SourK
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Posts posted by SourK
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Aw -- Echo finally found another place where acting like a psychopath is valued. In all seriousness, there's a kernel of something I liked in that story, which is that the three characters who were able to join the psychopath army are the three who have already been established as ruthless, cold-blooded killers. I also kind of like that it taps into one of the central themes in this show, which is acting based on principle/the greater good vs acting to protect the people you feel closest to, personally. I wish that all of that had been developed more, but it's a cool idea.
Also, I'm a fool because, for a split second, I thought Echo really stabbed Hope in the neck and that's why Hope wasn't there in the future.
22 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:I truly hate this type of story telling. I quit Lost over it and I don't like The 100 as much as I liked Lost.
Lost opened the hatch. Cue cliffhanger. Then they rewound and told the story of how they got to the moment of opening the Hatch in about three different episodes. Maybe more than three different episodes because I quit. I got to the point of not giving a shit what was inside the hatch after living through the frustration of ending the episode in the same place three times. And I cared at one point what was in the hatch. A lot.
I didn't watch Lost, but I agree that this structure isn't working for me. I think it's partly because the flashbacks generally aren't adding new context that changes the situation or deepens the themes -- the flashbacks are just literally explaining step by step how we got to where we are. At this point, I'm not totally sure what the benefit is of showing it out of order if that's all that's happening.
21 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:Because, yeah, I really don't understand the logic of locking up Sheidheda with his disgruntled followers and just assuming they would take him out. At this point, it is clear as day that he is more powerful than most people here, and there would be an easy chance that he would take them all out with ease. Especially since; lets face it; Russell's followers aren't exactly the toughest or smartest gang in Sanctum. I really don't understand why she didn't just finish him off herself or find some other way to stage it. Was she worried about a backlash or something? And now thanks to Murphy accidentally letting his true identity slip, it looks like Trikru is going to submit to Sheidheda's rule now. Yay! At least JR Bourne was having fun devouring the scenery.
I don't know anything about JR Bourne's career, but I like to imagine that he just chills in Vancouver/LA, and when his agent calls with a weird SF/F show, he's just like, "Sure -- I could use a new car. What do you want me to do?" and then stuff like this happens.
As for Indra's plan... it was probably the stupidest plan anyone has had this season. I guess she didn't want to have to explain why she shot Russell and then have the grounders find out he was Sheidheda? Which is also why she wanted them to stay outside the room no matter what? But literally the only thing he has wanted is to be left alone to talk to people, and he's supposed to be some kind of master manipulator so... why would you leave him alone with people?
21 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:At least the little rebellion was stopped and Emori made it out alive. Of course, Murphy would try to make Nikki kill him instead, by claiming he was the one that sent her husband to death, instead of Raven. Such noble tacts from a guy who likes to believe he doesn't have an unselfish bone in his body! Still hoping Murphy/Emori make it through all of this in the end.
I'm pulling for them, too. I think they have a cool story, with being two people who were only out for themselves but now they're kind of out for each other. I'm just worried that the resolution to that story is for one of them to become a good person and sacrifice themselves.
Meanwhile, if what's-her-name believed Murphy's lie, she now thinks he's responsible for her dead boyfriend, and that's probably not good.
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I'm glad I have this forum to explain what's going on to me. Now that I know they're trying to have a spin-off, this episode makes more sense. I liked Callie okay, and I'm curious about the dynamic between her, her brother, and that other nightblood guy who kept changing sides -- but not really enough to want a separate show about it.
I thought the most realistic part was the part where they leave Lucy behind, and Callie's just calmly like, "Yeah, I always knew we'd abandon the poor when the time came, because they're not the chosen people, but it sucks for Lucy, I guess." Rich kids are like that.
On 7/8/2020 at 11:18 PM, thuganomics85 said:Interesting that Raven seemed more distraught over Bellamy's death than Clarke.
I wish that this show spent less time on plot twists and more time on character relationships. Theoretically, Raven and Bellamy were close, because they were on the ring together and -- I think???? -- hooked up at some point in the earlier seasons. But we so rarely see anyone interact for a reason other than telling the plot twists that it's hard to remember who's supposed to be friends with who.
On 7/9/2020 at 6:08 AM, AudienceofOne said:Gosh I hated the Trikru and Trigedasleng retcons, they were horrible. Just the worst thing anyone could come up with. It's like they took anything interesting or organic out of the show and replaced it with the most trite explanations possible.
On the one hand, the sarcastic part of me wants to say, "It makes sense that the dumb Grounder language was made up by a kid," but, on the other hand, you're right -- I think we were all willing to believe that slang just changed its meaning in the intervening years without needing an overly specific explanation of how or why.
On 7/9/2020 at 7:34 AM, ottoDbusdriver said:I was just waiting for someone to say '7th symbol locked' when Rebecca opened the portal. They have ripped off so many other ideas from Stargate SG-1 why not that as well.
Honestly, when she said that seven of them were quiet, I was like, "That's because it's the address for Earth," and I was expecting people in the main plot to need the address for Earth at some point... but, no. Seven of them were quiet because it's the super apocalypse.
As an aside -- I think the idea of opening a portal to an unknown time and place and just hurling yourself through it is TERRIFYING, and I'd be really interested for the show to explore that more. But, the way things are going, I no longer feel suspense when someone goes through a portal, because there's always air on the other side.
On 7/10/2020 at 4:10 PM, ketose said:Also, the "Commander" label on Becca's suit has no significance because she never landed at future Grounder HQ under this retcon.
Not that I remember the earlier seasons well -- or sometimes at all -- but I did spend the whole episode going, "Wait, so, Becca is the first commander in the sense that she had the chip but... the grounders didn't really exist before she died?"
I guess there had been a question of why she got burned at the stake, and now that question is answered... but I didn't really remember that that was a question
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On 6/26/2020 at 12:27 PM, Oosala said:
Finished watching last night. I agree with iMonrey in that I ff'd thru the stupid, unnecessary singing bits. I don't like watching someone sing on TV and yet I love going to concerts.
I think the worst part of watching someone sing in a TV show or movie is the reaction shot where the other actors have to watch that person sing and pretend it's really doing it for them. It's a pretty common fantasy to imagine having everybody listen with rapt attention and be moved and impressed while you sing -- that's why it's a joke in the second Austin Powers movie, when Dr. Evil makes his minions listen to him give a concert of contemporary pop songs. There's nothing wrong with imagining that, but we all understand that it's kind of narcissistic, so it feels embarrassing when a TV show doesn't seem to understand that.
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Yeah, I had no effing clue who that guy was. I just assumed it was the dude you guys keep talking about, who I don't remember at all, from a season that feels like it was a thousand years ago -- hey!
16 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:Diyoza and Hope have some mother/daughter bonding time. Which includes debating the differences between freedom fighter and terrorist, and ending with Diyoza chocking out her own child. Families can be so complicated sometimes!.
I loved how Diyoza's whole attitude was, "From your POV I've been missing for almost 20 years -- why are you being so dramatic about wanting to find me?" Also I call bullshit on her or anyone else on this show ever learning the lesson that "doing the right thing in the wrong way" is bad. "Doing the right thing in the wrong way" is basically their motto.
26 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:I am happy to see Emori getting more screentime, but I knew right away that her party was going to go badly. It was a decent idea, but she really needed to feel people out before she started reuniting people with their kids who they threw out like moldy bread because their cult leaders told them to. I did like hearing more about her past and how she related to the people who had been kicked out of Sanctuary at least, and how much it still affected her.
Same. As soon as what's-his-name showed up to meet his parents, I was like, "He's gonna kill them."
To be honest, I thought her whole attitude about it was strange -- saying that the thing that would be most healing is to have the chance to convince the people who rejected you that they were wrong. That's a game lots of people play with problematic parents -- constantly trying to prove that you were worthy of love in the first place -- and it usually ends badly.
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It's my week to say this felt like filler. Still interested to see what happens next time.
17 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:Has the Grounders language always been so understandable? It makes sense that its a version of English that morphed over a hundred years. But Indra's fight to be Commander was the first time I noticed that I could understand the gist of most of what they were saying before looking at the translation.
Oh my word, yes. My secret pleasure -- or, I guess not secret pleasure, because I keep making fun of it openly -- is how the Grounder language is just slang terms with an accent. My favourite detail from this week is that "sun up, yo" means "good morning."
FWIW, I think Indra was speaking more clearly than people usually speak, and that made it more obvious.
15 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:Interesting how Diyoza was that close to killing Hope with the knife into the helmet. That might have been awkward.
And yet, what a perfect summary of having Diyoza as a mom. Hope and Jordan are really the opposite sides of what it's like to be raised by characters on this show.
(Also I LOL'd a how Diyoza had to escape in the most extra, gratuitously violent way possible).
9 hours ago, AudienceofOne said:Especially since Raven's entire freakout was predicated on Clarke's apparent blithe and carefree ability to commit mass murder without giving a shit. I seriously wanted to kick her.
I thought that was funny. She's trying to say something sincere and vulnerable and what comes out is, "I don't understand how you're a psychopath like that, but I wish I could be one, too."
3 hours ago, tennisgurl said:Sheidheda...continues to be a thing for some reason. Do we not already have enough going on without more Earth crap dogging us?
When they were talking about what to do with Sheidheda, and they said, "If we kill him, everyone gets mad, and if we tell them he's not Russell, everyone gets mad -- OMG what do we do?" I was like, "IDK, maybe do the option where the Grounder Devil is dead? That seems like the best thing for everyone, if there's a riot no matter what."
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I really enjoyed this season up until the flash forward, which made me worried about season three. FWIW, this is probably my favorite Judith Light performance and I think it makes sense that the next step in this story is her and Payton running together (at which point Payton's scheming gets exposed) -- but I don't know why we needed the intermediary step where Payton's mom became president.
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Yeah, so, let me just re-hash part of this episode:
A Latina girl gets edged out at an audition she worked really hard for because the director sees something special in a white boy who didn't try or care. Then, the lesson is that she shouldn't complain, because the white boy -- despite not trying or caring -- is really, really talented, and talented people deserve rewards, even when their talent is totally passive.
Cool show.
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lmao Michelle didn't come to their horrible three-couple wedding.
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I'll admit it -- I got confused. I don't get the timeline or the rules about when you lose your memories and when you don't. I also kind of wish the main characters were together more during the final season.
8 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:"Because of time dilation, no one is coming for you" -- that makes no sense at all. Time is still moving forward on all 3 planets.
I laughed at that line a lot. It's totally something you say to someone when you just don't feel like helping.
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Okay, so, this show is now Stargate, but I'm okay with it. I actually found this really interesting -- much more interesting than the other plot lines that have been held out to me this season. Echo's betrayal also felt a lot more personal and painful than Raven's betrayal last week -- I guess because she has more practice betraying people.
On 6/10/2020 at 11:54 PM, thuganomics85 said:And, again, she's apparently doing this all for Bellamy, which would feel more impactful if I felt like Bellamy even felt a tenth of what she apparently feels for him. I have a feeling she's going to be experiencing some heartbreak soon.
Yeah, I'm also concerned about that. Echo is All About Bellamy, but Bellamy's all about either Clarke or Octavia, depending which way the story's going. He's never been all about Echo and I don't think he's going to be. :(
On 6/11/2020 at 9:40 AM, Isazouzi said:Why didn't Clarke and the rest first suit up before jumping to planets they know nothing about? I suppose the suits also deliver oxygen and heat. And since the wormhole seems to be a two-way street, which it wasn't on Stargate, why didn't they send one person first to go check the planet and tell them if it was safe for them to go?
I actually thought at first that they were about to do an Interstellar and split up, sending one person to scout each planet to save time. You make a good point about the helmets.
On 6/11/2020 at 10:24 AM, Lady Calypso said:I think that this episode was not very well edited. The beginning montage was horrible, so I'm guessing there were some ADR issues that they couldn't fix, so they inserted a weird pop-esque song over the dialogue to mask it.
Word. I legitimately thought there was something wrong with my sound during that first musical montage.
On 6/11/2020 at 10:24 AM, Lady Calypso said:Not to mention the weird editing for the Sanctum scenes. Where did random Anomaly Helmet Disciple come from? Who found them?
Also, I had no clue WTF was going on with that and I assumed it happened last week and I just forgot, but I guess not??
18 hours ago, quarks said:And back to this episode - I can't help but think all of the reveals in this episode should have made Dizoya and Octavia - two traumatized, suspicious people - more traumatized and suspicious, not less. I mean it's still possible that Dizoya built the cabin on her own (I was a bit skeptical about that, too, given that it wasn't at all clear to me how she managed to saw down the boards) but it increasingly looks as if she didn't, so...you arrive at a strange planet after going through a strange green thing, find a cabin, find lots of vegetables and seeds, and it doesn't occur to you to wonder more about what's going on?
The timeline of the prison stuff confuses me. It does seem like the cabin and stuff would have been put there by the prison people, but it also seemed like the prison people only discovered this planet when Octavia chucked her letter into the anomaly. Or maybe they just didn't have any active prisoners on the planet and became aware that people were using their cabin when Octavia sent her letter? I don't get it.
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Here's the thing -- in a scenario where Raven told prisoncru the truth, and That One Robber decided to help anyway, and then the radiation turned out to be worse than Raven thought, and That One Robber died, That One Robber's girlfriend would still go completely berserk and swear revenge on everyone else.
So, why did we need this to be a convoluted story about a not-very-convincing lie?
If the point was partly for Raven to betray prisoncru, they could have just left in the part where, once she realized they were getting hit with fatal radiation, she decided not to tell them.
On 6/3/2020 at 11:50 PM, thuganomics85 said:At least Emori got to be a badass here. I'm hoping against hope Murphy/Emori survive all of this and keep being the wiseass, self-serving, but surprisingly loving and refreshingly honest powerhouse couple that they are.
I'm also rooting for them, though I have a bad feeling that one or the other will have to die before the end. In the meantime, I'm enjoying their Prime fashions.
7 hours ago, tennisgurl said:How did two of the smartest people on this show create a kid as stupid as Jordan? Like, obviously they're manipulating you, you know this guy isn't trustworthy (he and his people killed his kind of girlfriend to wear her body like a prom dress!) and yet your just going along with it!
I think it was more like two gentle people raising a gentle kid, but I agree that he's not clicking as a character.
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I kind of liked this. I was pleasantly surprised that Diyoza is still alive and a character. I was 100% sure she was going to die in childbirth. I also liked getting some context for what happened with Octavia when she went into the magic anomaly.
I have more questions than answers at this point, but I find the questions interesting.
On 5/27/2020 at 11:37 PM, thuganomics85 said:Heh, Echo is totally regretting stepping foot into this Anomaly, huh? It's too bad I still feel like she cares more for Bellamy than he does for her.
I realized this episode that I really want her to be happy at the end of this. I've gone from not remembering who she is to rooting for her.
On 5/28/2020 at 12:19 PM, tennisgurl said:I guess Gabriel has spent so much time with his hippies, that he forgot that maybe just leaving important stuff around when there is a violent crazy person running around isn't the best idea?
I actually forgot that random guy was there, but my question was: why didn't the super special note with the code on it travel in whatever container kept Gabriel's tablet safe from the water? Or why didn't he take a picture of it and back it up?
From a story telling POV, I also feel like losing the McGuffin through negligence twice in a row is a lot.
On 5/28/2020 at 12:19 PM, tennisgurl said:So now we have yet another faction of weirdos to fight. You know with their luck, the Earth Squad will somehow land on the planet that is fully populated by evil man eating robot dinosaurs.
With their luck, though, they would kill the robot dinosaurs while trying to make peace with them and one would fall in love.
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I'm happy the show is back and curious to see how it ends, but I'm not really interested in either the evil commander OR the anomaly. I kind of wanted to see what happened if they all tried to live in a society and work out their conflicts, but fine.
I LOL'd at the part where Hope gives Echo a note and says, "This was in my arm."
Indra seemed weirdly quarrelsome to me, and then I was like, "After everything she's been through with these people, let her be cranky."
On 5/21/2020 at 6:25 PM, Sakura12 said:I'm also glad Raven's over her Clarke sucks attitude. No one wants to make any choices then gets mad when Clarke is forced to make one. It's not always the right one but no one else ever seems to step up.
I don't totally disagree, but this episode they also all agreed not to do anything to Russell, and then they left Clarke alone for five seconds and she decided to execute Russell and burn down the holy palace.
It kind of goes to Raven's point that Clarke keeps making rash decisions that the rest of the group has to live with -- and, in this case, it's not like she had no other choice.
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On 5/9/2020 at 6:12 PM, rmontro said:
I guess we don't really have enough information on whether Mr. Honey is actually dead or not yet. The other videos had Jughead and Archie being killed, and they aren't dead.
If Mr. Honey is really dead, it makes Jughead's application story appear to be in poor taste, doesn't it?
It didn't even occur to me that that was supposed to be Mr. Honey. If it was, I guess it retroactively makes more sense why the show would suddenly tell us he was a great, great man -- that's what they like to do when a character dies.
Speaking of Jughead's story -- are we meant to infer that whoever's making the videos read Jughead's story? Like... maybe Dark Betty is the videographer? Or the Stonewall people put spy software on Jughead's computer? We know he changed it before he actually mailed it to the university, so...
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This was really funny in the LOL-at-Riverdale way that I enjoy, but I also kind of liked the twist where Jughead realized the principal wasn't evil, and the story-within-a-story format.
KJ Apa continues to impress me, since he was clearly playing Archie as imagined by Jughead rather than normal Archie, and the difference wasn't huge but it was noticeable and fun.
The yearbook thing hit close to home for me, because I've worked in print production before, and I feel both the pain of having a slow approval process when you're running out of time AND the pain of having people blow their deadlines like it's NBD. No one is the monster in that scenario -- it's an evil inherent in the process!
3 hours ago, tennisgurl said:Mr. Honey may or may not be part of the sketchy video stuff (or was that just the one he used for his own ends this week?) and was cold, engaged in petty squabbling and one upsmanship with his students, and clearly had it out for some of his students...but as I've said before, a lot of the stuff he did that the kids were so pissed about arent unreasonable things at all, and the kids reactions to them are so over the top in how offended they were at the very idea of someone not just letting them do whatever they want, its kind of hard to be on their side.
Same. I laughed at the sequence where all of the parents stormed the school to demand that he un-cancel prom, because all I could think was, "This is the moment Mr. Honey understands why his students are this way."
On a better show, you could tell an interesting story about the Principal who was sometimes wrong about some things, but also right about some things -- on Riverdale, he has to be all right or all wrong.
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First of all, credit where credit's due: if you want to find out where the messed-up porn is, you ask the LARPer at your school. A+ 100% that is the first factually accurate plot point on Riverdale since someone explained Bumble.
I'm confused about the video store. Reggie made a website this episode to host his awful videos, so we know that internet porn exists -- and it is the internet porn the principal objected to, since that's the stuff where they were wearing their jackets. But the show leads us to think the reason the principal knew about the website was because he hangs out in the secret psychopath porn section of the video store. So... I guess those movies start by showing you a murder and end with a PSA explaining that the internet exists?
I'm going to reserve judgement about where this tickle porn story is going but, in real life, something is sexual if one of the people involved thinks it's sexual, even if that person is "just" paying to watch you do it. Reasonable people can decide that they still want to take the money, but Kevin is totally wrong that doing something legal with your clothes on means it's not porn, and I really hope someone explains that to him before the end of this.
16 hours ago, ruby24 said:I've always thought Mark Consuelos was the least threatening mobster I've ever seen on television but they actually made him look even more small time. Isn't he supposed to be like all powerful? They said he was a mafia don at one point. Guys like him employ hitmen, they don't go after hillbilly thugs outside bars late at night by themselves and get beat down in the street. His rep would be shattered.
I had the same thought, but I'll let it go because I remembered that previous seasons have established Hiram only had one guy: his teenage daughter's boyfriend, whom he kept getting in fights with. I think maybe there used to be another guy before that, but he got shot?
But, yeah. The show seems to forget that, in order for Hiram to be boss of something, he needs other people involved.
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7 minutes ago, angora said:
It was weird to me that Mr. Honey's stance with Kevin seemed to be "you can't do a song from Hedwig because that musical is inappropriate" rather than "the song you want to do from Hedwig is inappropriate."
I agree. I think it was a way to make sure we knew he was being transphobic as fast as possible, but, from a storytelling POV, the obvious counter-argument would have been "What's wrong with the specific song I chose?" and it's annoying that no one even tried that.
Also, I just personally dislike this Glee thing where one of the characters claims that a certain album perfectly speaks to their entire generation as a way to intro the episode. Maybe put more effort into making the songs serve as an interesting compliment or juxtaposition to the story, and let us judge that for ourselves.
7 minutes ago, angora said:The girls and Kevin also sounded really good in "Wig in a Box."
Though, they did miss the comedy gold that comes from having dark Betty sing a song about how putting on a wig can cheer you up.
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There's something that just feels right to me about the idea that these four characters start a band and only rehearse once, and half of them don't show up to the rehearsal.
11 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:That said, while Mr. Honey continues to be the worst, I did find it amusing how he kept simply thwarted the heroes with the most obvious and simplest solutions, in true deadpan fashion.
I also thought that was funny -- like, if your plan is to protest by having everyone sing Hedwig songs at the talent show, maybe don't keep warning him ahead of time?
Also, not to sound too sympathetic to a character I'm pretty sure we're supposed to hate, but... imagine if you were a principal and this was your school.
6 hours ago, Josh371982 said:Besides my anger at Betty and Archie I will say the video Jughead was watching at the end was probably the most disturbing thing I've seen on the show.
Word. That was a very disturbing video, and it made me curious about where this story line's headed. Although I think it's headed toward Charles.
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11 hours ago, Wouter said:
While the scenes of the others grieving for Picard were nicely done, it did feel like emotional manipulation, given that Picard would be back and that something similar would follow with Data. The talk about mortality also didn't make all that much sense to me, and with Picard being resurrected he didn't really lead by example in this specific case.
Sometimes we talk about a show being plot-driven or character-driven, but this episode was an example of a different thing where the events don't really make sense for the plot or the characters, but they make sense for setting up a melodramatic moment for the audience... which then rings hollow because it doesn't make sense for the plot or characters.
I laughed when Picard insisted that he had to talk to Soji on an open channel so that everyone could hear him movingly talk her into cancelling the kraken attack, and then when Soji beamed Picard down to the planet not because she had a way to help him, but because it was more dramatic if he died surrounded by all of the other characters.
I didn't laugh when Data showed up, but I was kind of confused by it because, if you're going to write a scenario where Data's consciousness still exists somewhere in the midst of all this, why wouldn't you find a way for him to participate in the story instead of just showing up at the end to bum everyone out?
(Honestly, I didn't think Picard would die, but I thought there was a chance Patrick Stewart would bounce after the first season and Picard's consciousness would be in a different body, played by a new actor, so it felt like an extra, EXTRA cop-out that he made it though the whole thing unscathed, but whatever).
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LMAO that was so dumb.
I can't even pick my favourite part. When the mysterious hellish synth intelligence turned out to be a space kraken that got sucked back into its portal? When Picard was saved from death and went, "Amaze. Let's unplug Data"? When Elnor, the neediest Romulan, just walked up to Raffi and cried?
I think it actually has to be the scene where Rios and Seven were bonding because they'd both done something they regretted, and Seven was like, "I killed someone just because I hated them again," and Rios was like, "Okay, cool. Mine is that I got attached to an authority figure."
15 hours ago, Delphi said:Finally full on confirmation that Seven of Nine, the Borg Fenris Ranger from the Delta Quadrant is bisexual.
On the one hand, I'm happy for the fifteen-year-old version of me would would have really liked to have a gay or bi character on my favorite TV show. On the other hand, it's been 20 years and the best they can give me is awkwardly holding someone's hand for five seconds.
14 hours ago, MissLucas said:Raffi and Seven are an item now? Okay, sure why not. Except that I thought Rios and Seven had more chemistry but I guess Agnes had called dibs.
I agree with this. I had literally just thought, "Wow, I think I like Seven with Rios, now," when we randomly got that panning shot letting us know who all the couples were.
5 hours ago, kokapetl said:You know who cared about Data and Hugh the most? Geordi. Bring Geordi back for next season. And who cared the most about Captain Picard? Dr Crusher, bring her back.
This is a fair point, on both counts.
5 hours ago, Wouter said:As for Narek, I liked that he turned in this episode, and that he was pleading with Soji shows that he didn't quite see her as the destroyer, in the end. He still hoped she would turn. That she didn't for him is only realistic I suppose, though I was very disappointed in Soji for going through with it, even after Sutra was exposed and knocked out (another surprise, for me).
This is a nitpick in a sea of much more glaring problems with their plan, but was it really awesome to bring the most garbage person Soji's ever met and let him plead with her to spare organic life? I know there's an excuse where they used him to get past the guards, but...
I do think it would have been a much more interesting choice, dramatically, if she had been faced with a decision that revolved around saving the most garbage person she'd ever met rather than people who were trying to help her.
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Wow. I feel affection for Picard as a character, but Raffi needs a better friend. He seriously just told her he was dying at the exact same time as he told a bunch of strangers he just met. That's cold.
I laughed a little bit when Gold Soji explained that the admonition isn't "Synthetic life will destroy the organics (scary)" but rather, if you know how to listen to it, "Synthetic life will destroy the organics (happy)."
At the same time, I did like that moment (heavy-handed as it was) where Picard was like, "I will save u, androids, run into my arms and give me control of the situation!" and they were all like, "HOW ABOUT NO."
The story was kind of convoluted, but it was exciting and it had a point of view that I still enjoyed.
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I just listened to the audiobook and I'm not sure what to think. I enjoyed it (and I particularly enjoyed listening to Ann Dowd read for Lydia), but I feel like it's almost a fanfic about how the breakout character from the TV show was secretly a really good person who we can root for, and also wouldn't it be funny if a normal teen sassed back everyone in Gilead.
One of my complaints from the TV show is that I don't get what Lydia's deal is, and, in this book -- partly because I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to consider the TV show canon -- I still don't get what Lydia's deal is. I can draw a line that connects pre-Gilead Lydia to Lydia at the end of this book, but the line doesn't naturally pass through the stuff she's done on TV.
I also thought it was interesting that the epilogue mirrored the first book, and had some dude give a lecture about the story we just read that totally missed the point.
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I didn't dislike this, but I felt like it was cramming a lot of interesting ideas into a single episode without stopping to explore any of them fully. Like Seven's extremely weighty choice to make a new borg collective and her worry that she wouldn't want to let them disconnect after. Or Agnes deciding she doesn't want to destroy the synths anymore because Soji's such a miracle.
I did enjoy that Raffi being a weird, outcast conspiracy nut was finally useful for everyone, because she put together the whole improbable story of how the Romulans were behind everything, but I wish that even that had had more room to breathe.
13 hours ago, marieYOTZ said:Unfortunately, I am struggling to believe in a vision of synth-takeover so terrible that it makes you claw your face off, or beat your head in with a rock. They’re going to have to expand on that a little bit more.
I have the opposite reaction. I kind of like that they're not explaining it in detail, because it lets my imagination fill in something super scary -- probably worse than whatever they'd actually depict. When they were talking cryptically about how "someone really bad shows up" if you allow AI to evolve too much, I got a little creeped out.
I also just kind of like the idea of being able to take it as written that whatever this sacred, terrifying memory is, it's really as bad as it sounds, and it makes sense that the villains are freaked out about it (even if I'm pretty sure their vision has the same stock footage of a fox decomposing as 20 other shows). I think, if they tell us super specifically what it is, it opens the door for us to decide everyone's being weird and it's not that bad.
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LMAO at Jughead sitting in the bunker for weeks (months?) coming up with literary allusions he can use when he traps all of his hateful writing school chums and makes them listen to him explain his own murder. Also LMAO at how bored and annoyed Donna looked listening to him. The actor playing her was giving a really big performance, but I loved it.
I was expecting/hoping that maybe at the end of their big explanation they would suddenly realize they made a terrible mistake and Charles was working against them all along, and then that twist would take us into the end of the season, but oh well. Charles is very patient about his revenge.
Something I did not like: Riverdale's bizarro sense of justice where, if someone's a really bad person, that means you can assault them and it's NBD. I felt like I was supposed to laugh at Brett getting beat up by gang members thanks to a corrupt FBI agent, but that's horrible.
Also, Riverdale's bizarro sense of justice where the only thing that matters is whether your actions hurt one of the main characters.
3 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:There was a bunch of stuff I did like and find funny. Hermosa thinking Veronica and Betty were killing their boyfriends so they could be together for one.
I love how matter-of-fact she was about it. Like, "That's what secret girlfriends do."
I think I would enjoy a version of this show where everyone just owned being completely evil and there was no pretense that they were ever going to do the right thing.
2 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:I liked the ending to Donna's story. Betty implied that Donna could return (and I assume her and Brett are likely to pop by in a future episode) and I kind of liked the explanation as to why she was pulling the strings. Having her ultimately working toward revenge on DuPont by sacrificing everyone else in her path is probably the best explanation.
But what made me extremely uncomfortable was the casual hand wave of Jonathan's murder. Yes, I didn't know his name until the last episode, and yes, I didn't really remember him otherwise...but we don't know how they murdered him or what happened to his body or...anything. And it was basically tossed in two lines and that's it. It was as casual as Archie sipping a milkshake.
I was uncomfortable with these two things in relation to each other. Because, the show's kind of like, "What did Donna really do? She attempted to murder Jughead, and that's not cool, but she can live in peace as long as she gives up the book contract... Oh, also I guess she killed Jonathan but who cares?"
This fits into a larger pattern where Riverdale has a bad track record with black characters -- it treats them like they're aliens or something and there's no possible way to let them participate in the story except by standing in the back of a group shot while a white character does something, and then it just gets rid of them. It's creepy.
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S01.E03: Don't Forget the Sea
in I May Destroy You
I had the same gut reaction, but I thought it was an interesting scene, in so far as it's asking that age-old question about what to do if you go to a party with someone and you never want to leave at the same time. We've seen that this is kind of a pattern for these two, and I can understand how it would start to feel frustrating if you want to go home and you feel like you're shackled to someone who refuses to leave with you. It's one thing if it only happens once, or if it goes back and forth, where one friend is the designated driver sometimes and the other does it other times. In this case, it seems like it's always Terry relatively sober and wanting to go vs Arabella totally wasted and wanting to stay.
I guess the answer is, "Don't be each other's buddy system in the first place," but it's a tough situation.