CletusMusashi

I'd been hearing it as "Numi," as in "New Me." In fact, she's been getting so much screen time that lately, whenever she appears, I've been greeting her with a Seinfeldesque "Hello... Numi." Back to the question of Bitch Manor: How does she keep the place tidy without a Renfield or Alfred? A house that size doesn't just dust itself, you know. Seems kind of OOC that during the weird Jason-hazing arc at the beginning of the season she passed up an opportunity to stick him into a French maid outfit and get some housework done.

But.. why would anyone want to kiss rocks?

OK, so, important things we've established this episode: Bill, when he's not doing stupid insane vampire shit, is now and always has been boring. There are still fairies all over the place. Arlene needs to get laid. Jason needs to get neutered. And, believe it or not, nobody wants to borrow a 500 year old dildo.

Has Violet's mansion actually been on the show before? Or did it just spring up out of nowhere like the Dracula castle on "Buffy?"

Yeah... there was a period back then when I thought I was seriously developing a fixation on female office attire. Eventually, I figured out the whole thing was pretty much just a Lilah fetish.

Nice! I did not catch that "running with scissors" was a social metaphor, rather than just a "poked out his eyes" excuse. But I think it was. For one thing, it makes a lot more sense that way.

The absolute weirdest one is their last one, "Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July." It involves... basically, the grouchier, less horny twin brother of the Ice King from "Adventure Time," trying to steal the power of Santa with a strange, complicated plan involving a circus, a blizzard, an ice cream man in a hot air balloon, and evil reindeer from the Ghetto of Misfit Arctic-Themed Tenants, the Arora Borealis Fairy, and the same truly bland awful song performed by about four different people throughout the entire full-length movie. I caught maybe the last half hour of it on TV once and was amazed by its very existence. But later, when I actually got it from Netflix and sat through the entire thing, I found most of it to be a bit of an ordeal. Worth taking a gander at for completists, though.

This was the funniest episode they've ever done. Love the buddy cop dynamic developing between Datak and Rafe. "Don't kill him." "I promised the wife." (shrug.) The Irathient Jewish lawyer would be offensive if the actor weren't so funny. And, let's face it, anything that can put a little bit of humor into an Irissa scene is a good thing. Plus, at least they're shamelessly owning up to their stereotypes. They're not trying to have it both ways, like certain other shows. (Cough! Ferengi! Cough! Cough!) Yewll really is getting squirrely. Understandable. When you've got as many big things to worry about as she does, you really can't afford to sweat the little stuff. Including, for example, doctor/patient confidentiality in regards to a racist serial killer-for-profit. And Mercado. Oh, Mercado. I am so sorry I ever thought you were duller than Pottinger. Weren't we all saying just last week how we wished the show would turn into more of a Castithan transvestite musical? No? Just me then? Well, in any case, mission nearly accomplished. All he needs now is backup dancers.

I don't know about Miami. Maybe a bit further north? "Spring Break Sharknado: Where the Sharks Are" or somesuch. 'Course, it could just be all of Florida. Or Texas. But anything we might have looked forward to seeing a rodeo champion do on the back of a flying shark was already done by Fin is this movie. Maybe Alaska. Of course, they'd need someone local to team up with against the sharks, but now that they've gotten some big names to appear in the series I'll bet they could get Sarah Palin.

I figure if there's a third it'll probably be New Orleans. During Mardi Gras. Bonus points if there's an oil spill involved, turning it into a flaming sharknado.

I've actually been wondering lately whether or not The Hat bestows immortality. I mean, seriously, how else do you explain Carl still being alive?

KAOS Agent nails a lot of the things about the episode that are "off." But, honestly, at least for that point in the series, I like those flaws. Real life has baggage. Issues that create group awkwardness do not always get settled. Bigger problems come along, fights get put on the side-burner, and life sort of drifts back to a semblance of normality. Everything not being resolved sets the stage even better for things like Buffy keeping Angel's return a secret. Of course, too many things not being settled properly just turns the whole group into a miserable dysfunctional pile of idiots, so you've got to only do those rough edges in moderation. A little bit in Season 3? No problem. Every single moment of Season 7? No thank you.

Might need to rephrase that.

One thing I appreciate is that Buffy's vamps did not have The Ancient Secret Council. True Blood, Forever Knight, Being Human, Lost Girl, the other version of Being Human, Twilight, The Laurel Hamilton books... it's not a bad idea in and of itself, but it's been done into the ground. Enough already. And, yes, they could have gotten away with it in the early seasons, because it hadn't been quite that over-done yet, but they didn't even try. If anything, Buffy flat-out subverted the trope, almost from the very start. Yes, the Aurelius cult was a big deal, but we saw that many if not most vampires were not affiliated with them and really just wanted to party and suck blood. And when the Maestro finally got taken down, they did not do the now-traditional "His uber-powerful boss comes to see what happened," schtick. Instead, they showed a fascinating story of completely different vampire personalities, from all over the place, moving into the power vacuum and clashing with each other.

Why exactly did Sara drink the antidote instead of just running for her life sooner? Never even mind "why was it just sitting out at room temperature right on the shelf with no doctor or guards around?" Just.. what exactly was her motivation supposed to be? "I want to give the vampires even more reason to want to drain me?" "One of the writers told me that I'm supposed to be the final villain of the series, and I am therefore contractually obligated to always have an antidote with me?" "I want to cure my sister, even though I don't even know she's sick yet?" "I plan to market the cure, and I am going to do that by ignoring this antidote and screwing some random yoga teacher for as long as possible?" I give up. The James Bond capture grated at first, but once I saw that it really was just a hardcore negotiation, I was okay with it. Still not sure why most of the Yakuza have to fight with swords though. If they had guns they might have won quickly enough to catch Sara. If they want, they can call their call their guns YakUzis. I was also, briefly, annoyed by the fact that they captured Pam so easily. Again. But obviously she really liked those shoes. Kind of stupid, if you're just talking about combat pragmatism, but I'll give her a pass on wardrobe choices, because holy crap did she look hot this episode! Sam should tell Nicole to move ahead, then get his affairs in order, move out of town with Nicole, and start a new business elsewhere, out of Crazytown. Loving the Andy/Holly dynamic. I wonder if we're moving toward a final Violet smackdown delivered by the combined mojo of Andy, Holly, and Jessica? The Tara scenes bored me senseless. What a waste. I was sympathizing with Bill for a while, but... sorry. You don't get to publicly kill people just because you think they're overcharging you. Most clients in similar situations don't even get the option of moving to the front of the line, because they aren't super-rich. I can't help thinking the whole problem could have been resolved with a little bit of... oh, I don't know... maybe haggling? Offer like 1.5 or 2 million, and wiggle it from there. I mean, WTF are they gonna do, say "Nope, sorry, the fat mailman vamp offered us $9,999,999.99?"

Was I the only one who was more surprised that Lafayette and James hadn't been screwing each other all season? I mean, pretty much every scene consists of them lying next to each other, getting buzzed, and exchanging bodily fluid. And the thing about James and whatsisname (the killed in 'Nam friend,) being sexually involved was already spelled out clearly enough the first time we heard about it. Laf needing to double-check was just weird sloppy writing.

it was a good episode until the Bill flashbacks started. Those have to go. I could justify this by talking about how they detract from the primary narrative, alter the show's pacing, yadda yadda yadda, but ultimately my complaint is that they are BORING! Lafayette seems to be the official Fourth Wall Guy. Not only was he the one a few years ago who told off Sookie about how her policy of "just do the right thing and everything will turn out all right," tends to kill everybody around her... but this week he pretty much did the same thing that Xander did on Buffy and told the writers that he was tired of being the show's comedy relief guy. Note to Yakuza: if you have automatic weapons, and you know that vampires a real thing, you should always be armed for them. Swords? In 2014? Not as effective. Sarah's sister is awesome. Andy's speech made no sense. Jessica being bothered about killing his daughters keeps reminding him? But otherwise he can just shrug it off? No. I think a more appropriate speech might have been "Listen, I understand it was just a one-time loss of control, but I need to move on past it, so I've asked Keith/ Violet/ Random New Vampire of the Week to take over my family's protection. Here's the address of another family that's been asking for somebody to help them." Lettie's drama is getting really old. Can't one of the vampires just glamour the addiction out of her? Sarah Newlin can die. The show already has too many characters. We already know she's horrible, so nothing she does will be surprising, and for a group that puts out genocidal plagues to also have made an antidote doesn't really make sense. After Jackson's big speech about heroic deaths I figure he's a goner soon. Not sure what Violet's going to do. Hopefully it doesn't involve Hoyt, although with the timing of him about to come to town, I suspect it will. Enslaving him would be a very successful "fuck you" to both Jessica and Jason. Last week's episode was a good solid A. This one I think would have been an A-. But the Bill flashbacks dragged it down to a B+ at best.

Yeah, it's not the actor's fault. Bill is just one of those characters whose personality tends to be whatever the writers need it to be for whatever story arc they have in mind. I stopped caring what Bill thought about anything, because I lost any expectation of his character development mattering in the next season. Nowadays, I like him with Jessica, and I like him mangling Sookie's name, but other than that I don't really have any use for him. And that anvil they set up, about whether or not he's a different person because of the blood transfusion? No. Just fucking no.

I'm getting tired of watching people hallucinate. The Yewll stuff was kind of interesting, but ultimately this whole episode was just a bunch of extraploation. A whole episode of characters talking to dead people? Babylon 5 already did that. It's not even a new thing for this show. They were doing it early last season with Rafe's son. At this point, all it's doing is broadcasting: a. How little death actually means on this show, character-wise, and b. How inevitabe it is that we'll see Kenya again.

Totally down with the elephant plan. I mean, if they can kill Tara offscreen, why not a bunch of no-names? And it would be such a "love it or hate it" thing for the writers to pull. Can you imagine how much it would piss off viewers who had no sense of humor?

So is Eric going to be like Dr. Hibbert on The Simpsons? They're just going to keep doing flashbacks in order to see how many extremely dated hair styles they can stick on him? That might actually be fun. A few that I would like to see are: his 1950s ducktail, his 1960s early Beatles phase, and, of course, his 1970s disco perm, complete with chains and white polyester.

So did the actual writers just come back from vacation and take over or what? This is the show that I remembered liking. Oh, sure, you can nitpick on certain incongruities, like the time spent discussing Kevin's death versus Tara's, but in my opinion that flaw lies with the bad episodes, not with the good one. What are they supposed to do, just keep on writing the worst crap they possibly can, in order to be consistent? We had no Lettie, no Violet, no Yakuza, the flashbacks actually expanded the characters' backstories rather than just wasting time, Hoyt is back on the show, we've actually seen New Guy 2.0 in the same scene as Jessica, Lafayette got to be in a scene where he wasn't blasted out of his skull, Willa is so great that I'm kind of pissed they didn't add her to the show earlier... hell, even Suckehhhhh didn't annoy me. And did she actually say "it's just lunch," about Bill biting her? God, I wish I believed her, but hilarious line anyway.

There once was a fellow named Shane who had something askew with his brain. Weirdest part of it all was his fondness for Carl. I mean, that's just completely insane!

I'm still very confused about their legal system. Are there courts, or judges, or... anything? Basically, the show writers call up the Mayor every week and tell him who they need to be in jail and who they need to be out of it? However, I'm not really watching the show for logic. I'm watching it for exciting character twists. Which I am enjoying. Also, until told otherwise, I am assuming that Jessica's full name is Jessica Amber Lynn. "Berlin" for short.

Yeah, the sombrero's a must. Somebody needs to make this thing.