Constantinople

This is what happens when you confuse good storytelling with explosions fight scenes flashbacks upsidedown camera shots "mysteries" for their own sake "twists" that undercut the premise or contradict what was said in a previous episode two conventionally attractive leads with no chemistry and the desire to "create a new franchise rooted in original IP" (Amazon Studio boss, see the Media thread). I'm also not particularly interested in watching a spy show which amounts to one of the lead characters working out his family issues.

This part of the article succinctly explains why Season 1 was such a stinker

Interesting article in the Guardian today about the theft in 2021 of 45 bottles of wine from a Michelin starred restaurant in Cáceres, Spain. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/may/20/those-bastards-stole-the-most-special-stuff-the-inside-story-of-a-16m-wine-heist I mention it because scenes for Season 2 are being filmed in Cáceres (as I was reading the article I realized I had heard of the town even though, to quote the song, "Well I never been to Spain"). No spoilers are in the article. If you want those, head over to the HotD media thread.

Opening with a scene that's both a flashback and an upside down shot that turns itself rightside up? They've outdone themselves. It took me this long to realize that all of the implausible story points, cheesy and overly long action scenes, dumb twists, nonstop flashbacks and pointless camera tricks aren't just filler. They serve an important storytelling function: to distract the viewer from noticing that Mason and Nadia have zero chemistry. This is the first tv series I've ever seen with Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and I'm not sure I ever want to see another. I liked Richard Madden in Game of Thrones and Bodyguard, but it may be a long time before I'm willing to watch him again. Much of the blame lies with the writing and directing, but even with that I feel their acting has ranged from mediocre to terrible. Props to the creative team for making the train wreck in the first episode a metaphor for the series. For now my goals are simple: root for Carter, hope he doesn't turn out to be a bad guy and finish the season. I'd like to say I won't be around for Season 2 but I may watch the premiere out of morbid curiosity.

I'm guessing they're telling so much of this story in flashback so that Mason/Kyle and Nadia can get it own without Mason/Kyle cheating on Celeste/Abby/Brielle The powers that be (TPTB) were really fixated on the train explosion in the opening episode TPTB are trying to preserve mystery that they believe would be lost if the story were told in chronological order Except I've already lost faith in the show. I've stopped caring about whatever mysteries there are. I'm convinced the season will either end with an unsatisfying cliffhanger or with an explanation that doesn't make any sense, or knowing this show, both. I guess in that sense I do have some kind of faith in the show. Even with an overly long fight scene when freeing Carter in the present day, and 2, 3 or 4 makeout or post makeout scenes in the past with cringy dialogue, this episode couldn't clock 35 minutes. Which goes to show how much filler there is. And even then we don't see Nadia giving the order to hide the thing that the bad guy was working on. Instead, Carter tells Mason. At this point I don't care if Carter is lying or telling the truth. I don't think it's possible to elevate this dialogue, at least for any character not played by Stanley Tucci. And Richard Madden isn't doing himself any favors if he's trying to use this as a springboard to be the next James Bond. But if he's convinced he won't be the next Bond and this is just a paycheck, then fine. If Season 2 isn't a while lot better, I'm finding it hard to imagine there will be a Season 3.

This is wild speculation but it's partly based on book events that haven't happened yet in the show, so I'm putting it here. In the book, Jace flies to the Eyrie, White Harbor and Winterfell. At White Harbor, Jace and Lord Manderly agree that Jace's younger brother Joffrey will marry Lord Manderly's daughter after the war. At Winterfell, Jace and Cregan Stark agree that Jace's future first daughter will marry Cregan's son (I don't remember if the son had been born yet). In Episode 10, Rhaenyra says Jace will fly to the Eyrie and Winterfell but no mention is made of White Harbor. Jace could still stop by White Harbor in the show, but I'm guessing he won't. So what happens to Joffrey's betrothal? It could be dropped entirely. Or Jace may betroth Joffrey to one of Cregan's female relatives, whom I'll call Sara. She could be a daughter, a sister, or a niece but she's Sara Stark, not Sara Snow (and nothing happens between her and Jace unless there's a wedding ceremony where Jace is Joffrey's proxy). There could still be a marriage pact between Cregan's son and Jace's future daughter, but that's contingent. What if Jace never has daughters? Sara and Joffrey are here and now. At the time Jace and Cregan make this marriage pact, they may not know that Luke is dead. But they'll find out soon enough. So Cregan may now expect his sister/niece/daughter will be the future Mistress of Driftmark and Lady of the Tides on the assumption that Joffrey is next in line after Luke. But then Corlys has Addam and Alyn of Hull legitimated as Addam and Alyn Velaryon, with Addam named as his heir and Alyn next in line. So now Joffrey's been passed over. At least, that's how Cregan might view it. One catch is that in the book, Jace fully supports Corlys's desire to legitimate Addam and Alyn. But Jace may not know Cregan's thoughts on the matter. And if Cregan wants to blame someone, he find it easier to blame Corlys than the people to whom he's pledged his loyalty. That would give Cregan a more personal reason for his animosity towards Corlys when they meet up in King's Landing. Granted, Joffrey's dead by then, but Cregan strikes me as the kind of person who holds a grudge. In some way it makes what Corlys did worse in Cregan's eyes. After Hugh and Ulf changed sides, Rhaenyra wanted to "sharply question" the other two dragonseeds: Addam and Nettles. Addam is or would be on dragon duty in the Dragonpit when he's warned by Corlys, so Addam flees and Rhaenyra imprisons Corlys. Then the Storming of the Dragonpit happens and Joffrey is killed trying to get there to release the dragons. So from Cregan might also blame Corlys for Joffrey's death. That's a bit illogical because if Addam hadn't been warned by Corlys, Addam still wouldn't have been at the Dragonpit. He'd be in a cell instead. But perhaps Cregan doesn't realize no one else was a available for dragon sitting. And people aren't always perfectly logical. After all, Cregan didn't recognize Aegon II as king, yet he condemned people for committing treason against Aegon while simultaneously denying the validity of a pardon that Aegon granted. I'm not saying this will happen, but it could happen. It explains the confused accounts of what happened in Winterfell and Cregan dislike of Corlys. But they'll probably drop the Joffrey betrothal story.

This show is so over the top it wouldn't surprise me if he wanted to get captured. It doesn't really make sense, but nothing does. For that matter, I'm starting to wonder if Mason/Kyle is the biological father of Hendrix. I don't know if the timing works, and I won't bother to figure it out because it's not worth the brain cells. I'm just watching with the expectation that no plot twist too dumb.

So they spent about a third of the episode, or more, on a pointless flashback just so the stars could have a lame make out scene without having Mason/Lyle cheat on his wife. They also need to stop it with the upside down shots slowly turning right side up and vice versa. It's too pretentious for a show that is this level of dip shittery.

Kyle Conroy is the name he was called in the hospital and the name that he's been living under for 8 years. He looks exactly like Mason Kane, who Manticore knows was on the train, is known to be a survivor of the train and is in a hospital near the train explosion. Yet for some reason Manticore can't figure it out? I think it would be difficult for Citadel to scrub the media of survivors since the entire network was destroyed and now consists of one guy in Wyoming. Moreover, there's nothing preventing Manticore from checking hospitals for recent admissions.

Given Nadia Sinh / Charlotte Vernon's ability to routinely beat the crap out of people much larger than her and who are presumably equally well trained, including when recovering from being shot in the leg, she should have been named Jaime Sommers. Good point. I started doing that with Episode 1 and eventually gave up. In general, I find it enjoyably stupid. As others have noted, it probably helps that the episodes are only 40 minutes. That said, this isn't $300 million good. If they hadn't already committed to Season 2, I wouldn't have expected it to be renewed.

If the twin brother Manticore agents can find and recover the Xbox just from being told it's in a CIA black site in Miami, I'm surprised Manticore couldn't find the King of the North recuperating in an Italian hospital given that one of Manticore's founders is from Italy and given that stories like "American Survivor of Huge Italian Train Explosion Suffers Amnesia" tend to show up in n the news. I mean Manticore couldn't even track Robb Stark down in 8 years when there's probably 1 person on Earth named Kyle Conroy who is American, who survived the train explosion and for whom there's no records of prior to the train explosion (according to the doctor in the Italian hospital, helpfully passing along what the American consulate said). Yet somehow Manticore wiped out Citadel (thousands of agents). Speaking of Citadel, if they've been around for a hundred years fighting the good fight, they need to up their game because they really sucked. It was a little much when Stanley Tucci said nefarious unironically, and his obvious exposition dump was obvious. And please, no more therapy scenes. That said, I appreciate that the show isn't taking things too seriously. It makes it easier to enjoy in contrast to something like The Diplomat, which is equally implausible but wants to veer back and forth between serious and snarky. One is enjoyably stupid, the other is just stupid.

From the episode Except the UK Prime Minister isn't the head of state, both of whom should know hat, but particularly the UK Foreign Secretary. I know it's not the most important criticism, but it bugs given that writers/showrunner/whomever are otherwise treating this as a subgenre of science fiction as Mindy Kaling would put it.

I see the story so far is unconstrained by reality. I'm not sure yet if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I contend you keep moving the goal posts We very much are. There's no trolley problem if writers haven't established the trolley isn't moving or that the trolley even exists. Then why did you bring up Socrates and Plato? Istated as a fallback argument that even if there were a trolley in the show, it's not legal anywhere to kill someone and harvest their organs to save more people than you killed. You replied Which means, by your definition, Joel's choice does not involve the trolley problem because two and a half minutes elapsed between the time Joel says "Find someone else" and the time he attacked the guards in the stairwell. Except now you're saying that is the trolley problem. If the trolley problem involves premeditation, then the organ harvesting hypothetical is an example of the trolley problem. If the trolley problem does not involve premeditation, then the show did not offer an example of it. To summarize There is no trolley problem in the show because the writers / showrunners failed to establish that the trolley existed, there were trolley tracks and that the trolley was moving Even if they had established that, no society that I know of has said you may murder one person if harvesting that person's organs would save more than one person If the organ harvesting hypothetical isn't an example of the trolley problem due to premeditation, then neither is what happened in this episode. Bad writing isn't excused when the writers / showrunners waive around the phrase "trolley problem" as if it were some sort of talisman

Then by your own definition what happened in this episode isn't an example of the trolley problem. Over two and a half minutes elapse between the time Joel tells Marlene "Find someone else" in his hospital room and the time he attacks the guards in the stairwell. Two and a half minutes is a very long time. Dion of Syracuse knew Plato personally and if I remember correctly, studied under him and was one of his better students at that time. He was a disaster. Marcus Aurelius left the Roman Empire to his son Commodus. That was a terrible decision. It's a lot easier to be a deep thinker in the abstract when you're not the one making the decisions that affect people outside of a thought exercise in a classroom. Not that the issue facing Joel or the viewers requires deep thinking because the showrunners provided no evidence to suggest a vaccine is remotely feasible. Therefore there's no choice to be made, no conundrum. Nothing. Philosophers and their students can discuss the trolley problem all they want, but "the trolley problem" isn't a magic phrase that excuses substandard writing in a television show, particularly about an event that's been building up in the show for the entire season.

I too was expecting a little more historical accuracy, and so far it's not interesting enough as a soap opera. But I'll watch at least one or two more episodes.

I'm unaware of any country where it's legal to kill someone to harvest their organs to save 5 people who would otherwise die, nor am I aware of anyone calling for this to be legalized. So society has solved, or at least answered, the version of the trolley problem that is most comparable to the situation in this episode. And governments deal with moral absolutes all of the time. Their decrees might lack legitimacy if the government in question isn't a democracy, but few people have a problem with outlawing people from walking up to someone from behind and blowing their head off or having sex with a 10 year old. In this episode all we know is that Ellie will die if Marlene gets her way. Marlene implied the vaccine might not work, and there's no evidence in the show that the Fireflies can manufacture, distribute and administer a vaccine. So "in universe" there's no justification for killing Ellie. It doesn't matter if the showrunners intended for there to be a justification, or they want the viewers to accept they did when they did nothing to establish that in the show. They put less effort to show how a vaccine would be even remotely feasible than they did to show how Joel miraculously recovered from being stabbed with a shattered bat and then took out 3 or 4 guys from David's group. That's a big storytelling problem.

I never said the metric is a million, you did. But the metric isn't 5 because Marlene never said they were trying to develop a vaccine to benefit a handful of people. In this episode she said "we can give it to everyone" Society has already answered the classic trolley problem. If you kill someone to harvest their organs to transplant them to 5 people who would otherwise die, you go to jail for murder The show has already answered the classic trolley problem with David's cannibal cult because they're not just eating people who die, they appear to be killing outsiders to use their bodies as food. A vaccine for hunger, as it were Once again, I never said it has to be a guarantee, but it has to be plausible. If a character of a book, play or television show has to choose between X and Z and the writer wants the character or the viewers or both to feel conflicted about it, both X and Z must be plausible choices. If Choice Z doesn't make any sense based on everything that's happened in the story to that point, there's no reason for viewers or readers ask themselves why the character chose X or have regrets over Z not being chosen. TLOU's showrunners aren't exempt from this merely because the choice can be characteristized as a variation of the trolley problem. In this case Z, vaccinating everyone or some large number of people, doesn't make any sense because every step in the process -- creation, manufacture, distribution and administration -- either requires the Southpark Underpants Gnomes Or this mathematical proof

You need to suspend disbelief more than just a little. You need one Deus ex machina after another after nother. Even if you eliminate the possibility of some kind of brain biopsy, you still have to believe the Fireflies have the ability to mass produce the vaccine, distribute it and then convince people to take it. There's no evidence in the show they're capable of doing any one of those three tasks, much less all of them. They can't even smuggle Ellie out of the Boston QZ and Tess figures the Fireflies are desperate and doing really shitty if they're trading with a scumbag like Robert for a truck battery. And even if all these barriers were somehow surmounted, it wouldn't change things that much. Society has still been destroyed, the infected will still be infected, and the infected can still kill you by tearing you to shreds. Even if a vaccine had been administered to everyone in Kansas City the moment FEDRA was overthrown, everyone would still be dead after the infected erupted from the ground. The showrunners can't expect viewers to grapple with the question of Joel's choice when that requires viewers to ignore the rest of the parts of the show that touch on the Fireflies competence and the practicality and utility of developing a vaccine.

And I don't recall seeing Marlene's university qualifications in any relevant scientific field. All we know is Marlene is the failed leader of a failed group whose 20 years of effort amounted in her own words to nothing more than spray paint. Now she sees an opportunity to be something more than spray paint. People in those circumstances have been known to be overoptimistic. This doesn't mean Joel thinks the prospective cure is bullshit, just that he doesn't think it's a guarantee. Even the surgeon who was going to remove Ellie's brain doesn't think it's a guarantee. "Could be", not "will be". So the best assurance Marlene and Dr. Mengele can give is that it "could" work, which means it could also be for nothing. Also, and it's most likely that the setting of the episode is just a coincidence, but Joel may have a vague memory of the last time there was a revolutionary scientific breakthrough reported from Salt Lake City that would change everything about how we would live. It turned out to be nothing.

The Fireflies, and Marlene in particular, believe that harvesting Ellie's brain will result in a cure, but that doesn't mean the viewers or Joel must be 100% convinced. I feel the same way about the Fireflies. They haven't exactly accomplished anything. Even Kathleen the Soccer Mom, widely derided by many viewers for her leadership, overthrew FEDRA in Kansas City. The Fireflies can't even smuggle someone out of the Boston QZ without screwing it up multiple times. Even Tomny, the patron saint of lost causes, gave up on them. Which reminds me of another movie quote So why should anyone who isn't a Firefly take their claims at face value? Particularly since, as others have noted, even if the Fireflies could develop and mass produce a vaccine, the only way they could get people to take it would be by taking over QZs and other non-FEDRA settlements. A task at which the Fireflies have utterly failed. Another reason for viewer skepticism is Marlene isn't the first person to suggest everything would be fine if they just followed her lead regardless of what that entailed. That didn't work out for Kathleen or David so why is it third time's the charm with Marlene? This doesn't mean Marlene was wrong, only that Joel and the viewers can't be certain she was right. And sometimes not knowing is more haunting than knowing.

Near the end I was wondering if Joel would get the Moses can see but not enter the Promised Land treatment.

We don't know if they're next generation monkeys, but the Fireflies are interested in finding a cure (according to Marlene), this appears to have been the headquarters for Firefly CDC for a time, and vaccines are tested on monkeys, so the monkeys Joel and Ellie saw may be the Firefly lab monkeys. I have been wondering for a while what the Firefly CDC would do if Ellie were brought to them, particularly if they conclude that saving humanity and saving Ellie are incompatible. This is uninformed speculation on my part. I haven't played the game, nor have I read about it. I don't know if Ellie ever will meet up with Firefly CDC and if so, what happens if she does.

Looking back on it, it's interesting, and odd, that the 4 men from David's "resort" that were at the campus at the end of Episode 6 were not armed with guns. As far as I can tell, they only had bats or clubs, but no guns. It's not if there were no guns at the resort. When Joel is in the lab room and spots the 4 walking around outside, it doesn't look as if they're carrying any guns. And when Ellie fired at them as she and Joel fled on the horse, they didn't return fire. I'm not sure what they were trying to do without guns. It can't be easy to hunt an animal without a gun, particularly if you must get so close you have to hit it with a club or a bat. Alec almost got Joel anyway, but if Alec had a gun, Joel would be dead and Alec would look likely still be alive So why did David send out 4 men without guns? And why did they agree to go? We'll probably only be able to speculate since I doubt we'll find out.

That scene reminded me of a scene from the Ken Burns Civil War documentary. The body of a soldier was returned in winter to his hometown of Deer Island, Maine. The soldier couldn't be buried until Spring, perhaps even late Spring, because the ground was too frozen to dig an adequate grave. I don't recall what was done with the body in the interim. Perhaps stored somewhere that wasn't exposed to the elements, but not heated either. Presumably that would be less of an issue with modern equipment, but David & Company didn't have that.