Danielg342

Really? You've never pondered how a certain event might have played out differently or what would happen if a cool little kingdom found some way to survive? Reading all the cool and interesting stuff that happened in the past always makes me think of "what ifs"- it's too hard for me to resist the urge. Maybe it's my active imagination.

I have a history degree, so I've always been fascinated with the thought of alternative history. I'm also hoping to create an alternate history series of my own. Delving into "what ifs" can be quite fun and a lot of people have created some very interesting and thought provoking scenarios. There's also a lot of junk, but that's the truth in every genre. What bothers me most about alternative history- and its cousin, science fiction- are those among the audience who get obsessed with accuracy, as if you can plan out how history would have been different if you factored in the change(s) you made. Some things you could predict with a certain degree of accuracy, but a lot of that will depend on how far out you are planning and what you think will get impacted by the change. Even then, there's no way to properly know what would happen if a certain event was changed. The classic example is killing off Adolf Hitler (yes, I'm invoking Goodwin's Law here). There are people who would think killing off Hitler means no Nazism, no Holocaust, no WWII, etc., but this wouldn't necessarily be true. To simplify things so I'm not writing a novel, Hitler and Nazism were a product of their own time- so there's no reason to think that, without Hitler, you wouldn't get the same kind of events that he set about. They may have different names and some people would be different, but the relative history would be unchanged. That's for a change in the immediate aftermath- extrapolate that into a longer narrative and, guaranteed, you are going to start getting into the world of pure fantasy. There's just no way around it. My own project deals with the Roman Empire lasting to and thriving in the present day. Just getting into all the differences in history that would spur could easily take up volumes, and, at some point, you would do little better than educated guesses. I mean, the Classical Roman state never had to deal with things like the Cold War or the Reformation or things like that, so there's no way of knowing how such a state would deal with those events. If those events even still happen. Then we get into how places might be named differently, how certain innovations might have evolved differently and...it's a handful. So, long story short, anyone who tells you "this is an accurate version of alternate history" is lying through their teeth. There is no accurate version and there never will be.

No Nischelle either. I agree. The "born again" story line is a bit of a Hollywood cliche at this point. I was hoping he had been a Christian his entire life...that would have been a far more interesting character as it's a perspective Hollywood does not explore enough.

That would have been fun. Of course, knowing me, I'd probably intentionally spray that board incorrectly just to hear the board throw a temper tantrum. :P

Someone asked a while ago why people use "we" when talking about their sports teams, and I can't help but feel today is a great example of that. I've never played a down for the Buffalo Bills and I probably never will (I am a few years younger than Tom Brady but I am, for sure, not built like him). I'll also never receive a dime if Buffalo had won the Super Bowl...heck, I'd probably give them a few (or a lot of) dimes buying stuff had they have won. So having all these feelings for the Bills as an organization- or, heck, fandom in general- is a bit of an irony because, aside from the emotional benefits, sports teams don't exactly give a lot back to their fans. Even on the emotional front, they usually leave you disappointed most of the time. To an outsider, like my mother was, fandom just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. ...but... Feelings are irrational. You can't explain them. All you know is that your favourite team becomes a part of who you are, like your favourite colour or your favourite hairdo (and there have been studies that have shown this type of connection). Thus I know that, even against my better judgement, as the Bills go, I go. ...and Sunday was about as bad as you could get. Perhaps I should have seen it coming. Buffalo has no running game other than Josh Allen's awkward dashes. They have no pass rush because the guy they brought in to shore that up, Von Miller, was hurt for this game. They also had a patchwork secondary that was an injury away from forcing the team to have open tryouts. Knowing this, I had a hard time believing (Bill-eveing?) the hype. Yet, somehow, deep down inside I wanted to believe the hype. I wanted to believe that what others saw, that the team was better than what my eyes and my logic said. We'd never won the Super Bowl before. More to the point, we are viewed as the "poster child" of Super Bowl futility with those four straight losses (which I witnessed with my own eyes), even though I think that achievement ought to be celebrated as one of sports' greater achievements. No one else, not even the dynastic New England Patriots, have come close, and who knows if we'll ever see such an achievement ever again. ...but, it is what it is, and I can't tell you how badly I wanted a Bills win this year. I know, every other team's fans say the same thing about their team, but I think there's a special kind of frustration when, not only are you facing the prospect of another year without a title, you face that prospect despite being told you have a very good, if not the best chance of winning that title that has eluded you for so long. Losing sucks, but losing when you are "not supposed to" sucks even more. I think what hurts more about losing in this situation is wondering if you'll come back to this same height- or more- next season. We have our predictions but sports has shown that you never ever really know. Championship windows tend to only last for a few seasons, and the Bills have been championship contenders for the past three seasons. A fourth straight season as a championship contender doesn't appear out of the question. Rationally, knowing the Bills situation, their situation isn't as dire as some other teams, so being great for another season looks likely. Then again, I was sure we could have been to that fifth straight Super Bowl. I even recall The Toronto Star article that said just that. ...and the Bills finished 7-9 that year, starting a stretch where the team won only one playoff game between then and 2020. So yeah, losing today stings for me, as much as, rationally, it probably shouldn't. Because sports is cruel and unpredictable, and who knows if I'll ever feel the same highs I did this year again. Anyway, I don't know how interesting that rant was but if I'm a little absent from these parts, this will probably be why.

I'm with @hypnotoad here in that I don't necessarily hate Garcia, I just have liked her far less in recent years. Most of that I chalk up to the writers whiffing and making several bad choices, like they do with the other characters, than any wider fault with the Garcia character. It's gotten so bad that whenever Garcia pops up on screen I cringe at what will happen, and more often than not, she irritates me. That said, there are times- like when she told Tyler that "nerds do it better"- when I see the old Garcia magic and wish the show would milk more of that instead of the petulant, overgrown woman-child they have moulded for her. All of my favourites- Morgan, Reid, Simmons, Gideon, Zoe Hawkes (I don't care if she was a one-episode wonder, she's still one of my favourite characters this show has produced)- are gone at this stage, so I'm pretty much watching out of pure loyalty. The main team I find to be rather bland but otherwise inoffensive. They don't set the world on fire but they won't make me stop watching. Garcia, on the other hand, is someone who I now look at as a character I just don't ever want to see again- she has "go away heat", for us wrestling fans. Yet the thought of Tyler trying to kill her or just simply torturing her just doesn't sit right with me. I hated the prison arc because it felt like it was the show's excuse to beat Reid up, and Garcia is (practically) the female version of Reid. Torturing and exploiting the pain of characters who are- let's face it, weak- is worse to me than seeing the show torture some "victim of the week". The victim is a blank canvas that I don't have a lot of feelings for. Garcia and Reid are two characters I actually do care about. I do believe that Garcia's relationship with Tyler will likely blow up in her face in some way. It could be a way to write her out of the series for good, as Prentiss fires her from the FBI for not terminating the relationship like she was supposed to. I still hope the ultimate denouement with Tyler ends up with her taking him and Sicarius down using her own brand of smarts. For all her cutesiness and her magical computer hacks, we hardly ever see Garcia truly use her skills. They have an opportunity to change that so I hope the show takes it.

I don't know where you are but I'm in Canada and I still have S16 on Disney Plus.

Well, murder mystery has been a thing ever since television was in its early days, and, despite not being able to show any violence, they still made some riveting work. So I don't necessarily agree that gore has to "come with the territory" on shows about serial killers. Ultimately, though, for me it's more about the maxim of "only include it if you need it". This would go for any kind of choice within the story, not just the choice to depict violence. However, when it comes to something that could, potentially, unsettle the audience- things like using gore, sex and vulgar language or doing anything taboo- it's really important for creators to lean into the "only include it if you need it" rule. First, guaranteed, including an unsettling scene will turn off segments of the audience. There's no way around that. A great way to mitigate the inevitable backlash is to be able to say, as a creator, "we filmed it that way because otherwise the scene would not have worked". Second, nothing will turn off an audience more than being forced to sit through an unsettling scene for no reason. You'll get complaints that the creator is "being exploitative" or "seeking attention" or what have you. What upsets me more about the latter is that it's simply lazy writing. Overusing shock value tactics does not make up for a lack of a story. This, ultimately, the biggest mistake Gotham made during its run- it's no fun if you're "shocking" for the sake of it. This is also a mistake that CM makes time and time again, especially in Erica Messer's years. Most of it is gratuitous violence, but they're not above pulling off cheap, emotional stunts like whatever it was with the Maeve storyline. In CM's case, gratuitous violence is more the symptom of a greater malaise- writers who cut way too many corners. When it comes to this episode's usage of the whipping scene, it would have made far better sense to have it at the beginning. The idea of forcing the woman to watch the beating so she can be told, "you did this to her" was an important part of the profile. The UnSub felt wronged, and he needed to make the people who wronged him understand that. More to the point, the UnSub ominously saying at the beginning "you did this to her" would make the viewers wonder, "what did she do to him?" From that vantage point, you can then start to construct the case that eventually answers that question. The show didn't go that route. We instead had an opening scene of the young woman crawling through a maze of ducts, which added nothing to the profile other than explaining why the dead man had bruising on the palm of his hands and knees. Which was not a huge, Earth-shattering, revelation. The revelation that was Earth-shattering, though, was the revelation that the UnSub was a moral enforcer bent on teaching those who wronged him a lesson. Yet the scene that would have shown that- the whipping scene- came after that revelation was made (via exposition), so it lost whatever impact it could have had. That was a great scene. I had a chuckle too. Yeah, the Attorney General is a piece of cake after you've dealt with Ian Doyle. Maybe Emily Prentiss ought to run for politics. She has the nerves of steel to pull it off. You could be right, but there's a big part of me that wouldn't want to go there. We've already told the story of "hot guy starts dating Garcia to strike back at her" all the way back in S3, and doing it again, even if it is literally 16 years later, feels like Garcia is backsliding in that she didn't learn from that experience. Yeah, perhaps Garcia would be the type that is so naïve that she'd overrule any instincts that she might have that the relationship is a bad idea but I think there would be limits. It's not like we're talking about Garcia having a bad streak of dating people who cheat on her and are emotionally manipulative- we're talking about Garcia ignoring the possibility she could be dating- again- someone who might kill her. That's a bridge too far for me. The first time it happened I could understand it because she might not recognize those signs. The second time? She would be ignoring her own trauma and that's unrealistic. The other part is, while I'm sure there are many who don't want Garcia on their screens anymore (I know I have not liked Garcia since Messer took over), I think killing her off or putting her in peril would be the wrong way for her to go. Listen...Garcia is like Reid. Vulnerable. Child-like. Full of insecurities...and she's the victim of several serious traumas that have wounded her emotionally and mentally far more than maybe even she realizes. The show has already established that Garcia likes filling her space with cutesy things because it helps remind her that there is still a lot of good in this world, despite its darkness. In short, hurting Garcia- again- would be just like the thought of hurting Reid again. The show would merely be taking a character who's already down and kicking them again. It would just feel...cheap...and disappointing. Perhaps a fun twist could be Tyler- who is, supposedly, military-trained in psychological operations and thus might even be smarter than the BAU- uses Garcia to lull the team into some kind of trap. Tyler here plays the long game in making the BAU believe he is on their side, only to lure them into a trap that he and Elias Voit have set up. Tyler believes he's also set up the trap so well that not even Garcia can stop it, but here we see the smarts Garcia displayed in "Saturday" to show Tyler that, while he thinks he's the smartest in the room, he really isn't, and Garcia's tricks get the team saved- and Voit and Tyler Green arrested.

Funny enough, that quote was used as part of one of the bookend quotes in Episode 100. The other part of that quote has been used two other times- in S1 and S9.

Some positives about this episode: Manny's gambling storyline might actually be finished, finally Even if it's a bit contrived, I'm glad we seem to be moving on from the Bode/Gabby/Jake love triangle This show actually presented us with one of the positives of small town life, with all of Edgewater rallying behind Sharon in fundraising for her kidney We got to hear Billy Burke's nice singing voice To the latter, in case anyone was wondering, Burke really is a musician. He has two albums, and in case anyone wants to sample it, here's the title track to his first album, 2010's "Removed". Pardon the pun, but I don't believe his music sets the world on fire...but it's not awful either.

At this point, Matthew Gray Gubler coming back might make this train wreck bearable again. Of course, that said, why would Gubler want to waste his talents on a platform that is so far beneath his abilities?

Is this show in a rut or are we at the point where it is simply running out of gas? I had my hopes in S1 that we'd get to a S5 or a S6. It was fresh, it was tightly written, it didn't always follow the regular conventions of the genre, it was well-acted and the characters all left an impact. It's continued success was very well-deserved. The question is, is there still room for this show to grow or have we hit the end of the line? Tonight wasn't exactly a bad episode...it was just "there". Aside from some intriguing moments like finding out how the Russian terrorists infiltrated Ukrainian refugee camps in order to attack them as well as finding out how Deacon became Christian, the episode really just went through the motions. Everything felt forced and stunted, and the beats just didn't hit the way they should. I also bemoan how "soapy" this show is getting. Terry acted like a child- though he owned up to it- and may have chased Eva away for good. Perhaps- hopefully- it's not the end of the story but this segment felt over the top. Like how a lot of things have gone on this show lately. There was a time when S.W.A.T. hit all the right tones and struck the right notes, but now it's off. Can they get back on track or is this the start of the end of the line?

I may never understand this show. I can't figure out if there has ever been an episode in this series, including this one, that had a coherent, non-ridiculous story all the way through. Let's not even start with tonight, because there were too many plot holes. I mean, you have a psycho madman targeting Sharon. Said psycho, it is established, will stop at nothing to bring Sharon down, including going after Sharon's family. Heck, said psycho telegraphed his future intentions by cutting the brakes on Sharon's bike. So how there was not increased police presence at 3 Rock I don't understand. That's just the tip of the iceberg. We again had roadside surgery this week, albeit performed by someone who knew a bit more of what she was doing than Gabby did a while ago. Speaking of Gabby, she did show tonight what makes this show watchable despite its faults. It has heart. It has meaning, and the actors and actresses all around do a fantastic job bringing that meaning and heart to life. There's a real sense of camaraderie that this show has that others wish they had. Meaning that, no matter how ridiculous this show gets, you really do get the sense that the characters of Fire Country are truly in this together. Now if only they could get a story that's worthy of the effort the actors put in this show.

Mandy Patinkin couldn't make peace with the violence on the show which is why he left. I wonder if, secretly, the other actors who left and never came back- like Shemar Moore, Lola Glaudini and Matthew Gray Gubler, among others- also couldn't rectify the show's violent nature. Moore's new series may deal with guns and have some blood but I've never seen any gore on S.W.A.T. I figure it was inevitable that the show was going to get more violent now that it's on a streaming platform. Without having to worry about the standards of broadcast television- which CM's writers and producers have complained about- upping the gore factor and having the characters swear was a given. Of course, I also figured there might actually be nudity too. You'd think that, in real life, the woman getting whipped would be stripped completely naked, because criminals tend to do that (the criminal would probably also rape the woman, because most serial killers are rapists too, but showing that might have been extreme for the scene). The bigger quibble is that CM seems to be using the violence in this episode- and many others- "just because they can". Which is the wrong approach. In the earlier years, the show would restrain the violent moments to the beginning, and only show what is needed to tell the story. It's there- once you get past feeling icky- to make you ask, "what is going on here?", since the killer's torture or kill methods would be integral to the profile. Yes, seeing Grace getting whipped and being Angela forced to watch fit the profile, but we already knew that part of the profile by the time it was brought up. There was really no need to show it. If nothing else, the scene with Grace and Angela should have led off the episode because then we don't know "the puzzle" yet. Perhaps the first scene should have been Grace having to watch the man get killed. Then again, I don't know if we needed to see a whipping at all. Describing the man's injuries was enough. At the end of the day, the CM writers need to learn restraint. Just because you can doesn't mean you should- even if you are now allowed to.

I'll give this episode this much- Nicholas D'Agosto brought out some warmth and tenderness I never thought I'd see out of Deputy Director Doug Bailey. He actually had some chemistry with Paget Brewster and was quite likeable as the dopey, "what have I gotten myself into?" stressed-out agent. If I saw more of than instead of a run-of-the-mill obstructive bureaucrat at the beginning, I might have liked Bailey as a character. Oh, and Brewster shined on her own, like with her migraine, as she's always done in that kind of role. I also found the Tyler Green-Penelope Garcia end of credits scene to be weirdly amusing, even if the thought of said scene made my eyes roll and my head shake like it never did before. That's about it, though. First, I want to know who's decision it was that said, "this reboot needs a run-of-the-mill, good old fashioned Criminal Minds episode". Does anything say "filler" more than that? Oh, and good that this case took place in West Virginia. Wouldn't want the FBI to have to worry about needing that jet they lost access to. Secondly, I'll never understand CM's brand of anti-misogyny. Kill the dude, have him be the only one who dies in this episode, reinforcing an old trope (although at least the show brought in his parents and expressed their anger, instead of just using that dead body for clues like they usually do). After they do that, though, CM turns around and has Elias Voit not once but twice hallucinate the gruesome death of his family, displayed in all of its gory glory (and perhaps doing a bit of foreshadowing). As well as showing Grace get whipped in full view with us hearing her agonizing (but muffled) screams as she gets whipped. OK then. It doesn't help that the case was rather rudimentary and, aside from it being odd, I don't know why the BAU's expertise was needed on this. Usually the show implies the local investigators' incompetence, but this time we actually saw it. What medical examiner would not know what a cat o' nine tails is? The connection was rather simple too. The janitor (hey guys, CM's telling us "the butler did it!") bought drugs from the dead guy. Even though no one was charged there would still be a record of that somewhere, because the police were told to drop the matter. You'd think that after the guy turns up dead bringing up that case might be the first thing the police do...but then it means the police would actually have to do work and not have time for the coffee and doughnuts. I then have to throw some shade at all the telegraphing that is going on in the Voit story. Here's this for profiling- Erica Messer loves family drama too much, so, guaranteed, if Voit's family isn't dead by the finale, Voit's final act will be to take them hostage and try to die in a blaze of glory at the hands of the FBI. I'm also betting that Tawny gets it. Because, even though it's very sloppy of Voit to leave her alive, he's also aware of his mistake and he'll correct it. He always does. Oh, and the false drama of the Attorney General (what happened to the actual FBI Director?) closing the Sicarius case? We know the BAU will resolve it, and they may even go rogue to do so, because when has procedures and protocol ever stopped them before? I bet Tawny is a victim and is only a victim because the BAU is forbidden to investigate her murder for some reason, with the BAU arguing "Tawny would be alive if we were only allowed to take her case". Which causes them to go rogue and confirm everything the father of the dead man in this episode believed about the FBI. Hey, at least one person was on the ball in this episode.

That I do wish the show would tone down just a bit. I mean, the show doesn't always let Hondo off the hook (see the 100th episode and Hondo's pursuit of the Korean drug lord), but it should at least acknowledge sometimes that Hondo's answer isn't always the right one.

Put it like that and I would wonder why Tara would even want to stay. Not that, I believe, the show will admit it, but she's dealing with an obvious narcissist who put her career and her interests ahead of what needed to be done and of how Tara was feeling. That Rebecca wound up doing "the right thing" doesn't make up for it- she still went to extremes and guilted Tara and ended her relationship over it. I mean, I'm not saying Rebecca should have been happy...but this should have been something where she could have shown a bit of understanding, at least. True. It just feels a little too flimsy for me. Mileage will vary.

Ugh. The show says this all the time before finales and other important episodes...and they always oversell what actually happens. The people on this show have to learn to let the episodes sell themselves. Especially when what they've delivered has contrasted immensely from what they think they've delivered.

I didn't realize that, but you'd think the Leones, being Cal Fire vets, would invest in a generator knowing how destructive fires can be.

Well... I'll say this much. Mileage will vary on this, but I think the show has been successful in portraying a leadership group that trusts its charges and won't fault them when it isn't warranted. Not that I want this show to start having its characters go rogue all the time, but at least it recognizes that exceptional circumstances are exceptional circumstances.

Perhaps someone with actual experience in the military or police can correct me on this, but my line of thinking is that decisions on discipline ultimately rests with the commander, not the second in command. You don't want a situation where, say, the second in command sends someone home but the commander disagrees with the call. I don't know exactly where the line is in regards to what decisions Deacon can make on his own without Hondo's input, but it seems to me that deciding which teammates get to participate in a case is beyond his purview. The show gets kind of wonky with this kind of situation. We've already had drama with Powell breaking protocol and regulations, a storyline that seems to have been dropped with little explanation. Previously, we had Tan get chewed out for going rogue in S4, not to mention Street's legendary escapades in S1, which cost him his spot on the team (for a while) and nearly cost Christina Alonso her spot on the team as well. Then we've had moments where Hicks had to step in and reprimand Luca for attempting to go rogue in S3, as well as times where Hicks has benched Hondo for doing the same thing. ...but, on the flipside, Hondo has gone rogue a few times and Hicks didn't reprimand him for it. In fact, in the S4 premiere, Hicks praised Hondo for, in Hicks' own words, "calling an audible". You might be on to something with the idea that perhaps trust dynamics are at play here. Despite the appearance of double standards, the times where the team was called out for going rogue were times when it backfired on them, sometimes spectacularly. The other times, when it worked in their favour, the team got the credit for it. On this end, the show is fairly consistent. Of course, there will be the debate about whether or not it's good to "look the other way", even if it benefits the situation. The show is lucky that the times the team escaped discipline for going rogue things ultimately went well, and it's refreshing there is a show that treats its characters like adults and doesn't insist on having them be "slaves to the rules". Still, real life wouldn't be as forgiving and the team wouldn't always be that fortunate.

One of the things I found interesting about this episode was that Deacon made a decision for the team (benching Street from the case) despite the fact he doesn't lead the team. I doubt the show would make anything of that in the future because the episode didn't make anything of it, but it does feel like Deacon is stepping on Hondo's toes a bit by making decisions that only Hondo should be making. Yes, Deacon is the same rank as Hondo, but, in real life, that is unrealistic. In real life, Deacon would have his own SWAT team, and, who knows, maybe he should given that this show has two SWAT teams already. That aside, the fact that Deacon is supposed to be subordinate to Hondo should mean that Deacon shouldn't be making unilateral decisions, at least not of the magnitude of who gets to participate in the case. On a darker show, they might explore the drama of Deacon usurping Hondo's authority. Coupled with Deacon's actions in S1's "Hunted", it would be the roots of a conniving schemer of a character- but that conflicts with the tone of this show. I mention it because it rankles and maybe makes me wonder if the writers thought that incident through. We didn't hear Hondo explicitly tell Deacon, "if you don't feel Street belongs on the case, then I give you the authority to kick him off it". All we got was Deacon telling Hondo that he'll "take care of" Street. I'm not sure that's enough to grant Deacon the authority that only Hondo should have.

Maybe next year, when Bode gets out of jail, he becomes Manny's assistant and Freddy becomes First Saw. That way we can keep the fire camp dynamic and give Freddy an actual function instead of just being one of the campers. For what it's worth, W. Tre Davis- who plays Freddy- posted news of the renewal of Fire Country on his Instagram page. So I suspect he's not going anywhere and may even have a bigger role next season.