Traveller519

Well! Just about everybody got some screentime in this one! The opening acting credits must have gone on for over 3 minutes! Assuming the IMDB credits match up to the Show ones, and from a quick summary it looks like they do, with Anthony Carrigan being the last of the folks listed in the opening (he got his "and Anthony Carrigan as Victor Zsasz" special shout-out, totally well deserved IMO) that's 25 names! Only Butch, Ivy and Jervis from the regular cast weren't in the episode. Also, David Mazouz is third lead in the show? I'd never noticed that. That's some outstanding work from his team. Busy but fun episode. It's pretty par for Gotham to spend the first episode of it's half seasons setting up a lot, but the Ed/Oswald and Jim/Lee stories had some meat to them which was nice.

Well this show definitely has accomplishing nothing down to an art form. I had hopes for the road trip, because last year's LA Escape was the best the show had been since probably Season 2. It had progression of both characters and new territory to mine that felt organic. Every episode of the road trip has just been stalling

Beck is certainly looking to make the jump to wider acceptance. He's been comfortable in his off-kilter stuff, and normally has avoided going too broad. Even Boss Baby works because of the range of the characteristics. However, you can tell he's trying to do more than just that stuff. I've actually enjoyed the earnestness with which he's played "himself" this season with the "Why is Benedict Cumberbatch Hot?" skit and now the Pop Star update, though I don't think we need to revisit either of those directly.

I agree, with all the good material the show can mine, a pregnancy sotry feels so pointless. There's really nowhere to go unless they decide to go a misscarriage route, but I'm not sure the show could survive that.

What I enjoyed about the show, perhaps as cliche as it was to have to give someone the opposing viewpoint was that it seeks to crack open some of the echo chamber. Perhaps Lucy's reasons don't make a lot of sense to a lot of us, but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel them. The show made the point, correctly in my opinion that if we're going to try and come together we need to understand, to find the appropriate middle ground. That's what Lucy was for me, earnestness in trying to find something to feel good about, which based on a lot of the results, was where the swing votes came in the swing states. Similarly Dre, Pops, and Zoe all seemed to express how sticking to ones convictions was important, but embracing society on the large was as well.

I'm disappointed about the ratings, especially as I feel like this was Schur's hit it out of the park from day 1. Parks & Rec struggled through finding it's voice to separate it from The Office in it's first season and a half, and Brooklyn 99, while strong out of the gate was definitely finding it's place in it's initial 13 episodes before being picked up for the full season. Fortunately, I think the 13 episodes will help the show, it makes for a very digestible single season for people to pick up on it through streaming.

Oh how I wish Hunter had been there to react to the LMD, and specifically an LMD that looks like Aida

I saw both this and Manchester by the Sea this weekend, so watching story play out through time jumps really did a number on me, but it was great. This jumped to the top half of my 2016 Top 10 list for sure, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it come out on top. Following Prisoners and Sicario, Villeneuve is generating a style I can really get lost in. It's engrossing. How refreshing to have an Alien Encounter storyline that doesn't result in war, but plays on the inherent paranoia of such a situation, and looks at the real problem solving that would go into understanding first (public) contact.

I took the ending to show how Patrick was pushing Lee to fight his inherent disaffection with the world around him (his coping mechanism). When the ball bounces just behind him and starts back down the hill he says to Patrick, "Forget about it" but Patrick grabs it and passes it back to him, and they resume tossing it back and forth. It was a nice little moment showing how much he was helping his uncle even if it wasn't outright or conscious. The motivation for not wanting to be the guardian felt like new territory for me. Normally when we see that situation (though normally in light comedies) it's about some selfish single person learning to take on responsibility and change their life. Lee was by all indications a good father and a caring person prior to the fire. He loved his kids, and nephew, and new how to interact with them.

"...and your father requires a headboard." I randomly thought of that line while driving this weekend and started cracking up. This show isn't changing the game by any stretch but it's a comfortable watch at the end of the week.

It had been sitting on my DVr for a while. I'm definitely going to need to rewatch. I wasn't as engrossed as I was for Mud, but I think having an idea of where it's going will help throughout.

Well we certainly went from all-out panic about the missing Uranium at the end of last week's episode, to a "Meh, it'll turn up when it turns up, more importantly there's a Cop convention in town" attitude this week.

The Monologue did a better job of parodying the cringe-awkwardness of The Bachelor than the Bachelor Parody skit. I did really enjoy both of the pre-taped bits, the understated comedy they manage to get out of those as compared to the (seeming) necessity to go broad in the live skits works better with my sense of humor.

In the throwback episode the kid that they got to play Young Tyler definitely looked the part! "Nice Hat! Are you Southern?" "No, we're just adults" and "Everybody's always yelling at us!" haha

So I rewatched this episode and (Original) Eleanor alternated between having natural nails and dark nail-polish throughout the episode. I'm guess ing Kristen Bell just applied some between day one and two of shooting, but it did seem like she had the nail polish on during the more "confessional" moments, even if it wasn't there later in the same scene.

This show keeps on delivering! A couple theories I have coming out of this episode: Now that we have some information on the other Deaths, I do agree that this is a neighborhood for people who have died earlier in life, and likely from something other than sickness. It would seem to make sense that this was a neighborhood to be given to someone like Michael for people who had a zest for life and would have a harder time transitioning to the after-life. I 'm willing to wager dollars to donuts that the incredible sacrifice Tahani referenced is what got her into the Good Place. We saw how much Eleanor's sacrifice did for her points, if that was Tahani's final act on earth it could have counteracted a life time of good deeds that were selfishly motivated. If you go back to last week's episode, when Eleanor says that if she'd known people like Chidi, real Eleanor, and Tahani in real life she may have gotten into the good place for real there's a quick reaction shot of Tahani that is almost her questioning how good she was in her own life anyway. At any rate, more Jason and Janet doing things, I wasn't happy about the prospect of the reboot, but watching her beg for her life again would have been some chuckles (that sounds really dark!)

Get. My. Pants

I also remember seeing something about one of the reasons the US Nuclear Missle Launch capabilities are still initiated by 5 1/4" floppies is that they aren't "hackable" so I could suppose if you were going to manually reboot your safe-mode for offline systems, that could be why. Was that a Doctor Strange reference with regard to the "disappearing" of the book? That'd be cool, especially if we get a Benedict Wong cameo in taking the book. Everbody delivered this week, which was great.

This whole episode. I love that their tactical take down of all the cartel members leaves the guy holding Chin's leash and pointing the gun right at him for a dramatic last second take down. It seemed like they had a much bigger idea of how to go about the Chin rescue then realized it would be impossible to film. Still, it's nice watching the team do things tactically well. (Kind of the "Indy shooting the Swordsman" approach). There were no less than 3 characters mentioned who didn't show up, (Danny, Abby, and Sabrina... and I'm pretty sure Duke got a shout-out too, I'm surprised someone didn't ask what Lori Weston was up to) Adam shows up in Mexico to unpack, then drinks a beer with Chin at the end of the episode. Then the plot that can't decide what it is, which centers around a car salesman who decides that importing plutonium illegally is worth the step up from importing drugs.

I will carry a candle for Diane Farr until the end of time

One Adam vs. Adam F. joke early in the season made me chuckle, two was still good, but why are they beating this one down? They've made their point. That aside, I loved this episode. "That really show's how much you haven't been living up to your potential."

I jumped in on the Office from day 1 while in college and watched it religiously right up through the first part of Season 6 (basically to the wedding episode). Then I moved to another country, and didn't have a DVR or many channels and so it slipped by the wayside for me. I caught a few episodes from all the other seasons on flights or through other miscellaneous encounters. Over the holidays I decided to binge seasons 6-9 and catch myself up. While obviously not to the same quality as Seasons 2-5 (1 was hit and miss, but I give it a pass due to the Basketball Episode being so great and the show trying to find its audience) I still really enjoyed them, and didn't find them as bad as much of the reviews of those seasons indicate. I'm willing to bet that's because of the distance I put between the first half of the show's run, and the second half. Had I watched them concurrently the slipping quality would have been much more apparent. I did appreciate how the characters remained true to themselves, and by and large didn't become caricatures of their early selves (outside of maybe Stanley and Meredith).

I spent my holidays binging the last 4 seasons of The Office, which I hadn't watched previously. So I was stoked to get some fresh Schur comedy before heading back to work. Terry in his overalls was a great visual gag.

Great performances all around. You understood each character, their motivations, their biases, and their emotions. God, I felt for Corey. When Lion is remarking how well Corey has done for himself, you can see the hurt on his face of the unknown with respect to football. That said, the direction was weak. As, save some elements (the slow progression of the fence over the scenes, which is not directly addressed by the characters), the me f I'm of film wasn't well explored. The house and yards felt cramped, but never as cramped as Minnie's Haberdashery in The Hateful Eight, or the Baseball House in Everybody Wants Some! The dialogue drives the movie, I just wish it had been better supported by the visual

The opening scene was great, followed by whole lot of choppy exposition scenes bouncing between planets, but once our Scooby Gang gets together, man was it a lot of fun. The shades of grey and mistrust across the spectrum felt very relevant to a cold war that was about to explode, and explored the non-Jedi element of the struggle. The final battle scene just plastered a smile to my face that didn't go away. The Co-mingling of the sabotage, ground fight, air fight and logistics on both sides played so well. And Admiral Raddus commanding everything up above was an element of the "war" on Star Wars that has been explored better through other mediums than the movies to this point. A film in a series needs to make the whole universe better. Rogue One would have done that just by explaining the Death Star's vulnerable design, tying together everything was awesome!