[Season 4 Talk]

30 minutes ago, Neurochick said:

I went to HS many years ago and it was done at that time.  In fact, my former boss and her husband took their son to a lot of different colleges, and that was just in 2011.

Well, touring a number of colleges is very common among the more privileged students who can afford those tours, but very few schools actually require an interview as part of a student's application.

1 hour ago, starri said:

I really did enjoy the switcheroo where afterward, Foundry came up to them, and you have every expectation that he's doing to say something at the very least insensitive...and then he introduces his husband.

I told Charlie and Alex through my television like a totally sane person that they needed to work on their gaydar because I'd clocked Foundry's being gay from his first appearance.

1 hour ago, starri said:

I do call bullshit on the football team, which has been nothing but toxic from the first season, would stuff the ballot box and cheer for a same-sex couple, QB or not.  It would be much more realistic for them to beat up Charlie and demand he be thrown off the team.

Yeah, it also rang very false to me that the football team was cheering so hard for them.  I mean, I was glad, but this is the same team that has a culture of systematically raping girls, so it doesn't feel right that they'd be so gay-friendly.  But yay?

I did laugh heartily at the Eli Manning argument Charlie and his dad had because Andrew McCarthy was so right.  And I would never in one million years call Eli Manning anything close to beautiful, but there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

5 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

They did a great job dropping subtle hints about his HIV status because earlier in the season, I remember thinking wait, did he always have that mark on his neck? And then later in the season, I thought did he always have that mark on the side of his forehead? I haven't rewatched any of the seasons so I thought maybe I'd just forgotten that he had them, but I googled pictures from S1 and sure enough, he did not have them previously.

That was one of my issues with this, though.  I thought the lesions looked like Kaposi sarcoma, and I didn't understand why no one in the world of the show seemed to be concerned about, or even notice, these obvious marks developing on Justin.  It felt like at least Matt and Lainie would've made him get those checked out.  It was a nice hint to us audience members who might know what we were looking at, but the characters on the show should've been concerned, too.

6 minutes ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Bryce also raped several girls and he didn’t seem to be the least bit angry when he raped Hannah, Jess, or Chloe. He was a predator who felt entitled to have sex with them.

I'll add to that that I don't think Monty seemed particularly angry so much as sadistically gleeful when he raped Tyler with that mop handle.

[Season 4 Talk]

4 hours ago, bettername2come said:

Why did Jessica not take the SAT again at a better time?

The SAT is offered on seven specific Saturdays per year, so there may not have been a better time, especially with all the shenanigans.  It sure doesn't leave much time for SAT prep!  Whatever, she's going to Berkeley, so good for her.

Totally called Clay very realistically getting into Brown.  Whatever.

When Winston said he loved Monty, I laughed so hard I had to pause my TV.  Girl, please!  His hallucinating dancing with Monty at prom was also good for a chortle.  Have fun with douchebag Ryan.  You two deserve each other.

Speaking of, it felt weird to have Ryan and Courtney in the finale.  I don't think they needed to be there, I hadn't missed either of them (especially Ryan), and it felt like a record scratch.

I had noticed the scars on Justin's face and body and had wondered if they were Kaposi-sarcoma lesions, and then I thought, "They wouldn't just randomly in the series fucking finale kill off Justin with fucking AIDS."  And then, they did exactly that.  I had a moment of being furious, and then I realized it was the perfect way to end this spectacularly shitty season.  I couldn't even be moved at the very well-acted scenes between Justin and Jessica and Justin and Clay because I was so over it.  And of course, Justin dies tragically, and suddenly everything at Liberty High is fine!  The jocks are cool, Diego's cool, Winston's cool, the police are cool, everybody's cool.  Justin brought peace in death!  Bryce and Monty hurt people, and they were evil, but they were also sympathetic, and hurt people hurt people or something, and now everyone is so fine!

Also, the finale was interminably long.

After looking at my television for nine episodes like this:

I spent this last 90+ minutes, looking like this:

But now it's over, and I feel so...well...

I'm relieved it's over, but I wish this season had not happened because it was:

I hope many of the actors on this show find lots of work, though, because most of them really were terrific.

[Season 4 Talk]

I just watched Episode 7, and it's hilarious that Clay was just so easily able to trick his way out of the hospital.  He's ranting out loud to himself by himself all over town, he stole and waved a gun around like an actually crazy person last episode, yet he's somehow "not a danger to himself."  He's so obviously fucked up and crazy that it makes absolutely no sense that he hasn't been expelled and committed to a mental institution, rather than scoring an interview with Brown (I honestly thought he'd actually submitted the application himself in a psychotic break since he seems to be dissociating and losing large chunks of time).  By the way, my job is tangentially part of the college admissions process, and interviews are the least important part of applications.  They also do not happen at the actual high schools students attend during school hours; Clay's interview at a coffee shop was, by far, the most realistic.

I'm not here for Alex's gay self-loathing/general self-loathing/whatever bullshit he's going through.  The hot (and KIND) jock wants you, shit for brains – be kind back to him!  Also, what the fuck are you doing spying on Bryce's mom and Ani?

I get what Zach was doing, but I wanted him to throw Diego onto a spike or something because that guy is a total fuck.

I just want to hug Justin.  Poor guy.

It's been blatantly obvious since the pilot that Tyler struck a deal with the cops to catch the gun dealer, and I honestly laughed at Tony's total misread of that because it makes. no. sense. that this would all be about entrapping a goddamn high-school student.  And of course, he has to involve Clay and play unbelievably stupid about why this might not be the best time for Clay, who just waved a gun around psychotically in front of everyone and was strapped to a bed in the hospital as a result, to be in the middle of this.  Of course, really, Tony should've just told Tyler he thought the police were setting him up instead of, what, trying to stop a gun deal with an armed gun dealer from going down?  Or something?  And Tyler should've just told them when he first made the deal what was happening.  I hope that gun dealer shot Clay just because he's generally awful and/or Tony because he's been unforgivably stupid.  However, I have no doubt that everyone but the gun dealer will be fine next episode and that Clay will extremely plausibly get into Brown.

This. is. maddening. 

[Season 4 Talk]

Six episodes in, and I need to go to bed because 1) it's after 1:00am and 2) I'm about to warp my eyes permanently from all the eye-rolling.  There is a 0% chance Clay wouldn't have been shot fucking dead for pulling that officer's gun and waving it around like the psycho he is.  I will take 37 holier-than-thou-Ani-narrated episodes over any of the Clay-mental-breakdown scenes; they are so unbelievable that it's become unbearable to watch.

Also, I hate Winston.  I hate him.  I don't believe he loved/loves Alex, and it makes zero sense that he'd be this invested in clearing the name of a guy who beat him severely – I don't care how awesome the post-beating sex was (which in and of itself is so fucked up and problematic).  Also, I don't care about the Winston/Diego crusade to clear Monty's name because Monty was a piece of shit, as are the two of them.

And why does Monty need to be humanized?  It's the same fucking problem as last season with Bryce.  I don't need or want these two rapist monsters to be humanized, and I don't care about any justice for either of them; their victims never got any, other than comfort in the knowledge that they're dead as fucking disco.  I will say, though, that I was hoping Hallucination Bryce and Monty would prompt Clay to run in front of a gunman and be shot to death.  Oh well.

[Season 4 Talk]

I'm three episodes in, and I just want to scream my head off every time Clay is onscreen.  Whatever insanity they're trying to portray with him is absolute garbage, and it's mind-numbingly stupid.  I want him to find Tyler's gun dealer, buy a machine gun, take out every single sack of shit on the football team other than Charlie and Zach and Justin, and then shoot his own goddamn head off.  I cannot take it.

Then, I want Ani to take the fall for everything because Clay will be mercifully dead and she is the worst.  The utter refusal of her and Clay to tell the group about Winston makes no. fucking. sense.  None.  Especially now that Ani has seen him making out with Alex (in the least shocking gay reveal ever).  Plot contrivance at its worst.

And yes, Diego, you obvious piece of shit, if Charlie hasn't come out to you or anyone else you know, calling him "gay or bi or whatever" is not OK, and Jess not listening to every obvious instinct she had made me want to stab myself in the face.

I want Jess to stop being so weird about Justin.

I want Justin to continue to be wonderful and to go to Occidental and only partially because it would be hilarious for the college he attended to have the nickname "Oxy."

I want my sweet, caring Zach back; I don't like alcoholic Zach as much, even though I understand why and like that he was so cool about Alex kissing him.

[NFL Thread]

Drew, it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

Honestly, none of this surprises me; he's shown himself to be passively racist and homophobic behind his cloak of straight, white privilege, and this is just the most egregious instance.  This apology is the very definition of damage control, I don't think it's sincere, and it's too little, too late for me.

[S06.E15: Stay]

14 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

So...like...did we ever actually find out how to get away with murder? 

Apparently, you just scream about your "pops" for a hundred years until everyone goes fucking crazy and stabs themselves through the ears and there's no one left to prosecute you.

[S06.E15: Stay]

20 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

Only if she's the only person he ever talked to. But that seems unlikely.

Kids with immigrant parents who grow up in the US don't have the same accent as their parents.

Your second point is certainly true, but as to your first: I know a woman who was born and raised in Puerto Rico who has no accent whatsoever when she speaks English.  Her father is from Oregon and only spoke English to her at home and had her speak English to him; she thinks she picked up his accent from him, and that's the only native English speaker she was really around.  So, it is possible to pick up the accent from one person if that's the person who taught you the language, but one example certainly isn't proof positive of anything.  It's possible Laurel didn't speak English to Christopher at home, so even though Laurel doesn't have an accent when she speaks English, he would if they lived in a Spanish-speaking country and spoke primarily Spanish with each other at home.

I'm thinking about this way, way, wayyyyyy more than the writers did.😑

[S06.E15: Stay]

4 hours ago, SnarkEnthusiast said:

The only true WTF moment of the episode for me was Connor/Oliver getting divorced out of absolutely nowhere with 20 minutes left, but Ollie’s such a sniveling, slimy weasel it was hard to feel sympathetic. Even if they reconciled in the flash forward – which I didn’t watch because I was too traumatized by the realization that they were killing off Bonnie - it came totally out of left field and felt like they were trying to torpedo the one couple that the writers were obsessed with keeping together because of the fandom.

In addition to being just totally disgusted by Oliver's utter shittiness at all levels of existence, I was unclear on this: did they actually go through with the divorce?  It seemed to me like maybe they didn't actually divorce?  Like, it was just thrown in there for shits and giggles?  I know Connor gave Oliver his wedding ring when he was hauled off to jail, but it didn't seem to me that they went through with it since their goodbye was so heartfelt.  Jesus, everything in this episode was obfuscated and/or specious, and the more I think about it, the less I like it and angrier I become.

[S06.E15: Stay]

5 hours ago, jaigurudeva said:

The problem for me wasn't Enoch's Spanish (it sounded fine, but with a Portuguese accent), it was his borderline parody of a Spanish accent when he spoke English. Especially if Christopher was raised bilingual with both English and Spanish by a mother who doesn't have an accent, he wouldn't have such a strong accent himself. I'm not saying it's all on Enoch, it was probably a directoral decision to differentiate Christoph from Wes, but it wasn't good.

Yeah, his accented English (which, again, sounded more like Portuguese-accented English, or a weird Spanish/Portuguese amalgam) was ridiculous.  Laurel's English has basically no accent whatsoever, so why does his?  I actually would lay the blame at Enoch's feet; he's a bad actor.

5 hours ago, jaigurudeva said:

The kids who tipped the first domino in this whole mess by killing Sam (and having the audacity to pin it all on Annalise, who only ever tried to help them) getting away mostly scot-free: ugh...(the kids killed Sam if their own volition

Except that the "kids" didn't kill Sam; Wes, and Wes alone, killed Sam.  And I'd argue that Sam tipped the first domino by fucking Lila, getting her pregnant, and having Frank kill her, thereby making awful Rebecca the witness who needed doing away with.  Connor and Michaela never killed anyone, nor did Laurel (although it does seem like she ordered Tegan to have her father killed, so...there's that).  They covered up the murder, but they didn't do the murdering themselves.  The way the show wrote everything from Michaela's and Connor's arrests onward made no sense, though.  Absolutely no sense.  I can now see that it was just badly reverse-engineered to manufacture Connor going to jail to find absolution (*the world's biggest eye roll) and Michaela losing every friend she had.  It was so dumb.

Also, did Annalise start drinking again?  It looked like the snippet right after Michaela gets sworn in was Annalise drinking; I actually thought it was Michaela at first because Annalise had talked about overcoming her alcoholism in her closing argument.

[S06.E15: Stay]

6 hours ago, alexvillage said:

Portuguese is my first language. Spanish is not necessarily easier for Portuguese speaking people. I became fluent in English faster than I could babble in Spanish.

My point is that Enoch majored in Spanish in college, so it's reasonable to assume he speaks it very well; you don't major in a foreign language in college without coming away with a strong degree of proficiency in that language.

Quote

I thought the mentor comment implied that Laurel and AK stayed in touch, which made it more surprising that Christopher didn't know who Connor and Oliver were.

Not to mention the fact that Connor and Oliver are Christopher's godparents.  I also had a "WTF?" reaction to Christopher not knowing his godparents.

[S06.E15: Stay]

For what it's worth, Alfred Enoch graduated from Oxford with a degree in Portuguese and Spanish and speaks Portuguese fluently (I believe his mother is Brazilian), so he's probably nearly fluent in Spanish as well; his weird accent sounded like Spanish with a Portuguese accent to me.

Aaaaaanyway, this didn't totally ruin my birthday, but I can't say that I liked it either.  Connor actually going to jail felt so completely unjust to me, as did him and Oliver staying together; Oliver is a toxic, clingy, manipulative asshole.  When he yelled at Connor that Connor was the reason Oliver was so messed up with all the AK business, I yelled at a fictional character who can't hear me my television, "Connor tried a million times to keep you out of this shit, but YOU, cupcake, YOU just had to force yourself in because...why, because you thought it was cool?  Because you wanted to be cool?  No, you brought this entirely on yourself, you fucking sociopath!!"

Honestly, I find it so incredibly unfair that Connor, the one who frankly did the least damage of anyone, served jail time (and to have that sacrifice be read as a noble absolution, baaaaaarf) AND was saddled with an emotionally abusive husband for the rest of his life.  If Peter Nowalk was aiming for the survival of the Connor/Oliver marriage to come across as some sort of triumph or victory, he failed spectacularly since he and his writers wrote Oliver as a psycho for the last two seasons.

Also, what the fuck was with Oliver turning on Michaela there at the end.  Seriously,

And Michaela just..never spoke to any of them ever again?  Like, Connor didn't seem resentful of Michaela at all, and she was devastated by his incarceration, so why did they apparently never talk again?  They had the best friendship on the show, so of course that was vaporized in the last ten minutes with no apparent justification.

Laurel, who is a borderline sociopath, suffers not at all?  Gabriel is just gifted with $87,000 and leaves?  And I suppose we're left to assume Hannah was either killed at Governor Laura Innes' orders or committed suicide.

Nate made a bit of sense in his final scene with Annalise, and the flashback to his nakedness was probably the best moment of the episode for me personally.  However, he killed two people and gets absolutely no punishment, while someone who killed zero people went to jail for five years?

I sure didn't expect both Frank and Bonnie to die.  I'm not sad about the former and am sad about the latter, but I ultimately didn't care much because it happened approximately two and a half minutes before the end, had no time to be impactful, and was completely ridiculous in the way it happened.  Those two murderers do not get away with it, but Nate does.  Blech.

Tegan and Annalise end up together until Tegan dies.  Yay?  Yay!  It would've been nicer if Annalise had seemed into Tegan when the latter professed her love and if their relationship had not been confirmed in the final two minutes or whatever of the show.

So, overall, a pretty disappointing end, but I've been over it since Asher's death.  Thank god it's over because I am

[S06.E14: Annalise Keating Is Dead]

57 minutes ago, secnarf said:

I have hated Oliver since he deleted Connor's acceptance email and didn't tell him. Did Connor ever find out about that?

Connor did find out and forgave Oliver because, as I recall, Oliver turned it around on Connor and made him feel guilty.

[S06.E14: Annalise Keating Is Dead]

Boy, have I not missed Laurel.  At all.

When Gabriel walked into that courtroom, I quite literally said aloud, "God damnit."  I honestly thought he was gone after the last episode.  He's probably the one who shoots whomever next week (if there is a "shocking" shooting death).

Oliver basically being like, "Cool, so, you're only going to jail for five years, which is, like, so fine, and I'm not – yay me! – and then we can totally start our lives together!"

I swear to fucking god, if Connor is the only one who either ends up dead or goes to jail to save that psycho's ass, show...

Michaela was being super shitty this episode, but I still understand why she and Connor took deals.  I don't know why Annalise doesn't seem to understand or care because I think they could've actually figured this out together if they'd tried.

At this point, I don't even know if I care that Annalise goes free, but if everything is pinned on (dead)Wes, Nate, and even Frank, in addition to Governor Laura Innes, fine, I don't care.  This whole road to the finale feels very capriciously thrown together, and I'm having very ominous feelings headed into next week's finale.  Which, as I said last week, is happening on my birthday.  During a pandemic.  Bring it home satisfyingly, show, or...

Good luck,

[S06.E07: Moira Rosé]

Patrick is awesome, the end.

The best moment in this episode was Johnny confirming at the end that the keys were in Moira's purse, and she just says, "Es un da kia pie fie."  Like, it's soooo close to being an actual collection of words, but she's juuuust drunk enough to miss.  Catherine O'Hara is a universal treasure, and we must protect her from all harm.

[MLB Thread]

2 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

ESPN ranks each and every World Series. Where does your favorite place? 🤔⚾️

I think the bottom three should be 1919, 2017 (which is ranked WAY too high given the cheating), and 2018 because: bribes, cheating, and cheating, respectively.  I also thought 1997 was ranked WAY too low, and the reasoning was stupid.  I'd have ranked 2016 in the top five (maybe even three) because of the emotion fueling everything, but I can't really argue with the top two.

[S06.E14: Happy Ending]

On 4/13/2020 at 2:53 PM, SmithW6079 said:

I must confess. I was disappointed in the finale, but mostly Patrick and David's story. I very much loved their courtship in previous seasons, but this season it just seemed like David either showed no growth or regressed. It was so much "me, me, me" that I felt sorry for Patrick. I got the sense that David was staying not willingly, but begrudgingly. Who knows, maybe being away from his parents and sister will help him grow up more.

David returning to New York would've been a sign of real regression, and he even acknowledged himself that he wanted to return to New York to show his old friends that he'd "won"; that's not a healthy reason, and he knew it.  Making the choice to stay in Schitt's Creek didn't strike me as being about or for Patrick; rather, it was the final step in David's growth.  We've seen him learn to appreciate and embrace human connections built on love, trust, kindness, loyalty, and everything else that was antithetical to his friendships in New York.  As much as he'll always be that pretentious, dramatic guy and as much as he might be loathe to admit it to anyone but Stevie and Patrick, Schitt's Creek has become David's safe place – the home I think he, more than his parents or sister, was really searching for.

[S06.E13: What If Sam Wasn't the Bad Guy This Whole Time?]

This whole episode was one big exercise in

I'm disappointed they went with the incest angle because it was so obvious, I called Frank being some weird incest baby from minute one of this episode, and it's too late to give two shits about any of it.  The whole episode felt utterly pointless, which isn't how the third-to-last episode should feel.  It does seem like we're rid of Gabriel, so that's a small but, at this point, pyrrhic victory.

I need Traitor FBI agent to shoot Smugface FBI agent in his smug face, shoot Nate in his smug face, and then shoot herself.  Then, I need Annalise and Michaela and Connor to stop being polite and start getting real stop with the bullshit and start figuring their way out of this.  If Oliver takes the fall for everyone, that will be fine because there's a limit to how much bad acting I can stand.  If Tegan is then crowned Queen of the Goddamned Known Universe, that will be fine because there's no limit to how much awesomeness I can stand.

Thank god there are only two more episodes.  The finale is on my birthday, so...they better not fuck it up.

["Oh HELL No!" Movie Moments That Anger Up the Blood]

21 hours ago, Shannon L. said:

I was flipping through the stations last night and came across Twister, a guilty pleasure of mine.  It reminded me that, as much as I couldn't stand Melissa (with one or two exceptions) Bill was a horrible fiance.  Here Melissa was trying to deal with a frightening situation that's she's completely unfamiliar with and not prepared for and trying to keep up with a bunch of rough and tumbled adrenaline junkies whom she just met and what does he do?  He sticks her in the car with probably the most obnoxious one of the bunch while he get rides along with his soon to be ex-wife in a situation that Melissa simply can't cope with (her break up comment was one of the few moments when I agreed with her).  I don't know if I'd have stayed with him either.

I LOVE Twister – such a guilty pleasure – and I agree with everything you wrote.  Jami Gertz is so bad in it, Bill is such a dickhead, the plot is ridiculous, but I love it so much!  The special effects were incredible, Helen Hunt was at peak awesomeness, the supporting gang of adrenaline junkies (minus Jeremy Davies, whose character never made sense) was great, Lois Smith and her beef were absolute gold – ugh, I may need to track that one down during my plentiful downtime at home.

[The NBA]

Jordan is the greatest, but he is also the angriest, most resentful person.  There is no joy to be had when you spend every waking moment obsessing over your own bitterness; I think that is the driving force behind why he looks so much older than he should.  It's really a shame that he's such a miserable man because I loved watching him play.

[S03.E09: Fire Pink]

On 4/18/2020 at 1:10 PM, sadie said:

He was mentally ill, not insane, so his actions made no sense

The literal definition of insanity is "the state of being seriously mentally ill; madness"; they're one and the same.  His actions made perfect sense to me because they were so insane; they should be insane given the state he was in.

I'm just going to go ahead and pencil in Laura Linney's and Tom Pelphrey's names for Lead Actress in a Drama and Supporting Actor in a Drama, respectively, at the Emmys.

But first, I have to stop crying.

[S06.E12: Let's Hurt Him]

5 hours ago, Delphi said:

Eh, I already considered Nate a murderer.   So now he's just like the worst person on this show,  and a fucking hypocrite.

Oh, I did, too, but there are viewers who maintained (ridiculously) that he didn't kill Miller because Bonnie finished him off (when the rest of us sensibly know that he was about three minutes away from dying of his Nate-inflicted injuries anyway).  Now, there are no technicalities, and I just hate his beautiful, dumb, hypocritical, expressionless face.

AK + TP 4eva!!

[S06.E12: Let's Hurt Him]

I don't care how awful Xavier is (he is) or how awful an actor Gerardo Celasco is (and he really is), when he was tied to that chair, all I could think was:

Celasco and Billy Brown mumbled so much of their dialogue in their horrible scenes that I only caught about 60% of what was going on.  Somehow, I don't think it mattered.  I did certainly hear Nate say "my pops," though, and I screamed.  At least we can now technically add Nate to the list of actual murderers.  Pin everything on him, Jorge!

Annalise is not on that list, nor are Michaela and Connor who don't deserve to take the fall for this shit.  I have zero sympathy for Gabriel, and I don't want to see Annalise screw Michaela and Connor over for his beautiful but utterly specious, unsympathetic, and uninteresting ass.  Nothing we've been shown about him makes me care one iota for his survival, especially at the expense of two characters I do care about, and I didn't like having no sense of what that dickhead FBI agent was going to do to Michaela and Connor when he absolutely coerced them to begin with.

Oliver...

But, really, Conrad Ricamora...

[NFL Thread]

54 minutes ago, geauxaway said:

On another note, I’d rather get C19 myself than see my boy OBJ be sentenced to death in the hell hole otherwise known as MN.

[Figure Skating]

13 minutes ago, BlackberryJam said:

That disgusting mess was supposed to Australian Aboriginal, right? I semi blocked it from my brain.

Yes, they were supposed to be Australian Aboriginal, not African.  It goes to show how horrifically offensive their costumes were that people are confused about whom they were portraying.