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Whoever issued the check could stop payment in case of fraud, couldn't they? I'm still scratching my head about the "original angel" premise. If she's the original angel, who was the older lady with half a wing?

I think they did use the brook as a bathroom. They showed Homer shaving in a previous ep (when Prairie threw up in the water). No idea if he also cuts his own hair.

I get the feeling that he died and was revived with special powers for a price. Or maybe he's still dead. That would be interesting.

James's half-sister (name?) killed their father. That's my guess. Maybe she did it because she was sexually abused as a kid, but I'm hoping there's a more original reason.

OK. Either way, it still feels like the writers are pulling their punches.

I love the production design and cinematography (the color palette, not the TV-friendly framing) but the story feels thin. It got more interesting at the end when James explained the war stuff and the interest in his family's land. The show wants to be ballsy (incest! gasp!) yet clarifies that James and his sister are step-siblings. Whatever. I could care less about the romance because the sister has the personality of a zombie. I'll try one more ep.

Anna. Hands down, the worst glottal fry I've ever heard. I can't think of any profession in which her voice would be an asset.

They don't want viewers to see the movements as an interpretive dance when the movements are the epitome of an interpretive dance? That's funny. Just because they don't take the time explain each movement doesn't mean that it doesn't have an interpretation. If each movement is meaningless, why do it? Why not replace one movement with a chicken dance or moonwalk? I also don't buy the dance as angelic. If I imagine angels dancing, I don't see something that an L.A.-based choreographer would think up. The secret handshake in Sound of My Voice was just as silly. I think the word "visionary" is thrown around too much when it comes to newer filmmakers. Shyamalan was immediately called a visionary until he took himself too seriously and fell flat on his face (repeatedly). Marling/Batmanglij may share the same fate if they think they're misunderstood geniuses and that everything they write is a masterpiece or too advanced for our tiny minds to comprehend. The movements are so advanced that they're akin to alien technology? Really?

Is it me or does today's Russian hack hearing feel like a precursor to an impeachment hearing?

Happy New Year, everybody! Glad the forum is still here. Nerdwriter dissects the Twitter Twit's tweets and his percentage of the tweeting. Also, a Daily Beast write-up on how the inauguration snubs are bugging the shit out of the celebrity-loving Orange One... The mad scramble by his team to secure famous players for his inaugural festivities coupled with his ad-hoc photo ops with a fading Jim Brown, a bizarre, unmedicated Kanye West and huckster-cum-murderer Don King makes Trump’s existential yearning clear. He can try to deflect with pathetic tweets about really wanting to be surrounded by “the people” on his big day, but the truth is transparent: the germaphobic pouter who lives in an all-gold penthouse built from cheap materials by undocumented Polish migrants wouldn’t wipe his nose on his core supporters. Just look at his billionaire cabinet for a clue.... It’s not a dismissal born purely of partisanship, but rather a rejection of the entire underlying ethos of his divisive, revanchist campaign. Maintaining a unified front against authoritarianism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and misogyny is no laughing matter, no matter how much Trump’s apologists try to snide it off on cable TV. Ultimately, denying Trump and Trumpism the cultural cosign they crave is an important statement. It does what so far, the collective media have been unable or unwilling to do: rejecting the normalization of the utterly abnormal. It tells not just the country, but the world, that Trumpism may have a hold on our politics, but it doesn’t have a hold on us. America’s ascendant majority will not so easily slink off into that good night, and will not quietly ingest what Trump has foisted on the electorate. He and his bilious, Russophile Twitter and comment-section trolls, his apologist surrogates and his zombified, partisan enablers on Capitol Hill will have to do their dirty work — including the horrors of disappointment and lost healthcare and social safety net programs soon to be visited on Trump’s own working class supporters — without the shield of popular cultural will. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/01/a-list-s-trump-snub-hits-him-where-it-hurts.html?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon

She was off her meds while secretly meeting with minors (at night, no less) so the monitor makes sense.

The bridge incident is what makes the whole show seem pointless. If dying is the only way to get back to Homer or her dad or whatever it is she was trying to accomplish by jumping off the bridge, why not try suicide again instead going through all this convoluted storytelling? If she needs five dancers to complete an urgent mission, why jump off the bridge?

I wouldn't be surprised if they reveal that she was institutionalized with Homer and the others for seven years, and that Hap is one of the doctors that she incorporated into her story.

Well i think,its clear at this point that Steve might have some mentall illness. This kind of violence ,especially towards someone who has been so good to him,is completely crazy. I mean his parents are shit for sure but he does need help. He certainly has anger issues but it's weird that his anger is immediately directed at Prairie and not at his parents. I could understand him having misdirected anger at someone in the vicinity of the incident. I don't see him as mentally ill... I have the same problem with all of Marling's movies so far -- in the second half, someone will do something out of character just to advance the story. While she has intriguing story premises, I don't think character development is her strong suit.

Glad they went for My Little Pony instead of trying to make India look more like Gigi Hadid than she already does. The biracial girl with the model mom (name?) looked better before the makeover. The twins have great bodies but that's about it -- I see more runways than editorials in their future. Love the revamp and new judges. The Tyra-free format is refreshing. I do not miss her enunciating... every... word. Love Rita's compassion for the girls. Love Ashley's attitude; she could be Eva Mendes' sister. I thought Drew might be bitchy but he's cool.

I forgot about Egoyan's Adoration in which an orphan tells his high school classmates an imagined story about his violinist mother (see pic) as he questions his parents' death. While the OA is certainly a unique TV series, Marling is like Prairie and her collection of books as she has cobbled together a fantastical story using Egoyan movie moments (too many to list here) and scenarios (The Sweet Hereafter's school bus of kids plunging into an icy river; Felicia's Journey's naive girl who goes far from home to search for her boyfriend only to be offered "help" by a serial killer; The Captive's parents who reunite with their daughter after she was held captive by a pedophile for 8 years, etc.).

Yeah, I got excited when I saw the flyer until I read further and saw the list of apparent performers. That's an awful lot of A-list acts for something for which there has been no official confirmation of even existing yet. We're not the only ones hoping the idea becomes a reality: The concert speculation led to the formation of a Change.org petition to fund such an event. Over 72,000 people had signed it as of Saturday morning. https://www.change.org/p/freedom-united-we-the-people-concert-telethon

The best part: "All the proceeds of the freedom concert go to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Lambda Legal, NAACP, Common Cause, CAIR, IRAP, SPLC, Environmental Defense Fund, Human Rights Campaign Fund, MoveOn, Economic Policy Institute, Inequality Media, and GLAD." Happy Holidays!!

You're not alone. So there's no evidence of where she was and who she met for 7 years and how she regained her sight? *sigh* The story went from Egoyan territory to Shyamalan pretty quick. ("Swing away!") It also reminded me of Identity, which started out as one thing then took an abrupt turn into absurdity at the last minute. The lack of foreshadowing confused me -- I first thought Steve was the shooter before he dove under a table. Yup, that was pretty clunky and super late. Overall, the show just had too much exposition for me. I groaned when the ALS woman also had a story for OA to narrate. I'm also not a fan of Emory Cohen, so there's that. It did have that "it was all a dream" quality. I would have liked the show better if it had fully committed to the mad scientist premise instead of abruptly switching to a live art installation about school shootings.

Steve blames OA (I feel ridiculous calling her that) and stabs her because his parents want him in reform school? Mm...kay. I would have been on the phone to the insurance company to stop payment on that check before the van left the gas station. This ep was mostly narrative filler. I didn't need the smart kid (name?) to rehash everything we've learned until now.

...and we are officially off the rails. There's suddenly another mad scientist? And he's suddenly dead? How did Prairie know about this guy? Did Hap tell her about him and I missed it while nodding off (aka traveling to Saturn)? The present-day story about the misfit kids is moving at a glacial pace.

I was marveling at that too. I also missed the part about how they learned about the "freedom movements" while they were dead. I guess the dancing is an extension of that weird interpretive handshake in Sound of My Voice. LOL. Once again, a Marling project reels me in only to lose me around the midpoint. I'll still finish the series and I like the basic premise but, yeah, I'm not buying it.

Tom Arnold has Apprentice Outtakes, Promises They’re As Offensive As Everyone Suspects. Despite the fact that Tom Arnold says he'll never be the one to leak Donald Trump's infamous Apprentice outtakes, the actor confirmed that the footage is indeed as filthy as it's rumored to be. "It was him sitting in that chair saying the N-word, saying the C-word, calling his son a retard, just being so mean to his own children," Arnold told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The comedian says the repugnant mash-up of Trump's worst comments was originally sent to him by Apprentice staffers who thought the supercut would make for a fun holiday gag. "[When] the people sent it to me, it was funny. (WTF?) Hundreds of people have seen these. It was sort of a Christmas video they put together. He wasn’t going to be president of the United States," Arnold said, adding that those producers won't ever release the footage because they're afraid of being blacklisted in their industry. No one — including Arnold Schwarzenegger's agent, who asked him — could convince Arnold to leak the tapes, which he said show the president-elect saying "every bad thing ever, every offensive, racist thing ever." When it became clear that Trump had a realistic chance of taking the White House, Arnold claims Hillary Clinton as well as new Apprentice star Arnold Schwarzenegger's agent got involved and wanted the tapes released. "The Sunday before the election, I get a call from [Schwarzenegger] CAA agent, sitting next to [Clinton]. They said, ‘I need you to release him saying the N-word.’ I said, ‘Well, now these people – two editors and an associate producer — are scared to death. They’re scared of his people, they’re scared of they’ll never work again, there’s a $5 million confidentiality agreement.' " http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tom-arnold-i-have-racist-trump-outtakes-apprentice-957836?facebook_20161220

Yeah, that too. I was thinking of Felicia and The Captive. I first thought Khatun was Egoyan's actress wife Arsinée Khanjian. After watching a few more eps, it's clear that Marling/Batmanglij are Egoyan fans. Even the tone and cinematography of the show are Egoyanian.

I don't think they know the codes to open the cell doors. But, yeah, Homer could knock him out and go for help.