Chicago Redshirt

It could be that the powers behind Cosplay Cap truly envisioned him only/primarily envisioned him doing propaganda stuff. Or that they didn't think things through. But the shield is actually pretty awesome on its own, and Cosplay Cap seemed to be using it just fine before he powered up. Almost all of those people could totally kick his ass now that he's powered, with the probable exception of Natasha (who I think would not necessarily have beaten him when he was ordinary -- there it's more that it was a plausible thing that either side could win). In any reasonable And Civil War not withstanding, all those people except Natasha would have beaten Steve in a reasonable fight. There's no reason to think Ayo went rogue, that they were trying to kill Zemo or that they were necessarily going to take Zemo back to Wakanda rather than to the German prison where he escaped from. That is an interesting read, but they needed to do more to establish it if they were going for that. That Karli didn't press the attack if she was like "Oh shit, now they are totally going to kill me if they can" and that she was in the crowd to see her comrade killed doesn't really square in my mind with that explanation. You are assuming that T'Challa and Wakanda gave a vibranium arm that is worth conservatively $100 million (in addition to lodging, hospitality and deprogramming) "freely"? That no one told Bucky "This document acknowledges our right to shut this arm down and repo it whenever we want, OK? Sign here" doesn't make it any less fair for them to do so. It was a gift but one that had hidden conditions. Would Bucky have accepted it if he knew? Probably. Is it shitty that the Wakandans didn't tell him? Sure. But they are totally justified in having contingency plans. I would say Tony 100 percent has contingencies to shut down the War Machine armor. The reasons he might not have a contingency to specifically disable his ability to walk is a) he doesn't need to because the mere ability to walk doesn't make Rhodey a threat b) Rhodey is a personal friend who he wouldn't want to humiliate and c) there's a limit to how ruthless Tony is. None of these apply to Ayo and Bucky. It is not established exactly how the U.S. got the vibranium for Cap's shield. But it could have been from fair trade with Wakanda, it could have been from other sources (as far as I know, Wakanda just has the overwhelming majority of the world's vibranium, but some exists outside it), or it could be more that Klaue was the first to pull off a heist of the size he did (a quarter ton I want to say?) but there were smaller heists before then including the amount of the shield. Presumably at this point in the timeline, it would be known to the government. Steve would have debriefed after Infinity War that Bucky had been deprogrammed. It might not be known, or believed, in the wider community which makes Zemo's bluff plausible. Again, if they gave it to him, it was a lethal weapon like Bucky's prosthetic, and the government were secretive and ruthless, it would almost be out of character for there not to be a contingency plan to deal with it. Trying to kill him when there was a reasonably good frame that he was a king-murdering terrorist does not seem to be incurring that high a debt load. Germany and the U.S. were also trying to potentially kill him and probably would have if Steve had not intervened. It's possible that given Wakandan science is magic that the prosthetic is self-cleaning. But given that Bucky reattaches the arm fairly effortlessly, it seems to me implied that he's done that part of things before. It's more that he didn't realize that someone else could de-power and detach it.

The OG serum was miraculous, yes. A cure-all? No. The fact that the OG serum (plus the Vita Rays) could transform Steve into Captain America and wipe away all the stuff that made him 4-F does not mean that a) the OG serum (plus Vita Rays) could cure ALL diseases no matter how advanced they were or b) that Nagel's formulation of the serum would have the same impact as the OG serum, even if that one was a cure-all. It seems silly that Karli would not have tried using the Nagel formulation if she thought it could reverse Donya's TB. She would still have 11 spares. As to the other point, some googling suggests that contracting TB from a corpse seems to be rare unless you are working with the corpse. TB is spread through aerosalization, and unless you are doing something to the corpse, it's not going to be spreading anything under normal circumstances that way. Here's a link to an embalmer catching TB http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/619259.stm And here is something from WHO; https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/risks-posed-by-dead-bodies-after-disasters

Considering this is Gotham, where the cops and Crows are generally a combination of corrupt, harried and incompetent, Mary can sleep peacefully at night without worrying about the possibility that the authorities are going to find out about her clinic and shut her down. Going aboveboard also comes with its set of risks. In a crazy world where for-profit prison CEOs hire crooks to take out community centers to preserve their profits, it wouldn't be unexpected if some hospital did something similar to preserve theirs. Or crooks would start to shake them down for protection money. Or the corruption or incompetence elsewhere in Gotham would spread to the do-gooding of the clinic. I don't see it as a forced plotline or conflict where both sides have reasons for acting and feeling the way they do. If I were Mary, I of course would take the money and run. Of course, Mary has literal billions in her own right and Mary could run a clinic with actual licensed doctors and just be in an administrative role herself. But that she wants to be hands on prematurely is understandable if not advisable.

Yeah, but those attacks would still have happened if her clinic was above-board, because the people attacking were looking for Mary, Batwoman, the desert rose or whatever. Jale could beef up security for the clinic, but considering the Crows can't seem to protect their own parking garage, if I were Mary, I would take my chances with my under-the-table firearm and Batwoman.

To dive in a little deeper to this show versus Lovecraft Country, there was a specific episode of LC that dealt with black folks moving into a White neighborhood. Here's some of the compare/contrast that made me think that LC did a much better job with similar subject matter. 1. It made sense for the one LC character to want to move to the white neighborhood, as she was a civil rights activist and a Bohemian. It really didn't make sense for the Emorys to want to move to East Compton. 2. The heroes in the LC episode were heroes. The Them characters were basically victims through and through, except they were seduced into committing at least one killing and possibly another. 3. The focus in LC was on the Black characters. Them wanted to give the White characters equal billing, which I think was a mistake. (I'm kind of salty that Allison Pill got a featurette about playing her character but neither of the Black leads got featurettes about playing their roles. (One of them was included in a featurette about the Tap Dancing Man, which was also sort of weird, because why not get the actor who played him to talk about the challenge of taking a walking stereotype and imbuing it with menace? 4. LC knew to include some humor and some victories for its characters. Them just went from one bit of horror to another with little comic relief or other notes. 5. There were a lot of period specific references in the LC episode, including to Emmett Till, a Chicago boy who was murdered when he went on a trip down south. Them seemed pretty generic.

Pilots can vary a good deal, but this one was alright. It seems to be the standard set of Joss characters put in Victorian England. Amalia True is the Buffy type - leader and fighter. Penance is the Willow type - adorkable bestie who pulls out tricks. Language Lass reminds me of River. Maladie gives off warmed over Drusilla vibes.

Miscellaneous thoughts: Overall, I kinda liked this one. Still had its flaws but what can you do: The Good 1. I kinda liked the intro of Gotham Gazette guy as a potential love interest for Mary. 2. It was good to have Dougray Scott look like he wasn't just phoning in his performance for once. Might as well face it, you're addicted to Snakebite! 3. Luke gets to help save the day! 4. Batwoman's bad-ass level seemed to go up a notch in general this episode. 5. I hope it doesn't come off the wrong way, but I like that the community center person doesn't fit the traditional Hollywood stereotype of what it means to be beautiful and Black. The Not-quite-so-good 1. This is the third or fourth time this season someone has pulled off the ambush-from-the-back-seat-of-the-car scenario. And in this one Jake wasn't even just getting in the car only to discover someone in the back seat. He had apparently been sitting in the car for a while listening to his radio. I literally was like, "Are you fucking kidding me?" 2. Now that we are in the same universe with Black Lightning, guns that fire lightning aren't commonplace, but they clearly exist in numbers enough to equip Freeland PD and at least some of Freeland's gang community. So it's unclear why Kilovolt deserves his own superhero nickname since it's not like the weapon is unique. 3. It's also unclear why the for-profit prison guy would go through all the trouble of allowing bad guys to get out of prison to stop community centers and then give them parole when they can just as easily use the infinite bad guys or minions out on the free world to do the same thing. Like if there was a particular reason to, say, need to use Mr. Freeze's cold gun for a job, that would make sense. But there were at least three lightning guns that the prison folks have (presumably more) and anybody can do a robbery or arson. Don't have to worry so much about the bad guys flipping on you or people tracing the bad guys to your parole efforts. I suppose for profit prison guy should have covered his tracks better. 4. Doesn't this ep involve a retcon on what Snakebite does? Before they said that it was a mix of Scarecrow's fear toxin and other stuff. So the rush meant you'd get scared while high. Now it's giving you a riff on the Black Mercy thing (granting you your fondest wish but leaving you locked in a death spiral. I guess they didn't want Jake to be THAT kind of junkie, or they wanted to try to work in Alice. I kind of hope that they actually kill Jake off. He and Sophie are kind of redundant when Kate's not Batwoman and if Alice is less central to the mythos. 5. Not a fan of the Alice redemption arc still. 6. Julia should probably know better than to confront a suspected memory eraser without having a backup to make sure that her memory isn't erased. But happy trials, Julia. I don't know if I will miss you. 7. Had Enigma been established as working for the Crows for a while, or was that just this episode? It seems like the Crows HR probably could use some fine-tuning. 8. Angelique is apparently STILL clueless about Ryan being Batwoman. But hey at least BW broke new ground in the love interest being jealous that the secret identity is dating the hero, instead of the usual "Why can't you be more like the Hero?" 9. The writers continue to do Sophie no favors. She sucks as an investigator (and ex) to not know that Julia probably didn't get blackout drunk on multiple days when she was pursuing Kate's whereabouts and turning in expense accounts. I mean, very few people have that much alcohol that they literally remember nothing. [Julia sucks for accepting that as a possible explanation, when she knows at least one time someone claimed that she had talked to him but that she had absolutely no memory of it]. The writers easily could have had her be like, "Thank you, Ryan, for getting Angelique to talk. We're one step closer to finding the Commissioner's murderers" Or they could have even if they wanted to worked it so that Sophie got Angelique to talk, either with or without Ryan. But they go out of their way to have Sophie be utterly indifferent to this major break in the case. Ryan shouldn't have to leave six voice mails about the new tip. And she shouldn't have to start investigating the leads herself. You've got an army to do that, Sophie! Even if they want to suggest that Sophie is too busy for some reason to call back about what is still probably the biggest crime in recent Gotham history, they could again have her be proactive. "I'm glad Angelique flipped. I'll work on getting the D.A. to write her a deal!" instead of how nonchalant she was. I don't know if Sophie was supposed to be channeling David Caruso when she found the suspects hanging and said that Black Mask was "tying up loose ends," but that didn't work for me. I guess I will not lay the Crows' failure to safeguard Angelique at Sophie's feet. 10. So we're really supposed to believe that the FFS ran out of people who could manufacture Snakebite? 11. A downside to the introduction of the Gotham Gazette guy is there's already too many people who are supposed to be fulfilling the "investigate stuff role." When you already have Team Bat and Team Crow and Alice, I think that doesn't leave much daylight for Gotham Gazette guy to function.

I think Mary did a better-than-usual job of explaining what her issue is with it. If the clinic is completely above-board, it's going to have to follow the rules. That includes complying with requirements to report gunshot victims and other particular cases, and doing what the board of directors/money wants done instead of just using their own best judgment. Also, part of the problem the clinic is trying to address is that there are people who don't trust the system. Getting to be part of the system would undermine what it's going for. And although Mary didn't explicitly say it, the clinic would not be a good front for Batwoman-adjacent activities if Jacob has his prying eyes and pocketbook involved.

I too believe it was a real experience ultimately. But I should say that because TPTB unnecessarily injected doubt because it is such an over-the-top awful crime that three strangers just decided to stake out the Emory house, wait till Henry and the girls were gone for to commit a rape-murder, and since there was the suggestion that she herself had committed the killing of the baby herself with almost no reference to her having been raped.

So now that I'm done with Season 1, I have a lot of thoughts that are all over the place. I feel bad because the show just invites comparisons with Us and Lovecraft Country, and that just isn't going to end well for Them. The characters in LC were more fleshed out, the historical research was more in depth, things generally were better balanced. I felt like this would have been better as a two hour-ish movie. All you had to do is condense the plots with the Reverend and Betty and keep the focus mostly on the family. I don't think we got nearly enough development of the family. Given that Lucky had her child murdered and she got raped by white people, how could they have even contemplated moving to an all-white neighborhood when there was a perfectly good black neighborhood with people that they knew? That is something the show glossed over, along with the notion that Lucky was raped. I think if you are going to introduce such a serious thing happening to a main character, there's an obligation to talk more about the trauma. It almost would have been better to just stick with the kidnapped/killed baby. Also, I think it was too unclear if the baby murder/rape was real or if Lucky had just had mental issues from the start. And similarly, I think that the show could have hit harder on the notion that these were supernatural phenomena happening rather than just psychological ones. Finally, the ending is a little abrupt and unsatisfying. Yes, Our Heroes achieved victory over Devil Rev. But they are facing an angry mob, where Lucky had just escaped an asylum by wounding two employees and Henry shot and wounded a white man whose version of events is more likely to be believed than not, and of course Ruby killed a man.. I guess there is no real room for a happy ending given that's where things are. But maybe they could have worked it out so that things were different.

I don't think Robot has collected the Mauler Twins' DNA. He has come to them with a DNA problem. We saw in a previous episode him looking at something/someone in a tube and store a sample in his body that he seemingly produced here. My guess would be that he wants Interesting, but I hope you are wrong.

I would say it's more idiotic. Jimmy is 6'+ and had been established as a black belt in karate or some other martial art. He obviously had survived years of danger as Superman's pal. It is not unreasonable for him to think "Maybe I can make an additional difference by dressing up in a costume and beating up bad guys." There's also an undercurrent of being at least somewhat jealous of Superman and Supergirl. Even if we assume that Kelly does have the skills to do the physical fighting, there's the question about why mentally she would want to. There's also the reaction of the rest of Team Supergirl. Supergirl herself thought originally thought it was a bad idea for Jimmy to be Guardian. It seems like the team should have reservations about Kelly becoming Guardian. But we'll see.

The worst part for him, probably, was when they were like, "Leave it." That they knew they could take it any time they frigging wanted, and that they didn't consider him with the shield to be any sort of threat.

HK has been on for 19 seasons. IIRC, every season, they do the "Final four (or so) take turns running the pass." Every year, the sous-chefs routinely sabotage some dishes. How can you as a contestant not be suspicious of every sous-chef dish that gets sent up? Heck, even if you never saw the show before, it seems like if you are second or later to run the pass, you would have to have seen the previous contestant either catch and yell at the sous chef or get yelled at by Gordon for not doing well enough and get a clue of what is going on.

A little late to the party but yeah, that trial was like the writers didn't even try. Let's see.... The prosecutor barely put on a case. There's no reason to hang the case on the testimony of Eve and Lena, when there is a ton of evidence from unbiased witnesses. Half the world was under the I Love Lexie protocol and then realized after it went off (at least judging from the bit in the last episode). So there have got to be witnesses who could testify about how they felt brainwashed into loving Lex. There's forensic evidence of the code that caused people to love Lex. There's the testimony of the Super Friends that could and should have been brought to bear. The notion that the Super Friends were so focused on trying to get Kara back from the Phantom Zone that they didn't seem to care about the trial of the guy who personally tried to kill them, even when it was one of their jobs to cover it... I don't think I will ever miss the subtle and nuanced political commentary that Supergirl does when, in this case, they had Luthor's defense channel a certain political figure. Little things like Lex having to wear his jail jumpsuit for the trial. He would get to wear his usual suit. Lex getting to pontificate to the jury whenever he wanted. No judge would allow that. Eve's testimony being "thrown out" is not a thing either. The jury could choose to believe that she was making all this up as a woman scorned but they at least would get to consider it if they wanted. Also, Eve when last I remember was smart. There's no way she would go to pieces like that on the stand. The show didn't do journalism any favors, either. Andrea has gone from being fluff-obsessed to failing to cover actual news with any sort of fairness or sense of decorum. Obviously you can't pre-convict someone. Obviously, you can't stalk jurors during the trial. Obviously if you are going to try to cover a story at the courthouse, you can't just be sitting in the newsroom and basically fist pumping out loud when you think the defendant is looking likely to be convicted. Bleh.

Well, now at least we know who to keep an eye on when we are worried about getting stabbed in the back! 🙂 Lamar caused him to check his insecurities and to consider alternatives. If Walker was left to his own devices, he would have not let Sam attempt to talk Karli down and would have intervened much sooner. He would have probably had thrown down with Sam or Bucky. We're talking different types of elite. There's no reason to not take Zemo at his word that he is against people setting themselves above people as gods. Royalty <>godhood. And even if we are to chalk Zemo up as somewhat of a hypocrite, that doesn't make him wrong. I've pretty much given up trying to predict what will happen in these shows after the rollercoaster ride that was WandaVision. But I do think that Sharon either being the Power Broker or working for him doesn't seem to make that much sense. What do we know about the Power Broker? PB controls a bunch of people and well, power. PB had that scientist create SSS TNG PB had SSS TNG stolen and knows that Carli took it PB has threatened Carli and sent people after her. Given this, Sharon's actions don't really make sense if she's also the PB or his employee. Why would she give Our Heroes and Zemo the lead to find Nagel in the first place when it would clearly be in PB's interest for them to never find Nagel? Why would she help them escape after Zemo kills Nagel? Why let Zemo live after he killed Nagel, something Sharon knows? Why would she tell Sam and Bucky that Walker is about to attack the Flag Smashers, for example? Why not tell the PB's men and get them to attack the Flag Smashers? Now I could be wrong and the writers may have either ways of answering these questions satisfactorily or they may just want to go for the twist without caring too much if the twist makes sense. We'll see.

They did not explicitly say about the shield, but the implication was that Old Man Cap brought back a version of the shield from the timeline he had been living in with Peggy. This was foreshadowed in how Thor (and then Cap) got to wield destroyed Mjolnir. Thanos pretty much left the original shield beyond repair. I suppose it's possible that T'Challa or Shuri decided to recreate or repair his original shield, but considering that they gave him the bracers they did in Infinity War, it seems like the alt-time line is the more plausible explanation. In terms of the Sokovia Accords, it has always seemed at least somewhat ambiguous how they operated. But it seems to me that Walker has been operating under the auspices of the Global Repatriation Council and/or the American government, which the Sokovia Accords at least theoretically allow. The point of them was that enhanced people had to be answerable to some external check.

I think there is nothing about Zemo's philosophy that says that science and technology should not progress. What it says is that if we allow science and technology to allow some people to set themselves up as special, it will inevitably lead to Hydra, Ultron, and other such problems. There presumably would be a way to have scientific advances that do not concentrate power in the hands of an elite or that do not evoke these concerns. Most do not. There are not as many ways for the fact that smart phones exist and some people have them and others do not to lead to catastrophe as there are that Tony Stark can build as many suits of armor as he wants and give them to whoever he wants to use them how he wants (or a given set of people post-Sokovia accords want)

I love MCU Cap as much as the next guy. But I don't buy the notion that he might not lose it if someone had just murdered Bucky or Sam (or someone he similarly was close to) right in front of him, and particularly if that murderer was a terrorist. In fact, it strikes me that Zemo would not/should not have conceded that Cap was pure good. Instead of "Touche," he should have said, "It was just a matter of time before even the noble Steve Rogers abused his abilities. Power corrupts. There is no getting around it."

It's MCU canon from Cap 1 that the shield is vibranium with no mention of admantium. As to why the vibranium spears did not inflict damage on the shield, it could be that the claws in T'Challa's suit are a purer form of vibranium than the spears, were sharper relative the spears, had more/difference force applied than the spears, etc. I think it's a common enough real-world phenomenon that in one instance a scrape of one metal against another might cause damage but a collision of one type of metal against the same would not.

Fair enough. But what I'm saying is that if it was me, that enchantment wouldn't have been able to take hold because I would have spat that nastiness out. In fact, it probably would have backfired. "I'm a pre-teen boy. You probably could have had me turn on my family and goddang Aslan for a chance to see for myself if there's any truth to the expression 'cold as a witch's tit.' But you tried to get me to do it by feeding me that stuff? Not today, chica!" Let's keep it real -- there's not a chance that Steve hasn't killed with the shield, whether it was Nazis/Hydra agents, Chitauri, or whoever. It's just that he probably never did so as brutally, in cold blood, and with numerous people to document it. Even if the government were going to want to disown CosplayCap, they would not want to give the shield to Sam anyway. They would simply want to repossess it and give it to CosploayCap 2 Super-Soldier Bugaloo. They want someone who will take orders, someone who will be photogenic, and someone white. I said what I said.

I don't think Bruce in particular but also to a certain extent Thor are "inherently good." But that may be a discussion to take over to the MCU thread, along with the white hero-black hero thoughts triggered by the last line of your post. Wakanda somehow was not able to get Klaw's scent for 35 years when he stole a shit-ton of vibranium from them. And Zemo is many times smarter than Klaw and (presumably) has more resources. So I think that there is unfortunately a chance that he can elude the DM.

I actually think that the line he said might prove to be true: if he gets the job done, nobody's going to care about how he does it. As brutal as what we saw was, it is capable of being spun. The person killed was a terrorist who was complicit in numerous previous killings and Cap's best friend. There undoubtedly would be people in a real world equivalent who would be like, "Hell yeah! Cap's not holding back!" I think the bigger problem for Walker is that he's not getting the job done, and it doesn't seem like he's capable of it. All he's done so far is follow Sam and Bucky and mess their stuff up. I think that Lamar humanized John somewhat and served as a possible check. He is more a symbol than a character, but such is life.

The serum is not a cure-all. Presumably Karli wanted Nagel to address whatever Donya's underlying condition. Also Nagel could have told her that the SSS would not have cured whatever Donya had. And the bigger question is why Karli hadn't used all 12 doses she had. Presumably, she could find a dozen volunteers she trusted to be down for the cause. You could rationalize her keeping some of the serum as a bargaining chip or in the hopes that more could be made directly from a pure sample...but I don't see a good reason why not to use at least some of the remaining ones.

Maybe I'm particularly slow, but I did not perceive Kori as Latina until this episode when she threw in that they should vote for her by using the [Spanish for yellow]. Usually, they have the chefs beat their chests about their heritage on these shows. (see: Declan's Irish/Viking pride talking heads or the endless "putting me on a plate" talk about this ethnic recipe or that). Even with that, I wasn't sure until I googled and saw that on her IG she describes herself as "Proud Latina Chef & Mom." Am I oblivious? Did she cook much in the way of Mexican/Latino cuisine and I just didn't notice?