Orbert

I don't understand how helping Rose's mom with her euthanasia is going to get Rose out of the way so Danny can go to Iran. And Naomi was right; Danny was really bad in trying to con Rose's mom, but I also would've expected a bit more from Naomi than "follow my lead" as they're walking up to the house. They're CIA. Go in there with a plan, even if you're just conning an old lady. Yeah, the boots... sigh. The second he put them on, he must've known they weren't his. But what was with the little charade about giving her a raise and a present? To show that he's also a sadistic fuck? Up to that point, he was ruthless and smart, but that doesn't automatically mean he's sadistic. She was a loyal employee for five (or maybe six) years. On the other hand, I kinduv expected her to break down as soon as she saw the boots. "Please... they forced me. They threatened me." Nope, just silent acceptance. But she's worked for him for five (or maybe six) years, so what do I know? She probably knew it wouldn't have done any good.

I wouldn't necessarily expect them to make the trip there, depending on how far it is (plus paying for two more guest stars), but a quick line from Jay about how he wished his dad could be there to see it would have been nice. That's all I'm saying. A lot of times, a line here or there can go a long way towards keeping or enhancing continuity. I don't remember now, but did Jay even say the name of the restaurant? "Welcome to the Grand Opening of Mahesh!" would sound so much better than "Welcome to the Grand Opening of my new restaurant."

I realize that Poppy is there because Martian clearly needs more things to go wrong in his life, or lives as the case may be, but do they both have to be so stupid about this? She was so freaked out about Osman asking her about Paul Lewis that she called him nearly in tears, and he told her to go to her mother's. I figured she'd stay there for a while, until things calm down, but no, she was back at his place later. Next day, he tells her to stay in the apartment, and now that she knows how serious and dangerous this all is, she'll listen, right? Again, no. So she almost gets nabbed by "The Chinese" and AGAIN is back at Martian's place that night (to make the joke about "The Chinese"). It doesn't occur to anyone here that maybe she should just stay at Mom's? Teenagers get bored and you can't expect them to just stay put? No one will follow her or Martian back to his place so Poppy is perfectly safe there, right? Oh, that's right, Love Is Blindness. Or rather, Love Makes You Stupid.

Sorry, it's the first regular episode of the current season, so S14.E01.

It was nice that everything worked out, but where were Jay's parents? Bela is now the restaurant manager and the place is even named after Dad, but the Grand Opening doesn't even mention them?

When the episode opened cold with Brice basically giving his life story and how he became a police officer, I thought that that was a different, rather cool way to introduce the new uniformed guy. New season, new DI, apparently a new uniform as well. Then he turned out to be the first victim. Unfortunately, the perp turned out to be a bit too obvious IMO. I can see a ruthless mom getting her son locked up if it was for his own good, or hers I guess, but not killing her own son. The stepdad seemed too cool, so it would've taken quite a twist for it to be him. The older brother, however, seemed like a jerk from the beginning and to me was the obvious perp, and his motives were right in line with what we knew about him.

I tried to watch The Mentalist. I liked the characters and the stories. But the ongoing arc with Red John always brought my enthusiasm to a screeching halt. I get that TV nowadays has long arcs, sometimes season-long or series-long arcs, but there doesn't always have to be a recurring bad guy, always seemingly within reach, almost caught, but always eluding them, year after year, season after season. Ugh. It's like you get to enjoy 90-95% of the shows and episodes, but to pay for that, you have to indulge their shitty thing of the recurring bad guy who they can never catch. It's not intriguing; it's not tantalizing. It's just lame and depressing and spoils an otherwise good show.

I feel like I followed at least 75% of what was happening, possibly more. That's pretty good for me, for this show. I hadn't even thought about the parallels between Danny and her interrogator and Owen and Eva. Opposite ends of the training spectrum indeed, but they both got sex out of it, so... win-win? Was Eva truly just Coyote's secretary (or whatever) or was she something else? Poppy's ID in Martian's jacket is concerning, but yeah, maybe it's all part of the game, the cover. Paul Lewis has a daughter, and if they investigate Poppy, that will all check out. But the guy said the police didn't know anything about an assault last night. If Martian was supposed to be trying to make this all look legit, then after spend 1:40 at the police station, he should have actually filed a report.

Things seem to finally get going, or at least become more interesting. I think I can follow about half of what's going on.

If my child was being bullied, I'm definitely making a few phones calls at the very least. But I didn't get the impression that Elliot was being bullied. He was not invited to a birthday party because the kid having the birthday doesn't like him. Sure, the birthday kid invited everyone else in the class (according to Elliot) but there's no law against that. It's a shitty thing to do, but birthday kid was within his rights. When Morgan called the mom and the mom said that it was just a small party for only his closest friends, that sounded reasonable, if we didn't have Elliot's statement that literally the entire class except for him was invited. But kids can exaggerate, and birthday mom may have been correct. Either way, for Morgan to suggest a playdate seemed a bizarre way to handle it. Birthday kid doesn't like Elliot because Elliot is different. It happens. So you force them to hang out together? I suppose the idea was that they would get to know each other better? When Morgan told birthday kid (sorry, I don't remember his name) to go wait outside on the porch, I figured that's because his mom was coming to get him at a prearranged time. That's how it usually worked with my kids. Mom shows up, kid is waiting on the porch as expected. She has no idea how long he's been there, minutes or hours. Even if she asks him how the playdate was, he didn't have fun, Elliot is a freak, etc. It doesn't seem like a decent conclusion, but I really hope this isn't the start of a greater arc, because I can only see awkwardness and "cringe" on the horizon.

In the penultimate episode, Chickie was going to fly to Tulsa to meet with Dwight, but he's on the "no fly list" so he takes a train. At the end, they showed him sitting there on a train to Oklahoma all sad because he can't fly, and the song playing is "Learning to Fly" by Tom Petty. That cracked me up.

Jod was told that there are one thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine vaults total. 1139. The 1971 George Lucas film THX 1138 is widely regarded as the one that got his career going, and we've seen THX crop up in a few places since, and also the number 1138 when they can work it in. I would actually have expected there to be 1138 vaults, the classic Easter Egg. But this is "one more" than that. I have no idea what that would mean, but it seems too specific a number to not be intentional.

I didn't want to trust Gio at first, but I'll admit that that's mostly because Domenick Lombardozzi plays a certain type, and he was recently a real dirtbag on Tulsa King. Plus we got a warning about him, and that was after we'd already seen that he seems pretty sketchy. Then he mentioned "The RAMs" and how he knew, and had Morgan drop him off at... a church? I guess that was supposed to make us realize that we were wrong about him and he's obviously okay, right? Right? Maybe.

It was the feds. I'm just not sure which ones. There was a scene earlier in the episode with some federal agency getting a call from Washington, asking for everything they have on Manfredi, which they supplied. Then at the end, Dwight was taken to some place that looked underground and very secure, some kind of place the feds take you to where there's no chance you can escape. But whether it was CIA, FBI, NSA, or what, remains to be seen.

That's the best explanation for Morgan's attire that I've seen yet. She may well know that it's not work-appropriate, especially if she's working with the police and/or the public, but if they haven't said anything to her about it (which still seems unlikely, but hey, it's a TV show) then she's not going to worry about it because she has bills to pay and mouths to feed. A whole new wardrobe is not in the budget right now. As for all the shows with "consultants" solving the crimes, I just figure that the vast majority of the cases solved really are solved without them, but those are regular boring stories. We're watching because we want to see something unusual and entertaining. But you're right; TV would make it seem like the police are helpless without their consultants.