rabidchipmnk

Y’all. I just rediscovered this part of this site and this (archived) thread and yeah, from the perspective of 2023, this is creepy and depressing af. With what we’ve seen about how bad we are at managing pandemics, I am not optimistic this couldn’t happen. It definitely had some plot holes, but I did generally enjoy this very weird show, although it might be too soon for a rewatch.

Am I in the minority that I REALLY HATED this finale? 1) Liv's hot boyfriend dies. Again. Like the other two, and like I called from the second it became evident they were going to bone (so like, 12 seconds after he was introduced). Lazy. I suspect they're doing it to get to a Liv/Major endgame and I really dislike that, which is probably why I feel so strongly about that. 2) If I may put on my scientist hat: OMG, RAVI, YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW MUCH OF THE BRAIN SHE NEEDS TO EAT. THE FUCK. YOUR SAMPLE SIZE IS N=1. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW THE BRAIN CURES PEOPLE, THEREFORE YOU CANNOT KNOW HOW MUCH OF A DOSE IS NEEDED TO CURE. WHY WOULDN'T YOU GIVE INCREMENTAL DOSES TO SEE HOW MUCH IS NECESSARY. 3) With the scientist hat still on: okay, so like, if I'm understanding this (really bad medical research) correctly... he had Isabel's brain, and like, put it in blue juice and ran a current through it and then they got a gelatin brain of a different color, by magic. But you actually literally have no idea how many brains might be immune. Has anyone ever been scratched and not turned? Did anyone who got the vaccine not turn? But of course *most* people who die as humans will not have been scratched by zombies, so you have absolutely no idea whether they may have immunity. You have no data! And if eating the brain cures people, *maybe* start by doing that procedure to *all* brains you come across and see if they turn orange, since *handwaving* Isabel's blood work showed nothing unusual? Maybe there are more immune/curing brains out there? How would you even know? I'm not even that kind of scientist, but I think I understand biological research well enough to know that this is particularly bad (and has been the whole time with the cure/vaccine/whatever), and for some reason it really really really annoys me, possibly the most ever even though this is a show about zombies. (Ravi is my favorite though, it's not his fault). 4) I am completely not understanding how Major is now in charge. Wasn't he in exile like 8 seconds ago and everyone was following Chase's orders and raiding his hotel room? But... he's prom king, so he gets to be the leader? 5) Writing your own wedding vows that are 60% "we're getting married but I'm super sad we won't have kids" is weird and dumb. 6) I *really* hope Clive tactfully broke up with Michelle, then. ...but still, that's kind of a dick move, in her/your place of work. 7) (How could zombie babies have nursery rhymes about Blaine and DonE if we just established ad nauseam that apparently zombies cannot have babies. Are we turning that many babies?) That's a really good question you bring up: why don't they freeze people? If there's going to be a brain shortage, why not take volunteers to get frozen? I'm sure some people would even *want* to be frozen, so they can live forever and see future cars. It's not actually that dire a situation re: brains, it's really limited by freezer space, isn't it? And then get the CDC on it to do some *actual* sciencing (/handwaving nonsense). But at least they'd have access to more brains to study. ETA: Don't get me wrong, overall I still enjoy this show, and I only criticize because I care and I know they can do better.

She's not self-centered. She's single-mindedly desperate for affection because she never got it from any adult in her own childhood, is depressive, and has no sense of self-worth (probably also due at least in part to her emotionally-abusive childhood). I'm a little surprised about all the talk of borderline... I'd definitely pegged her as primarily bipolar, though admittedly I'm not an expert at all. Hey, looks like other people had the same question though! Also: man, this frigging show. This one and Bojack Horseman. Damn.

Yes to the latter point (the selfies would have been an immediate dealbreaker though), but his coworker wearing the shirt seemed to have a not-malicious tone, which is not really something I'd expect if it was a product of third-party public shaming. But then I even less understand why he would have done it himself.

Oh good, I was coming here to say "does anyone think that there is any possibility at all that Logan Echolls is not behind the murders/guns?" but everyone else had that same thought about 3 minutes in, eh? (actually, I had a sneaking suspicion back when the Tuttle-Reid murders first happened and how we were shown Vivian's reaction... something sketch is going on there.) (Also: "failed assassination attempt in which no one is injured but makes the politician look like a super-hero" is also entirely too coincidental to not be staged.) I wish I hadn't said out loud in like, the very next scene that "I bet Ravi's girl in this episode is going to be worse than Major's girl," but seriously, is there a reason we can't get either of them a decent love interest? Also: isn't that some really irresponsible reportering she's doing? At the very least, they have no corroboration, unless she was recording it, and even then how will she back up the stuff Ravi probably told her? At worst, Ravi explained to her the whole thing about the zombie island and the murders and WHY they're doing that, and she understood the risks to innocent zombies if they were outed too soon, and she published the story anyway and in the most sensational way possible, which has gotta go against some sort of ethics. Or maybe she's just a tabloid reporter, in which case who really will believe it? I was kind of confused about Major selling the shirts of himself though... at first I thought it was something she would have done to get back at him, but I guess we take the reporters'/radio's word for it that he's embracing it now?

Yeah, that's another good point. Even if it wasn't all about Gerry it seemed she was definitely considering de-nunnifying. It would also be a trial run for HER to be in the real world, since it sounded like she started ...nun seminary(?) pretty young without ever having to be an adult in the world herself. And I'm sure (or I hope) all the sexual abuse didn't do a lot to convince her to stay inside the church either...

Is it actually common to do dinner with the option for drinks as a first date? If I'd never met the person before I'd usually go for something lower-stakes like coffee or maybe brunch. ... for that exact reason. And maybe I'm an overly-cautious lightweight female, but no gracias to drinks either. I did also like how they were at the same restaurant too. Gotta have a designated "first date" restaurant that you don't mind having associated with a lot of crappy experiences. Or so I'm told.

AND THEY PUT IT AS THE EPISODE LOADING FREEZE-FRAME TOO AGH I think it's the faceless face. ughhhhhhh it's too late for these images to be back in my head I need to google some pictures of kittens now.

To continue my speculation: maybe it's like that myth where if your roommate dies you get straight As and everyone treats you nice through the semester? I did think it was weird that she got another roommate though... like the roommate said, I would have been paranoid every second I was in that parking lot, however irrational I knew those fears to be. I wish we'd heard more from Russell. It sounded like she knew more than most about what was going on, and I don't know what that could mean.

The story was that Cathy thought she couldn't advise students how to deal with living in the real world when her only experiences were in the cloistered nun-life, so she and Russell requested to do an experiment of teaching at a public high school and living outside. It wasn't a punishment. IIRC TPTB had decided the experiment was not worth continuing beyond the current semester, but Cathy had not yet been told that when she was murdered in November. it sounded to me like the whole thing was her idea. If it was related to the rapes (which I suppose we don't 100% know), it could have served a purpose of her getting an outside perspective on how to deal with it; she had to have known that no one inside the school and possibly in the diocese was going to address it, and the cops were compromised too as we saw. I could see how she might want to be very deliberate about how to act, since it would be very easy just to transfer him away again. Didn't work out that way, as we know. Just speculation on my part.

I mean, ghosting can also be just a way to say "hey I'm not digging it" without actually having to SAY it which is awkward and hurty. Most people take the hint, and sometimes it's even mutual... just the other day I said "I was totally not qualified for that job but I wanted it so I applied anyway, I hope the search committee just ghosts me rather than telling me how much I suck!" (For the record, I think they did...yay?). We saw Hamilton this weekend and the Thomas Jefferson actually did admirably, even though I've had the OST on repeat for two weeks now. I'll think Daveed Diggs is great in anything, I guess is my point, so I may be biased.

...please tell me that real humans aren't going around naming their real human babies Khaleesi... Re: Reneesme: https://xkcd.com/1011/ How do you even pronounce Espn? Like "Aspen" except dumber? (I may have a side hobby of judging all my acquaintances' choices in children's names. My cousins in particular have done a really bad job of it. You can technically name your child "Maddison," but you do realize you are actually naming her "Maddison-with-two-Ds" because that is how she will have to introduce herself to people FOR.EVER?) Ahem. Topic? Yeah, not a lot of baby Lindas, but you can do a hell of a lot worse in this day and age... glad that Titus realized it's not really about the Linda.

Thanks for the link! It's great to have concrete resources on that (really not-great) topic.

Nice! Though Phil's death and the S3 finale/Dawn's birth should be separated by at most 8 months (Erica wouldn't have known she was pregnant earlier than that). Maybe Season 3 is more condensed in time? There was a Christmas in Malibu, but I don't recall exactly when. of course, we can always fan-wank it in that do we REALLY think these people have a 100% accurate calendar? They're not astronomers, and Tandy messes up a few "30 days has September" and suddenly your February is actually March...

I think it does, for some reason I categorize Leen-da as different from Lin-duh. Maybe because "linda" is actually a commonly-used word in Spanish? I'm too lazy to find a source, but don't names go in cycles, so we think of the Debs and Barbs and Lindas as middle-aged since those were popular 40-50 years ago.? Just think, in 40 years everyone will think of McKenna and Madison as the Lady-in-HR names... and maybe Linda will come back in style for being classic and retro. (I have high school acquaintances who named their baby Edith... maybe they're at the leading edge of a wave of Ediths and Roses, but that still sounds old-lady to me, I don't care it was on that one show. ABOUT OLD-TYMIE PEOPLE.)