Chicago Redshirt

I just have to hope that next season does a lot of course correcting. Maybe I'm burned out on the Arrowverse (other than Superman & Lois), or maybe the Arrowverse is burned out. But it just seemed like this season was just bleh. Like probably worse than S1. Bishop is a worse villain than Vandal Savage. Most of the Legends ranged from bland (Spooner, Behrad, Zari 2.0) to underused (Sara, Nate, Zari 2.0) to actively annoying (Ava, Gary). I probably wouldn't mind if they just cut half the cast. I'd rather have the Hawks than most of the current Legends.

Did you mean the cartoon and the NBC series of Constantine? Anyway, the character John Constantine obviously has a lot more runway than we've seen so far in his solo outings and in Legends. There's a reason why he's managed to keep a comic going for a pretty long time and why the character is apparently being eyed for HBO Max. As much as I might have liked Ryan's portrayal of the character, he couldn't really be the same John Constantine that he was in his series or that the character is in the comics. Legends is too much about being a quasi-family to allow him to be a full-fledged bastard. Whether Matt truly felt like he has done all he could with the character or was simply saying that it was time to move on because he effectively had no other choice given DC is planning a reboot is a question that will never really be answered.

A couple possibilities that come to mind for me: The actual parameters of the challenge were that to earn the safety of the balcony, a contestant was supposed to wow the judges. Kelsey made a very good French onion soup. But it is not that complicated a dish. I bet with enough prep time, my non-cooking ass could figure out how to make a decent one in the time allotted. So the judges weighed in the ambition behind Alejandro's duck a l'orange in granting him safety even though there were things to nitpick about it, but not Kelsey's soup, even though it was as good as a soup could reasonably get. Or, the producers were looking for drama and hoping that Kelsey would get thrown off her game by having to cook again. Or along similar lines, they wanted to obscure the notion that this has been Kelsey's competition to win all along and create a redemption arc for her. They had to suspect that there would pretty much be no way that Michael was going to outperform her, or anyone, in a cuisine that is about technique and finesse even before he put up raw chicken. So I wouldn't put it past them to have planned that it would have been Kelsey and Michael in the bottom two almost regardless of what the actual dishes were, and Michael was going home. I think in Googling about Masterchef, I saw that someone (maybe Tosi, maybe a contestant) talk about how there is a similar pause where production goes over the ground rules to make sure that everyone gets it. I'm sure they did, but at least in the "girls vs. boys" episode I didn't get the same sense of sexism as when there were co-ed teams and the judges were like, "What, did Joseph let Anne keep his balls on a shelf?" and also "Anne is such a harpy for wanting to get the challenge done!" The most recent stuff was less sexist than I'd expected. Which might be damning with faint praise. I have watched an unhealthy amount of reality TV, among it most if not all of Masterchef, Hell's Kitchen, Top Chef, the Amazing Race, and about half of Survivor. In all my watching, I have never disliked a contestant as much as Kelsey. I don't know if I can explain fully why. Certainly there have been candidates who have been smug or teacher's pets or gotten winner's edits or are humorless and have bland personalities. But it's rare that someone is all these things at once, and Kelsey IMO is. She is the first contestant on any of the above shows I am actively rooting against not because of anything she's done, but just because of how she is. I don't think this is a sexist thing, but rather an anti-Kelsey thing.

Good citation, but on its own terms it points out that it is unclear that Odin knows even what is going on in his own vicinity during the Odinsleep and that it's Laufey's hope that he is conscious of stuff so that he would know that it Laufey killed him. This is different from: "It is known that you are conscious during your Odinsleep. So watch me kill you." Which is again different from Odin being conscious of Thor having been killed on his own. Which is again a step removed from Odin choosing to remain in Odinsleep out of grief. We can read anything we want into the sleeping Odin tearing up. The film does not establish conclusively what level of awareness he has. As far as I remember from the comics, the Odinsleep was a deep sleep from which he simply could not be awakened. That seems inconsistent with someone who is well aware of events around him.

That's presumably not how the Odinsleep works. While he is asleep, he is presumably not any more aware of what is going on around him in the real world than any of us are when we are asleep. So he would not be aware of what had happened to Thor until he woke. and would not have had reason to grieve.

He's just a boy in love. He can't be held responsible for his actions.[/Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Shout-out] This Strange was in disbelief/denial that what he was doing was risking the whole universe until it was too late. And his wanting Christine back is one of those things IMO can be viewed as selfish and not exactly selfish at the same time. I would bet that if it could be the case that he could revive her on the condition that he never got to see or speak with her ever again, he would have done it in a heartbeat. It isn't just about what he could get out of having Christine back, but also that she deserved to live. YMMV.

Which doesn't meaningfully change anything I said. She was not shown to be wrong that removing the stones would disrupt things. Hulk came up with a solution that addressed her concern and showed she could risk things.

No doubt that booting any of the three was overall justified. But I'd argue that Alejandro as the leader of the failing team should have been first on the chopping block, followed by the vegan who whiffed on the vegetable component. The given reason that Abe was booted wasn't even that the tuile kinda sucked or what have you, but that he was too quiet. That seems bogus to me.

It is certainly possible for two people to be in the same car wreck and for one of them to be killed and the other to escape without a scratch. Odds may be against it, but it happens in real life without the concept of an absolute point or fates intervening and all that (as far as we know). That Christine was not around to electroshock Strange as seen in the movie does not mean that no one would be around to electroshock Dr. Strange. He simply could have appeared to anyone capable of using a defibrillator. Indeed, we don't know if Strange needed to be electroshocked at all in this What If? version of reality. The fact that his search was to save Christine would have shifted a ton of points in his own personal history, including when he began his study of the mystical arts, how he approached his study, etc. etc. We know that eventually he confronts Dormammu as in the main reality. But the granular details of how he got to that point need not have been the same. He almost certainly started his mystical arts journey sooner than in the main reality because he didn't have to wait for his hands to heal and exhaust all conventional medicine techniques before turning to the mystical arts. Presumably he started his search for mystical solutions shortly after the accident since it was clear nothing conventional science could have done would have brought her back. Strange seemingly took the cloak he had at the end from one of the beings that he siphoned power from. So it seems to me it's not the movie cloak of levitation. I don't think that the concept of absolute/fixed points is very compatible with the concept of the infinite prism of possibilities that is the premise for the show. But if there has the be the concept, it is feasible that something only becomes an absolute point under certain conditions. It is the very fact that Strange is inspired to become a sorcerer because of Christine's death that makes Christine's death an absolute point. I don't think she was wrong in Endgame, or at least she was not shown to be wrong. She stated that removing the stones would disrupt the flow of time. Hulk came up with a solution of the stones getting returned to exactly where/when they were taken from, which presumably Steve did off-screen. In terms of the What If? everything we were shown here suggests that it was an absolute point. Strange tried numerous times and in numerous ways to avoid Christine's death and she kept getting killed no matter what he did or didn't do. The Watcher also seemed to maintain that he literally did not have the ability to change things even if he was not bound by his non-interference oath.

They will s-t-r-e-t-c-h things out like their name was Plastic Man. Two possibilities: A. Two episodes next week whittling the four to three. Two episodes 9/15 whittling the three to two and then 1. B. Two episodes next week, taking four to three and then three to two. A double length episode with the two finalists.

Oh, I meant just from this double episode. Of the ones put forth this season, I'd at least heard of Paula Dean, Emeril, Curtis Stone, Roy Choi, Morimoto, Nancy Silverton, and Jonathan Waxman. I would not be surprised if I had heard of or even seen others on Top Chef or elsewhere. But the ones in last night's episode, no clue who any of them were except Sherry Yard, who I only now know because of her previous episode this season.

They may not have specifically used the term "Michelin" in previous seasons, but the idea was always that they were supposed to present fine dining quality dishes for any individual challenge. For the team challenges where they were supposed to make like 50-100 of something, admittedly things were not really expected to be at Michelin star tier, but it was always supposed to be "elevated." I have to say I prefer the old formula where there were two cooks each episode to this season. I know Joe is often annoying, but I would have loved him a little bit if he had said intentionally, "It's a rare thing that we get a perfect dish...and this was no exception."

I think we are supposed to believe that the day-to-day dishes they make on HK are Michelin-level dishes., or at least fine dining restaurant worthy, if there is much daylight between those concepts. It's been an inherent part of the concept of MC that it is supposed to elevate the nation's best home cooks and transform them into stunning, amazing extraordinary chefs capable of putting out Michelin-star level dishes. Obviously, the actual contestants often fall short, but the judges routinely claim that the best each week live up to that standard. Whether that's true or not, we at home can't really say because we're not tasting it. It would be nice if there were a show that was just like, "Give us good food. We don't give a crap about plating, frou frou stuff, etc. Just give us stuff that we want to eat."

Odin had emerged from the Odinsleep by the end of Thor, and I would have to imagine that the timeframe of this What If? went beyond the timeframe of Thor. In other words, the time between when Thor attempted to get Mjolnir back to when we see Odin awake in the MCU is seemingly a matter of a day or two. I think the time between when Thor is killed and the rest of the events of the What If? are about the same timeframe or longer. Thor seemingly gets killed on a Tuesday and Loki's speech to the U.N. comes on that Friday. Even if we assume that Odin was still asleep when Loki made his move, presumably at some point he will wake up and Loki will have to answer for what he did. (And Odin will have to come to grips with having caused the conditions for Thor to be killed.)

Just to be clear, I'm not at all svelte so I'm not bodyshaming anyone. But of the winners only one appears overweight, S8 winner Nona. It seems to me from looking on the Internet that she seemingly lost a fair amount of weight in pictures after that. For instance, in the picture at the link she's maybe heavy by Hollywood standards but not real-person standards. https://www.mashed.com/323020/what-hells-kitchen-winner-nona-sivley-is-doing-now/

Random observations on the latest double episode: It seems like Gordon is getting harsher and Joe is getting kinder. Or is that just me? Also, Aaron is trying to borrow Gordon's "young man" and "young lady." When Gordon told the contestants they had an "amazing 75 minutes," that should have told him that he's on adjective overload. Also, I don't know why they tried to call the first episode a "restaurant take-over." Because that is a specific thing where the chefs go to an existing restaurant, learn to do some of that restaurant's signature dishes and then serve a limited dining room. It makes sense that against the backdrop of COVID they probably couldn't/shouldn't have tried to pull that off, but the first episode had nothing to do with taking over a restaurant. The boys vs. girls thing, thankfully, was not as blatantly sexist as it could have been. It's no surprise that they booted Abe and Michael, but I guess I am mildly surprised that they did them in that order. It was almost like they went out of their way to kick Abe off during the team challenge because as an individual cook he's pretty decent. He went a whole episode without talking about his world travels so good for him. The show continues to jock Kelsey hard. What was even the purpose of having her in the bottom two when Michael, perpetual bottom-dweller, also served raw chicken? I am not above admitting I felt a little schadenfreude at her being there in the bottom and such (although not at her cutting her thumb -- I'm not quite a monster). But it's now going to be fodder for a "As God is my witness, I will never be in the bottom again!" arc. The only one of the masters who I liked was the only one I'd heard of before this season, Chef Ludo. He was pretty funny. It wasn't clear to me if hypothetically each chef had made awesome dishes if more than one could have been safe, or if each chef made mediocre dishes if all would have had to do a second dish. It looks like they have two more weeks of two episodes back to back. This seems like things are stretched out quite a bit.

Haven't yet gotten around to watching the episode, but the general rule of thumb in the Arrowverse is that characters simply do not share information that they absolutely should be sharing and it's a lucky day when they are not actively concealing information that they should be actively sharing.

I don't doubt that someone probably told GR about this vow to not throw the other person under the bus, or that it led to him specifically asking the question this time. But it's a fairly common thing for GR to ask, "Who is the weakest chef on your team?" or "Who's weaker, you or X.?" to people up for elimination. Indeed, if it were an out-of-the-blue situation, Antonio and Sam wouldn't have been discussing the possibility. In a vacuum, I would probably volunteer to wait an hour or so for dinner at HK, assuming I had nothing else going on. Worst case scenario is you have a story behind the scenes that you can savor and tell, plus a few bucks in your pocket and some free drinks. Best case, you get paid to have a great meal and maybe get to have a celeb moment with GR or whoever is the chef's table for the episode. Someone linked to an article about previous winners with their publicity shots. https://www.realitytvrevisited.com/2016/11/hells-kitchen-winners.html For my money, I would classify only Nona as looking overweight in that picture. I don't remember her, but that is one more than I would have thought.

I suppose one possible mindset is: Fury and SHIELD took away my Hope, so I will take away their hope. I will make them suffer slowly. And there's no such thing as an innocent SHIELD recruit since the whole construct is evil and guilty. I agree with you that the motivation doesn't quite work because the deaths of Stark, Thor and Hulk have absolutely no personal meaning for Fury, and even the deaths of Natasha and Clint are not going to hit him in the same sort of way as Hope's hit Hank. It seems to me that a genius with technology like Hank had at his disposal and decades of insider spy knowledge probably could have executed dozens of better revenge attempts than this one. It Need? Probably not. Want? Why wouldn't he? A different question would be whether Odin (and for that matter, Frigga) would allow Loki to take over Earth. I suppose they too could be "They killed our Thor. Screw em." Or Odin could be broken up over the fact that his attempt at a morality play ended up costing his son's life.

A little Jon Cryer Luthor went a long way. I kinda hope we're done with him. It's funny...I don't think Tyler's Superman and Jon Cryer's Luthor had a single scene together in the Crisis cross-over.

My memory might be wonky, but I only recall Steven having one bad service, where GR took him in the walkin to give him a pep talk. He had one other issue where he prepared something that ended up being overcooked at least in part because he was relying on a teammate's incorrect estimate of how long they needed and they ended up needing more time. Steven seemingly has been presented as one of the stronger chefs in the competition, winning the punishment pass, generally scoring well in challenges, including the dish to put things over the top, etc.

Black Mask was clearly hoping to flip Ryan. Of course, it would have made sense to kill her immediately after it became clear that she wasn't going to flip as opposed to staging a prison murder. But I suppose there's an argument to wanting to not risk a Jim Gordon-like cop finding out the truth if the killing happened under circumstances that the corrupt cops didn't completely control. There are lots of potential reasons why Parole Officer could be remaining in her job that would not mean that she would be inclined to believe her clients, or believe that police are capable of doing a murder-for-hire plot. One can't fairly assume her motivation is "dedication" just on the presumption that being a Gotham parole officer doesn't pay much. Perhaps she likes the power trip of lording things over parolees. Perhaps the job pays a lot of money by her standards. Perhaps she's staying in the job because it's got excellent benefits. Maybe she's doing the job because it allows her to be a functional alcoholic. Her motivations for doing the job don't really matter in terms of whether she believes Ryan. She thinks Ryan to be lying about her innocence in the first place. It seems reasonable that will color her belief about Ryan's credibility in general. Then when Ryan tells a story that she is Batwoman and the cops are trying to kill her for it, it makes sense for Parole Officer to be cynical. It shouldn't make all that much sense from Parole Officer's perspective for Black Mask to wait to kill her in prison, much as you argued, when he could hypothetically have killed her prior. It doesn't make sense for her to be Batwoman because how would she have gotten the suit? We the viewers know that Ryan is telling the truth, but there's no particular reason for Parole Officer to. Even if we accept for discussion's sake that someone who does that job would be generally inclined to trust clients, there's still the possibility that Parole Officer is disinclined to believe Ryan. for those reasons.

This episode was the first that I noticed Antonio having a little twang in his voice. Was that always there? And was it just me or was there not a significant difference in the doneness of the two sides of Emily's steak? If they had booted Steve after letting him talk about how he was channeling his grandma, I would have been amazed. I don't know if I like the kindler, gentler Gordon Ramsay that we've generally seen this season. I don't think he had a single serious criticism or insult all episode long. I still maintain because of superficiality, there is no way that anyone but Steven or Brynn could win because the other chefs are by messed up standards overweight. I kinda hope HK proves me wrong.

Yeah. According to Wikipedia, Worf started on DS9 in 2372, WWLB took place in 2375, and the current season of LD takes place in 2381. Of course, we currently don't really know anything about when exactly Mariner might have served on DS9 relative to the rest of her career. So at least a partial timeline: has been suggested by the show 2371 - Mariner is an ensign on the Quito. We know this because during S1's Cupid's Errant Arrow, she recounts a situation that happened while she had been serving on the Quito. She was with her friend Angie and Angie's evil Harvongian shape-changer boyfriend, and Angie talked about that Data had an evil brother and they teamed up with the Borg. That's from Descent I/II, the S6 finale and S7 premiere. We know that TNG S7 took place in 2371. And it seemed like in the scene they are talking about something that happened relatively recently So we can reasonably assume that Mariner has been in Starfleet at least since 2371, possibly before. (It's possible that Mariner and Angie were talking about something that happened way back in 2371 more recently, but the scene suggests that the situation just had come up.) 2379 - Mariner is a lieutenant on the Quito. We know this because in S1E1, Boimler asked her how she knew the Galadornian farmers, and she responded that "because I was here for first contact last year on the Quito before I got my ass demoted and transferred to the Cerritos." Presumably this posting on the Quito was her last before the Cerritos, but we don't officially know. She could have gone through a bunch of ships before the Cerritos was considered a last resort. 2380 - Having done some (I think) unspecified thing to get demoted, Mariner is an ensign on the Cerritos, I don't know if we have information to know if Mariner did her other postings between 2371 and 2379, all in 2379, or what. For all we currently know, Mariner started at DS9 around the same time as Worf in 2372, but she had done a bunch of years at other postings before then. Or she had been on DS9 up until like 2379 and did only a hot second again on the Quito before getting demoted.

I think that we can assume that Quark has franchised/will franchise. There was a Quark's in ST: Picard on another planet, and for some reason I thought there was a Quark's in a previous LD episode (possibly the one where Boimler and Mariner were chasing the drunk Klingon general), but I could be making that up. I tend to doubt that the scratching post would be too big to replicate as a general principle, since it was only (seemingly) about as big as our heroes. I think it was just that they figured fixing it was the best call. I suspect that as an heirloom, there might be some aspect of it that might be too nuanced to be captured by people who truly care about it. Not sure what is so confusing about her background. I wouldn't say that she has "more life experiences than most Trill symbiotes." She just has done a lot of living in her posting to five ships plus DS9. Off the top of my head, here's the summary of what she has done that we've been told about: ETA 1. Was part of the 1st contact crew for the planet the Cerritos visited in S1E1. 2. Been in a sentient alien cave for weeks 3. Had a shapeshifter-esque being adopt the persona of a friend's significant other while on DS9 4. Been buddies with a Klingon general and done black ops with him. 5. Was in a Klingon prison where someone stole her shoes to be a dick. 6. Almost got her head taken off by a singing crystal. 7. Befriended a Ferengi. 8. Dated a bad boy alien whose species like red. I'm sure that I'm missing a few things in there. But the point is that it's really not that much compared to the things that people have experienced during, say, what is captured in just one season of any of the Trek shows. Keep in mind that each season is a chronological year, and that there were undoubtedly other experiences that didn't get captured. Also keep in mind that like Wesley Crusher, Mariner could very well have been doing things before joining Starfleet Academy formally. If we accept the premise that each of her postings has been about a year or two, then she could be in her high 20s or early 30s (assuming she graduated Starfleet Academy at 21). Given that her dad is an admiral and that she is apparently a prodigy in her own right, she could have graduated earlier than 21 and could be younger.