[S01.E10: The Winner: The Next Global Brand]

I guess you can argue that. But between Esther and Jonny, Esther did eveything better.

[S01.E10: The Winner: The Next Global Brand]

This conclusion seemed weird. Seemed like Esther did better than Jonny, except that Jonny had already managed a brand for 15 years. But wasn't the point to find the next huge brand and wouldn't he have made it big already in those 15 years if he was there? For me that counts as a point against him, not for him.

I was debating if I was willing to say that Esther was robbed, but I think I came to the conclusion: Esther was robbed.

[Rick And Morty - General Discussion]

I never heard cumgutters before. I think that may be my new favorite word.

So, interesting that they had a mention of the virus. They usually don't produce as fast as south park. Makes me wonder if that was actually suppose to be the real Rick and Morty on that train originally and they slotted in the toy-train part at the last second.

[S01.E12: Zoey’s Extraordinary Dad]

53 minutes ago, Dani said:

According to interviews with the creator it was one shot from the time the enter the house until the end. It’s amazing to watch realizing how much was going on off camera to make that work. 

That is seriously hard to believe. There are so many moving pieces and at the end you even have Jane Levy singing live (granted not perfect, but appropriate for the situation). That would be a huge order even for a movie, let alone a TV show. If it's true, I'm even more impressed than before.

[S01.E12: Zoey’s Extraordinary Dad]

What in the actual fuck? That was a 7 minute continuous shot! I'm sure there must have been some invisible cuts in there. It's not possible to do this at a TV show scheduel otherwise, but other than the front door to the house right in the beginning and the pan to the winter garden in the middle, I couldn't see any places where they could have easily been hidden and I watched this twice now.

I am extremely impressed. Bravo!

Not to mention the song and choreography during that song were beautiful.

Great and moving episode.

[S03.E08: Crisis Theory]

10 minutes ago, paigow said:

Bernard was expecting instructions that would help immediately, not a knockout. 

He didn't expect instructions immediately. If he did, he wouldn't have put Stubbs on ice. He probably expected it to take only hours, not months to years, but still priorities. There was no rush to recieve instructions immediately. He could have patched up Stubbs and then gone to robot heaven. This course of action makes no sense.

[S03.E08: Crisis Theory]

Okay one more complaint: Why the hell couldn't Bernard patch up Stubbs? What was so damn time sensitive about accessing the robot world? Seems like he was in there for months anyway... Speaking of which. For how long had he paid for that room?!

On 5/4/2020 at 4:30 AM, mac123x said:

William seemed superfluous.  I mean, he's been pretty unnecessary the entire season, but it really felt tacked on here.  

I also can't see what robot-William is going to be good for. Real William just shot a security guard in the head in front of a bunch of witnesses. He' going away forever. I swear if that is swept under the rug or not even menioned next season, I'm going to flip... no I won't, because I won't know on account of me not watching.

On 5/4/2020 at 4:34 AM, ShadowHunter said:

William, Stubbs, and Bernard did feel like a waste this season.

Pretty much everything was superfluous this season. This plot was enough for three episodes, tops. Nothing really changed from the first to the last episode. With minor eiditing you could have those back to back and nobody would notice.

On 5/4/2020 at 6:08 AM, enchantingmonkey said:

William was still alive, so unless they're living extended life spans in this future, I would guess it wasn't decades.  Maybe a few years?  

There is no indication that the William scene was at the same time as the Bernard scene.

On 5/4/2020 at 6:24 AM, paigow said:

Nobody went to that motel for 20 years??? Looting?? Burning it down?? Bernard just sat there undisturbed...

I made the same comment. On the other hand, I could see it being a fakeout. These writers oh so much love their twists. For a moment I thought maybe an explosion blew out the windows and dust all over him, but the windows do look intact.

So these writers better come up with a damn good reason how he sat there undisturbed for years or how dust got all over him in a short amount of time. Spoilers: They won't.

On 5/4/2020 at 8:02 AM, thuganomics85 said:

 Also, it turns out that she had always targeted him, because he had gone to the park for a training exercise, and she saw he was a good man, because he.... didn't rape the robots.  Man, that is a low bar to jump over, if not being a rapey creep means you are the best human in Dolores' eyes. 

How is "raping" the robots supposed to be a bad thing? For all they knew they are things with no emotions or real cognition. They don't seem to have any problems with shooting the robots (or humans for that matter), but sticking your dick into a glorified fleshlight? Now that's one step too far, Mr.! Now you are evil and should be burned at the stake!

21 hours ago, The Companion said:

I really felt like they addressed a lot of fan complaints last season and still got raked over the coals. People complained that Wyatt-Dolores as a black hat was boring. She was just an evil "kill all the humans" murderbot. So this season we get more nuance and character development.

We got that in the last 5 minutes of the final episode of this season. The whole rest of the season she was still murder-bot. These writers are way too in love with their twists to tell a good story. That's the problem. That was also the main problem last season.

21 hours ago, The Companion said:

I just really like this show and I want to talk about the themes and complexities.

What complexities?

21 hours ago, The Companion said:

want to talk about the way having Dolores and Maeve come together in the end subverted expectations and the old anti-feminist tropes.

Isn't it the definition of the anti-feminist trope that they had a cat fight for a whole season and the only reason for it being that they couldn't communicate?

21 hours ago, The Companion said:

I want to talk about how freaking cool it was to have them use Marshawn Lynch to knock down those barricades

When they knocked down those barricades, that seemed to weigh literally nothing. Who uses barricades as usless as this?

21 hours ago, The Companion said:

I want to talk about the nature of free will. 

Free will is an illusion and doesn't exist.

A better show might have explored this concept better (and in fact a better show did. Watch The Good Place, it's great), and even argued the oppsite of my opinion stated above (like The Good Place did), but Westworlds take on it was very pedestrian, boring and done a thousand times before, most of the time, better.

[S03.E08: Crisis Theory]

Thank fuck this is over. I deliberated if I should turn this off mutliple times. This was such a slog and not just the episode, but the season.

The Highlight of the episode was probably the talk between Dolores and Maeve. It was beautiful scenery and very moving. BUT we could have had that 8 episodes ago. Nothing really changed. Dolores could have explained herself to Maeve back then and would have probably brought her to her side, especially had she explained that she doesn't have the key but it is in save hands.  (Also not sure why Dolores stared at the side of a hill 3 feet in front of her instead of looking over the vastness of the west. Did they shoot there because it was a bit more protected from the wind and didn't think it was in the shot? I don't see how they could make such a stupid mistake. It looked really really dumb. In the closeups you don't see it, and if you try to forget the establishing shot it's beautiful, but yikes.)

This was some contrived bullshit. Making it out like Dolores is that heartless hardass who is out to destroy humanity, only for the TWIST, whooops, no she's not. She really is still totally warm and fuzzy inside. She was just pretending because of... reasons? I guess?

I'm not saying you can't do that, but you gotta have compelling reasons for her to act the way she did and there were None. Nada. Zero. Keine.

There were a few other nitpicks I had, like being able to take a police drone where you want to go without any credentials, but I'm not even going to go into those. I'm so annoyed.

Except maybe: Dolores was suddenly in military training park, when previously it was established that she had been on her loop in Westworld since forever?! Argh.

God. I hope I can stay strong and not watch next season. I have a debilitating condition where I have to finish shows I've started, that I only sometimes manage to break out of.

When most shows get bad, you can at least have fun hate-watching them. But this is just torture. it drags on and on and on and doesn't get to the fucking point!

There weren't even the stunning visuals of previous seasons. The cinematagrophy was still very good, but concrete buildings get old really really fast. The music choices were way too on the nose and overdone. Was the music always this bad? Did I just not notice with all the other stuff clicking? Or did they fire their old sound guys?

Argh. I hate myself for having sat through this. That is time I'm never going to get back.

[S02.E04: The Curse]

17 hours ago, MisterGlass said:

I wish I had not seen that Dracula.  This is a way better vampire series.

I liked the first two episodes. The third one was extremely horrible. But alas that's Gattiss and Moffat's MO. They make a show with a promising premise and really good first few episodes and then proceed to completely ruin them.

[Parks & Recreation - General Discussion]

On 5/1/2020 at 3:22 AM, AD35 said:

Even Tammy Two got a smile from me. 

Tammy 2 was great. Megan Mullally is great at physical comedy. I always loved her in Will and Grace, but imo that part of her talent was always a bit underused there. At least in the revival, don't quite remember how it was in the original run.

Not giving her any lines and just having her eyes and tied up hands do the talking was brilliant.

On 5/1/2020 at 4:28 AM, thuganomics85 said:

But, damn!  That quarantine beard makes 50 year-old Paul Rudd look like he's in his late 30s instead of early 30s!  Oh, no!

Just looked it up and he's 51?! Hot Dayüömn! I hope I look half as good when I'm his age.

On 5/1/2020 at 5:30 AM, Dots And Stripes said:

I tried to keep expectations low because reunion series generally suck and this was thrown together under strange circumstances. This totally exceeded my expectations! I loved seeing all of our old friends from Pawnee. Bobby Newport was the perfect start and Dennis Feinstein had my fav commercial bit. I thought it was all very silly and fun. I thought Amy did an amazing job carrying the whole thing too. It felt like Leslie never left.

I think in a weird way the strange circumstances helped, a lot. It wasn't that awkward characters coming back together after a long time thing, where you just notice that the warmth isn't quite there anymore. Instead these characters are doing their own thing, but still keep in touch. That was sweet. I loved it.

I think that was the perfect bit of extra-closure from this show, that I never knew I needed but am extremely glad I got.

On 5/2/2020 at 12:01 AM, Mabinogia said:

I just love that a group of folks who haven't worked together in years, who have all moved on to other things, came together and in a few days put together something so wonderful and so beneficial that the world is a slightly better place because of it. 

Apparently they still have a few group texts going and see each other quite often. It really must have been great working on that show. That's always nice to see when the cast of a show you love actually likes each other and doesn't secretely hate each others guts.

 

[S02.E04: The Curse]

No? The guys who made and subsequently ruined Sherlock?

Talking about this Dracula btw: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9139220/

But of course multiple people can come up with the same thing. Though it's also possible that there is prior lore that we all have in the back of our minds somewhere.

[S02.E04: The Curse]

Mailer Demon - now that was some inspired comedy. I almost pissed myself laughing. 

On 4/30/2020 at 8:27 PM, iMonrey said:

It's quite possible that Nandor simply remembers what the letters say without actually being able to read them anymore. He's had them for thousands of years, no doubt he has most of them memorized. No need to know how to read Al Quolanudarian anymore.

But one he never read before. "Ooops"

On 5/1/2020 at 3:12 PM, Gobi said:

Vampires can also learn a language from drinking a victim’s blood. This knowledge can fade over time without new victims with the same language.

I just made that up.

Are you sure you made that up? Wasn't that a thing in the new Dracula from Gatis and Moffat? Blood is lifes and all that crap.

 

[S03.E07: Passed Pawn]

4 hours ago, Athena said:

The show has become very inconsistent with character development and host abilities especially with Maeve's this season. However, Maeve's inability to control hosts who have gained consciousness was shown more than once last season. She realized it when couldn't control Ghost Nation and Lawrence; she notes when they are awake, she can't control them.  In previous seasons, they explain hosts use a mesh network to communicate and Maeve's power uses this network. The Security team last season put a host virus through zombie Clementine using the same network to kill off many hosts.

See, that would make sense, except Maeve can control all other electronics as well. Robots, handguns, electronic gates, you name it. Suggesting that it has nothing to do with conciousness but that she can simply hack into electronics.

So yeah, I could buy that explaination if she could only control other hosts, but that's not the case.

[S03.E07: Passed Pawn]

2 hours ago, Cthulhudrew said:

Didn't Serac also put the glasses on that guy they were torturing several episodes ago? I don't have the energy to go back and check myself.

Yeah he did. So if he's really dead he at least has to have a host body.

1 hour ago, dr pepper said:

I still don't get Maeve's commitment to stopping Dolores. She says she doesn't trust Dolores having the key to the virtual robot heaven, but she never asked if Dolores would give it to her. As far as we know, Dolores has no use for it.

Pretty sure she did ask and Dolores said no. Don't quite remember why. Probably some flimsy bullshit.

19 hours ago, Athena said:

Maeve can't control hosts which have achieved consciousness. She can do other things like help them access their memories (Hector and another host last season) and apparently in this episode, she can also talk to Dolores telepathically.

Really? Was that established at some point last season? Makes no sense, but I guess we have to just accept it, if it was stated...

On 4/27/2020 at 4:26 AM, mac123x said:

3,  The entire time Caleb and Dolores were moving around the guts of that facility, all I could think of was they were in the areas between testing tracks at Aperture Science, only GLaDOS is way more snarky and entertaining than Solomon.

Now I'm imagining Dolores singing this after the episode:

This was a triumph
I'm making a note here; "Huge success"

It's hard to overstate
My satisfaction

Aperture Science:
We do what we must
Because we can

For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead

But there's no sense crying
Over every mistake
You just keep on trying
Till you run out of cake
And the science gets done
And you make a neat gun
For the people who are
Still alive

I'm not even angry
I'm being so sincere right now
Even though you broke my heart,
And killed me

And tore me to pieces
And threw every piece into a fire
As they burned it hurt because
I was so happy for you

Now, these points of data
Make a beautiful line
And we're out of beta
We're releasing on time
So I'm GLaD I got burned
Think of all the things we learned-
For the people who are
Still alive

 

[S03.E07: Passed Pawn]

You know, I really couldn't get invested in that fight between Maeve and Dolores when the only rule about what disables these robots (they can't be killed as long as their pearl is intact and even then there can be backups) is "what the writers feel like at that exact moment". Sometimes one bullet is enough, sometimes one stab to the chest. Sometimes they are bullet sponges and you can lob an arm off. Doesn't matter that it robs the show of any suspense, only thing that matters is that it looks cool in the moment.

Also why can't Maeve just control Dolores? Was there ever a good explaination? I don't think so...

Was there anything to this episode, except for that fight? Not really, right? Everything else you could kinda predict. Except, why did Jessi Pinkman shoot Keith Mars exactly? Seems like that guy would have been his best bet to get out of that situation unbrainwashed... Oh well...

[S11.E18: It's Time]

2 hours ago, sashayshante said:

Wow. And I thought the original finale was awful.

Ah come on. This had a few problems, but the original finale suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. I'm so glad it will forever be just a weird hallucination Karen had.

2 hours ago, sashayshante said:

All that build up and we don't even see them with the babies? We should have seen that happening when they didn't have Grace show until about 3 episodes ago.

I think they overcorrected a bit too much from the last finale, where they showed way too much and all of it crappy.

But overall, it was a nice ending. Also a nice last shot.

[S03.E02: Management Sucks]

On 4/21/2020 at 10:56 AM, Espy said:

Haha that was my main takeaway from this episode: WTF. Seriously, who has a picture of themself, alone, as their lock screen? ?? Surely there’s another way to signal to the viewer that it’s kenny’s phone.

It was actually the worst way to signal that to the viewer. For most of the episode I thought Eve had changed her lock screen to a photo of Kennys in order to remember him / pay respect. Never in a million years would I have thought that that was Kenny's phone.

A photo of the girlfriend who was crying in the washroom might have been a good hint.

Or maybe just "Kenny Stowton's phone" on it. You could have explained later that the work phones have that to avoid being accidentally swapped, since they are all the same model. Etc.

On 4/21/2020 at 2:35 PM, kieyra said:

I've just read the script from that episode and it seems to be shooting more for bisexual ("Uh... I just fall in love with whoever I fall in love with"). I do understand this still falls under the umbrella of the tropes, though. 

Yeah he says that but right after it's made pretty clear that he actually only fell in love with men and that his marriage to a woman was for practical reasons, not out of love. Also that they only extremely rarely had sex.

I guess you could call him bisexual, even if that wasn't the show's intention. I think he'd be a 5 on the kinsey scale.

But in the end, like you said already, it doesn't really matter. Gay, bisexual, same dif when it comes to this trope.

[S40.E10: The Full Circle]

On 4/16/2020 at 3:03 AM, tracyscott76 said:

except to say that for a moment I thought Nick and his lady might end up in the sand right there in front of everyone.

Interesting. I was wondering what the over under was on how long it would take for him to leave her for a man...

[S05.E10: Something Unforgiveable]

7 minutes ago, nuraman00 said:

I don't think the hooker prank is harmless.

Word could get around, and he would lose clients.  Maybe the board would then act on this.

Eh, I think it's pretty harmless. Even if  "word got out", would anybody blieve it of Howard? He's way too boring and even if he did hire escorts, they would probably be higher class than that. And even if anybody believed it, would anybody care? Even more unlikely.

[S05.E10: Something Unforgiveable]

17 hours ago, Lonesome Rhodes said:

I liked the symmetry of Lalo's Lyle (the teen who was killed) and the depth of his loss over the Senora, who could represent for him what Gus' Chilean buddy who can not be avenged properly nor fully.  Of all the arcs, I most anticipate the Gus/Lalo dynamic.

I think the typical designation is "boyfriend", not "buddy".

  

14 hours ago, qtpye said:

Some good insight about Kim.

I still think Kim is the "Mrs. Goodman", Saul mentions from time to time. I thought that before they actually got married and them tying the knot, just reinforced it.

So all the speculation of what happened to her seem a bit surperflous to me. I think, yes, she actually is just in the background in BB. And maybe next season we'll see a few scenes with her that take place during the BB timeline, as next season is supposed to overlap.

[S05.E10: Something Unforgiveable]

I love Kim and how she turned out. Is she a good person, wanting to destroy a mans life because he lightly crossed her and to get money out of the situation? No, certainly not, but that is why I love her. It makes her an interesting character. Somebody who should probabbly be in jail in real life, but is great to watch on TV. Just like a walter white.

And I find it just delicious that Howard thinks Jimmy is the bad influence here and that he is corrupting that pure innocent woman, who just couldn't be bad, because women just can't be bad (or some patronizing bullshit like that), when it becomes increasingly more obvious that Kim is the worse one of the two.

I don't think it would have ever occured to Jimmy to actually ruin Howard's life. He played a few relatively harmless pranks and that was it for him. He felt that was retribution enough. But Kim was perfectly willing to go a lot further. If anything, she is the corrupting influence now.

 

That Lalo still isn't dead, I'm not a fan of. He's tiring to me and I would like him off my screen sooner rather than later. we know wher all this Cartel stuff is going and the journey isn't that interesting to me.

 

18 hours ago, Bryce Lynch said:

Kim's hatred for Howard seems to have come out of nowhere.  Her character has become tedious to me.  The whole "ruin Howard to tank the Sandpiper care" plot seems idiotic.  

The last interraction we saw between the two, Kim tore him a new one. I think it became pretty clear at that point that she hated him.

18 hours ago, Bryce Lynch said:

Does Kim really think Steph from S&C and the guy from HHM will want to leave their promising careers at prestigious firms to defend lowlifes at her $#i+hole firm.

Does she think everyone is as foolish and pretentious as she is?

I mean it might look good on their CVs to have worked for the little guy for a few years. Studies show your pay rises much faster when you change jobs often than when you stay at one company forever.

So if the pay is good (and it seems like Kim wants to pay well), why not work for her for a few years?

[S03.E02: Management Sucks]

7 minutes ago, kieyra said:

Men in general don’t survive long on this show unless they’re named Konstantin.

Straight Kenny at least survived two seasons and an episode. Gay Bill, under three episodes (and he died in the same episode he came out to Eve and the viewer)).

The out of the closet, into the fire just seems very obvious on this show. Probably not even because the writers hate gay people or anything, but rather to make the death more tragic.

Speaking of Kenny: Did he have a photo of himself on his lokscreen? who does that? was he secretly a raging narcicist?

[S03.E02: Management Sucks]

You really don't want to be a gay man on this show. You come out, same episode you are dead. Doesn't even matter if main or side character.

[Seasons 1 and 2 Discussion]

Season two wasn't that great either. Imo they should have been done with V after season one. I get it, everybody loves the actress and she does great work, but the character just isn't that interesting. I would have loved to follow Eve chasing somebody else.

would have been way nicer if V would have died from her wound instead of just walking it off... well at least it was a clean stab with a small blade an she got stiches and antibbiotics. Not like one Arya Stark who got a big ass knife to the gut, got it twisted around, jumped into sewer water an was completely fine without any antibiotics, no infection whhatsoever. (yes I'm still bitter abbout that one))

At least at the end of the season it became clear why MI6 would use an assasine when they have many other capable assets around. Plausible denyabbility. I couldn't for the life of me figure it out before the last episode.

But in the last episode, Eve is very, very dumb again. I could have seen that one coming. She should have too. Good thing in this show everybody always magically survives getting shot or stabbed, as long as they are main characters.

[Seasons 1 and 2 Discussion]

17 hours ago, Grumpymonkey said:

I thought so too. I binged over the weekend, had the last episode left but really no desire to watch it and when I did, total let down.  The characters are very hard to like and they annoy so much its hard to be entertained by them, though there are some moments. Bill I liked but he didn't last long and Kenny and Elena. Sandra Oh is very good but I don't like her character or Villianelle. I thought this show would be right up my alley but I was bored and just kept thinking can't stand any of these people.

I also don't think they sufficiently established that Eve had gone that far off the deep end. Yes, she was obsessed with Villianelle to some extend, but going to her apartment alone and then that "I love you, I hate you" stuff, I kinda wanted to vomit a bit. Villianelle killed a good friend of Eve's. I don't think anybody would get over that who isn't a psychopath themselves and Eve doesn't seem like one. She just has some kind of obsessive personality disorder.

Had the friend-killing not happened, maybe I could have bought the whole thing, but this way it seemed like too much of a stretch.