[S01.E04: Poor Sisyphus]

6 minutes ago, BC4ME said:

All I could think of is who would tell Dawn where Katie was without getting the money first. Those scenes were not on par with the rest of the show.

Right? Just the shot of Dawn driving was really prosaic from a visual POV, and then him perfectly framed (and lighted) in that window where she could see him? Not their best work.

[S01.E04: Poor Sisyphus]

This episode didn't really do it for me - too much of a potpourri, and this is also when the amount of red herrings reveals itself. I know red herrings are a necessary evil on this kind of show but now it's hard to tell red herrings from the general texture of the community they're trying to establish. (The mechanics and staging of the Dawn/Freddie incident were a little wonky too - to the point I thought this episode had had a different director, but I think it was the same as usual.)

[Shrill - General Discussion]

I am still unclear if they even knew it would be the final season.

why did Ruthie disappear after that one girls night episode?

UO but I didn’t love Will!

also why even introduce the new workplace for Fran then barely do anything with it? Again, seemed like a choice you’d make with another season left to explore it more.

[S01.E04: You Don't Hunt, You Don't Eat]

14 minutes ago, mamadrama said:

I feel like "Annabelle" could be Kate's coping mechanism, Martin's gun (the one his dad used), or Martin himself (in a PSYCHO/Norman Bates' mother kind of way). 

this is kind of mind-blowing. Maybe he had an alter and maybe gave Kate an alter role to play as well - it would be wild if he wanted her to pretend to be Jeanette while Jeanette was out in the world pretending to be Kate (so she really just saw herself in the mirror, as Jeanette, and imagined it was Jeanette seeing her) I don't see how all that would work but it's fascinating. 

[S07.E07: The Son Also Rises]

3 minutes ago, bilgistic said:

I don't have any room to talk since I am an actual bridge troll, but Liza telling Charles that Judith is "stunning" was a dirty lie, and I hope she was embarrassed that she was forced to say it.

I'M SO TIRED OF CHARLES.

Did you know Joanna Cassidy was in the running to play Wonder Woman but lost out (obviously) to Lynda Carter? I can't imagine. She's always bugged me a bit but that's probably partly intentional since she's almost cast as a prickly type.

[S07.E07: The Son Also Rises]

Not that it matters really but I was trying to decide whether the old novelist cucked by Charles was the Younger version of Pat Conroy - his titles seemed very 'tides' focused a la Prince of Tides.

I am not a prude but I couldn't imagine my boss telling me during my second week on the job (or any week on the job) they'd accidentally stuck their finger up their spouse's butt when they meant to aim for a different hole. like, what? 

I don't personally care whether they go to any great lengths to hide Hilary Duff's pregnancy but this episode made me wonder if they were going to get to Will & Grace-like laxness, where they just leaned all the way into their inability to hide Debra Messing's belly.

eta: also -- like were we supposed to think Kelsey was crushing it on this tv show? She kept cutting Lauren looks like, 'this is going well! i'm nervous but exhilarated!" While it just seemed like she was being silent a lot on camera with sort of blank expressions.

[S07.E07: The Son Also Rises]

THAT was all we get of Diana?!?!!!! Don’t wrap a dog turd in red tinfoil and tell me it’s Dove dark chocolate! 

[S01.E04: You Don't Hunt, You Don't Eat]

23 minutes ago, SoMuchTV said:

They showed the date in the opening credits.  I think this one was July something-teenth.  I think all the episodes have a graphic near the beginning that says "the events in depicted here happened on approximately (month-day) in 1993, 1994, and 1995" if I'm remembering correctly.

oh yeah, geez. I sort of knew that but I look away at that part because it makes it feel like a dramatic reenactment of a true crime story which to me demeans the overall storytelling aesthetic here.

ETA I even sort of wonder if that pre opening info dump was a network note to avoid viewer confusion and they were forced to add it late in the production process. The actual years (if I'm remembering correctly) are displayed with a thought-out design aspect of big type on screen, right? So they could have just used the actual date in those sequences vs now how they kind of tell us the timeframe twice.

[S01.E04: You Don't Hunt, You Don't Eat]

1 minute ago, Nicmar said:

i thought hunting season begins in the fall. I'm from Texas so school year begins Mid to late August and still does.

right, that's what i was thinking - my theory was this episode happened after July 4 but before the start of school, which would make sense if they were only skeet shooting and not actually hunting (altho then the episode title still doesn't totally make sense) ... but not sure what you would hunt in the dog days of summer like that. So I still wonder at what point the 93 timeline will catch up to Kate's disappearance.

I was also curious about Kate's comment about them still learning their roles (to her therapist, about her and Martin, or so it seemed). It almost implies there was a different mastermind and Martin was also playing a role he had to get used to. When she tried to bolt and he stopped her it sort of seemed like he was protecting her from what would happen if she escaped more than angrily keeping her from escaping. Though it also seemed like, when he told her - this part will be over soon - that he'd done it before or seen it done before with someone else, since he knew the timeline they were on. 

[S01.E04: You Don't Hunt, You Don't Eat]

I can't remember, was there an indication of when the events of the episode took place (within their summers)? We're past July 4, right? It wouldn't really seem like a hunting season, and I couldn't tell if they actually were hunting or just skeet shooting -- but then the episode is called "you don't hunt, you don't eat" ... and I don't think they were serving clay. (I digress)

I'm mostly curious because I wonder when the original kidnapping will be revealed to have happened. Given that the show is oriented in summertime and their pattern of sticking with annual events, I wonder if Kate would have been kidnapped around Labor Day, and maybe never made it to school the year that Martin actually started on the job as assistant principal.

ETA: schools tend to start earlier in the South but I don't remember if they did back then. 

[S01.E04: You Don't Hunt, You Don't Eat]

Anytime I hear Kate’s mom talk I feel like I’m watching Bless the Harts.

So this episode we had three new ‘characters’ introduced (the surprise stepsister, Berenice4, and Annabelle) ... though at least one and maybe two of those identities are avatars/constructs. Interesting!

I don’t know why they had to go to the police station and sit in an interrogation room just to hear they weren’t doing anything about Jeanette based on Kate’s word and the necklace.

[Small Talk: Texas in the 90's]

My experience is Arkansas in the 90s, not Texas, but...close enough. I was ready to call BS on 'you go girl' being a thing back then - but my research tells me it can be traced to Martin Lawrence's show. If I ever knew that my middle-aged brain buried it - so as for You Go Girl merch making its way onto the necks of these girls, I'll allow it (although I definitely think I never saw it with my own eyes). Similarly, the way they throw around the term 'safe space/s' on this show feels like using a term that is popular and recognizable now and pretending like people in Texas in the 90s invented it. 

[Mare of Easttown Spoilers and Speculation]

1 hour ago, lakin1013 said:

Stray thought - We have seen the exact same shot 3 times, in 3 episodes.  It is the 'bowling alley' shot from the complaining older lady's backyard all the way past the shed, to the back porch of the house behind hers.  We have seen the hoodie guy, the security camera shot, and the graffiti shot.  The angle is the same and the direction is the same.  It seems odd to me that this particular shot has been emphasized 3 times, and in the first 3 episodes.  Ideas?

I feel the same. If we had actually met the granddaughter referenced in the first episode (the one who'd complained about the peeping tom originally) I would be of the mind that she will be yet a new girl to go missing - and that perhaps her case and katie's are connected but Erin's is an outlier. But not having actually seen her it's harder to go there, yet. (I will also disclose that some of the early reviews for the show made it seem like there were even more than 2 victims potentially.)

[S01.E04: You Don't Hunt, You Don't Eat]

I wonder if this show is going to run out of annual events to revisit!

[S01.E03: Enter Number Two]

We might find out more about the drug planting scenario next episode, when Mare has to explain to her family why she's suddenly home all day instead of going to work, but personally I think the show just failed viewers a bit in the way it showed the steps of Mare's bungled sabotage of Carrie. Mare taking the drugs out of the evidence locker is really not the most important thing for us to see in order to believe she did it - her putting the drugs in the glove compartment is much more important to see, and they didn't let us see that. (Let alone seeing Carrie get pulled over, having the drugs found in her glove box, protesting they weren't hers, etc.) I wonder if they filmed more but decided not to use it for some reason. I don't think they've set up a frame-job scenario for Mare -- nobody on the force seems to have it out for her, and even if they did they'd also have to know she went to the evidence locker and took the heroin. That's a lot to establish later for a reveal, and this isn't the kind of show that's going to backtrack and show us a 'how it went down' flashback sequence, I don't think. 

[S01.E03: Enter Number Two]

I have no idea how evidence lockers should look but still somehow my observation is that evidence locker looked 'fancy' for such a small-seeming precinct. (i.e. couldn't it just be a locked closet? I guess they wanted the more dramatic effect of Mare being visible through the grating.

[S01.E03: Enter Number Two]

I had to laugh a little the first time they showed Siobhan working on her edit, recording into a microphone, then pulling back to show she was in a computer lab with an entire class. That audio isn't going to be great! 

[Mare of Easttown Spoilers and Speculation]

I was wrong about the who dumped the bike. They did remind us Freddie existed, showing him hobbling through the crowd at the town fair or whatever that was. And in another callback to the premiere we have another reason to wonder what Betty's backyard security cam is going to capture (If Mare doesn't delete it first) I guess she is just assuming that the kid who was on the deleted footage was the person she spotted in the alleyway in the premiere when she was driving home from the bar? Come on, Mare! 

Personally I think we have a 2 perp situation. If Katie's abductor followed the same M.O. and shot her then dumped the body somewhere else (not really trying to hide the body) then she would have been found. And I don't know that we can necessarily assume that the young woman seen in the episode 4 preview is Katie, though the editing suggested that.

[S03:E02 Intervention]

3 minutes ago, BloggerAloud said:

The actor who played Damon, his sister died somewhat close to start of production so this was their admittedly clunky way of dealing with it. I don't know why they didn't say he was dancing on a tour instead.

Oh, I am sorry to hear that - I didn't know. I studied his Instagram a little to see what he appeared to be working on but didn't do a deep enough dive.

[S03:E02 Intervention]

I wonder if Damon will be back. I feel like they steadily minimized the character after the first season and always wondered why. Not even getting an exit scene is the ultimate in minimizing.

[S01.E03: Enter Number Two]

We're spending so much time with Siobhan - I wonder if she will stumble into a connection to or lead on the Katie case but will end up having nothing to do with the Erin case. (For example, why note the suspicion that her brother may not have been alone in that moody video he sent her?)

The actress who played the medical examiner reciting her findings about Erin - those were some high school theater line readings. Yikes.

What will the significance of Betty's backyard security cam eventually be? 

[S01.E03: Off With a Bang]

Current theory: This is going to turn out like Murder on the Orient Express and literally everybody wandered through Martin's house at some point, saw Kate in the basement and was like, meh, she looks comfortable.

 

[S07.E06: The F Word]

I would have loved to have seen Diana tangle with Quinn. I bet she would have put the smackdown on her, too, in defense of Liza. Liza will probably eventually do it herself but she'll do it in such a dignified and high-road kind of way it won't be as fun.

[Mare of Easttown Spoilers and Speculation]

Part of me wonders if producers now know hiring an actor capable of a lot gets us speculating so they just do it even though the character is not that significant. I still don't understand why Lily Rabe took that role on The Undoing! But I used the same reasoning to suspect her character would have something intense to play that she never really did.

[Mare of Easttown Spoilers and Speculation]

Here’s what I think about the bike and that drop into the water from the trailer: Mare will find out the addict from episode 1 has it but she suspects only to sell it. To avoid getting him pegged for murder Mare herself drops it in the river but it comes back to haunt her.