lazylou

I dislike these misleading promos, too. And don't forget the re-does...such as the full scene of Nicky smoking heroin with Billy while the earlier episode simply showed him inviting her to join him. And the odd scene showing Mia shooting Baz...why? To stop fans from speculating about who the shooter was? If so, it didn't work. Now the conversation seems to center around confusion over who hired Mia. I did think this was the first really good episode since the first of the season. Here we see J stop cowering around. He reminds Smurf that he is all she has...she cannot continue to use and abuse him. He asserts himself with Mia, who up until this episode has led him around like her pet boy, but at the end of this episode HE barges into HER place and takes charge. Nicky is gone...the commander's dressing down was a small price to pay for getting her out of his hair. What happens to Nicky was Nicky's fault. She was lucky J showed up when he did. Even if J had been willing to take his money and go, Nicky was always going to be a problem. She is a girl who only wanted to have fun, an addictive personality type who lacks the fortitude to do anything at all to improve her situation. Notice how dirty the house has become in Smurf's absence. She could not even bother to keep the place tidy. She just barely managed to graduate. Apparently all J wants from life is to belong to this family of criminals. A disappointing choice for a bright boy, but predictable probably for the son of an addict. And in this episode we see his uncles have accepted him. Pope is clearly their leader, but Deran thus far seems unaffected by Billy's efforts to make Deran jealous of J. So now that Smurf is finally free, I am waiting to see what direction the writers will take us.

Thanks for identifying the song at the end of the show, "Which side are you on?" I associate it with the folk music of the sixties, much of which was old union stuff and which I thought was perfect for the ending of the show. Roman is really terrible. As is Shiv. and Tom. However, I still have hopes for Greg, though he should have taken his grandfather's advice and paddled his own canoe. He ought not to have told Tom that his grandfather was in town, but after that really terrible meal maybe he will see what a creep Tom is. But he already knew that. Greg does clearly have some information that could blow things up.

This season has definitely started slowly. It seems as though the writers have no consistent idea where they are taking us. The trailers are deliberately misleading, scenes seemingly edited out from earlier episodes suddenly show up to clarify what happened, the shooting scene is redone, apparently to stop viewer speculation about who killed Baz, Lucy and Marco have made off with the treasure and apparently are not to be challenged by the Cody's... It feels as though edits are actually occurring from week to week. There have been a couple of interesting heists. The car theft was fun to watch and the robbery of the pill mill was hilarious and entertaining, though one should not think too much about details of either incident. Now we are to imagine that J, who was nearly drowned by Javi's gang last season, is going to take off on his own to track them down at Smurf's insistence. At this point it would seem he could ask for assistance from the uncles, but of course he will not do so. He asks for help to lose an old lady with Alzheimer's, but will track down a violent criminal gang without help. Wonder why J was so conscientious about doing all that math if all he wanted in life was to head a small town crime family. Someone above suggested Scott Speedman had left the show in the lurch. Did seem last season that he would have to survive long enough to tell someone, Pope probably, where he had hidden the rest of the jewels, etc., he had found in Smurf's storage unit, thus setting up a conflict for Season Three. I don't know if the writers originally planned to have had Smurf hire the killer and then have the Codys blame Marco or not, but that might've been interesting, too. This show seemed so well planned and written the previous two seasons, the scripts this show are all the more disappointing.

I can't believe so many seem to like Marcia. I think she is conniving to take over the company herself and the kids are correct to distrust her. She clearly hides Logan's condition and then pushes him to make public appearances. This does not seem like a devoted wife, disinterested in company politics. Note her son's promotion, unknown to everyone ...except Logan and Marcia.

Maybe we are about to have Jack Horner make a cameo.

Leaving the old woman as they did was terrible, though she probably ought not to have been living by herself in any event. I would even have felt better if Deran and J had bought her that milkshake! Surely, though, the neighbors will wonder what has happened to her, so it is not clear to me that abandoning her was such a perfect way to avoid police attention. She is clearly suffering dementia...so much so it seems someone is probably helping her out...neighbors or relatives. The writers do indeed leave loose ends everywhere. Fans can't think too much about anything... I am a little puzzled about Pope and hope someone can clarify how he learned whom he needed to visit to find out about Smurf's protection in jail, why Mia had moved in, and so forth. I thought, even though Pope does realize that things are spinning out of his control, it was helpful to J to know that Pope knows about the protection money and is OK with it. Before J felt he had to keep secret everything related to Smurf in order to get any cooperation from the brothers. Now Craig also knows that Smurf is pulling the strings and Deran, who had to go to J for help about his unemployment insurance, etc., may understand he is not really up to managing the financial aspects of any business, though he is able to rescue J when it comes to the shadier issues of managing a set of double books. It seems, in an odd sort of way, that the boys may be coming together. Poor Lena! Poor Nickie! She has always felt abandoned by her parents, and now she really has been turned away. Maybe Pope will have to get out the shotgun to rid the house of Mia, Billie, and Billie's weird hippy girlfriend. And now we find out that Craig's abandoning Renn is the second time he has left someone to die. The more we find out about him, the worse he seems.

Wow! He is 64? I took him to be in his 40s. In that case, I agree with you.

yes, one of his crew.

I watched the episode a second time. The first time I was overly distracted by my problems with geography. The second time, I decided I could buy most of the scenery as being the Gallatin Valley, and I can imagine the Crow Res being moved, for the purposes of fiction, a couple hours further west, and, if the Res could be relocated, for the purposes of fiction, so could the oil fields. And there is a casino on the Crow Reservation...though the last time I drove by, it seemed relatively empty. So I have suspended disbelief. I agree with most other comments above..the writers tried to introduce too many plots at once. And the Governor and Senator look somewhat alike, which confused me the first time through. This has to be a US Senator...a state senator would not have much influence on Native American issues. I wonder if Montana law really permits building a dam to power a mine or mill on the same property. Water rights are a classic problem in traditional Westerns, and in old Westerns, plots often involved a Big Owner blowing up dams, etc., usually for nefarious purposes. Also, Dutton appears to own all this land outright, but usually those big ranches are composed of big chunks of BLM or Forest Service land that have been leased long term for grazing purposes. So all the dynamiting up on the mountainside in order to change the course of the river seems oh so unlikely in the 21st century. However, on second viewing, I decided to put those kind of questions on hold, too. I do have to say, though, that the good old time Western writers paid attention to such legal and geographic questions.

I wanted to like this because I like Taylor Sheridan's other work as a writer. I was dismayed almost immediately by several elements. 1) Sometimes the scenery does look like the country around Bozeman, where it is supposed to take place....other times it is too, too dry. 2) What Indian reservation is close to Bozeman? (Wow, the dance costumes look great...thanks, Hollywood!) 3) What oil drilling is happening around Bozeman? (That is not a rhetorical question...there may be some.) 4) Is the show runner aware that small stakes gambling is legal in Montana, every major city there has a plethora of gambling halls, and consequently the casinos on the reservations are not the posh, resort-style portrayed, and, anyway, as I said, what reservation is that close to Bozeman? 5) Are we to believe that the new tribal council chairman was not actually raised as a member of whatever tribe this is supposed to be? It has been very difficult for non-natives to adopt a native child for many, many years, and then, after all that, to raise the child in ignorance of his heritage? really? When promoting the show on The View, Costner described the setting as being in the Bitteroot...but the Bitteroot is near the other college town, Missoula. The south side of Yellowstone, Wyoming, might have been a better location! But then it begins to seem like a ripoff of "Longmire. In fact, Sheridan's last movie already seemed like a rip off of an episode in "Longmire," which in turn was based on real events...so I guess the real events can be seen as the basis of both. Sheridan is a Texan. I think he has just moved a Texas situation into Montana, though I do not know why. I guess he will get away with it because people do not really care about accuracy. I may give the show a chance, but the story will have to be awfully good for me to continue watching in spite of the errors in setting,

One thing I think people enjoyed in previous seasons was watching the jobs the boys pulled. We saw the auto heist Deran arranged...but since then there has been nothing but the nonsensical destruction of a house...for no reason...and a two story fall off a roof. Oh, and the torching of Baz's car...for no reason. I expect this violence was all supposed to appease the action-hungry audience, but all it did for me was to realize how little I like Craig. Oh, I forgot the replay of Baz's murder. So now we are warned, before we begin to like her, that J's new girl is a killer.

Agree that Smurf seems to have hired or manipulated multiple people to kill Baz, though the plan to have Pope kill Baz always seemed less than fool proof. Baz might have killed Pope instead, for instance. I wonder if there was a long term plan for the show. I can't imagine that gang leader entrusting a young girl to shoot someone...though maybe she was only supposed to wound him. Who knows. Maybe it was some sort of initiation ritual. However, this appears to be a large gang. it is more credible to me that she would have been the driver, not the shooter.The suggestion that the shooting scene was a remake seems possible to me. I also question Smurf's method of laundering money. Making the fake deposits seems pretty labor intensive. It would seem to me that most of the places would be rented, but for less than is claimed in what would be the second set of books. Costs of all repairs, remodeling, etc., would also be exaggerated for that fake set of books and for tax purposes. Clearly she had amassed much more cash and stolen items than she could actually handle. She should have had enough rent coming in to actually cover utilities, taxes, and minimum upkeep. J is supposed to be super smart, but then, he was studying physics and math, not business and bookkeeping. Pope turned down Deran's reluctant offer of $25 K...wonder if J would have done the same. He is desperate for cash and surely suspects the Trujillo's to be killers.

Like everyone else, I think the Jeep would have been in police impound. It was a crime scene. Next, I do not understand why Pope burned it. He could have had the windshield repaired and given it to J to sell. According to what was said last season, J has power of attorney over everything, including the cars. Why does no one in this group, including J, consider any legal means of raising money? Why not sell the Jag? Why not rent the vacant places in the buildings, especially if real estate is as hot as Craig and Deran claim? The plan to rob the pill mill sounds questionable at best. Hope Pope can improve the plans. Craig is really a horrible person. Clearly Deran did not buy the bar to go straight...just to get free of Smurf. Why are they trashing that place? even if it were the right place? Nicki is an addict. Poor J...yet another druggie to worry about. Once again, J is being used by a woman. Mia, who now turns out to be a contract killer, has probably been dispatched to keep her eyes on J, to see if he knows where Baz's stash is hidden. She is now going to sleep over, too? This does make me worry about the woman where J actually has his little stash. I imagine he has taken most of the money, it he did have a little jewelry and a throwaway gun there. Mia would only have to make a harmless social call, though, and then to search the bathroom to find it...don't know that anyone would be harmed. I agree that this season seems sloppily written.

Of course J may have killed Baz. I don't want it to be J, but who knows? Earlier on this site, someone pointed out that Smurf tried to set up Pope to kill Baz. (Guess she was confident that Pope was more likely to shoot Baz than vice versa.) Who knows? maybe she also tried to manipulate J ... in case, I guess, Baz survived the shootout she had planned between him and Pope. Maybe she hired yet another shooter...who knows. Smurf may even think Pope killed Baz, as she had planned, if Marco, the cop, Vince, ? is the actual killer. Supposedly Smurf hired someone to follow Baz to learn where he had hidden her things. We did not see this scene, but somehow Smurf had to find out where Baz had hidden the stuff since she sent Trujillo there. She trusted Trujillo more to recover her stuff than she did J? Smurf must suspect Lucy, even though Smurf has not said anything. I think the writers may want to put all this in the past and move forward...more jobs to pull, more suspicion between the brothers, ...things fall apart. The next episode is entitled, "the center holds" ... But the line in the poem is "the center cannot hold." I wonder if any of these mysteries will ever be solved

Smurf may think that Pope killed Baz, as she had planned, but must be wondering where the stash is. Maybe she will realize it has to be Lucy who knew where it was and took it.

This episode did jump around from character to character, but I think this is necessary owing to the fact that the two who are now the principal characters basically do not talk to each other, and, in order to find out what either one is thinking, other characters need to be imported. Given Pope's personality and the fact that J has no one in the family he can really trust, the writers have to bring in other people to provide us with dialog to move events forward. Also, action is great, both Pope and J do a great job of conveying emotion through facial expressions, body stance, etc.,but I do like dialogue! I like the fact that we are getting a little more development of Deran's character. He has wanted to get free of the family for a long time. Interesting that his first job outside the family both brings out his ability to be threatening and his poor judgment in choice of a crew. It appears his bar is doing a booming business; it offers him a means of laundering stolen money, and he really does not need the family, especially since he seems to have little interest in the ownership of the buildings, and unlike Pope and J saw everything as Smurf's rather than the family's. But now that Craig is back, he will be sucked back whether he likes it or not. I wonder how Lucy would have been able to get a copy of the police report. I think she and Marco must have killed Baz...if what she says about Javi's crew is true. The only other possibility to my mind is Trujillo...it does seem Smurf's protection is awfully pricey. Maybe J did it...but would he have done it without knowing where Baz hid everything? What nerve, though, for Lucy to keep showing up. Maybe she will need Pope's help to fence all those things in the suitcases, and she would need to focus suspicion on someone else if she is going to admit having the stuff. But if she has connections enough to get an American police report, I expect she knows fences. I would assume Pope could pull money out of the bank to pay for Lena's private school...but maybe he won't want to. It seemed he had put everything in Lena's account last season, so I wonder what he is using for money to live on. Maybe J has contrived to pay his "building manager" salary for a couple of months. Which also explains his concern to hold onto the buildings. So now the stage is set for the boys to get back together to pull some jobs. Maybe the whole issue of who killed Baz and what happened to the suitcases is about to join the issue of who is J's father in the background of unknowns of the show. Oh, and we see that the DA has little interest in investigating Javi's murder....they are working on a case against the whole family. I am confused about Craig...he says he was cleaned out. So after the beat down, did they ransack the house and rob him? Or what?

On a fan site, I learned that on the Season 2 DVD there is a deleted scene that shows Smurf hiring Deke, the guy she hired to shoot Javi, to follow Baz. This is how she knew where he had hidden the jewelry, etc. She may have hired him to kill Baz, too. That might not have been so hard. Deke is the actual killer of Javi (in league with Smurf) and may be quite happy to get rid of the witness. This all explains why she needed the money she dug up and had to fence the jewelry from the boat heist so soon after the robbery. Also, she is paying the Trujillos, apparently, for protection in jail.

I wonder if they flew from Montreal to Helsinki, then drove to the Russian border. This would avoid having to travel through Eastern block countries, and weren't they in a rented Volvo? Those people who are going crazy about their having got away with so many murders need to consider that in most cases those deaths were self defense or crucial to evading discovery...well, not Gennady and Sophia, for instance...a book about Americans spying in Russia might feature just as many murders that those same critics would have considered OK. It was the Cold WAR after all. Still, the death toll is horrible! I have been wondering about how Paige and Henry will get by financially.

The house where the suitcases were hidden was not the house where Baz lived. It was a house he had just acquired. So finding it was not such an easy guess., though I suppose she had someone following him after she realized he had robbed her, or had heard him talking to Lucy on the bug she planted in the house where he did live. Smurf is that cold blooded. She ordered the death of Catherine, Catherine's parents...and Catherine too if she had not been lured from the family home the night of the fire...Javi, and probably Javi's dad since it was her gun that she used; she killed the man who abandoned her when her mother was killed, and who knows who else. She threw J's mother from the family and all but abandoned both her and J, then a young boy. Baz has now betrayed her. She would totally have him killed for that.

Just speculation. I am not sure that the crew was Javi's former crew...just thought the guy who visited Smurf looked familiar...but I think this guy arranged the shooting. The "arrangement" the jail visitor talked about would have been to shoot Baz and recover the suitcases from the house. Lucy did not need to shoot Baz. She was Baz's partner, basically, and he was moving to Mexico. She thinks she can control him, as she told Nikki in Season Two. But once he has been shot, she recovers the goods before whoever shot him can. In fact, she now will have a problem fencing the stuff she recovered. I wonder how Smurf knew where the money was, too..maybe she picked it up from the bug she put in his house; maybe she hired someone to follow him. Since he apparently dry walled after he put the money in the wall..remember, originally, it was just behind plywood...seems he must have spent some time at the place. I wondered last season if J had bought the truck to follow Baz...but he tells Smurf he did not know where it was, so maybe, even if he did follow Baz, he kept the location to himself. In the previous season, Marco was unable to fence one valuable ring. How will Lucy and Marco manage to fence all that stuff w/o Baz? I think most of what was in the suitcases was actually jewelry, watches, etc...Baz had taken all the cash separately. J has the buildings now to handle. I hope all the apartments are mostly rented, or he will have problems paying utilities, taxes, etc. He did not take his share of the $1.4 mil, and presumably Baz's share was still in that suitcase...so what happened to that money? Why was the crime scene tape gone when Pope visited the scene a few hours after the event?

I was amazed how quickly the writers took care of the two big cliffhangers of the summer: 1) Will Baz live? He does not make it through the first ten minutes of the season, and 2) Who dun it? Smurf with the help of Javi's former crew... inadvertently facilitated by J. Apparently. I am glad Scott Speedman found employment in Shondaland... Now, on to the apparent Season Three conflicts: Pope is once again angry, suspicious, and threatening everyone except Lena in his quest to revenge Baz. J was never really trusted by anyone except Nikki, who, rather than being an ally in a time of danger, is more like a helpless dependent. Even Smurf once again suspects him. So the cheese stands alone. He sees that he has been used by everyone, can trust no one, yet in some ways sits in the cat bird's seat. He should secretly sell the beautiful big apartment building, take Nikki, and go off to engineering school on the East coast. But of course that would end the show, so... Does anyone have any idea how Smurf knew about the house where Baz had hidden the money? Maybe she followed him at some point or heard about it on the bug she planted in his house.

Dumb question, I guess. So, apparently Renee mispronounced Pierre....did she get some other capital wrong? She did call I U the U of I...which, since she said her friend was a graduate, seems odd. But Pierre is often mispronounced, as is Helena, capital of Mt, and many other small cities around the country.

One big difference between the two stories is that in "Running On Empty" the kids know the family is on the run and why. The Jennings' waited too long to tell Henry the truth. I think Henry will not want to leave the country if his parents get to him before the Feds. He may go because he is smart enough to see the life he had planned is impossible. Paige may well be looking forward to seeing Russia after Claudia's film festival. River Phoenix's character in "Running on Empty" left his family in order to follow his own dreams, and he does so, finally, with the collusion of his mother. Maybe Henry will stay in the US with his parents permission and Stan's collusion.

I do not think either Paige or Henry would be upset to learn their parents were Russian. Maybe they could have told the kids they were illegal immigrants, though that does not explain the odd hours they work. I do think they would be horrified to learn the parents were KGB spies working against the American government. I taught high school in the 80s. If a student had confided in me that her parents were Russian spies, I doubt I would have believed her. But if her father had previously made a rather frightening visit to confront me after hours, if might have been different. And if the parents visited me and confirmed they were spies for the USSR, I would have told my husband....and he would have told me to call the FBI, just as the pastor's wife probably had. It was a huge risk for the Jennings not to have packed up and left when Paige told the pastor...an even bigger one when they confirmed it. No wonder Pastor TIM is not about to tell the truth to Stan...he'd have a lot of 'splainin' to do! Yes, the KGB part would have been the hard part for Paige to accept.

I have loved this show over the years. I will certainly miss it when it is gone... Like all great, long running shows, some seasons and some plot lines worked less well for me than others, but always the show has managed to come roaring back and I have been all too willing to suspend disbelief. The plot element that has always bothered me has to do with Paige. I am the same age as Elizabeth is supposed to have been, my children are roughly the same age. I understand Paige's initial horror at finding out who her parents are, though her objections seem to center on her having been lied to...but I would think a child growing up in that period, exposed to all the rah-rah patriotism at school and the depiction of the "evil empire" that would have been everywhere (except at home) would have been horrified to learn her parents were Reds. I do not think she would have told anyone because she would have been ashamed and aware they would be exposed, jailed, and she would understand that her life as she knew it would be over. I bought her reaction because it is a TV show and because up to that point the show had shown Paige as being completely unaware of the world around her...not knowing where Poland was, hearing her mother criticize her social studies teacher not for his opinions but for his appearance...it appeared the couple was so apolitical around the kids that they left them in ignorance. The only way I could except Paige becoming a spy is by accepting that she is one of those people who is great at memorizing facts and performing at school, but shallow and slavishly desirous of fitting in...in this case, to her parents approval. The Jared plot did not work for me for much the same reason. We do not know this family...but suddenly this bright kid has been recruited unbeknownst to his parents, who then objected to his recruitment and died because of it. It seems to me that his recruitment would have required the parents to have been relatively open about their opinions, etc., around their kids, and in that case, would they have objected to his decision so strenuously he would have had to kill them? Henry seem to have been a neglected kid for a season or two, though not at first...this plot line I do believe. If he agrees to leave with them, it will be because, as he told Stan, family comes first...and he will understand that his life in this country will be ruined anyway when his family is exposed. Of course, we know that in a few years he will be able to come back, change his name, and, though he won't be able to get a security clearance, live a normal life here. i think Stan may get to New Hampshire first, though...