angora

Taking this to the book vs. show thread, to avoid talk about later episodes in the thread for the pilot.

From the 1x01 thread. I agree that the geography is pretty murky in season 1, and it gets tricky to keep track of where we are. I appreciated getting the quick shots of the map in season 2 as we were moving from country to country. If you're still fuzzy on how it all works, here's the map: The Fold separates a small portion of western Ravka from the rest of the country. The eastern side is where most of the population lives, and where the capital city is, home to the royal family and the Little Palace (where the Grisha live/train.) The western side has access to the sea, so their they're the ones that get all the trade/exports. In order for eastern Ravka to get supplies/food they can't make themselves, a skiff has to bring materials through the Fold. There's no way around, because Ravka's at war with the countries on either border (Fjerda and Shu Han.) In season 2, Nikolai's flying machine is still a prototype, so flying over the Fold isn't really an option for them at this point. At the start of the show, Alina and Mal are at a military camp on the eastern side of the Fold, where there's about to be a crossing to pick up supplies and bring them back east. When the skiff is attacked by volcra and Alina uses her power for the first time, they're closer to the east than the west, so they turn around and go back to the camp. That's where Kirigan tests Alina and takes her to the Little Palace (all in the east.) Alina's mapmaker friend Alexei, who got thrown/jumped(?) off the skiff during the attack, is the only one who winds up on the western side to tell them what happened. General Zlatan, the non-Grisha military guy in season 1, was a leader from western Ravka. He wanted to break with the royal family and make the west its own nation, leaving the eastern majority of the country to rot/starve without its shipments of supplies. But his push for western independence doesn't really work if there's a Sun Summoner who can tear down the Fold, so he enlists Arken to kill Alina during the Crows' heist, preserving his own political power. Kaz and the Crows aren't from Ravka at all. Ketterdam is on the island nation of Kerch (southwest on the map.) It's a bustling port city that attracts people from all over the region--Inej is Suli (part of a traveler culture originally from Ravka,) while Jesper is Zemeni (from Novyi Zem, northwest on the map.) Ketterdam has tons of trade, lots of pleasure houses, and plenty of criminals. When the Crows get hired for the heist in season 1, they take a ship to western Ravka and then use Arken's train to get through the Fold. They spend the rest of the season in eastern Ravka, and they don't cross the Fold again until the season finale, when they con their way onto the skiff that Kirigan is bringing Alina across on. At the end of episode 8, everybody is at a port in western Ravka, boarding ships to leave the country. The Crows are going back to Kerch/Ketterdam, and Nina is going there too (because that's where Matthias is being taken to jail as a "slaver.") Alina and Mal are going into hiding, and they end up in Novyi Zem.

Yep, Jon is doing Thursday this week, and I believe it'll be live. That's how the show typically handles the conventions--early tapings throughout the week, live show on Thursday after the candidate's speech. I laughed so hard at Michael's bit about Tim Walz living his best life on the campaign bus, consulting his personal map and giving the driver advice.

I kept thinking, you'd rather spend your 20 minutes talking about Biden's age than the Supreme Court ruling on Chevron and presidential immunity?

Same, @DoctorAtomic. I know I can just watch the YouTube clips, but I watch the episodes while I'm doing something else (dusting, working on a craft project, etc.), so it's nice to be able to hit play and leave it, not individually select each segment. Which, yes, isn't exactly a "problem." But I hate that everything is getting siloed into a different paywall, and it makes me less likely to want to try Paramount Plus.

I liked getting to see more from all the characters in season 2, but one issue I had was that their storylines felt so siloed from one another. In most episodes, it was like, "Now let's check in on Bisma's story with her identity and her family, now let's check in on Ayesha's storyline with Laura and her feelings about coming out, now let's check in on Amina's storyline with Billy and Ahsan." I'd have liked to see them in one another's plots more. Maybe they could've spread it out more so that they were supporting a just few characters' plots in each episode instead of needing to advance a snippet of everyone's individual storyline every time. Like, this episode is mainly Amina and Ayesha's stories, this one is mainly Saira and Taz, etc. I still loved it, though. I love all these characters! This season had so many great songs, and I liked the different themes we explored here.

I agree with what everyone is saying--the consequences of leaking their original tracks were a little unrealistic and basically takes the band back to reset mode, but I still liked the episode a lot. *Loved* "Glass Ceiling Feeling," especially how much of the first verse was taken directly from their argument about the album. I loved seeing Momtaz find a way to bring her vision to life, and regardless of my opinion on how things went down with the label, I was glad to see the whole gang back together. Amina's serenade was really cute! I appreciated Ayesha realizing that coming out to her parents wasn't the right choice for her right now, and I'm so happy that Dirty Mahmood was such a real one--out of all of Saira's dreams and goals, he was the only person that fully lived up to her expectations, both as a music producer and as an all-around good guy.

100% agree. Satirists can have fantastic, biting political commentary, and I certainly wouldn't categorize Lady Parts' songs as inconsequential or non-political. I hate it when people automatically equate humor with "not having anything 'real' to say." I liked Bisma pointing out that the very fact of being themselves was political, and I appreciated her standing up for the type of music they write. I also liked the point that they write about their own lives, and "picking an atrocity" from a list felt like capitalizing off of other people's suffering for their own cred. I understand why Sister Squire's words made Saira spin out, though. Apart from having her art dismissed by her *idol*, she's been very concerned about not selling out, and like @RachelKM said, she's most likely still reeling from what went down with Taz. When they were posing for a photo with the record label, I loved the moment where Ayesha swatted down Amina's double thumbs-up and then Amina slowly brought one of them back up again. So cute!

I thought Bisma's plot was really good, and that cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" was gorgeous. Although, yikes to her husband's "Believe Black Women" T-shirt while he was asking if she just wanted to remove her headscarf to be "sexier." The thing about Ahsan's insecurities/jealousy about Amina and Billy is that he feels like it's Amina choosing Billy *over* him, when in truth she's very clearly buried any hopes she had of getting with Ahsan. She doesn't know she's been in a love triangle this whole time, because after everything that went down with Ahsan last season, she's internalized that he wasn't/isn't/will never be into her. She has no idea that Ahsan inviting her to the folk night was supposed to be him making an overture, so of course it's going to feel to her like Ahsan "suddenly" wants her after she went out with Billy. Oh, Momtaz broke my heart at the end! She let Lady Parts go so they could fly, but it hurt her so much! If this Clarice thing doesn't blow up in the band's face, I hope there's some way that Clarice could mentor Taz or something, make some introductions for her.

Amina dramatically declaring it her "villain era," by which she means she's establishing boundaries and not letting people talk her out of things she wants, is the most Amina shit ever. I love her!

Okay, they all looked so ridiculously hot in their wedding suits! The implosion during the photo shoot was kind of over-the-top, but given what everyone was dealing with personally, I completely get why it happened. Poor Bisma, that's two episodes in a row now that a Gen Z-er put her in the "people pleaser"/"non-threatening" box. It's interesting how Second Wife, a band that from an influencer background, views Lady Parts from the perspective of branding and cultivated identities: Bisma's lower follower count is an image problem, Amina is ditching the "girl next door" vibe to go "full Sith," is Saira "queerbaiting" because she wears flannel? But Lady Parts isn't about any of that. They each have their own style and their own vibe, but it's based on who they are/want to be and not about what image they're trying to perform. In that way, it makes sense why Second Wife is gaining quicker success, despite not having original songs and besides Taifa's built-in following. They're crafted for people to like them, while Lady Parts just is who they are, and their thing doesn't really work when they're trying to fit someone else's idea of them.

I remember Amina's fantasy sequences from last season, but the fantasy elements didn't bleed into other characters, did they? Interesting to see little bits of that this season, like Bisma "pausing" her daughter with the remote. I liked Momtaz doing her best to make things happen, for both the band and herself, and not apologizing for her choices. And I laughed out loud when Bisma worried that she was a people pleaser and Amina instantly exclaimed, "You're a queen!" with that super intense look on her face. Loved the Malala song!

I could be misremembering--and I'm hesitant to Google anything CtM-related before the season is over--but when Cyril was first telling his church lady friend about his plan to get into social work, hadn't he seen a newspaper ad about a special program to get qualified in a short amount of time? I feel like there was some sort of scheme about getting new people qualified quickly. These "one half of a fictional married couple wants to leave the show" scenarios never seem to work out well. Killing them off forces the surviving spouse into a grief storyline that might disrupt any other arc they had going on, but dramatically sending them away and then leaving loose ends doesn't really work either. I wish the show would normalize the spouse just being offscreen--Lucille could have stopped working after her marriage, or maybe gotten a different job in another part of the city. They could have phased the actress out more gradually while keeping the character in the background through references, one-sided phone calls, etc. It'd be really great, if an actor want to leave but the show didn't want to kill off the character or anything, to come to an arrangement where they come back for a few days of work each year, filming a handful of small scenes that they could spread throughout the season. I can buy that Rosalind is more assertive/talkative personally than professionally, especially under exam conditions. I work as a sign language interpreter, and a few years ago, I had a really difficult time passing the screening to move to a new company. I can interpret just fine, but when I'm being observed/evaluated, it's hard for me to access my natural professional instincts. I get so focused on trying to make sure that I'm doing everything *perfectly* that I second-guess everything and it kind of falls apart. I don't really mind there being four pupil midwives when only Joyce and Rosalind get storylines. For the training program that Nonnatus is doing, it makes sense to have a small group of them but only focus on those who are actually going to be characters. It was the same when they had the trainee doctors staying at Nonnatus--I think that was a group of four too, but we didn't really get to know more than a couple of them. And didn't Nancy originally come with a small group of trainees as well? I think the biggest difference here is that it's so *blatant* that the other two aren't characters. In previous instances where they did this, I remember the minor trainees getting at least a few lines.

I suppose that, without the long hiatus, we wouldn't have gotten Nida Manzoor's Polite Society, which was hands down one of my favorite movies last year. But I'm sooooo glad the show's coming back! Looks like it'll be time to get Peacock again for a while.

In the interview with Lina Khan, when they were talking about product shortages, I thought it was disappointing that they kind of laughed off the Adderall shortage. Khan laughed when Jon brought it up, and he made a joke about the audience's reaction, noting they seemed to have an "interesting predilection" for Adderall. But ADHDers have been beating the drum on this for a while, emphasizing how hard it can be to function when they can't get access to their prescribed meds, and highlighting that federal agencies don't seem motivated to try and solve it. In articles I've read, they've mainly mentioned the DEA and the FDA, not the FTC, but it still wasn't a great look for the chair of a federal agency to make light of it.