aghst

I think cops are trained to shoot to kill because even if injured, a would-be killer with a weapon could still do damage. That and it's probably harder to shoot someone in the limb or at the edge than in the middle of the torso.

Wayne seems very naive or kind of a simpleton. Looks like Lorraine shielded him from all the roughness of life, gave him a car dealership where he doesn't even have to be a good car salesman to make a very comfortable upper middle class lifestyle. That's in contrast to Gator, whom Roy tried to mold in his image, apparently, but he was too soft and useless to him after he got bettered by Munch.

I think an action film shootout would have been very much at odds with the whole tone of the series. They just showed flashes of violence in slow motion to give you a sense of what happened. But they wrapped up the apprehension of the bad guys yet they had to kill off one of the good guys to show that there were real stakes? Nobody was going to get out of this unscathed -- Dot may have some regret that she didn't kill Roy right on the porch, which led to Witt going after him. I think an underrated part of the finale is Lorraine bragging about how she's the biggest funder of the Federalist Society so she gets her way with the courts, including the Supreme Court. She would also be a big donor of GOP and especially MAGA politics, in order to have such control of the federal courts, because presidents nominate these FS judges to the courts, including the SCOTUS. So while she's shown support for women during the season, like putting those old boys network businessmen in their place and hiring Indira and trying to help rescue Dot, she also is funding political entities which are changing laws to deny women rights not only to bodily autonomy but health. We're suppose to enjoy how she's manipulated the legal and criminal justice system to make Roy's remaining years in prison a living hell. But we also remember that she easily dismisses people as numbers, that is their debt. She judges people who get in debt as being weak, not unlike how Odin and Roy were talking about being "soft" -- Karen for not shooting Dot, Roy for not having killed Nadine already, Gator for being disappointingly not ruthless enough for Roy. There is some criticism that Hawley leaned too much into contemporary politics, made it too much about certain MAGA behavior or mindset as articulated by Roy and the militia leader. Even the idea of sin and penance, though borrowed from No Country for Old Men, kind of plays into the Christian Nationalism strain that Roy and Odin probably embody, though of course the leaders don't believe in penance for themselves, just everyone else.

Finale recap, also includes a short sit down with Hawley. https://www.theringer.com/2024/1/17/24040916/fargo-season-5-finale-recap-bisquik-with-noah-hawley

Saw Kerry on a promo for the new season of BD, the OG show. So what does that mean for BDA? Have they found another captain, because the previous season aired about a year ago. So it appears they had Kerry shoot a BD season rather than BDA.

Because the show is about being on a boat, even if the boat is stuck on shore. Certainly they could guide them on an excursion, like hire some local guide to walk them through some attractions. They've done that in the past and more in BD Adventure, where they basically outsourced the "entertainment" of doing these adventure sports like zip lines or parasailing to other companies. It's possible that some guests would take the opportunity to see the sights in the surrounding area before or after the cruise. But yeah there's plenty to see, like go further south to Cinque Terre. Might be about 2 hours by train/car but if the guests were getting sick of just doing nothing on the boat like the one guy, why not?

50% would not be enough of a discount to be stuck in port, if indeed other yachts were leaving. Again, I am dubious of this whole notion that guests on the shows pay to help Bravo make a TV show which produces millions in profits. They'd have to pay me to be on their show, since they need people to play guests -- not as much as the cast obviously but they still guests. They sing Happy Birthday to charter guests like it was some cheesy chain restaurant, not a supposed 5-star service. I really would like to know if real luxury yacht charters have cheesy theme parties and half-assed beach picnics and talent shows and game nights. I doubt it, I think BD wants the crew to perform, get in their underwear or in drag or whatever outlandish costumes they can think of, for the sake of the cameras. People spendings tens or even hundreds of thousands on these yacht charters probably just want to be left alone unless they beckon for more drinks or whatever. Not be forced to take part in game night or whatever. Some may enjoy it but why would they pay so much money to perform?

Let's face it, the women they've had on this show haven't exactly been trailblazers for feminism or having significant careers. They've been cast because they look good and can be love interests for the men. Among the men, only Thomas and to a certain extent Craig have been successful. I guess JT too, but he may not be a real cast member. This show is about a social circle whose members have money and certain status. Well they started that way because Thomas came from a family name and Katherine also had historic ancestors. But they want to project money, a lot of sex and booze and cushy lifestyles -- remember one season when everyone was driving BMWs, probably leased or comped from the same dealer. Back to the women, who are more or less cast for looks and youth compared to the men. Except for the married ones, they're not allowed to simply be friends with the male cast. Whether they sleep with each other for real is not the point. They can straight on allege it, because other Bravo shows have gotten better ratings for featuring drunken sexy times, so this show has to at least hint at the same.

I don't mean literally held captive. Just that they're obligated to be filmed on board. Not like they can say they're going to go out to visit other places on their own. The point is that they are to be "guests" on a TV show about yacht charters. They probably sign contracts so they want the cast of the show to entertain them and for them to be filmed. They can't do their own thing. That is why that one guest was not happy that they had to drink on the yacht and be filmed rather than go somewhere else. They could refuse to sign clearances to have their likeness used on the TV show but they probably sign contracts that is part of a package. They get to go on the yacht for the TV show and they have to consent to be filmed and have their likeness used on the show.

If they paid real money, like on real luxury yacht charters, you bet they're going to be screaming more about being stuck at port. They're not going to meekly accept not being able to leave port if they paid tens of thousands of dollars. Either refund or credit towards other dates. But on this show, guests aren't paying anything like tens of thousands and they're captive to whatever the producers want. Because they're not real guests on real yacht charters, that's just the roles they are playing for this show and they're there to be filmed, not to really experience a luxury yacht cruise.

Why Ferris Buehler of all things and why that scene with Twist and Shout? Liz says she hates the Beatles? You’d think way away from civilization they’d want news or something, not some escapist content? Or they just wanted the Beatles screaming on a loop to add to the ambience?

A couple of the guests were brain surgeons? They don't need to wait on the crew to find them things to do. It's not only Tumi who can Google "things to do in Genoa." But the guests were stuck on the boat, in the dock, bemoaning their bad luck because the producers wanted them to remain on the boat so that the onus was on the crew to entertain them. Yeah they could have just walked off the boat and hired their own taxi. As good as Jack's cooking may be, they're in Italy so they could go to some highly-rated, including Michelin-starred place for lunch. Or some place with better views than all those container ships. But of course the show wouldn't have anything to film. The guests could have demanded their money back in a real life luxury yacht charter, unless the charter contract says no refunds due to weather, which seems highly unlikely. Or you know, postpone filming until the weather improves and they could leave port. But producers probably don't want that because delays may cost them money with the production crew. Or maybe they wanted to make the episode be about the crew improvising and struggling to keep the guests entertained. Or for all we know, the guests did go offshore, spent only enough time to eat, get filmed for a couple of minutes laying out in the sun or do that sad little cruise on the tender. In any event, it's an artificial situation. The weather is real but the fixed, unchangeable schedule is not real.

It was so obvious what was going on, white men marrying Indian women and the Indian women dying. Along with many other Indians just being shot instead of the pretense of making it seem like natural causes, which is apparently what spiking the insulin was about. Someone mentioned that killing a dog would get the killer in more trouble than if he killed an Indian. Then the elders were talking about how they would kill the murderers who were killing the Osage if they could see them. And Earnest and Hale were right there. Mollie asked President Coolidge to send help but she didn't point fingers. The investigators showed up and it didn't take long to find out what was going on, who was behind it all. With her wealth, she couldn't simply just stay away from Fairfax, go to Colorado Springs as Reta talked about? Also why only marry white men? Was there some big shortage of Indian men? After Molly was treated, they probably told her that Earnest was spiking her insulin. Yet until she asked him, she didn't suspect? Those fed doctors didn't tel her she should continue with the insulin? Earnest and Hale outlived her by decades it appears. They referred to her bad diet so she was maybe more portly than portrayed here.

Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan discuss the first episode and Chris Ryan interviews Issa Lopez. https://www.theringer.com/2024/1/14/24036687/true-detective-night-country-season-4-episode-1-with-creator-issa-lopez Lopez talks briefly about the "cosmic horror" and how in season 1, there was this Lovecraftian menace, which she liked and try to put here. But she says at the end, viewers will be able to attribute the mystery to rational events if they want.

So Iceland has the infrastructure to support a big budget production and shooting for weeks but rural Alaska doesn't. There's an interview with Issa Lopez that I linked in the media thread. She talks a bit about the supernatural.

No.

Producers must want alliances with some players never going into elimination because it drives a lot of drama and the politicking which now constitute most of the episode. Seriously, you look at each 90 minute episode, after the commercials and everything else, you only get maybe 15-20 minutes of the Dailies and the Elimination segments?

So season 4 premiered and at the end of the first episode, they show what happened to the scientists, who are stuck in ice, posed it seems. That made me remember the crime scene which was discovered in the very first episode of TD, with all these creepy, ritual overtones. How often do murderers stage the crime scene like that? Most murders don't try to conjure some strange narrative. Whether planned or unplanned, murderers don't stage the crime scene in a way to confuse cops. Seems like staging a crime scene is to taunt or troll the cops. We've had that in real life, like the Zodiac Killer or some serial rapists who leave clues or notes. But in general, as a layperson who know nothing about policing or detective work, I don't think murderers are often trying to engage with police by the way they leave evidence, as if they're breadcrumbs for the detectives. So are these baroque crime scenes mostly a TV/movies trope? Or are they fairly frequent in real life crime? I suspect this is a Hollywood convention to sustain audience interest in murder cases in which the evidence left wouldn't conjure up these themes of heathen rituals or the supernatural/occult? There may be murderers who are satanists or members of some out there subcultures but are they trying to create a narrative for the police and the public with the way they kill, the way they mutilate their victims, the kind of evidence they leave? I would think in most murder cases, any evidence left is unintentional most of the time?

Yeah I wondered about that. You'd think it would be barren outside of cities like Anchorage. Supposedly a mine up there but also a crab processing plant? Wouldn't that be far away from the coast? Also Tsalal station was funded by an NGO? Place looked more like a giant man cave than a research facility. I think they have some giant research outposts in Antarctica which are like self-contained towns because there's nothing else out there. In this case, looks like Tsalal can get any kind of modern amenities from Ennis, which is fictional. I would imagine the reality up there is maybe a few Inuit villages, very little infrastructure. People who wanted to live more modern lifestyle would have to migrate south to the coastal cities?

Not sure if we’re suppose to take the supernatural literally, like some other worldly beings are involved. I don’t recall season 1 that well. The crime scene looked creepy but the killers turned out to be twisted people who staged it to have these supernatural overtones? Likewise it seems the perpetrator staged those bodies of scientists and perhaps planted Annie’s tongue and used the same spiral tattoo as shown in the previews at end of episode. In one of the extras on Max app, Jody Foster and Kali Reis interrogate each other like what’s the coldest you’ve been and they joke about HBO not providing enough hot chocolate during the shooting in cold nights. Then Jody reads the question is time a flat circle and she says “no, it’s a spiral” and Kali says “I see what you did there” because they’re joking about motifs from both seasons 1 and 4. Maybe the Tsala research outpost has something to do with the mine that Annie tried to shut down. Yeah I don’t understand what that was about, more supernatural atmospherics because “look, something freaked out the caribou,” not that some supernatural force made them flee and jump off a cliff? I looked up Issa Lopez, the show runner for this season. She’s Mexican who’s mostly written scripts for Spanish-language productions. She doesn’t seem to have much notable American productions. But she came up with this script for a plot based above the arctic circle where there are 60 days of night, about a fictional mining town and research outpost. Murders occur just after the 60-days of darkness start so they shot for 43 days in Iceland. That means everything in the story occurs at night, where people may see things, like polar bears scavenging in the middle of town or people see ghosts, such as Fiona from Killing Eve while she was gutting a still-alive wolf. What an inspired premise, but the setting also sounds like Murder at the end of the World, which I haven’t seen yet but takes place in Iceland, but not in the dark.

Been some years since Craig graduated law school? Took him awhile to pass the bar? Why would a law firm hire him over a recent grad? Maybe if he knew some people who are partners in a successful firm. He could open a law practice but where would the clients come from? Not so easy to start from zero. Lot of people graduate law school and don't end up practicing a lot of law. Some don't even bother taking the bar exam. He aint walking away from reality TV. His business comes from people watching the shows and following him on social media. He'd have to do real work if the TV gig ended. Good for him if he really gave up hard alcohol and drugs though. Can people who do a lot of reality TV settle into normal life? Maybe. Can two people who do a lot of reality TV settle down together and be happy with normal life? Maybe but probably less likely than then one person finding contentment away from it. That does not include people who stop doing shows but try to cultivate as many social followers as possible, constantly being active on it, to try to replace the TV gig with basically the same thing.

All they did was kiss once and talk about having a relationship, with each other and/or close family members? Seems like a nothing burger in the world of reality TV. But they blew it up and tried to make it a bigger deal than it is. In fact, I'm not convinced that Olivia and others are as aggrieved as they pretend to be. They were encouraged if not outright ordered to make as big a deal as often as they could. Because nothing really happened this season, the usual parties and trips and the shouting matches in front of the group.

Craig is worth 8 figures? He sure doesn't live like it.

Distance between the two places is a 30 minutes drive according to Google Maps. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Avalon+Beach,+New+South+Wales+2107,+Australia/Dee+Why,+New+South+Wales+2099,+Australia/@-33.6928812,151.2271887,12z/am=t/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x6b72ad32d4410349:0x5017d681632ac40!2m2!1d151.3311538!2d-33.6332741!1m5!1m1!1s0x6b0d55874e2bee61:0x5017d681632b440!2m2!1d151.2869177!2d-33.7525344!3e0?entry=ttu Place they chose is northeast of Sydney. The place they didn't choose is to the south so closer to Sydney. So as they said the difference in commute is 1 hour each way vs. about half that.

I don't believe anything these people are saying. During the season they tried to imply that there was something between Taylor and Whitney, like last season there was suppose to be something between Naomi and Whitney. Then at the reunion, Taylor denied it. Similarly, they made this whole season about Austen and Taylor supposedly breaking bro and girl codes on Shep and Olivia but Austen and Taylor denied anything more than a kiss happened or some discussion about them having some serious relationship. This show is just another reality soap opera set in some supposedly great place. So who's sleeping with whom seems to be the main thrust of the show but a lot of it is implied, much of it falsely implied. Maybe it is. Maybe in Charleston, men with money get a lot of much younger women. But that's not specific to Charleston or the South. Maybe there's more of it down there than in some more cosmopolitan city, where there are women who have careers and don't have to socialize with people like Shep or Thomas. At least on this cast, they've never had women with serious careers, other than I guess Leva who's a successful entrepreneur. There doesn't seem to be too many feminists on this show or at least women who lean into having agency and maybe we're suppose to conclude that this is typical of the city and the region? Guess Naomi was successful but she seemed mostly to benefit from family money but then that's true of Shep and Whitney as well. Maybe they can turn over the cast some more. They introduced a couple of men this seasonbut maybe they can replace Taylor and Olivia, as they introduced new younger women in past seasons. But they're essentially going to be expected to play the same roles, sexually linked with the older men, preferably with a lot of drama. Don't put it past Bravo to bring Kathryn back, even if she does have serious legal problems.