PinkRibbons

We have a return date, just announced on facebook: Sunday, January 9, 2022, right after NFL.

Considering I was coming here to complain that this show has a serious problem with understanding what the interesting story is and sticking to it, I'm not that surprised. I hope that if the show is rescued they realize how bad it's gotten and tighten the hell out of the piece, cut down the cast and storylines. As far as I'm concerned, the story is Yorrick, Allison and 355. Maybe some of the Hero stuff, but not whole episodes. And the white house/pentagon shit just needs to stop. It's just not interesting.

I'm not crying, you're crying! No, I'm a bit weepy. We lost my grandmother a few months ago, and stories about wonderful older people are hitting harder. Also I am so glad to have a round-a-bout explanation for why Beef of all people would marry a trainwreck like Kathleen: dude was marrying someone just like his parents. Yet another bit of good worldbuilding (although I could swear Beef had another brother, the one who traded the avocados to Wolf. Then again, he could just be one of their dad's friends that the kids call Uncle).

I loved the world building of Judy and Ham having taken up places as Moon's parents, because of course Kathleen would dump her youngest on her next two youngest. Beef is a great father but he probably spent a good amount of Moon's life so far distraught over Kathleen leaving, and I suspect Wolf handled the worst of Beef's emotional breakdown. It makes even more sense that Ham and Judy would cover as parents for Moon during that time. Also Bette Davis Eyes is an amazing song for any occasion.

As the Gayle to my sister's Linda, I say with some authority that she has got to stop that older and uglier shit. And Linda should be shutting it down more actively. If you are adult sisters, you don't get to insult each other without it clearly being humorous, and Gayle is not doing that. I know Linda doesn't seem to mind, but it really got on my nerves this episode. I really want to know how Louise got the hands so right as the Pale Man. God that's unsettling.

That was infuriating.

Yes!!! And as this screencap from hulu hopefully shows, they aren't the only returning faces! (Sorry about the incredibly bad quality, the resizing really did a number on it). I can spot Gandolf (aka Josh, Lana's grad school TA) from Pipeline Fever just behind Rhona, and the sexy Asian twins from Tragical History are in the way back. *SHRIEK* CHARLES AND RUDY IN THE SECOND ROW FROM THE FRONT! And is that possibly Ramon right behind them? I feel like I should recognize the two blonde people in the middle rows...

I think 355 is interesting in that a very real part of her doesn't actually know what she's supposed to be doing. She doesn't have her chain of command, her situation is completely unprecedented, and she hasn't figured out that she can't expect civilians to act like subordinates. I know Yorick is trying her last nerve, but he's traumatized and scared and unlike her, he has not been trained to compartmentalize all that. Plus her manner doesn't really make her all that trustworthy, which kind of explains why Yorick isn't keen to follow her every command. She needs to try to connect to him on a human level and stop treating him as a macguffin she has to tote around. We are talking BILLIONS of bodies. Imagine how damaging that kind of mass cremation could be to the environment, the air quality. Not to mention, most people aren't well-versed in proper cremation. It looks like the armed forces have been mobilized, they're just on priority to helping the living in immediate danger (bar the forces sent to protect antiquities at Harvard, which is really rather insane). They have to keep people fed and sheltered and healthy before they can turn their attention to anything else. My parents are Soviet ex-pats, and when the Empire collapsed, the biggest issue was supplies being cut off from what was once a functioning network. The network in Y-World is gone. Supplies and utilities are in different parts of the country, different parts of the world even. You can't get medicine or clean water or even power to where it's supposed to be because your route is clogged with dead bodies in cars, or a plane has fallen onto a building and severed every power line in the area. The number of people with the skills to fix these issues have been severely pared down, and almost everyone is traumatized and grieving. Y-World is in immediate survival mode, they can't get to practicalities all at once, no matter how necessary. I bring up the Soviet Union's collapse because my aunt and her family were in Russia at the time and the only thing that happened was that a bunch of territories decided to split off from each other. We were sending food and items to barter with for two years. We barely could contact them because the phone system was so messed up. Even with our help the family barely made it through and they still came out of the ordeal malnourished and permanently scarred.

Is it weird that I find Jess's bangs the most galling thing about finding her? Like, Murphy has been running around desperately trying to find her, and she knew Murphy had been about to visit her at the hospital when she left. So she knows Murphy would be worried about her. So she got a job somewhere out of state and bangs. The. Fuck. Jess. Josh, cram the shit about putting Murphy away for life. You have no heroin, no murder weapon, a person no jury will believe could have actually intentionally shot to kill (I mean exactly how was she supposed to aim?) and buried someone without accomplices - who themselves have nothing but circumstantial evidence against, oh, and a video of the person who was murdered marching out with a gun TO KILL YOUR SUSPECT. That video is a gift-wrapped piece for the defense. Even if somehow they proved Murphy killed Nia, the jury sees that tape and immediately says self-defense.

I know they didn't want to mess with Judy's design and I don't know if "crazy teeth" are a real thing, but a friend of mine had to have her braces put back on for six months and they HAD to be on at coincidentally exactly during the time of her wedding. She was still a gorgeous bride but she's got her mouth closed in all the photos, which is a shame, her smile is lovely. Pace Yourself was my favorite song, definitely.

I think it's safe to say that if the Culper Ring does exist, any of us even hearing or knowing anything about it would mean it's a failure and can't work.

Good God, Linda. That was a messed-up series of events to go through in childhood. Also bless her wanting to hit Jocelyn and Tammy with part of her car. I do like the girl diversity, but they're forgetting that Louise likes something traditionally super girly that Tina of all people doesn't: dolls (and plushies). As a doll person myself who took years to master extremely simple makeup for my own face, I can definitely attest to the fact that you don't have to like every girly thing to be a girl. (Seriously though, makeup? That's not something you can just do because you're girly, you have to be an artist to match those frikkin youtubers. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DRAW PERFECT EYELINER WHEN I CAN BARELY DRAW A STICK FIGURE?! I'm over 30, it's officially too late for me to suddenly develop the talent.)

I actually thought Reiko sounded a lot like Cheryl, to the point I actually looked her VA up. It's Karen Fukuhara, but I thought since Judy Greer has done the occasional extra voice on the show (Framboise, for example. She's actually the voice of Mitsuko, Krieger's holographic girlfriend too), while watching I thought maybe they'd want to make Reiko reoccurring and it's easiest to use an actor from the established cast instead of a guest star for that. But Dingo being very dead takes that reason out. I definitely think Judy Greer and Karen Fukuhara have a similar vocal tone.

No, that's Chloe's backstory. Murphy had a degenerative eye condition, and she spent years waiting to go fully blind, which she did in her teens. Before that she was a foster child, having been given up by her biological parent(s) early in her life. Not quite sure when she was adopted, but from what she said to Trey it sounds like she was in the system a while, at least long enough to remember it.

A lot of this episode was Fuck Yeah Murphy, starting from making her way after Felix kidnapped and abandoned her to jumping out from under the cops' noses again. The ineptitude of the cops on this show actually makes one finding her while on the way to do something unrelated that is incredibly stupid and unprofessional almost make sense. Also Murphy's mother can never again high-road her for any reason at all, she sold her out to the cops. Yeah, death row (which is what the crazy-ass law on this show seems to be sending Murphy to) is better than being dead? How is that her decision to make? Plus, Sam will definitely kill Murphy if they get locked up together thanks to Felix, so good going Mom. As someone who was homeschooled I feel I should pipe up that wanting to keep your children under draconian guard is actually not the goal for almost anyone. My own mother encouraged me to get outside into the world while the other kids my age were in school. My best friend and I developed a reputation for being those weird kids getting child tickets to the movies in the middle of a weekday, mapped out the neighborhood on our bikes. We learned how to budget our own money at the local farmer's market, which we walked to ourselves. Our adults were relatively assured of where we were at any particular moment, (no cell phones back then) but we were trusted to have decent judgement, and when you're trusted like that you tend to want to live up to it. I think the worst we ever did was check out smutty books from the library.

I can't defend Murphy on what she said to Felix, it was shitty af. But he doesn't get to have it both ways - use her blindness to trick her and then abandoning her where she has almost no idea where she is. Also, her attacking his puppy dog crush on her? Grow up dude, you just said her friend is dead. And how is that a foregone conclusion? Any druglords that might have been after Jess are dead themselves. And how did neither of them clock the fact that the mother was shocked to hear that Jennifer had bought a new identity and the uncle didn't even react? Oh, and speaking of things that don't get to go both ways: Felix and Max are circumstantial, but Murphy is in for a life sentence? The cops have blood and a button. That's it. She hasn't made a formal confession. They still can't do anything but place her at Nia's gravesite. Plus she majorly helped Gene out by giving him the story about Tyson, and now he's all about forgetting it and arresting her just to get in good with Josh, Murphy's embittered ex whose boner for her arrest is way too personal and a solid reason for the defense to have his findings excluded? (I am also a proud owner of a Law and Order Law Degree, with a minor in Boston Legal.) Okay, the deal wasn't made with an attorney present and that's bad, although without her attorney everything done in that police station seems suspect. They have her on aiding in the improper disposal of a body and escaping police custody, and on that second one I'd avoid prosecuting considering it makes the police look SO. BAD. Like, hilariously so. I love Darnell. Also are there literally any cops in that precinct with sense.

Leslie had a point about Murphy, (although I wish they would have pointed out that for Murphy, her phone is almost an indispensable to her as her cane, and even with no service, being without it is a genuine reason for her to go into an anxiety spiral) but honestly Murphy's dead-on that Leslie is a bitch. The whole thing with the newspapers? How insanely easy would it have been for her and their mother to fib and give them to Felix as his inheritance? That's so inconsiderate it's breathtaking, as is the fact that she acts like it's ridiculous that he gets upset over it. I liked that Murphy got a dig in about searching for things in the dark. I'm just hating Leslie so much over how inconsiderate she is to Felix that I'm strongly rooting against her. Her saying that Murphy has a need for control? Murphy already has a fraction of the control that a non-disabled person would have over their life. I don't really blame her for wanting as much as possible. Max has also been getting on my nerves ever since he told Trey that Murphy was just using him. He seems to need to create a narrative for Murphy that vilifies her. She's a sexual user - oh, she's also a chaos-magnet who's too much like his mom! She's not the one who willingly used their business money to launder drug money, Max. And when Murphy broke up with him at the end of last season, she was at least mature enough to say they brought out the worst in each other, which they do. Max wants to put everything wrong with the relationship onto her. It's really sad that Felix keeps getting the constant signal that he's less-than, but I don't like him and Murphy as a romantic or sexual relationship. She uses sex as a comforting mechanism and he doesn't seem able to separate sex and romance. They do make a sweet pair of friends though, when they actually spend time together not arguing.

The call came from Jess's alias, so it probably was her on the phone, but yeah, she definitely wouldn't be stupid enough to check into a hotel under her own name. I mean even the fixer lady who's recycling identities shouldn't be that incompetent; Jess is still a fugitive actively on the radar. It makes absolutely no sense that she'd resell an identity with the cops on its trail. That's just not how you run a business, it's selling faulty wares. Even if your career is illegal, you don't keep a client base by letting people down.

Does anyone else get the feeling that Josh was unreasonably set on arresting Murphy even before she got him fired? Like he comes to her house for sex - as part of her attempt to have a genuine relationship with him, and he just happened to spot a picture of Max. He starts basically interrogating her, refuses to listen to any attempts she tries to makes at communication*, assumes she killed Nia and then has the audacity to demand she give him a phone to call the police on her. Frankly his attitude strikes me as someone who much more than the justice he claims to want really just wants one last big case under his belt. *This is one of the stupidest things he does, now I think of it, because if he hadn't launched directly into "I WILL TAKE YOU DOWN" and listened to her, he might have gotten a full confession just listening to Murphy trying to reason away her actions. He acts like Murphy used and abused him (immediately assuming she slept with him for information), but I'm getting the feeling now that it's more like he's using her to fulfill his fantasy of going out with a bang. He never even tried extending some compassion to her before she got him fired, her doing so just made him go from determined to fanatical about putting her away. She hurt his ego and he can't forgive that.

Adding to ridiculousness: Murphy's blood near Nia's body is circumstantial evidence that she was involved in hiding said body. It does absolutely nothing to put her away "for the rest of her life" because it says nothing about actively killing Nia. (And uh, Jess was the one who pulled the trigger in a clear Defense of Others scenario. Murphy literally didn't kill Nia. Nia beat the shit out of her, which come to think of it explains her blood being near Nia. GET A COMPETENT LAWYER WTF.) Also? Hospital beds have alarms that go off if patients get out. A LOT of people in a compromised mental state (dementia, severe head trauma, etc) would be walking around hospitals very confused if nurses didn't have that particular device to warn them. Darnell talked to Jess, meaning she should have known Murphy and Felix were coming for her. Right? She has ditched them before. I mean her shooting Nia was her heroic return from dumping this whole mess onto Murphy &co and then leaving with her girlfriend to start a new life.

I nearly burst into tears during Tuca's imaginespot when Bertie pulled her away from Kara so she could be herself. God Kara is The Worst. And she's shitty in such a perfectly female passive-aggressive way, (not a knock against my fellow females, just props to the writers on her being so real I wanted to punch her).

So, without the heroin, and considering the pretty circumstantial evidence of the button at Nia's burial site, is there really a case against the gang left? Felix comes from an extremely wealthy family; I bet they could get a lawyer who would probably collapse the case. Just hope these idiots keep their mouths shut when under interrogation.

Nominated for an Emmy! And they went with Worms of In-Rear-Ment, which...is an interesting choice, I have to say. I think the safest choice would have been Bob Belcher and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Kids. Worms is still very funny, I just wonder if they may have wasted a chance in a year when Rick and Morty weren't in the race and Bojack is over.

The start was always Felix and Jess taking that money. It's pissed me off that no one likes to remember that part and the show's turned into Everything's Murphy's Fuck-Up. All she tried to do is find out who murdered Tyler and she did, she even managed to catch his killer (for all the good it did). She happened to brush up against Nia's operation but ultimately? The getting involved in drug trafficking was entirely Felix and Jess thinking "free money!", stealing from Nia and screwing Max over in the process. Murphy has made a ton of bad calls, but she didn't really start all this. I knew Jess was a dream but I thought Dream!Jess had a lot of nerve getting angry at Murphy for falling asleep. Murphy sensing something was wrong and trying to find her way through a foreign country, ultimately collapsing from exhaustion in the middle of nowhere is not being selfish. She's being too hard on herself through Dream!Jess. Not to mention she couldn't stay at the depot too long, a point of international transit is not the best place for a wanted fugitive to hang around.

I've always felt that Murphy was a little too much of a question mark, because we never really been told how she got to where she is. By the time the show starts she's been fully blind for at least a decade, which hasn't stopped other blind people from living full lives. I always wondered if her parents set her up to fail by overly sheltering her. So actually the scene with her Mom not wanting her to go to jail actually made more sense with my headcanon, because aside from the "your child will be safer in jail" thing never sounding right, her mom is probably thinking that her blind child is not going to be safer in jail with her disability. Murphy panicked without Jess because she's so used to having someone take care of her. I really wonder if she's just a victim of being too sheltered in regards to her disability. But also they've definitely nerfed her since the pilot - remember how much she avoided using Pretzel? I loved that scene where she got thrown out of a guy's apartment without her cane and only then was everything absolutely terrifying. She used to be more independent and skillful. I mean, wasn't that the whole reason Jess lo-jacked her phone?