guess from what Olivia said to Rowan about Quinn dying for the Republic that she went with the former. This show never gets power struggles right, so I wasn't surprised that Olivia vs. Papa Pope was so ridiculous. After all, remember last season when he shot his own girlfriend dead so he wouldn't have any weaknesses, and then the bad guys were like, "Yeah, but what about your daughter?" and Rowan was all, "Doh!" and did everything they wanted anyway? And so of course the show doesn't mention the third option, even though we saw it again tonight - if Olivia doesn't want to kill her father, she could just imprison him like her mother. He's already mostly imprisoned, so it's not that far a step to one of those facilities like Maya is in. It's all so dumb. The moment of the episode was definitely Maya laughing hysterically upon hearing that her ex-husband wants his dinosaur. Somebody should've killed Papa Pope seasons ago. He's an awful character and Joe Morton, while a competent actor, is terrible in the choices he makes for this particular role. I don't think it's all the direction's fault since other actors on the show do better with similar material of monologuing and whatnot. And I do not know why in this final season we are still dealing with B-whatever nonsense. It was a terrible idea from the start and should not be part of the final episodes, but for some reason the writers just love B-whatever. There were other ways to take Olivia down a dark path that didn't involve shadowy organizations, which so rarely work out well.

We don't know that. We only know that Annalise has always accused Bonnie of having sex, which has been one of the interesting things about the dynamic between the two women - she's rather obsessed with Bonnie having sex. And no, not just with men connected to her somehow - she also accused Bonnie of sleeping with a lawyer whom Annalise did not know at all (the one Bonnie recommended to represent Wes). Bonnie's involvement with Asher also had nothing to do with Annalise - Asher and Annalise didn't have much of a relationship during that time period. If Bonnie was going to single out one of Annalise's students on the basis of his connection to Annalise, back then Asher was about the last one she would have picked - it would have been Wes. But there was never a hint of that. We saw the Bonnie/Isaac scenes and she never made a move on him. She did seem to have feelings for Sam, but she was his patient. Transference is a normal thing and probably had little to do with Annalise. She never moved on Sam, and when Sam actually finally made a physical move on her, Bonnie ran straight to Annalise. (I've always wondered how much of Annalise's blaming Bonnie and firing her for that was jealousy - not over Sam, but over Bonnie - and how much was unacknowledged guilt because Sam was the last therapist she should ever have recommended for Bonnie, given she knew he'd already crossed ethical boundaries with a patient once, with herself. I don't think Sam was fit to be anyone's therapist, but especially not for a woman who had been victimized by dozens of men, including her own father.) Bonnie and Frank was more about the fact that he killed her horrible father for her than anything else, and from what we were shown, Bonnie really was thinking of that whole thing more as a choice to break away from Annalise than to connect herself to Annalise more. But Frank bailed on her, so Bonnie went back to Annalise. I could have lived without an entire segment devoted to Laurel giving birth in the elevator. Ugh. And I wish they hadn't shown Simon dead before they showed Simon shooting himself - the way it happened with the gun, it would have been a really amazing shock if they'd shown the latter cold. Perhaps the thing I'm most curious about for the next episode is how/why Michaela and Isaac know each other, because as of this point in the timeline, they still haven't met, and there's so little time left now before the hospital scenes. I feel like Isaac's ex-wife has something more to do with all this. Hiring Kathryn Erbe just to be the ex-wife would be a waste. The actress playing Tegan is such a good addition to the cast. Her whole speech was just show filler to intersperse with the gang breaking into the server room, and yet I enjoyed watching her deliver all of it. Why does nobody from the group really grapple with the fact that Wes was killed because he was going to rat on all of them, his girlfriend Laurel included? It doesn't justify his murder, but you'd think they'd be a little less "We have to do this for Wes!" as a result. He chose to betray them all to cut an immunity deal for himself, which is rich considering that the original Rebecca fiasco was almost entirely his doing.

The original Kristen/Susan story is one of my all-time favorites. I found it absolutely hilarious. Not at all believable, but hilarious. To this day I still giggle when I think about Susan and John's wedding, capped off by Laura crashing the wedding and shaking Susan until her teeth flew out and landed in Vivian's glass. But yeah, I think that to be able to even tolerate this current version of Susan, one would need to have a ton of nostalgia from not only watching but enjoying the original storyline.

Amen. I see this come up a number of times and I hate it so much - if a woman has sex with her partner and then is raped, somehow the revelation that she'd had sex with her partner and then was raped is seen as promiscuity on her part, and further is perceived as damaging to her case against the rapist. She was raped! She didn't consent to the second partner! She didn't know when she slept with her partner that she was going to be raped later! Aargghh! That other guy is Paul, Sonny's current fiancé, although presumably not for much longer. Paul and Sonny were together first, then Paul slept with Will not knowing that Will is Sonny's husband, and then Paul and Sonny got back together after Will's "death."

Oh my gosh, as someone for whom the OTP of this show has always been the Kara/Alex sisterhood, this episode was everything. It was also such a welcome course-correction after S2 - I completely agree with Chyler Leigh's comments about how everyone was basically sectioned off last season and that this episode brings back some of the beating heartbeat of the show. I hope the writers have learned their lesson for when Mon-El inevitably returns and don't allow things to get so out of balance again. All the relationships matter, not just one per character, and Kara/Alex are the bedrock of the show. I can't get over YoungKara and especially YoungAlex - what, did Chyler play all the scenes first so her younger counterpart could see how to do it, because that actress was note-perfect in channeling Chyler! Her line deliveries, her looks, even the way she'd hold her head...just dead on. I was amused that even as a teenager Alex already knew how to intimidate with a look. YoungKara perfectly captured Melissa's ebullience and awkwardness, too. And aw, my heart at the two times the sisters hugged, first when Kara was floating with Alex and then when Kara busted in at the end. I also liked that they didn't forget J'onn and put him in so that we could see that he was looking after the sisters as he'd promised Jeremiah. In the present day, I liked the undercurrent of the scenes between Alex and Kara, how it was not only Alex missing Maggie but also her lingering hurt from when Kara shut down for so long after Mon-El left - in a way, she lost her sister for a time, and now she's lost Maggie, which brought that back. And the way the lyrics they sang at the end, which resonated with Alex's line that right now all she really needs is Kara there, and how "and I could be your favorite girl forever, perfectly together" called back to Alex's line in the season premiere that Kara is her favorite person was beautiful. Such a perfect song choice for them. They're each other's favorite and always will be. My heart. Now can they do a spin-off with YoungKara and YoungAlex? Please? Those actresses are so perfect!

But to be pretending to be Susan for so long? I can't see Kristen being able to stand impersonating Susan for a week, much less a year.

It would be pretty funny if Sonny spent so much time dithering between the two men that they decided to choose each other instead.

I feel like it's the sort of thing that depends on whether you're really emotionally committed to the person or not. Paul only lied for one day and then came clean - and entirely on his own, not because someone got suspicious and asked him about it. He saw Will once, said nothing about it, went back the next day to look at Will again, and then told Sonny the truth. So in my mind it's not that huge. It can definitely be worked through if you're serious about your relationship. But it presents Sonny with a ready-made excuse to drop Paul if that's what he wants to do anyway, check out of the relationship guilt-free and blame it all on Paul. If Paul's the one he's leaning towards, he'll forgive Paul. Personally I'd still take Paul's staying silent for 24 hours and then coming clean on his own over Will's two infidelities and the months he kept those secret (and he did not come clean on his own - Sonny basically figured it out), and I'm surprised the show didn't have Paul get caught in the lie instead so that the two men would be on a more level playing field. I know Sami having the exhumation done would have put Will's being alive out there, and then they would know to find him in Memphis with Susan, so it all was going to come out very quickly. But they still could have done something like have Paul pretend he didn't know about Will being alive until Sami arrived with the news of the empty coffin, and then have it turn out that Will did catch a glimpse of Paul when Paul was in the bar, so that when Will and Paul inevitably met Will could be like, "Hey, I've seen you before," thus outing Paul.

Yeah, I was thrown by Sofia's initial attitude in her scene with Arizona (she cheered up once AZ rolled out the three flavors of ice cream). Now I think maybe the writers just wanted to have AZ say that she misses Callie, as a nod to the Calzona history and fanbase, and they couldn't think of any organic way to do it, so they just had Sofia set it up with her line. I grew to hate the Calzona pairing with a passion and couldn't have been more thrilled when Sara Ramirez left, but they were groundbreaking in some ways and meant a lot to people, and I do think the writers needed to make some sort of Calzona gesture, especially since they gave AZ the Mark speech earlier in the episode and one of the problems with Calzona writing-wise was how poorly they balanced Calzona and Mark - in Calzona's own freaking wedding episode, AZ's big emotional scene wasn't with her bride but with Mark. I think Vernoff realized it would be tone-deaf to have Arizona talk about Mark and say nothing about Callie. (Last night I was thinking of who else could've talked about Mark, and was depressed to realize how many characters from his days are no longer around. The only other remaining characters who really had relationships with Mark are Mere and Jackson.) I enjoyed this episode. I watched a lot more of it than I typically do. The baby GIC cracked me up. I do wish they'd come up with something better for DeLuca though. And I would have liked to see an Addison mention, but only Amelia could really do it and having her do it would've pointed out the absence of Addison during the tumor storyline.

I already got what you meant in your/my original posts, but I still don't want to see it. I feel like at some point there would inevitably be a conversation where Sami has to say to BrainwashedWill that he isn't EJ, because EJ was her husband while Will is her son. Not to mention the level of mindfuckery Sami would go through upon learning her son is identifying himself by her dead husband's name, even if he has none of EJ's memories and just believes he's Susan's son, full stop. I have a lot of tolerance, but it's still too much grossness for me. So, of course, your theory is probably dead on. I'll stock up on brain bleach.

I hope that's not it, because the idea of Sami's son being brainwashed into her husband, even though I'm sure "EJ" wouldn't know he has a wife, is so squicky.

I used to read a football blog that was a bunch of adult men posting, and once they got onto the subject of very overweight women. They were pretty crass about it, so I apologize in advance, but it was eye-opening as they either didn't know or didn't care that any women might lurk. In any case, no guy said that they hadn't or wouldn't - and not because they were "woke" men, because they sure weren't trying to pretend to be that. It wasn't the first or last time they were giant pigs. Anyway, the consensus among them was that those women were better at things like giving blowjobs, and were willing to go further, because on account of their weight they had to try harder. As such, it doesn't surprise me that this guy wanted to sleep with Kate. It was a hook-up. For hook-ups, what sort of time you expect to have in bed is more important than how someone looks.

Zola is at most three months older than Sofia. Zola was six months old when she was introduced in S7, in the episode in which both Callie and Arizona, and Derek and Meredith, were married. The previous episode, which featured Callie's recovery from her car accident, covered three months from Sofia's birth to when Callie was finally able to go home. The weddings in the next episode took place at some indeterminate time after that. Probably not that much afterwards, but I'd think Callie and Arizona would've needed a couple of months after Callie had returned home for their wedding plans, since the wedding wasn't a super-formal affair but wasn't a slapdash thing either. Speculation aside, what we know for sure was that Sofia was at least three months old in the episode six-month-old Zola was introduced.

Wow! First, I can't believe anyone else is reading this book at the same time, and second, you have mentioned the section that I found the most upsetting (so far) as well. And, with Harvey having just torn through the Houston area, all that about the petrochemical plants all around the area really had special resonance. I'm finding the discussions about evolution fascinating; yes, we've created a lot of things that will last for a really long time, but some organisms will evolve accordingly. It's not the meek that will inherit the earth, it's something that can eat plastic. Also interesting is the dichotomy of how we've created so many problems by importing invasive non-native species, but with us gone, many of the native species would lose the battle for good since we at least have eradication programs attempting to ameliorate the damage we've done.

I agree Jackson isn't coming off as likable in general. But that could be intentional, as Jesse Williams has lost a good portion of his fanbase and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he doesn't last the season. Maybe the award he wants to establish will end up being named the Jackson Avery Memorial Award. I see they're just doubling down on Carina having no actual character. But if they're going to continue with that, fine, then I'm relieved she's away from Arizona and on to Owen, who I don't care about. And who knows, maybe Carina can get Owen to lighten up. That's one of the reasons I like Owen with April (in their mentor/mentoree roles, not as anything else!), because he's not so damn scowly. I don't think Sofia is going to be SORAS'd to full-on teenager, but even if they use the same actress she's still going to be a little older than she technically should be in show time, and if she's had a growth spurt IRL it could be especially jarring since we haven't seen her for over a year. I think that's the reason they're getting DeLuca out of AZ's house, even though DeLuca is about the last guy I would worry about around a minor girl. Speaking of DeLuca, first, it was completely bizarre/inappropriate to see him hanging out with Alex, and second, yay, he looks to finally be getting a storyline of his own! AZ had the first half of the classic "That's not how this works! That's not how any of this works!" rant. I was hoping she'd finish it, but I guess the writers thought that'd be a little too on the nose. I loved the looks the docs gave each other when April commented about a bullet still in the chamber and the idiot girl was all "Wuh?" And word to April on the sense of not dating anyone from the hospital, though of course nobody (herself included) has or will follow that, I'm sure.

She did. I vividly remember because Brooke fainted when she saw Maria, and because of the way they insisted on filming it, Julia Barr was forced to do the worst on-camera faint ever so that she didn't hit her damn head. (Usually actors are filmed just from their waist up, so that there can be a mat on the ground that they can drop onto.) But that was a while ago. More recently than that was Marty on OLTL (where TSJTodd kept it to himself), and I'm sure more since then. The Jason/Liz thing on GH, for instance, even though that's just been retconned into NotJasonAfterAll. I guess in this show's case Ron feels the need to kind of put Paul and Will on the same footing, since Will and Sonny were not together when he died due to the fact that Will cheated on Sonny with not just one but two men. Sami obliquely referenced that to Lucas at their graveside reunion, so at some point I expect it'll come up. Without Paul doing something shady like this, for Sonny it really should be a pretty straightforward choice despite the "first love" handwringing.

I mentioned above that one of the reasons I normally incline to publishing order is that it's usually how the author intended, and as you point out here, Bujold is one of the exceptions. I happen to have read the books in published order because I got into that series early, rather than when a bunch of books had already been published. I haven't tried re-reading by internal chronology (in large part because I sadly don't really have time to re-read anything these days), but I am curious as to how that actually works out for readers of this series, because Bujold has always asserted her right to overthrow established canon if she happens to Have a Better Idea. I guess it works out roughly the same as far as the big picture goes, it's just the details that differ. If you read one way you'll eventually have Canon A later overwritten by Canon B, and if you read the other way you'll eventually have Canon B overwritten by Canon A. And now, because I feel like I have yanked this thread somewhat off track and should at least throw in an on-topic comment: I'm finishing up Alan Weisman's The World Without Us. It's an interesting study of what would happen on this earth if humans simply vanished tomorrow (to the rapture or whatever).