Ottis

I laughed more last week than this week, if you count laughing once ("I called you on my cell-phone ..."). This week was devoid of funny. Oh, wait, I lied - it tied. "Are my babies in heaven" was a great line. I love Elizabeth Banks. The show just wasn't funny.

Agreed, and I think it is a bad sign that the show has gone so jokey, so fast. Mixing mortal threats with juvenile humor is very tricky. The Ferris Beller ep, as amusing as some homage scenes were as standalone segments around the brutal deaths of the rogue CIA team, gave me whiplash. Now we have pirates. Next up: Descendants of Atlantis. All of this undercuts any menace from Bradley Cooper, or bodily harm from using the drug. Chuck is a good example of a show that found that balance, but it had comic foils (the short guy with the beard), and Chuck, while occasionally nerdy, wasn't the jokester that Finch is.

I quit watching this ep last night after Daryl escaped the 3-some, and went into another room to watch a recorded episode of Shark Tank with others. How many more times do we have to see our gang meet people who capture/screw them over or torture them and then they get away? What are we watching anymore? Already there.

Except I think Jimmy *has* asked Gretchen what he can do to help. Her answer - that he can't fix her - essentially says there is nothing Jimmy can do. Gretchen could have said, "Just listen," or "Give me time, it can take a few weeks or months' or "Give me space, I'll be back." Gretchen is the one who apparently has been down this road before. She knows what it is, how it affects her and generally how it ends. Jimmy knows none of this because Gretchen isn't telling him anything. She never even let him know, back when she wasn't depressed, that she has severe bouts of depression. He was caught completely unaware, thanks to Gretchen. As a result, Jimmy is left to his own devices. And those devices involve generally trying to cheer Gretchen up. He figured out that doesn't work. Then he just tried to vent. That didn't work, either. So what is he supposed to do? I suppose he could Google "depression." But there is no guarantee that whatever he finds will be what Gretchen wants. People with depression respond to different things. Gretchen has to throw him a bone. Until she does, I have no issues with what he is doing. And I don't equate it in any way with saying, "Stop having cancer." There *is* an element of will to depression for Gretchen. She chose not to tell Jimmy before hand. She isn't giving him any idea of how it affects her now. If she can't even point him to a book, or an online source, or a mutual friend, then I assume she also isn't working or interacting with anyone else in any way, but we have seen that she actually is. So she is choosing not to help Jimmy help her.

As was I, except I will say I am impressed at how close this show gets to actual headlines today. I thought that after watching this ep even before Paris. It almost feels like actual terrorists would get annoyed at Blacklist (or get ideas from bits of it).

I find this far less annoying than "taxi luck." At least in a begging challenge, how the racers execute it matters (whether it is fun and amusing, or desperate and pushy as the cheerleaders did, for instance). Taxi luck is completely random, happens all the time and racers can do nothing about it. This was a big topic of discussion at our house! Usually attractive people learn that skill, because they can. We theorized over why these girls didn't seem to have it. Fatigue? Entitlement? Embarrassment over begging (maybe they had upper class lives)?

I think you may be right. I liked the Patty we met at first, but they aren't adding any depth to her. It makes me think she is being set up to fail. Which unfortunately brings us back to Iris, which has never made sense because Barry grew up with her as his sister. You don't come back from that. It would be better for Iris to become a meta-human who holds her own vs. Flash, IMO.

I turned off the show last night. Trevor is showing the same slant to the left JS did, and it's already old. I'm an independent, and have most recently voted Democrat. But watching Trevor go on and on about Ted Cruz saying "commerce" twice while ignoring the news that Hillary signed an agreement that explicitly forbid what she did with her personal email server, or the ongoing statistics about Obamacare and the failure of exchanges and increase in rates, diminishes the show. It should point out hypocrisy on all sides of politics with at least a faint semblance of equal time. It used to do that, years ago. Now TDS is more a comedy, left-wing version of Fox.

You make a valid point. I'd have to go back through the past episode threads for examples. You are right in that pretty much every other character on the show is written to look stupid so Red can be a genius, at least at one time or another. Lizzie was inconsistent from the get go, when we were introduced to her as some sort of hard ass at the academy and yet she couldn't put together the simplest facts to create a profile. Then Megan Boone's facial expressions, or lack of, and some of her acting choices, made the character even harder to decipher. Any more about this topic is probably best moved to the Lizzie thread. The show's problem is that, as in this episode, even as they have minimized Lizzie, the blacklisters are becoming more outrageous and less believable, like Mr. Freeze. So what grounds the show? Spader is very good, but soon he will be combating descendants of Atlantis or some such. Let's keep his environment a bit more realistic. That, in turn, will help us care more about the characters.

Actually, they did do that, and it was the worst part of the show. Hence, I assume, Lizzie now taking a back seat. Some of that was writing, some of that was the actress. There are many posts about this in past episode threads. The overall effect of anything Lizzie-specific was to slow the show down to an indifferent crawl.

I didn't miss her at all. They are using Lizzie in just the right amount these days. I didn't understand The Donut's plan. Why were they cutting into someone's skull? The bodies we saw frozen seemed intact? Was the ultimate point just to save the heads? Is there any reason to believe that works? And most importantly, how long did The Donut think the bodies/heads needed to be frozen? Longer than his lifetime, I assume, so ... did he have a succession plan - the Donut Hole? Blacklister's tend to be fantastical, but this one was a few Krispy Kreme's short of a baker's dozen.

So I got the impression that the reason they lied wasn't because they wanted a war, but because they didn't want their mom to know that Rye was killed by some nobody in an accident of some kind who happened to be a butcher. It was important to their mom's pride that Rye was killed by somebody professional, someone who is good at what he does. The comments about Rye getting in a few licks in anyway back that up. The war between the Gerhardt's and KC was coming regardless of that.

Not sure why this is confusing. As an infant, Tommy couldn't control his power. After years with Hiro as dad, he learned how to. Hence he stole powers as an infant but didn't as a teen. Oh, just saw someone post that. Well, we agree. I thought this ep tied together many glimpses we have already seen. I have to wave away a few minor details. I'm enjoying the trip back to when Heroes was good.

I thought the audience was fairly silent any time Trump was on stage, probably because it is SNL and the audience leans left. God forbid anyone laugh at the Republican, lest it be construed as support. Whatever. The Drake skit was funny and Trump was very good in it. "I called you on my cell-phone ..." I thought Sia missed an opportunity to have her dancing pal wear a wig with the colors reversed (a la original Star Trek), to show the dancer represented what Sia could not. Che's "stabbing" hand line was great and lost in the applause.

Agree again, and will add that anyone who is married with young kids would get this. The only aspect of what he did that was kind of squicky was that he did it when his wife had left the room, but even that isn't unusual since one parent is often better at that transition than the other (and in the world of TV, the one who matures more easily is usually the mom). When the more mature one leaves, the other one often has to vent. No harm, no foul. Why? All lives have aspects that are not ideal. No one has a perfect life. What exactly are Gretchen's expectations? It feels like she is 12.

So was the woman in the house who had turned someone who had slit her wrists because she gave up? The camera zoomed in on her wrists at one point, and the giving up part would be consistent with the theme of the season. Also, the passersby seemed surprised that this particular woman was a zombie. Jessie then gave a speech about fighting, so I thought that all tied together nicely. Standing at the top of a wall, in full view of the gathering horde, may not be the best move.Just sayin'. Enh. She is not made up, supposed to look worn and walkinga round mostly in shock in what looks like an ill-fitting shirt.

Yes, sometimes it isn't A Thing. Those vacuous morning TV hosts just thought Louis was funny. As a viewer, I was annoyed when out of the blue Jessica tried to make it into the "funny Chinese guy" thing. And as terrible as Long Duk Dong was in retrospect, I remember when that movie came out, his bits were among the funniest and got the greatest reaction from the audience. I prefer to think of him as an elderly grandparent who doesn't get why some terms are racist, and save my anger for more current, relevant examples.

They do have a few basic rules, however, and one of them seems to be that in each episode, a character has to act like an idiot. Since Juliette is (probably temporarily) gone, this episode it was Nick. Dude, you are a trained cop and a Grimm. You know what has happened and you have friends to back you up. Settle down, think out a plan and execute. Don't threaten an FBI agent in her office, or stalk her at home. BTW, what time did she get home, 3 p.m.? Awfully light out. Your tax dollars at work. Also? Most anytime someone expresses sympathy for Juliette it takes me out of the story, because with every fiber of my DNA I don't get why anyone wants her around. Adalind has done awful things, however, it seems like if she views you as being on the same side, she's a pretty good ally, and a lot of crap that she has done has been tied to others forcing her to do it. Lame and annoying is just who Juliette is.

That's the thing. I love this show when everyone is being who they are. They owned it, and I have no problem with that. I have begun to detest it from the moment the show began to position Gretchen's depression as a deep, meaningful motivation for her actions. At that point, the connection between the show's title and its characters' actions diverged.

Nothing? No comments? OK, I'll go ... this show drives me mad, with its very funny concepts and then awkward execution. The Yank Bank discussion, and having Taco immediately "get it," was great. It's link with Andre, and his inability to deal with a former crush who is asking for his expertise, was not.

I think I found the other couple more interesting than Gretchen and Jimmy. At least they were dealing with the real-life changes that happen when you make choices. Depression or no, Gretchen, grow the fuck up. You kidnap a dog, and stalk a nanny with a baby, just so you can see what that kind of life is like? You should have been arrested. And in any case, realize that you can choose that life for yourself. You're not too old, you have many options in front of you. Second, be mature enough to realize that not everyone else's life is as perfect as you might think from the outside. When the guy vented a bit about where he has found himself (in a way that I found normal and not creepy at all), that's useful info from which you can learn, not cause for a breakdown. I find Gretchen's behavior annoying. It's easy to say "depression" to excuse it all. But really, she is more in a state of arrested development and just now realizing that every decision she made may not have been the best possible one for her. The times where she made fun of normal but nerdy people, or didn't respect the rules of the yogert shop because, well, she's too cool for that? That attitude comes with consequences. She reminds me of some of my musician friends who partied and enjoyed that lifestyle in their 20s and 30s foregoing a career or education, and then in their 40s and 50s began to realize that it's ending and what else do they have?

That was the choice the writers made, yes. But then they came back to it with the Rooneyesque bus ending, which had nothing to do with Brian and the beginning. My point was I wish they would have made the entire episode a light one, while moving along a little more of the NZT/side effects/immunity mystery, as Brian aped Ferris throughout the city. It would have been more elegant than an abrupt change to black ops and then a return to Ferris.

I loved Ferris Bueller and I got every reference in this ep, including suspecting what was coming from the episode title phrasing. I just wish the show would have gone all the way with it, and made the entire episode a light peek at Brian's Day Off (and it should have had Brian wandering into a parade in the city and ending up with a lip-syncing boy band on a float), It was too weird trying to have fun and then dealing with rogue black ops characters who killed each other, spraying blood on Brian's face. Also, it seems too early in the series run to pull out the change-of-pace, homage-to-another-source episode.

And as we learned last night, if you are Republican and recognize this and decline to appear on the show, you will still be mocked. Refusing access for TDS was pretty stupid, though. Say no to interviews, but don't refuse access. The WSJ had an editorial earlier this week where they rephrased debate questions to Democrats in ways that resembled the way the moderators asked questions of Republicans. Interesting juxtaposition. The Republicans had a point. The party handled it very poorly, though. It was very gentle, complete with cooing over a drone outfitted with boots. It was more a recitation of historical events that led to Obama making his choice than a commentary on Obama's going back on his word, IMO. That's an example of the tact the show takes when it comes to left vs. right issues. I was surprised they didn't go to Dick Cheney footage to underscore this happened before Obama was elected.

That was a HUGE piece of glass to be found anywhere other than a glass factory. Step on that baby and you are off to the ER! I'm trying to remember what Lou et al were looking for in the road, but given they were in middle of a road, I would think a big piece of thick, clearly auto glass would be viewed as a meaningful clue. As to whether the glass would blend in, could be. But I think Lou in particular (or Betsy!) would have found it. YMMV. Of course, given that they eventually did decide that a car was involved, I don't know why Lou and Hank weren't at every local collision shop before Hanzee. BTW, "Hanzee" doesn't sound like a Native American name. Does anyone know if it has a meaning in Dutch or German or whatever ethnic group is dominate in N. Dakota/Minnesota? Seems like that would be a hidden clue of some kind.