Hatshepsut

Pretty much every last one of these kids, even the “good guys” would at the very least have been expelled from school if not in juvie. Or in the ER. And how their parents haven’t pulled them all out of this school and/or karate is beyond me. Cobra Kai and Miyagi-do would have been buried in lawsuits. For the most part I can suspend my disbelief, but I think I would have liked just a tiny bit more insight into these kids’ home lives and even just a hand-wavy explanation of how there weren’t more consequences for the school and house fights. I get that the kids probably wouldn’t be “snitching” on each other, but I just keep imagining them coming home beaten bloody every other day and their parents going like “how was school today dear?”

It's the apocalypse. The survival of the species is a little more important than honoring contract law. It's fair to say that the firsties are owed something for their funding of the train, but palatial apartments and a beach are not it. And "fair" has to take a backseat to "survival of the species". If losing the beef car could be an "extinction event", then clearly the resources are stretched a little thin. Supporting the lavish lifestyle of the firsties take sa lot more resources than just giving the tailies some decent food, especially since plenty of the tailies seem to have useful skills. I think it has more to do with the reality of everyone on that train possibly being the very last of humanity. Rights or no rights, it just makes sense to find a way to integrate everyone into the ecosystem of the train, even if means the firsties can only go to the sauna once a week or have sushi once a month 🙄 (really, this is actually what really challenges my ability to suspend disbelief--the Noah's Ark of humanity with a sushi bar?).

The 1st classies may have funded the train, but they're functionally useless now. This isn't a cruise or a plane ride--this is the survival of an entire species, with pretty limited resources that could be put to better use giving everyone a medium-ish standard of living instead of a handful of people a ridiculously lavish lifestyle and other people, invited or no, treated as more or less subhuman. Obviously the show has to require a certain suspension of disbelief, but there's no way that sort of system would hold up for long. Class and money no longer have any relevance in a post-apocalyptic world, where they need engineers and sanitation workers and have zero use for hedge fund managers or even sushi chefs. "Wilfred" needed the first class folks to sign up, so "he" promised extravagant luxury, but once it became obvious that humanity was more or less extinct, other considerations presumably have to come into play. And while I don't have much sympathy for someone stowing away on a cruise liner, survival is the most basic instinct we have, so it's not exactly fair to expect the tailies to have just been like "oh, well, we didn't pay to live, so we don't have the right to live" before getting on the train. Especially since it's clear that this isn't a situation where there aren't enough resources to go around--there are, if they just bump the first class to like, a second class standard of living (I mean, saunas and sushi in the apocalypse? And the first class Marie Antoinette complaining about the nude Swedes in the sauna when the entire world is a dead frozen hellscape? Come on).

Yeah, I’m not quite sold. I mean, I do like that this gives us a new mystery to unravel over another season or two—what race is the doctor from? What happened to them? But I’m not crazy about making the doctor so super special. I agree with the Master on that much. Speaking of the Master, I guess it makes some sense that the revelation of the timeless child is a semi plausible reason for the backsliding into crazy evil Master. But it bothers me that it seems to cheapen the history between the Doctor and the Master—like, the Doctor probably had a ton of best friends if they lived so many lives. I prefer them both as the last survivors of Gallifrey, with all the shared history and baggage that that entails. Damnit, I just want those two crazy kids to be friends again! so do we think the Master is gone for good (haha, as if). I assume that he had some sort of contingency plan, since he deliberately left the death particle thing for the Doctor. not crazy about the Doctor ending up In a Judoon prison. Give her a little time to process all this shit, huh? also agree that the tripe of “if you kill me, you become me” is so tired. And letting the old dude do it is hardly any better, morally speaking. I mean, If you’re going to kill your best friend/archnemesis/definitely ex lover you really owe it to them to do it to their face.

Yeah, I did mostly like the show, but have to agree that the poor writing took the shine off of what was a really cool, fun concept. The kids are basically idiots--not using the music box against Dodge (which is the first thing probably most viewers thought of when introduced to the music box), never checking in with Great-Grandpa Locke to get some backstory on the keys and the house (How many keys are there? What can the other ones do? What's with that door?), opening the Omega door ('cause that turned out so well last time), not considering that the Dodge could use the identity key to look like anyone (although I will give them some leeway for not guessing that the identity key could be used on someone else against their will), etc., etc. Then there are the completely superfluous adults (and honestly, if the mom can only remember what happened when drinking, I say let her drink! The kids are clearly unable to handle this situation by themselves). And I found the whole "oh, grown-ups can't remember magic" thing to be kind of a cop out (and what about the Locke ancestors? Great-Grandpa Locke clearly remembered--do you stop forgetting when you die, or what?). Hope they get better writers for season 2.

This show is definitely at its best when it doesn't try and play it too straight. Malcolm shooting out the window and crashing onto the car as the room behind him exploded, all to the tune of under pressure, was just golden. And the role play scene in prison was some of the funniest tv I've seen ("I'm always Malcolm." "But dad, you kill people. And you're a dick."). I hope they do more like this. There are plenty of overly serious crime dramas on tv, I like this show because they play up the crazy.