Slovenly Muse

For me, the puppet thing was ALL WORTH IT as soon as THE PUPPETEER went on the news and tried to deny everything. I mean, the puppeteer trying to act as a character witness for the puppet is surreal and hilarious on its face, but it also completely NAILS the absurd way these dickswabs transparently cover for each other. I also love that Titus' story speaks to the type of sexual harrassment/abuse story that is NOT widely shared - the story of the victims who acquiesced under pressure and gave their harassers what they wanted. There is a unique brand of shame in seeing other victims sharing their stories that end with "and I got out of that room as fast as I could," knowing that your story ended differently, and not only do you blame yourself even more, you know that there's no way you could share your story publicly and still maintain a shred of dignity. So far, I think this batch of episodes is off to the right start!

I NEVER watch reality TV, but Marie Kondo's book changed my life when it first came out, and I couldn't resist seeing her in action! I agree that the Friend family was super annoying and a poor way to start the series, and I do wish they had explained the reasoning behind Kondo's method more thoroughly for people who hadn't read her book, but as the series went on I really started appreciating what it was doing well. For one thing, this show is not the typical Hoarders-style voyeuristic exploitation fare, where people are really sick and for some reason getting therapy on TV for us to gawk at. These people are just not happy, and need some help tidying. Marie's job isn't to come in and counsel them about their relationship, or force them to let go of treasured possessions, or makeover their whole home for them, or judge whether they are right or wrong to keep this or get rid of that. She wants them to be happy, and she's showing them how to do the work for themselves that will help them figure out what is right for them. These families, even the more extreme-looking cases like the lady with all the nutcrackers, or the guy with all the sneakers, they're not really hoarders, they're not sick. They just have a lot of stuff and they're having a hard time getting rid of it, which is totally normal for a lot of people, especially in the US where homes are larger than in countries with higher population density. I lived like that for ages (and still do sometimes, I admit). We might live in a bigger space than we strictly need, and we end up filling it with stuff, because it's natural to expand into the space you occupy. We get attached to stuff because it used to be important to us, or there are memories connected with it, or because having a house full of stuff gives us the illusion that our lives are also full - it's completely normal (though obviously not desirable) to live in clutter like these families do. But this isn't an intervention - these people know they have too much stuff, they want to tidy it up, and they just need some help with a structured process. Marie isn't advising them to keep or get rid of individual items, or judging or pressuring them, just helping them understand for themselves what items actually bring them happiness, and what is just junk. And what I loved about the series was that eventually, everyone got it, and they all got it for themselves. The guy who was having a terrible time getting rid of stuff, holding that old mailbox in his hands, decided that even though it was a good memento of the past, it wasn't something he needed in his future, and that was a turning point. Once everyone experienced how good it felt to unburden themselves of stuff they didn't need, and how good it felt to see space opening up in their homes, the process just rolled downhill to the end. People (like me) who like collecting things don't often get to experience the joy of getting rid of things (usually it's someone else trying to get rid of your stuff, which just makes you dig your claws in harder), but once we do, it really is a life-changer, and it really is easier to keep your home in order once you get how good it feels to have a place for everything, and to have a space you can feel proud to show off to friends and family. I just enjoyed seeing regular, messy people get to experience that. Kondo is so kooky and delightful - I love that her techniques are a little bonkers! From greeting the house to letting handbags "rest" to expressing gratitude to items before discarding them - obviously this is not for the good of the object itself, just a way to shift the way you think about the items you use. I don't use the handbag suggestion, and part of me thinks it's just a better technique for people who have multiple purses and might not use the same one every day - it's easier to cycle through bags when your stuff is out of the old bag and ready to be thrown into the new one on your way out the door. But the rest of me knows that this is actually a very sensible suggestion that I SHOULD be doing, especially because I use the same bag every day! I accumulate so much crap in my bag, and I forget it's there and don't notice it until I'm somewhere pulling out my wallet and wondering why it won't fit back in properly, and of course I can't deal with my junk when I'm out and about. If I opened my bag and confronted what was inside it every day at home, it would be SO much tidier and easier to use. But ultimately a bit too labour-intensive for the reward. And expressing gratitude to items - I love this. Obviously the shirt doesn't care if you thank it. It's just a way of giving yourself a moment of closure with something before you get rid of it. It does a lot of people good to "say goodbye" to something they are having a hard time parting with, or accepting that something they loved so much they wore it completely out will never again give them that same enjoyment, or maybe getting rid of clothes they've never worn or books they haven't read - how do you get rid of something that you haven't even used yet? "Thanking" the item is just a way of accepting that it's done all it's going to do for you, and releasing yourself from the obligation to eventually wear it, or read it, or do something with it to justify having bought it. I didn't LOVE this show, but I did find it strangely compelling, even if only because it reminded me of how good it felt to "Kondo" my own apartment. I liked that it was low-stakes, non-judgmental, and not voyeuristic to the point of being exploitative. I also liked how universal it was - everyone has to figure out how to manage their stuff and their space. Watching people figure it out was kind of soothing and rewarding. I liked it!

That supposes the problem is that they don't have access to the books. It's not. Roz had a copy of "The Bluest Eye" in her hands at the beginning. The problem is that the school is secretly censoring the library, removing books from the shelves that it purports to have available, and dictates which classic works of literature are acceptable for an open-ended book report. The students shouldn't HAVE to travel to another library or spend their own money on books the school library says are available. I agree the resolution was weird, but I was disappointed they ended with a secret book club, and not by continuing to pressure the school to end its paternalistic practice of censorship.

Yeah, it came up in her conversation with Father Blackwell. She was rightly concerned that Satan got to choose what she did with her body (no indication yet if men are also expected to remain virgins). That's what gave the birthmark scene some extra energy - the fact that it was the first time they'd seen each other like that. I disagree. It shouldn't be our go-to solution that girls should have to sacrifice their right to make decisions for themselves about their bodies and their sexuality (whether it's having sex before they have decided they are ready, or "saving" themselves for someone they don't even know yet) in order to protect themselves from being victimized by patriarchal bullshit. It defeats the purpose. It would be devastatingly unfair if Sabrina had had sex for the very first time with Harvey because her church (or anti-church) forced her into it, not because it was truly her choice. Plus, it still would have been "breach of promise" since she had "promised" herself (virginity and all) to the Dark Lord, so I don't see what that could have done for her besides hasten a "guilty" verdict. I admire the fact that the show is standing its ground on objecting to the PRINCIPLE of religious over-involvement in women's personal sexual choices, rather than avoiding saying anything about the issue by finding a convenient loophole. I'm a ways beyond this episode now, and something I'm really enjoying about the show is the way it seems to comment on Christianity and its institutions by slyly ascribing real attributes of the religion (like the expectation of virginity: dictating girls' sexual choices and basing their worth only on what they haven't done) to the fictional Satanic version - which make perfect sense when the religion is "evil," but also forces us to confront the fact that the so-called "good" church does them too.

I don't know. I don't think they're trying to portray real-life witchcraft (or real-life Satanism, for that matter), more like imagining that witches are what they were believed to be during the Salem witch trials (having the witches on the show connected in a fictionalized way with the real history of the region). That way, the individual witches aren't necessarily good or evil (so we can root for them), but their power DOES come from a place of darkness and servitude to Satan, as was feared by the puritans, and the Salem witch hunts are a feature of the past that is still hanging over the heads of witches in the present, hence their secrecy. I also don't get the impression the show is denigrating or pushing one religion over another ("Satansim" (a fictionalized version) vs. Christianity) - more like laying the groundwork for themes of rebellion against patriarchal organized religion in general. (Which is, funnily enough, more in line with real-life Satanism, which is not about evil at all, but about putting rational free thought over superstitious beliefs.) After all, how do you set up a dichotomy between two religions that BOTH require girls to save their virginity for marriage, call out that practice as patriarchal bullshit, and still try to claim that one of them is right? I get the sense this show is preparing to burn it ALL to the ground!

I see what you mean, and you're right. It could be both. I'm just not sure that any behaviour we saw as being "off" didn't end up getting explained by true experiences. All of Olivia's erratic behaviour (blackouts, fugue states, talking to no one, drawing the "Forever Home" in the blueprints) was explained by Poppy haunting her and manipulating her experiences. Luke's imaginary friends turned out to be real. The Bent-Neck Lady haunting Nell turned out to not be just sleep paralysis, but the actual ghost of future Nell. Theo's sensitivity and psychic impressions are true and reliable enough that she can use it to solve crimes. Shirley and Stephen were in denial about things they saw and experienced, but they really did happen. The only thing that MAY have been just in someone's head was the bowler hat man haunting Luke as an adult. It could have been real, or it could have been PTSD from seeing the bowler hat man (who is real) as a child. But if it's PTSD, it's from a real experience, not an inherited condition. Even Mr. Dudley said that Olivia's behaviour was very reminiscent of what his own mother had gone through after spending too much time in the house, meaning that the symptoms are not unique to the family. I feel like the "mental illness" idea was floated by Stephen to explain everyone's ongoing issues (not damaged from the house, but "ill"), but I'm not sure we really saw any evidence that it was a factor. (I wish we had, though, because that is a GREAT concept for a horror story. A schizophrenic in a haunted house who can't tell what's real? Yes, please! I would watch that Mr. Robot/Hill House crossover FOR SURE!)

I think the hold the house had over her was The Bent-Neck Lady. It haunted her after she moved out of the house, and she believed TBNL killed Arthur. Her doctor suggested to her that she put too much power into her memories and thoughts about the house, and that it was probably now just an old carcass in the woods, and TBNL was just a hallucination (I don't think he meant for her to really go back, but he hadn't meant for her to really confront Stephen the way she did at his book signing either - she was a little... "scattered" from being haunted and not believed and off her meds, and didn't always take the right message away from her sessions). She went back to see if it really WAS an old carcass, if The Bent-Neck Lady was really just a nightmare brought on by sleep paralysis, and once the house had her back in it's grip, it killed her. (At no point did she make the decision to end her own life, so I maintain that the house killed her, and not that she killed herself.) Basically, in order to have any kind of life after Arthur died, she needed to know whether she was haunted (as she believed), or insane (as everyone told her), and going back to the house really was the only way to know for sure. What "inherited issues" do you mean? I wondered if Stephen's talk about mental illness had some basis in reality, but since everything that happened at the house has turned out to be real (or not shown to be untrue), I'm not sure that mental instability had any sort of role to play, and wasn't just a red herring. The only thing I think we know that Olivia's kids inherited from her was a sensitivity to the supernatural, and even then, I'm not sure that was a factor in what happened, because it sounds like the Dudleys had similar experiences, and they were never shown to be sensitive. I really wish the show had clarified this a little more, or not started down roads they weren't prepared to explore.

Thank goodness this is bothering you, too! My rant was so long, I didn't want to get even more bogged down, but yeah, this stuff just doesn't track: Completely! And Hugh specifically told Stephen that he has a version of Olivia with him at all times, as a coping mechanism that many widows/widowers experience and is normal, but that the things he (Stephen) was seeing were NOT that. Meaning the show deliberately distinguishes between "real" hauntings and metaphorical ones. But then how do we square ghost Olivia's accusation that Hugh never comes to visit (preferring the fake version of her he imagines), with the manifestations of her that appeared to the siblings and smashed Shirley's "Forever Home" model? If she can't leave the house, and is dependent on him coming to her, AND the visions of her we've seen outside the house are definitely not just hallucinations, then where does that leave us? And furthermore, if time is not linear but rather "like confetti" falling all around us, and Nell is able to haunt herself BEFORE she actually died (showing Flanagan's penchant for playing with time) (and I've also seen some speculation elsewhere that sometimes, when Luke saw Abigail, he may have been seeing her ghost haunting the past before she died - I don't know if that is supported), then why don't we see apparitions now of people who WILL die in the house in the future? Like Mrs. Dudley, and presumably her husband? Or is that just specific to Nell? SO! MUCH! THIS! Aside from the fact that Leigh was willing to hear Stephen out and maybe reconcile (which was maddening, like the writers didn't understand how deeply he had betrayed her), this drove me bonkers. "Honey, there's something absolutely awful I have to tell you, and I'm terrified to do it, but will anyway. Is it that the house I grew up in was for-real haunted and killed a good chunk of my family and tried to kill me too, and the ghost of my dead sister saved my life, and I'm afraid you'll think I'm crazy?... No, it's that I cheated on you one time, and WHAT COULD BE HARDER TO UNDERSTAND THAN THAT?!" Boo. Ah, but here's where you're wrong! It's all been cunningly crafted, you see. If you LIVE in the house, and stay there after dark, then it will be able to work its terrible will on you, and manipulate you into doing something unthinkable, like killing yourself and/or your children so that you can be together forever, and that will turn out to actually work well for you and have been the right decision and why didn't you listen to the house sooner it only had your best interests at heart! Yeah, with this one there actually was a body. But it was still pretty ambiguous. Hugh told Olivia's ghost that he would make her a promise if she let the kids go (which is ridiculous: if she doesn't, they will all die in the room, and she can kill Hugh right then and there and have them all - she's already "won" and there is no incentive to stop), then she opened the door and Hugh helped Luke and the others out and down to the car, then came back with Stephen to show him the whole story of Olivia's death. The flashback sequence ends with Stephen and Hugh standing at the top of the spiral staircase, and Hugh looks down to see his body lying at his feet on the platform with the empty pill bottle beside him (his heart medication). Then he turns young and goes into the Red Room. It is NOT clear when he died, and as far as I can recall there was no explanation of what was done with the body. The Dudley's were able to touch and hug the ghost of Abigail, so maybe Hugh killed himself on the spot to convince Olivia, and it was his ghost that helped Luke down to the car. (But then how did he leave the house? The door has been suggested visually as a barrier between what is IN the house and what is not, so how did he cross it when no other ghost does?) Otherwise he kept Stephen back to tell him about Olivia's death and to help/watch Hugh kill himself, which REALLY would require more exploration than we saw. So I don't know what to make of that scene either. Maybe a viewer who wasn't cursing the TV for most of the episode caught more details than me and could fill this in. And can I just say, the idea that the house is some sort of supernatural vending machine where you put in your life and it instantly cranks out your ghost, is laughable. Seeing SO MANY people die and then just instantly appear as ghosts over their bodies, looking and sounding and BEING exactly like they were in life, is not the way effective ghost stories are told. The horror comes from the creeping energy of a life that barely remembers what it was, assembling itself into a twisted facsimile of its living self, and manifesting in ways it's former self would find abhorrent... THAT'S the way ghost stories are told in the horror genre. This insta-ghost, happily-ever-after technique? Is straight out of a supernatural comedy. In summation: Boo.

Didn't Mr. Dudley say that his mother had died after bouts of erratic behaviour caused by the house? If Abigail is the Dudley child, that woman could have been her grandmother. I agree it is confusing. If she's real (died from poisoning, so probably not a ghost?) she MUST be the Dudley child. But if she is the Dudley child, who's never set foot in Hill House before, then how does she already have a ghostly caregiver she seems to know?

I wondered about this too, since in the book, it is suggested that people with sensitivity to the paranormal may see or maybe even CAUSE more manifestations in a haunted house, so would the house BE this haunted if the sensitive Crains weren't in it? But something about the pre-credits scene played it a bit ambiguous as to whether Theo had her "Whose hand was I holding?" encounter BECAUSE of her sensitivity, or if that encounter perhaps CAUSED her sensitivity. Did the house touch them in ways that affected their connection to the supernatural, or did their connection to the supernatural cause the house to touch them? I'm not sure the show takes a clear position on this, but it is interesting to consider as things move forward.

I don't quite know how to express my profound disappointment with this episode. I will say, the reveal that I DID like was the revisiting of Theo's experience in her dance studio. I figured, after Hugh said in a previous episode that "there was no treehouse," that all the kids had been in the Red Room unknowingly, each seeing it as their own personal sanctuary. (Nell's toy room and Stephen's games room were described as "up" and the treehouse requires climbing, so that tracked, and from there the link to Olivia's reading room was plain as day), but I dismissed Theo's dance studio as being the Red Room simply because of her experience with the rattling door. If the house were trying to eat the children, it would make them feel safe and at peace in the room, untroubled by manifestations, and inclined to stay. Learning that it was Shirley and Nell trying to get into the Red Room, HUMAN actors breaking through the house's spell on Theo, really satisfied me. And that was about the only thing in this episode that did. In general, what the series really did too much of, was showing us the spooks. In the beginning, they crafted such interesting ambiguous creep-outs, like the kids maybe imagining things or maybe seeing things. By the end, the ghosts had names and motivations and you could have conversations with them... and we completely lost the sense that the house itself was a malevolent entity. This is why I think it was a mistake to introduce us to Poppy so clearly. WAS it Poppy's ghost that drove Olivia insane? Or was it Hill House? WAS Poppy's ghost the malevolent entity in Hill House, that lured everyone into the Red Room so they could be eaten? Was she the one "eating" them? Or was she just a victim of the house (a particularly easy one because of her insanity) who now works on its behalf? Why was she presented as a malevolent actor who could be negotiated with or stood up to, when the original idea was that the house is a presence in and of itself that makes you not SEE that you need to resist it? How do we reconcile friendly ghosts like Olivia and Nell who seem sane and sensible, who protect their loved ones and can be reasoned with and have some power within the house (like the power to open the red door or disrupt its illusions), with the terrifying manifestations that attack children in the basement? If the house tricks people by showing them visions of people they want to see saying things they want to hear, then why do ghosts Olivia and Nell seem to be their real selves acting in accordance with their own real will, rather than puppets of the house that tricked and consumed them? I'm just saying, if Olivia couldn't be reasoned out of murdering her children when she was alive, how is the ghost version of her, that is used to trick and manipulate others on the house's behalf, MORE susceptible to logic and negotiation? This is such a massive de-escalation of the situation that it feels shallow and doesn't track logically with what we've previously seen. And if the spirits are trapped in the house, and you have to be near the house to be near your loved ones, then why and how were ghastly visions of Nell and Olivia haunting their family at the cemetery and funeral home? To quote 30 Rock's God Cop, "I don't understand the rules of this!" And furthermore, why introduce the idea that Olivia was the SOURCE of manifestations (like the rain of stones), and that Nell IS a terrifying spirit haunting the house even back in time, if you're going to dismiss the idea and say, no, that doesn't mean anything, it's really all this flapper ghost. Taking something interesting and revising it into nonsense. The other thing they tipped their hand with was the "hidden ghosts" within the episodes. The show's twitter feed has pointed out a few... They're places where ghostly faces or figures can be seen in the background or shadows of certain shots. However, some were just a bit TOO obvious, and once you know to look for them, they're not very effective. I really found, when I noticed a few, that they don't actually look like ghostly presences watching the family from the shadows. They look like extras in white makeup trying to stand VERY still during a whole scene. If they appeared or disappeared between shots, that would have been cool. But they didn't. It also gave the impression that Hill House was stuffed full of spooks. I said out loud as Stephen began his closing narration, once again bastardizing Jackson's words for no good reason, "If they try to say that 'whatever walks there walks alone' after demonstrating just how many different freaking things are walking there, I will break something." And then they said something so, so much worse. Really an unforgivable erasure of Jackson from what is supposed to be an adaptation of her story. And I predicted from Episode 1 that the gender politics were going to be an issue. Why is it that STEPHEN, who treated his wife in an absolutely monstrous way (Imaginary Leigh was right on the money when she said he didn't see her. He robbed her of the ability to have children by lying for years while she ran out the clock on her own fertility. No one could do that to someone they truly loved and respected.) and does not deserve our sympathy as a POV character, gets let in on ALL the family secrets of Hill House, when he is arguably the one least affected by it? Don't the people who saw the most in Hill House, who have carried that trauma with them throughout their lives, deserve to get answers and closure about what happened to their mother and why that house is still standing? How dare Mike Flanagan take a story by Shirley Jackson (whose works typically feature women being controlled "for their own good," finding (often disturbing) ways of empowering themselves) and end it with two men deciding to keep secrets from the female protagonists in order to "protect" them. Appalling. I made a comparison in the Episode 1 thread to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," and I stand by it. Basically, I am super done with male filmmakers deciding to adapt famous works by female writers, while re-writing them to exclude the female point of view that made the work so compelling in the first place. Ken Brannagh, Danny Boyle, and whoever directed the Karloff films did it to "Frankenstein," and Flanagan and every other prospective adapter except Robert Wise did it to "Hill House." Listen, fellas. You do not have to piss all over things you WISH you had created in order to claim them as your own, or to teach the woman who wrote it how it SHOULD have been done. How about you either come up with your own ideas, or stick to adaptations of works you actually understand. I don't regret watching the series, but the lasting impression I will have looking back on it is bitter, affronted anger. This episode was hot garbage, and it ruined the things the show actually was doing well. So incredibly disappointing.

Yeah, this is really bothering me. His eyes look SO WEIRD. I would honestly not mind if young Hugh and old Hugh had different coloured eyes, and would probably never even notice, but the contacts draw attention to it in a way that completely defeats the purpose. It makes him look possessed, and NOT in the intentional haunted house kind of way. Plus, I feel like blue eyes are the easiest to cover up and would look more natural with darker contacts, so why isn't Hutton the one changing his eye colour if it's such a big deal? (I know, because he's more famous and gets to refuse things like that in his contract. But still.) Yeah, that bothered me too. When my grandmother passed, there was a viewing held before the service for those who wished to see her, and then a closed-casket funeral. My parents though it would be upsetting for the kids to see her, so everyone got to make up their own mind about what they wanted to see, and wanted their kids to see. I was not taken to that viewing, and for that I remain eternally grateful. No one should be forced to look at a dead body, especially of someone they care about. Although I do understand that in Shirley's case, she seems pathologically obsessed with "fixing" dead loved ones, and it could be an intentional signal to the audience of her unwellness that she feels like she can "help" children by forcing them to look at the bodies she "fixed," and is unable to accept that there is nothing she can actually do to fix death. But mostly I think it was just clumsy writing. I am also having a hard time keeping track of the characters. I think it's because young Mom, adult Shirley, adult Nell, and adult Theo ALL look the same. And so, apparently, does Shirley's employee at the funeral home (whom she directed to go get the body), so there are three nearly-identical women just in that one house alone. Thank goodness Leigh is blonde or I'd never be able to tell ANY of the female cast apart. Honestly, if the Crain women all have to be brunette with similar features, couldn't at least one of them have a distinctive short haircut or something? In the pilot, when Nell was dancing through Hill House before her suicide, I genuinely couldn't figure out if that was Nell, or if that was a flashback to what their mother was doing after the family left her (I mean, it could have been both, but I couldn't tell which actress it was). They need to start physically differentiating their female characters, or they run the risk of the audience seeing them all as interchangeable. All in all, I wasn't hugely impressed with this episode. The banging in the walls was an interesting nod to the book, but it didn't seem to go anywhere or mean anything, and could have just been a dream (the mask and the cats followed through to the present day, but the banging was just a one-off, and seemed to just be there because it was in the book, not because it's a part of this story). There wasn't much happening here that was actually spooky, and they really lost me with the flashing porch light at the end. I think if the final moment had taken us to Hill House, and the porch light THERE had been flashing, to call all the children back "home," that could have been really effective, but the tiny flashing light on the theoretical model of a house that doesn't even exist didn't mean anything and looked a bit cheesy. It makes me wonder what role Hill House will be playing moving forward, and wish I had a sense of how the family is connected to the house in the present, besides just through memories and shared experiences from their past. I suppose I will push on and see where the story goes!

Just gave this a shot, even though I was not optimistic. Just like Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," this book is one that WORKS because the author had such a unique, precise, and ingenious approach to the story, and the true horror of the novel seems to be completely overlooked or misunderstood by the filmmakers (mostly men) who try to adapt it, and think hideous monsters are where the scares are. I wasn't as disappointed as I expected to be, so I'll give it that, but ITA that it is UNFORGIVABLE to take Jackson's brilliant words and attribute them to a fictional male author. (Apart from the slight to Jackson, just think, anyone who loves the series so much that they decide to read the book will forever be picturing Stephen as the writer.) That rubbed me the wrong way immediately, and the show never really recovered from it. (Plus the fact that the main POV character is a man, and everyone who dies in this episode is a woman, demonstrates that Mike Flanagan is not thinking too hard about the gender politics of his adaptation.) That said, I DID like the format, showing how the house has pervasively affected the family throughout their lives, and the creepy allure of the house that Nell was unable to resist... it shows Flanagan at least understands what sets Hill House apart from your standard haunted house story, even if he doesn't understand, as Jackson did, that NOT showing/naming/describing the spooks lets the real horror come through. Much of it did have that Jackson sort of feel, and I don't know if it was intentional or not, but that creepy girl in the woods that Young Luke drew reminded me IMMEDIATELY of Merricat Blackwood from "We Have Always Lived in The Castle." As a Jackson fan, I know nothing can ever live up to her books, but this show concept could have been much worse than it was, and while it's far from perfect, it is a pretty effective adaptation. And in all likelihood... no one will come any closer than that. In the night. In the dark.

Really enjoyed the final message and poignancy of this season. It had different goals than Season 1, and it did what it intended to do very well. While Season 1 was all about the True Crime Documentary process, and how the scrutiny can open doors (and also destroy lives by inviting wild speculation), this season was much more focused on the teenage high school experience. And MAN did it do a good job exploring that. But, in contrast, the True Crime Documentary aspects seemed so tacked on. Like all the obvious red herrings about the texting "glitch," who had access to the faculty lounge, Sir Fuxalot, Wexler's conspiracy, etc. It was never really very compelling. Plus, as others have mentioned, the access Sam and Peter seemed to have was unusual, because even though it makes perfect sense that people would want to cooperate to be on TV, we never got the sense from their interviews that they were eager to help because of the potential for celebrity. And the documentary aspect was so neglected that, while I would like to believe it was an intentional statement about the way crime documentarians can sometimes do more harm than good, I found it really unfortunate that Sam and Peter didn't acknowledge or take any responsibility for the fact that they 100% caused The Dump because they alerted the perp that he'd been identified before going to the police. All said, though, I really enjoyed this season as a whole, if not every individual episode, and I especially loved the way it wrapped up.

I know the current binge-culture makes individual episode discussions kind of moot... just about everyone here has basically blasted through the whole season in a day I bet. But my partner and I don't get a lot of TV time together, so we're taking this one episode per day, and just got to this one... I got to say, I've been enjoying the season so far, but this is the first episode that made me wrinkle my eyebrows and go, "wait, huh?" Last season, it was clear that the conceit of the show (two high school AV club guys filming a documentary at their school) did not match the form of the show (an expertly-polished series with high production values), but we were sort of expected to go along with it. I like that they addressed that critique in the first episode of the new season. However, it seems like THIS season, the thing we're supposed to just shrug and go along with is the kind of access these boys now have at a swanky private school they don't even go to. For one thing, the Turd Burglar has supposedly been identified and punished. So why are the faculty so willing to talk about the case with Peter and Sam? I was amazed that the secretary they talked to just told them everything they wanted to know about whatshername's comings and goings, with no question about why they wanted the information, or what they thought she had to do with the Turd Burglar case everyone must have known they were investigating. "Oh, you want us to tell your camera crew the detailed schedule of the school's wealthiest family's abductable young heir for anyone with Netflix to see because you want to accuse her of a crime? No problem! I'm not afraid of offending our top donors at all!" I could understand it if the faculty were so dazzled by the idea of being on TV and helping out the famous Netflix documentarians that they ignored proper procedures and common sense to get their minute in the spotlight, but I didn't sense any of that at all. And if there WAS a conspiracy among the faculty to hide a poop crime, as they theorize at the end of this episode, then why does everyone seem so willing to talk, and no one is going "We got the guy, what are you even doing here asking questions about this other totally innocent person?" Furthermore, the "glitch" in the text evidence is so sketchy, and unless this comes back in a later episode, VERY sloppy. BOTH of the posts that contain the glitch ALSO contain capital I's unaffected by the glitch. If the glitch is selective, then how is its presence or absence relevant at all? And if kids had figured out how to compensate for the glitch by typing, say, a lowercase "L," and only remembered to do that selectively, then it still invalidates the glitch as evidence. Especially in the second post, because no one uses the wrong letter in a hashtag just to make it look like a capital. The hashtag would be useless. And if the glitch only affects capital I's written on their own (with no other letters connected) then, again, they could easily get around it by using a lowercase "L." It's not hard to figure out, and they look pretty much identical. Even if they do circle back to this in a later episode, it feels really dumb to waste time on something that is immediately and demonstrably nonsense, and pretend that it might be a factor in advancing or eliminating suspects. This is the first time an episode has really disappointed me, and left me feeling like the actual procedural angle (and realism of the context) was totally ignored in order to spin some wheels and kill some time. I hope the show wins me back soon, because I really like what it's doing in general. But taking a show slowly can sometimes highlight where the weak spots are, and this episode was so lazy it was downright insulting.

I'm not sure, it's been so long since I've read the books that I can't really say what is and is not in the spirit of the source material. But right from the theme song "Ahead by a Century" we know that this Anne, while in a more-or-less historically accurate setting, is intended to be an Anne for modern audiences. If she doesn't make a found family with, and extend compassion to, the outcasts, the "freaks" who are subject to similar discrimination that she is for being an orphan, and if she doesn't explore the real horizons of her world, the possibilities of the life she's yet to lead, and embrace them completely, then how can she be an inspiring heroine to a modern audience? Especially a young audience. They didn't NEED to bring in LGBTQ issues to make their point, but this story and these characters add a deeper dimension to what was already there. A straightforward adaptation of the books would probably please adults today who enjoyed the books as children, but this adaptation seems to be aiming more towards young people today who may be encountering Anne for the first time, and this episode was important for that reason, if nothing else. Which makes it sound like I only thought it was "important." In fact, I also loved every minute of it. I loved Josephine's party, and her guests, and her guests' conversations with the kids... and I even loved Diana's struggles to make sense of her Aunt's relationship. It's natural to struggle with that kind of revelation, especially about someone you've known your whole life, and especially during this time period, and I liked that her feelings about it weren't resolved by the end. And I REALLY loved the unexpected comparison of Josephine and Gertrude's relationship with Matthew and Marilla. Even though they've strayed off the path that was expected of them, they spent their lives happy with the people they loved, and what could be wrong with that? It's a powerful and crucial message for someone like Anne, who will always march to the beat of her own drummer.

My partner and I were just talking about this as we have just started Season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale. What he very smartly pointed out about shows based on books was, how long did it take the author to conceive/research/write/edit that book? How many drafts did it take? How many years did it take those half-formed ideas to really coalesce into a tight and compelling story? With really good books, the ones worth adapting, the author wasn't just writing for the sake of having a product to sell. They had a message, a point, an idea to explore that was meaningful to them and motivated the process. With the first season of a show like this, the entire season is already laid out for you through months and maybe years of dedicated, passionate labour by the author of the book (and betas and editors), plus the amount of pre-planning required to even pitch the idea of adapting it in the first place. But when you leave the book and try to do a season 2, you have a much more limited amount of time to write a new story from scratch that gives all the contracted actors something major to do, plan the visual style and presentation of the season, settle internal creative disagreements, make inevitable changes mandated by the network, and get filming so it can air by the next awards deadline. When you consider the amount of work required in the time given, there's basically no way a second season of a book-based show can ever live up to the first. I'm working my way through Season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale, and I'll give S2 of Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects a chance, but my expectations are not particularly high.

Hmm. I guess the beautiful thing about art is that there's no one "right answer," and it can mean anything to anyone. I didn't read any of the book, or behind-the-scenes interviews or anything, and I wasn't on the forums very much, so my impression comes entirely from what was on the screen. And I thought everything was there that needed to be, as long as you were watching the story that was being told, and not trying to twist it into the story you expect. I saw this whole series as Camille's descent into the darkness of her past. All of her coping mechanisms (the cutting, the music, the drinking, etc) on display, and the deeper she goes, and the more she interacts with the people who helped create that darkness, the clearer WE see how she became the person she is. Finally she descends so low that she discovers the base level where her family and the deaths are connected. Her mistake is that she's Adora's child, and she stops digging, and just accepts the easy (well, easier) answer, and takes Amma home with her. She is wobbling between kindness and Adora's smothering, and is definitely leaning toward kindness, but the fact that she does make Amma's care about her own recovery (and doesn't see what's been right in front of her face the whole time) shows that she is wobbling indeed. I'm not sure what you mean that the ending flushes away our feelings for Camille. It seems like it only reinforces what we already knew (She's a damaged person trying to do her best despite the ways her family messed her up). Can you explain a bit more? I'm also not sure what you mean by being "manipulated" by the creators into not seeing the girls as violent. The story was about Camille and the people of Wind Gap not seeing the girls as violent, but THEY had Bob Nash and John Keane to blame. We (and Camille) always had the strong impression that John/Bob were innocent, and I never thought I was supposed to suspect them. There weren't any red herrings thrown our way, everything was pretty much laid out for us, the show just didn't explicitly connect the dots until the end. What sort of manipulation do you mean? As to the song, it can't just be about Amma, because it's used at least once before in the series just by (and about) Camille, and that song specifically is one of her escape mechanisms. "I need your love" applies equally to ALL the women in her family (and maybe Alan too). I think it is THEIR song, not just Amma's (and yes, everything Amma did was about needing love, because she'd never experienced real love, only Adora's murderous co-dependency, and would do anything to secure even that twisted version of love all to herself, including killing the friends who were intruding on Adora's affections.). I wouldn't say it's definitely a signal that Camille zones out to Led Zeppelin, I kind of saw it as more of an invitation to the viewer to adopt Camille's escape mechanism and pretend we never learned the truth, content ourselves with the easy answer. Whether or not that's what the director had in mind, I don't know. I can only say what it meant to me. But whatever he did, it worked on me!

Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that the *forum* maintained wilful ignorance! I only meant the townspeople. I know there was complaining on the forum that a few episodes "wasted time" and did nothing to further the mystery, and my point was that the characters themselves worked against solving the mystery (the purpose of the story was examining the community's reaction to the murders, not the actual investigation (or, actually, it was about a woman's relationship with her family - the murders were just an extension of that, an inciting incident)), and therefore marketing it as a "mystery" was probably a poor choice for HBO. Really? I'd have thought a regular file would have done it. Removing them would be the challenge, but once they're out, they're just bones. They could probably even be sanded into shape. Not that I want to pull one of my own and find out!

Well, count me in the minority, because I loved it all the way through the ending! It seemed like the perfect encapsulation of what the show had been doing leading up to that point! Camille and Alan had an important commonality: Listening to music as a form of escapism, to avoid acknowledging and dealing with the reality that was in front of them. Alan ignored Adora's slow murder of her children (although, knowing what we now know about Amma, his decision to stop her leaving the house seems a bit less blatantly evil - who knows what he was avoiding knowing). Camille ignored and denied what had happened to her sister, even though part of her surely knew. She wouldn't submit to her mother's "care" as a child, she must have known it was bad for her, and Marian did, and so Camille blames herself for her sister's death. (And Adora takes every opportunity to blame her for it.) And the whole town of Wind Gap does the same thing. They hold a festival every year to lionize a young girl who was raped and tortured and still stayed true to her husband. They remember their dead girls the way they WANT to, rather than the way they are ("Purple was Natalie's favourite colour. Well, actually it was black, but that seemed too morbid."). They profess to care, but when tragedy strikes, they would rather gossip and ostracize the two people who are hurting the most, than actually look around and see things they don't want to see. They see Amma and her friends as harmless, because they believe young girls can only be harmless, victims, "good girls." No one wanted to think that gentle, fragile, delicate Adora could be capable of violence, so they looked for easier answers, no matter how cruel. To me, this was never a "mystery," but rather a psychological horror series. By the midpoint, I was half-sure we'd never find out who the killer is. It's almost beside the point. No progress was made on the case because no one WANTED to know the truth. They all just worked together to deny and bury it, and point fingers wherever it was easiest, and THAT'S where the real story lay. Camille faced the truth. She conquered her death wish. She allowed herself to be poisoned by Adora as penance for letting her sister die, and to try and save Amma. She finally received her mother's love, and then she fought for her own life at the end and emerged transformed. I loved that Curry came to save her, because it shows that unlike anyone else in her family, Camille DOES have someone who knows what real love is, and is willing to show up when everyone else rejects her. I also loved the quick reveal that Amma is the killer. It's further commentary on what we don't want to notice. All the clues WERE there, we just didn't want to see them. The way troubling behaviour in boys is often shrugged off as "boys being boys," Flynn is showing off the way troubling behaviour in girls is similarly ignored as "just acting out" because it CAN'T be anything real. The reveal reminds us that, like the residents of Wind Gap, we're STILL looking for easy answers and not fully confronting our assumptions about what girls are capable of. And the instant we get that uncomfortable information ("Don't tell Mama"), it's BOOM right into Zeppelin, right into Camille's escape from reality, the easy denial that anything is wrong, punctuated by the kinds of distressing flashes of reality that are likely going through Camillle's and Alan's minds all the time as they are trying to escape their worries through their headphones. The series in a nutshell. I saw Amma noticing Camille noticing it, and I believe this is Amma repeating old patterns. Mae wants to be a journalist like Camille, she writes on herself like Camille, and Amma sees this as Mae muscling in on Camille's affection, the way Natalie and Anne were muscling in on Adora's. It's funny - I loved this! Because this episode made the explicit psychological/mystical link between the dollhouse and the real house, I now can't picture Adora and the rest of the family walking around on that big ivory floor without imagining it made of the teeth of Amma's victims. A family haunted by the remnants of its own crimes, hidden in plain sight. As for the physics of the murders, I don't have a problem with that. They said Adora would have likely needed an accomplice to pull those teeth. Amma had at least two, and access to tools and equipment at the slaughterhouse to boot. I loved this series from start to finish, and while I usually prefer the book version to the screen version of any given story, I just can't work up any desire to read the novel, because I really think over-explaining things would ruin it for me. I just want to bask in the strange and awful alchemy of the series. Man, that was good.

Well... not to drudge up a years-old debate about sexism (Just kidding, I'm definitely dredging it up!), but I just caught up on season 2, and after watching 2 seasons of Fargo and 2 seasons of Legion, Noah Hawley's patterns are becoming very evident, and yes, sexism is a big one. The old adage is "Show, don't tell." I notice that Hawley likes to have his female characters TALK about feminism, or explain how they are oppressed or mistreated, etc... but always in a context that undercuts their message, or denies them real power. For example, Peggy's speech to Lou in the car about "having it all." She has a valid point about the expectations on women in the 70's, but the fact that she is an unhinged person attempting to use "sexism" as an excuse for manslaughter invites us to laugh at or dismiss her as cuckoo-pants. Or Floyd getting to talk a big game about being in charge, sending "3 men" to do a job and then going herself, only to ALSO fail spectacularly, in such a way that invites us to believe that maybe she was wrong to think she had what it took to be a leader. Maybe a man would have done a better job. Or Simone trying to get out from under her father's patriarchal, protective thumb, only to IMMEDIATELY fall prey to enemies of the family who intimidate and manipulate her easily, proving that her dad was right. Hawley seems to set women up on a path to empowerment, and then veer away at the last minute like he can't bear to go through with it (see Season 1, when Molly is sidelined at the last minute, and Colin Hanks gets the triumphant moment of closure with Malvo that SHE never gets with Lester, who she spent all season pursuing, or in Legion, where Kerry is established as the badass of the show, then spends the climactic battle of Season 1 huddled in a corner in need of rescue... or when Melanie tries to convince Syd that they don't owe loyalty to the men who have lied to and abandoned them only AFTER she is subject to psychic manipulation so her valid points just sound like evil mind control.). He'll put the right words in their mouths, but then invalidate them completely through the context he creates. The "show" undercuts the "tell" every time. Some other patterns and observations: - Did anyone else notice that most of the men who were killed this season got "blammo- dead in an instant" death scenes, and those who were wounded or had a more prolonged death got to make a brave speech about being ok, or got to have the last word and be "right" with their wives, or fought their attackers, whereas ALL the women who died got prolonged scenes of crying, begging for their lives, or extended suffering (Floyd getting gutted, gurgling in agony for a long moment staring into the eyes of her killer). I see this often in media, and I wish writers/directors would be more aware of it. Even in something like this where men and women are getting killed left and right, performative suffering falls disproportionately on women. - What's with all the dead moms? Molly has a dead mom, she meets Colin Hanks, who has a dead wife (and a daughter with a dead mom), and now we find out that Molly's MOM had a dead mom! Considering that women have a longer life expectancy than men, and the men left behind here work in the dangerous field of law enforcement, what the heck happened to all these moms?! - There was some ugly, discriminatory language used here that was not employed responsibly or with a sense of purpose. Can't you tell sometimes when you're watching a period piece, and the characters throw around some ugly racist/sexist dialogue that has nothing to do with the story, but would have been in common usage during that time period, and you just get the feeling that the time period is more of an EXCUSE to use that language than anything else? That was the feeling I got from this season. Yes, people in the 70's were more likely than us today to call a woman "a bitch" or express pride that the US is "over there, killing gooks." But there didn't seem to be much purpose or message behind the use of that language apart from "It's historically accurate, so we can!" It makes me uncomfortable when writers undercut the basic humanity of already-persecuted groups simply to create a sense of place. See Mad Men for how to do this properly (well, better, anyway). And all this makes it sound like I hated the season. I didn't! As the resident Feminazi of my household, I gotta call things when I see them, and Hawley's patterns become more and more noticeable as I watch his stuff, which makes me more and more uncomfortable, so I gotta get it off my chest. Apart from those features of the writing, I thought the season was tight, the performances spectacular, and the drama solid! I mean, there's something about watching Jesse Plemons dispose of a dead body that makes you feel like all is right with the world. You know? I'll be interested to see what happens in season 3!

I think NPR's Linda Holmes put it best when she said:

That was probably the worst "heroic death" sendoff I've ever seen for a semi-lead character. If it had been more of a soft exit ("I have to leave you for some vitally important reason and I don't know if we'll ever see each other again"), it would have been more ok to just tack it on to the end of an episode like that. But a heroic sacrifice? Very poorly done. It wasn't clear at all that that's what they were setting up, and honestly, the fight scene generated more suspense about the fate of Nicole and Peacemaker than Dolls. I would have loved to have seen an episode ABOUT Dolls to see him off, or at least have his death be meaningful to the arc of the show, rather than just taking out some demon who was inconvenient at the moment, like a total afterthought. Racially, it's also problematic, for the reasons others have stated so well. And what really gets me is how transparent the effort is to quickly replace him with another black character, just to ensure the minority is represented. I mean, you couldn't find anything for him to do pretty much all of last season, and he's a hunky covert agent who is also PART DRAGON! But instead of being able to just write him off and focus on the characters you DO know how to tell stories with, your cast is SO WHITE that you have to bring in a new character, and figure out what the heck to do with them, so you can blatantly fill your quota. This, to me, is the strongest argument (from a purely artistic perspective - there are many more to be made from a social one) for diverse casting from the get-go. I understand that Wynonna was cast to be white (probably because of privilege but let's give the benefit of the doubt and say it's because she's a descendant of white man Wyatt Earp), which means that all of her biological family has to be either white or mixed-race. But what about everyone else? When you start tallying up all the supporting/recurring/guest roles on the show that could have been cast non-white, the list gets long. (Nicole, Nedley, Champ, Bobo, that witch from season 1, Dolls' co-workers, just for a start, not to mention the vast majority of the Revenants... When actors of colour can't even get a job as a disposable bad guy, you're in REAL trouble). When you have a diverse cast from the start, you are free to focus on storytelling, without having to worry about tokenism and optics. (Yes, I'll even acknowledge that some unnecessary devotion to historical accuracy could lead to casting the Revenants and all other contemporaries of Wyatt Earp as white, but I think that only reinforces the point that the modern day characters, like Nicole, Nedley, and the citizens of Purgatory that we've met, are an ENORMOUS missed opportunity for diversity.) I'm just saying, I would LOVE to be having a conversation about "that shocking twist" or how much we'll miss Dolls, or whatever else I'm sure Emily Andras wants us to be talking about. Unfortunately, here we are, berating a show we want to love, for getting the simplest things frustratingly wrong.

I loved this movie so much! So glad I saw it! The "Equi-Sapiens" really worked for me. I think Riley (the director) was trying to make a comment about the wage gap and slavery. All the language used to describe the Equi-Sapiens (they're "stronger," they can "work harder" and have better "endurance" as they're basically just beasts of burden) was the same language used to describe African-Americans during the time of slavery. I think Riley was deliberately trying to make a link between wage-slavery and racially-based slavery. I thought he was saying that CEO's and major corporations are still doing everything they can today to right the wrongs of slavery - the "wrongs" of course being that the slaves rebelled and the practice was subsequently abolished. Every tiny little toe-hold they get, they will take, in order to crawl back to a place where they are able to force their employees to be nothing but cogs in their machine, streamlined for productivity rather than quality of human life. You can't escape that by trying to join the system, or getting promoted out up from the bottom, or hoping that you'll be the one to win the metaphorical lottery and not experience the worst of it, or trying to put others under your boots and using them to climb up the ladder. There will always be someone above you who only sees you as a tool for their own prosperity, and if there isn't, you've likely become the problem. The only way to resist is by standing together, taking care of each other, and making the bottom BETTER for everyone. Just like the way to combat slavery wasn't working hard and doing your time to try to earn your individual freedom... it was total abolition and the promise of safety and security for everyone (a promise that has yet to come through). And yes, the mutated horse-people were a highly exaggerated twist, but WorryFree facilities already exist overseas (more or less), only they're called sweatshops. And we are perfectly happy to have them make our clothes, phones, etc, just as long as we can buy the products for cheap and never have to see where they came from. It's not crazy, as the wage gap widens, to imagine similar conditions developing here. We're already basically there with the private prison system, as was mentioned upthread. After all, once you've decided the abuse of human beings is permissible as long as it improves productivity, where does that actually end? This movie had so much to say, and while I've seen some reviewers commenting that it seemed to have TOO much to say about too wide a range of topics, I think the opposite is true. I think it did an excellent job of taking a lot of disparate problems and ideas and showing how they are all tied together at the root, and only presented to us by those in power as separate things in order divide our attention and keep us demoralized and feeling like there is too much going wrong to make change possible. I think the scene at the party, where Cassius is made to "rap" for the guests, illustrated just how well he uses not only his "white voice" to get ahead at work, but also the innate skill of being able to quickly figure out exactly what others want, and offering it to them with (completely artificial) enthusiasm. That is a killer combination. Many people know how to use, say, watercolour paints. That doesn't mean they're all able to put those skills to use to the same effect. There was so much to love in this movie, and even though some was a bit rough, it was very powerful and well-constructed. I'm really looking forward to whatever Boots Riley does next!

I am trying to think of a series finale that did not end with the firm responding to takeover threats by hiring/firing partners and restructuring/rebranding the firm. I guess there was the one where the firm was under threat and Mike saved it by going to prison, which I respected at the time, but really, it was fundamentally the same thing. Even though the firm-in-danger stuff was same old, same old, the Jessica stuff was interesting enough that I might check out that spinoff, just to see what they do. For this show, however, I think this will serve as a series finale for me. This SO MUCH! I didn't mind that they were sidelined a bit, but we all know the reason they are leaving the show is that Markle is becoming actual royalty, and Adams used her departure as an excuse to sneak out himself. SHE was the reason they left the show. So why was the storyline all about MIKE getting some job offer and Rachel being thrown in to that like an afterthought? All the goodbyes were about Mike, all the talk was about what Mike wanted to do, and the resolution was about Mike moving on and moving up, when in real life it's Markle who is doing that. Rachel didn't even warrant an acknowledgement that she was offered the job at the Seattle firm on her own merits. The guy made it clear the job offer was for Mike, and then included Rachel because he knew Mike wouldn't go without her. It was WEIRD. The whole thing felt like a goodbye party thrown for the wrong person. I get that Mike was a lead character from the start, but when the real-life situation is so widely known, it was very odd for the show not to actually say a proper goodbye to Markle, when we all know she's the one leaving for good. (Does Adams have another project lined up? If not, it would not surprise me at all if we saw him pop back up once or twice for a guest appearance.) Did the producers have some sort of unresolved issues about Markle's departure? Because the subtext of this goodbye should have been, "We're happy for you, Megan!" And instead it was "We're pissed we had to write Mike out because of you!"