Shanna Marie

One thing I like about this series is that the characters who'd be in the villain role in a lot of shows are allowed to be good. Like Mrs. Pumphrey. The stereotype for that kind of character would be that she's the bitchy lady of the manor who expects everyone to cater to her every whim and makes life miserable for everyone else. But while she does sort of expect them to cater to her whims about her dog, that's because she dotes on her dog, not because she's being lady of the manor. She's a genuinely good person, like in this episode, when she jumps in to help (didn't they say in a past episode that she married into that position but didn't come from that social class?). In a more typical series, Tristan would have been a rival to James, trying to undercut him. It kind of looked like they were going to go that way when he first appeared and nearly got James in trouble, but then Tristan turned out to be a good guy instead of a jerk (even if he can be a bit flighty), and he and James are like brothers. It was a fun little twist that he hasn't been masking PTSD, that he really has been having not too bad a time (unless it turns out that this was part of the masking). It's rather nice watching something where no one's really evil, and even the annoying people mostly have good intentions (well, aside from the guy trying to scam free medical treatment for his goat). I'm going to miss it after the finale next week. I have Passport and could have watched the whole season already, but I'm spreading it out. Maybe I'll go back and rewatch from the beginning of the series because it's just what I need right now.

I really need a Pop-up Video version of this special, with little bubbles popping up on screen to give the name of the actor, tell when they were a cast member if it's a former cast member, and the name of the character if it was a recurring bit. Plus a caption for the name of the sketch if that was a recurring thing. Between some of the people having aged a lot since they were last on SNL and the wigs/makeup/costuming, I spent a lot of time wondering who was who and if I should be recognizing them. I watched pretty consistently in the late 80s and early 90s, then had a long gap when I might watch occasionally, then missed a lot of years entirely (because I'm not a night owl) until I discovered that they post the sketches on YouTube a few years ago and started catching up and then watching regularly again. So I caught some things and figured out some people, wasn't sure about others. I'll definitely need to rewatch the New York musical because there were a lot of people I didn't recognize in it. Who were the guys doing the Les Mis "Confrontation" part? I laughed out loud for several minutes after the alien abduction sketch. That one has always struck my funny bone, both for the colorful descriptions of being pantsless and for the fun of seeing esteemed actors absolutely losing it while fighting not to. I think much of the point of that sketch was always to see if they could break the guest host. It was like a hazing ritual.

That was my read on it, that he would claim that Siegfried and his treatments didn't do any good, so Siegfried would have to give him his money back. Once he had his money, then he'd actually follow the directions and treat the goat, thus getting the treatment for free.

That was how I understood it, too. As much as I enjoyed this series and as much as I want to see what's in store for At-Attin, I'm not sure how they could do a second season and have it be at all the same show. This was mostly an adventure series about kids, but that was a once-in-a-childhood adventure. These kids are unlikely to have yet another planet-hopping adventure that sends them up against pirates. Any follow-up would be more about rebuilding the society and integrating At-Attin into the New Republic, maybe dealing with Jod in the aftermath. The best I can imagine is that some of the other series set in this time period might visit this planet so we could get a sense of what's going on there. I could see Hera having to go there as part of the rebuilding effort, and since she has a kid that would be a reason to bring in the kids. I'm not sure things would have gone as well as Jod would have liked even if he'd succeeded just because of basic economics, since flooding the market with those credits would lower their value. That money would be about the equivalent of Spanish doubloons for us. They're not really useful as currency because the government that issued them no longer exists, but they have a value beyond the value of the gold/silver they're made of because they're a historic relic. If you found a small amount of them, you could sell them to collectors or museums for a lot of money or get someone who recognized their value to take them as payment. But if it turned out that someone was still making doubloons with the same equipment used for the original ones, they'd be less valuable. They'd be "fake" for museum/collection purposes, so they'd really only be worth whatever raw material was used to make them, so there would be no point in making the citizens keep making credits. Jod might as well just take all the gold/gold-pressed latinum/whatever material they're made of without bothering to mint more cash. Since we're dealing with a whole galaxy, he and the pirates might be able to spend a fair amount before someone noticed that the Republic credits were too new or that there were suddenly a lot of them on the market, which would make them less valuable, but that would likely happen eventually, since I doubt the pirates would show much restraint.

I think it was more aimed at The Love Bug, given the paint job, the number on it, and the fact that the car was named Kirbie (Kirby?), which was likely a reference to Herbie. It was just a 50s car vs. the Beetle. So it seemed like it was going to be a friendly magical car with a dash of mischief, like Herbie the Love Bug, except it reflects the time it's in, so it turns out to be racist and sexist.

I still like what they did with the live-action Cinderella, where they weren't trying to replicate the cartoon. It was merely a new telling of the same basic story, with elements from the cartoon woven in, rather than exactly the same movie, but with real people instead of animation. Different costumes, not trying to duplicate the hairstyles, and even the story being a bit different. On another note, I've been meaning to post about this for months, but I got kind of sidetracked by moving halfway across the country ... for a novel that has a good fairytale mash-up and that actually uses the Snow White and Rose Red story (which I recall a lot of people here putting on their wish list for the show to use), the novel After the Forest by Kell Woods just came out in paperback, and it was really interesting. It's a mash-up/retelling of Hansel and Gretel and Snow White and Rose Red, with some elements from the more famous Snow White story, as well as elements from a lot of other Grimm deep cuts. It's set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years War in Germany, with the main character being an adult Gretel. The events of the Hansel and Gretel story happened, but in a slightly different way. Gretel grabbed the witch's spell/recipe book when they escaped, and now she has a recipe for gingerbread that people can't resist. However, the people in her village are starting to get really suspicious of anything that might involve magic, and there's a new lady of the manor who may be up to something. I read the hardcover earlier in the year and liked it. There's a short story online by that author that's a prequel. I haven't read it all the way through yet (the tab's been open for ages).

I spotted a OUAT mention in the Washington Post, in an article about the impact of the Twitter blackout in Brazil on fan accounts, which highlighted the fact that so many of the "stan" accounts for a variety of stars and properties are Brazilian. At first it was all about the big ones, like Taylor Swift and various K-Pop groups, but their example for a niche interest was a fan account for Colin O'Donoghue, with the last few paragraphs of the article being about the account a Brazilian fan started about him, initially for OUAT but then following his career, and included a photo of her with him at a convention. This should be a gift link so it's not paywalled: https://wapo.st/3Z2oNZv

I had to bail because it was so stressful and unpleasant to watch. The "beautiful, sunny, vacation in Italy with soapy hijinks" doesn't mesh well with "fascism on the rise and the start of the Great Depression, and nothing seems to work out well for most of the characters, who are never allowed to be happy." I would have been all over a series about a plucky Englishwoman running a hotel in Italy, where her guests find love or find themselves, with maybe a bit of running drama among the staff and family and the occasional challenging guest. That would be perfect summer TV. I'm just not in the mood for unending misery, no matter how pretty the setting and costumes are.

I'm sure that not all young, single clergymen in the 50s and 60s were celibate, but surely there was at least one who didn't indulge in casual sex. At least we're getting some variety in Alphy not being wracked with guilt, but it might have been nice to have one whose only issues involved dealing with all the external factors he's faced with, like the potential failure of his parish as racism, but who is otherwise not self-destructive or dealing with inner issues and who is actually living up to the standards of his calling. It has struck me that this show has a tendency to do these extreme swings in tone. The very premise of a vicar who tags along on murder investigations is a setup for culture-clash humor, and some of the characters are comical exaggerations, but then the personal stories of the characters tend to go so dark. It swings so much between "ha ha, the vicar and the cop have totally different perspectives, and the overbearing housekeeper really runs the place for the hapless young vicars" and inner demons, substance abuse, oppression, mental illness, etc.

This is a problem for me. I'm not a fan of the too-easy, last-minute "redemption," but I like even less seeing a good character turn to the bad, with the show trying to justify that choice. I can see Osha feeling betrayed by Sol, but that doesn't excuse going off with the person who killed her friends, who had nothing to do with all this. I get the feeling that the show's creator has folders full of Draco/Hermione (or Harry), Spike/Buffy, and Kylo Ren/Rey fanfic. I'm still not sure why Osha had to go with Smilo to save Mae. I guess he was determined to get one of them, and Mae wanted out, so she was "sacrificing" herself? I don't have a problem with the Jedi being depicted as flawed. I felt like that was what they showed us in the prequels, even as they talked about them being good. I kind of like the fact that they're finally saying that the Jedi have issues. I didn't dislike this show. I just feel like there was a lot missing. It needed to be fleshed out better so we'd have more context.

I feel like there was a lot of blame to go around here, and it might have helped to have had a bit more context and explanation. Sol's initial obsession with getting Osha out of the coven is a bit unclear. We didn't see any sign from his perspective that she was in danger or being abused, so was there other information he had, like the history of this coven, or was it just the Force told him to do it? This was what set everything in motion. But then the disaster seems to have been triggered by the witches. While Torbin was whining about wanting to go home, it seems that having his mind messed with and the suggestion planted about him wanting to do anything to be able to go home ended up backfiring and making him do something extreme that would hurt the coven in order to allow him to go home. The plan was probably just to make him insist on going home so the Jedi would leave, not to make him want to kidnap Mae and Osha to get evidence of the vergence so they could leave. Then there's this: Shouldn't she have led with "I'm letting Osha go, she's packing and will be down in a minute" instead of going all ominous? Sol probably overreacted, but she was definitely being threatening, and oddly so, considering she was the one who planted the obsession in Torbin and she'd decided to let Osha go. Then there was spiny face mom urging Mae to stop Osha from going. I think Mae had a wee bit of a sociopathic tendency that made her go overboard in being cruel about that, then she realized too late that she'd gone too far and lost control. I figure the witches had it coming from possessing Kelnacca because forcing someone else to do their dirty work, especially when it involves forcing that individual to attack his colleagues, is dirty pool. So far, the Jedi who are more or less innocent were the ones to die. Indara was trying to be the voice of reason throughout, and I figure she was acting in defense of others when she broke the connection between Kelnacca and the witches (though it does depend on how much she knew about the consequences, still, not sure it would or should have changed her actions, given what they were up to). Torbin was a pawn who was manipulated and used by the witches, then was dragged into a conspiracy by the Jedi. He didn't deserve what happened to him. Ditto Kelnacca, who wasn't behind any of it and was possessed. Sol was the one who instigated all of it by being obsessed with getting Osha and then killed her mother and then promoted the conspiracy to lie about it all.

The whole saga has a really weird thing going on with the Jedi, where they keep showing them as fairly incompetent, oblivious, arrogant, and doing some shady things, but they keep telling us how awesome they are, and I'm not always certain this disconnect is on purpose. It goes back to the prequels (so you can't blame it all on Disney), where the Jedi were utterly oblivious to the fact that Palpatine was a Sith, even though he was right there among them, pulling the strings the whole time, and their policy about no attachments was part of what ended up isolating Anakin to the point he was easily corrupted (if he'd been able to talk to someone about his fears about Padme or if his mother had been around, he wouldn't have been so easily manipulated). But they don't ever seem to dig into the flaws. Maybe that'll happen on this show, where the Jedi seem to have done something truly wrong and that's being covered up.

That's what I figure. I'm cutting him some slack for now because he woke in a dark jungle from a stun after watching his whole team die and nearly going Dark Side, so he's not thinking clearly. If he continues falling for it, then we'll have problems -- assuming Mae doesn't reveal herself, and she was only going through with the ruse to use the Jedi to get her to some kind of sanctuary from the Sith. Still, it was cold of her to just leave her sister in the jungle, so even if this is a way of turning herself in, she's still the evil twin. I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of "everyone dies!" stories. Yeah, you get that shock factor in the moment, and there's the sense that no one is safe, which raises suspense, but it has the long-term effect for me of making me disengage from the story. If no one is safe, there's no point in caring about any of these people. They've now wiped out everyone but Sol, the Sith, Osha, and Mae. I just want to see the Sith and Mae defeated, and Osha has been a bit of an enigma. I think I like her, but she hasn't really been developed. All that's left for me to care about is Sol. And with everyone dead, there's no one for the characters to interact with. Unless it turns out that Yord is only mostly dead and can be healed, Osha's going to be on her own (I'm glad they made it clear she was alive because if the story had been that Mae killed her, and now there was just Mae as Osha, I'd really have been disengaged). They're going to have to introduce a new character in the last few episodes for her to have anyone to talk to. I'm a character-driven viewer, and if there's no one I care about, I can't get into a show. When they get rid of the character(s) I care about, I lose interest in the show. Having people I like is more important to me than shock, surprise, and suspense, so "everyone dies!" is a turn-off for me.

I think that's fairly consistent throughout the saga, though. There doesn't seem to be much change in this society over time. I guess there was the shiny, reflective ships in the prequels vs. the ships in the original trilogy, but nothing really changes in the 70 or so year span from the beginning of the prequel trilogy to the end of the sequel trilogy. People are wearing more or less the same clothes, the technology is the same, the ships don't seem all that different. There doesn't seem to be anything new, no new inventions that weren't there before. It's like their society was rapidly accelerated to where it is, and then it stuck there for centuries. But I would like a bit more worldbuilding, along the lines of what Andor gave us, where we saw how people lived at different levels of society and got glimpses of their culture.

I think that's the issue, that the audience needed to hear her thought process, so she had to talk to someone. There would have been no way of knowing that she'd changed her mind if she hadn't said something to someone, and there would have been no point in her telling some random person who wasn't involved, so it amounted to her telling someone who either was secretly the Sith or was likely to rat her out to the Sith. She did set him up in a trap that should have delayed him doing anything, unless he was secretly the Sith and the trap wouldn't have held him for long, but I don't think she was supposed to suspect him the way the audience does.