Chicago Redshirt

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news...

Pure speculation but I assume that she will play a key role in the fight against Eclipso. Lantern vs. darkness seems a natural matchup.

It doesn't so much matter the number who believe in the conspiracy is small if they are going to be very active. I think we are living through in real life examples of people buying into all sorts of conspiracy theories despite no evidence or logic supporting them. Yes, there will be consequences to having hid the existence of Yorick down the line. But sometimes you just have to make it so that future society has to deal with that. Perhaps once more order is restored, people will be able to understand why they held back the info about Yorick, or to appreciate it is pure coincidence that the president's son survived where all the other men have died. Perhaps not. Perhaps they think that they can keep Yorick's existence a secret well beyond a half year. Perhaps after a half-year, it might come out that he's not the last man. It's a good point that it would make more sense to split up Yorick and Ampersand and to have them studied separately. I can't think of a good reason to not do that, other than Yorick is a whiny man-child and wouldn't want to be separated from Ampersand, in which case screw him. The fate of the world is at stake.

The ground was littered with dead people as shown in the first episode. One can imagine that it would be a major undertaking trying to remove the dead bodies of half the population, made even more complicated by the trauma of everyone losing half the people they know, the dire longterm prospects for food and for future generations of humanity, etc. If something like this happened in real life to either gender, a lot of people would be paralyzed with the trauma of it all. Think of how 9/11, an explainable event that resulted in like 3,000 deaths, struck the U.S. Now multiply the death toll so that it's 4 billion worldwide with no explanation and maybe it will be more readily understandable why people had not simply taken care of business. The show had made reference to looting and scavenging. Presumably, some people have hoarded more than their share of food, while other food had spoiled due to lack of power. A single man is potentially that crucial to study him and determine a possible cause/cure and as a symbol. Again, the immediate aftermath of such an immense tragedy would cause massive upheaval, distrust, trauma and so forth. The show has explained at least in part why it is a big deal to keep Y a secret. There is a barely controlled mob at the gates of the White House (and presumably others across the country) who think that the government is behind the death of almost all men. The coincidence of the president's own son would in the minds of such people confirm that government shadiness was behind what was going on and completely destabilize the efforts of the government. The explanation that he was intersex isn't going to tamp down conspiracy theories about how the President Brown engineered the virus. Lots of people will question it, just as people question all sorts of real-world things that should be beyond questioning. Moreover, at some point that cover story would have to be abandoned if you're going to attempt actual research on Yorick. As 355 (aka Sarah) said, somewhere in him may lie the key to analyzing what happened to the men. That is the most important thing for humanity in the show. The women realize the power needs to be kept on, water needs to be kept clean, etc. It's just that it was a greater logistical challenge with half the population dead and the attendant grief in the aftermath. The show discussed this in the president trying to talk the one engineer to put her grief aside and focus on the necessary job of getting power back online. The framing of the story is that it is about Yorick as the last man, and how he adjusts to being in that position. I sometimes wish that they had done a different framing for the series and the comic, because the larger world and most of the other characters are more interesting. But as long as Yorick is going to be the focus, there is going to have to be some attention paid to his mother and his sister Hero.

I haven't seen Shang-Chi yet how the rest of the Ten Rings are portrayed. But there is a different between having a member who is White and being fully multi-ethnic. There'd also likely be a difference in acceptance between a White person and a Black person. You run the risk of not being able to save Tony personally if you wait until the ambush happens, is the problem. Tony could have been killed either by the shotgun barrage that blew holes in his Humvee or if the shell had simply exploded. It seems like Killmonger would have been better served to not risk the possibility that the assassination succeeds for the possible benefit of slightly more gratitude. Obviously, nothing forces Killmonger to tell the full truth about what happened to his dad. But he could have said something non-descript rather than a lie. When asked if he was close to his dad, Killmonger could easily have just left it at "Nah." I'm talking about What If? T'Chaka. When Killmonger is talking about knowing what it's like to have someone taken from him, the cut to T'Chaka could be read as a lot of things. Guilt is one, or trying to sus out if Killmonger knows the truth, or buying what Killmonger's selling. There is a number of differences between Afghanistan and this situation. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the post-9/11 mindset for a specific reason: because the government there was harboring the people behind a massive terrorist attack on American soil and at least initially wouldn't give them up. Starting that war in retribution for thousands killed is a far easier sell than doing so over two American deaths, even if one of them is Tony Stark. If the world at large knew that Wakanda had the repository of vibranium it does, I could get that the war could have been intended to get that precious resource. But at least in the MCU, it was a secret. Now T'Chaka is heard talking about how they were not going to allow imperalists to plunder their resources or something like that. So maybe T'Chaka had already let the cat out of the bag in terms of how much vibranium Wakanda has.

Things in this episode that leave me wondering: 1. Killmonger claims that he found out about the assassination attempt on Stark when he was undercover with the Ten Rings. First of all, it seems strange that a Black American soldier could convincingly go undercover with what I understand to be a Middle Eastern/Asian terrorist organization. Second, in the original MCU, the Ten Rings did not know that the plot was to kill Tony Stark, only that they were to hit that convoy. Did the Ten Rings in this universe know more? Was Killmonger somehow able to put together that the attack was on Tony Stark on his own? If he genuinely knew that the Ten Rings was going to attack Stark in advance, why didn't he do more to prevent it rather than show up in the middle of said attack? 2. Killmonger tells Tony he lost his father to gang violence. In the MCU, it was T'Chaka who killed his father, and Killmonger knows this. Does What If? Killmonger not know this and legitimately think that his father died in gang violence? Did the death happen differently in this universe? Is Killmonger just telling Tony what he thinks Tony wants to hear? I assume it's the latter. 3. Along similar lines, does T'Chaka seemingly has guilty vibes about orphaning his nephew. It seems like it might have been a good idea for him to let people know on the secret that he killed his brother and left Erik to fend for himself. (An aside: I don't remember if anything in the MCU established what happened to Killmonger's mom). 4. In the MCU, Wakanda is thought to be a simple generic African country as opposed to a technological wonderland. So it seems like engineering a war shouldn't work. On the U.S. side, it seems like they would be slow to believe that Wakanda massacred their soldiers, and on the Wakandan said, even the death of T'Challa is probably not something that would cause them to go to an open war (as opposed to more targeted or covert strikes). It also seems like there would have to be more diplomatic efforts before war could be on the table.

I know this is supposed to be the case, but really, it bugs me that it is so. You don't bring a shiv to a cosmic staff fight. Or in other words, someone who can fly and blast things from a distance should have no trouble beating someone who has no sort of ranged attack.

To be fair, anybody with connections and/or money could buy Stark stuff on the open market or the black market. Hypothetically, Killmonger could have bought enough Stark stuff for the ambush and to frame Stane, either on his own or through a connection like Klaue.

I mean, we know from the main MCU timeline that Stane was behind the attempt on Tony's life there. It could be that Killmonger was behind it in this universe and framed Stane, but there's no way to know for sure. Obadiah would protest his innocence in either case. And the "receipts" Killmonger claimed to have could be forged. I guess we will only know if we revisit this particular universe. Which I hope we do.

Even if we were to concede that it is the worst movie with the worst writing in the MCU (and as much as I'm not a fan of IM3, I think that Thor: The Dark World easily outdoes it for that title, along with possible others), it remains a canon example that Tony can and does have blinders on when a) someone close to him gets hurt b) it involves his SUPERIOR TECH (shout out to Marvel vs. Capcom fans in the house) or c) he doesn't figure things out that might be obvious to him if he took half a second. If we want to talk about other canon examples of Tony being overly confident/reckless/a dumbass in better written movies, I'll submit a few more examples: B. Another poster beat me to in Iron Man how in his testing he slammed himself into a wall and experienced the icing problem because he couldn't be assed with running tests. One could also add his not thinking through intervention in Gomira and nearly getting blown up by the fighter jets/destroying one of them and nearly killing its pilot. And on the political maneuvering side, there was that he had no clue that Stane had largely succeeded at locking him out from his own company by getting an injunction. C. In IM2, Tony underestimates Ivan Vanko and gives him an inspiration for improving Vanko's tech. He mocks Hammer and essentially goads him into making a drone army. He thought that the secrets to his tech was like a decade away for everyone else, but it was obviously far less than that. D. In Civil War, Tony lets Team Cap get away even though on paper, Team Iron Man far overpowers them, The only heavy hitter on Team Cap, Wanda, doesn't even have full mastery of her powers. On seeing that Rhodey got hit by a blast meant for Falcon, Tony blasts Falcon at point-blank range. On finding out that Bucky killed his parents, Tony basically loses it and gets his ass beat by Cap and Bucky (I submit) because of a combination of being emotionally overwrought and overconfident. E. In Age of Ultron, the whole situation with the Ultron is essentially Tony's fault for being too in love with the notion that a series of drones would answer the world's problems without bothering to consider what might happen if the AI went rogue, fell into the wrong hands, etc. F. He builds another global defense system governed largely by an AI despite the travesty of Ultron. Instead of entrusting it to his best friend and military vet Rhodey, his wife and COO Pepper, or even his security chief Happy, gives the key to this system to a 16-year-old child he liked and had a few adventures with. MCU Tony is simply not a guy with multiple layers of contingency plans, generally. He's not Batman. IM3 is the only time that comes to mind where he seemingly did much in the way of advanced planning for a situation he himself faced. He is a guy who generally thinks of a plan on the spur of the moment and executes it. Remember from Avengers, when Cap tries to stop him by saying "We need a plan of attack!" and his response is: "Here's my plan: attack." That to me often sums up Tony to a tee. Getting back to the scenario in What If?, Tony could have turned Killmonger over to the authorities with the evidence he had. He could have turned the evidence that Jarvis had collected over to the authorities automatically if something happened to him. He didn't. He wanted to personally make Killmonger pay for Rhodey. Normally an ordinary or even extraordinary human is not going to have much chance against a killer robot that's made of vibranium alloy. And this particular killer robot had an extra advantage in that its AI had a lot of info about how Killmonger typically fought and could thus theoretically counter his moves. Why would Tony not think that his robot could easily deal with Killmonger? The shotgun blast through the car is the same as in Iron Man, so to the extent that it was lucky that Tony survives, it's lucky in the source material. Black Panther and the Wakandans were lured to the site purposefully. There's no reason to think that Black Panther would have had ear protection for a weapon that was not widely used and he had no reason to suspect; even if he did, Killmonger might have had another way to deal with him. Killmonger had exact knowledge of how strong the drone army was because he was instrumental in building and leading it. He presumably had pretty good knowledge of how strong the Wakandan army was even in the short time after he "defected." He also had first-hand knowledge that a drone can be destroyed by someone using a vibranium spear because he himself did that, and he had to know that the Dora Milaje had a pretty much unlimited supply, plus that Wakanda had other advanced weapons. Killmonger also had some control of the drones still because he was able to re-activate them. He presumably could have de-activated them at any time. So it's pretty clear that he could engineer the battle for Wakanda to prevail ultimately. And hey, even if it might have been hypothetically closer or if the U.S. might have won, I'm sure Killmonger could adapt to that situation too.

What was not realistic about it? Could be that the drone didn't have them. It was early in the production process. Could be that the drone/Tony was overconfident. Real-life drones aren't powered by vibrranium nor made of vibranium alloy to be nearly indestructible, nor do they have a sophisticated AI controlling their moves, nor are they hive-mind linked. I assume that the Stark Liberators would kick the crap out of the drones shown in Far From Home. Iron Man sometimes flies in a Quinjet to save power or for other reasons. so even assuming that the Liberators can fly now (and remember, this is presumably in 2009 or thereabouts, in a reality where Tony didn't necessarily work on tech in the same way or come up with the same solutions,), it might not make sense to have the Liberator legion fly from the U.S. to Wakanda. If a foreign power came onto American soil and killed any Americans, particularly a hugely popular American, there would be similar calls for avenging. In fairness, only Shuri figured anything out and she then told Pepper. Pepper only had suspicions that Killmonger was sketchy but absolutely no evidence until Shuri showed her. And of course, Shuri is a genius. So it doesn't stand to reason that Nick Fury and SHIELD would have a clue that Killmonger was evil. Even after going through the crucible of his ordeal in the Afghan cave, main MCU Tony Stark could be an overconfident dumbass for a genius, billionaire playboy philanthropist. Exhibit A: his taunting the Mandarin to come at him, bro, and then failing to set up any defenses in case he did. I have no doubt that Tony could and would have thought his vibranium-powered, vibranium-alloy covered drone could easily kill a single person. And he would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for Killmonger having a pure vibranium spear. The only reason there wasn't blood was it was a cartoon. Obviously the wound went all the way through Tony and he would have to be bleeding.

I tried to put away my dislike for Kelsey as much as I could, and I actually managed to fool myself that they were potentially going to choose Suu or Autumn at various points. It seemed like Joe was jocking hard for Suu. And it also seemed like they found more stuff wrong with Kelsey's dishes other than the appetizer than they generally did either for other winners or for her in previous episodes. But maybe I was turning a blind eye to the emphasis on how much Kelsey sacrificed and how she's such a wonderful mother and to compete while pregnant means that she can turn water into wine. Oh well. There's always next season. Incidentally, Kelsey gives this post-win interview and this one. She doesn't say much exciting IMO. She quit her job as a physical therapist and is potentially looking to do more food TV stuff and is part of some sort of partnership with GrubHub. She does say she got Covid, so even I feel bad for her on that. Was I slow, by the way? I don't remember Autumn cooking a lot of Japanese stuff during the season. Her thing, it seemed to me, was always "I'm from Bahstan so I will make X" or "I'm Italian so I will make Italian food." Also, I assume the Viking appliance people were not so psyched about what I assume to be one of their ovens failing during the finale, even if it was not the fault of their brand.

Or the latest season of Flash turned off more fans than I would have thought.

To be fair, she definitely seemed to be limping, so she may have had some broken bones. Still and all, I agree it is a stretch that it wasn't the two-hit fight (tm The Breakfast Club) of Hourman hitting her, her hitting the floor. I could buy that the adult Sportsmaster and Tigress are experienced enough to have outsmarted/outlasted Rick especially because of Rick's overconfidence. And yes, perhaps some of it is due to Rick pulling punches. But Artemis took some brutal hits that should have left her unconscious or at least bleeding. And how did she get out of the bat cuff? My regret is as a nerd that Beth didn't get any licks in during the fight. Hopefully at some point they give Beth some capability to contribute during a fight. I don't expect her to be trading punches with Solomon Grundy or what have you, but between her and Chuck/real Dr. Midnite, maybe she can come up with some gadgets that can help or use the goggles to help support her teammates in finding opponents' weak spots. A propos of nothing, I don't remember what happened to Green Lantern's daughter?

Hey, watching this episode didn't feel like a chore for the most part, so...yay? I did virtually facepalm when the show explicitly talked about overthrowing the patriarchy and a life of "magical privilege." It is like the writers are determined to invoke every stereotype of woke Hollywood. The Lena is magic plot is, to borrow the term from Lena herself, "absurd." I don't like that it foreshadows that she is either going to play some role in stopping Nxy using her neophyte magic or that she is going to pit her neophyte magic against Supergirl or some other Kryptonian. I imagine that Katie McGrath was having Merlin flashbacks.

It would make sense to me that he has not started working for Ramsay because that would spoil the surprise of him winning. From this interview, it sounds like he's only now fixing to go and start at GR Steak.

I'm very curious what led to Kiya hating Trenton so much that it seemed like she wanted to diss him at every opportunity. I remember she was salty that she came in second in a challenge and Trenton took Megan or someone else instead. And she has previously talked about him being a jerk. But was there more to it than that? Also, is she right to hate Trenton or is there something else going on? Like she also put Brynn in there with her Trenton-hate, but I don't think the show had demonstrated any animosity from Brynn to Trenton. I'm pretty convinced that Kiya was tanking her tasks in order to sabotage Trenton. I sometimes wish that picking the brigade was not a straight schoolyard pick but a snake draft (i.e. Chef 1 gets pick 1, Chef 2 gets pick 2 and 3, Chef 1 gets pick 4 and 5 etc.) because oftentimes, the brigade overshadows everything. Here, I think Trenton had the better dishes (at least according to the judges), the better leadership, the better overall performance in the season and so it probably didn't matter.

I assume the fake drug bust thing was staged. It just seems ridiculous if you are either of the top two that you would think that a) anyone in the competition at all would bring two big ass stashes of drugs in from the start (as you have to know that there'd be no opportunity to bring the drugs in once filming has started) that they packaged in a peculiar way b) that now that it's just down to the last two, either someone booted off left said drugs in the dorms or they belong to your competitor c) Hell's Kitchen has security that had been unbeknownst to you does routine security sweeps that were thorough enough to find these drugs from wherever they were hidden and yet somehow were not noticeable until now d) that the drugs would have been a big enough deal that they would consider tanking the show right before its climax (as opposed to simply figuring out who the drugs belonged to and DQing that person, or sweeping things under the rug, etc.) and e) that the way they would have conducted an investigation into such a big deal would be for GR to personally investigate on camera (as opposed to the security people or a producer or what have you). I just can't see someone in the middle of the prank not being, "It must have been Trenton, Chef, because it's for damn sure not mine." Or "Chef, run that part back again about you going through our stuff all the time. That's kind of messed up." Then again, it's easy for me to see it as obviously fake and bizarre as someone older, cynical about how reality shows work, and not in the mix of it.

I will be doing virtual somersaults like Jake Blues in the Blues Brothers if she or Suu wins. But I'm pretty sure that there's no chance.

Even as someone who is triggered by Kelsey (see rant above), I have to admit that she has not really been shown to screw things up, Last week was the only time I can think of where she was shown to have gotten anything substantially wrong, and even that IMO was a stretch. The butter for her sole was not browned. Big whup, as we used to say. It was according to the judges her worst dish of the competition, but that doesn't mean it was an actually bad dish. She has yet to have been shown to make an actual mistake that would be worthy of sending someone home as far as I can recall. And you can take it to the bank that if she had, I'd remember and have posted about how they were playing favorites by letting her stay on.

Aliens seemingly flee to Earth for analogous reasons to why immigrants come to America: they are refugees from oppression or violence, they are looking for new opportunities and to build a better life, etc. etc. Of course, there are lots of problems with the show trying to make an alien=immigrant analogy. The first of which is while it seems transparently wrong to fear human immigrants as a group, there's pretty good justification to fear aliens with their various superpowers. A single alien not even at the power level of the Supergirls or Martian Manhunters of the world can and have done immense damage. The other is that there's little to no excuse for aliens to not make it on Earth. At a minimum, having access to or knowledge of the technology used to get to Earth would make them rich beyond most people's wildest dreams. Can you imagine how much a Jeff Bezos or a Richard Branson would pay for a trip to another habitable planet? Or how they could parlay their innate skills or technological know-how into devices Earth doesn't have?

My head may be is mush, but I think they have said on the show that the winner does get to be the head chef at GR Steak at one of the LV casinos. I think they are emphasizing "protege" because there is probably less of an expectation that the person will be the ultimate authority at wherever it is. To be fair, "bounce back" is probably something Gordon has been saying from S1, but it was striking how much more that poor Antonio was using that phrase. I totally agree that the Christina/Jason sabotages should never get through. One would think that you'd watch the food that the sous-chefs produced like a hawk. Even if you were just teleported into HK and found yourself expediting without having watched a second of the show, just being able to hear them getting caught sabotaging someone else should make you suspicious of everything they put up. Because obviously the sabotages are deliberate things. No one is going to confuse orzo for risotto rice or peas and zucchini by accident. So even if someone had no idea, like there should be no way that they get caught by more than one sabotage. I'm surprised that there aren't (more?) examples of people falsely accusing Christina/Jason of sabotaging stuff that was actually just fine the way it was. As well as that the producers/Ramsay don't enlist the other contestants to purposely tank things to see if they would be caught.

Cheryl had a crush on Josie and was sending her stuff as a secret admirer. Nothing says love like a pig's heart!

Freudian slip much? :)

We did see that Morgan Edge rewrote a piece that Lois wrote about him, and that he did arbitrary layoffs (or at least, I would consider any set of layoffs that would result in Clark Kent as an acclaimed journalist for about two decades getting fired arbitrary, I had speculated that Edge deliberately targeted Clark knowing he was Superman, but nope, Edge only found out the Secret midway through the season). But the fact that Edge did these things and was an evil alien might not affect the overall quality of the Planet. Also, the rankings could have been from before the reveal of Edge as an alien. Also also, the rankings could have been less a measure of actual quality and based on such things like buzz, reputation or clicks/circulation. In which cases, the Planet has a huge edge because Metropolis presumably has like 8 million citizens and because it pretty much owns the franchise on reporting on the Big Blue Boy Scout. I'm hoping that next season S&L will be more connected to the Arrowverse than it has been so far.