Hobo.PassingThru

I agree with most of what I read here, even how it could have been different. I also applaud how many of you were attentive and to those who had theories on how it would play out. I've watched most of this series with things many of you wrote in mind. It was hard to watch it for what it is. I needed cliff notes and speculation to get through it. One thing that bugs me is once I realized Paul had confronted Hollaway in those tunnels last week is that I was surprised to hear he was still alive. And, he had one of those Marcellus Wallace neck band-aids on. I thought Paul killed him in the previous episode. The finale still had to many characters and when in groups they were each shown too briefly. For instance, if I had focused on the left of the screen (stage-right) while the dedication for naming the stretch of highway after Paul, I would have missed his girlfriend, her child and Paul's mom. When they showed the dedication for the rail system, I didn't recognize anyone and I'm sure I should have. If there had not been a sign saying Tony became mayor, I wouldn't have known it was him--even though it was not surprising he replaced his dad. If I can say anything that others haven't seem to have said is I wish there had been one detective character without family issues. Just one. Let that person survive at the end distraught with how ineffective she or he was while others die. In a way, Ani fills that role but no. She was totally tied into this with too many strings; and, look where she ended up. In a perverse way a good guy version of Burress character is what they show needed. That one detective without a load of backstory who got enough screentime to reduce the number of extra characters and all of the characters' convoluted backstories. I truly believe one good, extra, solid protagonist would have eliminated the possibility of too many extras and extra storylines. But, oh well.

I should have put this in the "I'm over Under the Dome" thread but I admit that I checked out about three weeks ago. It started out with me forgetting the show was on that night. And, I swear, I am sure I checked the forum. So, I should have known better, but, I just conveniently forgot. Then I watched it on Friday. Well, not all of it. Then last week, I started to watch it and just stopped after Barbie hightailed it to some previously unknown location to watch the meteors. (In the episode, did anyone wish upon a falling star the the dome would vanish?) I didn't bother last night and won't bother to watch anymore. I'll still read this forum and otto's opulent recaps. But, I don't know how long I'll care. There was an episode last season where the actors were like robots and just walked around spouting lines with the most awkward timing. They'd walk 5 feet and say something. They'd walk another five feet and their companion would reply. That was the worst episode I've seen. Since then, the show's nutty and gets nuttier but I can't watch it regularly. Oh what the heck. I could bother looking over the weekend. It won't hurt to take a taste. Just to remind myself how bad it is, right? Aaaaaaag! I'm not over Under the Dome! I've changed my mind! Can't a fella be entitled to change his mind! There's nothing wrong with that!

That would be quite a development if it turned out Paul was set up to find the body. True, we are led to believe that Dixon started trailing him (how creepy is that?) after Paul made the homophobic comment in that warehouse meeting among Dixon, Paul and Ray and Ani. But, it is doubtful that he was being set up, even with the weird starlet situation. The thing that still bothers me is that from the outset, the Black Mountain thing was always hanging over Paul's head and somehow his involvement was well known by those who needed to know (his superiors and the lawyers for the starlet).

What if Caspere's murderer was Ani? The way he was killed doesn't seem like it would be her MO. But, it would definitely make it seem like she would not be a suspect. With Paul killed, all bets are off on the Three Detectives making it through this unscathed. So, I'm throwing it out there.

Throwing this out there. One of the recent comments I wrote found me typing "Caspere" for the first time. Felt odd because of how they say it on the show. Someone mentioned the oddity of the spelling. This probably means nothing to the character name but in French Cas = case and Pere = father. I'm sure it is just an oddity I am making too much of and not an intentional allusion on the part of the writer. Oh, for some reason I was under the impression that one of the key bad guys (the mayor specifically) raised the two kids. That reason is why they, like everyone else, are in Vinci.

Let me confuse this even further by asking a question. If the store in LA was robbed and the blue diamonds were taken, we assume that the diamonds were not the only items stolen. We also are basically told that the owners two kids were taken in by someone, the mayor of Vinci, right? So, someone raised the kids and we assume that we've seen both of them as adults and they may be behind the initial torture/killing of the Caspare guy, right? Well, is there a chance that there was also insurance money involved in the robbery, in the heist? If so then I can see there being a particular reason why someone took the kids in, adopted them or whatever.

The only problem I have with Paul's story line is that they kept hinting that whatever happened during the war that he was involved in was a bigger deal than him being gay. But, the part they kept focusing on was him being frustrated at being gay. Think about it. Everytime someone, a superior or that lawyer in that meeting, hung something over Paul's head, it was always Black Mountain (cue ominous music). The gay part, that was mostly this big unspoken thing. If this was his story and his alone, fine. But, the scenes with his mom--including the missing money which again seemed to lead back to Black Mountain (cue ominous music), made it seem like the secret that mattered happened during the war. Maybe the closeted aspect factored into that, too, but, prior to this episode, Black Mountain was always brought up as being about something really, really bad. Like, Paul getting mad because his mom spent his "hidden stash" of money, Black Mountain kept being emphasized in favor of the self-denial aspect. And, yet, his friction with his mom always hinted more at the closted aspect. I mean, the aspect of his his girlfriend getting pregnant totally made what happened during the war... oh no. It had nothing to do with the war. It had to do with him being closeted. Then it turns out in this past episode, oh crap!, that Black Mountain stuff mattered a lot. But, not in the way it seemed. I seriously thought the shootout was supposed to mirror the vaugely described incident that was scandalous. But, so far, no clear verification of that. But, according to the guy who killed him, if Paul had been honest with himself, he'd be alive and wouldn't have anything over his head, right? Ugh. I appreciate what you bring up, Tony, but they just emphasized too much. Maybe thematically, sure, Paul needed to become a father. Parentage and all thats good or bad that goes with it is a recurring theme for the characters. But, wasn't his creepy mom enough?

It is still a confusing way to tell the story. At some point, maybe around episode 3, I wondered if you could divide each episode into 4 parts, one for each of the main characters so each could have been fleshed properly. So, @15 minutes per character. Eventually, as the story progressed, it would meld into 3 stories, 2 stories and then one. It's a tricky structure but there are diamonds involved. (at least on the flowchart I have in my head) And then the rats came. I can understand that notion that Marty and Rust brought up about the detective's curse, missing something right in front of them. But, for cinematic storytelling, there [are] ways of emphasizing importance. Even if it is a subtle clue (like the crow image in the freaky doctor's office) it can be seen and not unseen.However, since the show is cycling through characters left and right and any connections are not made earlier, those extra characters seem less significant. [so, showing Dixon trailing Paul more than once, with each time its shown becoming more obvious it is Dixon = a good idea;Conversely, there was a jewelry heist in the middle of riots 20 some-odd years ago? Good to know now. What? Wait? There are survivors, too? Too much.] I was waffling between thinking Black Mountain was a place of a battle in Afghanistan (fictionalized but that's fine) or an allusion to Blackwater (which is one word, by the way). Some fleshing out that it is a company of private security people and that perhaps Paul wasn't in Afghanistan as a soldier but as a private security force would have gone a long way of telling my ears to perk up and wonder who else besides his one-night stand was a part of that group. And, since Black Mountain was only tied to Catalyst, that's info worth noting earlier than this episode. Maybe if they had done some detective work on that the main characters would have told us that earlier than this past episode. If this were a story told in a two hour movie, you can bet the important characters would be emphasized and the cruft would be excised. Early on, I wrote how maybe the constant shots of the highways mean the story is an intentional mess and looks intimidating but that the roads lead to one place. If the point of watching Season 2 is to simulate driving on a screwed up highway system while getting lost: success! I've been asking for directions for 7 episodes now! Technically, Ray still works for Frank. So, I do expect Ray to go to him and for Frank to seek out Ray. Help us, Dopey One, you're our only hope!

If they only showed him once, they should have showed him tailing him often enough that we saw it was him before he ended up getting killed. How many episodes that would have taken? I don't know, maybe episodes two and three? I hope he was shown spying on him before the fourth episode.

You know what could have been done? They could have better established how that Black Mountain thing functioned. The show could have made clear that it was a security firm and still active and only involved with that Catalyst company. They could have had people threatening or haranguing Paul from the outset instead of making his guilt and ambiguity of his preferences an internal problem. It could have been brought to the fore and kept there. (for instance, I think Burress gave Ray grief about the house he lived in, right? Why wasn't he shown interacting with Paul, even silently and being shown as trailing Paul? Ditto with Dixon. One interstitial shot to show Paul's problems ran deeper than some unspoken inner monologue?) It's like with that Dixon detective. So, he was Ray's partner, he was trailing Paul, he either got or just gave a bad tip, but, he was barely on the show. We never saw him trailing people; though he was shown as checking out that building where the shootout happened. Showing these things and emphasizing their importance would have gone a long way to establish the secondary characters and to understand how complex it was. Instead it all comes across as complicated and vague, and, last but not least, forgettable. [and yeah, i guess this is speculation but…]

Thanks. At first I thought it was my browser but then I tried to load another forum page and it took forever. Then when I tried to delete the mistakes I made, I got a "service unavailable" page in my profile. So, your answer makes sense.

I haven't bothered re-watching any of the episodes beyond the first one. It is a frustrating show. Like others say, I don't recognize most of the names I see in these threads or on the show. One of the best examples of how screwy the show is: When Frank tells Ray that Stan is gone, or something similar. Then Ray asks, what happened to Stan. Then Frank just looks away and I guess we are left to take it as he didn't want to say what happened and became engrossed in that depressing singer's song. That epitomizes the show to me. Oh yeah and: Russian Israelis. After all the time they spent bringing up the Russians, now the clarification is it is more than that. ---On the Grand Conspiracy: when Ray got shot by Birdman- which was after the Book of the Dead was shown in the first episode-- I began seeing stuff where people were theorizing there was a lot of Egyptian mythology allusions. If there were any after Birdman, I didn't bother to look or to notice. The sloppiness of the storytelling is just too much to try and sort through extra information to get a sub-text.

LOL Don't give the Sci Fi channel more ideas for animal disaster movies!

Apparently, on this show, where there is a lack of free will, there is a way. They'll find the resources and the labor and they'll rebuild Chester's Mill whether or not they will get to eat or drink clean water or get out from Under the Dang Dome!

Maybe I took that the wrong way but I thought she meant her sister and someone else ended up in jail. I didn't take it as they are still there. But, tense does matter so maybe two people she knows are still in jail.

Maybe his time as a counselor caused him to slip up.

That is something I can pick apart, too. While none of us probably want typical motivations or developments, there is a typical set up for the kind of story or plot point involving multiple characters in a small team. Not that it needs to go similarly, typically infiltrating the party by one person would have led to doors opening for the others. So, say, Ani gets in, she'd locate a key person or a literal door or a key or get some information which would lead to the other detectives gaining access to that information that Paul got. Since it played out with two motivations: infiltrating and whatever Paul did, it didn't seem connected. That said, I really think the thing with Ani is she wanted to see first hand what those parties are like. That's why she went in instead of another person. Hate to compare it but it was like when Rust Cohle handled his "mission" while Marty manned the getaway car. But, with the extra angle of retrieving some evidence it makes Ani not even having a wire or a camera to gather proof of the party seem like missing an opportunity. Rust probably knew his mission could go South (he made a kid hide in the bathroom for his safety). Ani could not have been expecting anyone she saw or the woman she found so her great escape shouldn't have been difficult but it quickly became that way. The thing about that orgy is most were occupied and probably didn't get flustered at noticing rough play or a pursuit. Bottom line for me in this part: it could have played out differently and made more sense by allowing the accomplishments to be readily obvious. Sure, getting a missing person is huge and the documents are probably big. But, now the documents are missing and the woman is missing and someone's dead. People in charge of that call girl/business clatch will notice those things and I guess the payoff is people won't be happy?

Both versions do it right and both versions don't prolong the agony of the "story".

Oh yeah. Count me in on wondering if Ray's ex- knows without a doubt that Ray is not the father but doesn't really know who the father is. I'm not saying she wasn't raped, too. But, there could be more to that. I also must admit that not once in this series have I seen someone other than the kid and thought: Redhead! I don't know why I don't notice that trait in anyone else on this show. Weird.

I'm sure I wrote something about this earlier. What I want to believe is that like those overhead shots of the spaghetti-like freeway all the roads lead to somewhere. [so far there's been ] the "neat" resolves of things[ which seem like progress is being made in the story, sort of.] Like: The Real Rapist being nabbed; "Oh! Those diamonds! That goes back to decades before this story in a seemingly unrelated event, but it is important the diamonds were taken!"; finding the missing person at that party; escaping from the party without a hitch (not to compare it but even Rust had to deal with his informant who found out Rust pulled the wool over his and that biker gangs' eyes) ; having all three detectives have career changes yet still they end up working on the same case they worked on before the career changes. This feeling that someone is going to be the parents of someone else before this is all over with--but that is just what the show seems to be setting up. It could continue being one big mess. This episode didn't help me much at feeling I get what is going on. I still don't feel I know what the mystery is. Think about it: there's a lot of people who get killed. That old, fat guy Ani knifed got killed. Does he suddenly become another "mysterious" death, like the guy who "drove" off a cliff while "drunk"? Or, does it lead back to Ani or her sister and just complicate things? One question though: I sort of get what Frank has his fingers in but is it clear whether or not he is a part of this sex party scene? That's where "deals are made", right? Yet, he seems to be not into the prostitution racket directly? Does that sound right?

It's not just you. I wondered if Ani saw familiar faces at that "orgy"--if that's the right word. But, if she did, I didn't. It's bad enough there are so many extra characters, ones who may be one-offs or vital to the story, but, to quickly show them again is a bad choice. That is why Stan is the man. We got his name more than we ever got to see or hear from Stan. You'd think once she arrived, she planned a quick escape. Too bad that didn't make that obvious.

I just think he gave up on the stories long before the[…] other actors [and he's just really bored]. We could all learn from that kid.

You say that and you know that depressing bar singer will end the series with Frank in attendance-- and, nursing a drink-- while she sings a mournful remembrance of Stan.

Well, I am joking! Prediction: Barbie will be covered in a glop of goofy goo when suddenly he comes to his senses. In a slo-mo shot, he will shake off his goofy goo, like a wet dog*. And, then he will run toward Julia who will be running towards him and they will meet in a hug and she will lift him up and spin him around and someone around them will die. *not unlike this season's superb cast addition, Indy the Wonder Dog, whom I will assume will give the actor who plays Barbie tips on selling the scene that he's shaking it with the right level of emotion.

OK. That made me laugh harder than I should have. I rewatched it since I wrote that and I do remember it but I just thought it meant nothing. I swear to God. On the ground of Chester's Mill there must be spraypainted foot prints signifying dance steps so the actors know how to get from one scene to another. That's the only thing that explains how horribly bad this story is. It moves forward but when you are crossing a line, "forward" encompasses 180 degrees.