call me ishmael

My memory of last year is a bit hazy but I'm pretty sure they set up the Johnny/Pawter thing then. They were eyeing each other and having the sort of conversations you would expect was seed planting. I think that it was meant to balance the Dutch/D'avin stuff so that Johnny wouldn't seem totally monomaniacal about Dutch.

My suspicion is that Truffaut was actually working for evil corporation woman. Clearly ECW was expecting them to escape and given how difficult it would have been without Truffaut's help i do wonder if they could have done it without that information. It would have been funny if Two had shown up and the eye thing didn't work because she is more than human.

Good point. I had forgotten that.

I think that she needs 5 for the Android. They haven;'t been able to get the tapes out of the android and are afraid of losing all of them in a reboot. So she is trying to figure out who she can use against the android. I suppose they figured out enough that the android wouldn't protect six. But what I wonder about is who it was in the previews who was so excited to discover 5? Her parents were killed right? Is this another conspiracy in which all of the victims ended up on the Raza?

My suspicion is that he is dead (and I have to say that his falling backward onto the floor was one of his better acting jobs in this show) because I think that his death is going to drive the rest of them into figuring out that they are small pawns in a larger conspiracy that started with the murder of his wife and the framing of 3. I still think that Jace C probably killed the wife and was supposed to be on the raza to kill 3 but things got messed up (Jace would have been taken care of when 6 was freed of the memory wipe after the second destruction and brought them all in) etc. On the other hand, that might actually mean the writers had a serious plan so I may be being too optimistic.

I suppose that it is too much to hope--given how poorly they develop characters on this show--that somehow Six is subtle homage to The Prisoner.

So I assume that we are going to find out that the evil CEO had Jace Corso kill Morse's wife and then try to get on the Raza in order to kill 3? i'm not sure if that is a side plot to the GA is totally corrupt (and probably knew the last space station was going to get blown up or not). I am guessing they Put 6 on the ship and then let him know who he was so that when he was involved with a SECOND explosion he would turn them all in? But he may figure out that they were all set up because of the special snowflake that is 5. Don't know about Nyx being super human but clearly 2 is suspicious. i still think the android has the most personality of all of them.

Aren't we supposed to assume that the inplant was what enabled him to resist the Level 6 programming. In a way i tend to see D'avin as less a special snowflake than a mcguffin. He is the object that triggers the stories but it is all pretty random. i didn't think about the Trees and the green goo but that makes a lot of sense. The bad guys killed the farmers (?) in order to control the trees and the goo because that enables the creation of zombie super soldiers to help run the galaxy. I don't know if Dutch is a clone (doubt it) or a daughter but i guess that Kylen was training her to kill whoever she looks like and take over. But she escaped. Clearly he isn't running the show and doesn't like it. But whether his interest is in thinking that he could control Dutch or actually is protecting her remains to be seen. Still think the world building is great.

Can Paulie be trusted not to backdoor Natalie or does he realize that isn't his best plan for stay in the game sustainability?

Okay I guess we just have to agree to disagree but I don't see any of this--especially Chad as a victim. Here is my read: First: He came on a show. it is a genre and there are genre conventions. Nothing is "real" about it and nothing is "normal" in terms of dating so his claiming that he was just being "real" strikes me as completely fake. He came in with a particular strategy and it didn't work and he didn't know how to change. Second, I think that part of his strategy was assuming that he could achieve dominance over the other men and win Jojo's "heart" (admitted concession here: I don't know if he was on the show to get on BIP or help his career in some other way so maybe he didn't care to be there at the end). But it didn't work exactly the way that he wanted--because all of the other guys instead of shutting up and letting him rule the roost kept talking back at him even if that meant he got plenty of their time. At that point since he was not all that good at conversing when he wasn't in control he seemed to have nothing left but threatening to hit them. His comment to JoJo that he only threatened them when they didn't stop talking at him tells it all. I'm sure it is all edited. But I especially suspect the talking heads are edited and although he had some good one liners he never produced anything beyond a one-liner. The thing that was so different about this season is that everyone was complaining about him and they complained to JoJo. Normally they don't start complaining this quickly and then it is usually one sacrificial lamb who goes and they get dismissed because the lead has some connection with the villain. But he overplayed his hand early and since he thought he was better than everyone else didn't realize that he had to recover and actually play the game. If you throw in his tendency to threaten violence (and I wouldn't have wanted to be that door) she did the right thing in getting rid of him.

Unless i missed something she didn't threaten him because he said something she didn't like so i don't see how she stooped to his level of manners. No one manufactures the fact that he thinks threatening to hit someone is an acceptable way to solve the situation. And i think the idea that he was just reacting to other people is wrong. They all took a dislike to him after he started to interrupt everyone else's conversations. I've never heard of that sort of consistent effort to disrupt. If you sign up for a game you agree to the rules. Chad doesn't think he should be held accountable in any way. She just finally gave up on him. Should have happened earlier. I just assume the producers insisted she keep him.

I think the real issue with Ben is that he wanted to pick Alex over Michelle until he realized that maybe they should have talked before he picked her at the Tiki Bar. My guess is that he was most attracted to the woman who told him that she really couldn't see being with anyone who wasn't Christian and Alex looks the most like her. He clearly preferred brunettes to blonds and also probably thought he would look like a creep if he rejected Michelle after his clunky reaction to her having a child. But i don't think he was prepared for Alex who i don't think is willing to seriously entertain any alternative view points despite her alleged willingness to discuss things. That is why they both were so "mature " about going their separate ways.

I completely agree with you about Chad. He seems to think that no one else in the world knows that this is a STAGED TELEVISION SHOW and that he is a genius for figuring it out and a hero for saying it out loud. I don't know if he is a plant but i suspect the producers insisted that Jo Jo keep him. Probably until he crosses some line that only Fleiss knows.

I assume that at a certain point there will be a moment when the couples have to decide if they want to leave the island together. What happens if they don't is unclear. I assume the man just leaves but i don't know if the woman could return to the bungalows.

I'm also not sure that Amara killed the geraniums. Remember when Dean asked her to stop the sun from dying she said it wasn't her it was the end of Chuck and that everything was going to end when Chuck did. I think that the geraniums and the sun made her realize that she wasn't going to survive either. But she needed Dean to convince her that there was something worth surviving for--that revenge wasn't victory but defeat.

I think that that is actually right. They were trying to place too much energy inside of her so that she couldn't contain it all. Think Monty Python I guess.

That is what I thought. I wonder if that is why Amara decided that Dean needed Mary. Catrox, it was when they were in the cemetery before Dean went off to blow Amara up. Was it Sam??? I thought it was Dean. Okay sorry my mistake.

Okay, so as expected they did go the Babylon 5 route (two powerful forces fighting for millennia come to realize that they have no good reason to fight but are afraid to be alone) and it had the same emotional resonance as when B5 did it--not much. But then to introduce Lady Lady as if she could be the equivalent Big Bad as the end of the universe is pretty silly. It would have been far better to have the boys have to figure out what to do with Heaven closed and nature ruling (except for the Demons) and maybe they could have tried to bring back Death. Did anyone notice which of the graves that Dean went and touched? I like the idea that Amara might have sent Dean in-between in order to get closure. After all, her whole lesson was about moving on and maybe that is the chance she gave to Dean. It isn't so much about getting over a screwed up childhood than moving on. Of course now we are moving on to Lady Lady and the stupid british MOL who of course are all upper class and look down on hunters. I suppose if they wanted to have Amara move the boys back in time to discover that Downton Abbey was really the secret headquarters of the MOL that would have been one thing. But this is silly.

You know I have been assuming that the shot of Dean looking up at the sky was him seeing something(one) leaving. But what if it is someone arriving? Maybe that is him having to face Amara or some of the angels?

Well, if you are correct and it means something then perhaps her link with Dean is the only thing keeping Amara in the universe and if they break it they can drive the Darkness out...

But didn't he heal Lucifer? And wouldn't Amara be able to tell he was a fake when she was facing him?

Yes, as i suggested in the episode thread i think this is their best bet. I actually think it would work better than B5 because here it would allow a restart to all the free will and reponsibility questions. So long as God was out there there is the possibility that he would simply fix things or that he had planned everything. But once he leaves and all the other creatures are on their own they can't keep waiting on him. I think Metatron convinced him he was responsible one last time to clean up the mess and then it is up to the natural world. And that means Amara leaving too. what i don't get is why people think that God and Amara together means giant explosion. First, haven't they been together before? And being and nothingness aren't matter/antimatter. They are philosophical concepts. Neither can exist without the other; it isn't that they can't co-exist.

It did seem as if God had decided that he had saved the Winchesters enough times already (and think about the comment about rebuilding Castiel) that he figured enough was enough and he wasn't going to worry about them anymore so long as they didn't need to be protected to stop creation. From his perspective Dean was fulfilling a necessary function and Sam chose his brother over the universe. And it wasn't even to save him from death.

I don't think they really need to go there. There is plenty of precedents for the notion that God created the universe then steps back and let it run. I think that is where they were going with Chuck and Metatron's conversation about nature. But Metatron got God to decide to try to fix up the mess with his sister before he leaves.

I thought that Chuck also was indicating that he checked out because he realized that leaving things to nature and history to work out was a good thing. There was an odd way in which he almost seemed like he was a Judeo-Christian God who wanted to be a Deist God. I think for that reason that people who think that he and Amara will have to leave together at the end of the season are right (think the moment in Babylon 5 when the Vorlons and the Shadows finally left). Everything has been in Limbo for the last few seasons because everyone has been waiting for God to return and fix things. But if the only way to keep Amara from destroying the world again is to have them both leave then you can have a season next year where everyone has to work out how to proceed on their own. Of course God will have to do something to keep the Angels from getting carried away but if there isn't the hope that he will intervene (even if Dean doesn't believe, it is still possible in this universe as written so far) then everything can be pulled back from the brink and nothing is ever settled. But if they both leave the universe....