Carrie Ann

Yeah, I'm sure whenever this love child thing is addressed, we'll figure out the timing a bit more, but the baby was likely born about the same time Oliver got on the Queen's Gambit. He's been home for probably a year and a half now (we've seen two Christmases), and was on the island for five years, and I assume the mother wasn't very far along when this deal was brokered. So even if the mother had a change of heart when the baby was born, she thought Oliver was dead. I'm really unhappy with this development, and I'm skeptical that this is a good move for the show. I just find that there are only so many things you can do with a child character on a show like this; most of them end up being treated as an object to be protected at all costs, which is tiresome. It limits the things the parent characters can do. It pulls focus from interesting characters in favor of a child actor, who is probably not very strong, and therefore not very appealing. Best case scenario: Oliver finds out about the kid, maybe even meets him/her, but he and the child's mother decide to maintain the status quo to keep the kid safe, and they make infrequent appearances thereafter.

GRRM has or will apparently talk the showrunners through the endgame. First he'll have to come up with it, so....

I thought Fake Luke was possibly Jerry Jacks, just because he seems to pop up every time the show needs a bad guy.

I just read the book over the past few days, and I had a different interpretation of Amy.

I like Dany, and I think her heart's in the right place, but she is young and sometimes it shows. Her instincts about people are pretty terrible, and she's definitely too prideful and she pays for both. But as we've been discussing w/r/t Jaime in this episode, there are so few people in this series who truly want to do the right thing, and she is one of them. So I like her even if I find her sections in the latter books tedious.

Yeah, I don't think anything romantic is going to happen with Oliver and Felicity this season for a lot of reasons. I'm cool with that. But I do agree with Sara that it would be better for Oliver to be with someone who encourages the human, hero side of him. I don't know when he'll be ready for that, and I'm not in any rush for it as a viewer, but that is what Felicity represents in my mind.

I don't think this is a spoiler, because it's real life and there are interviews to this effect, but Jake Harris

I read the whole thing, and ultimately found them really engaging. But I will warn you that I found the writing style incredibly off-putting to start with, so it took awhile for me to get used to it. I still find it annoying, to be honest, but it becomes less of an issue as the series progresses. If you can get past that, I think you'll enjoy them if you generally like YA sci-fi stuff.

Ugh, I hated those stupid fade-into-the-mist scenes so much. I still have hope that she's evil, and I almost want to give the writers credit and say that her withholding information was intentional, but chances are slim. It's been a few months, so I may be misremembering, but I still don't understand why Katrina never told Ichabod or Abbie that in order for her to leave Purgatory, someone would need to take her place. I mean, she knew what they were trying to do, right? So Ichabod keeps his promise to save her and she's suddenly shocked and appalled. She waited until they're already there to say that someone will have to stay if she goes. If the audience isn't supposed to dislike and mistrust her, I really don't understand the way she was written at all.

His baseline had a lot of spikes because of the pin (?) he pushed into his thumb, which is why Koenig asked if he was in pain. If you cause yourself pain during the baseline, you can make your lies match up to your baseline answers. But that's on a normal lie detector. It's ridiculous to me that the super-special SHIELD lie detector functions the exact same way. Anyway, I suppose that doesn't rule out the idea that he lied on those questions too.

Yeah, I feel like this is a two-lead show, and to me the focus is shared equally between Ichabod and Abbie. But if anyone is the main protagonist, I think it's Abbie because Ichabod is the outsider, the visitor from another land. We'll see how Season 2 handles things, but I was pleased with the balance this season.

I think her recipe and portion sizes are leftover from her catering days. Like she's planning for 1.5 times the actual number of guests.

Yes, exactly. The media and fan response to this isn't because it's the most shocking scene ever on the show, or the most violent, or the most disturbing.

So the only reason they would do that to advance the plot is so that EJ can desperately try to prevent it from going down that way, right? But I don't understand how that's any different from how he would have approached it pre-daydream. Was he considering telling Sami?

You're right--I didn't mean that it shouldn't have affected her, but it just goes to the point about how Laurel is unable or doesn't care enough to connect the dots on things. Like, all this really shows me is that Laurel has still never given much thought to what her sister or Oliver went through. If she did, she would have anticipated those scars and while I hope it would hurt her to see them, she shouldn't have been surprised.

I'm in the minority because I like Paul. I think he's supposed to be sort of a stoic dude (in the line of a Michael from Nikita, for example) and I may be biased because of shallow reasons, but I don't mind the way Dylan Bruce plays it. And I like his chemistry with Sarah. If anything is confusing about Paul, I put it down to either being intentional or unclear directing choices. I don't think we're supposed to know yet whether Paul is more loyal to Sarah or to himself. I don't think he knows. Which is why he's still working for DYAD while also helping her as it's possible. I rewatched the episode yesterday, and just ruminated on how much I love Allison. She does work as comedic relief in some ways, but I think what keeps that character (and the whole show) grounded is the clones' growing connection to each other. When Sarah was coming up with her plan and said, "Allison's not going to like it," my husband said, "Oh no!" like he thought for a minute that Sarah was sacrificing Allison to save her own skin. I immediately said, "She would never hurt Allison." And that's when I realized how true it was. And Allison, for all her protestations, went right out there and got them that gun. They're all family now, and I love it so much. But Rachel, you can't join the Clone Club Family, sorry. I loved Sarah shooting a bullet inches from her head right after she said, "You won't kill me," and then jumping on her, gun to her temple. You can tell that a lifetime of cooperation and protection has made Rachel a little deluded about her own invincibility.

I just caught up on this season today and I'm glad you're talking about Millie/Susan, because I've been wondering if I'm either dense or delusional about their relationship. Based on all of their conversations this season and last, I think they were in love with each other, but Susan either got scared or she was pressured to marry Tim. "And then what happened, happened." Talking about regrets, etc. All the tears and the awkward wistful looks. That's beyond friendship, and it's on both sides. I love this show so much, and I will miss AMM for the rest of the series.

Thank you! I thought I was going crazy when Laurel didn't know Sara was the Canary a few episodes ago. I just assumed she knew because she knew about the assassin stuff, so I figured, what's one more thing? And yeah, she slept with Oliver last year, and saw his scars before that, so why she thought Sara was just on some vacation on Assassin Island is beyond me.

I agree with that, too. I just bristled at the first line of your previous post because this issue has inspired a lot of what I consider "policing" how people watch or think about the show, and that irritates me, in both directions. If someone wants to watch the show without applying any set of morals to it, I think that is a very valid way to do it (and probably the way that would make a person happiest, frankly). But then I don't want that person saying to me or others, "Well, you can't apply your morals to the show." Because it's just a different way of approaching it. And it's definitely trickiest to talk about rape from these two perspectives, because it's a really triggery issue, and people downplaying its importance on the show feels a lot like people downplaying its importance in real life. I didn't mean to say that you think rape is OK! I was referring to the argument that rape isn't bad on the show/in the books, and I disagree. I think it's portrayed as bad (though commonplace), and the characters who perpetrate it are generally considered bad, while those characters who are considered good or becoming good generally disdain it. Tyrion, Jon, Ned, Robb, Jaime. So now we remove Jaime from that group, on the show, and it's a hard pill to swallow, as a fan of his growth.

I'm confused about what Laurel thinks Sara was doing for five years too. I honestly thought she knew at the very least that Sara had been in the League of Assassins, even if she didn't know it was called that or whatever. Why did she think their mother had been kidnapped, if she didn't know that it was a group out to get Sara? Were they just like, "Oh, we got your mom back and look who we found along the way!"

Why should people "stop obsessing about it?" Just because rape is common in this world doesn't mean it's OK, even by the standards of most of the people who live there. They send rapists to the Wall. Spousal rape is very common, and while not punished, it is recognized by its victims as abusive. As we've been discussing, Book Jaime is anti-rape and ultimately protects Brienne from being victimized in that way. Tyrion steadfastly refuses to have sex with Sansa until she affirmatively wants to have sex with him. Not just accepts it, but wants it. Beyond that, people are probably allowed to approach the show any way they want to. Some people won't apply any of the values of our time to the show/series, and that's fine. Other people will apply all of our values to the show and will judge characters accordingly. If rape is a dealbreaker for you, especially if you were a fan of Book Jaime, then this is a huge problem and disappointment.

I don't know, I think his motivations are icky in both book and show. In the book, he's been missing her for months and wants her so badly he doesn't care that she's grieving or you know, that there's a dead body there. You could argue that he's trying to comfort and be there for Cersei in the way they have probably done since they were very young, but I think he's still thinking more of himself than her in that scene. But at least she consents. In the show, because of her apparent continued rejection of him for weeks, and the feeling that he is losing her, this feels like a rape motivated by the desire to control and punish her. It's disgusting, and I'm baffled that the director thinks Cersei eventually consented in that scene.

I mean, I guess it depends on your definition of "molest" but he kisses her full on the mouth with tongue. Repeatedly.

I think Sonia agrees with you that there is a lot of misogyny in the books, and that consent issues abound in many of the sex scenes in the books and show. She says as much in this article. What she's questioning is why make these particular changes? I struggle to see any valid reason for doing so, and it's troubling as a woman who already finds this show/series so incredibly problematic.

Huh, I think Littlefinger is just as skeevy in the books as the show; he just puts on the act a bit longer for Sansa. As far as his motivations go, I think his goal is power, and along with power, he's got a bit of an obsession when it comes to Catelyn. Catelyn is no longer an option, so he's set his sights on Sansa. As Tyrion implied here, the person/people who killed Joffrey also set up Tyrion to take the fall. Now, you can view that as just collateral damage, but from Littlefinger's perspective, it leaves Sansa a widow and free to wed again. He could end up Lord of Winterfell, Ward of the North at the very least.