KimberStormer

I think Cirie being from Survivor, which is a show that since Richard Hatch has a tradition of people actually reading the rules and what they say and not what you think they are supposed to say, is why she took out Arie. (Which was a risky move that should have had the rest of the cast applauding, not whining about it.) I haven't seen season 2 but I think I saw a thing on instagram about Sandra saying it doesn't actually matter if you ally with a traitor if it gets you to the end, which, same thing, Survivors actually read the rules and think them through. Unlike real Mafia it's not a team game. You get money if you're there at the end and you get more money the fewer people there are. So if you're a traitor there can be any number of faithful left, as long as you're the only traitor, and if you're a faithful, you want it to be just two certain faithfuls (because I assume there's no way to 'tiebreak' and get rid of each other at final two.) Cirie played the actual game and not the nonexistent team game, and turning against Christian and Arie was exactly what she was supposed to do exactly when she did it.

Been absolutely clobbered by some virus or other and have been in bed since Boxing Day, so to pass the miserable time I binged this season, spoiled, to see Cirie win. I basically haven't watched any reality TV since Survivor thirty-something, I don't even remember which one. Can't say this season inspired me to watch any more. I don't remember a single conversation where anybody ever suggested someone was the Traitor based on any logical thinking at all. At best the time when Christian (who I can see I liked better than a lot of people here, I thought he was the second strongest cast member after Cirie) said his silly thing about being recruited, and they were like "why would you say that" but they still didn't vote him out right away, and it took Cirie and Arie turning on him for it to actually happen. (I can only assume Christian also planned to take the money for himself, and he's a good sport, because otherwise he's the one who I would expect to blow up the other traitors' games on the way out -- they could have voted for literally anyone else and then the traitors would have had a majority and could just drop the facade and win the game. Didn't anyone play Among Us during quarantine? Certainly Arie should have known what was up at that point, and tried to get Cirie gone. It makes no sense to say Christian could hurt their game when they would have a plain majority regardless!) A few posts up in this thread someone said they had no way to tell who the traitors were, but nobody even actually tried to think it out! They just went entirely on "their gut" which they'd all been smugly going by the whole game to no avail and insisted it was Kate when that makes literally no sense whatsoever. From the very first murder it should be plain it wasn't Kate or Brandi -- they might murder their friend eventually, but the first one?? What could the benefit possibly be?? The thing with Andie and Quentin is, they act like Cirie decided to be a Traitor and it's some kind of moral failing. She was chosen. She couldn't do anything about it. It was literally impossible for her to go to the end with them. Even someone as incredibly dumb as Quentin should know it, and in fact they do know it, and came up with this laughable excuse of "using their personal stories" to take money from Arie so they can stay mad. Absurd. It's really something to act like being assigned a certain role makes you morally superior, like thinking you're a better person than me because you got the red checkers. Anyway! Kate's arc was fun, you had to be happy about her toughing out the bug challenge and jumping from a helicopter after she had been so desperate to leave. Christian is a big goof but not bitter despite being probably the most screwed over by Cirie and held his own both as a TV character and a game player against the reality show people. I finally know one Bachelor. (So he dumped the winner of his season...and married the runner-up? Wild.) And Alan Cumming is always fun and seems like he enjoys it. But the main pleasure was just seeing Cirie finally get her well-deserved win in something, though I wish it were closer to the Survivor million (in 2006 money) she deserves.

When they first started doing the "main characters very explicitly explaining their positions on The Issues" bit I cringed, but then I had to admit it was very accurate to the original run. A certain datedness is appropriate for this show, and I hope they keep to the case of the week without any season arc or whatever. The great thing about original L&O is you can watch almost any episode, from any season, at any time with no context and get basically the whole experience, although us nerds will of course always watch the subtle modulations of feeling between Rey and Lennie or Connie and Cutter. I can't believe, though, that they didn't have a Jack/Jamie scene. That is what old theater books would call "the obligatory scene"! The whole silly Cosby setup seemed like just an excuse to get a great scene between those two and then it didn't happen. So my sister's theory that Jamie will indeed have a season arc seems sadly plausible. I can't agree with people who say she looks unrecognizably plastic surgeried -- she just looks 30 years older to me, because that's how long it's been, crazily enough -- but do agree with those who say her hair and makeup were terrible. At this point I don't like any of the new characters, though hopefully the second chair lady will get to do the traditional second chair legwork in the future and so have more than 5 minutes of screen time and we can get an idea of her character beyond Tragic Backstory. I thought the new ADA guy was just awful, badly written and badly acted, completely unconvincing. I wanted to see Jack McCoy growl MAKE THE DEAL in classic Adam Schiff fashion! I feel like Jack (with his cop dad) was always a "tough on crime" kind of guy, not as much of a nutcase as Abbie Carmichael but I feel like of course he's going to be against defunding the police. I sort of like how old and out of touch he seems on it, very plausible for an old guy like him imo. "At least she's Irish!" -- Lennie Briscoe. Everyone knew they were sleeping together!

Making my way through this show on my sister's recommendation and because I love Mackenzie Davis. This episode solidified an impression I got from the first couple episodes: I would very likely hate the book. I already hate the graphic novel from the bits we've seen; I can't explain exactly what makes me like a comic book or not, but I certainly don't like that type. So because I dislike her art, I also dislike Miranda; but (here's where the I-would-hate-the-book part comes in) it's hard to imagine anyone liking a character who was born on a goddam boat and lost her father in a hurricane and looks off into the middle distance talking about it so we all know she's so super special and tragic because of her absurd special cute tragic backstory, and then goes into fucking logistics and sets fire to the house when she's mad and speaks fluent Chinese, Jesus Christ almighty. You have got to be kidding me with this shit. Experiencing an apocalypse is all you need, not this tottering pile of winsome quirks. But a show is not a book and I like Jeevan and I like the costumes and set design in post-apocalypse time, so I press on. I know this hope will be dashed but I would absolutely love it if this was the one and only episode with Miranda.

Yeah I feel like there has to be a creative solution that's not the false dilemma they were presented with. Why couldn't Loki and Sylvie make the TVA a sort of United Nations of the multiverse and put its resources towards preventing interdimensional wars while still allowing timeline variations and free choices? They could even kill Ham Villain #35 and then do it, if Sylvie wanted.

See, one example of my complaint is, even the people who make the show are calling this guy "Kang" but they deliberately refused to say his name in the show. (It felt like an unnecessary tease leading up to the inevitable reveal that he was another Loki, which would have been perfectly in keeping with the rest of the show -- remember how much they emphasized in the first episode how the TVA does for the universe what Loki wanted to do for Earth/Asgard -- but nope!) If you don't read comic books not only do you have no way to know who he is or why anyone would care, but you can't even know what the hell the cast and crew are talking about in the press!

Well I thought this was garbage. Building up to the big villain who is....some random guy I don't have any reason to care about played by the biggest ham sandwich I've seen outside of a local theater production. Endlessly blathering on about shit I don't care about while "ACTING" or something, sitting on the back of the chair! eating an apple!! Wow, Stage Business! Sylvie never grows from her boring Quest for Revenge. All the stuff Tom Hiddleston Loki was suggesting, that she was the one Loki who wasn't a perpetual fuck-up who never grows, thrown in the trash. And all the other sort of foreshadowing/set-ups go nowhere -- the other agent who Ravonna knows, who left a coffee stain or whatever it was, which they called back to, but I guess that's just one more "cliffhanger" for next season or seven movies from now. Blech. I didn't know it was that kind of show. I wouldn't have watched if I had.

My sister brought this idea to me, that she saw on the internet: Joe is a Loki variant It's pretty amazing how well it fits IMO. Perpetually scheming, bisexual, self-sabotaging trickster, desperately looking for a Glorious Purpose, always failing but always surviving, whose real role is to to inspire others to realize their potential for greatness!

Hi guys; I have not read anything anyone else has written in this forum. I don't really want to because I've seen enough reactions to the show to know the way people in general have taken it and reading the stuff people say often bums me out. But I want to write this somewhere and I guess this forum is the one I feel safest on, with my Survivor friends on it, although I know I haven't posted in forever. I asked the mod and they said I should post in this thread for my whole-season thoughts. My sister persuaded me to watch. I have seen maybe 10% of the Marvel movies? And in general I am not a big fan. I liked the first Iron Man very much and I love Spider-verse, but otherwise I am pretty meh on all the rest I've seen. And indeed once it was CGI laser fighting I was disappointed, though of course I knew going in that that would eventually be coming. I was only disappointed because what came before was very moving to me. My mother died when I was 9 and from then it was like a festival of death for my family and loved ones, boom boom boom everyone dying and before I was out of high school my siblings and I were orphans with zero other family members left. More death was to come but thank god not my siblings, like Wanda lost Pietro, or a boyfriend/husband like Wanda lost Vision. Now 20 years later I have been thinking alot about it, and WandaVision helped me to see and acknowledge it, how I was, like Wanda, holding up by sheer will an illusion that I was just fine! normal teenager! yeah that sucked but hey I am doing great, don't worry about me!!! And not just to fool the world, but to fool myself. I mean, I would avoid the topic of parents, I would use ambiguous language so I didn't have to lie that they were alive but also not admit they were dead, but I thought that was because I was Totally Fine and didn't want a lot of drama. I was not fine. I think of it now and I see so clearly how not fine I was. I think there's no part of this show I identified with more than when she leaves the Hex to throw the drone at Hayward's feet. I have seen discussion (maybe not here, but elsewhere) where people suggested that wasn't really Wanda, because she didn't really know what she was doing while she was inside her fantasy in the Hex, so how could she defend it? But wow, was I exactly the same; I did not consciously know I was putting on an act of Healthy Happy KimberStormer, but I certainly consciously knew to defend it whenever anyone tried to butt in and threatened that illusion. And I knew, like Wanda, that they were not doing it because they cared about me; they wanted something, creepy professors at school who figured out something was up and wanted to pry into my life, "mentor" me, or whatever. If I had magical powers I would have blasted them away, no question. I remember times when, like the beekeeper, reality would intrude -- maybe some trouble with financial aid at school or having to get a co-sign for my first apartment or whatever, something I couldn't deal with on my own and I had nobody to help me, and how it would terrify me, reveal that illusion, make me see myself lost and alone and shivering with fear, and I too would rewind, push away, deny and delay, hide and ignore and pretend. And I feel like I never really adequately mourned, too busy pretending, even at 9 years old, that I was totally fine guys, no drama here, pay no attention to me. So for me, Wanda doing these wacky sitcom antics, with all the strain and sadness and fear behind her eyes, well, I feel a deep deep connection. I think the only thing I'd seen Elizabeth Olsen in was Wind River (which I didn't think much of, a lot of macho bullshit, and ugh Jeremy Renner gross, why is the super lame white guy the hero anyway) but now I feel like I want to watch everything she's in. Except I don't know if I can handle Sorry For Your Loss, if she made me cry so much in this silly sitcom superhero show about grief, how destroyed would I be in a serious show about grief? ALSO they totally nailed all the sitcom stuff perfectly, the production values, the theme songs (and I hate the music in Frozen so much, so it is surprising for me to admit that all the themes are perfection) etc etc, good show guys, it's just a shame about the superhero stuff, I do like Darcy tho--

I tried to watch something Nickelodeon recently and it told me I had to turn off my adblock...but I pay for no ads...so I'm wondering if this is some Paramount+ baloney? Star Trek stuff seems to still work fine.

It does make me wonder what the Enterprise-Z is up to, in this new century.

Haven't seen that one either! Maybe that's what she was talking about?

I was talking to my sister about this, and she said well that's how it was in one of the recent movies, too. It seems that this season of Discovery has made an effort to connect with all other Star Treks to an extent even more than Lower Decks, with references I didn't catch because I never watched Enterprise, Picard, or most of the JJ Abrams movies. She also had a possible explanation for the truly baffling Replacement Replacement Airiam: apparently the actress who played Season 1 Airiam and then Replacement Airiam was in a Lifetime Original Movie, so maybe she was off filming that when these past two episodes were made. Still very strange IMO to put another actress in, instead of just having her be absent in the same mystery space that Reno disappears to (perhaps in these bizarre cyberspace cityscapes the turbolifts fly around in?)

Oh my god this was terrible. I was so lost. Why call the Ni'Var and not have Momma Burnham appear? Why did Michael blast Stamets out the airlock to stop Osyraa having Discovery but then stop the Admiral and the Ni'Var from stopping their escape? Why was pesticide so scary to her? Why do the turbolifts fly around in some kind of cyberpunk cityscape? Why is there a replacement Replacement Airiam? Why did the sphere data do fuck-all? Why did Osyraa think pusing Michael into the wall was going to kill her? What the hell was that wall? Why didn't Grudge even appear, when I thought she was going to save the day when she called upon her subjects to show up as a deus ex machina? Why did they immediately accept the scientist guy? Where was Reno this whole time? (And Original Replacement Airiam, who was there at the very end?) Why oh why oh why can't we ever have anyone not give speeches about how great Michael is? And why did anyone think after building up "what will Saru's catch phrase be" that Michael's lame-o "Let's fly!" was going to be cool? I am glad that at least Michael didn't really give up when Book was being tortured. I continue to think Georgiou would have had these completely useless, unthreatening villains for breakfast, literally, before they had the chance ot say boo. The Main Villain has gotten worse every season so far. I would never have thought that Zombie Leland would look like an effective threat in comparison to anyone. They made the slightest effort to make Osyraa a bit less boring and lame last episode, and immediately abandoned it, and now that she's gone the whole Emerald Chain is just gone? Ridiculous. All the stuff on the Dilithium Planet was good, very Star Trekky, although the fact that the ship just happened to be falling apart the moment Discovery got there was pretty weak. Otherwise it was a breath of fresh air from the rest of the action-movie nonsense in totally illogical space. Aw, it was sort of nostalgic to me. That Discovery Season One vibe. I can't think of a more complete failure of a plot point, in anything ever. Amazing. The hell of it is, I liked this season. The setting was fresh and interesting. A lot of good episodes. I just think this need to end every season with an action movie is misguided and always results in a crappy ending that leaves me unhappy. I'm looking forward to next season, even though I am sure it will also end terribly -- it's not the destination, after all, it's the journey. Plenty of interesting stories to explore before the inevitable stupid action.

It's pretty amazing that they have holo-lie-detector guy (bizarre idea even if he isn't, as it sure seemed, only lie-detecting one side of the negotiations) but no lawyers/diplomats to read over the treaty, just one guy who does everything.