sjohnson

Amy is coming all the way back? She's the real first one? MP wants a second rising for her brother to come back? Kieran's family is rejecting him now? I can't tell if the plot is exploding in a grand finale, like fireworks, or if it's just falling apart. What is this show about?

Jared did it in my opinion is BS. Since this dominated the entire season, the entire season is permeated with it. I think it's the whole story that matters and exciting hints and teases and sensational scenes along the way don't count for much when the ending contradicts it all. Maybe the people who love The Americans are responding to something other than a plot where the characters do things because of who they are, make meaningful choices to achieve what they want.

Was it certain that Ryan Robbins' character (forgot his name already!) didn't miss? Or that one of those several time signatures yet another party who changed the timeline so that there were two Kiera's killed? The hints that he comes from a later time when the GCC world has met its inevitable doom hints that they're working toward a new minimal program for Liber8 to sign on to, survival instead of a free society. Pesky and possibly embarrassing positions on freedom can disappear in the wash that way. The momentary adrenaline boost with the time hijinks do tend to let us forget whether there's progress on the real drama. Multiplying protagonists can stall characters actually troubling to decide what they want to do in regards to creating the GCC world. Second Alec approaching Julian is the first sign that he hasn't already defaulted to corporatism. So it was a lot more interesting.

Frankenstein vs. the Wolfman was the model, so it seems inevitable to me that it's going to finish with Ethan vs. Caliban. I'm not at all sure Dracula isn't waiting for next season. My guess we will never see Ethan and Dorian alone together in another scene. This isn't the 1890s any more. Having Dorian Gray turn into a monster in his portrait because of sexual immorality would be pretty lame. If the portrait revealed a hermaphrodite it could still be sexually transgressive. But, this Dorian is being played as very old (a la Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger.) So if there's a reveal of the portrait could just show someone old? Or, since our awareness of mortality is so deeply part of our identity, someone non-human? A dark angel of sorts? PS Took the trouble to google...It's really Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. My bad.

Absinthe was supposed to hallucinogenic as well as intoxicating. It appears that if it was it was because of additives, not the absinthe itself. Absinthe was flavored by grand wormwood. The episode had two plants, the wormwood and the nightshade.

"Whose pack?" Dracula's pack, until Ethan cowed the alpha. Zoos don't ordinarily let wolfpacks patrol the grounds, so I'm certain that Dracula let them loose as part of the trap. What I can't understand is how he could count on just a pack of wolves to kill all Vanessa's protectors. But I think he'd need Ethan's cooperation to, so to speak, de-fang the pack so that the troupe could seize the real trap: Fenton, who would let Dracula into Murray's mansion. Overcoming the fake menace of the wolf pack would make it more convincing.

Since apparently Dracula was offering Fenton as a kind of Trojan Horse, his wolf pack would have prevented them from taking the bait home with them if it weren't for Ethan. The implication is that the wolf pack was just there to make it look convincing but a fake threat since he knew Ethan would take over. I would think if the trap were simply to take Vanessa after killing the rest, Dracula would have been there to see it done properly. And there would have been no need for Fenton at all.

Re Cal's niceness: Daniel's appearance was in my opinion an extraordinarily powerful justification for feeling a need to protect his daughter and her mother. Leekie ordering the fire makes a problem for the loss of the information (what Swan Man had in the box.) They would have gotten it first, then torched the place. That's why I had convinced myself that Maggie Chen did it (and Beth found out and that was why she killed Chen.) Cosima is making an obvious mistake i think in not bringing in Scott.

Philip's story was interesting but I felt a little disconnected because I couldn't quite buy it. The nondiscovery of the escape was also baffling. I'm not seeing how the UVF story is fitting in. What's-her-name's PTSD and the older lover story don't gel together for me and it doesn't seem like she belongs to the family either. MP at the graveyard was a long overdue hint as to what this series is about. Not just plot wise, but thematically, I mean.

I always preferred the helping stories to the chase arc. This was all chase so it was rather flat and unappealing. The way they left the Channing story hanging in air (well, literally speaking, waiting to hang in air in the chopper,) was pretty revealing. And if Bo and Tate did succeed in persuading Skouras someone else would take his place, and it wouldn't solve any problems for Tate (and ergo, Bo.) I like the actors, and so I watch, but I think even the show knows, on some level, that this is just an excuse for FX. TV really has trouble competing with movies for FX.

I think it was back in the first episode where the women talking about the murders and curse the murderer were looking directly into the camera...which was showing us Chandler's viewpoint. The victims weren't whores (which the show even pointed out later,) so that ruled out the Ripper. I think they've been pretty upfront about Chandler=Larry Talbot. This show is basically a takeoff on Universal's Frankenstein versus the Wolfman/House of Frankenstein/House of Dracula etc. (Purists please don't hate on me for not knowing the series by heart!) So I've been back and forth with myself about investing. But I have to say that this episode has gotten me to buy in. The play in a play worked, both to highlight Billiie Piper (who showed me what Chandler is with her for,) and the meta compare/contrast of grand guignol and the horror of the ratting bets. I hadn't thought of the Bride but agree that's where this is going. Dorian Gray's realization that he couldn't expect Chandler to be honest about knowing Wagner and his toast to Vanessa confirmed an awareness and interest in him for other people, not just boring self-absorption. His candid yet perfectly deceptive claim that his mask is human was especially striking. To me, now it seems like Gray is not just some pretty actor the camera and script insist is astonishingly sexy. Josh Hartnett is just as pretty, after all. This episode sold me on the idea that whatever's on the outside, what's on the inside is something else, and it's not us. It's on screen that Gray knows there's something amazing and eerie about Vanessa, but does he also realize this about Ethan? The Dorian/Ethan hookup is not quite as bold as it seems. They are after all shipping the two prettiest actors. They are deliberately diminishing Eva Green's looks with the Victorian clothing and hair styles. It's true there's only so much they can do without putting monster makeup on a woman who looks like her. The surprise of Dorian/Ethan helped make up for not knowing if it's supposed to be simple lust, Ethan's anger over Brona or Ethan realizing this is another soul who doesn't fit in with humanity? Little Lucy at the church is far too young for the canonical Lucy Westenra, who after all had three lovers (that's how she contracted syphilis, er, vampirism.) Vanessa appears to be genuinely interested in Dorian, but however will she respond to a discovery that Dorian's vice versa is not as unilateral as she might wish? Also, will her psychic powers work on Ethan? Or does she already suspect something about him? And that's why no one troubled themselves about his wolf powers? Which brings us to the really big moment, in the plot sense, Dracula's appearance. Going with Murnau instead of Browning is fine. But having the simple presence of the cross save Murray? As pointed out, Frankenstein tried bravely enough, but he was utterly useless. The thing is, the discovery that Fenton was a plant to open the mansion to Dracula suggests that Chandler is in cahoots. What are they going to do about that? Can it be true? Or is this just a plotting error. It's awfully damn early for holes like this to open up.

To me, whenever someone starts talking about someone else's whining, they're basically assuming that anyone who objects to something they like is an asshole just for objecting, with overtones of contempt for the objector's powerlessness. To me, real whining is badgering, stalling, nagging with a literal whine, a sound vaguely like a saw cutting wood. Children whine often, adults rarely do...except when someone pissed at an adult's objections wants to be insulting. Was Ethan whining? I don't think so.