BaskingsharkGTX

He's definitely still shady, but IIRC, in TLG he was actually the dad of Sutton's best friend Mads rather than the twins? Speaking of friends, I also laughed when Alicia said she wanted to introduce Danny to her friends. Alicia, based on what we've seen, you don't have any friends. You, like all the other characters, spend all your time hanging out with your family, even the members you don't seem to like. Maybe "Codependent Hotel" would be a better title... I know logic is not the most frequent visitor to this show, but how come the cops aren't interested in interviewing Helen, the GH employee who quit for a job at the hotel which collapsed and then suddenly quit working there and returned to her former employer right before the collapse?

Adrian Pasdar plays Felix and Shalim Ortiz plays Mateo.

This is the silliest freaking show. I swear that if it wasn't so damn easy to watch and the actors weren't so pretty/engaging/amusing, I would be done done done and tearing it to bits. It has to be the most unrealistic portrayal of the cut-throat world of running a high-end luxury hotel EVER. I love how Gigi is offhandedly like "Oh Alicia, we have a wedding at the end of the week, I could use a little help planning it, ya think you could help out?" while they're at family dinner/breakfast/whatever. Uh, isn't that her job? Don't you have meetings to discuss things like this? And as somebody upthread said, everyone in it is so nice. Amanda from old school Melrose Place would literally eat all these people for breakfast and pick her teeth with their bones. I'm glad someone else thinks Alicia behaves like a 12-year-old. You run the damn events. Behave like an adult and get staff to paint the freaking flowers. Welcome to the Peggy Bundy One-Stop Emporium for Used Luxury Vehicles and Dirty Money. I did enjoy that hair gel crack though. The Lying Game was the greatest, most completely and utterly batshit insane series ever. And it ended on the most amazing cliffhanger where the twins' dad was about to have to explain to the mom literally every single ridiculous thing that had happened across the entire season, including their adopted daughter's twin sister pretending to be her and murder and double-crossing and lying and God-knows-what because all this had gone on around her and she knew about NONE of it. This would have been the absolute greatest monologue in the history of idiotic teen soaps, but Adrian Pasdar ruined it by getting attacked on the roof of the hotel they were in and crashing through the skylight and landing on their table. And then it got cancelled.

I wondered this too. His uniform nametag just says "Danny".

This show is objectively terrible but I am still hugely enjoying it and am not hatewatching in the slightest, which makes me feel quite unlike myself. So it's doing something right. I do not believe for one single moment that Carolina is an actual person who has a life when she's not onscreen. Do she and Yoli have any other friends at all? It did strike me that Santiago's "I'm not ashamed of you/I just can't live with looking at your leg and knowing it was my fault" speech to Javi was pretty much exactly the same storylining as Gigi telling Yoli she pushed her away because she reminded her of Adrian Pasdar. Helen appearing under the massage table was hilarious.

Me either, especially since it seemed Mateo and Santiago were only just talking about taking care of Finn when it happened. Did Mateo even have time to get this set up? Helen and Santiago's plans to attack Finn were extremely junior high. How long did Helen think Finn wouldn't smell a rat after she hired incompetent Ingrid and equally incompetent food suppliers? This is the hotel management equivalent of making his face smell like a foot. I wonder who, if anyone, is dead. It looked like El Rey and his party friends all got off the balcony before it went down. Is this going to be Grand Hotel's Moldavian Massacre. Well done Danny! You actually managed to do some detective work successfully for once without being caught in the act! It's would be interesting if he took Yoli into his confidence about who he is. It seems like she might know way more about Sky than anyone and would be interested in finding out the truth about what happened to her. Plus it would be interesting to have the characters mix it up a bit in terms of who they hang out with.

I loved Nancy and the Hardy Boys and still do, but even as a 10-year-old, I noted that Nancy does not go to school or have a job, lives at her dad's, drives a new convertible, flies off round the world at a moments' notice (along with her equally unemployed friends) and always refuses payment every time she solves a mystery. The Hardy Boys, meanwhile, did go to high school and somehow managed to do every extracurricular activity on offer while also flying off round the world at a moments' notice, owning a car, a boat, motorbikes, vast amounts of other technical equipment and having automatic and immediate access to their father's plane (which they could fly). They also had no jobs and refused any payment for solving mysteries. I'm not sure the Riverdale formula will strike twice for the CW, but I'd almost like to see a Brady Bunch Movie take on both series!

This episode was fun, but a little weaker than the others and there was a bit more credibility-stretching (yeah, I know it's a night-time soap based on a telenovela, sue me). I can't help but feel that even though I really like all these characters, sometimes they come across like the pitch is "a group of lovable bumblers try to fake it to make it running a hot Miami hotel". I used to live in Miami and the egos among those who ran the hottest nightspots and hotels on South Beach were out-of-control huge. Someone like Santiago would SO not wander over to the construction site next door, hope to meet the owner and ask politely if he'd mind putting the construction on hiatus. He'd send a minion with a legal letter. And he and Gigi would REVEL in their being the last family-owned hotel on the strip. It would be in every news story about them front-and-center and they'd make damn sure everyone knew who they were and bowed down appropriately, mob-loan be damned, as they used that to fight back against the big hotel chains taking over. I really feel like the fierce vibe they'd put out is missing. Poor Javi. He's my favorite and my heart broke for him. I just wish that scene where Ingrid told him it wasn't his had gone on a little longer - it felt like he bought it and walked out a bit too quickly. He could have been incredulous for just a few moments more and she could've told him they never even had sex. It's funny, though, because even though I do think this show needs to kick it up a notch with the edginess, they do make these characters nicely rounded. I even felt sorry for Ingrid crying in the break room. What a horrible situation to be in. Uh, Helen? Even if you are conspiring with Santiago, I think you need to give notice before you leave your job and since you're seemingly so irreplaceable, wouldn't they need to find a replacement and have a hand-over period? Bye Heather. We hardly knew you.

This is kind of the one big issue with this show - everyone's just too nice to each other. Considering that either Matteo or Santiago has the upper hand here, Santiago owes major money to Matteo's bosses and they're being blackmailed, they seem to be pretty chill with each other to the point where they seem almost like equals. Santiago's threats to Matteo sounded more like good-natured ribbing than actual threats. Do Yoli and Carolina have any other friends? Considering they seemingly don't get on, they seem to spend a lot of time hanging out with each other!

She probably figured that Javi was richer, nicer and hotter than Matteo and if she managed to hook him in, she'd have a sweet easy ride (not knowing, of course, that the family is in dire financial straits.) In the sequence where Danny was chasing Sky's car, something was bugging me and I just realized that at different points, the car switches between being a VW Golf Mk3 and a VW Golf Mk4, both of which look completely different!

Me! Me! I was in Junior High and I absolutely LOVED it, like all Aaron Spelling shows. I remember with perfect clarity the part where Peyton (Jamie Luner) found out Ray Wise was actually her father and that he knew about it but hadn't told her, making her grow up poor, said "Ah will get what is rahtfully mine!" in her horribly fake Southern accent, got him drunk and tricked him into thinking he'd had sex with her so she could get a payoff. I thought that was just the most wonderfully clever, evil plot I had ever seen anyone do ever and TBH, I'm still in awe! Just came into Grand Hotel after watching the first two episodes on a plane and I'm really enjoying it so far - I can't help but feel it could use a slightly harder edge, and there were a couple of things I didn't buy (like the part where the baseball players talked smack about Javi - not least because based on what we've seen of him, the story about the Sports Illustrated cover model is probably true!) but I just really like these characters - they mostly feel multi-dimensional and fresh (bizarre for what's essentially a trashy soap) as well as being genuinely likeable. Given that I've basically hatewatched every show I've followed for the last two years, it's so nice to watch something and actually enjoy it again. I'm in for the summer!

Well that was very... montage-ey. Since the demise of The Enemy Within I have most certainly not been on the lookout for another terrible show about an incredibly annoying woman with astounding powers of deduction and prediction who law enforcement officials inexplicably invite to investigate crimes. Looks like I found it though! I think my favorite bit was when Petra punched her in the face. I will definitely be back next week.

I couldn't see a topic for this and wondered if anyone else is watching it. This show is mind-blowingly, mesmerizingly awful but has somehow managed to become the highest-rated show ever on its home network Sky Atlantic in the UK. It airs in the US on something called Ovation which I've never heard of. Neil Jordan gets a "created by" credit, even though he disowned it before it aired after his "original darker version" was "reworked" by others and by "reworked" I mean "allowed to chew through its restraints and run off screaming into a dark night of complete and utter insanity". It's a British-French co-production and also costs an absolute fortune to make and looks fantastic. Basically (as above) it focuses on Georgina Clios who is supposed to be vital, passionate, caring and intelligent but is actually morose, annoying, devoid of any personality whatsoever and so dim she doesn't notice when a secret room is built in the middle of her house, plus her dead older husband's family of Eurotrash one-percenter cliches. The kids are eldest son Christos (Dimitri Leonidas), a cokehead wastrel playboy who is secretly just desperate for his daddy's approval, middle child Adam (Iwan Rheon), a sensitive soul who pours scorn on his family's wealth and their materialistic lifestyle while longing for the life of a poet (albeit a terrible one who keeps using the family cash to pay for his luxury poet's loft) and emotional basketcase teen daughter Adriana (Roxane Duran) who self-harms and gets into a soft-focus, scandalous-in-1997 threeway relationship with her best friend and the gardener. There's also the first Mrs Clios, Irina (Lena Olin who plays the part with her eyes closed but is still the best thing in the show). Season one's completely unintelligible plot involved art fraud, yachts, the Russian Mafia, money, mansions, terrible writing, more money, murders, atrocious acting and directing, art forgery, approximately 4,500 couture outfits and a highly memorable scene where Georgina expresses rage and frustration by whacking a shampoo bottle off a shelf at a luxury day spa. Season two has just started and encompasses murder, more yachts, an art installation involving an apparent suicide, characters coming back from the dead and a scene where Adriana and her new love interest flirt by smashing vases and knocking over suits of armor. They've also added Juliet Stevenson, Poppy Delevigne and most bizarrely, Will Arnett to the cast. It is highly recommended for anyone who thinks Melrose Place played it too safe. (Although it does take itself incredibly seriously.)

Aw, we are officially officially cancelled. Goodbye JCarp! You are no longer The Most Hated Woman in America™! Goodbye icy narrow-eyed stares! Goodbye Morris! Goodbye FBI dungeon! Goodbye Stubble Guy! Now you can shave! Goodbye MY DAUGHTER! Good luck with those driving lessons! Goodbye Blonde Woman whose name I never did remember! Goodbye Microsoft AI! Goodbye Drunk-Cam car chases! Goodbye Tal! I'll miss you least of all!

She does, which is sad because I loved her in Suburgatory. Not sure how much more I will bother with but I would be very OK if Lisa's friend (I think she's the CTO - the one she told Anne she wouldn't let go) went far, far away. I think she's supposed to be spunky and no-nonsense and down-to-earth but she just comes across as incredibly annoying.

Thanks for that. I guessed Renee was Lisa's mom and the rest is just as lame as expected. These are some sub-Melrose Place-circa-1997 hijinks. This show is nicely summed up by the bit in episode two where Anne tells Lisa not to bring Sean to the big evening event where his ex showed up bartending and it is painfully, transparently, glaringly obvious that she did this because she knew Lisa would do the exact opposite. Of course that is exactly what Lisa immediately does and Sean says something like "Didn't Anne tell you not to bring me?" Lisa gives him this HUGE GRIN like a 5-year-old-gone-viral for writing a "note from my parents" in crayon excusing them from class for a week expecting 100% to get away with it and says "That's why I'm bringing you - it's CHESS!" And I'm like no, Lisa, that's not Chess, that's Tic-Tac-Toe. Also Kevin is a terrible dancer.

So I adored Revenge, I thought (and still think) the pilot was amazingly well-written and well-structured and Emily Thorne is my TV girlfriend for life. Like a faithful puppy owned by a master who turned on it, I even stayed loyal to the show after, gulp, David Clarke showed up alive and Courtney Love showed up as "White Gold", but What/If is disappointingly underwhelming so far. I watched the pilot (boring) and then meant to watch ep 2 but watched ep 3 first by mistake to am now watching ep 2 to fill in the gap but not sure I can be bothered with any more. These characters are really not coming across as that bright or that interesting and I have a feeling that whatever the big reveal is, it's going to be a let down. But I'm still curious and I wouldn't mind a synopsis too. On another note, I understand the need/want to nip and tuck as you age, especially with the pressures of the industry but I'm beginning to feel like plastic surgery is getting out of control and certain actors are starting to resemble escapees from the Capitol of Panem. Renee Zellweger looks like she's wearing a Renee Zellweger Kabuki mask in this. She can barely move any part of her face except her lips. This was not necessary, Renee.

This is the crux of the show's problems. Everything that could have set it apart, it completely blew, starting with the pilot. Morris is forced to work with the woman who is responsible for his fiancee's death. I have observed on here before that literally every spy show and movie now uses the death of someone close to the lead as a motivating factor. It is an extremely tired trope. But forcing the lead to then work with the person responsible has (as far as I can remember) not been done before. But instead of taking that one original concept and exploring the conflict, having Morris' doubts about JCarp being evil grow across the season in spite of his wanting to hate her for what she did while keeping it ambiguous as to whether she's good or bad, they throw it SPLAT onto the screen in episode one that she was actually just doing it to protect HER DAUGHTER and Morris is the first to know. Thereafter, their relationship is just kind of... meh. I mean, it seems like they quite like each other. But that's it. The writers pay lip service to having people be shocked that Morris is OK with working with her via his fiancee's parents, but those were throwaway scenes that went nowhere and the whole thing just fizzled. Interrogator dude seemed to be the most suspicious of her and he never even really does anything about it. It's all just so lame. And so instead of interesting character study intertwined with rising action, we got a surfeit of soggy and ill-defined characters hanging around a generic control room, a campy little terrorist who likes making phone calls and lots of shots of JCarp glowering at stuff in a dungeon. It may be unfair to blame the writers - after all, this is a network show, so they may have been pressured into making it conform to procedural expectations (the dreaded Network Notes). Maybe if this had been on cable or streaming it would have been better. Snarking aside, it really does feel like a missed opportunity. Although as ever, I'm glad people enjoyed the snark and thank you for the nice comments! 🙂

To be fair, in that moment of truly inspired idiocy, JCarp did make excellent use of that handy 1950 Chevrolet Fleetline Deluxe 4-door fastback coupe to short-circuit her tracker implant.

Hmmm, interesting. That seems to be the only source, though, and I'm wondering if it's correct. They canned Whiskey Cavalier, which probably has a similar budget to this crapfest and that was (allegedly) a close decision and (amazingly) TEW has had higher ratings than WC. As such, I thought it might get a second season.

Does anybody remember way way way back when once every season, no matter what the show, there would be a “Greatest Hits/Clip Show” episode where the characters got together to reminisce about times past? It meant you could re-use all the most expensive stunts and most memorable moments, strung together with some shot-on-the-cheap filler scenes set at Fonzie’s birthday party or whatever and save majorly on budget. This was The Enemy Within’s Greatest Hits episode. Except it didn’t actually re-use any footage, it just found new and innovative and more wildly stupid than ever ways to re-use its top ten cliches, cringes and craptostic cop-outs. You know - all the things that have made the last 12 weeks so very, very special. Starting with; #1. HER DAUGHTER. It literally took less than a minute for HER DAUGHTER to make an appearance. Exactly 57 seconds in, to be precise, while JCarp is in her dungeon, chatting to Tal on the phone which the guards have still not noticed she has, Tal asks her why she’s helping him and the answer (drumroll please)…. “For the safety of MY DAUGHTER.” Bonus awful dialogue In the same conversation; “You have a friend in me!” So JCarp is Woody and Tal is Buzz? And Morris is Randy Newman? #2. Fools who (still) doubt the wisdom of JCarp. Pettigrew; “What if you’re wrong?” Seriously, Pettigrew, she knows everything about everything and everyone and has never been wrong one single freaking time since you met her when The Stubble Guy went and recruited you from the Spy School you were teaching at in episode 3 because there weren’t enough characters who didn’t have enough to do on this show already. She can guess the color of your underwear correctly based on how many steps it took you to cross the room, define Pi to the 5,479,993rd decimal and figure out how to disarm a nuclear bomb with a bicycle pump and SHE IS ALWAYS RIGHT. Can you just go read “Hostage Negotiation for Dummies” again, please? And make notes this time. #3. Worthless guards who, #4, get the crap kicked out of them by someone half their size. Stupid guards. Did you not know that JCarp was just playing along this whole time to make you feel better about yourselves? You are mere insects to her. She could Karate you into oblivion and make her escape any time she wants. While handcuffed even. Can you just go read “Not Sucking At Being Guards for Dummies” again, please? And make a LOT of notes on the chapter about searching the people you’re guarding for stolen cellphones this time. #5 JCarp Deduces Stuff. OK. Deep breath. From her conversation with Tal, JCarp figured out that Tal had figured out that she would figure out that Morris would figure out that Grand Central Station was a diversion, but not that Tal wanted him to figure out that it was a diversion and that he (Morris) would also figure out that he should go raid that no-budget Jerry Bruckheimer Industrial Smoke and Fire Factory metal processing plant but he (Morris) wouldn't have figured out that he (Tal) wanted him (Morris) to figure it out and that it was a trap and then they (Morris and the Scooby Gang) would get blown up. And she figured it out just in time to save everyone including The Stubble Guy who did get blown up, but not really and so Pettigrew got to kneel over him and look concerned just like he got to do when she got shot at the racetrack, and they had a moment, but also not really, and if this is meant to be a slow-burn romance, it is glacially freaking slow and their first date will be in season 15 except not really because there is no way in hell this show lasts that long. #6 Chatty Tal. Seriously, Tal, you are so damn chatty. Standing there posing all silhouettey by your palm tree in your puffy army pants. Maybe if you hadn’t been quite so chatty, JCarp wouldn’t have figured out your EVOL PLAN and Morris would have gone up in smoke, but you were, so he didn’t. And there you went again at the end too, all “Do you feel peeeeace, Agent Keaton? Now you can understand me and blah blah blah there is no peeeeeeece for men like you and meeeeee and do not shoot me, JCarp, I have another MOLE who is so high up you can’t imagine who they are and they will carry on my EVOL PLANS and we can take them down together and can you ssssssmelll the salt in the air and we are not so dissimilar and oh no you shot me.” Tal. Chatty to the end. I’m so glad she shot him. Twice. The alternative was that I was going to shoot myself. #7 Stylish wool coats. Looking sharp there, Cabrera. #8 Ambushers ambushing. But who ambushes the ambushers? The ambushees, that’s who. So, class, today we learned that when the CIA’s covert ops trainees graduate from their super-secret covert ops training, they have a super-duper-secret clandestine graduation ceremony at some shitty (but secret) house in the middle of nowhere and literally EVERY HIGH RANKING CIA OFFICIAL EVER attends because they are all so secure in the super-secret clandestineness of their shitty secret house and even secreter graduation ceremony that they all roll up in official SUVs. And nobody notices a bunch of random guerrilla ambushers surrounding the place in the freaking woods waiting to attack them. #9 Extremely elaborate evil plans that are actually pointless (and some more Deducing). JCarp used her mind-sensing skills to figure out that Tal was going to spring his operativessssss from Sierrrrrra Maestrrrrrrra’s weird underground prison place using the ventilation shafts to collapse the roof. Or something. Seriously, what would spy shows do without ventilation shafts? Anyway, Tal promised JCarp that he NEEDED to spring ALL HIS HUNDREDS OF IMPRISONED EVIL EXPERTS for his PLAN to DESTROY and get REVENGE. And then we learned from “roll call” that there were 57 of them. Given that he seems to have had no problem at all recruiting dozens and dozens and dozens of guards, politicians, pilots, pirates, FBI and CIA agents and Mole Girls over the past 12 episodes, I’m not sure what’s so special about this lot that they were worth going to all this trouble to bust out of underground jail. (Special bonus #9b Onscreen Introduction Caption for Agent Baez. Who got killed about 2.5 minutes after said caption, which I think is a series record.) And last but not least; #10 The Most Hated Woman in America (and Cuba)™ Who Nobody Recognizes (and another bonus #10b, HER DAUGHTER. Again.) So JCarp, The Most Hated Woman in America™, snuck back into America from Cuba and nobody noticed. Perhaps she was The Most Hated Woman in America Who Was Wearing a Groucho Marx Mustache, Fake Nose and Glasses™. But of course, Morris knows where to find her. At HER DAUGHTER's school (where nobody recognized her again) watching HER DAUGHTER do sports. (And a final bonus #10c, Hannah Unfazed By Anything. Playing volleyball here. Ho hum. Kinda boring. Darn I broke a nail. Oh. There’s my mom. The Most Hated Mom in America™. The one who’s supposed to be in jail. And who just showed up on my doorstep telling me she was going off on some, yawn, secret mission. Whatever. Gonna give her a little smile but I ain’t gonna let that put me off my game. I wonder what's for dinner.) And then of course, JCarp LIED to Morris. But does he know she’s lied to him? And if so, does she know he knows? And does he know she knows he knows? And does she know he knows she knows he knows..? AND THE DANCE BEGINS AGAIN! And then they killed the lights and it was a wrap and everyone went home and fired their agents for getting them to agree to do this terrible freaking show and when the studio was completely dark, a little voice rang out from the dungeon set and it said; "Uh, hello? It’s me. Mendoza. Remember me? The girlfriend? The one Tal couldn’t live without? I’m still here. Can you like let me out now please? I’m guesting on a Law and Order next week and I need to be at rehearsals or they'll recast with that woman from episode three of Whiskey Cavalier. Is anybody there? Hellloooooo?! HELP!” I was sad there was no Senator Eleanor Waldorf this week though. I was kind of hoping the whole episode would just be her and JCarp hanging out together, sitting in leather chairs, sipping wine while gazing intently at each other through narrowed eyes and Deducing Stuff about each other, sort of like Killing Eve With Boredom. And then they get hungry and order pizza and when the delivery guy arrives, Senator Eleanor is like “When we called in our order, I realized that the person answering the phone was speaking approximately 1.5 times faster when they told me today’s special was pepperoni than when they said ‘Thank you for calling Sal’s.’ and with extra emphasis on the word "pepperoni". From that I deduced that you under-ordered meat products this week and are nervous that you won’t be able to fill orders.” And JCarp is like “And from the angle you’re holding that pizza box at, I deduce that the pizza inside it is approximately 2 grams lighter than usual which makes me suspicious that whoever made it skimped on the extra cheese I requested.” And the Pizza Guy is like “Look, I will give you double coupons and two dipping sauces but can you just stop deducing stuff and give me my $28.50, please? We've been here for half an hour and other people want their pizzas too.”

Aw that's a shame, but not unexpected and if it had to end now, I'm glad it ended how it did. I hope SWS gets his own action/thriller show now. I still wish they'd cast him as Magnum.

Thank you everybody for all the kind comments about my ranting! I'm glad people are enjoying it. Once upon a time in another lifetime I wrote a TV column and for some reason this show just pushes all my buttons and brings it all back and it's now my Monday night chill-down routine to come on here and vent about it! Which is ironic, because I really am a huge fan of JCarp and I started watching thinking it would be genuinely good. I still think she is a fascinating actor, has a sort of latter-day through-the-looking-glass Katharine Hepburnish charisma and a fascinating face. She deserves better! I'm also a former TWoP forum poster if anyone is around from those days. I was active in the forums for The OC (loved it even after it sucked), 90210 (mocked it from the get-go) and - right before the site shut down - the wildly terrible CW remake of The Tomorrow People (stared at it in incredulous horror, unable to look away as it ran round in increasingly demented circles flinging its own poop at the walls before being mercy-killed by cancellation). Back to TEW though, here's a genuine question - what happened to Mendoza, Tal's supposed girlfriend operative who he was so madly in love with and who they captured a couple of episodes ago and locked up in the FBI dungeons with JCarp? Did she get sprung while I wasn't looking or has she been memory-holed by everyone (including the writers and Tal himself who as far as I remember, hasn't referred to her once)? Maybe she was more of a booty call operative and less of a love-of-his-life operative. If so, then not only is Tal an EVOL TERRRRRORRRRIST, he also doesn't call after the second date or come rescue you when Morris & the FBI Scooby Gang capture you and stick you in a dungeon. Pig. Still, he's so annoying, maybe she'd prefer to stay in the dungeon. He could rescue her and they'd be flying off and he'd be like "Sssssso, Mendozzzza, let ussss now rrrrruminate on the truuuuue nature of evilllllll" and she'd be like "I CHANGED MY MIND TAKE ME BACK NOW!" My finale predictions; Tal will either inexplicably decide to be in the vicinity when his Big Evil Plan for Union Station goes down, probably to revel in the aftermath and experience True Vengeance firsthand or be watching it remotely/be trackable down by the combined powers of Senator Eleanor and JCarp working together to Deduce Stuff. When said plan is ultimately foiled by Morris & JCarp & the Scoobies he will be chased down and either; (a) get killed in a showdown with Morris and JCarp (most likely Morris shoots him to save JCarp so they can have A Moment) but before he dies he says something like "Errrrrrica. You may have foiled my Big Evil Plan for rrrrrevenge today but NOTHING will stop my Bigger Eviller Plan - the one which involves Sierrrrrrra Maestrrrrrra." or (b) escape after the showdown but before he flies off in his helicopter (or whatever) he goes face to face with JCarp and says something like "Errrrrrica. You may have foiled my Big Evil Plan for rrrrrevenge today but NOTHING will stop my Bigger Eviller Plan - the one which involves Sierrrrrrra Maestrrrrrra." JCarp will then figure out some way to get Zane out of Rosa Klebb's klutches before escaping and running off to Sierrrrrra Maestrrrrra to foil Tal's plan and/or finally kill him (delete as appropriate depending on whether it's scenario #a or #b above). Morris will aid her escape, they will share A Moment where JCarp tells him that stopping Tal's Bigger Eviller Plan and/or killing him is the only way she can be absolved of what she's done, and he says yes, she actually CAN be redeemed, then Rosa Klebb will put Morris under arrest after she realizes he and his gang helped JCarp slip their clutches, but she can only pin it on him. The Scoobies discover that 87 new moles are actually helping Tal and/or the CIA is actually sponsoring his Bigger Eviller Plan for their own ends. Morris may or may not quit the bureau in disgust. Pettigrew and The Stubble Guy get put in a cliffhanger where one of them saves the other leading them to a moment where they just miiiiiiight declare their love for each other... The Blonde Woman gets put in a cliffhanger leading her to a moment where she just miiiiiiight declare her love for Morris but nobody cares and Morris doesn't notice but at least she still has her Microsoft AI. There is also a remote possibility that Senator Eleanor will actually turn out to be evil and on Tal's side and it will all have been another Big Tal Fakeout (in that scene in the car right before they got ambushed by the ambushers, she seemed to be incredibly close to spelling out exactly what JCarp's motivation was for doing what she did, even by this show's ridiculous standards of what people can extrapolate about each other!) (Also as we approach the finale, it is worth noting that I still genuinely don't remember what Morris or The Blonde Woman's actual character names are and only in the last couple of episodes has it sunk in that The Stubble Guy is called Bragg although I have no clue what his first name is.)

In our nation's capital... in the highest corridors of power, the most elite branches of law enforcement, there exists a special breed of people. More than fearlessness, more than mere super-intelligence, they boast... powers. Powers of Intuition, a form of sensory knowledge beyond that of mere mortals. Powers which transcend the internal consistency of narrative. Powers which allow them to just, like, KNOW stuff about people, things, events. Powers that grow stronger thanks to their previous experiences in Lithuania, Russia, the former Yugoslavia and other places which vaguely evoke thoughts of late-90's political strife and which can be recreated somewhat realistically (at least by network television standards) on a studio backlot. This week, we saw an EPIC CLASH of these titans as JCarp meets her match in Senator Eleanor Waldorf, a woman with just as many POWERS OF INTUITIVE DEDUCTION as she has! Thrill on the edge of your seat as JCarp SENSES that Eleanor knows why Tal wants her dead and Eleanor parries by DEDUCING that JCarp and Morris have gone rogue and their Rosa Klebb boss knows nothing about it and then JCarp STRIKES BACK by EMOTION-GUESSING-FIGURING-OUT that Eleanor is actually... ex-CIA Black Ops! Only to have Eleanor strike the ultimate fade-out smackdown by using super-ultimate Big Boss trump card power-up of a Previous Experience in A War Torn Eastern European Country Which Conveniently Parallels What's Happening Here to manifest knowledge that JCarp is Hiding Something about her motivation, rendering JCarp (for once) speechless! But while these two Big Beasts locked horns, another was just coming into his powers as Morris went after Backus because... he just Knew Something about "the timing"! ANOTHER IS BORN! JCarp looked so proud of him - she has nurtured and guided him well through these dozen episodes and now he is ready to make his own giant leaps of logic, bounding away with hunches and guesses and tortuously-thought-out-yet-always-correct-and-successful deductions! Fly, Morris! Fly! It is now a fact that on spy television shows and in spy movies, it is statistically far more dangerous to be related to a spy/law enforcement agent/terrorist than it is to actually be one. So far we've had Morris' tragic dead fiancee, that other dude's other tragic dead fiancee and now Tal has two tragic dead brothers, killed by the CIA in a tragic stock footage attack. (And with a convenient anniversary coming up to boot!) Personally, I blame James Bond, originator of the Dead Wife character motivation trope and Batman, first to be driven to vigilantism by Dead Parents. What have they done?!!! When Pettigrew and The Stubble Guy and Senator Eleanor were ambushed by the ambushers, the ambusher-ambushers got there in a matter of seconds, coming from all around. How did the ambusher-ambushers hide from the ambushers? And if they swept the area and knew where the ambushers were, couldn't the ambusher-ambushers have just ambushed the ambushers before the car showed up? It was good they wore different camo so we could tell them apart, though. I also like how they all go round with bulletproof vests that say FBI and CIA in big letters on the front. I know that's probably realistic, but if I was making this show, I would not be able to resist having one of the extras wear one that says "FRONT" on it instead. Also, why was everybody acting like Senator Eleanor saying mean things about JCarp was mean? Did they somehow forget that while Morris and the audience know The Truth that it was for HER DAUGHTER, nobody else does and she remains The Most Hated Woman in America™. And Tal was at it again, meeting people in the middle of parks and spouting stupid sort-of-sinister sayings. "I orrrrrdered you to get rid of Morrrrrris, it was an orrrrrrrder. You have never serrrrved, Mr. Backus, so you do not underrrrssssstand the imporrrtance of an orrrrrrrder. When I worrrrrked at Rrrrrred Lobsterrrr if the orrrrrder was wrrrrong do you know what would happen? It would be taken out of yourrrrr tipssssss!" I wonder what WAS in that tape he had on Backus? Maybe Backus was a Brony. And more dumbass spies not suspecting that pram woman is going to pull a gun. Have these people not watched TV like ever?! All of that snark snarked, this was actually better than much of what has gone before and Margaret Colin is one of my Kryptonites so she at least added some pep. Someone has joined the creative team of this show late in the series who is very good at making the best out of terrible material and his influence is pretty obvious - and thankfully so. I didn't even roll my eyes too hard at that idiotic last sequence with JCarp showing up on her husband's doorstep and having another cheesy chat with Oblivious Hannah (not least thanks to JCarp's quality performance.) Rrrrroll on next week when Tal will attempt to mount his Greatest Brother-Avenging Revenge Attack Ever and will be foiled and the season will end with JCarp giving Morris the slip and heading off to Sierrrrra Maestrrrrra to find out what the grand plan behind the grand plan is and which we will not see because budgetary constraints. And a random thought; if I get a change.org petition up to change the title of this show to "Tal Tales" would everyone here sign it?

Why thank you! I suppose I have to watch the last 2 episodes now... 😉