whyjoshua

Thank goodness, not even a fresh coat of paint is going to take away the Marbella's sterling reputation as "the one with all the murders." I was worried.

The prototype (or at least its schematics) was sent to Gotham, and then Bruce Wayne approved it for beta. We are to infer that Bruce Wayne then adapted the prototype to make an anti-Joker version, with the Powerless crew shrugging it off as a coincidence.

The Fox. There's two of them. The idea of the Fox is that she's a French Batman-style hero (wealthy industrialist who has adopted an animal persona to avenge her parents' deaths), but with a twist!: she's twins. One of the D'Aramis sisters (Constance) faked her death, so there's both a Crimson Fox and a Vivian D'Aramis operating at all times, but the sisters switch roles as needed. The real Vivian died in Justice League America (the post-Zero Hour run with Wonder Woman as the leader), and then the real Constance carried on as a solo hero, only to die in Starman. Constance talks a bit about how lonely she is as the sole survivor of her family in the Starman issue, which I think is meant to make her death in that issue seem extra tragic.

That's an odd issue for a lot of reasons. Honestly, I kinda like the little speech Robinson gave her about how the new Louvre pyramid isn't French enough for her. I actually got into comics long after their deaths, so I've always known them as dead heroes—pre-N52, at least. Who knows if they're "alive" in current continuity.

This bothers me a ridiculous amount since somehow the Crimson Fox is one of my favorite superheroes. I never thought I'd see her in any non-comics adaptation outside of Justice League Unlimited backgrounds, but it's still frustrating that everything we see of the character is… not her. She doesn't use her head-whip ONCE. I get that they wanted a D-lister for Charm's local hero; I'm just not sure why they'd pick a real DC character and then eliminate the stuff that makes her lovably weird.

The dings and buzzer sounds are missing from the hot potato game for Round 2.

I'm sure it just slipped Tara's mind, but The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow are both CW spin-offs—the former of Arrow, and the latter of both Arrow and The Flash. That said, I would happily take a Jane the Virgin spin-off focused on Jane's rarely seen "best friend" Lina. The actress is adorable, and I like the idea of having two shows about very different friends whose lives only intertwine in occasional catch-up episodes where they recap their shows to each other over drinks, each giving her take on the other's crazy situations.

I never would have guessed that Naomi Smalls in Jerri Blank drag would resemble Christine Baranski most of all, but now I know it to be true.

Was this a reference to something specific? He winked when he said it, so I thought it must be. I didn't get it.

The moment I saw I Love Lucy in the episode description, I was already disappointed because I love that show and I couldn't imagine the regular crew liking it much. Sarah made a good point about whether a less-well-known episode might do better, though. I could see episodes from either of the two great "road trip" arcs (LA or Europe) playing a little better. They tend to have a little less of the "everything is setup for one big slapstick set piece and/or musical number" structure, and a lot less of the war of the sexes stuff.

I think the songs-are-in-Rebecca's-head thing was/is a rule, but it's a rule that has to be modified as the series progressed and more occasions for a song are constructed without Rebecca being present. Because that song was not in her head, but it was in Greg's head. The lights changed, a piano appeared out of nowhere, and when the song was over, there was a jump-cut back to Greg, who never actually moved from his spot behind the bar. The scene even ends by lingering on the place in the bar where the piano was, and now there's a table there, as if to underline the fantastical nature of the performance. I don't think it's that big a deal, but I do think it's part of the show's way of presenting characters who are fundamentally broken (or, to use the title's phrasing, crazy). The songs aren't just songs: they're symptoms of the distortion in the mind of a person.

That makes sense. I guess I chalked up the blocking stuff to being a joke, similar to in "Sexy Getting Ready Song," the rapper stopped his part almost immediately because he was horrified by Rebecca's bathroom arsenal. Rachel Bloom did another awkward/unexpected reaction to that, but I don't think the rapper was a real character (I assume the last scene of him calling up his bitches was also a joke).

"Face Your Fears" is a total delight, definitely my favorite number so far, but I don't think it actually happened in-universe. It seemed like just another hallucination from Rebecca, who hears terrible advice but wants to be motivated to throw the party, so she reimagines it as something much grander and musically persuasive. I think that's why it ends with a smash-cut (no pun?) to Rebecca and Paula in the same poses they were in before the number started—they never moved. I mean, I guess we'll know for sure if there's ever a musical number that doesn't involve Rebecca in the room with the singer.

We were never told. Presumably she was let go when Kalinda made her redundant in the post-Diane-jumping-ship reshuffling. I would imagine she's too expensive for Alicia anyway, but I assume real-life issues were at play.

Everything about this episode made me happy. I forgot how charming the characters are, how much they like/love each other, and how much fun they are to be around; but I remembered the moment all the missing baby nonsense was resolved. Except that cliffhanger. My lord we don't need *another* criminal mastermind with nonspecifically evil intentions hovering about Jane & Co. If she ends up being Luisa's next girlfriend, I'm fast-forwarding through that plot.