Cornhusker12

I just want to shoutout Charlie for this again. It was one of the only times I've appreciated the value of the immediate after-show. He was clearly pretty dejected and dazed in the moment, but was able to pull together a pretty incredible concession speech that gave full credit to Kenzie in an authentic and gracious way. Very cool.

Yeah this season is a big time dud. Makes me wonder if they intentionally held off on releasing season 6 until they had season 7 ready to roll asap haha

Bummer of a season so far, especially after being super excited after such a long wait. The AI thing isn't interesting and really just overshadows the catfishing aspect. The cast aren't very interesting or fun either.

Siiiigh I think Clay seems like a smart and earnest guy and a good person, but there are a lot of times when he has a very childlike naivete. I think he genuinely thought the day would go well, and his reasoning would make sense, and they would just happily move on to the post-show world together as a smiling success story couple. The scenes with his dad were really illuminating. Clay has talked about how he thinks his dad's past has affected his own ability to be in a relationship, but seeing him light up and go into a little bit of awe around his dad made a lot of things click. Again, he was a little bit like a kid, he hasn't quite come to grips with how much his dad/idol really did him and his family wrong. And you could see why! His dad really was "smooth" as Clay always said, but man, the way he was just speaking in platitudes and rattling off his own track accomplishments, it just bummed me out to see Clay lapping it all up. Anyway, people usually say this in a condescending way but I mean it sincerely - I hope Clay really does go to therapy! Haha I think his heart is in the right place, and there are some "issues" that stick out like a sore thumb that could probably change his life quite a bit. Maybe even go with his dad! I think there is a lot of love there, but also a lot of weirdness and past situations that need to be revisited and ironed out for both of them. ...Wait what show is this again?

This is exactly how I read it too. To me, it was extremely clear that she was the one trying very hard to connect with him, whether through physical touch or conversation or even unpacking/setting up their apartment together, and he was unfortunately checked out. Waking up your fiance at 1:30 am when she didn't know where you were and she had to wake up at 5, and expecting some cuddling or intimate time, doesn't count... haha. Unfortunately from what we saw on the show it does seem like he kinda got spooked on his relationship after spending time with Clay and AD and realizing the real-life implications of being in a mixed-race couple. The strange breakup made it look like he was looking for a quick and easy reason to break it off. I admired the way they both talked about race in the brief times we saw them discuss it, but apparently it would have taken quite a bit more to make it work as a couple. As someone else said, if being with a Black woman was extremely important to him that's his prerogative and I wouldn't begrudge him for that, but if that was the case he shouldn't have gone on this particular show.

I read it a little differently... there's no doubt Chelsea is insecure and that is making her and Jimmy a very bad match, but I think most of the blame falls on Jimmy being SO weird and now having any idea how to talk to fellow humans haha. He keeps saying the words "we have the best connection, I am so happy, I'm the happiest out of anybody" but zero of his actions are matching those words. We've seen him mention looks multiple times already, he turned into a cartoon wolf around AD, which clearly made Chelsea insecure, so she kinda played into it to NOT seem insecure, which backfired... but it was Jimmy who decided to go stammer at AD for who knows how long, with a drunken aloof grin on his face, while Chelsea just waited and waited. I feel like after Chelsea piggybacked off his comment and did her own catcall, Jimmy could've just been like "we're all so lucky, everybody here is smokin hot!" or something and totally diffused the situation. Instead he went and draped himself over AD like a lovesick (horny) puppy under the guise of apologizing. On the topic of objectifying AD, I was really turned off by Laura's "bean dip" thing... If I remember right, her fiance (Jeremy?) was like "so Laura told me to go bean dip you, I don't even know what it means, she said you would know what it meant...?" which very understandably made AD and Clay weirded out, and then Laura tried to blame the entire thing on Jeremy, as if he made an inappropriate joke...? Even though she was the one who told him to bring it up? I thought I was gonna like Laura, I figured she might be light and funny in the group settings, but that was messed up and weird. I don't like the vibe between her and Jeremy.

Absolutely true, however I just think the show itself would be more effective to show that in its storytelling rather than expect the audience to fill in the blanks with their own historical knowledge. BoB obviously did this incredibly well throughout the entire series, and even The Pacific did it pretty well, with Sledge in particular.

Yeah that's a great point, it's almost as if there is no context outside of what we're seeing on our screens at that very moment. These guys are heroic pilots because... they're heroic pilots! They're friends because... they're friends! The missions are happening because... they are the missions! It's all important because... it's important! One thing I find really interesting and kinda harrowing is that this show seems to have made a point to cast some actors who are the actual age of a lot of the soldiers in WW2, AKA late teens and early 20s. The character who is now going to try to escape from Belgium + his buddies looked like children. Most war depictions make the choice to cast guys who all look like full grown men for obvious reasons, but I appreciate that this show is changing that a bit. Just unbelievable how young so many of those guys were in real life. EDIT: Ironically that actor who plays Quinn is actually 26 haha but man, he looks much younger in the show.

Hmmm I'm going to watch it all, but I'm still not sure how much I like it after two episodes. I think it's already a little repetitive, which makes sense considering the subject matter, but I'm curious how that will play over 9 episodes. I think a big component that is missing is the historical context that BoB and The Pacific both had at the beginning of each episode. I'm a fairly decent amateur WW2 buff (for my generation anyway - I'm 34), so I knew the gist going in, but my wife kept being curious where/when things were happening, and what the stakes were at that time of the war, things like that. I think that perspective would've helped some of the issues, such as some bland characterizations. I was nervous about Austin Butler, luckily he hasn't bugged me but he also just doesn't really bring anything to the table in the role of Buck. Callum Turner on the other hand (Bucky), is much better in my opinion, but I still don't really get a sense of why Buck and Bucky share a bond. To compare it to BoB, it seems like their relationship should be somewhat similar to Winters/Nixon (the responsible boy scout and the cynical drunk with a heart of gold) but we haven't quite gotten that dynamic. One of the things that kept The Pacific from hitting as hard as BoB was the dialogue and characterizations that seemed very romanticized and almost soapy. So far I think MotA is working better because we're focusing on one group of guys, but I still feel a little bit of that soapiness too much. Many of the characters in The Pacific (and possibly MotA as well) seemed like modern actors reciting borderline-corny lines on a movie set. The characters in Band of Brothers seemed like they were channeling the real people they were portraying. Now for the good - The flying sequences are incredible. I'm usually drawn more toward ground war stories because it's just easier to put myself in their shoes and follow the action, but this show is doing an amazing job at recreating the feeling of being in these planes. I can't claim to know the ins and outs like a historian, but the attention to detail the show seems to have is definitely pulling me into those scenes. I feel the cramped space, I feel the freezing cold, I feel the rickety plane shaking, and it helps the show create that camaraderie for the characters too. When it goes from a mission to an interrogation to blowing off steam at the bar while they wait to do it all over again, you feel how those guys are experiencing something totally life-altering together as a group. Anyway, I'm excited to see where it goes! I am under no illusion that it'll be as good as Band Of Brothers, but it's definitely worth a watch for me and it will be a good thing for TV in general for a show like this to be good and succeed, so I'm definitely rooting for it to keep building into something special.

Haha I think they mentioned something about "Josh will handle the evening news" a couple times when Bradley has been absent for whatever reason, but I have no idea who Josh is... Have we met him or is he an offscreen character like Norm's wife on Cheers?

This season is an absolute rollercoaster haha. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be rooting for Milton and Lydia the most...

Agree! I want a Milton + Josh spin off. They were cracking me up for some reason haha.

Aaliyah is a saint, I'm still shook by that absolute bomb drop haha :( Her and Lydia's friendship seemed so incredible, my wife even said "THEY'RE THE REAL LOVE STORY" but then... damn. Very hard to see any other angle other than she cozied up to Aaliyah as a way to live vicariously through her with Uche, or something weird like that. The way she rattled off all of those little facts about him, sheeeesh. Poor Aaliyah. Uche is extremely awkward, I still can't really put my finger on him. There are times when he seems like a total dick, and then other times when he seems like he legitimately can't read people/situations correctly and knows that he needs to back off and apologize after the fact. I dunno, I'm interested to see what the hell happens with these three. One thing I feel pretty certain about is that Lydia and Milton have zero future together haha. Poor guy got swept into her whirlwind I think.

Agree. Sally was always SO insecure and self-absorbed, and in previous seasons we saw how much she wanted others to view her as someone who (literally) stood up for herself, left the violent man in her life behind, and in her tv show retelling, saved her child from the violent man in her life too. In that moment, she finally lived up to the person she always wanted (and pretended) to be. Obviously that doesn't miraculously make her a great person, or a great mom, ESPECIALLY when you factor in the incredible trauma and terror she had gone through in the past 8 years since learning about Barry, killing someone, and then living a bizarre awful fake existence on the run. But it was a moment of clarity! I'd like to think she AT LEAST was able to build a relatively normal, if not perfect or even happy, life from that point with John.

This is actually where my mind went too, but I don't think we'll ever know for sure!