Chicago Redshirt

I think that we are just supposed to conclude that in some ways Angelique and Sophie are blind to basic things. In Angelique's case, she had sex with Ryan without noticing she had a nasty green glowing wound until the morning after. And Sophie didn't know that Kate was Batwoman despite having been close to Batwoman several times and having kissed her.

For my money: Yes, it is possible that it would have been futile to try to save a desert rose. It probably would not hurt to try to get one or to try to put out the fire, or to see if even a burned rose might have healing properties. It wouldn't have killed the writers to have Sophie verbalize that she couldn't make it to the fields before they were burned or some such. Obviously, part of a show like this involves every character experiencing setbacks from time to time. But they should also experience successes. And for Sophie, those successes are rare. How much would be different if the writers wanted to do this episode without Sophie? They'd have to make Jake talk to himself and maybe they would make him be the one Ryan snuggled up to. I don't think anyone is saying that Sophie should recognize every scent. Fertilizer seems like one that it is not unreasonable for her to be familiar with though. It just seems ridiculous that Mary is being portrayed as a bigger bad-ass than Sophie right now. Which one, despite just being a spoiled socialite with no training, managed to outfight or outfox two Batman villains and a train assassin, rescue Batwoman, drive the Batmobile such that she evaded the cops, and help synthesize a cure for a plague Alice caused?

1. Pretty sure that the real military had some desegregated units before 1948,, when Truman signed the executive order banning desegregation. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20587/20587-h/20587-h.htm#page017 2. Obviously the MCU military need not have followed the exact pattern of the real world. "Buck" is what he said Sam didn't get to call him; only Steve got to call him that. Bucky doesn't have a problem being called "Bucky" apparently.

But I don't think that Bucky or anyone is claiming that Isaiah's situation was similar to Bucky's or that Isaiah should be more understanding. As far as I can tell, Bucky brought Sam there for some combination of two reasons: 1. Because Isaiah might represent a lead on where the hell the SSS that the Flag Smashers were on came from or 2. It was part of his "you should have kept the Shield, Sam" effort. The idea behind the second would be to try to say, hey they did this brother wrong, but things have changed since then and you would have had a chance to stand out as the new Cap. Of course, that argument sort of fails spectacularly from the point of view of someone like Sam because it would be a reminder that we have not come all that far in the time since Isaiah was used and abused. We don't know ultimately which Bucky was aiming for because Isaiah kicks them out and then the cops arrest him before he can explain what's up.

I would say that Bucky hasn't been shown to be clueless at all, or at least I can't think of scenes where he has explicitly been any more clueless about race than a 21st century well-meaning white person. Bucky seemed to get the racism of the cops doing the stop, and did what a lot of contemporary people would do: just give them the ID and it'll be fine. Part of his wanting to leave Isaiah alone was recognizing how fucked over he had been. If anything, he is surprisingly evolved for a white person who was raised in the 20s and 30s. I don't think the average one would date an Asian woman as an equal as Bucky did. Bucky is apparently needing Sam to spell out the real reason why Sam didn't keep the shield: because he believes that America just is not ready for a black Captain America. Maybe they will explore in What If what would happen if he had just taken up the mantle of Captain America, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have been doing any press tours and marching bands for Sam. Sam could be right about America not welcoming a black Cap, Sam could be wrong about that, but I think it isn't surprising that someone who was had a chance to catch Steve's optimism about the world apparently has not figured that this would be a consideration for Sam.

Obviously it would be a coup to have Sam and Bucky voluntarily working with him. But having them working with him against their will means that he probably loses out both on the propaganda value of having them show they are cool with him as Cap. It would also mean that they would be less likely to be effective and they might even undermine their efforts out of resentment for being forced.

Not that this series is necessarily bound by what went on in the Netflix Marvel series, but Jessica Jones used Karl Malus as a character in its S2, and he was killed in there IIRC.

I took it to be ketchup and special sauce.

We're just guessing, of course. But a few possibilities: A. Isaiah had a kid in the 70s or 80s (early release/conjugal visit) through conventional means; Isaiah's kid could as an early 20something have Eli in the early aughts through conventional means. This would put Eli as a teenager in 2023. B. Isaiah had a kid in the 1950s through conventional means, and that kid had Eli through conventional means when he was 50ish, still around the aughts. C. Either Isaiah's kid or Eli is the result of experimentation (artificial insemination/cloning/etc.), in which case things could have happened at various times.

The one cop expressly asked Bucky if Sam was bothering him So yes, he/they had jumped to the conclusion that black guy was harassing white guy and they should step in. I imagine that Sam has a fair amount of leeway to operate. So if he doesn't care about Bucky joining or wants Bucky to join, it'll probably happen. I think the more unbelievable thing would be that Bucky could track Sam down in person that easily and that he would volunteer to go to Munich to complain to Sam for a flight of 6-8 hours about giving up the shield. Sam and Bucky are free agents. As far as we have seen, Sam works specific cases for the government, but even in the face of the Sokovia Accords, he and Bucky presumably can choose to go where they want and do not have to go where someone else wants them to go. Walker and Battlestar don't have the luxury of turning down orders or acting independently. What makes you think that he failed to report the failure of his mission? Presumably, Sam and Bucky got back from Munich on an Air Force transport and had hours to do whatever debriefing that the Air Force required. Walker did not force Bucky to do any therapy. Walker pulled strings to get Bucky released and to loosen the mandatory therapy requirement to give more flexibility. It was Raynor who insisted that as a condition of Bucky's release that he immediately make up the missed therapy session then and there. She had no authority as far as I can tell to rope Sam into it, nor any reason to think that Sam should be part of the therapy session. But it allowed for funny, so I guess I'll handwave it. Why would Walker be able to force Bucky and Sam to be his teammate? How would he do so? And even if he could, why would he want to? Presumably, Isaiah was on Hydra's radar when he sent their best agent scurrying back with a busted up metal arm. This would have been before Isaiah was jailed. Hydra took some time to grow "like a beautiful parasite," to quote Zola. It is unclear when exactly Isaiah was first imprisoned. But even if we were to assume that it was at a point where the Hydra presence in SHIELD was pretty well developed, it's not a given that a) SHIELD was involved directly in the imprisonment/experimentation on Isaiah and b) if they were, that the Hydra agents within SHIELD would have access to that information.

In the comics, Cap and Bucky were a superhero team like Batman and Robin. Just like there had been multiple people to take up the mantle of Robin over the years, it makes sense that someone trying to recreate Captain America would want to have a Bucky to complete the look. I mean, he IS someone special. Check the resume. Is he Steve? No. Few people --- including Sam and Bucky -- could measure up to Steve. But Walker explicitly acknowledges that he is not Steve. Whether he's sincere in saying that or just saying that because he knows that saying anything else would a) alienate Sam, Bucky and the general public and b) make him seem as much of a douchebag as possible remains to be seen. I would also argue that the line doesn't fully make sense because there would be information about Hydra/SHIELD activities that would not be digital, that would be actual disinformation, that would be mistaken, incomplete, conflicting, etc. So I take that as an oversimplification of events to say Natasha released all the information. Even taking TWS at face value, Natasha released the entirety of Hydra and SHIELD's information to the world as it existed back in 2014. It's now 2023 in the Marvel universe so at best that information is nine years out of date. And even if we were to say that the information Natasha leaked were somehow complete at the time and updated, there would have to be tons of information to sort through. Someone like Zemo could at least somewhat shortcut what they might be looking for. It's not clear when/how Isaiah was imprisoned. It could be that he got framed for a crime. It could be that he was locked up solely to be experimented on. It could be that he was imprisoned at because of Hydra, that Hydra had no involvement in it, or anything in between. Assuming for discussion's sake that Hydra had at least some knowledge/involvement in Isaiah's imprisonment, Hydra could have just wanted Isaiah off the board, and having him imprisoned and having it buried that there was a black supersoldier served them just fine. Or they could have gotten what they needed from leeching off the 30 years of imprisonment/testing that Isaiah endured. As to what Bucky knew, it seems most likely that Bucky's Hydra masters over the years told him things about the one man who kicked Bucky's ass. That would be make sense with his saying that Hydra feared Isaiah in the same sort of way that it feared Steve. In addition to being privy to whatever his masters said about Isaiah, he had some ability to track down information about him through any number of means between CW and being dusted in Infinity War, not to mention since returning in Endgame.

I will say that it is plausible that the mass firings that apparently took place may have left the remaining journalists at the DP dispirited and broken. It is less plausible in general that a) any newsroom would rewrite a critique into a puff piece rather than just shelving it b) that they would push out the puff piece under Lois's own byline rather than either "Daily Planet Staff" or some unfortunate other reporter and c) that the publisher would personally rewrite it. All those would be journalistic scandals in the real world and largely unimaginable. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. If he were to personally meddle in a story critical of Amazon or him and transmute it into a story positive about it, it's something that would not just outrage the newsroom but the general public.

There is nothing to indicate is playing out in the same time as those seasons, either. No mention of Supergirl, no call or text from Supergirl of condolence after Clark has lost his mother, no offer to help him get a job at CatCo or whatever. It could be simply that TPTB want S&L to stand alone as much as possible and didn't want to draw in new characters. It could be an availability/COVID thing. It could be a straight-up oversight by TPTB, because of course Kara would either go to the funeral or privately support Clark. It could be that there's an in-story reason why Kara can't make it, like whatever fate awaits her at the end of her series (my unspoiled speculation: she goes off to the future and reunites with Monel) We don't really know where Crisis left things for Superman and Lois. Pre-Crisis, Superman and Lois were about to have a baby in Argo City. Post-Crisis, Clark gets a message from Lois to come home and deal with the twins. So it could be that Crisis retconned things so that not only did they have twins, but they had them 13 years ago. That's what would be what would have to happened for S&L S1 to be in the same general time frame as all the current Arrowverse shows. Or it could be that Crisis retconned things so that instead of just having the one baby around the time of last season's Arrowverse shows, they now have two and we have done a time skip of about 13 years to get to where we are. Thart's my preferred interpretation. At this point, there is no conclusive evidence one way or another.

Basically, whoever runs the Raft can decide whoever they put in the Raft and for what reason and for what length. Ross tells Tony that he's lucky that he wasn't in a cell there. Hawkeye and Falcon are not enhanced people and yet they were thrown in the Raft in Civil War. I was under the impression that the Raft was where Zemo was placed at the end of Civil War, but he obviously could have been moved since, or if he was Snapped, he could have been recaptured and put in another prison. Saying that he doesn't have gadgets like Tony or strength like the Hulk, but he does have guts isn't saying that he's better than Tony or that Tony doesn't have guts, though. It's at least on a surface a self-deprecating statement that he's not a super-superhero, but he's still worthy of being Cap 2.0 because he's gutsy.

In Civil War, Zemo stole the identity of a psychiatrist and (I think) a couple of others in doing his dirt. I took the last shot to be that he was in Berlin too, which indeed was where the airport fight among the good guys was. IIRC, we did have a shot of him in prison, which I thought to be the Raft. I don't know if it has ever been firmly established where the Raft is other than it is underwater. The accords signing was indeed in Vienna, but Zemo committed so many crimes that the prosecuting attorneys could probably have chosen a whole lot of venues to have the trial. Which of course assumes the quaint notion that he got a trial in the first place. I would imagine whatever authority is behind his imprisonment can make up whatever rules it wants to.

Trying to go out on his own terms but failing strikes me as different from trying to live but failing like most Marvel villains have.

Whoops, got my fictional country confused with real world. Fixed in the original post. Anyway, I think Zemo does not get enough credit fo rA) succeeding in his objective and B) living to see another day. Thanos is about the only one who achieves the former besides Zemo, and most Marvel villains end up dead.

And hypothetically, Walker could develop a chance to become Captain America, or at least his version of him, in actual adventures starting in this episode. We are biased because precious few are worthy to be Captain America, and we presumably know that if Falcon and Bucky have doubts over whether they can measure up, Walker should have doubts too. And at least as they portray him in this episode, he genuinely has some. I dunno if Cap refused to continue on with the tour or if it was more that he managed to show the powers that be that he had more value actually fighting Hydra in real life than fighting screen villains. Cancelling Bucky's therapy because it was convenient for him is a fair way to read the action. An equally fair way is that he reasonably thought Bucky didn't really need or want the therapy and so it would be doing Bucky a favor, and the country a favor by not having Bucky sidelined. I don't think Walker was saying he was better than anybody. Now again, all his humility may be fake and calculated. But I don't think that is a given, and again, I point to the fact that he needed to be psyched up in the locker room as evidence that he's not simply an egomaniac. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't hear Walker say he was best friends with anyone. No questions are stupid. Some are easier than others. Zemo was introduced as a villain in Captain America 3: Civil War. The short version: Zemo was a special forces person from an Eastern European country called Sokovia. He lost his family when Ultron tried to use the country in his plot for world domination, and so Zemo developed a grudge against the Avengers. He somehow knew about Bucky's past as the Winter Soldier including the fact that Bucky killed Tony Stark's parents and exploited that to frame Bucky and manipulate Bucky's programming to create a situation where the Avengers would implode. Although he ends up captured, his plot worked. So for Bucky to want to confront the man who manipulated him is a Big Deal. I assume that Bucky and Sam were still in Baltimore when they were in the station, although they could have been extradited to some other jurisdiction. I don't know if the show has established exactly where they reside now, whcih might matter for where the warrant was issued and where Bucky would be taken back from.

I laughed out loud more at that trailer than I did in the entire previous Suicide Squad, so my hopes are high.

Maybe my take is a little bit of sympathy for the devil, but as presented thus far, Walker IMO hasn't been too bad. I don't see him as a gloryhound at all. We saw him in his private moments before going out into the stadium, and he was nervous about it and had to be given pep talks to do it by both his wife/girlfriend and his buddy/partner. The big stadium presentation and interview he did was pretty much a 2023 update of the USO tours and the movies that Steve used to make. Steve clearly wanted to be active, but he still kept doing the war propaganda because that's what his bosses wanted him to do. We might hate him for referring to Bucky and Falcon as Cap's wingmen, but that's not an unfair description IMO of what they were. It's mighty entitled of him to think that they should kiss his ass just because he's wearing a similar costume and has got the shield. On a spectrum between Steve and Hodge from the first movie for honor, smarts, selflessness, heroism etc., I would say what we have seen from Walker so far would put him closer to the Steve pole. But as things develop, maybe he will be at the Hodge pole or worse, like Rumlow.

He wasn't just a good soldier. He was a super soldier! Seriously, it depends on the parameters you use. Being willing to sacrifice yourself in order to spare 10-20 of your colleagues seems like it is both heroic and being a good soldier. I suppose that an even better soldier would have seen through the test (how dafaq is there a live grenade that has been thrown in this training camp? It must be a ploy).

If Lois and Clark's reporting careers were analogous to real-world reporters, they would have been doing pretty well financially. Lois is the world's most famous journalist and Clark traditionally was no slouch. They both have been at the Daily Planet for about two decades. I at some point had Googled the New York Times reporter's salaries and IIRC, the average was about $100k a year. I think with their higher levels of experience and their higher profile, it's probably a fair assumption that their annual household income was more like $350-$400k in recent years. Now the boys and Metropolis living would eat into that a great deal, along with the premiums that they would have to pay on "I got kidnapped again" and "Aliens blew up my apartment trying to get to Superman" insurance. But they should have been able to bank some decent cash. In addition to Martha's life insurance, presumably Clark would have gotten some amount of severance pay after his getting fired. I'm operating under the assumption that we are still within a month of his being fired and losing his mom, so I would think there wouldn't be financial pressures on the family yet.

I think Bucky's issue with Battlestar is that it is a ridiculously self-important codename, and it emphasizes the sense he already had that he didn't want to be working with the clown who tried to take the image, rep and shield of his best friend when he's trying to pair up with Battlestar.

Although Luthor initially retconned himself in the new continuity to seem a good guy, I guess it is safe to say that this is roughly 10+ years from when he did so. That would be a long time for that tiger to not show his stripes. I think it is fair to assume that he has been exposed as the bastard he is by now, and the public knows it.

I was operating under the assumption that the kid who answered the door might be Eli. As someone said, Walker is in the Army now. So if he's not going to be in his Cap uniform, he reasonably might be wearing his Army one. I would say they were overconfident. Surely there are not that many groups of five to eight people who can stand up to the might of Captain America, Battlestar AND the Falcon and the Winter Soldier? Another question is why Walker didn't just shoot the super-soldiers. (Or vice-versa). The real-world answer is because it's a comic book series and it would be less exciting if either side mowed the other down. But I don't see there being a good in-universe explanation, especially when Walker did have a gun that he fired once.