Charlemagne

Perhaps, but I am willing to bet that they are gambling on achieving the longevity of shows like The Mentalist and Psych.

I don't think that he has been in The Walking Dead before but he was a main character in the TV series, The Resident.

While a large part of me thinks that they would never say otherwise, it's always a possibility. Maybe the Strike wasn't a factor and it was just about a budget issue that caused them to go from 10 to 8 episodes.

I loved the finale. Though, I get the feeling that this was not the exact spot where they intended to end it. I think the Strikes last year put them a bit behind. I suspect that where the first episode of next season ends is where this season was likely meant to end.

I would imagine it follows the Servant Rules of British Aristocracy shows... some of the grunt employees see and hear everything and gossip with one another. They don't ever do anything about what they see and hear but I can't imagine that there is any way that the milk thing remained a secret at Vaught Tower.

She's now part of The Seven. I think the easy answer is that she found out through old-fashioned office gossip.

But, I mean... its genre seems pretty clear to me. It's a satire. In the vein of The Death of Stalin. I found its tone to be 100% focused in that regard. I am loving it. Others are not. That's how it goes. I am very comfortable being in the minority on this one. 😊

I thought it was simply fantastic.

Totally. A classic "put your cart before the horse" situation. And it may even be that the con artists had hoped it would be longer before Oscar found out that he had been scammed but Oscar couldn't contain himself and spoke to George. As a result, he found out earlier than he might have - but still too late, as it turned out.

The question that he wanted answered was a question never posed in the show. Oscar didn't invest because of that one deal. He invested in the company overall so that he can be a railroad tycoon in his own right. You may recall that he was given a dividend on his initial smaller investment in the form of a big check from the fake banker. Though we know now that the check was likely fake, Oscar was impressed enough by the sum to want more. Which is a classic grifter strategy. Oscar was presented with a "choice." Take the money and get out, or put in more money to get even more money. He ripped up that dividend check and opted to put more money in. Which is what the con artists wanted him to do. So, to sum up: How could Oscar have gotten a dividend check if that fictional deal had not gone through yet or had already been acquired by Russell? The only answer possible is that the contract that Russell eventually won (which was real) was but one facet of what Oscar was trying to invest in. The issue in this debate is that many people are misunderstanding this critical narrative point. Oscar thought that he was investing in a company that was making *many* deals - for which he had already seen a dividend check in his hands. The competing contract with Russell was just a real situation that the con artists used in order to lend legitimacy to their overall fake narrative.

The writers did just fine in this instance. They way they did it worked. And this is knowable because it can be compared to real life. How much money did some people put into NFTs when common sense should have prevailed? If someone wrote NFTs into a story (and they did not previously exist), that would have seemed completely unbelievable. Yet here we are. On this subject matter, it's not an opinion like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We have verifiable "comps" in this particular narrative neighborhood. How in the hell did Nigerian Prince scams work? Beats me. But they did. As unbelievable as it would seem... they did.

Fair enough. But the issue still remains: as a storyline... there's nothing unbelievable about it. We can point at the sucker and marvel at how someone could have been so stupid but it's one of the truest storylines on the show.

You are 100% correct in your assessment. People are holding the character of Oscar responsible for not being as smart as they think he ought to have been when we still see people falling for stuff like it today. Elizabeth Holmes & Theranos Health Technology. Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX Cryptocurrency. How many people *within* those very industries were duped? How many celebrities - who had their own teams of managers, etc. - were duped? There is nothing about this particular storyline that is in any way unbelievable. Folks love to gamble on a new opportunity and to make a quick major payday and don't always think everything through. Hell.... there's a city in the Nevada desert with bright lights whose whole basis for existing is to entice people who ought to know better to part with their money.

It feels like you might be applying options & sensibilities from today to the time period and characters of the story. It's not like Oscar could have Googled things. Part of the nature of these scams - which is 1000% believable because it's how they work and still goes on today - is that someone is duped into thinking that they are getting in on the ground floor of something that most people do not know about yet. History is littered with victims of con jobs that people think are unbelievable when examining them from a distance. It's also important to remember that the "beauty" of the scam is that its whole hook is that it was a new company - hence the lure of being a founding investor. Oscar had no reason - within the parameters of his gullibility - to think that there would be an existing track record because he thought he was getting in on the ground floor of something brand new.

It is a natural assumption that after Oscar handed the Big Check over, he signed some papers (which would have undoubtedly been fake.) But, in Oscar's mind, that's it. His particular deal is done as far as he is concerned. Payment is given, the thing of value is received. From our perspective, he is a dumbass, yes. Absolutely. But we are witnessing right now the collapse of NFTs and Crypto. How many otherwise intelligent and competent people were scammed by those? Oscar's situation seems 100% realistic to me.