Zuleikha

I don't think there is room for Vladim to be involved in jurga parem, though. They would have to change massive things that don't work. Did the show completely forget that Ravka is at war with Shu Han? I haven't read the books in a while, but now I'm doubting myself. Did I make that up? Ravka being at war with Shu Han was still canon last season, right? I hated the ending because it made no sense. All the characters acted like idiots, and it didn't work with what was established. The show rushed too many things and dropped too many things, and I don't know why. What purpose is there in splitting up Inej/Kaz at this point in time? Why rush Jesper's character development in regards to his Durast powers so fast? Why have Nikolai/Alina go through with the marriage at this point in time, when it hardly seems politically necessary any more? Why leave Matthias in Hellgate all season when breaking him out in order to secure Nina's partnership would have been an obvious and better Crows storyline for part 1 than rushing Kaz's war with Pekka Rollins? The other problem with Nikolai/Alina really getting married is that Alina/Mal have no on-screen chemistry but Nikolai/Alina do (although mostly because of the Nikolai actor). Since the show is changing so much from the books, I don't see a reason why they can't change Alina's romance arc.

I am trying so hard not to judge this season on the basis of the books, but it is very hard when the changes end up feeling like an excuse to have the Six of Crows characters where they do not belong. Inej looked cool when she arrived with the sword, but Inej is not an all-purpose martial artist. She's an ex-circus artist who Kaz taught to pick locks so that she could spy for him. Her proficiency with knives is just barely explainable as maybe she also did throwing knife stunts in the circus, but it makes no sense for her to know how to use the sword. Meanwhile, Tolya is an actual trained swordsman. Why the heck does Inej have the sword instead of Tolya? It even makes more sense for the actor skill-sets to have Tolya do the sword scenes! I don't know how the writers conceived the showdown between the amplified grisha and Nikolai's army in their heads, but it did not translate to screen. It looked silly, and we have no reason to care about most of these characters living or dying. I can't even see Kirigan's Grisha as evil given that we know they had nothing to do with Kirigan's plans for the Fold and we saw that they were getting hunted down indiscriminately in the beginning of the show.

Filtered to hell and back, maybe?

I think Raven's first pick was always SK, but I can't remember Raven saying one way or the other either on screen or in interviews.

To me, that conversation was a way for the writers to handwave away how significant these reveals should have been for the characters. I know the show is a cheesy action fantasy, but I think the audience could have handled the occasional in-depth conversation about people's perceptions of their faith and commitments and how they thought the OCS should even continue to be. I don't really understand whether Beatrice left because of faith issues or because Ava functionally encouraged her to go out and experience life/get a girlfriend. It's part of why I think the second half rushed through too much, and the Adriel plot should have carried through season 3 (a little tricky since they didn't know for sure that they would have a season 3).

I thought this season started out very strong, but the second half (a bit after the OCS massacres) seemed very, very rushed. There were so many reveals and turns that I didn't feel either I, or the characters, got to feel the emotional weight of it. I think this plot could have extended for another season easily and had more room to breathe. I also felt there were unnecessary deus ex machina type of things. Why would Adriel have a follower put a divinium cross in Camila so specifically? Why would he do this without any apparent plan for it either? What is the likelihood that he really would leave himself so vulnerable to the divinium tattoos and crosses? Why did no one's faith seem to be meaningfully shaken by learning that everything they believed was false... not just about God, the Catholic Church, Jesus, etc. but also about Areala, Adriel, the Halo, and the origins of the OCS? Lilith's fuck-this-I'm-out reaction was the most reasonable and realistic to me, separate from Lilith's other issues. Beatrice's asskicking is beyond the realm of believability. She's a well-trained human fighter. But her opponents are also sometimes well-trained human fighters. Finally, I wish we had gotten some kind of explanation about Reya, the other side, the demons, and what happened to Lilith. Adriel was pursuing his own agenda, but it also seemed like he wasn't completely full of shit. What if Reya is the worse of the two?

Her mom died when she was 18, IIRC, so yeah, it's the mom's side of the family. We also saw that Zanab's sister is in the UK in the wedding dress episode.

But the Cuties story was already being placed into a context of Cole body shaming her. It was the tangerine thing that proved that Cole got a good edit that left out the ways he was controlling her eating and leading her to restrict her eating. So I don't think it's that clear that Cole was denying that the factual events of Zanab eating two Cuties and him telling her to save her appetite had happened versus Cole meaning that it was ridiculous to use this incident as proof that he bodyshamed her to the point that she developed an eating disorder. I don't remember the "fattening up" incident, but it sounds like it could have been cute and playful rather than serious (at least, I doubt Cole in Malibu was seriously worried that Zanab was making him gain weight!). Zanab is also the one who makes it herself. We saw multiple scenes of them eating together, and Cole never seemed concerned with Zanab's weight or eating. He happily ate cheesecake with her in one scene!

He didn't tell Zanab that out of the blue. She literally asked him to rate her and then followed it up with asking whether he thought any of the other women were 10/10s. Yes, he probably shouldn't have been honest. But Zanab shouldn't have asked! She's a grown woman. She should know better than to ask her fiance questions that she's not willing to hear an honest answer about. Heck, she should be more mature at 31 than to care about being the hottest woman in a room full of hot, beautiful people. Pretty much everything else Cole ever said to her about appearance after that was either a direct compliment or trying to share his POV about why finding Colleen (AND Raven) prettier doesn't reflect on his love for her. The Zanab/Lily comment gets regularly misrepresented somehow as Cole saying he preferred white women, but he was just trying to reassure Zanab that he wasn't upset that she didn't look like his previous girlfriends because he wasn't expecting her to. (although personally, I think Zanab looks more white than non-white, so the whole racial element also mystifies me. I also find the Colleen is more his type weird since I think Zanab and Colleen genuinely look very similar, at least in makeup. I have had trouble identifying which woman is Zanab and which one is Colleen in some of the group photos.) Zanab has also said many thoughtless and mean things to Cole. She had a momentary crack when she was confronted with the montage of her insulting him, but then went right back into her defensive victim mode. But everything she threw at him at the wedding applies to her, too. She insulted and belittled him in many of the scenes we saw.

Another Psychology Today article by the same psychologist who did the analysis of Cole/Zanab's dinner scene. This one is about whether it was ethical for the reunion show to re-air the Colleen/Cole pool scene given the potential issues in the Matt/Colleen relationship. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/love-them-or-leave-them/202211/the-unforgivable-mistake-in-the-love-is-blind-reunion

Cole clearly does not spend as much time in women's focused sites as I do, or he would have armchair diagnosed her as borderline rather than bipolar. I think that moment versus how we saw Zanab present it to Alexa is also a good example of how the other women don't know nearly as much about Cole/Zanab's interactions as they think they do. Zanab made it sound like an out-of-the-blue insult whereas the reality was Cole made a snarky defensive comment in the middle of an argument, and it was very much about him trying to get Zanab to acknowledge how her repeated put-downs were affecting him. Probably not. I don't know if the show said when Zanab's family moved from the UK, but I think it was around middle school. Since Zanab's mom is English, there would be no reason for Zanab to ever switch from "mum" to "mom".

The Cole segments of the reunion were hard to watch. I know we all filter through our own lens, but it's hard for me to understand how anyone could watch through the Cuties scene and think Zanab's version of events is at all related to reality. I hope the other women take some time to really reflect on what they actually know about Cole versus what they only think is true because Zanab told them it was true. I also note that although Raven scolded Cole for not taking accountability (for not reaching out to Zanab after she trashed him at the altar!), they let Zanab skate by without ever acknowledging or taking responsibility for her role in the relationship's failures. I thought Zanab was pretty cruel in the wedding episode, but I thought it was careless cruelty. Watching her in the reunion makes me wonder if she's actually malevolent. The discrepancy between what she said happened in the Cuties scene and what really happened is just on the side of where Zanab could be unaware of how much her own issues are filtering her beliefs about what happened. But she was clearly trashing him to the other women frequently, and that seems more intentional alienation. Also, the bachelor party claim does seem to be completely made up. All of the men supported Cole's claim that there were no women present at the rodeo or saloon, and none of them backed up Zanab's claim that there was a post-saloon hangout. Matt and Colleen actually seemed okay. Colleen was clearly nervous and sensitive about negative responses to her show portrayal, but she and Matt seemed to have loving body language. I think it's also a good sign that they're waiting out their leases. I was on Bartise's side about the blonde woman. Nancy very clearly broke up with him on the wedding day. Rebounds are a thing for a reason. There's no contradiction between him loving Nancy and having been interested/hopeful in continuing to date but then having a rebound fling when Nancy explicitly closed that door. I also don't see any difference between how Bartise handled the marriage rejection and how SK did, but SK didn't get dragged for it simply because Raven responded better.

What Alexa's dad said doesn't seem to have come across very clearly because I see a lot of confusion. But I'm Jewish, so I understood. He was just clarifying for Brennon that their culture is Israeli, and their religion is Judaism because Brennon was mixing it up a bit when trying to talk about blending lives together. The dad was just clarifying that they're not the Ashkenazi American Jewish culture that people know through things like Seinfeld. They are definitely not very religious. If they were religious, there is no way they would have done a wedding that fast and with Brennon's status up in the air. Israelis also tend to split into either very secular or Orthodox. They don't have as many in between denominations as American Judaism has. My guess is that Alexa's family belongs to a reform congregation or possibly no congregation (but I'm pretty sure from some curiosity Googling that they are involved with the Dallas JCC). It was not necessary for him to convert, and there is no way he converted by the wedding date. It would have been literally impossible. But they did have a very Jewish wedding. I was so happy to see it, especially to see them up on the chairs at the reception. I wish the show had given Brennon at least one talking head where he talked about his feelings in depth... my sense is that he is functionally a blank slate in terms of his family having religious traditions, but I'm curious if he felt any pull towards Judaism separate from his connection to Alexa. It's unusual to see Jewishness represented at all on dating shows, much less an interfaith experience with a non-Jewish partner diving so fully into Jewishness.

Cole asked Zanab point blank if she even liked him at the chicken dinner, and Zanab claimed she loved him, definitely wanted to marry him, and was only concerned about whether he was committed to her. And she has the gall to claim that he gaslit her? Cruelty is not empowering. I am glad that Zanab and Cole did not get married because they were clearly wrong for each other. But Zanab is engaging in massive denialism about her own behavior towards Cole if she thinks she was the poor, wronged victim. To me, it seems like Zanab never forgave Cole for going off script that first morning after in Malibu, and she has been blaming him for being his own person rather than the fantasy in her head. I don't think ever really loved him, but she was never willing to be honest with him. Bartise didn't really do anything different than SK, but Nancy's reaction versus Raven's makes it feel like Bartise did. Bartise seemed like he was sincere that he would have liked to continue dating if Nancy hadn't shut him down hard. I don't understand Nancy's choices, with either saying yes or being so hurt that Bartise said a functional not yet. I wish the episode ended with Alexa and Brennan rather than Colleen and Matt. Alexa and Brennan were pure, uncomplicated joy. I hope things work for Colleen and Matt, but the show didn't give us a lot of reasons for optimism there.

I stumbled on this Psychology Today article in which a psychologist analyzes Cole and Zanab, focusing on the chicken cooking dinner scene. I thought it was an interesting take and not just because she completely agrees with how I saw it. (okay, maybe that was a factor) https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/love-them-or-leave-them/202211/will-zanab-and-cole-love-is-blind-stay-together