whiporee

I watched episode 2, and I'm reaching the conclusion this is just a totally different story. There are so few similarities between them at this point that spoilers don't even matter. Just for the basics, we've got the judge gender swapped, which is fine except it does take away the history between Little and Carolyn (also, I assume, takes away Judge Motherfucker). We've also taken away the history of Horgan and Carolyn, and I imagine we're taking away the kind of slavish devotion Tommy had to her. We genderswapped Lipranzer, but aside from the best-buddy aspect of that relationship I don't know how much damage it did (except that Lip did hide the glass after he was taken off the case, and his new cop buddy seems to be a lot less helpful). We added two teenage kids (in the original their son was very young) that Rusty confesses the affair to, and we've made Barbara not a repressed math doctoral student who gave up her career to be a SAHM but apparently someone who works public facing in an art gallery. In both the book and the movie, there was never any public confirmation that Rusty and Carolyn had an affair at all. That was a key part of the case being dismissed. Now he fathered her baby and everyone knows. In addition, one of the key points of the book (less in the movie) was that Rusty knew pretty early that Barbara had done it. He knew it from the glass at the bar (which would have made one too many, but Barbara brought it from home). He found and cleaned the murder weapon (the thingamajig). Police, ME and prosecutorial incompetence was a huge part of the book (less in the movie). IN other words, it's so different that the only things that remain the same are is the title, logline and some character names. I'm a little disappointed at that because I really love the book (and its sequel), but at least now I kno wI'll be surprised. If not by the ending itself, at least in how they get there.

In the book Lip presents the theory that Barbara planned for him to be charged and convicted. Rusty gave her the benefit of the doubt, but the book presents the case for Barbara's intentions as harder to delineate.

I thought it might be nice to have a topic to talk about all the derivations between the three interpretations. Spoilers will follow.😀 While I found the original film pretty faithful to the book — a bit more sympathetic to Barbara — the series is taking off in wildly different directions. I think that’s good because very little about the book and the mystery wound work now. DNA testing would have immediately shown Rusty as the dude, for example. Cell phone records would have probably outed B. But they are making real changes in the story and I wondered how people were reacting. The biggest of them — well, the biggest so far — is getting rid of Sandy Stern and remaking the Horgan character Rusty’s attorney. But also the speed in which they’ve had the election and Rusty’s indictment. I know Carolyn wasn’t pregnant in the book because her having her tubes tied was a major reveal during Painless’s cross. so this has me thinking they may change the ending. Maybe they’re raising up Horgan’s profile because he did it in this version. Or maybe Rusty. Anyone have any thoughts?

What I didn't like about that -- or why I was okay with her rejecting the other lives -- is that she was replacing someone in all of them. Her husband or kid at the time, as well as the other version of herself, deserved the life they'd built.

It's irrelevant now, but is it adultery if it's another version of your wife? I can see that it's non-consensual on the other universe, sort of, because it's you but not really you. These kinds of alternate reality/timeline sexual morays get very confusing for me. The movie About Time does this, where the protagonist keeps going back in time until he gets it right with the girl he loves. But he knows more than she does -- he knows what she likes and doesn't like and all that, so it's sort of cheating. Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day -- is it really consensual if someone knows all about you and you don't know about them? I guess that's off topic, but it is a question. He's still Jason, both times. Danellia enthusiastically agrees. But he's not who she thinks she is. LIkewise, the other Jason was ready to sleep with Daniella even though she was a different Daniella. But is that wrong? I feels wrong, but it's ambiguous.

I was want to point out that Maurice is a space cowboy. Rewatching on Prime, it's a much more gentle show than I remember. Joel's not as bad, Maggie is flat-out beautiful, and none of the things that I expected to be overly quirky turned out to be. It's my current comfort show, so I'm grateful to it.

The Soviets made the only decision they could regarding Margo. Once she said she didn't want to return and she was turning herself in, they'd have been over a barrel. She had no ties back in Moscow, no one to be scared for, and was facing execution or imprisonment. So she would not want to return and certainly the US wouldn't let them take her by force. So they did the quickest hand washing they could. She didn't have anything to offer them anymore, anyway. I've never thought Dev was about money or power. He just had big dreams and wanted to see them play out. I think there's an inclination to equate money with malice these days, because I don't think there are many readings of the text that suggest he's been motivated by anything other than grandiose dreams at any point in the show. I listened to the showrunners today, and I think a lot of what they've said is that their world at this point would have moved beyond astronauts and engineers. The time jumps forced that, but in retrospect maybe they made the jumps too big, the tech advancement too much. For example, I don't think they could have developed Happy Valley to the extent they have in seven years. While I like the jumps, they never really talked about the ships that went to Mars now. If they get a fifth season, I'd like to see it not about getting to the asteroid belt, but about the first interstellar voyage. Maybe Alex is part of the team that decides to head to Alpha Centauri, and they end the show with them just headed out to space without plans to return. Because as much as I enjoy the show, even I don't need to see another season of space economics and labor struggles. I think they were good themes for this one, but we've got The Expanse if we want to see how all that stuff plays out. And as much as I like the show, and I liked this season, and I don't think Ed is an asshole or Dev a meglomaniac or even that they did something wrong in keeping the asteroid for Mars, I watched season one the last few days and it was soooo much better. Every character was deeper, the stakes were higher, the dialogue better and so was the storytelling. So I hope for another season because I enjoy it, but it used to be a lot more than it's turned out to be.

You could say the same about the American West or the colonization of the western hemisphere. People go to a place, they help to shape it, and it becomes a part of their identity. I don't know that I'd love to live on Mars, but there is an appeal to being a pioneer anywhere.

I like Dev's plan. I think it's the only way to make Mars self-sustaining. And it's pretty shitty of the Earthers to have the Mars crew do all the hard work of capturing the asteroid and then take the fruits of their labor. Almost as though there was a metaphor working. I'd like some sort of breakdown of the operations of the base. I think most of the people who are there are Helios, not NASA or Roscosmos. The fuel refining must be Helios, because it's Helios contracts that are messing things up -- they aren't government employees or federal workers of any country. So the Earth nations are planning for Helios to help capture the rock, help bring it back to Earth, and then, as Margo told Irina, let other companies start mining it, too? They are the only ones who have put the capital into Mars, and now they are supposed to let one of the biggest payoffs of that just leave? Because it's easier for the Earth governments? Fuck that -- if I'm Dev, I do the same thing. Steal the bastard. I'd feel the same way if I were Ed. This has been his home for a decade. He's a cowboy used to frontiers. He doesn't want to go back to Earth -- he wants the people who have helped build Mars to benefit from Mars. (It's not hard to see why every Sci Fi story involving Mars colonization eventually ends up at this place). On a sidenote, Massey is KGB. I don't think the USSR wants this to work at all, but they can't publicly say that. So they institute work slowdowns and unrest and strikes, and the opportunity slips on by without it really being their fault. Also, i don't like the idea at all of pushing a 1.1 km rock towards Earth for any reason, especially with how often things go wrong on this show. Once they have it coming towards us, they gotta then find a way to get it into orbit. That's a lot of mass to point at a fairly fragile, inhabited planet.

I don't think they are talking about putting it in Earth orbit. I think they are talking about lunar orbit, which would be a lot smarter because there's no real consequence of it hitting the moon, certainly not when compared to what would happen if it hit Earth. Not a planet killer, but certainly a planet changer. I was glad to see they're talking about landing on the asteroid to move it, because I did that in a book I wrote. Easier to push than to pull.

I’m in a small minority but I’m more on team Ed in this than Dani, but mostly because I am really over Saint Danielle. She’s been insubordinate plenty of times — she decided on her own to break her arm to get Gordo home, which left Ed alone on the moon. She disobeyed direct orders to complete Apollo-Soyuz. That it all worked out doesn’t change that she did it. She also crashed Sojourner. Had Ed not shown more restraint than she did, everyone dies on Mars. She picked her crew for that mission every bit as much as Ed did his on the Ranger. Dani made a decision that should have cost Ed’s daughter her life The difference is Dani keeps getting rewarded and Ed keeps getting shit on. Molly makes the call about Sojourner — Margo overrules her. Then Dani gets pissed at Ed for giving Danny a chance — the same chance Dani was giving him. She changed her mind and then got mad at him for disagreeing with her opinion. Then, here, she comes in, exerts her authority, and not only gets his trusted copilot who he’s been training imprisoned — or at least doesn’t fight for her — she tells Ed just to take it. He’s a Helios employee and has been on that base for eight years. She’s not his commander; at best, she’s his boss. And a boss — one who was trained and promoted by Ed — ought to have a bit more delicate a touch than she’s shown. Dani likes being the savior every much as much as Ed likes being a cowboy. Ed was being a dick. But Dani‘s perpetual self-righteousness has just gotten old to me.

I think they made a change in the last one, too, where Jordan was drafted by the Blazers and led them to a few titles before switching to baseball.

As a former reporter, I have a lot more sympathy for Bradley in the Hal case. She's not a citizen detective; she's not an adjunct to the police or the FBI. It's not her job to turn anything over to the police that she uncovered while working on a story. If the police have enough for Hal, then indict him. But reaching out to everyone's cell phones is overstepping their bounds, but more importantly sets a dangerous precedent for other situations. I don't know of any reporter who would have turned in a family member to the police, or allowed their footage to be used in that kind of way. Laura doesn't know how she'd act in that same situation ... oh, wait, she does. Because she's doing the same thing. It's not just protecting Bradley, it's that her life then gets pulled in, too. Just like Bradley's would have been. But instead of accepting that life has difficult choices, she got up on her self-righteous journalism high horse and delivered her sanctimonious diatribe. Bradley got put in a terrible situation through no fault of her own. Laura got put in a terrible situation because she snooped into her lover's phone and then searched hacked -- supposedly private -- emails for more details. And Bradley is the one who violated trust?

Halfway through season 2. Season opened with a fourth wall break, and then nothing but bangers. It's easy for forget Charles Rocket was once a thing. The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice was just great, from the Orson Wells intro to Cybil's singing on both songs. The one thing that I had misremembered was that Mattie and David liked each other almost from the start. It's not just a forced together thing -- they smile. They aren't in love yet but this isn't a "they hate each other but really ..." kind of show. There's affection almost from Episode One on.

Thought it was solid. I do feel bad because Kate was my favorite character. But hopefully she'll be redeemed.