iMonrey

And that, my friends, is the $60,000 question. Jerry does love everyone, but the show is trying to use short-hand to establish that Magna & Co. are now part of "the community" and are not only known to all but beloved by all. The show is too busy planting Easter eggs and coming up with awesome new special effects to bother with boring stuff like character development.

But . . . if Lalo gets out on bail and flees for Mexico where Gus has him killed, it seems to me Gus and Nacho should be able to stall for time, instead of immediately blowing up the chicken restaurant. That seems . . . extreme. And unnecessary.

I think I might have to put this show on pause for awhile. Maybe I will pick it back up again later. But it's a real downer, and with everything that's going on right now, the last thing I want to watch is some doomsday scenario story.

I don't get what's going on here. Why did Gus and Nacho burn down the restaurant? Lalo called Nacho from jail and asked him to burn down the restaurant, right? And Nacho told Mike. And Mike, who arranged for Lalo to be arrested, now wants Saul to get him out on bail? WTF? I'm very confused and unable to follow this story at all. I also can't remember the circumstanced of Lalo killing some clerk (?) last season. Can someone refresh my memory? Thanks.

Yeah I couldn't figure out how that was supposed to work. It looked like the outer ring of the interior was rotating. The only rotating restaurant I've ever been to, the entire room rotated, and it did so VERY slowly. It wasn't just the interior rotating against the exterior (hence, the impossibility of an accident such as this one). It was the entire structure. I don't know if that's a real thing but obviously that would be potentially deadly! True story: when we were "kids" me and some of my gal pals would play "proposal" at nice restaurants to see if they would comp us the meal. Only one ever did but we got some free desserts elsewhere, LOL.

I think it says something that initially the authorities just wrote it off as a tragic accident, even if they thought it was fishy. There was enough missing information about the victim that makes me think there's part of the story they didn't want to tell us lest they be accused of victim-blaming. Let's face it, Dana was involved with some pretty shady characters. Doesn't mean she deserved what happened to her but might be the reason the cops weren't overly invested in the case until they were forced to be.

There are already characters like that. There's that one chick who was one of the Savior's main goons who wound up at Hilltop and to this day I don't know her name, I always call her "that Savior lady." I hate to say it because I'd probably hate it, but if they wanted us to care at all about Luke, Connie, Magna, and Yumiko they should have devoted an episode to flashbacks showing how they met, what their lives were pre-apocalypse, etc. Instead they just wandered in one day and Judith went "you're good" and that was it. Why the hell am I supposed to care about these randos? I still don't know them. And there was Jerry hugging Magna like they're besties and I'm wondering "how the hell does Jerry even know her?" So this week they pointed out that there was supposed to be some significance to the ax that Beta saw in the cabin, because in a previous episode, when he was fighting with Daryl an ax was used to push him down an elevator shaft, or something. And I'm like "really? This is what the show is devoting its energy to? These stupid little Easter eggs they think anyone gives a shit about? Maybe they should focus more on writing a cohesive story that makes sense."

Just as previous seasons made the audience wonder what timeline they were watching, I believe the point to this season is wondering whether what we're seeing is real or a simulation. That Serac is creating a "mirror world" is suspicious as hell. How do we know this isn't already it? I think at the end of the season we'll find out some or all of this season has taken place in a simulation and then we're supposed to go "OMFG jaw drop never saw that coming mind blown!!!" That really seems to be the primary goal of this show, to yank our chains all season long then drop a bombshell so we'll all be impressed with its cleverness.

Oh for the love of Criminy. Between this and Talking Dead I get the distinct impression I'm supposed to be way more interested in Beta than I am. To me, he is the flimsiest of the various cartoon villains that have plagued this show for the past several seasons. Primarily because we never see his real face, but also because he's just crazy for the sake of being crazy and there is no real depth to him or reason for him. I'm so over the Whisperers and I've never been interested in Beta and never will be. By the same token the show is obviously trying to make Magna and Yumiko main characters and I still struggle to even remember their names. True story - actually had to look up Yumiko again on IMDB because I literally cannot remember her name. The show is crap at fleshing out new characters. They are either cartoons or unmemorable background extras. Or . . . the writers pulled this latest plot twist out of these asses and had no prior plans to link Carol to Negan's escape when they wrote the first half of this season.

Isiah looks an awful lot like Fergus. And where was Fergus in this episode anyway? Did he stay behind because he only has one hand so he wasn't conscripted to fight? Roger sure has shitty luck. First being sold into Indian slavery and now this.

Bottom line, money. Assuming everyone is under five year contracts, once those contracts are up they have to be renegotiated and everyone wants more money. It's just cheaper to start a brand new show, even if the ratings are still decent. And in this case, the ratings have tanked this season. It doesn't make sense for SyFy to give everyone a raise and bring the show back for another season when ratings are tanking. Netflix does license this show, though, so if anyone is going to pick this up it will be them. I'm not holding my breath, though. Five seasons is probably good enough for them.

I don't think making Amy and Jonah a couple harmed either character. I honestly wouldn't even know they are a couple most of the time, and it's better than dragging out the "will they or won't they" trope every other TV show does. But I do think promoting Amy to manager was a mistake. I think they wanted to show her in upward mobility, and that's a positive story to tell, but ultimately it made her look incompetent. It might have been better, and more realistic if less positive, to show her getting constantly beaten down and passed over for promotions despite all her training and effort. Likewise, they tried to do something meaningful with Mateo's deportation, but then they just threw away any impact from that by bringing him back and now it's like it never happened. The show shouldn't try to tackle "issues" if they don't know how to follow up.

I ask myself the same question about so many married couples I know. It never ceases to amaze me how few couples get together based on mutual interests.

I don't get the relevance of the German accent. I thought he sounded like Dieter - that SNL character Mike Myers used to do. Disagree. Despite his many foibles, Charles has consistently been shown to be a capable and impressive detective. "I just slipped out." "Title of your sex tape!"

I would argue that it has always been a soap opera, but it used to be a better written one. At first glance I thought "Oh look they took all the characters I don't give a damn about and made an episode about them." But I do still care about Richard, kind of, so I forced myself to sit through it.