MicheleinPhilly
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Posts posted by MicheleinPhilly
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1 hour ago, mamadrama said:
Not only did they do stage shows, but NXIVM hosted an a capella festival in the hopes of bringing in college kids (read: young women). Turns out the college kids were too savvy. There's an a capella forum that has a bunch of posts from people who were there. It's entertaining.
Thanks for sending me down THAT rabbit hole. I find it helps ease the stress of a long work day to have some good belly laughs.
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I feel like this episode brought the momentum of the series to a screeching halt. And like others I wish they would make the timeline more clear as they seem to be jumping backwards and forwards quite a lot with no indication when a given event is taking place.
And because most (all?) of the people featured most prominently are wanna be Hollywood types, I'm having a hard time reading their emotions as genuine. Mark comes across as a bit robotic but I still get the sense that he is performing. Bonnie and Nippy are the only 2 that strike me as somewhat "normal" people who just can't believe they got sucked into this shit - both the cult and the documentary.
The Dalai Lama visit was beyond cringeworthy. I felt like the Bronfmans must have received a good talking to from His Holiness's aides after the fact for subjecting him to that.
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12 minutes ago, Maysie said:
However...there is a line and some of the people who got caught up in the organization crossed that line (such as Allison and Lauren). It's creepy and a little pathetic to see the video of Allison's first meeting with Keith, but she went way beyond staying engaged and active like someone who was sucked into the organization (the Janes, Sarahs, etc). She actively solicited other vulnerable young women to be slaves and actually branded them. That crosses a line for me because it goes against the premise of right and wrong, and most functioning people have a basic understanding of the difference. And don't even get me started on how these groups actually profess to empower the people they're actively subjugating.
Oh we're 100% in agreement on that. I was thinking of the Janes and Bonnies (I have a bit less sympathy for Sarah because something about her just rubs me the wrong way), not the "higher-ups" that actively recruited people and then made them their "slaves." They can all go to jail as far as I'm concerned.
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I have no idea who Alison Mack is outside of this documentary - I've literally never heard of her - but her initial meeting with Keith was laughable. Literally. We were cackling the entire time. Some random, sweaty, serial killer looking creeper gets up in your face and starts spouting nonsense about art and you're moved to tears??? Good grief.
I'm working on being less judgmental of these folks because I recognize that most if not all of them were terribly lonely and feeling lost but I fail to see an ounce of charisma in Keith. That and the corporate B.S./Chicken Soup for the Soul level "philosophizing" makes it very difficult for me to fathom how this group existed as long as it did. As others have pointed out, it's a B-level (more like D-level) rip-off of Scientology. At least with Scientology they have a "goal" or "purpose" - clearing the planet (*insert eye roll emoji). What is this group's purpose?
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19 hours ago, EdnasEdibles said:
I do laugh at the fact that Allison Mack is the Tom Cruise of this cult. Like . . . her? That's as big as you could get? Her? I can't help but think that the Smallville set must have been a terrible place when she and Kristen joined up. Poor Tom Welling. The stories he could tell.
If they didn't include the name of their show in the chyron I literally would have no idea who either of them are. Kristen's name seemed mildly familiar but I couldn't tell you why. Likewise with the actress from Battlestar Galactica. 👵
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1 hour ago, EdnasEdibles said:
My feeling on Mark is that if it weren't for the sex stuff, he would have stayed in it forever. He loves that new agey "Be the Secret!" stuff and I don't even thing the MLM aspect of it bothered him at all. It was losing his wife if he stayed and the idea of the sex cult.
I've also been wondering whether they were so successful in recruiting these Hollywood wannabes and Hollywood adjacent people because so much of this entire operation was performative in nature.
Standing up there and selling everyone a crock of shit and convincing them to part with thousands of dollars in cash takes some skill. I don't doubt that many of them believed in this crap but in a way it allowed them to "act" for a living and get paid for it.
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On 9/5/2020 at 10:05 PM, Bastet said:
Samantha and Emma broke my heart; I sobbed so hard when Samantha apologized to Emma, and when she said she misses her already, that my cat climbed up to see what was the matter with me. What a horrible decision to have to make.
I am not even going to lie. I was a hiccuping, snotty nosed MESS. This show always hits me in the feels but that got me good. 😭
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Well that escalated quickly.
We go from cheesy, self-help platitudes and cheap ass sashes signifying nothing to naked photos, master/slave relationships, and branding in the span of a single episode? This stuff is absolutely wild.
And maybe it's because I'm from Philly and my BS detector is pretty finely calibrated but I actually find myself getting supremely frustrated with some of these folks. OK, you've found a group that makes you feel good about yourself and you're happy and feel like you're working towards some self-actualization or something...But as soon as they ask you for naked photos and start texting you a chain emoji you don't go screaming for the hills? WTF?
Naturally I'm hooked.
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On 9/5/2020 at 5:54 PM, ElectricBoogaloo said:
Don't feel too bad about laughing earlier. There's definitely an element of "welp, it was the 80s" to the first half of this documentary. It was a time when kids rode bikes without helmets and expected to run home with bloody knees when they inevitably wiped out. And this was also a time when you could drive a pickup truck with kids in the back and no one batted an eye. That's why some of the earlier footage made me laugh too because it wasn't at all surprising that kids got hurt and no one thought it was a big deal. Scraping the skin off your arms and legs on the alpine slide? Of course! Kids jumping into the water haphazardly and knocking over other people? Of course! Letting 14 year old kids be in charge of ride safety? Of course! I'm not excusing the negligence of the park at all though. I'm just saying that given the way things were in the 80s, some of the earlier stuff made me shake my head and laugh.
Exactly. When I think about some of the crap I did as a kid in the 80s/early 90s, I'm amazed I'm still alive.
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1 minute ago, readheaded said:
I don't disagree with you about the show, but if Nest Seekers' website is to be believed, they're real agents. https://www.nestseekers.com/Agents/hamptons
Interesting. Looking at their profiles, Noel, Mike, and J.B. seem to be more active doing rentals than actual sales. But when I saw Nest Seekers at the top of the first episode I was expecting Ryan Serhant level skills. These folks seem VERY green.
Oh well.
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I watched this the other night and was absolutely gobsmacked by what they were able to get away with. I don't know what it says about me but I was actually giggling throughout the first 2/3 because I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.
I was too young to have experienced it in person but one of my older sisters reminded me of the time she came home with all of the skin from one of her elbows missing thanks to that straight down waterslide.
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I watched 2 episodes and that was more than enough. The house porn was great but everything was just so painfully fake. And I say this as a fan of Million Dollar Listing which I know scripts/amps up the DRAMA but at least I believe that those guys are actually brokers.
These folks all struck me as people that showed up to an open casting call. With the exception of the first guy that appeared in a TH (who said he made $2.5 million in commissions the prior year), have any of them actually closed a deal?
I'm out.
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Variety hosted a conversation featuring the cast and creators. It's about 45 minutes long.
Honestly these Zoom or Skype or whatever they are conversations are the only good thing to have come out of quarantine. They're so much more interesting and enlightening than a 10 minute "interview" on a talk show.
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Sandra Oh will be a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers tonight.
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7 hours ago, Cheezwiz said:
Yeah, I felt uncomfortable with those scenes as well. I completely understand how compelling true crime stories can be, and I also totally get their following on podcasts and the internet.
But a comic-con style convention with fans getting photos with authors just kind of crosses an icky line for me for some reason. I don't think I'd feel comfortable going to one, even if I were a big fan of a particular author's writing.
I wasn't even aware that CrimeCon was a "thing" until this summer. Between this, The Genetic Detective, and a book I read called Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe, I felt like it was suddenly everywhere. Count me in the "this feels icky" club.
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This episode got me good. 😭 Hearing these women introduce themselves to one another using numbers was almost too much to take. And the finality of that ending not just for these women he brutalized seeing him brought to justice, but also in seeing the (likely staged) packing up of Michelle's office, I got quite emotional.
I did not at all mind that they didn't delve into his psychology - I think there are more than enough true crime tellings that almost fetishize the killer at the expense of the victims. I'm just happy that he will spend the rest of his life rotting behind bars before he rots in hell.
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26 minutes ago, ThatGreyCat said:
Patton's wedding band is probably his ring for his new marriage (to an actress). He married her a little over a year after Michelle died. Which was pretty quick, honestly.
I know he got re-married and assume that's the ring he wears on his left hand. But if you look closely in his talking heads on the show, he wears a similar ring on the ring finger of his right hand too. I was just curious if perhaps that is his ring from his marriage to Michelle. Just something I noticed and was curious about.
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Congrats to the cast and crew on 8 Emmy nominations including nods for Sandra, Jodie, and Fiona! 🥳
https://www.emmys.com/sites/default/files/Downloads/72nd-nominations-list-v1.pdf?q=1
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I had watched Patton's Annihilation special on Netflix the night before so I felt a bit more emotionally prepared for this episode but it was still a tough one. Although Patton's binding of Michelle's other writings for Alice got me good. 😢 I can't imagine how difficult it was for him and Michelle's siblings and friends to sit for these interviews.
The timing of DeAngelo's arrest following the book's publication was surreal. I remember reading the book as soon as it was published and being completely spooked that this individual could very well still be alive and absolutely FURIOUS that he had never faced justice. When they announced his arrest a few weeks later I was completely gobsmacked.
I am firmly in the "Michelle contributed mightily to his capture even if she never fingered him specifically as a suspect" camp. We've seen in this show how badly the various law enforcement agencies bungled the investigations with their pissing contests and jurisdictional squabbles. In addition to the attention she brought to the cases, she did a LOT of ground work tying together so many disparate strands of the investigations.
Something I've been wondering about since episode 1: Does anyone know whether the ring that Patton wears on his right hand is his original wedding band?
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I only just watched this over the last week and I absolutely adored everything about it. I did read the book when it was released and while I am admittedly a big fan of Sally Rooney's, I actually thought this was better. Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones are both so wildly charismatic and their chemistry is just off the charts.
The deeper dive into Marianne's upbringing and family and attraction to abusive asshats was incredibly well done. As was the depiction of first love, first heartache, etc. I see a lot of people questioning why they didn't communicate more fully when they got back together at Trinity. But I thought that characterization was spot on. I was 17 when I went away to school and was definitely not emotionally equipped to deal with BIG LIFE STUFF. And while I wasn't as naturally reticent as Connell I did (and probably still do to a certain extent) tend to avoid potentially uncomfortable conversations. Especially when I already feel out of my element.
Overall I think this is one of the most well done portraits of intimacy I've ever seen.
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Expected it, but still... 😞
https://deadline.com/2020/07/killing-eve-season-4-delayed-indefinitely-coronavirus-1202994165/
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Another really great, substantive interview with Sandra Oh, this one for The Hollywood Reporter.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/awards-chatter-podcast-sandra-oh-killing-eve-1302822
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This was easily the hardest episode for me to watch. First of all, that phone call has haunted me since I watched this maybe 2 days ago. So unbelievably creepy.
But I think the introduction of evidence into how this case and this research ultimately killed Michelle really came through in this episode. And that was not made any easier by the copious footage of Alice. 😞
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I am equal parts fascinated and horrified by this show. I feel like the world's worst type of voyeur listening to these women recount the trauma that they endured but at the same time, am so impressed by their strength and stamina.
Echoing what others have said about the "pissing contests" between law enforcement agencies, I was absolutely flabbergasted that they would not allow that woman to even put on a robe. I don't know if sexual assault kits were not processed this way in the 70s, but from what I know of sexual assault testing today, any articles of clothing are removed while the victim stands on a sterile floor covering to preserve any evidence that may fall from or be present on the clothing itself. So you'd rather have a rape victim stand around naked in front of a bunch of male police officers in order to wait for her to be more "comfortable" with a female police officer. Gosh, the idiocy is just astonishing.
The conversations with rapists literally nauseated me. I have a lot of opinions about America's criminal justice system and what is deemed cruel and unusual punishment and sentencing decisions but I would have no problem with each and every one of them being locked up for the rest of their disgusting lives. In gen pop. *insert angry face/cursing/steam blowing out of ears emojis*
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Love Fraud - General Discussion
in Love Fraud
You're not the only one. As we were watching his interview and he offered up some sad sack excuse I literally shouted at the tv: "Maybe because you're gay!" And I say this as a gay person.
But overall add me to the list of people thinking, "Him, really? HIM???" I failed to see even an ounce of charisma in the guy.
And his prison sentence was an absolute joke.