justjoan

Jason was the first mistake, though, not Eleanor (that we know of. Maybe there's someone else wrong out there, keeping quiet until the season finale). Maybe Jason was so busy being silent and dumb that he didn't cause big enough waves, requiring a more disruptive switched person? Trevor doesn't really strike me as patient enough to make two attempts at subtle sabotage, though. He's such a perfect douchecanoe, good lord. I hissed when he told Eleanor to smile more. I appreciated how carefully worded Michael and Eleanor's finale exchange in his office was, when he asked if she felt she belonged in the Good Place, she said no, and the lie-detecting box backed her up. No hands shall be tipped as to what the universe thinks about her status, just what Eleanor thinks. My favorite joke in the episode was the growing herd of cacti every time we saw Michael's office. So many off-screen cactus arrivals!

Maaaybe, but it's a big stretch. How much has Japanese changed since the Edo period? I'm a historian myself, and I can read Latin, Old English and Old Norse, but that really, really doesn't mean I can speak them. Generating your own ideas in a dead language is a lot different than translating someone else's. The only way I can make the language issue work is to imagine that Gideon fed Nate a babblefish pill while he was unconscious and didn't want to hurt his feelings by mentioning it. Nate's "I'm a historian!" shtick is driving me nuts. It's like he's revenge for all the years I wasn't sufficiently sympathetic about the goofiness of skilled-in-all-fields TV scientists. You can't specialize in everything, your gormless dope! Pick one! Or pick a couple of overlapping fields; that's common enough. I can just see him being equally the go-to history dude in the Edo era, Renaissance Florence, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Golden Age of Piracy, and arrrrrgh. Watch him be all Civil War savvy next week! He's a dilettante. The heck was his diss even about? Was the title just "History! Yay!"? If he gets more interesting post haste, I'll grit my teeth and bear this nonsense, but he's not even close to that level yet, and superpowers aren't a magic fix for a flat character. I miss Snart so much. Woe. It would be nice if they'd at least mention him. Waiting until two minutes before he shows back up, whenever that is, doesn't count. I miss Rip, too. Hopefully when everyone got time-scattered, he landed in Jonah's time and is having a nice vacation (and Gideon can't find him for... reasons). At least Sara still gets awesome action scenes. This episode was a festival of samurai movie visual cliches, but the end result was pretty (especially considering their limited means), so I'll forgive it. Even the falling cherry blossoms.

Well, maybe. Or maybe it was all that Pride, Wrath, Lust and Envy he was indulging in last season, and all those bad choices they lead to (releasing a damned soul and giving him a kill mission, sleeping with a demon, etc). Amenadiel rode really far off the ranch last season, and he justified it over and over by saying it was all due to his brother. Thing is, he's responsible for his own reactions to Lucifer, provocation notwithstanding. I don't think God's gonna buy "the Devil made me do it." He might also be in trouble for siding with Luci now, but he might not be. Depends on what game Dad's playing. The guest cast on this one was so much fun. Michael Imperioli was a disappointment, though I can't tell how much of that was him and how much was Uriel just not being that interesting compared to his brothers. The other three, though, were great. I can't believe Cordelia and Samurai Jack were such dumb, sloppy criminals! For shame! And I liked Dan more here than maybe ever before. It probably won't carry over, but I have to agree with Chloe that he and Lucifer were oddly adorable.

And the other half, boots-guy's happiness when Chidi told him his lecture was very bleak. Hee! Maybe the fail safe can only be used officially by an architect? Or maybe the murder screen popped up because the button was supposed to be for a malfunctioning Janet and ours wasn't? Honestly, though, I think they kind of Rule of Cool'ed it. The weird button standing on the seashore and Janet's* performance pull us right past any logical flaws (hopefully). *Janet's performance as opposed to D'Arcy Carden's, though she is just fantastic.

Unfortunately, like every other piece of evidence, that can either be useful or a red herring. Props could be accurate or the prop dept playing around, continuity in dialogue cues is a mess, and locations, ultimately, are bound by the Vancouver Factor. That's been an issue since the rolling hills and rainy forests of Smallville's Kansas, and has popped up in nearly every CW show since. Everywhere looks like British Columbia in the end. Hopefully, for Supergirl's sake, they'll have a sunny winter.

On Flash or on Arrow? Do you know which ep if on Flash? Because I don't remember that, but I don't watch Arrow. It would be a big change from every other version of Central (it's never been in CA before), and also contradicts their own work, though continuity can get shaky on these things (there are more important things).

They did. J'onn was being poetic. Not wrong, though. Both Martians and Kryptonians have the power of gods compared to the humans they live among, and they all seem to be pretty aware of that (as are their evil counterparts, unfortunately).

Central's in Missouri. Season One of Flash had a couple of Easter eggs for it, the occasional license plate and... I think an address on a letter? Or a piece of paperwork at Star Labs? I'd have to rewatch to be sure. One of the animated shows explicitly made it DC's St. Louis by showing the Arch, but no doubt our Barry would have already had a race with a baddie all over it if it were in his Central, so it must not be. I really can't explain Star(ling)'s situation, though, or the wandering Iron Heights. Identical branches of a chain prison franchise? I love this version of Superman, and I wish no harm on any of these lovely characters (except Snapper, until he wins me over) but I hope his taking off with the kryptonite comes back to bite them. He totally has a point when it comes to the "what if J'onn's not in charge of the DEO" issue, but since the arc villains last season were evil Kryptonians, and since there's no proof there are no more hiding out there, it seems tragically naive to think us squishable humans are never going to need that stuff. Plus, J'onn's mini-monologue about Mars being a tomb was brutal. David Harewood is so good.

DC's National City is L.A. We occasionally got glimpses of US Bank Tower (or whatever the DCverse calls it) last season. That's also why we've never had any governmental-type stock footage, seasons, or even rain. Vancouver will change that last one quickly enough.

There's also a comic series that shows a bit of his backstory: his master Depa Billaba's sacrifice to save him, his sort-of apprenticeship/partnership with a smuggler, that sort of thing. How Caleb became Kanan, basically. Then he meets Hera in A New Dawn and that sets us up for Rebels.

That makes a lot of sense, because yeah, it often reminded me of Murdoch's sillier, dumber cousin. Especially this week, with everyone wandering around The Town That Will Be a Toronto Neighborhood or Suburb in the Future (Murdoch loves that reference- "Look, this quaint town is Markham! Or maybe Scarborough!"). I guessed the reason for the dead town, thanks to Lake Nyos, but that didn't make it any less creepy. Just a really tragic, unsettling way to die.

Not really; he just made it disappear. The elephant was perfectly fine. It just stayed in its mirrored, curtained cabinet and killed time while the audience ooohed and ahhhed. Though not as much as they should have, perhaps, because unlike his TV counterpart, actual Houdini was not a particularly adept magician. He was a great escapologist, but he (apparently) could never quite nail the right degree of showmanship for truly successful stage magic. He could do the tricks, but not sell them. So I guess that's another way in which this version of Houdini differs from the real one. This one never stops selling the trick.

How does this version of Savage's immortality work? Have they even told us? He doesn't reincarnate like the Hawks (... I don't think), so if you stab him, does he lie there for a while and then come back to life, like on Highlander? Or would you have to stab him, like, 413 times (206 Carter/Kendra deaths, plus an extra Carter) to wear down his stolen life-force, and then he dies? Or what? I'm just wondering because the problem has never been killing him; they've done that several times. It's been keeping him dead. So why didn't someone just shoot him in the head, drag him off to the Time Masters, and then wait for him to revive once there? Much less danger and much less irritating Hannibal-blather that way. I'm not surprised that Rip had no idea the Time Masters were evil. They saved him from whatever Artful Dodger existence he was living, and made sure he was safe and fed. They gave him a mother, a home, an education and a purpose. They used debt and reward to shape him into a tool they could use. That's the kind of thing that breeds powerful, even fanatical, devotion, and it's apparently their usual method of recruitment. A small part of him probably still believes (even now!) that he owes them everything. No wonder personal relationships with spouses and children are forbidden. They can certainly be used as weapons against a Time Master, ie the Council's official reasoning, but beyond that, a Time Master with a family is one whose loyalties are no longer to the Council alone. Miranda and Jonas are his biggest weakness, but they're also his salvation. Would he ever have questioned the Council if they hadn't been killed? He was by all accounts an excellent and loyal agent until then, and doesn't seem to have doubted them at all. Eve Baxter doesn't seem to have any doubts either. They are/were both willing to kill or die for the Council as needed, but neither of them is shown to be a sociopath or anything like that (Rip's a mental health disaster, yes, but not that kind). They were told from an early, vulnerable age that the Time Masters were a force for good in the universe, and they believed it. Who knows what they've been ordered to do to enforce that "good"? Creepy, creepy stuff. It surely doesn't help that Time Masters work alone, so if they start to question their orders, they can only question themselves, or call back home to the Council. Remember how dangerous a team supposedly is? A team, like a family, is a double-edge sword.They can be dangerous because they run around getting in trouble and changing things, like our Legends, or because they start asking inconvenient questions, causing doubts, and, again, changing things (they've all had moments of this, but especially Martin, Sara and Ray. And Leonard, actually, in his own way). No wonder the Council wasted no time swearing out the kill orders. Poor Rip. He's lost, broken, been robbed of and betrayed everything that ever mattered to him. He has, as far as he knows, utterly failed in his mission, and gotten both his family and his team killed. Oh, and his life was built on a lie, which is a fun surprise. And they even took away Jonah's duster! If only he knew Sara and Snart were still on the loose. I know I would find that very reassuring.

Hey, Agent Vasquez of the DEO works for SHIELD now. Weird little niche Briana Venskus is carving out here. She should go work for ARGUS next. I am kind of surprised they introduced a whole team of red shirts and didn't actually kill any of them. But good surprised! Don't waste the extras; you might need them. I've figured Agent Anderson (Doug? I think?) was a goner ever since he got a couple of lines and a clear view of his face. Doom clock's ticking, Anderson. The verbal fight between Daisy and Mack made me so unhappy. The physical one wasn't great, and I did actually have a moment of wondering if they'd used the finale countdown to distract us from an earlier death, but the argument actually seemed more brutal. Daisy's a mean drunk, and she knows just where to hit. Poor Mack. Assuming he makes it, he has more than earned another vacation (without racist militia douchecanoes this time). May, too, though her Hydra persona was great fun. James is livelier than he is smart. I'm somewhat dubious that Ward's dead body could defeat a mature, healthy, fully-trained Kree warrior. I suppose the show handwaves it away with "super-healing!", and I won't fuss about it, but seriously, that super-healing must have been going great guns. Okay, he doesn't feel pain anymore, but he's still both breakable and squishable, and he wasn't even showing any wounds. What kind of resources would that burn? His energy intake must be incredible. Speaking of the Kree... I am so susceptible to these darned comic book shows. Every time I start to think, "okay, but wait, this, that and the other thing are really bothering me. Maybe too much," the shows say, "we understand, we do, but look, we have Martian Manhunter/ a giant atomic glow-bot/ bright blue Kree warriors with bloody battle-axes!" And my inner ten-year-old says, "yay!" and I keep watching. Ten-year-old me could not have predicted that even the scifi branch of primetime network TV would look like this someday. Wild times we live in!

Mileage varies in this as in all things, but the only way this could possibly be true is in a world where Marvel Comics doesn't exist, and DC only publishes Booster and Beetle.