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SlackerInc

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Everything posted by SlackerInc

  1. Not a great episode. The show has definitely been on a downward trajectory lately. But it's weird: I feel like it's probably got me hooked for the duration--and I'm notorious for being willing to cut bait on shows, especially comedies (among those I've watched 30-50 episodes of before getting tired of them and dumping them: Veep, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Curb Your Enthusiasm). This one, I just have too much of a curiosity about somehow, and it's only about four hours of content a year, so...yeah. (What a rave review, eh? But they got my eyeballs regardless.)
  2. Until you keel over in front of everyone. (Look at how I brought it back to the episode!)
  3. I get that, but being behind the counter at a mall Cinnabon is a bad way to avoid being recognized, is my point. Other than being a TV anchor, there aren't many jobs with more visibility.
  4. Yeah, the way he furtively holes up in his apartment would make a lot more sense for a guy who works in a role that doesn't involve much contact with the public, at least in terms of seeing his face: a nighttime cleaner, a telemarketer or CSR for something involving the elderly would be great for him. But they felt hemmed in by the "best case" comment in Breaking Bad. When actually, having him actually be a manager of a Cinnabon in Omaha doesn't make a lot of sense. It was clearly meant as a sarcastic line, and there's no way he was going to tell Walt where exactly to find him! That was just pure fanservice, and I kind of wish they had resisted the temptation, honestly. Wasn't it the tongs he tossed, rather than the battery? You're right--but as I said upthread, they felt they had to fanservice the flippant "Cinnabon in Omaha" comment. They could have still included a different kind of fanservice and sent him to Belize.
  5. Yes! I loved that moment, including watching Culpepper and the others increasingly notice "I think she's right..." and then pump their fists as they saw they were completing the comeback.
  6. I liked Ozzy fine on his first season, but he was a jerk and a social bully to Cochran on Cochran's first season, and I'm a big Cochran fan, so...
  7. I love that Mischa got all the way to the U.S. and then ended up all the way back in the USSR without Philip ever knowing. I don't think any of us predicted that! But I was kind of hoping for it. Now if Renee just turns out to be a regular American woman... [crossing fingers] I was confused by Elizabeth thinking back to her friendship with Young-Hee, but then doing surveillance on some other seemingly white family. Or did my penny-pinching by purchasing the SD season pass from iTunes instead of springing for the HD version undermine me? I rewound a few times and they did not look Korean to me. Overall I thought this was a somewhat below average episode, until the end which was well done and makes me look forward to the next.
  8. Interesting. Do you have a cite? Not that I don't believe you: I'd just like to read more about it. I remember Probst standing with Brandon, massaging his shoulders (basically keeping him away from the others). But I thought he was kicked out. No? If it was a vote, then that's bogus as he needed to be kicked out. If someone is not getting kicked out, they should have the opportunity to present an idol. But the people voting him or her out also need the opportunity to try to blindside them and send them home without playing their idol. So Jeff just pretended to sort of have a vote? Why not just declare that he was disqualified?
  9. This is true! And that I think is my main point: his primary reaction was not, I think, "Damn that Jimmy for sabotaging us" but rather that this is, as you say, a "hot mess of crazy" and he's just trying to think of the most diplomatic thing to say, regardless of what the truth may or may not be. Sure, I think we all understand this. But there are plenty of ways to have fun, without attracting the police's attention but also not turning into a pathetic milquetoast. It's already been made clear that he didn't have to do like Walt in "Granite State" and hole up in a cabin. He has to see members of the public all day in his job, so there's no reason he can't go out on the town in his off hours (as long as he stays away from bars that attract lowlifes and 911 calls). Or at least go eat at nice restaurants.
  10. I really appreciated this recap because it did go into a full discussion of the episode (my favorite recapper refused to do a recap this week and just talked about the outing). I kind of wish we had two episode threads this week, with one being reserved for the stuff that happened up to and including the immunity challenge. I just have no interest whatever in discussing, or reading about, the "trans" stuff. (I liked Zeke before this episode, FTR, and still like him.) Anyway, the comment I wanted to make about this enjoyable and amusing recap is about the pizza. I will fully admit to thinking it looked good (well, not the Hawaiian slices--an abomination I will never understand). But you know how some people like "cold pizza" out of the fridge? Others want it warm out of the oven. Those are both okay, but my favorite is between the extremes: pizza that's been sitting out on the counter for 30-45 minutes or so: kinda congealed, but not yet hardened. (Does that make me a monster? LOL) ETA: Do the rules allow Probst to just call it the way he did? What if Varner had an idol? I don't understand why he didn't still hold a vote.
  11. Interesting idea, but it doesn't quite map over to me. "The Fly" is the only Breaking Bad episode I don't like (except for Walt's monologue), whereas I liked this episode of Better Call Saul quite a bit. His firm lost a huge client because of Jimmy, so I'd think however complicated Howard's reaction has been to Jimmy, it's safe to say he'd think Jimmy's an asshole at this point. Ugh, I don't know how I managed to get those two quotes nested inside each other, and I can't seem to split them up. @JudyObscure, I expected the same thing: that he would just say he had been reading and not paying attention. I don't think he really wanted to "do the right thing", but he was feeling the heat and was torn between doing nothing and dropping the dime, so he slowly and reluctantly just barely summoned the will to do what the cops wanted him to. @Clanstarling, you may be right...but Howard's reaction ("I don't even know where to begin...") suggested to me that he's not even sure whether he believes the tape. I'm sure he doesn't think it's doctored or anything, but he may think Jimmy was just humoring his brother to bring him back from total psychological breakdown.
  12. Sigh. I'm only a couple minutes into the first podcast of the third season, and Kelley is already wearing thin. She just keeps hounding them about how they planned somethingorother about the episode (or season, maybe?) and won't let it go. Vince is an amazingly patient man!
  13. I'm with those critics. Like ghoulina, I was sleepy when I started the episode--but I found it riveting, and it woke me right up. Two of my very favorite shows of all time (this and The Americans) have now started their seasons this spring with long, wordless sequences of drudgery (on The Americans, it was a ten minute depiction of digging a hole) that go against every rule in the book for how to make TV. And I did, indeed, find them both "brilliant". Right, but: That was my question too. But I guess he had to go get the extra car at some point, and maybe when he first bought it or whatever, they tracked him with his main car and switched the gas cap after he left it to be used later? Definitely a little confusing, but I have a vague sense of "story checks out".
  14. That's cool. I wonder how those "forks" got spread so far and wide, yet scattered? Because I grew up going to this ice cream stand in Maine, which also serves hot food including the best (super bright red) hot dogs I've ever had...and french fries in a basket with those very wooden two-pronged forks. But I've never seen them anywhere else.
  15. Not the best episode, but a good season finale, if that makes sense.
  16. I'm just now catching up myself, three months after you. My initial reaction to this episode was exhilaration: any concerns I had previously about where they might be going were (at least for the nonce) wiped away. Definitely my favorite of the three I've seen so far. So I was surprised to see that as you say, a lot of people thought it was disappointing. Apparently this was true among critics as well; Alyssa Rosenberg of the Washington Post opened her review as follows: I'm with Rosenberg, obviously; but maybe this episode is a kind of litmus test. All I know is that I hope it continues (continued) in this vein and not in the direction the people who don't like the episode want(ed) it to go.
  17. I'm a little late to this party, but I only get HBO four months a year, and I'm just starting to get into this show. Pretty good so far! (And please, no one spoil me.) Nice to see someone conversant with the idea of "qualia" and "philosophical zombies", meaning they have thought deeply on the nature of consciousness, and what it means regarding AI. I am one of those people you referred to who don't believe philosophical zombies are possible. I believe if an AI can simulate every nuance of a person's personality, it must have sentience, must experience qualia. There is "something it is like" to be that so-called "zombie", meaning it's not a zombie at all. This is of course a nearly impossible opinion to prove, and it may continue to be after AI becomes very advanced. We may have AIs that seem to have emotions and intellects beyond ours, but how will we know they are conscious? We technically don't know other humans are conscious (the solipsistic perspective), but we can reason by analogy that since we were created the same way they were (in a woman's womb) and have the same basic stuff inside of us, they must be conscious since we are. This obviously doesn't hold in the case of an AI. Something I find specifically interesting (albeit annoying) in response to fictional representations of AI on TV and in movies is that there are many viewers (including not a few professional critics) who are so unable or unwilling to imagine an AI could be conscious, it makes them "watch [the show or movie] wrong". I'm thinking in particular of reactions I've seen to the movies Her and AI: Artificial Intelligence. Even if you think conscious AIs are impossible in the real world, I think it's hard to dispute that the people who made those movies intended the AIs in them to be considered sentient. To watch them and stubbornly see it otherwise, as their being mere unthinking machines, is for my money missing the point: like watching a Jurassic Park movie and saying there's no reason for the characters to run from the T-rex, because "it's impossible to recreate dinosaurs from amber". The other part I bolded is also a really good point. The people who choose black hats should be sent to another section of the park. Or rather, it maybe should go the other way: those who want an experience without that kind of random, senseless violence should be able to go to a "bunny hill" area. But maybe that's too limiting, acting as though only children or the very sensitive would want that. You could also have an area where people can be violent, but they are expected to respect the narrative and preserve a sense of realism so other guests can feel a fully immersive experience. So that would also include not loudly talking about how this is a vacation or using anachronistic language. Relatedly, I wondered about the fact that the guests (as we've mainly seen with the Ed Harris character) cannot be harmed. I don't play video games myself, but I understand the concept of "god mode". I also understand it's generally only available via a "cheat code". Clearly this isn't because video game makers want to keep people from having fun. Okay, in arcades they want you to put in more money. But I don't think many games sold for home use have "god mode" as an overt option, or at least not the default option; and I'd venture to say that's because it's boring. What is the point of being a quick draw if your enemy's shots just flutter your clothing a bit? The Ed Harris character is not actually as badass as he makes himself out to be: we have seen him get "hit" quite a bit, but he's not on a level playing field. So I'm surprised we haven't (at least thus far) seen anyone playing like it's paintball or Lazer Tag: that when you get shot you would obviously not actually get hurt, but you'd at least "lose a life", meaning you'd have to go down, and then when the action moved away from you, be ushered through a back door to either be done completely, or at least be sent back to the train station. (You would need to have some way of penalizing people who refused to play along: a financial penalty, or maybe being banned from the park.)
  18. Yeah, I was curious to check it out when I was in Moscow in summer 1990. It had opened about five or six months earlier, but it was still a phenomenon: the line stretched out the door and 3/4ths of the way around a city park across the street! No exaggeration. It was hard for me to imagine that everyone in that line was actually going to get served. I said "forget this" and went and ate at a mostly empty Russian cafe instead, where the food was really good (certainly much better than any McDonald's I've been in), and super cheap. I think I spent about five or six cents in U.S. currency, if I remember right. Heh, GMTA. Glad I'm not the only one! Did they have a long line too?
  19. Oh wow. I like both of those shows. He also did a memorable one-episode turn on Stranger Things!
  20. As I noted upthread, I would much prefer that Renee turned out to be just a woman from the gym with no dark secrets. I find the notion of her being a spy kind of cheesy and unrealistic. And I like the idea of this show playing against audience expectations and featuring red herrings mixed in with the cloak and dagger. So also in this vein, I would get a kick out of it if Mischa just ends up going back to the Soviet Union, or maybe defects but never finds Phillip--and Phillip never even knows he was looking for him. Is that sadistic? LOL (As I mentioned in the "how I want the show to end" thread, I also want them to surprise everyone by having the series end without Stan ever learning that his neighbors are spies.)
  21. Yeah, this suggests something a little different from the way the home has been interpreted thus far. There was a lot of talk contrasting it with Elizabeth's childhood home, along the lines that Philip's was just a hovel, with no sense of anyone even making an effort to have pride in it, make it look nice, etc. Just bare-bones existence. But these details show it's a little more than that. BTW, when I was in the Soviet Union in 1990 and visited people's homes, I was struck by how the exteriors and common areas looked like the worst slums you might find in an inner city housing development tower (like on The Wire, for instance), but the interiors were very homey and well-kept, with lots of little knicknacks and antiques.
  22. This is all completely spot on. I especially laughed at the picture you painted of Cochran (of whom I'm a big fan) and Ozzy.
  23. I think the opposite. My parents bought a home computer in the '82-'83 school year (an original IBM PC with 64K of RAM), and it had a 300 baud modem (1200 baud was also available for an additional cost) that just used the phone cord plugged directly into it. No cradle. (A couple years later, although I had no idea how to actually hack into a remote computer, I made a BASIC program that simulated the sounds of the modem calling, including a dial tone and the high-pitched noise after the other computer picks up. I had stored by own grades and my sister's grades in memory and tricked her and my parents into thinking I was going in and changing them. It was a blast.)
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