Splash

I avoided the past two season until this week, so I had a bit of a ride and it was a surprising good one. I rolled my eyes so hard when I heard about the ICE season, but I think it was incredibly well done. I think Piper moved to Ohio to wait for Alex, which wasn't a surprise for me. Piper and Alex are terrible for each other, and I think Alex realized that at the end, but knew that wouldn't be able to really end things with Piper until she was out of prison. When Piper was talking to Larry, I realized why she's annoyed me for so long; she hasn't gained any emotional maturity. Wikipedia says she was 31 when she went to prison, so she's basically early to mid 30s during her incarceration. But how she speaks to Larry about the her break up with Alex, it's like a teenager talking about her first love. Which I can get that Alex might be her first real love, but if the only way you can express your sadness about her ending things is like losing a limb, maybe therapy is in order. I did like Piper taking law classes. Even if she can't sit for the bar, she can still get a degree and be an advocate. I was hoping she'd hear about the ICE inmates and that's what inspired her to go back to school. As far as a series finale, I did like how things were wrapped up, other than the Piper/Alex relationship. We got to see most everyone and not everything was wrapped up in a bow.

This is so random, but I'm watching the second episode of season 5 and Mark is at Rachel's soccer game. She's the goalie and he's standing next to a dad from the opposing team, who is cheering on his son/talking smack about Rachel to his son (she's just a girl, easy point, you can take her, etc). Anyway, Rachel stops the kid from scoring, but hits her head on the goal post thing. Mark goes to check on her, and the other dad walks away, while the kid who kicked the ball and helps her up. The dad walks up and says the first aid kit was empty (seriously??), but then offers her some ice. This sounds silly, but the entire scene was so surprising to me. I was fully expected the dad to come up and berate his son for failing to score on a girl and make some snarky comments about Rachel, which would set Mark off. The last thing I was expecting was the kid to practice good sportsmanship and the dad to offer whatever help he could. It was really refreshing to watch it play out that way, but also makes it feel a bit dated, since I doubt that scene would play the same on a show now.

I just finished watching A Walk in the Clouds and the ending was just way to WTF for me to handle.

I always viewed The Zeppo and The Replacement as how Xander views himself. He has such low self-esteem that he doesn't believe that he's a valuable member of the team and that all the times he's saved people are just flukes and he just got lucky somehow. I actually love The Replacement because it does such a great job of showing how strongly your brain will lie to you when you have depression. He can't see that he's as important to the team as he is; there has to be some sort of magic spell in order for him to make any real contributions. We know that's wrong, but he can't see that because his brain won't let him.

I wish I could have enjoyed this episode, but I seemed to have audio issues. The volume would randomly drop like a rock when they were speaking, but turning up the volume meant blowing out my eardrums when the music started.

I managed to get 16 minutes in and I'm out for the season. I can't quite decide if I hate Alison or Noah more, but having to suffer through them together is too much. I had recorded Girl, Interrupted earlier in the week and it's a such a more enjoyable use of my tv watching time, than watching two reprehensible people dance around their lust. Within the context of the show, they are not only terrible people, but they are such boring people that I can't bother to care. It's a shame, because I really liked this show.

I liked the first half, but I'm 10 minutes into the first episode of the second half and I'm done, only because of the laugh track. Two sentences, uproarious laughter, three sentences, uproarious laughter, (serious scene) 4 sentences, uproarious laughter. Yeah, no thanks. Like the actors/characters/setting/plot, no to the annoying laugh track that takes me out of the show.

I can understand how she could both love them and want to have some distance from them. From her perspective, her infant and preschooler are now older than she is and that has to mess with your head. And I'm betting she's blaming herself for what they've become and that's causing her to feel an incredible amount of guilt. She made the deal with the Yellow Eyed demon, which caused her death, which caused John to go on a crusade to avenge her death, forcing her boys into a life she didn't want for them. Honestly, I'm not sure that letting her read John's journal this quickly was the best idea. I'm generally not one for withholding information from someone, but that was an extremely emotionally charged book written by a man who was consumed by grief over the loss of his wife and whose singular focus was to have his family destroy what destroyed them. To her, she probably felt that, because of a single choice she made, she robbed them of any other choices, other than to become hunters.

Even though computers existed in the 80s, I can't think of when Mary would have had an opportunity to learn how to use one. She definitely wouldn't have been on the internet, in any form, simply because the ability to access it wouldn't have existed. I grew up in a small town in the midwest and we didn't have a way to access the internet until the mid-90s, because no company offered it. And by "we", I don't just mean individuals; my high school didn't get internet access until 97, so her not knowing anything about technology didn't strike me as odd. I really enjoyed the episode, mainly because it felt more like an earlier season episode. They took a case that had no relation to the season's mytharc, got out of the bunker, and stayed in a random motel and I hope we have more of that happening this season. I feel like they were out in the world and interacting with people unrelated to a case more in earlier seasons and I miss that. What they do is isolating enough without them locking themselves in the bunker until it's time to interrogate someone.

I turned on the the Nick Offerman episode and about fell out of my chair because of the Samsung cold open. I couldn't figure out why it simultaneously startled and mildly creeped me out until I realized the voiceover guy's voice reminded me of Phil Hartman. Am I the only one who think he's sounds similar to Hartman's Bill McNeal?

Exactly. Several years ago, I went on a tour of the Pentagon, hosted by a non-military friend. I don't know what the normal tour sees, but we were able to freely go through where the Joint Chiefs offices were and to the interior plaza area (ground zero, I guess it's called). We didn't see too many people in this area, but what I did see, was notable. Most of the offices were open and anyone coming or going was at attention or prepared to be so. Heck, there was one door that was manned by a member of the military (not sure why). Obviously we didn't get saluted or anything, but the way he opened the door spoke volumes as to how well they are trained in those positions. We were no one, so he could have just opened the door, but he did the whole silent, precise step thing. So if a member of the military does that for random visitors to the Pentagon (knowing that these casually dressed people might just be visitors of an employee), but still does pretty much everything but salute as an automatic thing, then I find it ridiculous that the new president would be treated with less respect, regardless of whether he was the Secretary of HUD or the Secretary of the local community college, if that was in the line of succession. Heck, I can't recall any job I've ever had where I haven't been forewarned when the "big" boss is coming. I've worked in several industries and we've always had a warning call and heeded it, regardless what was going on.

In the bathroom scene, Kal Penn's character said that Kirkman was fired, didn't deserve to the the president, etc. Since, as far as we know, that was never made official by a signed document, it's irrelevant. However, that made me think who could challenge Kirkman in the succession, particularly if there does end up being some sort of document, announcing his promotion to Ambassador of "IHOP". It's unclear whether Kirkman has ever been elected to an office, so taking the Cabinet out of the mix (I'm assuming they were all at the SOTU), could the most senior surviving member of the House of Reps challenge him? That said, I don't think putting together a new Congress quickly would be that hard. A Governor could sent two members of the executive branch to serve as Senators and fill the House seats with State Senate members. Since everyone can vote for people in their state's executive branch, just as they can for US Sentators, so that's the best apples to apples, "will of the people" scenario; and the same could apply for filling the US House with State Senate members. Taking care of the Supreme Court would be much more difficult, but I don't know if that would be an immediate and pressing issue. The swearing in got me wondering if there's a "designated survivor" in the event that all the Justices attend the SOTU, which I had never thought about before.

The actions of the people in the Situation Room/bunker really rang false to me. I don't care that there's an unfathomable crisis happening; every single person in that room would have been knowledgeable about the chain of command and would have enough experience to have their actions regarding protocol be almost automatic. If they were in that room, they would have known that Kirkman was the Designated Survivor and, considering what happened, wouldn't have to be told/informed/reminded that their Commander in Chief just walked in. It was unbelievable that the Chief of Staff (I think?) had to bang on the table to get their attention. I know that was to show how much chaos was going on, but the members of the military there would (I assume) be used to swift changes in their command structure and would act accordingly.

Thanks! Obviously, my ideas have their flaws, but it helped clarify in my head what I felt were flaws in this run of shows. I was feeling pretty disappointed about how this ended up, which didn't make much sense, because I didn't really hate any of the episodes. For me, the problem was that there didn't seem to be any connection among any of the episodes. Sveta was a pretty big part of the first episode and nothing happens with that. I mean, they find out she does have alien DNA, she goes missing, and Mulder and Scully are basically all "huh" and that's the end of it. To me, that kicked off the flaws in this run, because the lack of resolution with her case wouldn't have been treated like she was just some crazy woman screaming at the bus station. Supposebly mentioned Justified as a successful serialized law enforcement show and I find that comparison interesting. Justified was a show where the character's "quest" coexisted with standalone "MOTW" episodes, without the quest taking over. They had plenty of episodes where the MOTW was the focus, while the quest simmered in the background. It wasn't pushed aside for several episodes, only to be brought to the forefront for an episode or two; it was always kind of there behind the scenes. And I think that's really the biggest flaw with this run of episodes. You have this huge opening episode, saying we're on the brink of something globally devastating. We're not sure what it is, but it's enough for the FBI to pull two former agents back into the bureau to investigate, only to not mention it again for 5 episodes. Heck, maybe that explains why Skinner hasn't been promoted past AD; he makes questionable personnel decisions. Taryn74, I absolutely agree with what you said on My Struggle II, about the fact that things were just simply too rushed for it to make much impact, other than frustration. I was continually baffled while watching this run after the first episode, because I figured it was setting up what the season would be about; stopping this global 'whatever' and I kept waiting and wondering when we'd go back to that, since I thought that was kind of the point of bringing them back into the fold. It actually reminded me of my high school AP English classes. We were told we at the beginning of the semester that we'd be required to write a 10 page research paper, which would be worth half our grade. It never failed that a third of the class would forget to do more than the bare minimum on it throughout the semester until the week before, when they would promptly freak out about the paper. It was out of sight, out of mind until it became a crisis of epic proportions. I have no real opinions about CC as a writer, showrunner, etc. I don't generally read interviews, articles, or much of anything about any creator or showrunner on any show I watch, so that kind of stuff isn't on my radar. But it seems to me that the extent of his planning was was with a 22 episode run and not a 6 episode run. With 22 episodes, you can afford to start your season's theme, drop it for 5 episodes, then pick it back up. You can't afford to do that with only 6 episodes, because then you get what we got. If he wanted to do six unrelated MOTW episodes, that's fine, but then do that. Personally, just seeing Mulder and Scully back on my tv investigating weird cases would have been enough, without dragging a crisis into it. That way, if it did well to show there's still a market for it, we'd have some fun new cases with our favorite FBI agents and they could do the "OMG, we're all going to die" plot in the next season. As much as I'm 'eh' about Chekhov's Gun, I think Sveta was Chekhov's Gun and that's their misfire. O'Malley introduced us to the gun in the first act and it didn't go off in the last act, so what was the point of her? I know I keep bringing up the character and it's not because I thought she was awesome or compelling; it's because we spent an awful lot of time with her in the first episode, only for her to be completely irrelevant in the story. You could ditch her character completely and have O'Malley just give Scully a file and some alien DNA blood to test and we'd have the same results.

I think this season would have worked better for me if there was more buildup to the alien DNA/virus situation. Some tweaks I've been thinking about that might make it more cohesive. -Don't kill Sveta in My Struggle, but have her be abducted. -Alter Founder's Mutation a bit. I'll have to rewatch, but I feel like they could have went in a different direction with Agnes. Maybe instead of her approaching Scully and Mulder while they're talking to the nurse, they could have passed by an area where they have quarantined a group of teens that have been affected by random, unusual illnesses. It wouldn't really be important to the plot of the episode, but would indicate that something odd is going on, but it's not yet cause for too much alarm or panic. -Move Babylon to 3rd. Ditch the entire bomber nonsense and use this to ramp up the alien DNA/virus stuff. Even though we've all got the same alien DNA, how the virus manifests and becomes deadly could differ with each person, so it would be hard for a hospital to pinpoint an epidemic. The kid gets sick, goes to the hospital, and get diagnosed with something he couldn't have been exposed to. At the same time, other people are going to hospitals and are getting diagnosed with other illnesses, all that they couldn't be exposed to. The newbie agents are sent to investigate, but it pings Skinner's interest, so he sends Mulder and Scully. Mulder can still have his shroom trip to the country bar, which is what the kid was doing when he got sick and Mulder notices other people that are sick in the hospital, helping them figure out that something happened at the club that made people sick. You don't want to cause mass panic too early, so you slowly trigger the alien DNA/virus with something benign, so that by the time there's a pandemic, it's much too late to stop. The ending is that the agents figure out that all the sicknesses are connected, but haven't yet made the connection to the virus. -Keep Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster as is, but as episode 4. -Ditch Home Again. -Make My Struggle II a two part episode. Have Tad O'Malley come back online, but Mulder hasn't disappeared yet. Have the panic start and have the Scully's mom stuff from Home Again happen. When Scully wants to back to work after her mom dies, Reyes calls to set up the meeting and Mulder says he's going to do research (his meeting with O'Malley). Have the episode end with O'Malley calling Scully about Mulder and us seeing Mulder fleeing. Have the second episode pick up with Scully at Mulder's house with O'Malley, then her going back to the hospital to start looking at her blood with Einstein. Meanwhile, Miller is looking for Mulder, while all hell is breaking loose, O'Malley is doing his reports about what is going on, and Mulder is confronting CSM. While Mulder is confronting CSM, Sveta walks in. It turns out she was sent by CSM to orchestrate getting Mulder back in the game, so CSM could offer to save him. Scully and Einstein get the cure and the episode ends the way it did. You still have 6 episodes, you've still got the fun episode, not all of the rest are obviously apart of the mytharc, and it feels more cohesive overall.

I rewatched the dance scene and is Skinner sitting at the table with The Lone Gunmen and Mulder? From the left, it looks like Byers, Skinner, Mulder, Frohike, and Langley, but I'm not sure.

So, I found the clock I made. I do remember screwing up on the time back in the day (but too late to fix it), so I'm not a complete moron. And I'm guessing this was after Ice, because of the bugs. In any case, nerdy teenage X-Files swag!

I'm laughing so hard at the concept of an FBI ball. I mean, I guess the FBI might have some sort of annual banquet thing attached to a conference, but it's not Prom: FBI Addition. If the series started now, would this FBI Prom fanfic involve Skinner helping to orchestrate Mulder asking Scully a'la teens going all out to ask their date to the 'big dance' (I read a story today about how a local teen involved the cops to ask her date to prom.) I haven't read XF ff, but I've read ones for other shows and it really is hit and miss. Staying true to the characters is my benchmark. If I could potentially see the characters acting that way on screen, then I'm good.

(Disclaimers: I'm speaking about Mulder, not DD in regards to ages/dates. Also, I haven't seen past season 5 and am also assuming that each season is a year, even if it's not, so please overlook any inaccuracies.) I don't see him phoning in his performance, but being pretty true to how Mulder would be at this point in his life. He was in his early 30s when the show started and was already considered a kook by people at his job. He was only about 5 years into his quest, and his actions hadn't yet had tangible repercussions, so can see how he would have that passionate and enthusiastic drive for answers. But in 9 years, he lost Deep Throat, X, The Lone Gunman, his partner's sister, and his father; discovered and/or were led to believe that his parents knew about and/or were involved with his sister's disappearance; his partner was abducted, got cancer, and couldn't have kids; not to mention all the times that he's been shot and/or almost died, people/creatures have messed with his mind, been framed for something, and had to run from the law. Taking out the supernatural aspects of those situations, that's an extreme amount of stress. loss, and guilt for one person to have to deal with. His quest cost him everything and he knows that going down that road again would be bad for him, yet he can't help himself. I think his acting detached and using sarcasm could be a defense mechanism, so he doesn't completely lose it.

Good grief, that made my skin crawl a little bit.

They occasionally did funny episodes, but those aren't the norm. I'd say that the second episode is a bit more in line with how the show was, in general.

I was at a restaurant with friends watching the game when I happen to see the commercial about this being the final season. I cheered and said how happy I was that they were finally putting this how out of its misery, which I'm thinking isn't the reaction that the creators were going for. It was so awesome in the beginning and it blows my mind that it turned into the mess it is now.

I rolled my eyes at Alicia's little breakdown. Peter cheated, blew up her nice little suburban life, and she was left to pick up the pieces, because he went to jail. And when he got out, and wanted to have a reconciliation (because it looked good for him to be married when he ran for office again), instead of say no and filing for divorce, they did that ridiculous separation. Sorry, Alicia; at that point, most of your misery is of your own making. I realize she didn't mention Peter, but I felt that it was implied. But besides that, I wasn't impressed because it just looked like bad acting. It's like she went from silence to wailing in 60 seconds, which felt very so out of character. It's always good to see Diane and Cary, even though Diane's case was stupid and Cary didn't have much to do. My favorite scene of the entire show was Eli's apology at the door. I loved the fact that he was so upset by what he had done and was going to try one more time to say how sorry he was. I knew Alicia was going to shut the door in his face, and I can't blame her for being furious with him, but her non-reaction bugged me. Either sincerely accept his apology or tell him to stop trying to make things better, but the dead-eyed stare and flat "I forgive you" was cold.

I'm loving reading about when/how everyone got into the show and I'm envious of those of you who were able to discuss it back in the day! As for me, I was 13 when it started and was a fan from day one. I remember seeing a commercial for it, knew it was something I wanted to watch, but wasn't sure if I would be able to (in my house, my parents got first choice in tv viewing). However, we got our first VCR that summer, so I spent time setting it up to record, just in case. It turned out that my parents were amused by my chatter about it, so I got to watch it live. I have such a strong memory of being in the kitchen, hurrying to make a pitcher of tea before it started and I remember exactly where I was standing and squealing as I rushed to the living room. We didn't have internet, and none of my friends watched, so I was kind of alone in my fandom, but it was appointment tv for me. Not only did I watch it live, I recorded every episode, bought whatever magazines/TV Guides I could find that had articles about the show, and made a ceramic X-Files clock in art class (which I still have somewhere). I also have a vague memory of keeping a binder full of 'stuff' (newspaper clippings, artwork?), so I guess that was my way of participating in the fandom when I had no other way of doing so. However, my interest started to wane around season 4 and I stopped watching completely at some point during season 5. This was partly because the mytharc was frustrating and partly because I was in my senior year and just too busy to watch. And here's my confession: I've never seen a full episode past season 5 (only snippets) and haven't seen either movie. When I got internet and could read forums, it seems that the mytharc just got more complicated and convoluted and I decided that I didn't want to end up hating a show that I had loved so much, so I avoided it. I've actually avoided it to the point that I never did a rewatch until now. Since I haven't been immersed in the show for almost 2 decades, it's been fun to do a rewatch with adult eyes. The episodes that freaked me out back then still freak me out, but I'm finding that episodes that I didn't like as much back then are ones that I like now. I also think that more than enough time has passed that watching the seasons I haven't seen won't taint my love for the show and it's almost like the show (for me) is in three parts; the first 5 season that I watched in real time as a teen, the last 4 seasons that I'll watch as an adult, and the new episodes that I'll watch as an adult in real time. I was so excited when I heard about the new episodes and my inner 13 year old cheered when I found out the premiere date, since my birthday was 2 days later and I decided it was an early birthday gift. I would have laughed and thought you were nuts if you had told me that I'd be watching new episodes of this show, 23 years later.

I hated the entire Grace plot. First off, when Grace was begging to bring in new business, Alicia told her to look for mid level clients and when Grace asked how sh could tell that they were mid level, Alicia told her to "look at the size of their ads". Ads where, in the newspaper? Surely she didn't mean the phone book. And I find is really hard to believe that Grace could get past at least 3 gatekeepers and is just put through to decision maker Mrs. Gilmore with her first phone call. I half expected her to say, "You've got spunk, kid! Let's do it!", but no, she just wants Grace to call her the next day so they can draw up the papers (why wasn't a meeting set?), Grace asks if she's serious, then just hangs up on the woman after she says she's sure. I get that shows don't bother with phone goodbyes because they waste time, but it took me out of the scene. Not to mention, it bugged me that she was using her cell to make business calls and not the business line in the house, which would show up on caller ID as Florrick/Quinn. If Grace is in the habit of using her personal cell for work business, can Alicia bill for that time? I guess they could just look at her bill every month, but she'll have to be really organized to keep track of what calls are for what clients. Really, I think all that is tied into the fact that I'm so annoyed that they are working out of Alicia's house. If I was a client with $2 million in billings, I'm not sure I'd trust a law firm that seemingly couldn't afford any office space. Also, if Peter gets far enough along in the campaign to get Secret Service protection (since I think the guys that follow him around now are his Governor's detail), would they even allow her to see clients at her home?