Pike Ludwell

This. Couple of dull people who react weirdly to everything and with extreme passive aggressive tendencies. I couldn't stand to be around them for more than a few minutes. Remember, the final scene was Helen's POV - with Noah conveniently behaving exactly how she'd want and telling her exactly what she needed to hear. Next season might start with Noah's POV. Or had she fallen asleep and this was just a dream. Why did Noah suddenly appear out of nowhere? I might have missed something. And Whitney ... she's developed into an extremely erratic, volatile kook who goes crazy at "provocations" any rational person would be able to deal with in a productive way. She has to be handled with kid gloves or she will be hateful. Good to see Helen be blunt with her and not just take her nonsense.

I think ApathyMonger must have gotten his shows mixed up. Actually I sort of like that beach world and the characters are interesting, so I'll keep watching and see what happens.

Amazon Prime is where I currently get Showtime. I've used up my free time and subscribed on a month to month, and a month expires tomorrow. I don't believe there is any way to get an individual Showtime show for a small price. You have to subscribe to Showtime one way or another or wait a year till it gets out on iTunes or something.

My Showtime subscription ends tomorrow. The only reason I would renew would be to see the season finale of The Affair. Is there a legal way to watch just that one episode within a day or 2 after airing and pay like $2.99 or something just for that one episode?

I am always disappointed when men or women do not stick to their guns with relationship decisions and instead cave into making bad decisions. Alison was great at first with the strength of her resistance to Ben. I thought "wow"! ... finally she's gotten it together! Then she hears his sob stories, and that is exactly why she should stick to her guns even more (an alcoholic with PTSD who has tortured his ex-wife and is susceptible to frequent episodes of extreme, bizarre moodiness). Instead she caves. I was cussing at the screen. Helen on the other hand has done a good job avoiding the irresistible Noah! Alison pushing the buttons of the second, evil, Ben was stupid beyond belief. I'm tired of seeing women victimized by men on these shows. It would have been nice to see Alison, after Ben's first indication of refusal to leave, pull a gun out of a drawer, call the police, and repeat that he leave. But she's not the type to own a gun I guess. When they showed the second Ben eating the crackers it was like they had the microphone right at his mouth and nose with the volume turned high to magnify his chewing and nasal sounds for a prolonged period. Disgusting. I do not want to hear people chewing food and snorting. Minimize it.

I think that showing Jimmy's extended catatonic state was for a purpose - it involved his subconscious mind working through his "Chuck" issues and resolving conflicts - determining what sort of person he would be after that. When he came out of it he had adjusted to a sort of personality he could be comfortable with, all things considered.

Sort of a running thing ... I wonder if it's just a coincidence that that's what Gus gives Eladio as that extra special gift in BB, or if that gift is a suggestion from Saul to Gus. By the way, probably not the best time to bring out a bottle of tequila worth probably thousands of dollars, when Jimmy is in a prolonged catatonic state.

Zafiro Anejo tequila makes an appearance. That is the tequila that in BB Gus poisons and gives to Eladio. It is a purely fictional brand, made up by the BB team because they failed in getting product placement. It is supposed to be extremely expensive, and so it was an extra special gift to Eladio. Was Kim's obtaining a bottle a part of a previous episode? I sort of vaguely recall it but I'm not sure.

A friend tells me that weed is so much stronger these days than way back when, that one or two tokes is enough to get you pretty zapped. Yet these people were smoking it like cigarette fiends.

Cole made the right decision to leave Luisa - she transformed into a total B. Seems the type who loves to complain and create issues. Whether he will stick with it? Who knows. He's weak. I hope he gets back with Alison - she "seems" to have sort of gotten it together. I think Ben is stalking Alison for some reason. He had known (from at her office) that she was going to that convention. He joked at the convention he was stalking her. What is the reason and what is he up to? Of course the writers may be doing a fake out and maybe it will turn out he's fine. maybe he and his wife really are in the final stages and he will tell Alison. I don't know though - he seems smarmy, and with 2 identities. Regarding the foreshadowing, beginning segments, I was thinking Cole touches base with Noah for the drive back to NY, for some reason. On that trip they learn Alison is missing - that gas station is in PA, on their way to NY, but how does the black kid (Noah's student, who I guess he has as a protege) get into the picture then? Maybe Noah is so impressed with the student they take him with them, so he can talk to publishers in NYC.

The only likable person to me this season, surprisingly, is Noah - I've usually hated the character. Actually Alison is good now too. But Noah should just give up on his whole keep-the-kids-in-his-life thing, for a while anyway. Whitney worked out ok - she was away from Helen. But as long as they are with Helen the whole thing is an annoying mess, with Helen sabotaging and Vik being passive aggressively hostile, but pretending to be a nice guy. Every other character seems either rude, overly sarcastic, overly dramatic, wimpy (Cole), manipulative ... you name it. the title should be changed to "Parade of Idiots". Even the incidental characters - the patient's mother in ep. 5 who Vik informs of possible cancer in her child ... she carried on like a psycho and is in desperate need of therapy. Vik's parents ... what a couple of goofballs, yet Vik clings ... I guess of course because they truly did help him get where he is, but still ... Cole's wife ... good G what a B. She's all of a sudden upset, among other thing, because this is Cole's life she's in and she's not in her country any more. I'd assumed she understood that already and knew what she was signing on for. Some are comparing the walkabout to a character's actions in "Lost" but what immediately popped into my head was Yoko and John separating with John going to Calif. till he got his head straight.

It was hilarious when Billy left her and the man alone at the table and he asks her how long has she worked with Billy? She says "no" and shakes her head ... correctly assuming he's hitting on her, but reacting too strongly too fast -- the acting conveyed it all perfectly. The scenes in the ep. with her family ... LOL ... one can see why she is the way she is. I liked episodes 6 & 7. Ep. 7 was one of those off the wall sorts of episodes series have once in a while. And, by the way, I saw influences of Breaking Bad, The Godfather, and North by Northwest (with a drone instead of a plane).

I see what he was talking about there as to a suggestion of a possible course of action. And getting this suggestion out there could very well be why the writers chose that particular resolution of the President's situation.

The people in that fictional society seem so divided, I'm not sure what she could have done. LOL They are at the point where there was a presidential kidnapping, a coup attempt and assassination attempt, for Pete's sake, and no huge sympathy backlash. Tough crowd. She did make a unity effort when she went to the home of the widow of the deceased FBI agent to get her to attend the memorial. That was an extraordinary effort and it worked. The cabinet members were legitimately fired because they, dangerously, believed an erroneous narrative and acted on that belief. If a President learns a group of cabinet members believe the world is flat, she can legitimately fire them en masse when she learns of it. If the Supreme Court by a 5/4 vote determines that was unlawful, that just tells you it is a goofball court. Even if, worst case, she is not doing well bringing everyone together, that is no reason to support her opponents who either (1) firmly, dangerously, believe erroneous things; or (2) are traitors.

I saw Mandy Patinkin on Morning Joe yesterday. He said, along the lines "the ending will be of a moral nature and a suggestion of possibility which I think is our duty in the fiction world".

For the reasons stated above, strong dislike of Keane is irrational. The things she did after the coup attempt and assassination attempt can be justified, and can be understandable. The veep on the other hand showed himself to be a disloyal, error prone ignoramus.

I wonder if so many's dislike of Keane is based on existant feelings about the 2016 candidate. Keane was a kidnapping victim and nearly killed and a victim of an effort to overthrow the gov't by people she never would have suspected were all that evil. So she imprisoned a couple hundred people after that till things got sorted out. Maybe she went overboard with that, but it is at least understandable why she did it. Yes, they have her as a rather uncharismatic unexciting uninteresting character. But the idiots in the show who are opposing her are either ignoramuses or traitors. I would put the veep in the former category (disloyally rejecting the judgment of the woman who appointed him insofar as her accurate statements that the Russians were behind this, when she was in a better position to know than him or the cabinet members; referring to the referral to congress portion of the 25th amendment process as sending it for "ratification"?) I have zero problem viewing the prez here as the "good guy" and hoping she wins and screws over the veep and the disloyal cabinet and all who opposed her.

I wonder if it will end like some other seasons, with things basically wrapped up early on: they get Simone to the U.S. and she clears things up. The senator looks like a fool. The prez gets the veep to resign. She gets the cabinet thing straightened out. Then we follow Carrie as she eats in a restaurant, goes shopping, etc. for 20 minutes. Then in the last couple minutes something happens so we have an idea what next season will involve.

This is my favorite season of the entire series. I like it because they got away from the whole "24" thing and went 10 episodes with a slow moving drama with good character building and an interesting WH plot. Yes if you have a "thing" about Carrie on medications, or a "thing" about the twists and turns of her face, or a "thing" about the kid plot, then yes, you would not enjoy it. For the final 2 episodes I'm willing to suspend a little disbelief and watch the action unfold.

With the slow moving drama, they'd been doing ok this season making it not look like "24" again. This week they almost out-"24'd" "24" in terms of preposterous action and technical stuff.

The veep turned against her because she refused to undo her firing of goofball cabinet members who refused to give her the benefit of the doubt on her accurate assessment of the Russian situation. Those goofball cabinet members needed to be fired and the veep was wrong to throw himself into the support-of-the-goofballs camp,

I loved the concept of that running story of the KTK - the bike rider. A running story with a few seconds in an episode every once in a while. Finally it ends suddenly in this episode. Neat idea to have a brief side story like that, unconnected to anything else - it's sort of like the little running gags they'd have on the sides of the pages of Mad Magazine. And now I see Maddie wandering around in the desert! The writers should have a little fun, and have her encounter a cougar!

As to that usage of the term "ratify", that usage can only be justified on the basis that the Veep was using it in a very general, non-legalistic way, simply to mean "approve" the submitted application of disability. Whatever the case, the writers made the veep look like an uneducated ignoramus who doesn't understand the meaning of key terminology. Someone who understood the constitution would not have used the term "ratify" at that time, in that way - it demonstrates ignorance.

I agree. And, IMO, He seems the type to have some deep, underlying sleaziness and I would not trust him either and would not want to be beholden to him. He had been close to bolting after input from the last person he spoke to, so he could again, after the next person he speaks to. And the fact that he was trying to extort concessions from her is sort of a foreshadowing ... that sort of stuff could have continued. I do wonder why the delay in firing them - not to take effect till late that afternoon. In the meantime why couldn't they act fast and do the 25th amendment thing before the firings took took effect? And I do not believe the mass firing would be unconstitutional. That is BS -- if a prez has a number of cabinet members acting disloyal based on ignorant misinterpretation of events .... fire their A....s !!! asap!

The maneuverings that would go on behind the scenes to implement the process of the 25th Amendment is something i have always thought would be fascinating. So I am finding this episode entertaining. One wonders where Pence would come down in similar circumstances.