Lazlo

I'm not sure that's true though. I'm looking at the Best Picture wins since 2000 on Wikipedia and the Oscars actually don't seem to like romance that much - I'd only qualify Slumdog Millionaire, The Artist and maybe A Beautiful Mind as being romantic relationship movies, and that last one is pushing it. That is 3 films out of 17. Nor do they seem fond of musicals: Moulin Rouge!, Ray and Les Misérables all lost out with only Chicago winning best picture (and if you find La La Land to be cynical and bitter...) Even films about Hollywood/artists don't do all that well. I can only see Birdman and The Artist doing well there. Worst of all La La Land is popular with cinema goers which more often than not seems to be a kiss of death from the academy.

I loved La La Land and was rooting for it but this made me laugh too! I am puzzled by the narrative that seems to be developing in the media that Moonlight winning was some David over Goliath victory. La La Land is a crowd pleasing frothy romantic comedy musical, Moonlight is a downbeat character study about serious issues. I don't think either film can (fairly) be called 'Oscar bait' but if either could, well, it wouldn't be La La Land.

While I do think the movie is over hyped, that part was pretty believable in a cringingly awkward 'trying to bond with your daughter's boyfriend' sort of way. I had much greater problems with the brother character being presented as a cartoonish, drunken banjo playing(!) hillbilly when the family were wealthy educated liberals.

I think it would be more two coming out stories in close succession that is a bigger factor than having two same sex couples. The show spent quite a lot of time and 'big moments' on Alex coming terms with who she is and entering a relationship. Doing that again almost immediately after would feel like a narrative retread. That said as I've said before I think the Lena/Kara vibes are more because the show is very reluctant to put Lena in scenes with any character other than her own mother or Kara. If Katie McGrath ever interacted with David Harewood, Jeremy Jordan or Mechad Brooks I'm sure there would shipping vibes pretty much straight away.

The problem is that the person who would be most emotionally invested in that storyline - Alex - has spent almost the entire season in a story-arch that is also emotionally heavy but is completely unrelated.

Thank God. I thought I was the only one who felt that way. I found Alex's coming out story moving and powerful, but when she's actually with Maggie she seems more like a teenager (and a young teenager at that) than a supposedly nearly thirty year old secret agent/scientist. I understand that this is all somewhat new to her, but Alex definitely seems far less emotionally mature than she should be. I agree Winn's date had a very Buffyverse-look. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if James is gone altogether sooner rather than later. He feels very disconnected from the DEO arc and the CatCo scenes are so infrequent you'd be forgiven for forgetting Kara has another job altogether.

Me too. I'm honestly surprised they don't; Katie McGrath could have onscreen chemistry with a rock and fellow genius Winn is surely the obvious candidate - I don't even mean in a romantic relationship sort of way, but a 'hey we both have supervillians in the family' at least makes a clear icebreaker..

As kariyaki said much more Brenda Strong being really tall. I knew Katie McGrath in college and while that was a billion years ago unless she's shrunk in the last fifteen years or so she's average height, maybe on the shorter side of average but not someone you'd describe as short. I guess I was wrong about Lena being 'adopted' as an excuse for any accent lapses since 'Young Lena' was obviously not Irish. That said I don't know why they made Lena so young. Based on the maths and the age of 'Young Lena' Lena must only be about 24 when her actress is nearly a full decade older. I do kind of wish we'd get to see Lena hang out with someone other than Kara (not that they don't have great scenes together) or Lillian.

I like this show more than most here but sending Grace insane and her father a murderer was dark for this show (I know it seems odd label a show about serial killers going darker but there you go.) Kind of weird Brock is now our viewpoint character. Not bad weird - JS is good - but this is the second episode in a row we've seen things mostly from his perspective.

I think the real world reason Lena is adopted is to explain away her accent. I love Katie McGrath but fake accents aren't her strong point (unless she is pretending to be British) so leaving her as vaguely 'adopted' allows the show to handwave her slips back into Irish. Honestly I'm still a bit surprised they didn't let her just use her real accent and explain she spent her childhood in a European boarding school. There were a lot of things I liked here but honestly the pacing issues were terrible. We really should have had a scene of Lena and Supergirl talking after the fake virus revelation. What bothered me more though is Maggie's non-reaction to the deaths of all the aliens in the bar, given how supposedly passionate she was about them. I understand that being shot must be very traumatic, but as a cop she must have been familiar with danger by now and it is hard to imagine this is the first time she has been hurt while in a relationship. I would think that the slaughter of the people she was protecting and advocating for, at least some of whom were surely her friends would have more of an emotional impact.

I like Alex as much as anyone but sometimes I get the feeling she's very much not someone I'd want to work for. Okay I laughed at her slapping Winn but objectively speaking slamming a subordinate into a wall, threatening them and then hitting them is not excellent behaviour (does the D.E.O have a HR department?) I probably wouldn't mind so much if she had done the same thing to Jimmy since he was the one who emotionally blackmailed Winn into helping out his cape envy to begin with.

I really like this show but I agree with some of the criticism: it is ridiculously preachy at times (and I say that as someone who is worried about climate change) and I do think Kara has been neglected too much in the heavy emotional arcs. I like Alex and CL handles the material well, but I do think her show stealing owes more to having the meatiest storyline than any significant talent gap in the cast. I have to admit I never bought Lena as gay (yes she flirts with Kara but Katie McGrath did that with everyone on Merlin) but you guys have sort of convinced me we are heading for a Lena/Alex hookup after all, what with the Maggie swerve. As for James and his cape envy, I don't know whether we are intended to find his as unsympathetic as I do now, but I suspect it won't end well even in-universe.

I guess this is a minority opinion but I found Ivy as comic relief airhead fairly amusing and certainly a lot less creepy than Ivy as femme fatale. I'm not sure she's that much dumber really; she always struck me as someone completely dependent on Selina's smarts (also Camren Bicondova does frustration really well).

I agree. The only other person we've really seen Lena interact with on a one to one level besides Kara is Winn and there was a definite hint of chemistry there too. Besides she's Katie McGrath and as AudienceofOne noted there is a reason she was universally shipped on Merlin! I know this a sensitive area and I have no personal experience in this but isn't Alex a little old to only now realise she's a lesbian given she is in her late 20s? If she were from a very conservative family I could see it but from everything we've seen the Danvers are pretty progressive types and Alex herself had a pretty wild party girl phase. It seems strange that she never would have experimented. I wouldn't have any issues if the show said she was bi but that doesn't seem to be the direction they are going in.

"You're Fired" is very hit or miss. The current host, comedian Rhod Gilbert is very funny but I'm not sure the show plays to his strengths (he is very much an 'exasperation' type comic and "You're Fired" is usually quite gentle with the firees.) Sometimes though it is worth it for the insights into the firees - Natalie revealing she had never even watched the show for instance!

I can accept that and she should be a bit more savvy compared to her earlier self, an admittedly not hard target to reach. But it just seems a bit too much, especially as the show seems to be selling as her the brains of the pair between her and Tabitha, despite being crazy. It really does seem like she went through a substantial offscreen leap in IQ somewhere along the way.

I'm not sure how consistently doing stupid things is functionally different from simply being stupid. Indeed, as I noted before, the show deliberately drew attention to Barbara's lack of smarts - we, the audience, are clearly meant to agree with Selina's mocking of Barbara as essentially a loser and that her vision of herself as a street smart femme fatale is fantasy (in case it needs reminding at this point in the show Babs is more or less having her life run by two street girls less than half her age.) Even with that said though the difference is not even that Barbara has become smarter than she was, it is that she has become smart. Figuring out Butch's plan on a dime wasn't due to her own particular neuroses. She simply randomly became a genius.

That was a fun episode. I loved seeing the puppy (kitten?) love between Bruce and Selina. Poor kids, they'll be dancing that way for over a decade if the comics are any indication. I'm not sure what is going on with Ed and Oswald. My gaydar is non existent so if I thought that was ridiculously overt sexual tension I've no idea what someone who can actually read subtext would think. I know DC Comics has reconnected several characters into being bisexual recently (Catwoman, Wonder Woman and Black Canary if I recall correctly) but I don't think they've done it with male characters, so I don't know if the romance is going to turn overt or not. I still don't quite understand where Barbara suddenly got all her brains from. In Season One 'sane' Barbara was an idiot (we even had a scene where Selina mocks her to her face about her supposed manipulative qualities) and crazy Barbara was more crazy than smart. When did Babs become an ace sleuth who can instantly see through lies and figures out what Butch was doing long before Penguin even comes close?

Valerie really is ridiculously gorgeous and I have always had a crush on Lois Lane as a character (yes I know Vicki Vale has had an independent existence for decades but for all intents and purposes Jamie Chung is playing Lois Lane.) This might be unpopular but I think the show played Barbara as unrealistically clever this episode, with her expert insight into Butch's plan. She is crazy and dangerous but I always felt the show played her as someone who thinks she is much smarter than she actually is - remember her conversation with Selina in Season One about beauty being a weapon: Barbara: Your appearance can be a weapon. As powerful as any knife or gun. Selina: What good's it done you? The point of that I thought was not to show the uselessness of knowing how to manipulate other people - Selina is destined to become a femme fatale after all - but that Barbara specifically couldn't really back up her own ego. It seems a bit of a leap to suddenly buy her as a genius.

Oh God yes. I understand why Joss felt that Giles was the father figure in story terms but it really was poorly handled by the show and it doesn't help that the Buffyverse is flooded with awful fathers anyway so turning Hank into such a deadbeat felt like overkill. I might not have had such a problem with it if he had been treated as off the grid since day one but we saw Hank onscreen and he was a seemingly an okay guy who was worried about his daughter. I never thought about the First adopting the guise of Kendra but yes that does seem like a missed opportunity.

I do read the comics and they sort of fudge the aging issue - everyone is clearly several years older than they were at the end of Season 7 and the technology and culture are basically modern (Andrew uses Siri) but not as old as if they had aged in real time. It's probably most notable with Dawn who should be 30 years old (or at least have the memories and life experiences of a 30 year old) but is definitely written about ten years younger. For the most part I like the comics but they do give me the feeling the creators would have a difficult time writing a late 30-something Buffy. An entirely new series set in the Buffyverse might be interesting though. It has a rich mythology to mine.

Okay, that's a new one, heh. Basically Katie's natural accent (which she used on Merlin) is Wicklow/South Dublin posh ('Dartspeak' - named after the DART, the local light rail system) - a very typical accent for upper middle class young Irish people in and around Dublin. Andrew Scott (Moriarty in Sherlock) and Domhnall Gleeson have very similar natural accents. Since Merlin, though she's mostly used Received Pronunciation as most of her characters have been English (ie. Jurassic World and Dracula). She has played actual Americans in Slasher and a couple of made for TV movies IIRC.

Agreed about the presence, though as I noted earlier I'm biased. :) She does have some issues around accents - she can fake a British accent fine but I've read she had difficulty keeping up an American accent in Slasher. McGrath became an actress unsually late (in her mid-20s) and without any formal training so that isn't really surprising (she's said in interviews that she was working in the costume dept on the Tudors and was asked to try out for a bit part.) I wonder if they'll explain Lena having attended a foreign boarding school just in case.

I went to college with Katie McGrath (though lost touch with her long before she became an actress, let alone famous.) I remember her being very funny and nice in person. Naturally I'm thrilled to see her on my favourite super show, though I think if they were going to have her anyway she would have made a good Siobhan Smythe based on her work as Morgana and actually being Irish. I do like Italia Ricci but guess I'm still a little bitter over Silver Banshee being American.

(Sorry posted in wrong thread.)