[S01.E10: Silence Lay Steadily]

6 hours ago, Peanut6711 said:

I too found the presentations of the ghosts a little murky, conflicting. Nell seems enlightened in death. Most of the rest of the ghosts do not.

That didn't really bother me, since Nell's enlightenment seemed to derive from the specific circumstances of her ghosting, not the mere fact that she became a ghost. That is, her climactic realization that "our moments fall around us like rain" instead of progressing in an inevitable line seems to derive from her discovery that she herself was the Bent-Neck Lady all along. As far as we know, none of the other ghosts received a similarly meaningful revelation when they died, so it makes sense that they didn't find the process all that enlightening.

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It appears the custody dispute was between Hugh and Aunt Janet. I'm going to assume Janet, Olivia's sister, felt Hugh was not suitable to raise the kids after Olivia died on his watch, so to speak. No doubt, she resented him for it. 

Yep. And the lawyer argues that if Hugh doesn't tamp down the haunted house talk and let the kids testify about what happened that last night at Hill House, it's all but inevitable that the judge will rule against him. There's not really any missing information; Hugh did exactly what he said he was going to do in the hearing, and the results were exactly what his lawyer said they would be -- Aunt Janet was awarded custody.

[Tusk to Tchaikovsky: Re-watching the Americans]

On 10/25/2018 at 1:38 PM, sistermagpie said:

So watching it this time I really felt like she was definitely an Illegal like Philip based in Canada, especially based on their last scene together. It made the most sense to me emotionally here, having now seen the whole story to the end, that she was embedded like Philip and just had a relationship with her son the way Elizabeth did with her mother, via tapes and the occasional picture.

 

Ha, it's funny, because I'm the one who mentioned before that I always assumed Irina wasn't a long-term illegal, and my most recent rewatch only made me more certain that this interpretation is correct. I had a whole list of reasons why, most of which centered around the fact that the episode seemed to portray Irina as the love Philip left behind, not someone who moved forward with him on a parallel track. But while I was reviewing the episode just now to get my thoughts together, I stumbled upon what to me seems like a much more concrete reason to think I'm right:

"Your life in America -- is it a full life?"
"Yes."
"You're married?"
"Yes."
"Children?"
"Two -- a boy and a girl. You?"
"I was married."
"Divorced?"
"He died."
"Children?"
"Yes. A son."

If Irina were a deep-cover illegal, the marriage they're talking about here would be to another officer, just like Philip's marriage is. So why would Philip's first assumption be that they got divorced? Wouldn't "died in the line of duty" or "was recalled to Moscow" be a much more probable way for such an arranged marriage to end? Indeed, when Philip suggests to Elizabeth in the next episode that the two of them could get divorced, he presents it as a new option that they would have previously considered unthinkable. The only way it makes sense for Philip jump to that conclusion with Irina, it seems to me, is if her late husband was a real one she married back in the motherland.

Also, Irina's explanation gets very complicated if she's talking at one moment about her cover husband in Canada and then in the next about her and Philip's son being raised by her parents back in Russia. It goes beyond a lie of omission into confusingly cobbled-together fabrication in a way that it doesn't if she's talking about her late husband in Moscow and the boy they raised together there in between her temporary international missions.

[S06.E05: The Great Patriotic War]

On 10/22/2018 at 3:22 PM, Roseanna said:

Tatiana had been promised a job of a boss of Rezidentura somewhere else (Africa?) but it was cancelled when her mission failed. I guess her area (diseases as weapons) is such that that there aren't many willing to do it. 

Tatiana did work for the KGB's bioweapons divisions, but it wasn't her only job at the Rezidentura. After all, no one else, not even the rezident, knew she was associated with Department Twelve, but they didn't think she sat around all day doing nothing; she must've been engaged in a lot of non-bioweapons work as well.

So it's possible that she got booted from Department Twelve after the operation with William imploded but stayed on at the Rezidentura in her other, less sensitive capacities.

On 10/22/2018 at 3:48 PM, sistermagpie said:

Elizabeth's plan was incredible stupid really.  It would have surely disrupted the summit with an international incident wouldn't it?

I'd say it was specifically designed not to provoke an international incident. They weren't planning to kidnap Kimmy or anything like that; they're were trying to engineer a situation in which she could plausibly be arrested by Soviet authorities on legitimate charges. I don't think they intended for Breland to realize that the KGB was the cause of Kimmy's troubles, just that they could pull strings to offer her a solution.

As usual, though, the show doesn't stitch up the operational details super tight, so maybe it requires some suspension of disbelief to accept that Breland wouldn't immediately put two and two together. But I think that was the intention.

3 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

From what little we know about Philip's family it doesn't seem like they were particularly proud of his father's work. He himself speculates that his mother didn't approve of it and that's why he was never told what his father did.

 

Which in turn informs Philip's angst about Henry in season 5, because if Philip was chained to his father's destiny despite the fact that his family protected him from learning the truth, how can he be sure that Henry won't inherit his father's darkness in turn?

[S04.E10: Winner]

2 hours ago, Bannon said:

That "bit" about the insurance company simply reflects the fact that motorists in Illinois are required to carry insurance, and report their accidents. Yes, their premiums go up, and they endure stress. Like I acknowledged, the scam is a felony. The victims of it are still better off, compared to being beaten to death by a burglar.

I think the implication of the original "Slippin' Jimmy" story is that Jimmy was scamming business owners rather than drivers. That's why he mentions finding a spot on State Street or, better yet, Michigan Avenue -- because those are high-end shopping areas in downtown Chicago. The idea seems to be that he would find a successful business and take a fall on its sidewalk in front of a crowd of witnesses, counting on the owner to pay him not to sue.

I would guess that such business would need to be insured as well, but the scam may have involved encouraging them to pay Jimmy under the table so their premiums wouldn't go up.

[S04.E10: Winner]

3 minutes ago, Sharper2002 said:

So Werner really thought he could go on vacation and come back? He really had no idea who he was dealing with. It would have been SO easy to finish the job and go home. 

It didn't occur to me till now, but Werner's foolishness basically represents Mike's feelings about his criminal activities up till now. Mike, too, has been telling himself that he can do a little bit of work for a drug kingpin, then go back to his family, then check in with the kingpin again, as if it's all no big deal. By killing Werner, Mike wasn't just busting his "murdering innocent people" cherry; he was also killing the part of himself who thought a life of crime could be Pop-Pop's little side gig.

[S44.E02: Awkwafina / Travis Scott]

On 10/7/2018 at 3:12 PM, peeayebee said:

I remember not liking Cecily when she was a WU anchor. I'm so glad that changed because, as you said, she is great at creating characters. They're distinct and very funny.

Yep, she's one of the few performers who consistently rises above the weak material with her sharp comedic takes, and I wish she'd get more recognition for it. 

Cecily's voice work is especially strong. Her performances always have a unique sound that's tailored to the character and the needs of the sketch, whereas most everyone else has like one or two vocal modes that work or don't work depending on how well they happen to fit with whatever the bit is trying to do.

[S04.E09: Wiedersehen]

1 hour ago, Tighthead said:

I must say, I don’t really care if Werner lives or dies.  I just want the damn lab built. I’m sure in the end we will glean a few nuggets from this plot line, but I think it has been more wet tinder than slow burn.

(shrug) It's not my favorite storyline, but I think it's there more for its thematic resonance than its contribution to the plot. It's the physical representation of what's been going on psychologically with the characters, particularly Jimmy, this season -- how they have to hide who they are and what they're really up to, but it's driving them crazy and eventually they have to break out. I expect Werner's fate in the final episode to resonate with however Jimmy ends up dealing with -- or not dealing with -- his repressed grief over Chuck's death.

[S04.E09: Wiedersehen]

1 hour ago, Trees said:

* Re: The Dating Game, my guess is that they were able to show it without paying huge royalties! I remember in any Insider Podcast from BB, they were talking about why somebody watched really old movies: no royalties.

I think it's just a thing that would've been on the air at the time and likely to be screening in an old folks' home. The sets and fashions seem to match this version of the series from the mid-to-late 1990s, which would certainly still have been in syndication in 2004.

[S04.E09: Wiedersehen]

13 minutes ago, MissBluxom said:

Yes. That certainly seems to hit the nail on the head. Vince must have a very low opinion of lawyers.  Those bastards didn't care how Jimmy felt towards his clients or the public or anyone else except for them. They wanted to see Jimmy bow and scrape and dance to their tune. That was the only way for him to get reinstated.

I'm more apt to go with Occam's Razor on this one and say that the reason they rejected him was the reason they gave: because he came across as insincere. And the reason he came across as insincere is because he was being insincere. The very crux of Jimmy's arc this season -- so central that they based the season's promotional art on it -- is that he's pretending not to care about his brother's death to avoid dealing with the fact that he actually cares very deeply. The only problem with the board's decision is that they don't have any way of knowing that Jimmy is lying to himself, so they think he's lying to them deliberately.

[S44.E01: Adam Driver / Kanye West]

43 minutes ago, Tachi Rocinante said:

Kate's version of Graham was worse than her Sessions, which is terrible.

There's at least a character behind her Sessions impression, the idea that he's a naughty little southern racist who's half possum. For Graham -- as with her Giuliani -- there was basically nothing but awkward physical mimicry. If Kate were an actual impressionist like Darrell Hammond or Jay Pharoah, she might be able to skate by on the uncanniness of her impressions -- but she's more like Will Ferrell, in that she needs a strong comedic take to compensate for the fact that her impressions are pretty basic. Throwing her out there with nothing beyond "Try to look and sound like the real guy" is setting her up to fail.

[S44.E01: Adam Driver / Kanye West]

7 hours ago, vb68 said:

Kyle's film was fantastic. But hey, where was Leslie? I guess she didn't fit with Wendy Williams in there, but I wish she would had been there asking him to come home for consistency's sake. Oh and at least on the show, Pete is a really big deal now guys. Like, BIG DEAL.

I think in one of the talking heads setups you can see a framed picture behind Kyle in which he has cut Leslie out of a photo of the two of them, suggesting that the two have broken up.

[Tusk to Tchaikovsky: Re-watching the Americans]

22 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Yes, let's forget all about the Military GENERAL Elizabeth met with, and Arkady telling Oleg how high it went.

What do you mean? I mentioned the military involvement specifically: "a covert effort by KGB and military officers." My point is, regardless of how many high-level members of the armed forces and intelligence apparatus were involved, we are specifically told that no political authorities were implicated:

"The Centre. The very top leaders there are all behind this. They're also working with certain high-level military leaders, like your friend from Mexico."
"But not the Party."
(dismissive) "We're all in the Party."

Essentially, the series postulates a Deep State conspiracy of the the type President Trump imagines is plotting against him today -- career government functionaries using the machinery of their offices in illegal ways to manipulate the political figures who are supposed to have authority over them. And that's the exact opposite of what happened in the 1991 coup, in which a group of high-ranking political figures used their authority in illegal ways to manipulate the machinery of the government.

Indeed, the sort of people who perpetrated the real-life coup would've been the earlier plotters' primary victims -- like I said, their whole plan was to approach anti-Gorbachev members of the Party and lie to them in order to get them to remove Gorbachev from power. Even if you agree with the plotters politically, you're not going to let them keep their jobs after they tried to trick you into overthrowing your own government on false pretenses!

[S04.E07: Something Stupid]

1 hour ago, icemiser69 said:

Kim is trying to do everything straight without pulling off anything sleazy (Jimmy like) in an effort to get Huell off.  The problem is that her boyfriend (Jimmy) doesn't care how sleazy he gets in order to get what he wants.  It would be a shame if Jimmy did something so sleazy that it some how cost Kim her law license.

I thought the implication was that Kim was going to do something stupid that could put her career in jeopardy. Yes, she originally tries to keep everything on the up and up, but when she realizes that Jimmy is going to enact some reckless plan, she totally changes tactics. I'd assume that her new plan is an ill-conceived attempt to square the circle -- to do something sketchy enough to keep Huell out of prison, but not so sketchy that it'll blow up in their faces or ruin the poor cop's life.

It's the latter possibility, especially, that Kim seems to have reacted against most strongly: "I'm not bringing down a cop!" she says. So I'd assume that whatever she has planned is an alternative that doesn't require making the cop look like a drunk or a racist or whatever.

[S04.E07: Something Stupid]

1 hour ago, LittleIggy said:

BTW, that Burl Ives cover of “Big Rock Candy Mountain” is sanitized compared to the one on the “O, Brother Where Art Thou?” soundtrack. That one has lyrics about “little streams of alcohol come trickling down the rocks” and “lakes of stew and of whiskey, too.” Oh, and “where they hung the jerk who invented work”! ?Now, that was a hobo paradise!

Yeah, the long-lost original version was actually even less sanitary -- and in the final verse, uh . . . kinda rapey?

The punk rolled up his big blue eyes
And said to the jocker, "Sandy
I've hiked and hitched and wandered too,
But I ain't seen any candy
I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore,
I'll be god damned if I hike any more
To be buggered sore like a hobo's whore
On the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

Apparently the song was originally about an old tramp who uses the story of a mythical hobo paradise to lure a young punk away so he can sexually assault him!

Honestly, it's that version that seems most in keeping with the content of the episode, in which a couple of old men haul away a group of scraggly young men every day so they'll toil miserably for some promised reward that doesn't seem like it'll ever come. It's also reflected in the title, "Something Stupid," which per the lyrics of the opening song is about how Kim and Jimmy are laboring under the delusion that their increasingly separate lives are going to lead them back to one another, but sadly they're only chasing a lovely illusion that will ultimately break them.

[Tusk to Tchaikovsky: Re-watching the Americans]

On 9/15/2018 at 7:28 PM, Umbelina said:

If they hadn't wanted us to consider a REAL COUP made up of exactly the same kind of people, that would happen very soon, why not choose a made up "jeopardy" story for their Paige stays ending?  Yes, I get that most people don't know Russian history, and obviously most don't care, but I do care.

 

It's explicitly not the same kind of people, though. The real-life coup was an open revolt backed by powerful politicians within the Communist Party who thought Gorbachev had to go; the fictional conspiracy depicted in the series was a covert effort by KGB and military officers to deceive supposedly sympathetic politicians into believing Gorbachev had to go. That's exactly why Elizabeth rejects it -- because it means the Centre is betraying the very Party she swore to serve.

Now, maybe within the fiction of the show, some of the perpetrators of the 1991 coup are meant to be the "certain members of the Central Committee, key military leaders, and regional party secretaries who understand the situation we're in" whom the conspirators planned to trick into deposing Gorbachev. But there's zero reason to believe that they're involved in the conspiracy itself and would therefore swear revenge on the people who exposed it.

Quote

Claudia was understandably devastated at that moment, predicting, as WILL happen, that the USSR will fail because of Elizabeth's actions.

She also predicted that the leaders of the Centre would be thrown in jail for conspiring against their government. Why would the writers make a point of having Claudia say that if it wasn't meant to be predictive? If they'd just wanted to show that she's really sad about the inevitable fall of the Soviet Union, there's another part of her final speech where she says that. They could've just as easily have left out the "They'll put them in jail. All of us" part.

Again, you're trying to build an interpretation by pointing to one sentence and ignoring the one before or after, and I just don't find it at all persuasive. I will always privilege an interpretation that encompasses as much of the evidence of the text as possible over one that conspicuously ignores what the text is saying when it becomes inconvenient.

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Arkady IS back home, and her boss, and he knows HIS boss (the head of Directorate S) is in on the Coup, and he would have a better finger on the pulse IMO. 

OK, sure. Then it's sort of significant that he also indicates that the reformers will be in danger only if Oleg's efforts to expose the coup fail. You can't discount Claudia's perspective by citing some other authority instead, since literally every character on the show who expresses an opinion on the subject expresses this same one. And if they're aaaaalll saying it, I think we should probably give the idea pretty significant weight.

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The Soviet Union STILL collapses, and everything Elizabeth dedicated her life and body to, all of the lives she ruined, ends up being for nothing at all.  During those first terrible years after the Coup, and frankly the issues the USSR is having when she returns, and let's just say Claudia falls down the stairs and dies so can't exact her revenge/self-protection?  How, in any pipe dream, is Elizabeth not devastated?

I was never arguing that Elizabeth wouldn't be devastated by the fall of the Soviet Union, so I'm not sure what you expect me to say here. If the argument is just "How can we consider it a happy ending if something bad is going to happen to Elizabeth in the future?" that's not much more persuasive to me than arguing that a love story can't have a happy ending since we know that the loving couple will die some day.

[Tusk to Tchaikovsky: Re-watching the Americans]

5 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

The first bolded part was what I was referring to.  Arkady admitting his own jeopardy, saying Gorby can't save Oleg, and that he and Oleg's dad are in danger too.

Yes, of course, I know, but you can't just ignore the next sentence, in which Igor takes Arkady's comment to mean that Oleg's mission failed, with the clear implication being that they would not be in danger if Oleg succeeded.

Quote

History is history, and if you can show me one instance where the show re-wrote it?  Please do.  If not, it's logical to assume that history still matters in their futures.

There are a few minor things, like the fact that the Russians never lost a nuclear submarine because they stole a propeller and it failed, or that when that FBI plane went down in 1982, there wasn't a guy named Dave aboard. And the writers are obviously fudging things when they never give the name the Deputy Attorney General, presumably because he's not based on Edward C. Schmults, the actual DAG at the time. (Though the character does conveniently disappear around the middle of 1984, when Schmults was replaced by Carol Dinkins, the first female DAG.)

But what we're talking about here is not a literal historical change anyway. The series gives no indication that the hardliners thwarted in 1987 are meant to be the same people who attempted the coup in 1991. Indeed, KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov, who originated the 1991 plan, didn't ascend to the position until 1988, after the conspiracy depicted in the series would have been resolved. The writers can postulate a group of hardliners who tried to overthrow Gorbachev four years earlier without implying that they remained in power and became the 1991 conspirators.

7 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

Logically, that just doesn't make sense, so with word of mouth that Gorby's representative was about to be framed suddenly all is OK?  How?  How does that damage the Coup, or save any of them?  I'm honestly asking, not being sarcastic here.

To me that fact that Claudia says that's what will happen is a perfectly sufficient explanation. She's always been portrayed as having her finger on the pulse of the Centre's operations, and she's a key figure in this particular operation, so one assumes she knows how resilient or how fragile the conspiracy is. Heck, she comes right out and says of Gorbachev, "It's almost too late to stop him," then points out that "there's a chance that this could go badly." It's characterized as a delicate and desperate operation all along, so I have no trouble believing that it would fall apart if the officer whose reports are being used to justify deposing Gorbachev testifies that they've been faked.

And, again, maybe you don't think that all holds together, but it's clearly what the writers intended. So it still seems like the logical conclusion would be "The writers wanted us to think the coup would fall apart but their writing wasn't up to the task" and not "The writers intended for us to think that the coup did not fall apart, even though every scene that talks about it indicates that it will."

[Tusk to Tchaikovsky: Re-watching the Americans]

49 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

I watched Arkady telling Oleg's father that Oleg would be in jail forever in the USA, but I also noticed that he said he's personally doomed as well, and that Oleg's dad may be as well,  so add them to the list of our doomed characters.

Par for the course at this point, but I totally disagree. Like every other conversation on the show that touches on the fate of the hardline conspiracy, the final meeting between Arkady and Igor makes it clear that they are only doomed if Oleg's mission fails:

"Igor Pavlovich . . . he wasn't there for the KGB. There won't be a trade. He could be in jail for a long time."
"I'll talk to Gorbachev . . ."
"He's not in control of this. That's part of the problem. They're going to come after me, possibly you."
"What you sent him there for . . . it didn't work, then."
"Yes."

If the idea was supposed to be that the mission was inherently dangerous to Arkady and Igor regardless of its outcome, then Igor's inference -- and Arkady's confirmation of it -- make no sense. And if the writers wanted the point of the scene to be that Igor realized everyone involved in the plan was doomed all along, they could've written it that way. Again, you're asking for us to assume that historical events that are completely external to the story override what the story is actually saying.

[S04.E06: Pinata]

2 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

We've just begun to hear some of his pre-drug trade background, so I'm willing to think that the writer's have more reveals planned, which may include Gus not being originally from Chile (or, if he was, that at that period of his life, he was living elsewhere).

It may well be a mistake, but it's happened before, on this and forums for other series, that perceived mistakes or events that make no sense, turn out to be deliberate choices and are addressed as the story evolves.

 

I'm seeing from online sources that coati do have a presence in Chile, just not on the mainland. It seems the early settlers brought them to the Juan Fernández Islands off the coast to hunt mice, but they quickly became an ecological menace.

I would assume that they picked the coati either because it has that reputation in Chile as an invasive species, which fits perfectly into Gus's story, because they wanted Gus to be from a particularly remote part of the country -- maybe particularly from Robinson Crusoe Island in the Juan Fernández Archipelago, which has obvious resonance with Gus's lonely self-reliance -- or both.

[S04.E06: Pinata]

8 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

Jimmy does tend to get himself knee deep into trouble and does manage to find a way to pull himself out of it.  The big question is why does he continue to get himself into trouble.

To me that's sort of the central question of the show, with each season filling in a different piece of the puzzle. Season 1 centers around Jimmy's inherent sense of decency that he's unable to let go of even when he's trying to break bad. Season 2 looks at the other side, how he's unable to just walk the straight and narrow, and how as a result he's always pinging back and forth between conscientiousness and sleaze. Season 3 is about his impatience, how he's always leaping without looking, and the ways it both gets him into constant trouble and protects him from getting into really deep trouble the way someone like Mike can by being too careful and caring too much about things. And season 4 deals with the devil-may-care exterior he develops to deal with the pressure of being constantly torn between his better and worse natures, between always feeling put-upon and always somehow skating away unscathed.

[The Americans in the Media]

1 hour ago, Umbelina said:

They should have had Elizabeth kill her, for logic.  Who knows why they didn't?  Maybe the promise, but more likely because they wanted to be "edgy" and "surprising" and since killing Claudia is the only thing that made any damn sense for Elizabeth and Philip's survival, they not only had Elizabeth confess all to her (TWICE!) they then had the Elizabeth, who had been on an unprecedented murder spree all season, let her live.

Ridiculous.

I honestly don't understand why you keep searching for some elaborate, secret explanation for this decision, when it's explained in the writing itself: Claudia indicates that the inevitable result of Elizabeth's message about the coup reaching Moscow is "They'll take apart the Centre's leadership. The people who supported you all these years. They'll put them in jail. All of us." Since that fate is inevitable, and Claudia herself is willingly going home to face it, killing her would be pointlessly vindictive.

Now, I know you don't accept Claudia's premise, and you can definitely make the argument that it doesn't make sense given the real-world history of Russian hardliners at the time. But I don't get why you don't just assume, therefore, that the show's failing was asking us to accept this shaky premise. Instead, you assume that the writers intended for us not to accept their own premise, and then you have to conjure all sorts of elaborate theories to explain why the writers didn't want us to! That seems like a pretty literal violation of Occam's Razor to me.

[S04.E04: Talk]

2 hours ago, MaryPatShelby said:

Like I said, mine cut away mid-sentence - the judge saw Kim in the courtroom, reacted non-verbally, then said something like "I'm not..." or "I'm going to...", then....cut.  It just seems odd to cut away like that, before a scene has even ended.  But it sounds like I didn't miss anything.  

Yeah, I think that's how it went for everyone. But the judge wasn't saying anything important to the story; he was just starting to get into his next case. Per the transcript: "I'll address the defense's motion to disqualify opposing counsel. Well, I read your brief very carefully, but I'm not . . ." Unless folks were really eager to learn why the judge refused to disqualify the lawyer from the DA's office in a case we've never heard of, what comes next is inconsequential.

[S04.E04: Talk]

10 minutes ago, Milburn Stone said:

This raises the possibility that it worked better with a cut to a commercial (as the creators anticipated it would) than without one. I can see that.

I did watch it live on the air, so maybe that's why it didn't seem like a mistake to me either. Though I think at least one person earlier in the thread talked about how it seemed like they cut to commercial too early, so it seems like at least some people who watched it with commercials still thought it seemed off.

[The Americans in the Media]

10 hours ago, Umbelina said:

So that's why Elizabeth didn't do the logical thing and kill Claudia, because the producers "promised her."  Wow.

No, but it might be why they wrote a story in which it was logical to let Claudia live. The idea that they had a whole ending planned out that would've required Claudia to die, but then they were like, "Whoops, we promised Margot we wouldn't do that!" so they left her alive but didn't change anything else is absurd.

Though I suspect what Martindale is actually talking about is that they didn't kill her off during the years in which she was mostly unavailable to do the show, instead letting her appear as her availability allowed. That seems more likely than her having some weird attachment to the idea that the character never dies, even as the show is going off the air.

[S04.E04: Talk]

1 hour ago, MaryPatShelby said:

So, I've read most of the comments and this seems to have happened to some, if not all of us?  Mine cut to commercial mid-sentence while the judge was speaking, then Kim's storyline was never picked up again. Is this consistent with everyone else's viewing or was there more to that scene?

What I saw seems to match what people are describing, but I didn't find it confusing or think anything was missing. Kim and the judge chat in his chambers, and he warns her that if he sees her in his courtroom again he'll put her to work on a case. Then there's a time cut and the judge is back in his courtroom continuing with his day, and he notices that, despite his warning, Kim is still there watching the proceedings. He reacts to that as he starts in on the next case, and the scene ends.

Or did some local broadcasts cut away earlier?

[S04.E04: Talk]

I'm skeptical that the cell phone store is engaged in anything nefarious at the moment. The whole point is that JIMMY is going to bring in a criminal element with his new campaign, right? It sort of steps on that story if his employer has to be like, "How dare you do crime when I was doing crime!"

I think it's much more likely that this is just a sleepy store in a bad neighborhood where people can only afford cell phones when they're on sale, and Jimmy will have to explain why it's suddenly doing gangbusters business with lowlifes.