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You know, I’d initially mentioned bipolar disorder but removed it because I didn’t know how often those with bipolar experience hallucinations.

Was Maximus’ explanation of the cycle of going off his medication, seeing things/writing letters (to the librarian!), going to the hospital, etc., every few months a good indication that he is likely schizophrenic? I was thinking of his alien encounter and the fact that the onset of schizophrenia is often in the late teens/early 20s. Maybe it explains his odd hatred of Fixico that his friends didn’t understand as well?

GAH! It’s Evan Adams! Besides playing Larry, Adams is also a medical doctor in real life. Larry, I feel you on La Bamba. That is still one of my favorite movies. Rita, Natalie, and Bev letting Cookie go broke my heart a bit. I had a close friend die in a freak accident when we were in our 20s. I still sometimes dream about her. Nearly twenty years later and it still hurts that she was taken far too soon.

I agree 100% and at the same time I would absolutely watch a spinoff series about Irene, Brownie, Bucky, Mabel, Maximus, and Fixico both now and then.

I really enjoyed seeing the elders’ origin stories. I feel for Maximus in particular and how sad it is for such a bright kid to be hit by something that affected him so profoundly - and not in a good way. Young Irene was played by Quannah Chasinghorse, a successful model and the real-life girlfriend of D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Bear).

Elora is thinking about going to college. I know she dropped out of high school - did she finish or get a GED at some point? Did I miss that?

Graham Greene has said before that he wanted to see more humorous Native American characters on TV and in movies as so many portrayals were so dark and sad. Hearing that I hoped/figured he'd show up on RD at some point. I really liked how Maximus' story was tied in with Irene, Mabel, Brownie, and the other now-elders in Okern. I hope we see him again before the end of the season. Yay to the return of the Deer Lady, but what a rough episode. I don't know much about residential schools other than that they were incredibly cruel. Why exactly were the kids being killed? Were they disobeying? Koda mentioned he wanted to go fishing - did he and the Deer Lady go and were discovered? Did the young Deer Lady sort of give up her mortality to follow the deer in the woods and eventually became her present self? I figured the old man knew who the Deer Lady was and expected she was there for him. He was lamenting being a terrible father and was looking over the pictures of the school when she arrived. I'm a little surprised she didn't kill him before now - I figure he'd be number one in her book given what she saw as a kid. I know the Deer Lady told younger Officer Big in the first season that she had known his grandma. I'm a little surprised we didn't see the young Deer Lady meeting her at the school.

I knew about the student the Gies' hid and that Jan worked with the Resistance, but I don't remember Miep's brother being gay or anything with the landlady or her family. I'm surprised Bep's (the blonde secretary) father, Mr. Voskuijl, hasn't been seen. He's the one who built the bookcase and built/repaired much of the furniture in the Secret Annex. He was the supervisor of the Opekta warehouse located just below the hiding place and threw the scent off of warehouse workers who heard noises from the rooms above. Mr. Voskuijl died of cancer before the Secret Annex residents were betrayed and they along with the Opekta employees were heartbroken about his death.

Of course Skully has a hamburger phone. Of course he does.

I am a diehard Narcos fan and this have 100% faith in Pedro Pascal doing a great job in this.

Small nitpick: I think Domhnall Gleason must have a very uneven complexion. Not a big deal, but I understand why that would need to be evened out when he’s onscreen. But I swear that make-up chose a foundation color a shade or two darker than he needs and then decided to freaking bathe the poor guy in it. Seriously, it’s just caked on. Makeup department, the direction that Sam needs layers was not meant for you.

I listened to an interview with Sterlin Harjo last year about the show. He said he and Taika were having a conversation about their respective indigenous upbringings and found a lot of parallels between Harjo’s life in Oklahoma and Taika’s in New Zealand. I don’t know if Harjo was working on the idea before the conversation or not, but it sounds like that’s what brought Taika in.

Holy shit if this episode didn’t make me think of my three college friends and smile. Granted, we’re all married and not looking to “snag,” but the four of us meet up once a year, rent an Air BnB, drink a lot of alcohol, shoot the shit about jobs/husbands/kids, and have a long weekend much like Rita, Teenie, Nathalie, and Bev. (Thankfully we aren’t permanently missing a Cookie of our own.). That was one of the best episodes I’ve seen. 😊

I took to Marcus right away. I kind of have a thing for chill, diligent, intellectually curious dudes even if they often have zero sense of time. It seems odd at first that Carm would want to leave the five-star dining world for a blah sandwich shop, but it made sense to me by the end. There was the family connection, and naturally the fact that Mikey never let him work there was a big motivator. But the flashback scene of the chef verbally tearing into Carm as he was making the dessert and his long monologue at the Al-Anon meeting explained it well to me pretty well. Carm had to prove his worth to his brother by taking the fine dining world by storm. And he did it! But in the process he isolated himself - no family, few friends, no love interest, and shitloads of verbal abuse from an asshole superior. Going back to the family restaurant was a way of taking charge of his life more on his own terms. Sure, he’d still be stressed to the max because he was running his own business, but now he wasn’t proving himself to an impossible to please head chef or to Mikey. He was doing it for himself and in the process creating a life and family that he’d missed out on up until that point. That’s something that was probably still years down the road - if it happened at all - if he stayed in the five star dining world.

Of course the spirit guide takes a snack into a port-a-potty while he doles out helpful (?) advice. 😂 But I'm glad Bear has him, he needs someone in his corner.

Avi was probably the most consistently written character on the show and certainly one of the most interesting. I’ll miss him. I think Kane probably suspected Louie ordered the hit, but Franklin confirmed it. I’m sure Kane thought Franklin would never rat out his own aunt, so I think he knows this is the truth. Not a bad season finale overall. Teddy and Oso have big problems. Franklin, Cissy, and Jerome have bigger problems. Louie’s anger and greed mean her problems are probably the biggest of all. Next season - which I’m guessing will be the last - should be a real firecracker.

We had The Iliad, then we had this episode. What kind of shared fever dream was the writing team having this season? I take it Skully was the one who drugged the chocolate, since he was skulking around the fountain then left? And because he’s a total weirdo? Avi and Oso were dressed perfectly according to their characters. Thank heavens Wanda was allergic to chocolate. She’s done so well, I’d hate to think of anything jeopardizing her sobriety. Too bad she had to hang around the whole night with a bunch of loons. Teddy is still hanging around that freaky doctor. I still think we need to know more about their history in Tehran. Yeah, Franklin. It’s really too late.

I would watch the shit out of that show.

If Leon's and Franklin's treatment of Kane with kid gloves was based solely on their supposed big brother-little brothers relationship with him I'd have a tough time buying it. I think Leon and Franklin are being naive, but I do find their stance believable due to their guilt over Kevin's death. I thought everything Leon told Kane in their sit down was very genuine. Will it come back to bite Leon and Franklin in the ass? Probably, but I think their vulnerability in this particular situation is understandable. Like with Teddy and Tehran, the Franklin-Leon-Kane relationship is one where I think we could use a flashback or two to understand exactly where we are now. So much of this season seems be based on history prior to the start of the show. I'm fine with that - we've had some Alton flashbacks during his time as a Black Panther and those have fit into the story well - so I'm not sure why we haven't seen anything yet about Teddy/Parissa and Leon/Franklin/Kane. Damson Idris did provide some background on how Franklin met Veronique. I'm not sure if it's a spoiler or not, but I'll tag it just in case.

This whole weird story about Peaches but without Peaches actually onscreen makes me think the actor had a conflicting project and the show had to write around his absence. I'm glad Peaches' and Jerome's Vietnam service is being revisited, though. Buckley is a creep. He sexually harasses Louie damn near every time he opens his mouth. How does he stay on the payroll? Dirty cops were a dime a dozen in LA around that time. Couldn't the crew find one who was also not so smarmy? I like Leon more and more as time goes on. He has really become the moral compass of the show. I hope that doesn't mean the kiss of death for him. I wish we'd see some flashbacks from Teddy's time in Tehran. I feel like it's mentioned so frequently and is such a big part of his history (and his history with Parissa) that we should see exactly what happened. Oh Teddy...I think Oso is firmly in Franklin's camp.

¿Porque no los dos?

Peaches was a friend of Jerome’s, so did he really know Kane? I don’t know - the money part points to Peaches. Peaches as a Trojan horse (per The Iliad) checks out. But it still doesn’t seem to add up somehow. Peaches being sick started in episode one. I think he’s genuinely sick (and given the time, AIDS would make sense), unless he’s really played a long con. I don’t know, I think Kane has another informant or another angle. I think there’s still a lot we haven’t learned yet.

Did anyone ever go back and grab the money from the crawlspace? I think Teddy is starting to wonder if he should have just taken his chances alone with his shoulder wound rather than end up in crazy-ass Parissa’s clutches. He’s handcuffed to her bed, right? He’s going to have a tougher time getting away from her than Franklin and Oso did with the tiger. I still think Veronique is a plant. A damned good plant, but a plant. I think that’s why she started babbling about the CIA to Franklin. We know Peaches took the money unless he told someone where it was stashed. But is it certain he was working with Kane? Or is Kane connected to whomever Cissy has been meeting? We never did see where she put that pen.

Yeah, thanks for that.

Jeez, Marian. Tell Raikes he’s the asshole that he is. He deserves it! Have a fucking backbone. I get Peggy’s father being pissed about her eloping. I understand him being conscious of the family’s place in society at that time. But to break up his daughter’s marriage, lie to her, and take away her baby? Doesn’t that seem like just a bit of an overreaction? Hope the his wife and daughter shutting him out was worth it. Whoa! I never saw Bordain/Borden’s deception coming. His insistence on using the accent is a hoot. I love the other servants’ defense of Borden against the real (drunk) French chef. I also loved Bertha’s wince upon hearing Borden’s real accent. The Russells’ blackmailing of literally everyone with any influence to come to Gladys’ ball really kind of awesome. Gladys (and Bertha) got her ball. I know there’s been a lot of discussion about Oscar and Blake Ritson’s portrayal of him, but I think his wit matches that of Agnes in a way no other character does. I believe Oscar as her son. However, I refuse to believe Agnes is in the dark about his sexual orientation. Ooh, John Adams is still salty about Oscar’s pursuit of Gladys. I guess John Adams is still all about showing Oscar that he can be a chick magnet too? I’m glad Ada got some more depth this time. I think we’ve seen her through Agnes’ eyes all season - as a sweet, but somewhat dim-witted woman. She honestly has a grace that Agnes does not possess. Jeanne Tripplehorn didn’t have a lot to do, but I really enjoyed Mrs. Chamberlain’s presence this season. I also absolutely covet her jade earrings. I thought we’d see Turner again. Glad I was wrong.