withanaich

That's what I meant. I thought she was there to make sure Varga (or whomever) didn't escape ... which is why I thought she set him up to attempt just that. Because if anybody was going to abandon the others, it would probably be him. Which is another thing that bugged me about that scene: why didn't he just get off the elevator on the SECOND floor? Does the elevator not stop at the second floor? What was the need for all the James Bond elevator-hatch-escape stuff? And aren't there, like, any STAIRS in that damn building? Shouldn't Nikki and Mr. Wrench have factored in someone trying to escape that way? Maybe Varga should have stationed someone on the stairs in the first place?

I was under the impression that Nikki sent the text to Varga (to get him to abandon his minions to their fate so she could get him alone and take him out), but then he outsmarted her by climbing out of the elevator (which was a bit much for me to swallow, quite frankly). I was also under the impression that Nikki is the one who sent the incriminating documents (and Gloria's name and number) to the IRS guy, because she wanted to get Emmit every way she could. It seems like once Varga and Goldfarb cleaned out Stussy Lots, they didn't much care what happened to Emmit. He could have died, gone to jail, or lived off of his off-shore accounts for the rest of his life for all they cared. Not sure why Emmit's car suddenly decided to work. I think Ewan McGregor did pretty good work here, but maybe it's just that Emmit is so damn bland the actor didn't have much to work with until the end of the season? I think he did a better job with Ray than with Emmit, but maybe that's because we learned more about the former character and the actor had more to work with. We never really learn why Emmit was such a bland, perfect patsy for Varga and Goldfarb. Presumably that's one of the reasons they targeted him in the first place, but we never really see WHY he turned out that way.

I totally agree with your assessment of Tuan. He kills me, talking shit about the U.S. like he A) knows everything about the goddamn world, B) knows more than experts Philip and Elizabeth, and C) isn't sitting there bingeing on American junk food while wearing a goddamn KNIGHT RIDER tee-shirt.

Not everyone wants a partner; Deirdre is clearly pretty content with her life and wants nothing more from a relationship than sex. I don't see what her looks I have to do with it. I think her looks do come into play here, or at least the way they're perceived, because it's one of the reasons Philip approached this whole thing wrong. Yes, he's still thinking about Martha, but they all underestimated Deirdre because she's older, "plain," and works a "boring" job. Elizabeth specifically mentioned Deirdre's age and job when she teased Philip about getting kicked out of bed by Deirdre. He made a lot of assumptions about her, and then was so entrenched in these assumptions that he didn't see that he needed to come up with a new approach. She kept clearly indicating that she was serious about her job and just looking for something casual, and yet this seasoned spy kept pushing and pushing like a lovesick puppy. I did think it was clever (and hilarious) that Philip finally figured out that he needed to play the Married card with her. She didn't even give him a chance to finish leaving a message!

If they don't have sex at the exact same time they did before, it won't be the same sperm and egg meeting. So unless Lucy knows exactly what time that happened (which, ew, how could she?), what she's asking for is utterly IMPOSSIBLE. I so don't care about Wyatt's dead wife, but at least he has some kind of chance of going back in time and preventing her from being killed (the only reason his attempt didn't work is because he pegged the wrong man as her killer). What Lucy's asking for is freaking ridiculous, even on a time-travel show, and I wish everyone would stop pretending like she has a snowball's chance in hell of pulling it off. It feels like they're patronizing her and the writers are patronizing us.

Yes, it was awesome that she was an attractive, plus-sized woman who had no problem finding dates (just dates that weren’t weirdos, losers, or killers). No, it wasn’t cool that they made the fat lady a fucking HIPPO. A HIPPO! Why not an alligator, or a jaguar or something else predatory and vicious that can take care of itself, but isn't code for "fat fatty fat pig"? In fact, I have to wonder if she wasn't written as a pig or elephant at first, and some "discerning" soul decided that was just too on the nose. They took what could have been a funny, interesting twist and ruined it. That “reveal” left a bad taste in my mouth. I can't even concentrate on how funny the blatantly obvious Get Renard's Shirt Off fanservice is, or how much I appreciate the return to the WoTW format, because that bit just ruined this episode for me.

I find the characterization of the Wizard pretty believable. Reactionary, petty, small man, easily humiliated with a severe inferiority complex under all that blustering? Yeah, him shooting Anna was a bit of a shock in the moment because it happened so suddenly, but once I think about it, not that surprising at all. Pretty sure Elizabeth was faking it, and Anna was telling the truth because she wasn't in on the spying ploy (which seems pretty dumb, actually, because it could've made the Wizard suspicious that they weren't in agreement). I think she feels betrayed and wants to hurt the sister who hurt her with her lack of trust. She was already furious when she suspected Glinda was keeping a secret from her, and this is a doozy. Maybe Glinda is Lucas' mother? That's what I'm thinking. It's still incredibly soapy. And creepy. And gross. But it still leaves the door open for him and Dorothy to get together, I guess. The way it was set up in the preview, it looks like Lucas is betraying Dorothy and set her up, when I'm guessing he's under Glinda's thrall (maybe magically?).

I actually liked that scene, even if it was a bit ham-fisted. I think the writers were trying to give Monroe an opportunity to go on one of his historical minutiae-based tangents (“nerdsplaining,” as The Wild Sow put it), which they haven't let him do in a while. And Rosalee completely realized that he was about to tell her a long-ass story, because it’s one of those things about him she finds cute, and he knew that she was just humoring him (take a note, Auggie’s dickhead dad) so it didn’t come off as mansplaining as much as one partner putting up with the other's idiosyncrasies. I have to disagree. I feel that they did show that strife was already brewing, what with the mother being obsessed with taking 5,000 pictures a day, and not even coming to bed because she had to post them right! This! Minute! The father looked like he was completely over it. I don’t know, maybe I’ve just seen couples like that, where one of them was clearly way more into the idea of having kids than the other, and sometimes they even steamrolled the other person’s wishes to get their way. But of course you can’t make someone be happy, so it rarely works out. You would think that the kidnapping and return of their infant son would have brought them closer together, but it didn't. They fell right back into that old pattern. So I think the strife was already there. Now, in the real world, of course that doesn’t have to lead to a homicidal teenager. Plenty of people have kids who aren't that into it (or even hate it), or are obsessive helicopter parents, and the kids manage to turn out okay. But on this show, where magical stuff is quite real, I think they showed that El Cuegle was trying to prevent a tragedy that was definitely imminent, because he tried not to intervene before, and that didn’t work. He didn't have to EAT the baby to kill it (lots of more merciful, less disgusting methods), but I think the story about his one failure (and the fact that Hank and Nick found evidence to back it up) proved that he was doing what was necessary. But where is she sleeping? Where is she pooping? Even hexenbiests gotta go sometimes, right? She had a cot at HW headquarters, so we know she sleeps sometimes! Hell, get a motel room and work through your transition there! I don’t know why, but this is bugging me more than the layout of Nick and Juliette’s house, with the guest room that apparently came and went at will. It just feels so lazy, like they didn't feel like working out where Juliette was going to be staying after they "wrapped up" the HW storyline. Trubel got hustled out of town, fine, and Juliette is ... creeping in the tunnels beneath Nick's loft all day and night, cold and damp and miserable and weird.

But his name isn't listed on her birth certificate or in any other official records, so it wouldn't come up in a background check. No one knew his name but her mother and her biological father (because he knew he'd slept with this woman and, being in Rittenhouse, I guess he secretly kept tabs on the fact that she'd given birth to a baby nine months later?), so how could Agent Christopher possibly know? I don't think even Flynn knows who her father is, does he? (I was thinking it might've been in the journal and he would reveal it, but her mother was the one to tell her.) The rest of Rittenhouse (and whatever moles they have inside Homeland and Mason Industries) might know, but only for the same creepy reason her father does.

I would imagine he learned about it when he stumbled onto Rittenhouse and its various nefarious dealings. "They killed my wife but I know about that time machine they bankrolled, so I guess I'll be stealing that to get her back!"

Yeah, when I was a kid (in the 80s), seat belts were still not a big deal, even for nine-year-olds. I grew up riding around in the backseat unrestrained, and sometimes sitting on another kid's lap if space was tight. That was the joke: of course seat belts existed (even automatic ones), but if it wasn’t automatic a lot of people didn’t even think about putting one on. I don’t know if the cops in Ohio back then were required to buckle up (and even if they were, people don’t always do what their bosses tell them). Not necessarily. Power/phone service could be out in one area and not in another (I don't remember if we learned how far away the bartender's sister lived). Nah, maybe I’m a bad person or whatever, but I still laughed. At least the Western Union attempt was a spur-of-the moment bad idea that didn’t risk anyone’s life (in the moment). The second attempt was careless, sloppy, inconsiderate, dangerous … and the first attempt should have taught Wyatt that maybe you can’t “fix” the present from the past. But it didn't, because he's a rockhead. And quite frankly, I'm sick of hearing about his insistence on resurrecting his wife (as well as Lucy's selfish "yeah, yeah, we'll save the world ... lemme just magically somehow get my sister back first"). So yeah, I laughed. We're not supposed to believe he blew up the ship. That's what he was planning, and they probably thought he succeeded when they first learned about the explosion, but they made a point of saying they didn’t find any of the materials from the Mothership in the wreckage. I believe you’re right. I guess “guy with single mom sister and little kid nephew” is supposed to be more sympathetic than “single white male hooking up with women in bars" in the same way that "tragic military dude with dead blank-slate wife" is supposed to be more sympathetic than "average veteran who is competent, not distracted by personal shit, and an asset to the team." *Shrug*

I assume Creepy Bio-Dad meant that she's a direct descendant of Rittenhouse Jr. (the creepy little twerp she stopped Flynn from killing). That would be a pretty neat twist, which I also assume means we will never actually learn what "gift" dude was referring to, even if the show does get picked up for another season. There is no way Lucy could have remembered the "original" timeline (the one in which the serial killer was conceived) unless she started a new journal and got Wyatt to take it on board with him. And asking us to assume that's what happened is just a bit much, even for this show.

That's exactly why I don't care about Wyatt's Dead Wife Drama. I don't know her. I don't know anything about her, except that story he told to Bonnie and Clyde, and I'm sorry, but the actor and the writing are just not selling me on why I should care about this. I don't know why they felt they needed to shoehorn it in. I shouldn't be HOPING that one of the heroes fails the little mission he set for himself, but I am, because the whole thing is such a drag, has nothing to do with what we're watching this show for, and takes up precious minutes that could be spent explaining any one of a number of things they really should have explained already. At least Lucy's family drama is tied to Rittenhouse and the larger plot. If they're going to claim that Jessica was tied to or killed by Rittenhouse, then A) they should have been dropping some bigger breadcrumbs and B) they need to go ahead and make that reveal soon. I still won't like Wyatt, but at least it might give him some emotional relevance.

Sorry not sorry, but I’m glad Wyatt’s wife is still dead. It’s terrible for the other people who love her, but he’s an ass and he was way, way, way out of line. And because it’s this show, I’m sure there won’t be any other consequences for all the crap Wyatt pulled (stole the Lifeboat, got a man killed, fucked around in the past like a clumsy dummy, lied to Rufus), so maybe he needed to chase a man to his death to realize that YOU’RE NOT GETTING YOUR WIFE BACK, YOU MORON. Now if only Flynn would realize that the tragedy of his life can’t be undone by mucking around in the past, and Lucy would stop freaking out on Homeland Security about their empty promise to magic her sister out of nonexistence. My husband thought Wyatt was going to end up sleeping with the woman to keep her away from the bartender, and end up being the one to father his wife’s killer. Which would have been awesomely ironic, and not resulted in a presumably innocent man getting killed because Wyatt is a hapless dumbass. No, Wyatt didn't intentionally kill him, but he was directly responsible for his death. I'm pretty sure the roads were closed, though? Which is why the guy was worried: he couldn't get to his sister, and then the phones went out too and he couldn't call her either. It is funny that instead of asking a cop to check on his sister or something, he very quickly forgot about her and started hooking up with the stewardess instead. There were a lot of things about this episode that highlighted how clumsy the plotting is on this show sometimes. The best thing, as usual, was Rufus. I could watch him geek out over old TV shows all day. "MANIMAL!"

This is so surprising yet awesome!

I think that's probably right. We just see more Wesen than humans because the main character is A) a cop and B) a Grimm. Those two groups are going to come into contact with Wesen more often than anyone else in this case. Alas, I think you’re right. Every episode from here on out is going to be over-the-top conflict followed by an immediate reset to status quo that makes no sense. (How do you assign cases to someone you tried to have killed? How do you take orders from someone you threatened to murder?) Maybe they'll throw a few WoTW eps in, because maybe the writers are FINALLY figuring out that that’s why people got into Grimm, not uber-magical rape babies. But because they’re the ones who started all the stupidity in the first place, they can’t let it go completely. So I smell some REAL ridiculousness coming down the pike before it’s all over. I like the women playing Adalind and Juliette/Eve, but let's face it, those characters have been trashed. I don't feel bad complaining about it, because we're not complaining about female characters (like, why are all these GIRLS in our cool monster show?), we're complaining that the writers on a network TV show don't know how to write female characters (and apparently don't care to learn how). The only two characters they know are mystical emotionless/inexplicably evil badass fembot, and shmoopy useless hand-wringing damsel. (Seriously, that scene with Adalind trying to trick Renard into staying home was EMBARRASSING. I felt like I was stuck at home with the flu watching Three's Company in the days before remote controls.) I'm guessing someone with talent was allowed to develop Rosalee at one point, but even her awesomeness has taken a backseat (after she got married, huh, that's funny) to the As the Grimm Turns nonsense.

Flynn wants Renee (was that her name?) because she has even more dirt on Rittenhouse than Anthony does. Anthony knows they're bad, but it's not clear if that's a conclusion he reached on his own or if Flynn was able to convince him they were Pure Evil and that's how he swayed him to his cause. It's also not clear exactly what info Renee has on Rittenhouse that would be useful to Flynn, but presumably she knows enough that he thinks he needs her to take them down. (What I found interesting is that Flynn chose to appeal to Renee rather than threaten or kidnap her, as he's done with other people he wanted to get something from.) She faked her death and stranded herself in time to hide out from Rittenhouse, presumably until the end of her days, because she knew enough for them to want to kill her. Maybe she didn't want to go along with them (the way Rufus won't), and she didn't have any family for them to threaten. Flynn learned about the pilot and the cabin from Lucy's journal. Yes, the info has been in there all along, but Flynn doesn't know what the most relevant bit of information is or what he should act on first. There are quite a few pages in there. And it looked like the sketch of the cabin was toward the middle of the journal, so maybe he's starting at the beginning and working his way through. It would be awesome if Anthony had made a couple of trips to bring her care packages ... but I'm thinking it's just sloppy set design/writing. That's just it, though. I get moral relativism, and I can see both sides of the argument here, but we never see Lucy argue that she was concerned that James would escape and kill more people. She doesn't say anything like that, before OR after she shoots him. She's just stumbling around uselessly the entire episode (both Rufus and WYATT -- of all people -- comment that she's out of it), she seems to be agreeing with Rufus that it is bad to kill Jesse James, and then ... she shoots him from behind. And then ... no one speaks of it. So weird.

I don’t know that Lucy did the right thing, because she doesn’t even argue her case. When Wyatt brought it up, it seemed like she was leaning more toward Rufus’ way of thinking. Then: BANG! She shoots an unarmed, injured man in the back. Um, why? Because she was sad about her sister’s birthday? And it did nothing to “fix” the timeline. It may have prevented it from getting even more out of whack (we'll certainly never know), but the extra people Jesse James killed were already dead and still are. Maybe I’m just struggling with it not because it was “wrong” but because Lucy seemed in no position to be making any kind of decisions this episode. Was she grieving, or was she drugged? She should have called in sick. I’m sorry, but I don’t care about Lucy’s sister. We never got to know her. (Seriously, we got to know Jesse James – the BAD GUY – more in this single episode than we got to know Lucy's sister or Wyatt's damn wife.) We never hear about her unless Lucy’s throwing a temper tantrum or going catatonic because she had a bad dream. Exactly. I don’t know who I’m supposed to root for or even like anymore, except Rufus. Lucy used to be likable, but they’re turning her into the same kind of whiny useless baby as Wyatt. I assumed she was supposed to hang back in the machine while Anthony went to check things out on their missions? (Which would actually be a smarter role for Rufus, if not as much fun to watch.) Or maybe they even took turns babysitting the ship and exploring. I think I also saw a video game controller in the cabin, so it seems like the pilot had plenty of stuff in the ship to pass the time. Or maybe she grabbed a bunch of supplies on her last trip because she knew she wasn't coming back. She was most likely hiding in the woods so that if Anthony ratted her out to Mason, they still wouldn't be able to find her. Anthony knew she wasn’t dead and Flynn knew when she was, but wouldn’t have known where she was without Lucy’s journal. Plus, maybe the pilot actually cares about not changing history and was trying to hang back in the woods to avoid civilization altogether. The more people she interacts with, the more chances she has to screw up the timeline. (Which is bad for its own sake, but might also alert Rittenhouse to her presence in the past.) All those creepy animal skulls outside her cabin certainly said, "STAY AWAY." My husband suspects that Mason hasn’t gone Full-On Evil, that he’s playing both sides against the middle. It could be that he’s trying to scare Jiya out of being the pilot without actively trying to discourage her. He left her a trail of breadcrumbs he knows she's curious and resourceful enough to follow. If Jiya decides she doesn't want to pilot the ship (or indeed, to work for Mason's suddenly super-scary ass at all), Mason would be "forced" to keep using Rufus and Rittenhouse wouldn't be able to go after him. Which would make a lot of sense and still be in character, but might be too well-thought-out for this show. (Which I love, but I don’t think they’ve fleshed everything out the way that they should have.)

Hahaha! I didn't catch that other magazine headline. I was too busy trying to read the one Eleanor picked up. This show definitely warrants a re-watch.

I'm pretty sure they were just in charge of Bad Places. Michael's entire gambit was "I know we always torture them, but what if we got them to torture each other?" If they needed to steal a Good Janet, that implies that they have no authority over Good Places. We haven't seen an actual Good Place yet, nor have we seen any Good Place employees or constructs, with the exception of Good Janet.

I'm hoping that's endgame. Like, they have a hands-off approach and don't even know what the architects have been doing, and step in when they realize what a clusterfork it's become. It seems like the architects are pretty disdainful of humans, and have a lot of honestly petty reasons for taking away points and sending people to the Bad Place (liking The Bachelor doesn't make you a good person but I don't know if it should count toward eternal damnation), so it stands to reason that they don't think any humans are worthy of the Good Place. But maybe that's not the way it was supposed to be.

I do think it's telling that Michael's workplace was so dark and depressing. And yet, even if he had a cruel agenda, he seemed like a pretty optimistic guy, even in the flashbacks. He was so happy to get his first big assignment, and he was willing to try something new. Even if he's quite possibly evil, I don't think he was pretending all the time. Some of his joy at experiencing tiny human things seemed to be real. Maybe eventually, after spending enough time among them (because remember, the architects don't do that), he'll want to help the humans he's supposed to be torturing?

Personally, I would have written something more vague like "Eleanor - Find Chidi. You can only trust him, Jianyu, Tahani, and Janet." But Eleanor didn't know how much time she had (even if we did because it's TV), so she had to quickly think of something that would circumvent Michael's plan, while taking into account that she would be re-set and not acting like "herself" (or at least not the "self" she'd come to be in the fake Good Place), not to mention thinking of a way to hide the note. If the Eleanor who'd originally arrived in the "Good" Place had been told she was actually in the Bad Place, she'd have probably gone off. I don't think she would be able to keep it to herself, stay quiet, and figure things out. And the improved Eleanor knew that about herself. That's actually something they could do in a future season (for people wondering how much longevity this show could have): show us what the real Good Place is like, in addition to showing us more of the other neighborhoods in the Bad Place. I'm guessing where Schur is going with this is that NO ONE actually ends up in the Good Place (which I think they alluded to when they told Eleanor about all the seemingly selfless people who didn't make it in), so when they get there it's empty. And that, of course, is complete and utter bullshirt. I'm bummed about the reveal, especially the fact that it was Michael's cruel plan all along. Even if we learned that they were all in the Bad Place, it would've been a nice silver lining to have Michael at least be what he said he was. But I still think there are a lot of directions in which the show can go even after a memory wipe, given how creative and daring Schur apparently is.

I ... don't find it that hard to believe that Flynn was able to convince Holmes to help him. He's not exactly thinking reasonably (Holmes, not Flynn, although the latter is up for debate), he'd probably have a hard time turning down a "free lunch" (so to speak) and probably a financial bonus to boot, and all Flynn would have to do to get on his good side was make him think he's a serial killer too who found out what Holmes is doing and wants to help out. (I mean, Flynn actually is a serial killer, or at least a mass murderer, but Holmes doesn't know that.) I have a harder time figuring out how Flynn is convincing all these goons to help him murder people throughout history, risking all manner of ugly death (dysentery, musket ball to the gut, smallpox) or possibly getting stranded in the past. Did he break them out of jail, or what? How many of these guys are there? How is he paying them? Are they just adrenaline junkies with no family, friends, or jobs? Where do they go when they're not helping him out?

Oh! I forgot about the ring! (And so have the writers, probably, so I guess I won't hold out hope that they take the ring off in the finale, only for Adalind to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West.)