DEM
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Posts posted by DEM
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Either way it is a very interesting show, I just really would love it if the writers decide (if they are using some type of mental illness) to just represent it accurately instead of purposely muddying the waters to make the character more mysterious with a bunch of symptoms that are not likely to occur together. When they do not, then it opens doors to confusion among the viewers and also opens the doors to ambiguity as to what is really going on (if that is what they are going for then fine-being mysterious that is).
Captanne upthread called Elliot a Mary Sue, and I'd modify that to say he is a psychological Mary Sue. He is by turns antisocial, schizotypal, and socially anxious. He hates everyone... but he feels bad about it! He can't connect with society... but he feels bad about it! He's dark and controlling and paranoid and off-putting... but doncha just wanna give him a hug?! He's affectively and interpersonally detached... yet a superior judge of character!
I am not making light of actual psychological conditions; I'm poking at the writing. When I first saw the pilot I was fascinated by Elliot, but the more I've thought about it, the more I'm realising that because of the way he's been constructed almost nothing will be psychologically out-of-character. More importantly, a character with such a morass and array of symptoms would more likely be barely functional in life.
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But saving the Android could have been presented as just as rational a decision as jumping to FTL.
Exactly. The dialogue gave sort of passing lip-service to this point, but then it went right back into Good vs. Bad territory. I would have preferred a more complex argument.
Furthermore, given the general lack of curiosity about the ship, I doubt the crew had surfed to the Android Store to find out how much it would cost to replace a ship's system-grade android should the need arise. For all they know, it could cost half the price of the ship itself. Given that none of them are completely captain-ready in terms of knowledge of the ship, blithely throwing her away when there's still a chance wouldn't make sense.
The memory wipe thing still bugs me. It's completely psychologically implausible. They have a whole bunch of skills & knowledge, but --rather conveniently-- not all of them. If they were clones, that would (somewhat) resolve the 'psychopathy is housed in long-term memory' nonsense, but it wouldn't clear up all of the other inconsistencies.
And yet, despite the fact that Really, Really, Very Bad Psychology should turn me right off, the show's interesting enough to me to stick around for a couple more eps at least. I only hope that every week is not going to be a morality play.
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But I do agree that 13 episodes should be enough for an awesome arc.
Yes, could be! When we first got the announcement of 13 episodes, I quickly sketched out a shortened S4 simply to show myself that it could be done (and because I felt S4 had a lot of 'nothing'* episodes). I got it down to 13 fairly easily, though Blunt had to be sacrificed. It helped that Skip made Pretenders completely irrelevant, and then the following episodes made Skip completely irrelevant.
I also agree with Camera One that it would have been optimal to know in advance that S5 would be the last.
*'nothing' =/= standalone
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SpoilerTV has corrected the S5 episode order to 13 episodes ("We've just heard from Bad Robot that unfortunately Person of Interest will now only have 13 Episodes." -- SpoilerTV).
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Because Whispers doesn't know about him. The show is cut into 3 acts.
('Him'? I assume this was meant to be 'them'?) This seems to me to be basically circular reasoning. "The story was mainly about Nomi, Will, and Riley because the story was mainly about Nomi, Will, and Riley." Again, I don't think it had to be that way. There's no law of the universe that says the multi-protagonist characters have to be split into primary, secondary, and tertiary roles. I liked the series; I simply think it could have been better on the development of some of the 8 characters.
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Sun, Lito, Kala, and Capheus get shafted while we're treated to a solid fifteen minutes of Wolfgang meticulously breaking into a safe.
If I could choose one thing and one thing only to change about the series, it would have been this: Even out the amount of screentime across the sensates. Here was a show aspiring to be something bold and different, but it settled into the same old storytelling format and character hierarchies. The 8 characters were clearly in 3 ranks, and after saying to myself things like, "Why is XXXX so disconnected from the Big Bad story/everyone else?" once too often, I was displeased.
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When Lizzie went to kill Connolly I thought she was having a psychotic break or a dissociative episode, or perhaps that her Soviet trigger had kicked in. Her affect and movements were so... odd.
I wish I could tell whether the writers are trying to say that Lizzie: a) is immature, b) has a deep-seated inclination toward The Dark Side, or c) both. It's often hard to discern.
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His name is Capheus, and he is Kenyan.
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OK, looking at the fullsize images, I think I've got it. I think slothgirl is correct that the curvy borders are meant to delineate the entire town up to the surrounding tree line. The loop-thing at 3 o'clock on the hand drawn map is at about 5 o'clock in the photo; it's the circular road. Thus, to get them to line up better, one would have to rotate the photo 45 degrees CCW. The potato hanging down from Main Street in the hand drawn map is the large clearing just outside town (bottom left of photo). If the park is part of the clearing, the marking/line seems too big.
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Or third theory: flashbacks and/or other timeywimeyness that doesn't involve un-killing off the characters.
Although I'm leaning toward your 2nd theory ("surprise!"), I suspect Theory #3 (or something similar) might have merit. I was struck in the first episode when they showed the photo of Agent Bill Evans (Kate's partner). That was a photo of Ryan Robbins, a very active Vancouver actor. Spit anywhere near a BC sci-fi show, and you'll probably hit Robbins among the main/featured cast. I wouldn't be surprised if he showed up later in the series.
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A thanks, peach! I missed the obvious by focusing on the numbers.
But speaking of that stocked refrigerator, the way they left the doors hanging open while they had a chat (and then walked away!) made me a bit crazy. Don't normal people kind of automatically close the doors?! *sigh*
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I feel like the time-space wonkiness is affecting Ethan, but he's not aware of it. I was trying to understand his movements and motivations, but he was all over the place.
I was glad the kid finally made himself useful and did something besides whining and drawing people into no-win arguments.
Was there some significance to the license plate on the delivery truck?
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I re-watched the scene, unless Fitz compromised the door's hinges, I don't think it's his fault. When the liquid pops out, the door opens on the other side. Unless the lock for the door is by the hinges, I think Fitz just slipped on the glass.
Fitz slipped the lock, and there was a loud clicking sound when he did it. Even Simmons noticed it, but apparently she didn't realise what it meant. After Fitz left, Simmons walked around to the side Fitz had been standing on, noticed that the door was partially open, and moved toward it while saying, "Ugh, what --."
That was kind of rinky-dink writing. Surely the safety mechanisms on the box should have been much stronger and more extensive!
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Hee, Dagny! The psych stuff is often painful too. "Shaw has an Axis II personality disorder which means, technically, she's a sociopath." = "Shaw has a car which means, technically, she drives a Porsche."
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I hope that at the upcoming media events someone tries to get clues from the writers about the original plan for S4 and, bonus, how that was disrupted by SS's pregnancy. Perhaps it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I'm having trouble understanding why it would throw such a wrinkle into the back half of the season -- which was developed several months after they knew Shaw would be gone.
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Did Sarah Shahi's name appear in the opening credits?
No.
I'm going to be the odd person out and come down against the 'compact, Persian sociopath' ~joke. IMO It was tortured and unnecessary.
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I have never heard of any kind of business arrangement like this in network television. This talk of "whenever you want, dude, it's totally cool, man, whatever" strikes me as wholly implausible. I think they're simply trying to keep a lid on her return, and the story of !THE GREAT AND MIGHTY TRAUMA OF NEWBORN CHILDREN! is part of that spin. It's understandable they want to keep a lid on things, but I don't think things are as murky and open-ended as they would have us believe.
I, too, hope they dial back on The Romance, but that's because it's becoming overwrought, IMO. Then again, I think they took a wrong turn with the story way back in S3. Shaw and Root are not typical people, but the story is being written according to a much too traditional pattern. However, unless Shaw's character makes a sharp right turn in the final eps of S4, I don't foresee the writers dialing it down. As I see it, even in her absence, the Shaw character is being completely boxed in by Root's story/characterisation.
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When this question first popped into my head months ago (because, yes, I do expend a fair bit of mental energy dreaming up apocalypse scenarios), my first answer was, "It probably should be Reese, yeah?" Then I realised that Reese would be a lot like Rick Grimes, and ain't nobody got time for Farmer John. However, as tessaray pointed out, Shaw has an M.D. so there really is no point going to Reese's camp first because I might only get one shot and I shouldn't lose my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hook up with Shaw's group. The End.
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Story Time! Here is the scenario: You find yourself alone in a zombie (or whatever) apocalypse. One day you find a map that shows the location of several (5-6) independent camps. Each camp is lead by a different member of Team Machine. The camps are equidistant from your location. Whose camp would you choose and why?
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She's as dangerous as Reese and Shaw.
And she's arguably more psychopathic than Shaw yet also capable of a deep and abiding love (or obsession) that leaves her open to emotional devastation ala Reese. Oy vey.
When Root flipped Martine over her head, I was done. She is now basically all of Team Machine in one person. To me that's not great characterisation. It's the opposite. Root is the kind of character that, were she the lead, I would change the channel (and for a while there network teevee was churning out that lead character type every other day, so I speak from experience).
When Root was first introduced, I enjoyed her as a formidable villain. The Caroline Turing reveal stands as one of the Top Ten moments in POI history. Even through at least half of S3 I appreciated the character and was all set for some sort of 'dark mirror' partnership to form between Shaw and her. However, by the end of S3 the writing had become obnoxious, and now it feels like it's gone way over-the-top and completely off the rails.
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Would someone care to explain the 'cochlear implant' scene to me, like the actual mechanics of it? Here is a gif-set. Who and the what now?/Xander I suppose that was meant to be an "ultra cool cyborg Root" moment and another instance of foreshadowing the final episodes, but it was nonsensical to me.
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So, when is Finch going to have to shoot someone? Its inevitable now, right?
I only wish the foreshadowing hadn't been so heavy-handed, tennisgurl. I don't know if it's because I haven't really felt much mounting tension in this part of the season or what, but all I could think was "Finch & Reese have been doing this for nigh on four years and been in plenty of tight spots, so this feels very sledgehammery." Perhaps if it had been tied into some sort of existential angst on Reese's part, but even that hasn't been fleshed out very well. That's the sort of thing I'd hoped would come out more in his therapy sessions.
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Caught the Ernest Thornhill reference on second watch, but I wonder how many casual viewers would remember that was The Machine's pseudonym a couple of seasons ago?
That was one of the benefits of Reese calling Finch right after to say, "Hey, Harold? Call me. Harper is getting texts from the Machine." Even if someone didn't remember, Reese spelled it out.
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Did The Machine give Harper the Ray assignment so she could -- unwittingly and in a strange, roundabout way -- provide back-up to Reese (to protect Ray from Perp Frankie)?
I need to watch this again and pay closer attention to the plot shenanigans in the Frankie/Ray/Florida Guy story. Admittedly I was a bit distracted so I might have heard wrong, but I could have sworn at one point that Florida Guy said to Frankie, "You disappoint me, Frankie. I followed you all day so that I could find Ray, and then you lost him," but in the next breath said, "Where's Ray?"
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S01.E02: EPS1.1_ONES-AND-ZER0ES.MPEG
in Mr. Robot
In the scene with Elliot, Shayla, and Darlene, Shayla definitely reacted to Darlene (after the "froyo" line), but she was out-of-focus in the background.
Who does Angela think is Elliot's girlfriend? Shayla?
I'm leaning heavily toward Slater not being real. In the scene at the arcade, I noticed that Slater stepped directly between Elliot & Darlene, so Darlene's eye-line *looked* like it was aimed at Slater when it could have been Elliot just as easily. I'm less certain about the rest of the group. They seemed to react to Elliot's odd behaviour (i.e., when Elliot followed-up on a remark from Slater), but then later they seemed to check out completely -- as if Elliot weren't there at all. I guess that could make sense if Elliot had in reality just been standing there not doing anything.
Good call about the med scheme, Pacodakat! And I agree there was something off about the therapy session. Krista Gordon seemed very ethereal, and she rarely blinked. I think she's real, but I think we may not be seeing everything that's happening during the session.