The Companion

For a minute, I thought it might trigger some sort of control over his trips between the worlds. So far, he has no control as to when a trip to the Upside Down is triggered, but he is able to be pulled back. It isn't clear whether or not he would be able to move back and forth intentionally if he wanted to. I love D'Artagnan. He was adorable. I feel like we were all sort of conditioned in the 80s to think we could take care of sci fi creatures. Blame ET and even Gremlins (I wanted a Gizmo SO BADLY). Even The Neverending Story. I wanted to ride Falkor so badly. I thought for sure they were setting a trap. Poor Bob was making such an effort to connect and help a traumatized kid. Little did he know that the monster in the closet was real this time. I love the Eleven/Hopper flashbacks too. Watching their relationship grow is fun, and they are so so good together. Millie Bobby Brown is incredible. Her face is so expressive. I agree. She has zero context for normal human interaction and zero coping skills. Additionally, it is easy to forget how young she is. I hate it because I was really looking forward to a reunion, but I don't think it was inconsistent with her characterization, and it was a good reminder (along with the longing looks at the child and her mother) that she really has missed out on so much. I agree. Eleven must be going stir crazy and she deserves to have some semblance of normal life. I think Hopper's no risk position is understandable. He lost his daughter and there are actually people coming for Eleven. That being said, it is hard to imagine anyone being comfortable locked away in a cabin indefinitely. I think they need to find a compromise (half-happy), but I totally get both of their perspectives which is what makes the interactions so emotional to watch. I really like Bob. I suspect Joyce is just looking for someone who is "safe" and "steady" after all of the upheaval, but Bob really seems like a great guy. He is so likable. He is clearly doomed. Millie Bobbie Brown is an incredible actress. Just her face when she saw the bike was award worthy. This show has a great cast, in general, but I think Eleven is critical. She doesn't have the benefit of a ton of lines to make us care about her, but Millie Bobbie Brown knocks it out of the park over and over. I just want to hug Eleven and protect her from the bad men. I think Bob's respect for Joyce and her family is one of the best things about his character. He does step in to help with the kids (driving, advice, etc.) but he respects that Joyce is their mother and he defers to her. I loved how he let the damage to the camera go completely, too, bringing it up only to let her know about the problem he saw on the tape. He is a good guy, so clearly DOOMED. I did not realize how badly I needed this in my life until you said it. Dustin is already full on adorable. The image of him walking a Demogorgon is amazing. Most of what I have to say about this episode has been covered. I love all of the things about Dustin and Dart (best friends forever). I also loved Mike admitting that he doesn't like Max because he is worried she is taking the place of Eleven. Honestly, the only thing I don't totally love is Nancy. I just find her to be a bit boring, but she seems to be moving in an interesting direction so we will see what happens next.

Just to add to the KFC discussion, we definitely called it KFC when I was a kid. The only time I used the name Kentucky Fried Chicken was in a little song we did in choir, and it always seemed weird to me to say the full name. This would have been 1987ish. I think we can mark it as plausible. I do always love the way this show gets us all talking about our very different experiences of the 80s and the regional customs and dialects. I am SO HAPPY this show is back. We can't binge watch it, so I am stuck watching it an episode or two at a time, which is hard. I was so excited to see Eleven at the end, and I loved that last season's events had lasting effects (rather than being largely glossed over). I was excited to see Sean Astin and I feel like Joyce deserves a a nice guy who treats her well, even if I don't see it lasting. I was intrigued by the introduction of 008. I had assumed the first 10 were dead. It opens up the world significantly, but I appreciate that they kept the sense of place, at least in the first episode. I was amused that the kids are still left to run around on their own (other than Will). I am really excited to see where we go from here.

I feel like they wanted to have her struggle (which happens to a lot of kids), but they couldn't exactly have her out getting drunk every night so they had to come up with some reason she has been too distracted to do her work. I think it might have worked a little better if the subject matter had at least been something particularly boring, but I guess they had to have an excuse for her to call on Adam. This is always the problem with the kids go to college storylines in a show. If she acclimates too well in college, she has her own separate life and only visits on occasion which makes it hard to write her into the show. If she doesn't, we have to watch her either drop out, fail or generally have a miserable time in college. Overall, it was a fun episode, though. I loved pantry raid.

I could write a treatise on how much THIS, this post has. As the audience, we shouldn't be yelling SHOOT HIM while he hams it up and the people who watched loved ones die at his hands sit around and watch him ramble. Honestly, if he had a human shield, I would STILL expect some discussion as to whether or not to just shoot through the human shield. There is no going back. He has seen all of your groups and if he lives he is going to try and find the worst way to hurt you. He is going to rape you and make your husband sit by, he is going to randomly choose someone and murder them while you all watch helplessly. There is no negotiating with Negan, so there is no plausible reason they aren't shooting as soon as he shows is smug face. This would be so amazing. It really would become a talking point for years to come. They have given us some shock deaths, but Negan just keeps trucking along. Hell, you want to really shock us, have him suddenly collapse from a heart attack or stroke and then have an entire plot about whether or not the doctor will help him or not. Right? This isn't "we can create a better world" this is "let's stop this monster who keeps murdering us and forcing us to put our families at risk to feed himself." Don't even get me started on Rick acting like he has the only (or the most valid) reason to want Negan dead. I would have loved it if that was how Gregory went. Dead from being pushed down the stairs in a zombie apocalypse sounds about right for him. I was a little confused about this because they had set the explosives for the herd, hadn't they? Why are they going to check out an explosion that theoretically has accomplished what they intended it to accomplish? We were laughing about a reboot too. I was like OH NO, WE WOULD HAVE TO BRING BACK LORI. Here is the thing. I don't mind suspending belief. I have said in other shows that the gasoline crisis that would arise doesn't really bother me that much (though it could have been an interesting side plot). I am not looking for absolute realism. What does bother me is that they made low ammo a huge plot point. We had to watch varying side quests for ammo and guns all season last season. Don't spend 6 episodes talking about a dwindling resource just to have it suddenly become plentiful. Establish the rules and stick with them. If you have unlimited candles (Jericho, I am looking at you), I might mock you but I am going to stop noticing it or commenting on it and just write it off as part of the show. This was the part that made no sense to me. These guys are in a stronghold. The fence appears to be more to dissuade people from getting in, not to stop walkers. They have a huge store of supplies and the ability to bar the doors until the walkers wander away. What is the purpose of using all these resources just to surround them with walkers. Not to mention the bizarre choice to be there when it happened. You bring in a strike team and have them ram the gate with the winnebago. When everyone comes out to see what the noise was, the walkers overrun the doors. Boom. No mess, no speeches, no risk to most of your army. Instead, they all stood outside behind sheets of metal (would those even stop a bullet?) so they could shoot out some windows? What?? This episode was disappointing for me, more so because it was a premiere and usually you can at least expect the two pieces of bread on TWD season sandwich to be good. It felt like more of the same. Leading a big herd, overrunning a fenced area, boring speeches. We have seen all of this before. Multiple times. We didn't even get to see the groups really work together, unless you count a few throwaway lines. There were 100 ways to make this episode interesting while either keeping Negan alive or drawing out the "war" and instead we ended up with a completely nonsensical meandering plot line with random time jumps. I found myself not really emotionally invested when the action started (except for hoping Negan would get eaten but I pretty much feel that way all the time).

I recorded this with very little knowledge because I like to see how people portray my native state, and particularly the New Orleans area where I am currently located. There is certainly a wide range of success, but I can usually at least get a laugh out of it (K-Ville's gumbo party is still the butt of jokes down here). I found this fairly unwatchable, though. It also clearly wasn't Louisiana (and some sources place it in Georgia where it was shot, making it even more confusing). As for accents, they generally complicate matters because people outside of the South don't seem to be able to tell the difference between between the different regional accents (meaning people in the same show will sound like they are from alternatively Mississippi, Georgia, Texas and Arkansas), and nobody seems to understand that the accents around New Orleans are more likely to be Cajun or Yat.

It was giving me a heavy Haven vibe as well. I like the claustrophobic feeling they are creating as the walls close in and the residents become more isolated. It has brought a lot of the creep factor (I actually found myself jumping), but I would like to see a little more character development. Maybe it is because they have introduced so many characters at once, but I found it a little hard to really root for/worry about the characters.

I think it was consistent with Carol, though. She is a big old softie. She forgave Tandy for his truly awful behavior more than once and her relentless optimism doesn't let her stay angry for long. I think he was in a dog carrier that they did show. I thought one of the pieces of luggage was actually a carrier and she put it in her lap. I could be wrong on that, though. I am willing to hand wave this because I think it would have to be a relatively complex side plot and you really don't have time to get into it on a show like this (it could have been interesting in TWD). In the end, you would likely end up with some sort of steam punk type contraption or a whole lot of walking, so I am fine with just ignoring it. I thought she was hilarious, but I really like Wiig. Maybe it is because I am an awkward human being and I tend to relate to her characters. She would have been a bit redundant had she stayed (her character was too close to Tandy), but it was kind of fun to have someone who got Tandy's humor. I know they are probably headed to a brutal death (who isn't on this show?) but I thought it was a bit of a cute ending. Who knows what they will find. New survivors have been consistently discovered. It was a better ending that exploding during a plane or dying in emergency surgery.

It was simultaneously hilarious and hit a little too close to home. When I was doing fertility treatments, I was definitely that girl. I think we keep coming back to: do these characters really belong in the Bad Place?, and this was one of the scenes that brought it home. Eleanor can talk about her crappy upbringing all she wants, but to actually see this woman who truly did not care after killing her kid's dog gave us some context for Eleanor's awfulness. In the end, I suspect the reason we have these characters in the experiment, is that they would have hand picked people that would be susceptible to soft torture. Michael was probably given the hell rejects. Not a juicy murderer. Just a generally not amazing person. I also think it is what works about this show. We are rooting for these characters because we can identify with them. I loved this episode. I am still not convinced that Michael isn't just forking with everyone, which honestly makes the show more enjoyable. I loved the party competition. Of course Tahani threw a tasteful soiree with classy decorations and upscale food rather than a blowout. I felt so bad for her when she saw the other party. Personally, I would need about ten minutes in the puppy pit.

I always think of the tag line on Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams: "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy" I legitimately don't know how they manage not to get the giggles every time they play off of one another, especially when they were in each other's face singing SAAAILING. Loved the introduction of Chris Elliot. I am not sure how long he will stick around, but it would be interesting to see his reaction to the world now that everything is gone. The rest of the characters have had years to deal with everyone being dead. I liked his optimism, though. I would hate to see it diminished. Wouldn't it be amazing if he went home and his kids were just sitting there waiting for him.

I loved the Jack Black reveal and subsequent death. Very reminiscent of the Will Farrell cameo. Our gang is less fatal than the plague, but only marginally so. Whoever is hiding on that island might be better served running the other way. Tandy continues to be clueless, but entertainingly so. I have to assume that the rest of the gang let the jet ski thing happen because it wasn't worth the fight. I really enjoyed watching him play off of Kristen Wiig/Pamela. Whatever happens to Pamela, I hope her dog is okay.

I now want to open a restaurant just to use one of those names. This episode was hilarious. The writing on this show remains so tight and the visual gags really work. The clam chowder fountain was hilarious (and so gross). I hope nothing bad happened to the Golden Retriever (like being kicked into the sun).

The extra details on that are so hilarious. I laughed so hard when they said she had done it at the end. I admit, I see a little Bev in my parenting style (kid is only 4 so I have time to tone it down), and my mom was definitely a Bev. She made me check in constantly. My friend in high school used to laugh that she made me call when I got to school (true), when I left (also true), when I got my hair caught in the door and would be delayed 30 seconds (slight exaggeration), etc. Even she didn't spend the first night in my dorm, though.

Although consistent with Bev's characterization, I kept thinking it felt very unrealistic. I mean, whose mom would spend the night the first day of college? Pure sitcom shenanigans. The reveal cracked me up.

I think Will impressed me most because he didn't get emotional about the game. Maybe I have forgotten something, but I don't recall him ever getting bent out of shape. He managed to get people to underestimate the threat by being such a big threat that everyone thought someone else would get him out. I still remember his you should vote me out speech. He is probably my favorite and would probably get my vote. Derrick played a really good game as well, but he wasn't as entertaining. I found him harder to watch because the season was so boring. That being said, I certainly don't think it is unreasonable to think Dan was the GOAT. His funeral was a brilliant move, and I respect the way he completely changed his game around and used perceptions about what he would do to protect him. How many times did he say, you saw me last year and you know how loyal I am. The common thread, however, is that all three of these guys understood that they needed to do jury management. Paul just didn't get it. You have to make the person leaving feel like you either did it because of some secret hidden strategy or because they are just so awesome. You were too much of a threat or I really wanted to work with you but I had already made this other deal. Josh got this, and it was why he revealed that he was working with Paul and Christmas. He wasn't throwing Paul under the bus, he was making jury members feel better. It's not you, it's strategy.

In the real world, if premiums were a concern they would have priced it out. It was a terrible argument. I come from a family of doctors and I am a lawyer who works with Boards and Doctors. I can tell you right now that they are familiar with regulations and law. If there was any concern, one of their in house lawyers would have been briefed and present. They weren't just being biased, they were refusing to consider an applicant based on disability who had made no indication that he would even need a reasonable accommodation. Beyond that, the entire conversation was cringeworthy and unrealistic. He would have been through medical school, rotating through different fields. There is no world where they don't have transcripts, recommendations and information about his performance of medical procedures. Additionally, he would have been matched months before after an intense interview process. You meet the doctors, interview and go through recruitment and then you are generally ranked by a selection committee. You also rank your hospitals and you are matched up. Beyond that, there is also no world that the ambulance takes like 45 minutes to get there. My husband, a former EMT was cringing. I wanted to like this show. It seemed interesting from the previews. I think I am out though. It was predictable (I told my husband I wasn't sure I wanted to see how the brother died like halfway through) and poorly researched. I expect some unrealistic aspects for drama (if you think surgeons have a lot of downtime during which they get it on in the call room you have never known a surgeon) but there were just too many strikes against it.

This. Paul made fools of them and they knew it as soon as he started reiterating his in house lies. They knew he had played at least some of them, and he needed to own it to win. Well said. It feels like we have this argument many years (does someone who made the most game moves deserve the win), but at this point I think it is clear that jury management is part of the game. There are some arguments that it is the whole game. You don't get points for winning competitions. Your entire job is to convince those people to vote for you. You can't do it without screwing at least some of them, so you have to find a way to soften the blow or to make yourself look brilliant enough that they grudgingly vote for you. Jess looked like she might grab some popcorn. It was amazing. I could not stand Paul before and found him even more intolerable this year. For the first time in my recollection, we skipped a good chunk of this season. I just couldn't watch Paul mug to the camera while everyone else acted like they had never seen an episode of big brother. I checked in to see if anything good was happening but it was the Paul show, so I kept deleting episodes. Life is too short to watch his smug bullying. I checked in fully expecting Paul to win so I could delete the show and low and behold he lost. I had to see it for myself. It was glorious.

This gag did not get old for me. I loved when he did it at the end. I think a lot of people have pointed out a lot of great points for this, so I will try not to overlap. One of the things that made sense in last season was that Eleanor was given a house that she would have hated, but the reason was that real Eleanor would have loved it. The yogurt/yurt also fit this theme, but Tahani's house did not. She believed she should be there (she clearly wasn't confused for someone else), so it didn't make sense that she would be put into the house she got. It was a huge tell for the characters that the Good Place wasn't all that good. I do think her behavior was consistent with her character from last year, namely that she thrives in her comfort zone but struggles when things don't go her way. I loved the references to torture, does that mean I am headed to the Bad Place? No thanks on the butthole spiders, though. I agree. Their mistake is making it too obvious that things are not all great in the Good Place. They really needed to start off slowly and then have bad things creep in. Suddenly that perfect soul mate eats with her mouth open or hogs the covers or has a really specific fetish. People keep misunderstanding things you say and getting offended. That type of thing. It was really entertaining, however, to watch as an audience member in the know. I agree. He came across as a lovely person. I am so in for a demon corporate retreat. The only thing more evil than pineapple on a pizza is an oatmeal raisin cookie. Chidi is not wrong about the ice cream sundae bar. You gotta commit early or you end up with a mess. Holy shirtballs it is good to have this show back. I loved the set-up and the quick disintegration of Michael's plan. It was really fun to get to see behind the scenes, so to speak. I don't know where we are headed next, but I am fully on board.

Me: Maybe things have gotten better. I should check in on Big Brother.

D'Avin's questions about the baby were killing me. How involved of a parent will Aneela be? DSK may eat him just to make him stop asking questions. Also, you smell like sports made me laugh so hard, I had to pause it. Loved all of the little character moments in this episode. It definitely ramped up the tension though. I was holding my breath that neither Pree or Gared went down. Their moments were just too sweet to not be a bad sign. It made me happy to see them still standing at the end. I thought Hannah John-Kamen was exceptional. They helped her out with some visual cues (Aneela had heels on and was a bit taller, they were styled differently, etc.), but she had to play basically three separate characters (Dutch, Aneela the crazy, and Aneela with new memories and knowledge), and each one felt totally different. I suspect that will be true, as they have really not laid down any groundwork for that pairing. That being said, I wouldn't mind an excuse for a little more Pip. He is hilarious. Who needs a beer? This guy needs a beer? That guy definitely does not need a beer. He is good. Atticus Mitchell has such great timing and such a natural delivery that I honestly can't tell whether his moments are scripted. They really let them break the budget with that space battle. I thought it looked fantastic. I love that they are giving Luke Macfarlane those moments. I think it brings a lot to the dynamic and the character. Johnny/Lucy makes me think of The Doctor's Wife (Doctor Who). "Did you wish really hard?" I like to think it is a Whovian slipping in a reference. I watched the entire GOT series in 5 weeks this year to catch up, but the similarity doesn't really bother me either. The shows just feel so different to me. For me, it has always raised the question of whether or not there is an Easterly. Maybe they have addressed that, but I don't recall it. Overall, this finale was tightly written and full of really great moments. It made up for some of the meandering earlier in the season when we were cutting to DSK and Aneela and breaking up the action in odd ways. I loved the combination of various characters. I thought the action was great but the solution at the end was sufficiently intriguing to leave me happy that it didn't just end up being a battle/war. I think most of the characters are somewhat flawed. You have mostly good (our intrepid Killjoys) and mostly bad (Aneela and DSK), but all of the characters feel relatively fleshed out and three dimensional. I wouldn't have said that for Aneela, though perhaps that was intentional, until this year. I did like DSK's observation that every villain is someone's hero. Killjoys definitely dips its toe in the gray, and the show is all the better for it. I am not throwing her a baby shower or anything, but it is amazing that they have humanized characters that I absolutely hate.

I suspect Littlefinger couldn't envision a person who didn't want power and standing. Those are the two things he wanted most in life. They were valued by everyone around him. The idea that someone might not want to climb up the ladder seemed impossible to him.

I would say Littlefinger was obsessed with her and/or loved the idea of her. He would tell you he loved her, and I think he truly believed it. However, his love was as self-serving as Cersei's. He did not seem genuinely capable of loving her, just the idea of her. He reminds me a bit of an ex of mine who really loved the relationship but didn't seem to love anything particular about me. He was a great boyfriend on the surface (giving me presents, writing poetry, etc.) but he never really loved me. He wasn't proud of me and he always thought what he was doing was way more important than what I was doing. I legitimately thought they were going there (or it was going to end up being Jon) in Season 1. I would love to see that be true. However, I kinda thought Gendry might end up with Arya rather than Sansa.

YES! At this point, it would be harder to find someone who didn't have a solid reason for wanting her dead. I feel a little bloodthirsty rooting for her death as hard as I do, but she feels like a cockroach. Everyone around her is getting killed and she just keeps going. I think it would be pretty awesome if she got killed by the people. A bunch of nobodies she doesn't deign to acknowledge.

Oberyn is definitely responsible for his own death. He could have shut up and killed the Mountain, but he had to get his confession. I think Cersei blames Tyrion for Myrcella's death because (a) he sent her away; and (b) Oberyn was killed in his trial by combat. However, neither of those reasons seems very compelling when she is the one who fixed her brother's trial forcing his hand. She is also the one who sat there smirking when Oberyn was killed. Could she have mitigated the loss had she been kind to Ellaria? Maybe not. That woman was not rational. She killed a little girl who had no responsibility whatsoever for Oberyn's death. However, it couldn't have helped that Ellaria watched her lover die and then looked up to Cersei's arrogant smirkface. I do think she has always been unreasonable about Tyrion sending Myrcella away. There was a war coming to King's Landing and people were dropping like flies. At least Myrcella got a few years of happiness. My husband was convinced the wight would be dead and it would be all for nothing. It was a tense moment! I think there are two possibilities. One is that Euron was told to make an excuse to get out of there. That may be why he was picking the fight with Theon. The other possibility is that Cersei is full of crap. That woman has not exactly been a pillar of honesty and virtue. She could have been lying to Jamie (it wouldn't be the first time) because she thought it would keep him. A third possibility, and one that I am not sure Cersei has considered is that Euron was serious. He may have agreed to get the Golden Army before he saw the wight, but once he saw both the wight and the firepower behind Daenerys, he very well may betray Cersei.

I think that is absolutely right. He still hoped that Cat would choose him when he delivered Ned's body. Despite his love for Cat (which is really more of an obsession), I got the feeling that Littlefinger cared most about besting them all. It wasn't just that he didn't care who he hurt on the way up, he seemed to actively relish all of the chaos, death and destruction.