Dowel Jones

And of course there should be a movie theatre car, with downloadable copies of, say, Once Upon a Time in America, A Beautiful Mind, Hulk, Hamilton, just to name a few...

Maybe the passengers paid for something like a cemetery endowment, whatever the actual term is? All things were taken care of in return for a huge payment up front. Or maybe there's a term limit, say, 20 years? The first class passengers being on the average much older, might see that as a benefit as they will likely die before time runs out. The upfront payments would go toward the construction of the train and the railroad. Just a thought. Maybe it will be explained as we go. Or maybe it's just powered by industrial strength handwavium...

While the Great Depression is often portrayed, fairly so, as devastating, it hit different areas and populations differently. My father worked for Shell Oil all the way through the 30s and beyond, and made a reasonable living. I can see a professional in a high income area doing well for himself, especially since real estate was likely dirt cheap. But it's equally possible that the doctor had "side income" as well. An interesting fact about the crime wave of the 30s was that the gangs made far more income from kidnapping than bank robbery. Families shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to ransom the victim, so somebody had some money.

I had the same problem with my DVR, but it taped the first half of the second showing too, so I got a very confusing look at the episode. It all worked out. I got a kick out of the engineer drawing a W on his uniform as a salute. Very Mel Brooksian.

According to IMDB, she was born in New Zealand, but the family moved to New Jersey shortly afterward.

I'll give it one more episode to start being about the murder. I'm really not interested in a show that revolves around drug addicts being assholes to each other.

Which leads to another question. Why would so much of the world's population agree to build a railroad for a relative few to avoid the coming global disaster? It would have to become obvious as time wore on.

One wonders why, if the Company's original plan was to include only well heeled and paying customers on this nonstop train, they needed to have so many heavily armored and armed security guards on board.

It appears that the train circles the entire globe somehow, and never stops. If this is so, eventually it would return to where the cars were dropped, with catastrophic results. I thought the last few cars were meant for human habitation, because of the rows of bunks in there. True, people did rush the cars at the disembarkation point, but the doors were open for a reason, to take on passengers. Thus, at least some of the tailies would be legitimate, although steerage, occupants.

I would have lots of questions about the development of this railroad if I didn't just accept it and move on the the inner workings of the train and passengers. Mr. Wilford must have had a ton of money to develop all that, and in the face of increasingly unforgiving climate, too. In case anyone is interested, the song played at the end of the episode was "Mountain Railroad" (how appropriate), although it's normally in the vein of a bluegrass gospel song.

It's no worse than Costner's 10-shooter in Open Range.

Something else that bothered me all the way through. The Kazanjians shot up the guys when they stole the accountant, plus two policemen there, plus another cop or two and an innocent bystander, and at the end no one is even concerned about bringing them in. It's all about Katarina and Liz.

Which, as we all know, became the infamous Townsend Directive, right? Let's hope the FBI doesn't get involved in this... The "Zoot Suit Riots" in Los Angeles were only a few years off. I think there's a Wikipedia page on it if people are interested.

It's in their best interests, at least as Jews, to help him break up the Nazi plan to steal the rocket information. Not that they won't, as gangsters, seek something in it for themselves. I'm confused a bit on the timeline. I thought the V2 wasn't even under development until well into WWII, and this is set in the late 30's? Or am I wrong on that? I can see the head Nazi playing the film for Councilman Brainless and saying to him, "Would you like to rephrase that?" It seems odd that the mob would be smuggling weapons out to Palestine through Mexico. True, no one would be looking for them on that side of the country, but it would sure be a long trip by cargo ship all the way to the Middle East. Am I evil to think that Sister Molly was going to vomit out a swarm of flies, a la The Green Mile at the climax of her sermon?

No, the hairstyles on the show are much better.

He lost about 60 pounds.

To be blunt, Liz going to the dark side doesn't frighten me in the least. In fact, it may be law enforcement's greatest asset. I cannot imagine Dembe driving her around. He would quit and she's probably have to hire Ressler.

Liz mentioned that "no one would get in her way to help her mother get to the truth, including you..." Maybe she's going to kill him. I liked Reddington's line: As an old friend of mine once said, 'Get there. Now'. She's not incompetent or disloyal; she's just drawn that way (tips hat to Roger Rabbitt).

When Evan snorted "You think we're idiots", I said "Yes." You spent your school loan on a dump of a house (is that even legal?) without even going inside to look at it. And your dream is to show that the other houses in the neighborhood could be remodeled. Especially if you have $54K and an interest-free loan of $20K to start. And then there was the mold problem. "Oh, it floods here often, so we'll need flood insurance." Uhhh, yeah? I would have laughed out loud if Theo had pulled out the condom when they reached the gravestone, and all those girls had said "You creep! Get out of here!"

Just thought I'd throw that in there. Sorry for the extra nonsense. I missed something in the detonator defusing. Jane said the housing was pressurized and removing it would cause detonation. Then they're shown removing the glass case. What did they do?

The best thing Wallace could do now is seek the advice of an outside attorney. He has way to much invested in his own case, obviously, to make a sound decision. The problem with the clemency deal is that the AG could renege at any time, using some flimsy pretext. Wallace needs a powerful attorney to forge a meaningful deal, because Maskins has some genuine shit on him.

Maybe Al Roker is the 'real' Raymond Reddington, managing his criminal empire from NBC headquarters. He had Matt Lauer and Brian Williams fired because they were getting too close.

Maybe Katarina wants to know where Lizzie's dogs and Vesco's cat are.

So, in the penultimate episode of S1, DI Arnott got his fingers cut off, or so I thought. I just started S2 (The Ambush), and he's not showing any mutilations. What happened? Anyway, this looks like a pretty brutal series already. One episode in and they're 4 cops down.

Thanks. I usually have trouble with ensemble shows when they throw all the characters at us at once.