lidarose9

A very strong recommendation for "Love/Hate" which is an Irish TV show. The first three seasons are on Hulu. It's about the criminal underworld in Dublin, in the same vein as "The Wire" and "The Sopranos." The writing is top notch, acting is fantastic.

I'm a bit late in adding my voice to the chorus, but I can't stop thinking about what an absolutely awesome actor TF is. This episode was amazing. There are certain moments in certain shows you just never forget, and his words to Athelstan up on that mountain, that will stick with me. It's a combination of fantastic writing, a top-notch actor, a location that does it justice, and a director with the right touch to bring it all together. This show gets a lot of little perfect moments. Each episode has several but lately there've been some great ones: Siggy's face when she sees her daughter on the ice, Athelstan's ecstasy as he had his Road-to-Damascus moment, and Ragnar's face as he said goodbye to his friend. There are more, but those three stand out right now. Both those guys are amazing actors. Everything was always so underplayed, it made the powerful moments that much more intense. I don't know why Ragnar loved Athelstan so much, but I know what it's like to have a friend like that. Something harmonized between them so strongly, in an unspoken way - they felt their friendship more than knew it - so that when Ragnar verbalizes it, you know what those plain words represent. You feel the simple truth of it. You must not leave. You are essential to me. I could not be happy without you. I don't know who I am without you. I especially love that there was never the slightest hint of homoeroticism in the handling of this relationship, even though Ragnar invited Athelstan to bed once. I guess I think that was just a friendly kind of thing to do rather than any secret wish on Ragnar's part. It is possible for two men to have a deep, meaningful friendship without sex being an issue. I think Ragnar wears Athelstan's cross not as a Christian symbol, but as a memento of his treasured friend. I think Ragnar doesn't give a shit about Christianity. He only took it seriously at all because Athelstan did. He wanted to understand why this meant so much to Athelstan, because he admired him. I was truly stunned to see Athelstan die cuz he has functioned as the point-of-view character for us a lot of the time. He's the outsider representing the audience. I guess it's a Ned Stark thing - the show will go on. But I have a feeling he will continue to influence events in Ragnar's life, even from the afterlife.

I don't think Alison and Noah are in love; they barely know one another. I think they are two miserable people who recognized something painful and empty inside of each other and latched onto each other. And when they fuck, they can forget who they are for a few minutes, and they then mistake that for love. They are both now addicted to that self-effacement, and can't live without it. This is not the basis for a lasting long-term relationship, but I understand how it can happen. People are complicated.

I let all these episodes stack up and just watched them, bringing me up to date, and I have to say, I hate this show and I hate all these people. Yes, it's a nifty device to storytell from two different points-of-view, hurrah. Congrats. But wtf is up with the story, man? Is this really an examination of the consequences of an extra-marital affair? Cuz so many of those involve drug smuggling and dealing, small town political backstabbing, oh yeah and MURDER. Happens all the time. I was expecting a chase scene or an explosion. Dysfunctional family, devoted family with dirty secrets... the hard lives of the working class locals in a tourist economy. Throw half a dozen genres into a blender and voila. Let me serve you a piping hot steaming plate of MESS. And they all act like spoiled children. Even Helen and Cole, who are less repugnant than the others. And while the adults are all off acting like children, the children are in big trouble: we've got drowned children, choking children, children faking suicide, children attempting suicide, puking children with cancer, and for good measure, suggestions of child abuse. The whole thing is a mess. A MESS. And a terrible waste of the considerable talents of the cast. I can't fault a single one of them, and yet it adds up to a bunch of nothing. Unlikeable people being miserable. What fun. And the lack of ANY kind of chemistry between Noah and Alison is just staggering. I didn't know it could be so bad. I love McNulty, and the poor guy is acting his ass off but it's all bouncing off a blank wall. I also love the actress who plays Alison but she has not got her bearings here at all. She is all over the map, I have no idea who she is. Maybe that was what they were going for. I don't know. I don't care. And I for one am sick to death of this crap of them making you wade into episode 3 or 4 before you even get the basic set-up. This is not the first time I've seen it, and I feel it is manipulative, sloppy storytelling. Hate it. Want it to stop. I will finish out this mess, I suppose, but I won't be joining the fun for Season 2.

This is just like a soap opera now, where first wives disappear and brain tumors are conveniently forgotten. We are all being asked to pretend these people wouldn't have known about Carrie's illness and medication. When it has been a pivotal plot point in the recent past: her very public breakdown. Being forcibly locked up in the nut house. Being denounced publicly by her boss. What kind of self-respecting terrorist would have missed something so major? This show has never been big on plausibility, but it's the first time I've noticed something so blatantly revisionist. And not for the first time does it make me reflect on the underlying, fundamental lack of plausibility in having a bipolar CIA agent. As a station chief in Islamabad. Or Drone Queen.

This story has lost its bearings and the last two seasons have wandered aimlessly all over the map. But this pointless gore has done it for me. I'm out.

Being a lifelong fan of John LeCarre's novels, I know that using sex is part and parcel of the "intelligence" world. Fucking the target is standard operating procedure. If fucking a guy will save lives, it's an easy price to pay, right? From Carrie's point of view, she's saving the world by fucking this guy. From a governmental standpoint, if it's permissible to torture people, it's certainly permissible to fuck them. To co-opt the ones we need, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we fuck, we torture, we kill. This is just reality. Carrie is following the usual playbook. The reason it feels so ugly and wrong to us in this case because here we have been able to get to know the "villain" or "victim" beyond a mere name and a face. We have been shown a sweet kid, confused, trying to just live his life, caught up in things he doesn't understand, doesn't want to understand, torn between conflicting loyalties. In other words, NOT a fanatic, not an ideologue, not a terrorist, not even a sympathizer. Horrified at his family being murdered, horrified at Sandy's murder. Accused of being a wimp if he doesn't take up arms to defend his murdered family, while being disgusted at the people doing the accusing. He can't win, and he knows it. Like so many people caught up in this kind of non-war, war zone, he looks for short-term answers to immediate problems, thinking I can just do this one thing. I have to do this one thing, it's family, it's an emergency. But taking that one small step, one tiny step put him in the cross-hairs. And now he's toast. He will be (and is being) victimized by "his own people" on every side -- everyone trying to use him, abuse him, manipulate him, even his so-called friends -- and he knows very well these foreigners are no good. He is pretending to believe there is a way out because he can't stand to face the truth. He is toast. Whatever his failings, I pity him intensely. I think we all know Carrie is an absolutely unbelievable character to begin with, but even within the let's-pretend world of this show, she's gone over the edge. Those closest to her sense it, see it - but for whatever reason, feel compelled to allow her to go on with this crusade. She is a manic depressive riding the knife edge of mania. Even when properly medicated, people with this illness can have issues -- issues with seeing things clearly and responding appropriately, issues with judgment, issues with self knowledge. Carrie is using her position in the CIA to enact some egoistic power play, some savior/martyr dynamic that was left raw and bleeding after Brody's death. Everybody knows it, but nobody seems to know how to stop it. Meanwhile, people "on the ground" have died, will die. This show is very hard for me to watch, and I may not be able to continue. It really upsets me. We're accustomed to our protagonists being good guys, people we can root for, but Carrie is not a good guy. I appreciate that she is a complicated, complex character. But in her person, she also exemplifies the worst parts of our country's sense of self, and she is using that place and those people as a canvas upon which to paint black and white pictures, ones that fit the right pigeonholes, to make a story come out with the "right" ending. And it has gotten all mucked up with her personal sense of self. She has a warped perspective. I imagine this is a risk for all "operatives" in this shadow world, if they don't get away long enough or often enough. I think Quinn is there to show us what the eventual outcome would be, if one is lucky enough to survive to the end of a career. The sadness and self hate in his eyes is heartbreaking. The suicide statistics for veterans speaks for itself.

I was disappointed. It's far too sloppy and incomplete, with too many questions and not enough answers. I can deal with some ambiguity, but by a season finale, we should have a much better idea of what's going on.

Blackouts can be total, partial, or seep back into your mind in little glimpses. For Eli, it was triggered by the face of the man in that photo he saw. I found it believable. I also think when you don't want to remember, the mind is very good at just burying it under other clutter.

I can see the writers sitting there saying, "Yeah, OK, so everybody is expecting Ezra to eventually rat out the Swede, I know, let's REALLY surprise them -- we'll kill Ezra! They'll never see that coming! Yeah, man!" Just like, "Hey, I know what will be a real mindfuck is if we bring back Elam and then kill him again! Cool! Yeah! Yeah! Hu-huh!" in Beavis & Butthead voices.

I thought this episode was a big zzzzz. More pointless running around shooting each other. You could just skip ahead to the last five minutes to find out who's dead.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a show needing a detailed FAQ by its 5th episode. What a failure of storytelling. Which is frustrating because there's a lot of cool shit in this story. I mean I'm grateful he decided to share that info with us, but I for one will not read it. If the story can't make itself comprehensible* to me on its own legs, then.... I don't know what but it's not good. * Note that I say comprehensible. Not interesting or entertaining. It doesn't matter if it's good or not if you can't figure out what the fuck is going on, on a really basic level.

There were times during this final episode where I had to pause the DVR cuz I was laughing so hard. It's possible this series will become a cult favorite in years to come. There were moments of hilariously bad acting, I mean, if I had any doubt that Halle Berry and Luka from ER are both really shitty actors, this was the clincher. There were plot stupidities too numerous to count. And there were some moments of true coolness, worthy of a much better show. The subplots involving Ethan were good and could have developed into something really interesting. The scene at the beginning, Molly is packing for her rescue mission. Packing what? Her bikini for a quick dip in the pool? Clean underwear? And then the two saying goodbye to each other, one note acting, no chemistry. And then off she goes with a case labeled PLAN C. I died laughing. I agree with those who suspect the last episode was cobbled together sloppily when everybody had given up on a second season.

Wendy laughing in the car with Nero. I was thinking either Wendy's super-attracted to Nero, or Drea de Matteo is super-attracted to Jimmy Smits.

That scene with Van Alden and Eli was so dark, I could not see what was going on. Could someone explain? The shoot-out wherein many people were shot?

Like so many other shows, it has suffered due to its success. The first two seasons had a good narrative arc that made sense and felt right. Now it just feels like it's in a holding pattern of "more of the same with diff ppl" -- with a few exceptions. I had really bought into the idea that Lily was Bohannon's one true love, a woman who gave him back his desire for love after being dead inside for years -- and that after losing her, he would hang up his romantic spurs. I was kind of horrified when they started making him hanker after the pathetic church lady. And now this dutiful marriage to the Mormon girl - whatevah. After Lily died, I was skeptical that they could keep spinning out the story interestingly, but for a while, they did. I enjoyed seeing Elam and the other newly freed slaves get used to the idea of having some authority, some permanence, making decisions. A bitter ex-Confederate slaveowner becomes true friends with an ex-slave, that was interesting! The story of that railroad pushing west seemed to be an awesome allegory for the changing times after the Civil War. I loved Eva and Elam's storyline. They found hope for a new way of living in each other. Then it wandered off somewhere stupid, around the time she sent their baby back east. Just.... whatevah. The Swede's storyline really was kinda awesome too, until... I forget when, but now it's just stupid. I can't even begin to keep track of all the double-double-crossing with Durant and (whoever) and Bohannan. Whatevah. The Big Bad of each season, fill in the blank. It's carpetbaggers now. Next year it'll be something else. Church lady? zzzz The Irish brother murdering his brother? Meh. And then we get another strong independent female figure thrown in there -- hotel, wait, no, financier, no, East Coast wife, no, wait, it's a newspaper woman -- cuz the new West was absolutely littered with them, right. Really they are all the same character with a diff name and backstory. zzzzz. It just feels random, making-it-up-as-we-go-along. One of the things I loved about this show was the idea that they were pushing west into unknown country. They truly did not know what they might be up against from one day to the next. Like "Deadwood," this show got less interesting as it got more "civilized." I feel like the show made more of an effort to explore those things in the first couple season. But I guess mostly I'm just mad that Elam is dead. What was the point of killing him then bringing him back, then killing him again? To torture us viewers? Further torture Eva and Cullen? Are there any other indignities and emotional tortures we have missed for Eva? Shall we give her a dose of leprosy, for good measure? Oh right, she's already scarred for life. I think they don't know what to do with her character. Actually, I think that is true for all of them.

I'm not sure why I'm still watching this show.

I spent most of the episode in shock that nobody had figured out it was Gemma who killed Tara. I could not believe Jax is that stupid. And then to have the entire MC also not see it -- completely and utterly unbelievable. And THEN to have everybody just line up obediently and kill the Chinese guy -- no questions asked, cuz Gemma said so. GEMMA? Excuse me? Did everybody just suddenly become MORONS? It just got worse and worse: Nothing about the school shooting, nothing about the dead sheriff, so many dangling plot threads - very sloppy writing. I feel sorry for the actors. They must have been reading the script going, "WTF??" I started watching this show around season 4 cuz my roommate loved it. She kept saying, "Hang in there, you'll see." For a long time, it seemed like just a bunch of angry guys driving around and shooting people. Drive somewhere, have a very intense conversation, shoot someone. Yadda yadda. What made the show interesting, eventually, was Jax's tug of war with his own sense of morality. I became curious enough to go back and start at the beginning to get all the backstory. Then it made sense. But that is the danger, if characterization fails: you just get a bunch of guys driving around shooting people. Yawn. After all these years of developing Jax's character, of who he is, Sutter has completely lost his way. I believe the character Jax would have been so utterly gutted after Tara's death, he would have picked up his kids and left town without a backward glance.

I think it's a secret society that has learned how to "come back" in a new body, lifetime after lifetime. They somehow jump into an existing person's body, and get carried around in there for nine years (?), until their time is up and they have to be removed and inserted in a new host. This is done by James Frain, like the Grim Reaper. Each of them has a "shepherd" -- the person who watches over them until their time is up. The traveling consciousness is completely absorbed into the host's mind, and a talisman of some kind is used to trigger the reawakening of 2 distinct personalities. Sand dollar, 45 adapter. Once awakened, the traveler arranges with their shepherd to jump into a new body, and begin the cycle all over again. James Frain is the shepherd for Marcus Fox, who bribed him to set up the arrangement we saw him describe in this episode. Marcus Fox jumped into Madison's body, I think when she was an infant cuz she's only 9 years old now. (I can't remember the details.) James Frain is reawakening all of the travelers only to kill them. Kill them dead, no more traveling. Was this part of the deal with Marcus Fox? Can't remember. Anyhow, James Frain is also trying to deal with the pesky paranormal investigator guy who has apparently uncovered the whole shebang, and is busy killing people via that storyline as well. I think the little girl's parents were her shepherds. They know what's going on and they somehow thought they could skate by the 9 year time limit cuz she was an infant when she became a host. I think James Frain actually says something like this to them when he arrives pretending to be FBI: Oh did you really think you'd get away with it? Something to that effect. I think when the traveling consciousness is awakened, they are intimately entangled in the host's identity. One or the other is in charge at all times, but they have no secrets from one another. Mira Sorvino is extremely torn cuz the host part of her really does love Jack but the Russian is determined to outsmart James Frain and stay alive in that body. She said it's myself I'm leaving. She knows her 9 years is up. SPECULATION FOLLOWS, be warned. MS told Jack he is her shepherd. I think he is her shepherd but maybe he himself is also a traveler, not yet awakened. I am not emotionally connecting with any of them, and that is a problem. There needs to be more information connecting the dots at this point. But I will keep watching.

I was stunned when I realized Holder had put Skinner in the car and dumped it in the lake directly in front of his cabin. Wouldn't he have driven the car to another location to dump it? This just guaranteed that if anybody came looking for Skinner, they'd find him right away. Yet another incredibly stupid move, ranking second only to Linden going back to the cabin to toss in the cellphone. I also assumed that the first couple days after Skinner's death, Linden was in shock, absolutely gob-smacked that 1. this man she'd known so well was a cold-blooded killer, and 2. she'd just had sex with him and had feelings for him. Keeping the shell casings on the table, I can kinda understand. It was a way of forcing herself to face the reality of how wrong she'd been, how badly fooled -- as well as her feelings in coming to terms with the fact that she herself just committed a cold-blooded murder. Even if he deserved it. I have done that, kept something sitting out where it would remind me of something, almost like inflicting pain on myself to drive home a painful message. I would like to say for the record, this show will always have my admiration for giving us a female lead who never gets naked (except in the shower which is shot modestly), doesn't show us her boobies ever, doesn't wear makeup or even give a shit about how she looks except to pull her hair back in a ponytail, and doesn't kowtow to anybody, ever. Never plays dumb, doesn't run her mouth, is never intimidated, doesn't apologize for anything even when she's wrong wrong wrong (except at the end, which makes it all the more powerful). You just do not see female characters on TV like that these days. Doesn't get hysterical (except in private in very extreme moments), and barely registers emotional at all. I remember in Season 1 being kind of bowled over by how different she was with Jack, smiling, trying to be all cheery and bright. So forced, so unnatural! I remember the episode where Jack went missing and you saw how quickly she could unravel when it concerned something personal. The depths of her character were wonderful. I loved how stiff she was with her mother, even when trying to make nice. There was something very honest about Linden. I will remember her. The ending, I thought, was brave. We do not see endings like this on TV much. Two people forge an incredible intimacy through some extraordinary trials, and then always they go their separate ways or at least return to their corners. How odd it felt to see them come back together, both recognizing it was SHE who would have to make the decision. In many ways, this show reversed the sex roles. I don't know if their reconciliation will involve romance or if they'll just be good good friends -- I don't care, but I was happy to have my cynical expectations rattled. This was never a happy ending show, and it took guts to return years later and show us these two people actually did grow and change from their experiences, and were both better people now.