dwmarch

I'm rooting for the bad guy here. Baxter was great in the scene where he was telling Michael off. I definitely feel worse for Baxter than I do for Michael and/or Adam. Are the docks in New Orleans usually so quiet that you can just drag a dead body around? Weird of the mob boss to just assume this is the case. I'm going to assume the chunk of brain that followed Michael home is a Pulp Fiction reference. Otherwise how do you manage to wash yourself off with a hose and miss it? I really need Legal Eagle to take a crack at this show. I am not a lawyer, nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night but I am pretty sure it is never a good idea to answer a judge's question with "fuck you!" and then double down on it when asked to clarify. I get it, it was to show that Maura Tierney's character is sassy and also to show that what Carlo said (and by extension what everyone else has said) will indeed be used against him in court but I feel like tossing a f-bomb at the judge gets you thrown out of court before you would get a chance to explain why you just flipped the judge off. The way Carlo's friend was behaving in the car I thought he was going to OD on the fentanyl, leaving Carlo stuck with drugs, drug money and a dead body. Instead he's out there on his own somewhere and I guess Desire and the Baxter crew will be looking for him. I liked Big Mo's line about "I guess we're not in a problem-solving mood today." Kind of bold of Michael and Baxter to assume that the judge they set up would be all "fuck the police" when she got pulled over. We've seen enough corrupt cops on this show to establish that there was a definite risk of them letting her go just like they did when they caught Michael pissing off the bridge. Also convenient timing for Michael and Lee to be driving by at the exact moment when she was pulled over and super convenient that they were right in the middle of that awkward conversation so he could drop an "I love you" on her at just the right moment (so she presumably wouldn't hop out of the car to go hassle the cops right then and there).

I liked this show overall. I found it to be tightly plotted although if it was cut from ten episodes down to six that would explain it. But despite that, I found the show gave us just enough to establish who the characters were and what was important to them with no lollygagging. The bad guys come across as somewhat sympathetic by which I mean the reasons why they are cartel thugs are clearly established as the best option among bad choices. The only thing that didn't quite work for me was how this tiny cartel (basically one family unless there are others we haven't seen yet) is omnipotent and omnipresent except for when the script calls for them not to be. What is the point of having a CBP agent on the take if they can cross the border at will? Despite the agents and patrols and sensors and whatnot, the border isn't much of an obstacle to anyone at any time. Powerhouse acting from Michael Chiklis here. He's certainly not doing a retread of Vic Mackey and he does a good job of selling his pain and desperation. I was happy to see Natalia Cordova-Buckley after her run on Agents of Shield but dismayed to see that she's playing the typecast role of Cartel Wife. There has been some music on here that I'd like to find again (Tunefind link if anyone else is looking) and I love the title sequence. I'm looking forward to more.

Comparisons to Breaking Bad are inevitable, as with any other show that snagged that One Great Actor and thought they were the key to success (I'm looking at you, Marvel's Inhumans!). But I feel like this is not a great show, it is several mediocre shows mashed together. We've got: Nawlins Gangsta Shit, where the white mob and the black mob have a misunderstanding that leads to war. The Adventures of Lee Delamere, Street Lawyer, where she fights tirelessly on behalf of those who have been wronged by the justice system. A Plague on Both Your Houses, starring Adam and Fia, star-crossed lovers whose parents are mortal enemies. This one is a comedy. Judge Desiato, PI, the story of an activist judge who finds justice via social engineering. There are also some aborted spinoffs involving a Senator and another one where Baxter's wife encourages her dumbass hothead of a son to go ahead with his fentanyl business (and his dumbass buddy volunteers to try it! I don't know how it is in New Orleans but around here fentanyl has killed a lot of people). At least this plot is finally moving along at something other than a snail's pace. I'm still confused as to how Mr. Green Toyota figured out that he should record that video. I can see a character piecing it together because of the way Adam and Michael have been walking around with giant I'M GUILTY signs all over them but how did he know to record the video in the first place? I guess we will not be finding out.

I like Peter Weller and I'm glad they didn't kill his character off. I wasn't expect him to get a redemption arc. Funny that Russ knew where he was and was just sitting on the information. I hope we come back around to that. The genius kid was a fun character and I hope we see more of him. It will be interesting to see how he interacts with the rest of the team. There seems to be lot less death by gunfire this season to the point where I feel like it's an intentional change. Not complaining; if I wanted heroes with a license to kill I'd rewatch Hawaii 5-0.

Well, I didn't love it and I didn't hate it. I did like Grey and Adira's outfits from the holoprogram. Adira has been in a basic blue jumpsuit for most of the season so it was nice to finally see them rocking some style. Grey looked great as a Vulcan. I don't like the new Starfleet uniforms, they're drab. I notice we didn't get a good look at Tilly to see if she has been promoted. You would think she has earned it by now but I guess we'll find out next season. Starfleet needs to get their safety division up and running again. Specifically we need to take a look at turbolifts and other areas on the ship where there are falling hazards due to a lack of railings/forcefields/etc. Osyraa went out like a chump. I was expecting something more from that scene. Burnham was absorbed by the data core and I thought we were in for some Superman III shit there, the revenge of mecha-Burnham. Instead she just busts out a phaser. And I couldn't have possibly been the only one screaming "shoot her again!" but I guess it was set to kill. For Admiral Vance, I didn't know he had a wife and daughter either but I feel as though we could have established this earlier in the season. Starships are weird in this century. You can have a close-quarters battle with a dozen ships and no one gets blown up. You can use a chemical bomb to blow a nacelle off but it's easy to reattach. And WTF with that warp core ejection? Why did it bounce around and scrape against the walls on the way out? I want a starship that ejects the warp core in one smooth motion!

To be fair, Sam does get called out by her own father for having a bunch of boyfriends in a short period of time. I feel like that's the Netflix influence in there, having characters vocalize things the audience is wondering about. "I thought karate died out in the 80s!" was another one.

It seems episode 5 was involved in a hit and run (or at the very least fell off the back of a truck) and was left bleeding on the corner on Wednesday night despite the record showing that it should have happened on the following Sunday... I'll spoiler code my post until it actually airs.

Edit: unspoilered as of the air date. Baxter's fancy restaurant is in a hotel that he owns. Makes sense because nowadays villains own hotels. It took us five episodes to wander into sterotypical Nawlins, where it is apparently always Mardi Gras, even in mid-late October. I see we are going the Romeo and Juliet routine with Adam and... Baxter's daughter, who does not get called by name often. I think Adam made a strange, dumb choice here. How did you know Rocco? Oh, from that club that he never went to. Why didn't he just admit that it was morbid curiosity and guilt because Rocco was hit by the car that was stolen from his house? That way it isn't another lie to keep track of it, it's just half of the truth. As for Michael's mystery stalker, I think we're dealing with a pair here and I predict it's going to end up being Adam's teacher girlfriend and his friend Wesley. The teacher girlfriend knows what happened and I have a sneaking suspicion that if she'll sleep with one student she might just sleep with another. There was also the unusually specific amount of money requested ($220,000) which suggests inside knowledge of how much money the Desiato family might have stashed away. She might have a key to the house. The emergency with the dog wasn't a poisoning, it was just Adam being a general-purpose screwup. Then again, it might not be them because the proof that was sent to Michael was filmed from directly behind the car. The previouslies show that the gas station footage was shot from overhead. So this means that someone got impatient at the gas pump, whipped out their phone and filmed the person who was taking their time in the hopes that this might turn out to be blackmail material. Sure, why not? I like the gangster lady in charge of the Desire crew. No messing around with her. She goes right to Baxter, lays out the facts for him and lets him know he's only got so long to respond. That gas station attendant sure has a phenomenal memory. Sure, you'd remember the sob story and the guy who told it but Gas Station Guy knew the specifics!

Admiral Vance, diplomat: It's our shit, you know? Well, I guess we know why people insist replicated food doesn't taste quite the same. What's worse than finding shit in your apple? An apple made of shit. Why did the Emerald Chain enforcer get turned into icy chunks after being yeeted into space? Starfleet HQ couldn't grab them? The Emerald Chain invaders couldn't grab them? You must exit in Starfleet-issue bubble wrap or else you're instantly dead? Some serious Die Hard vibes in this, particularly Burnham having to go barefoot at one point. At least she didn't have to walk across a bunch of broken glass. You can get into the weapons locker on Disco just by shooting at it a few times? I think that would have worked better if the crew was scrambling to cover the hallways while someone tried to hack into the controls and then the DOT-27s came along to help. There were a couple of "somekindas" in this episode and they bug the apples out of me. Don't say it's somekinda jammer, it's just a jammer!

This show has weird geography like that. For example, as regards Adam, I'm pretty sure he lives in a carriage house behind the main house. The scene with the Baxter family must have been in some mob joint because it seemed like there were too many people downstairs. I also vaguely recall seeing a bartender. However, as you said, it's a place where you heat your own soup and the waiters don't come to check on you if you start screaming and cursing during a quiet family dinner.

So Mr. Baxter, if you don't want the Feds getting involved, why did you blow up a house? In case no one has informed you, since at least the year 2001 anything involving explosives brings about seventeen different federal agencies to town and the umbrella of the Patriot Act gives them unlimited authority to crawl up your ass while carrying said umbrella. Also FWIW, the first season of Daredevil had an identical scene except the Kingpin blew up several city blocks instead of one tiny shotgun house that you probably could have knocked over with a fart. I know grief affects us all in its own way but Adam pushing his buddy for thinking out loud about their unusually young teacher was silly. As if the dude would actually send her a dick pic. At the very least he'd get expelled for it. And worst case scenario, the teacher would actually grade it and show it to class as an example of poor form. I was hoping we'd see more of Kofi and that his family would actually be okay but I guess this isn't their story. It would be more interesting seeing Kofi trying to get himself out of this weird war between all these fucked up white people but he just gets to be collateral damage instead. It was nice to see Baxter finally exhibiting some signs of personality when he had his little fit about the gazpacho (a new thing to me, why would anyone do such a thing to themselves?) and then had a good laugh with his daughter about it. Speaking of Baxter's daughter, what are the odds she'll end up dating Adam? That would be kind of ridiculous but at this point why not? A plague on both their houses.

I'm not particularly invested in the DC universe so I thought the movie was alright. But it should be noted that I stopped watching the first one about half an hour in because it was boring. The worst aspect is that old trope of Hollywood where sexual assault is okay as long as the person consents after the fact. We see that one guy get turned into Chris Pine and then he goes on vacation for a while as Chris drives his body. WW and Chris Pine get it on (which raises a whole other set of questions but I'll keep it PG here) and then once the original guy has his body back we see him having some low-key flirtation with WW that tells us if he knew he had already slept with her he wouldn't mind. And that is not how it works. I was confused by WW's ability to fly. She's very acrobatic and uses momentum to get around as if she can fly but later on in the movie she just figures out how to actually fly based on the insightful instructions of "it's not that hard, there's air and wind and stuff..." Also, I am doubtful that a WWI era pilot would be able to jump into a modern jet and get it off the ground. I am very doubtful that a jet (that was parked at a museum no less) would have the fuel capacity to go from Washington DC to Egypt. So Max Lord was the only one who wished for more wishes? I feel like a world where any wish could come true would be full of wiseguys trying to game the system so Max would have had some competition there. Also, no ridiculous wishes from kids? I wish the ocean was chocolate. I wish it rained M&Ms all day. I wish unicorns were real and were all over the place. They could have gotten pretty whimsical with the kind of things people were wishing for. There was also an early rule established about each person only getting one wish but WW and Barbara both had exceptions to that. Maybe it was because they originally wished on the rock so Max could still grant them a wish as well but they never bothered explaining how it was supposed to work. I really liked the chase in Egypt. That was nicely done and served as a good showcase for how WW is very powerful but that doesn't mean every conflict is going to be easy for her. The moment where she was stuck between the two APCs reminded me of Captain America trying to keep a helicopter from taking off in Winter Soldier.

I was joking but the captain's chair should definitely have a function like that. Discovery seems to lack an intruder alert system altogether which I noted all the way back in Season 1 when Harry Mudd managed to destroy the ship forty times over. Now Disco has the sphere data AI and 32nd century upgrades and still no ability to tell when someone is onboard who shouldn't be.

I thought perhaps there would be a description of the upcoming season on there and sure enough: "Johnny Lawrence wins at life and gets all the hot babes and Daniel loses everything. It's the feel good story of the year. Zebra rocks!"

Actual cause of The Burn: Tilly dropping some Freud on Osyyra. Tilly also did one thing that makes me think she'll be a great captain: she was immediately suspicious of the other "Starfleet" ship despite it having the right codes. I guess that mind control hat they used on Stamets is one of a kind. Otherwise it would be handy to use those on planets where revolts are an issue, right? Good use of Adira here, they actually get to do something for a change. Also good to see that in the future, talking to yourself is not considered at all weird. Weird editing with Book returning to the ship. There's a voiceover between Saru and Burnham to say his injuries have been treated and I assumed that this was done to avoid filming a trip to sickbay. But we end up in sickbay a little later anyhow where we repeat the same conversation except we now include Grudge. I also found it strange that Book was asking Dr. Ididn'tcatchhername if she'd mind looking at Grudge's paw as if she would be doing him a favor. Does no one on this ship like cats? I would think this would play out the other way around: the doctors and nurses would shove Book off to the side like "yeah, he'll be fine, let me see that cat." Weird Treknology: when Saru has his appearance changed by the holodeck, it apparently somehow changes his feet too. I am under the impression that Kelpians have a naturally raised heel but the holodeck somehow fixes this so that Saru perceives himself to be flat-footed. It could just be that Saru wears funky boots but if not, that's a weird holodeck ability. Speaking of Saru's appearance change, Doug Jones must have been so happy to be out of that makeup for a day! That little nub on the underside of the armrest? It was supposed to be the ship's intruder alert system.