AudienceofOne

My problem was that I wasn't entirely sure why Margot was being so vicious with Josh. Or why Margot's development into the rule of Fillory seems to have backslid. Maybe she feels insecure and overwhelmed? But I don't think we got enough information to inform us on any of her behaviour this episode. It all seemed rushed.

Of course but the point is not that he ate it, the point is that he chose to eat it. He went to the meeting and he ate it after letting Hades into his head. I find it hard to accept at face value that Penny 40 is telling the truth about Penny 23 needing to be in the timeline for the greater good and/or that the woman will die anyway. Hades no doubt has his own agenda and Penny 40s words and motivations are therefore suspect.

I found the writing for this episode weirdly clunky and the whole thing a bit disjointed. I think it might have tried to cover too much ground in too many plot lines. None of the moments got to breathe. Margo in particular seemed to be almost bipolar in her mood changes because we were thrown into each scene so quickly. I think the biggest question from all of this was Penny 40 - can he be trusted now he ate the cupcake? I kind of get why we haven't seen him yet this season because our instinct is to think he's one of the "good" guys. But I suspect he's drunk the Underworld version of the Kool Aid. I don't think Penny 23 should have accepted his pronouncements on things. But then Penny has always made bad decisions - it's kind of his thing - so I guess this tracks.

That was a really good season of television. It was interesting, well-acted and thoughtful. If I have a problem, it's that I can't quite get my brain around what the show is actually about. And I don't meant that as a reflection of the plot - I didn't find the plot hard to follow. Or about the underpinning themes - they're fine too. But I feel like the show is circling around a broader point that I'm not seeing. In particular, they did some work setting up the characters for season 2 that felt a bit disjointed and not entirely supported by the characterisations. This show is developing a bit of an issue with its female characters, especially with Claire and The Annoyer but also with Emily as well. When all your female characters are beautiful, mysterious and untrustworthy you have a Woman Problem. I don't want to use the M word but if I wanted to I probably could. This is a real issue with the spy genre and any hope I may have that they'd eliminate it by 2019 is long since dead. I don't agree this was 'smart'. Closing your borders never works really. You always need to keep the lines of communication open. This just makes it less likely they'll come to a resolution and more likely it'll end in war. Since war between the two sides is essentially a war between ourselves, this makes Pope's statement about this being a (social) Darwinian fight for survival interesting (I can't even quote his misunderstanding of evolution without caveating it - God this philosophy is destructive). For some people, even the existence of an Other is enough to scare them to violence. Even if those people are so like us as to be identical. I feel like setting this in Berlin really is a masterstroke. The line between the two Germany's was literally a divide between us and us in the same way this is and any hatred of the Other was ultimately a hatred of Us. In this, the show is doing a critique of racism and bigotry extremely well by making the Other outside the Wall literally ourselves. The Glass, Darkly. Overall, this is a good show and I'm looking forward to season 2.

The other side doesn't want to invade. This is entirely a rogue operation. I thought (and I could be wrong) that they want to make it look like our side is invading so Prime World will retaliate. That way they can get the revenge they wanted for what they believe is Alpha's biowarfare. If their goal is war between the two sides then, either way, I suspect they now have it. The show is far too slow moving and introspective to last for long (she says with some hindsight).

I was finding this episode tedious until the Howard showdown. That was so fantastic. I really love this exploration of what makes them the same and what makes them different. And it all comes down to how they deal with conflict. Since that is a learned behaviour, it makes me wonder why they deal with it so differently. I agree. But it doesn't make The Annoyer any less annoying. The stale characterisation, the cliches, the melodramatic tone of all her scenes.

Quayle's inherent nature as an over-coddled entitled child promoted past his level of competency was already well enough established that I wasn't at all surprised. This is exactly what a spoilt little man-boy would do when he realises his wife betrayed him - even though he betrays her every time he bangs a hooker. The big picture is nowhere near as important as his fragile self-esteem. So of course he gets drunk and confronts her and then chooses entirely to believe her when she says the cyanide pill is a dud. Count me in as one who found this episode tiresome. I understand why it had to be this way - anything else would have stepped on the reveal of Quayle's wife being the mole or taken focus away in the last few episodes of the season. But it was a slog nonetheless.

While I'm very late to this party, I will be calling her The Annoyer from now on. This this and this. I'm all for weird French films but I don't need one of them running through my scifi. Especially since this weird French film is boring. Oh wait, all weird French films are boring - even those with long purposeless lesbian sex scenes in them. My problem is that I ff'd through the first scene because I thought it served no purpose and then missed that Baldwin was still alive. So I felt I should watch this one in case something interesting happened. And... it didn't. But there was an awful lot of boobs. Do they really think people won't watch the show if there aren't boobs? Because, nobody stays watching a show they hate just for boobs. And nobody turns off a show they are enjoying because of a lack of them.

Quayle in that scene was me during that scene. JUST ANSWER THE DAMN QUESTIONS. This is influenza, not the plague. Trust me, a flu outbreak of this kind would be devastating because flu is passed directly from person to person, is airborne and mutates quickly. Flu viruses are hands down the most dangerous pathogens in the world. That's why we put so much time and effort into the annual flu vaccine to try to ensure flu outbreaks don't spread.

I loved that final scene. I kind of like that Prime manipulated Alpha into switching with him but while he's cooped up in Alpha's life, Alpha is swanning around the Other Side. I imagine finding out that Prime lied about Emily would have made him wonder what else he lied about and he's intelligent enough to go and find out. Mind you, after typing that ridiculous sentence I realise I'm once again watching one of "these shows".

I've always liked the idea of Quentin/ Elliot but I'm not entirely sure me liking Quentin/Elliot comes from a place of narrative coherence and a belief they'd make a great couple or an utterly shallow response to how hot their hookup scene was. That being said, I really like the way the show has dealt with the whole issue especially in acknowledging that Q is not gay or really bi but just loves Elliot. Q having the courage to be honest about his feelings was exceptionally brave and Elliot having that as his moment of greatest regret was so poignant. A succession of images of him being a coward culminating in his ultimate cowardice. And yet Elliot is still utterly sympathetic because of his self-awareness. The strength of the writing in this show continually astounds and impresses me - especially since this is season 4. I completely agree. Unfortunately for you, I suspect this season will be about them building monster Elliot's body to get Elliot back and season 5 will be about them dealing with the aftermath of that decision. Alice's betrayal was no worse than Julia's 15 other betrayals and she's bouncing around as part of the group so I don't see why Alice wouldn't be forgiven. Especially since Julia's betrayals were utterly self-serving while Alice only betrayed them to save Quentin. Which is to say, everyone has done the wrong thing at some point and forgiveness is part of what the show is about. I'll be pretty bloody pissed if Alice is the only one who get punished - again. Frankly, I don't know why the character remains the writers' punching bag. On the subjects of characters - where the hell is Original Recipe Penny?

I knew that Prime Howard was grooming Alpha Howard for something so when he sent him back in his place I groaned. Hopefully he is acting for the greater good and not doing something as simple as stealing Alpha's life. Either way, he clearly knew that they'd revoke his visa and insist on him going back and he needed Alpha to be at a point where he'd accept the switch. Some people might find the East/West Berlin analogy here to be a bit heavy handed but I personally think it works extremely well. Setting it in Berlin is the show's masterstroke for me.

As everyone said, this was nowhere near as strong as the first episode. It substituted action for plot. I imagine the time it took exploring how small things can lead the same person to have radically different lives will help later. But Nadia's story just wasn't that interesting. Still, this is clearly a show for slow world building and I'm personally grateful they're not spelling everything out.

While one episode is not enough to judge a series on, I really enjoyed this and wonder how I missed this little gem. I've been missing, thoughtful, paced ambiguous scifi and this fits the bill. So I maybe late to this party but here goes.

Summer Bishil and Trevor Einhorn just killed me this episode. Considering that American storytelling can be too plot focussed and sometimes truncate emotional arcs, the emotions they were able to bring to their roles were just so poignant and so on-point. And meanwhile Hale Appleman is still there just blowing me away every week. Apropos of nothing, I just found out that Trevor Einhorn was Frederick Crane on Frasier. Woah.

When you get to the end of an episode of television you should probably remember what happened in said episode, right? Oh, right. Pregnancy! I remember that. The flash forward plot line makes zero sense to me. ZERO. To the point that I'm not sure if it's the show, me, or the empty gin bottle. Or possibly all three. Also, it has no camera to LOOK and see who's at the door. You have to open it to see them. Which defeats the entire purpose of a security system. And she didn't programme in Williams' grandparents but that may have just been passive aggressiveness. In his defence, he did kind of try. And he said Oliver wasn't listening to him and only responded with monologues. And then Oliver responded by yelling at him and monologuing about responsibility. I agree. William was just behaving like a teenager.

There is so much continuity in every episode of this show that I realise I need a rewatch. It's so rare to watch a show like this and have everything that happens be a true culmination of everything that happened before. Alice's arc, in particular, is so tragic but so inevitable and it's happening somewhere the main gang can't see.

To think I actually liked him when he was first introduced! An enthused, geeky, openly-gay character who brought such zest to every scene. Now he's just an annoying, one-note tone ruiner.

"Why did you lie, William?" "To see if my so-called parents cared enough to notice"

God, that whole interview with Oliver Queen wrestling with the complexities of his past while trying to do right by his sister and atone for his family's sins is just so completely Oliver Queen and HOLY SHIT, PEOPLE. HE'S THE BEST PERSON ON THIS SHOW. Forget back stories and past pain and tsundere nonsense. Oliver Queen is an exceptional human being. This episode suddenly highlighted to me the biggest fundamental problem of this show - and not just this season. Oliver Queen is a human being who tries hard every single day to be better. And nobody gives him credit for it - not even the writers. The only person who does is Felicity and that's why we only want to see the story of Oliver and Felicity. Because they are by far the two best people on this show. The only other people that came close are Sarah and Quentin and, hey, they're gone. And this is the biggest problem. And it's a fundamental one. I don't see them fixing it soon.

Man, what they did with Dean Fogg this episode was just fantastic. He made me happy, made me sad, made me laugh and (almost) made me cry. It really was some beautiful work. This show is so frequently on point that I find it amazing it's coming from this network.

One episode of The Magicians is never enough Magicians. I always decide I'm going to wait to binge watch the whole season and then crack and start live watching it. This year was no exception. I pretty much loved everything they're doing with every character and that's all I have to say right now.

This episode just re-enforced that Amell is doing some sort of retirement acting - literally phoning it in while they attempt (unsuccessfully) to build a new show they can still call Arrow. They kind of suck at it, which makes me question how they managed to get us watching this in the first place. IMHO, he's already left. No fight scenes, no location shots, no part of the main plot. He's just there to hand the baton to whomever they can finally get us invested in. This week it's Emiko. She didn't impress me much. No. "So this is about revenge? No, this is about justice! Something that's in short supply in this city." Good Lordy Lord. Who wrote this nonsense? What database was she comparing the scan to? Or did she just opt for a comparison of Oliver's DNA first on the assumption that green leather is genetic. Oh God, this. The room was full of childhood memorabilia! And are we honestly saying that Oliver wouldn't have had Felicity hunt down every secret storage unit by now? Didn't she already do that in season 1 with the Gambit? No that pretty well sums it up. The thing is, this episode wasn't that bad in the overall scheme of things. Diaz remains an uninspired antagonist, NTA remain assholes, the flash forwards remain unconvincing, the new person who discovered vigilantism who they're trying to convert to the wonders of team hood is still there - whoever it happens to be this week- and Olicity remains criminally underused. Welcome to the last three seasons. It's just we're all a bit tired of it now. Wait, didn't I say I was going to drop this by now? Why haven't I dropped this? God, this is like Teen Wolf. Just cancel it already so I can be done.

Honestly, at this point I just ignore them. The statement is meaningless. The repetition is almost cult like. I have no idea why these people would watch any form of science fiction since it's an entire genre devoted to critically examining the world we live in and asking hard questions about it.