Danny Franks

Season two of The Bear has the single best use of music I've seen in a long time: When Carmy runs into his childhood crush, Claire, and they have an awkward, wistful catch up, the song that plays in the background is Strange Currencies by REM. It's the perfect song for that moment, because it's not one of the most well known songs of the 90s, it's not even one of REM's most well known songs. But I had this moment of recognition and nostalgia, of 'oh shit, I remember this!' that is exactly what the show wanted to convey with Carmy and Claire bumping into each other. I'm sure everyone else aged between 35 and 50 had that exact same feeling. Also, it's a lovely song and the sound of it is wistful and warm and there's an air of love being a confusing mystery, which is again exactly what you can see between Carmy and Claire.

Yeah, Mojo has always been one of the worst villains/plot enablers in the X-verse (hell, in the entire Marvel universe). He's completely one-note and repetitive, a one trick pony and the stories involving him always feel like complete filler (similar to Arcade). The only good thing that has ever come out of the Mojo-verse is Spiral, who makes for a fun villain or antagonistic ally.

I did a rewatch of Scrubs and decided I might as well bite the bullet and watch season nine for the first time. I only got halfway through. Partly because it just isn't very funny and the entire setup is awkward and artificial, and partly because Dave Franco's character is one of the most unpleasant and annoying characters I've ever seen on a TV show. He is selfish, narcissistic, callous and rude. One of the first things he does is sleep with Kerry Bishe's character, then take a photo of her naked when she's not looking and share it with people at the hospital. Then, even after she's completely humiliated by that, she sleeps with him again. He's similar to another rich boy med student character who appeared much earlier in the show. In that case, Elliot humbles him and calls his bluff on his threat that his rich dad will pull his donation to the hospital. But there is no such humbling or humanising of Dave Franco in season nine.

And the reveal at the end of season two that Will is actually there in person. Not only that, the whole cluster is there.

I just saw the trailer for this at the cinema tonight, and my overriding feeling was, 'none of these effects look practical.' After how amazing Fury Road looked because of all the practical effects and stunts, seeing so much that looked completely computer generated was very disappointing. I'd still be way more interested in seeing The Further Adventures of Furiosa, starring Charlize Theron, than this young version.

I just got back from watching this, and I think I have mostly the same opinion of it as I did the first movie - visually stunning and incredible sound design were the standouts, but the pacing and storytelling weren't great. The scale of the desert was incredible, and that's something that Villeneuve does better than anyone else working in Hollywood at the moment. The expanses are vast, and Villeneuve loves putting visual markers into those scenes to show the scale - a tiny figure on a ridge, a sandworm that fills the screen, a giant silver Heart of Gold looking spaceship with battalions of tiny soldiers beneath it. The greyscale look of the Harkonnen world was so striking, and it's little wonder they're all deranged, growing up there. The story is still the weakest part of the movie. There's too much 'because mysticism said so' driving the actions of the main characters - Jessica drinks wormblood and is apparently guided by the knowledge of previous Reverend Mothers. She tries to manipulate Paul into doing what she believes he must (with the help of her magical fetus) but it's only when he also drinks wormblood that he realises what he has to do. The Bene Gesserit were just scheming for scheming's sake, by the end of it. The notion that Feyd Rauda was "controllable" was rather absurd, given he casually murdered people for no reason whatsoever, even when he was in a good mood. The first thing he'd have done if he became emperor was devise a plan to wipe out the Bene Gesserit, as he'd see them as the main threat, and the people who could remove him from the throne they put him on. Feyd Rauda was a bit of a non-event as well. Interestingly played by Austin Butler, but his role in the story was very clear - be scary and then be killed by Paul. I like the overall narrative -Don't trust messiahs (and boy, Paul would have been better off if his mum was more like Brian of Nazareth's mum) because they will lose sight of your interests as they pursue their own. Paul becomes a narcissistic saviour, caught up in his own legend and apparently willing to sacrifice thousands, millions, of his followers to secure his victory. I think Zendaya was the standout actor in this, and her character was the standout too. If there is a third movie, I'd much rather it focus more on her and less on Paul. And I'd like it if they actually diverged heavily from the books, regarding how Chani apparently accepts Paul's choices and agrees to be his lover again. Certainly, the final shot of the movie didn't suggest a woman likely to accept anything Paul says or does again. And I doubt audiences would readily accept Paul marrying Irulan (Florence Pugh was wasted in this, by the way. All she did was look pensive and wear crazy hats) but acting like nothing needs to change with Chani. A couple of bugbears - are we to believe that the Fremen can steer sandworms, with those tiny little hooks? These things are so big that the one Paul rode was passing him for about two minutes before he jumped on its back. I guess that must be how it works, unless they stand there all day, just waiting for the worm they summon to be going in the right direction. And how do they get off, when they reach their destination? And when, exactly, did Leto have time to construct a secret bunker on Arrakis and hide all of House Atreides' atomic missiles in it? Also, why would he? That would leave his homeworld unprotected.

The fact that an X-Men episode focused on four characters of colour is kind of great - Storm, Forge, Jubilee and Roberto. Especially after some of the histrionics of people who somehow missed the fact that the X-Men are representative of minorities of all kinds. Unfortunately, Forge is one of the dullest characters to ever appear in the pages of a Marvel comic, and he makes Storm dull by association. The little personality he had back in the day was being an insecure dick. I always liked Jubilee and felt like she got shunted off to the X-kids team too quickly by writers who didn't care about her, so I'm glad she got a bit of focus in this episode. Roberto is a character I've never really had an opinion of, but I quite like the version of him in the show, and quite like that they picked Sunspot over a whole host of others they could have used - Cannonball, Boom Boom, Cypher, Wolfsbane, Karma, Dani Moonstar.

Logan/Jean was the absolute worst, and this is coming from someone who has never cared about Cyclops. It just seemed like Jean was too kind and good natured, and pitied Logan too much, to tell him to back off. Meanwhile, Logan was a significantly older guy who had an unhealthy obsession with a woman who was clearly in a relationship. Of course he had main character syndrome, and assumed that he could just put his feelings out there repeatedly, failing to respect that relationship, and of course he could just openly be a dick to Cyclops because he was jealous of him. As for Rogue and Magneto, that was almost as bad, for different reasons (although age difference was still a big one). In the case of the show, I do think it has to be a misdirect or they wouldn't be hitting Gambit over the head with it so hard (I don't think the writers of the show hate him as much as some of the X-book writers have in recent years), without actually showing them doing anything. Also, I have always preferred Magneto as a villain with noble intentions, rather than a hero who acts like an arsehole all the time. The obsession so many X-writers have with turning villains into heroes is truly tiresome.

I'm not @Dandesun, but I'll try to answer. The animated show is a loose adaptation of stories and continuity from the X-Men comics, so there are lots of things that will be different from the comics, or even completely absent, in the show. In the comics, Alex Summers has almost as long a history with the X-Men as Scott does. Alex was adopted after the deaths of their parents , but got involved with the X-Men and almost immediately learned that Scott was his brother. He joined the second iteration of the team, even before Wolverine or Storm, and has spent most of his time since then on various X-teams, most notably X-Factor (a spinoff team that worked for the US government, dealing with Mutant threats). Of course, Alex has spent some of that time being evil due to mind control or memory loss, notably when controlled by the Goblin Queen. Other than that, he and Scott are pretty close but have rarely worked directly with each other on the same team: Alex was gone from the books in the 70s, when Scott was on the team. Then Scott was gone from the X-Men for much of the 80s, forming X-Factor with the other four original X-Men, while Alex returned to the team. Scott came back and Alex went to X-Factor in the 90s. I think they were both active X-Men together for a period in the 2000s, but few people remember the stories of that era fondly. As for Corsair, they know he's their dad and they've had various adventures with him (Scott absurdly realised who Corsair was when he looked at his own unshaven reflection and saw such a strong resemblance). At one point Corsair died and Alex took over as leader of the Starjammers, but he may be alive again now.

They're really rushing through comic book stories at a pace even quicker than the original series did. At this rate, they'll be in the Krakoa era by the end of season two. Inferno could have been a whole season build up, but they crammed it all into one episode. It wasn't bad, but it could have been more. But I can't say it doesn't make more sense for Scott to believe Madelyn is actually Jean, rather than thinking he's met a woman who looks identical to the woman he believes to be dead and not really question it. I suppose we needed at least one occurrence of Jean fainting in Scott's arms because she's unable to control her powers, in the finest tradition of the original series. There was some genuinely creepy body horror stuff in this episode, which was executed well. I'm going to assume the Rogue and Magneto stuff is more like the Joseph storyline, where Rogue is tempted by the ability to touch but eventually decides against it, than it is the weird era where Mike Carey used Magneto as his self-insert character to bone Rogue, based on some lingering feelings Rogue had from an alternate universe. Another love triangle we absolutely don't need - Logan, stop being creepy about Jean and go find one of the several dozen other women you've had relationships with. Morph seems to only be included in this reboot to give cameos to characters we'd all rather have in the show - Colossus, Psylocke, Magik (and Darkchylde) - which is fine, but I would rather actually have one of those characters. I do like all the nods to classic X-Men covers and panels, like Gambit and Rogue on the basketball court, Scott and Jean's wedding photo, Rogue and Magneto in the Savage Land 'costumes.'

Dever would have been my first choice for Ellie, if the show had been made a few years ago. She's such a good actor, and I think she'll absolutely kill it as Abby. Her work in Justified and Dopesick and Booksmart is great. Talk about casting someone the audience has no choice but to empathise with.

Yeah, if it turns out no one is able to follow your instructions and complete the technical in time, it's probably because you didn't give them enough time. Tasha only produced something edible because she decided to stop following them. The creme caramel things were not my cup of tea. Gloopy, gelatinous slabs of sickly sweetness. I didn't think any of them really looked good, and I'm not sure how Paul and Prue ate their way through all those things. Meringue bombes were a decent idea but I felt like the request for "some kind of dessert" inside was a bit too vague. Tasha did choux buns with jam in, while Dan did a whole trifle and made a mousse cake of some kind. Sure, variety is good but it didn't seem like everyone had the same amount of work to do. I wish Cristy had gone instead of Saku. She's a drip, and a bland one, while Saku is a huge personality. The final is starting to look like Dan, Tasha and Josh, as they're all consistently closer to the top than the bottom, while Cristy and Matty both seem more likely to crash and burn. I do find myself wondering whether Tasha sneakily switches off her hearing aid so she can focus more easily, and likely to discourage inopportune banter from Noel and Alison.

Are spices really considered botanicals? I guess that's what they are, but I don't think they're what most people would immediately think of. Anyway, the spiced, sticky buns all looked, and sounded, amazing, especially Tasha and Dan's. One issue with the technical that bothered me was that both Paul and Prue were saying, "this has more thyme than lemon" or vice versa, but never said what the right balance was. Cristy made a hell of a fuss out of that, I have to say. Honestly, I'm not sure why hers was considered a showstopper while Matty's wasn't. Both had similar amounts of decoration, she just used a fancy mold. The montage of people dropping stuff and just getting on with it was amusing. Tasha's dismissive, "that was just my backup cake" made me smile. I appreciate Josh just quietly plugging away without any drama and getting star baker. He seems like an oasis of calm, compared to the others. Tasha must have been a close second, despite her poor technical. I know she said she was going to sign because she wasn't sure how to pronounce some words, but it seemed like she may resort to signing when she's a bit overwhelmed, which is very understandable. She was pretty nervous. Probably because she decided to do ten bloody layers. I wasn't sure about the shade of green that Dan used, but the overall effect was pretty good. He's starting to seem a little cocky, though, which I'm not wild about. Dana leaving wasn't a surprise, she's been one of the weaker bakers all season, although it was probably a tough choice between her and Saku.

Colour me surprised. I thought Christy was pretty unimpressive so far, and more likely to be eliminated than to get star baker. But she was really good this week. I always like pastry week, because I like pastry, and there were some really nice looking pies this time. I liked the little picnic pies, or whatever they decided to call them. Some interesting flavour combos, but I definitely would not have liked the spiced tuna ones that Saku made. A tuna and egg pie? God, that sounds terrible. Pretty good technical, and I've seen enough pithiviers on MasterChef to know how they should look. But it's essentially just a puff pastry test, which is fine. Seems like most of the bakers failed to get the shape right, and quite a few had undercooked potatoes. Couldn't be because they weren't given quite enough time, could it? The showstopper was a bit weak in concept, but I'd rather that than them demanding a '3D, modern art installation using at least five pies, and two different pastries' or something. Most of the sweet pies looked pretty good, especially Christy and Dan's. Rowan's didn't, but at least the cherry filling looked really tasty. It was pretty obvious which two were leaving, fairly early on. Nicky had been on the edge almost every week, and just doesn't seem to be of the same standard as some of the others. And Rowan was having a bit of a 'mare.

Poor Tasha. She was clearly struggling. I can't imagine a migraine plus stress plus one of the hottest days of the year combine well. But I do think Allison looking after you when you're poorly would make you feel a bit better. Of course, there are sadly some lunatics who take this show too seriously and are accusing her of faking an illness. This show has some elements of the fandom who are honestly just the absolute worst. And of course it's the Daily Mail that amplifies their voice. Let's be honest though, it was obvious no one would be eliminated as soon as they said she'd had to withdraw from the week. About it being so hot, there's no way they don't look at the weather forecast and know it's likely to be incredibly hot two or three weeks from now. They could easily reschedule chocolate week, but don't because they want the drama of things melting. More relatively normal things, this week. The "chocolate box" was basically just a collar. Those cheesecakes sounded amazing, and some of them looked it too. Deserved star baker for Matty, who had been pretty quiet prior to this week. It's definitely clear this season that the judges have been told to be less critical and more encouraging. There are some unkind word choices like "monstrous" and "hideous" but there's none of the meanness that sometimes came across in previous seasons.