BaskingsharkGTX

I completely forgot about Bianca - I think you might be right or at the very least they're tied. Actually, there's also Stacey Dash who was 30-ish when she played Dionne in Clueless and the spin-off TV series.

That's really interesting because I really don't see the two of them as being similar at all.

So I have discovered that Chase Stokes is, ahem, 27. This beats Benjamin McKenzie (who was 26 when he was cast as 16-year-old Ryan on The OC) but not, in fact, Penn Badgely who was 21 when cast as Dan Humphrey or Adam Brody (24 when he started playing Seth). Still doesn't beat Gabrielle Carteris, though. Thirty years later, she still remains the undisputed reigning Queen of Very Old Teenagers (29 playing 16).

"I was young and in love once. It was a disaster." Come now, salty old sea-dog who randomly and fortuitously rescued our heroes and who randomly and fortuitously happens to be headed for Nassau where the $400 million in GOLD that our teenage heroes found and then had stolen from them by evil Ward randomly and fortuitously also happens to be, I wouldn't call this a disaster per se. Demented, maybe, but it was entertaining as all hell! There better be a season two!!!!!

It is almost perverse how much I'm enjoying this show. It's almost like one of the old series the Children's Film Foundation used to make in England about wholesome young people who go on holiday and stumble onto/stop smuggling operations and suchlike except this has graphic murder, violence, sex, weed and bikini cocaine parties! Aw Topper, look at you switching sides and coming through for John B and Sarah. Way to prove you're good for something other than reminding us why frosted tips went out of style the first time.

Ward, Ward, Ward. You didn't think to just check that Big John was actually dead, call Mayday and say he just slipped, fell over and banged his head? All you'd have had to do then was go back to the island, get rid of John B, either by fostering him or kicking him into the foster system. Either way, you could then have just gotten hold of all the research Big John had done and figured it all out at your leisure. That is some motor John B has installed in his VW Microbus given that it can overtake a plane... This show is dumb as all hell but I am entertained by it like nothing else I've seen in forever. JJ saying that if he was the voice of reason they were really in trouble was the best legit good moment. He's still my favorite.

And then there was episode 7. While I was watching this, I first thought it would be fun to talk about Barry the dumbass drug dealer who is too stupid to; (a) Take backup when trying to rob five stupid teenagers of their giant gold ingot(!) (b) Notice that one of his hostages has just disappeared. (c) Manage to avoid getting his ass handed to him by the five stupid teenagers(!) he is trying to rob of their giant gold ingot(!) And yet, everyone is apparently still terrified of this idiot. Sarah the Kook Princess bashed his head in five times with his own car door. And then he went to the country club and admitted that to Topper and Rafe and the other one and they didn't laugh in his face which is exactly what I would have done, even though they have tried to drown people, beat them to death with golf clubs and push them off towers, all of which is ten times worse than anything Barry has done thus far in the show. But no, Barry is still apparently the scariest thing on the island. The only person with half a brain when it came to Barry was JJ. I have no idea why they all poured so much cold water on his suggestion that if Barry resurfaced, "we punch him in the throat" because that sounded like a pretty freaking effective way to deal with Barry to me. Oh, and my rewrite of that one scene would go something like this; RAFE: "The guy that you robbed is a bad man, Sarah. He gave me this. He gave me this for being late on a payment!" SARAH: "Ooooooh really, Rafe? Well I'm your little sister and I just bashed his head in with his own car door so that must mean that you are a complete and utter spineless lump of stupid. Now why don't you pack up your hideous pastel shirts, late 1980's haircut, fuck off and don't give me shit about 'I'm gonna run things' when you can't even deal with freaking BARRY!" Not to mention that last episode, Ward also kicked Barry's ass, so at this point, Rafe is the only family member - stepmom aside - who isn't capable of kicking Barry's ass... There should just be a running gag in the show where Barry pops up and demands his money and whoever is in the scene then just beats the crap out of him unless it's Rafe who remains inexplicably terrified of him. After that I thought it would be fun to talk about the teenage(!) boys who say things like; "I'm not the one corrupting this girl from a prominent family!" and; "You said Redfield, did you not?" Because this is exactly how teenagers(!) talk. In a Jane Austen novel. But then JJ bought a disco hot tub and called it The Cat's Ass. And nothing else mattered. Not even John B straight up claiming to be sixteen. Or showing Sarah his bell tower. Or Ward straight-facedly pointing out to John B that he was fishing with the Rhododendron King and this was a big deal. Or these idiots trying to sell a $50,000 gold ingot at a shitty run down ghetto pawn shop and expecting to be given this amount in cash on the spot. Not even Pope yelling at JJ that he could have spent the money on equipment to help them get the rest of the $400 million in gold that they, the teenagers(!), just found in the basement of the scary lady's house. None of that mattered. None of it at all. Just the hot tub. Just The Cat's Ass. The Cat's Ass is everything. I am going to put this down to youthful naivete, hope the adults are in on the joke and be thankful for it all. Because if they didn't play it 100% straight I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be half as funny...

You will love what happens to him in episode 6. Even when JJ is getting locked up in jail, his hair is masterfully tousled.

OK, so Netflix can fugheddabout The Crown and Altered Carbon and Stranger Things and that show with Jane Levy and the person who claims to be Renee Zellweger in it, Episode 6 of this is the single - perhaps only since my opinion of 99% of their output is low AF - greatest thing they have produced since Bojack went all turgid and mopey and I got fed up with it. I don't think I've laughed this much at anything (both intentionally and unintentionally) in forever. Highlights; The least-believable part of JJ's horror story was that his asshole father would actually hire a babysitter for him instead of just, I don't know, tying him to his bed with barbed wire. Doofus John B naively insisting that everything would be fine with Kiara and Sarah and the confrontation scene which followed. This bit was legit (and intentionally) awesome and hilarious. And Pope you are correct. John B is indeed a complete and total idiot. "Your daughter's banging a pogue, sir!" <Choking Noises> Wardy Cohen picking up Topper by the neck. And kicking the crap out of the drug dealer. Everyone in this is so ridiculously, over-the-top, cartoonishly violent. JJ's father punches him in the face and blood spatters all over the car*!!! Kiara stops a fight by torching a cinema screen and it goes up in flames!!!!! The water polo team might have beaten up Seth and Ryan but they never tried to drown them or beat them to death with golf clubs. Welcome to the OB, bitch! This is how it's done in Outer Banks! *it should be noted that in amongst the wacky campy nuttiness, Rudy Pankow is really very good at making you feel desperately sorry for JJ who clearly needs his own Sandy Cohen to come along. "It's too late, Leon!!!!" And the fire poker walking stick. It was a FIRE POKER! And when she walked straight past the girls. This was way jump-scarier and far, far funnier than anything Blumhouse has done in years. I bet this show was fun to make and I can't help but think that the reason it's so watchable is that the cast have genuinely great chemistry and are so game for trying to sell seemingly anything the writers throw at them. I have no idea how Chase Stokes managed to play that scene where he found THE JAWBONE and then THE GOLD straight or how Wardy and Topper didn't burst into hysterical laughter during the neck-lift sequence, but kudos. At some point, if Celebrity Deathmatch is rebooted for TV characters, Ryan Atwood, John B and Spencer James are going to have to face off to decide once and for all who is the king of the photogenic but impoverished teenage boys in their mid-twenties who are taken to live in ultra-fancy places.

This show is insane and ridiculous yet it remains so likable. Who lives like this and wants to become The Rhododendron King of the Country Club or whatever the hell Sarah's father was getting coronated as? This stopped just short of going full Wicker Man. I half expected them to burn JJ as a sacrifice to the Summer Solstice. Also, is there something in the water in this town that makes moms run off? Everybody except Kiara lives with their dad who is either single (John, Pope, JJ) or has a second wife (Sarah). John mentions his dad blowing their rent money on treasure hunting. If they don't own that charming rustic shabby-chic beachfront shanty house and his dad has been gone 9 months, how is he paying the rent still? Especially since Sarah's dad fired him. For that matter, how does he afford hair product since what he must spend on that is probably about 4x his monthly rent? I guess he saves on the Hawaiian shirts by only buying seconds with missing buttons.

Everyone on this show has the BEST hair.

Was the pitch for this show The Goonies meets The OC? While it is not exactly the greatest writing of all time and I don't really know what audience this is aimed at, it is... engaging.

Rufus and the actor who play him are both autistic. The ice cream boy is just badly written.

Well that was just wretched in every possible way. Well done, Netflix, for wasting some (more) interesting source material on this bland, dull, miserably-written show. I particularly enjoyed the clunktastic HURR DURR HERE'S WHUT WUZ RILLY HAPPENIN ALL ALONG HYUK HYUK recap at the end of the episode where we learned how Demon Dodge was really pulling the wool over all their eyes the whole time which anyone could have guessed was happening except, apparently, the bunch of dullards on screen. The scenes with the Scooby Savini(?) Gang all working together for the first-ish time made me miss Buffy's writing so much it almost hurt. 90% of these characters are so flat they could have been slipped under the OMG OMEGA DOOR and the others are just painfully cringe. I'm looking at you, inexplicably-British horror movie guy whose name I can't be bothered to remember. I would take Riley and the Initiative over this lot in a heartbeat. I was mildly amused by the fact that Dodge (in various forms) has now made out with both of the Locke siblings who are of make-outable-with age. I would love to see them discover this fact. Why is the writing on these shows so bad? Are Netflix's development periods incredibly short or something? I have been there and dealt with interfering network execs blah blah blah but there is really no excuse for this. And it happens time and time again. It is still less dreadful than Nancy Drew I guess. And if there is to be a next season, someone needs to take everyone in the music department and throw them into the freaking blue bad CGI demon realm with glowing demon possession bullets whatever the fuck it is. Stop with the Christmas music already.

Dear Netflix, There are these people called Script Editors. Sometimes also known as Story Editors. They give notes and make scripts not suck. Please hire them more. A lot more. Regards, BaskingsharkGTX

Uh, so is the Ghost Key still in the door? Or did they find it and take it out? Because otherwise everyone who walks through that door turns into a ghost now, right? Also how come Bode can fly through walls as a ghost, but Sam can't fly through the wall and get back into his body? OK, so I get that if the door with the key in it is closed the ghosty person probably can't come back through it, but what's to stop him going back another way? Like through the wall next to the door? I made the mistake of reading the comics this show is based on. They are SO much better. Interestingly, the actors who were cast when this was going to be on Hulu and who were then let go and replaced by this cast (except the little boy who plays Bode who is the only one they kept) look much more like their comic counterparts. This cast was definitely chosen to be more generically pretty though.

God these characters are stupid. And characterless. I think this was the worst episode so far. Not a single thing Tyler did rang true and Scot, I know Kinsey is annoying AF and you were angry but did none of the rest of you think to check what the deal was with the tide? I'm guessing this is the final episode for both Scot and Jackie.

Wow, Kinsey. Maybe they need to find the Not Being An Obnoxious Bitch key.

While this show is arguably not very good it's an enjoyable enough time-passer and I'm intrigued enough to find out what the deal is with the keys. I wish the characters were a bit less cardboard and I'm not sure who the audience is supposed to be. At times it feels like a Kingian horror but it's not really horrific enough for adults yet it also has cursing and a demon(?) who so it's not really for kids either. The score is also inappropriately Christmassy. Also, I'm confused as to how they all get around this town. At one point they all drive to school with Javi, then Tyler has a car in one scene, then it disappears then everybody seems to walk everywhere.

It did. This was so tipping the hat to the Emma Peel introduction episode, The Town of No Return (the episode which was filmed twice, first with Elizabeth Shepherd as Emma Peel, then re-shot with Diana Rigg when Shepherd was fired). So far I am loving Pennyworth! There are a few touches I'd do a bit differently, but overall it's freaking fantastic. Poor Esme. She was a bit of a shrinking violet sometimes, but I liked her and I thought she humanized Alfie. It will be interesting to see what he becomes like now she's gone. I hope not having her to play off of doesn't diminish things.

I'm a little hard on things. I was once told I was too soft on scripts as a reader because I was willing to read past page 3 so maybe it stems from that 😉 I wiki-watched the rest of it and it doesn't seem like much happens.

Me too. He was my favorite and easily the most interesting character this season. He was pretty doomed though. As one who hated the Matt Damon Talented Mr. Ripley, I gotta say Penn B would have made a MUCH better Ripley.

He was burned out on construction work after meticulously constructing his glass cage (including lifting the large, heavy glass walls into place) all by himself.

No wonder he was broke if he had to buy a glass cage. Or ship one.

Hmmm. That wasn't nearly as good as Season One and soooo much less original, but it was still enjoyable enough. I also don't think Joe's backstory explains his psychosis and I found Love a bit underwhelming too. Still, in Episode One I never thought that Forty Quinn would end up being a tragic character so it did pack some surprises. The last scene was funny too. Should be interesting to see what happens to Joe in suburbia. I still want to know how the glass cage got to LA.