S05.E06: Episode 6

[PrincessPurrsALot]

In Montauk for work, Joanie becomes acquainted with EJ. Together, they explore Joanie’s family history, leading her to question the cause of her mother's death. Rattled, she starts to make some self-destructive decisions.

Joanie and more Joanie.  Quelle surprise!  Joanie makes bad decisions!  Let's see what rando she beds tonight.

Original air date 2019.09.29

[LoveLeigh]

post moved to the speculation thread

Edited September 29, 2019 by DakotaLavender

[DiabLOL]

Soooo... Joanie cracks the case with some Google glasses. Ok. 

Also this never occurred to anyone ANYONE who was there at the time? And the only person "obsessed" with Ben was estranged loner Cole?

I'd warm up to the new guy a lot quicker if he wasn't such a quip machine. You quote movies in every situation and she's never seen them we get it!

[LoveLeigh]

13 hours ago, DiabLOL said:

I'd warm up to the new guy a lot quicker if he wasn't such a quip machine. You quote movies in every situation and she's never seen them we get it!

It is so transparent who the "new guy" is.  I moved my thoughts to a speculation thread to state my idea.  

Edited September 29, 2019 by DakotaLavender

[scrb]

So Joanie has both mommy and daddy issues.  Mommy was gone, daddy was too present, suffocating, so she had to get away from him.  But everything stemmed from Alison being missing from her life.

She tried to deny how much Alison affected the trajectory of her life so just like that her life unravels.

EJ is just a device for Joanie to confront her past and think about Alison.  She hears Alison’s voice in her head, fucks EJ, then tells Paul she’s been cheating on him for years.

It works but it could work just as well if Joanie is obsessed about Alison most of her life.  Instead she constructs this family life where she’s unhappy.

Did they just want another broken family and infidelity to depict?  Can’t let the viewers forget the name of the show is “The Affair?”

The cops interviewed Ben yet they went for the lower probability theory that Alison killed herself.

[LoveLeigh]

I loved this episode.

12 hours ago, scrb said:

Did they just want another broken family and infidelity to depict?  Can’t let the viewers forget the name of the show is “The Affair?”

I don't care. I just loved this episode and wish Showtime would throw the entire season up On Demand. I find it tedious to wait week after week to find out what happens next. It's just an old style of presentation. 

I am obsessed with the Joanie segments. I can't wait for her story to unfold. I will miss this show when it ends. 

Edited September 29, 2019 by DakotaLavender

[NeenerNeener]

Finally! The main plot for the whole season should have been solving Alison's murder; it's a whole lot more interesting (to me ) than watching the Solloways disintegrate further.

[cardigirl]

While I love mysteries, this show has always been about relationships (for me) so whether or not they figure out what happened to poor ol' Alison isn't the driving reason for me watching. That said, I did enjoy this episode.  Some nice background detail was filled in about Cole (sad he never was able to move on emotionally from Alison) and Joanie's childhood sounded, if not normal, not too horrible. Most children are eager to head off to college away from parental 'smothering.'  Nice to see Joanie stayed connected to her stepmother as well, and that it was not a toxic relationship, at least not in the present time. 

I liked EJ.  I'm not sure who he might be (there are theories abounding, I'm sure), but quoting all those movies seems to be a big clue to his childhood. I'm terrible with being able to guess peoples' ages, though, so I can't tell if he's a lot younger than Joanie or not.  I liked the theory about family trauma he was talking about.

I guess the world is really going to end in 2060 or thereabouts, if Joanie's conversation with her husband is anything to go by?  Hmmmm.  Very dark view of the future there. 

Looking forward to the rest of the series.

[Stad15]

Anybody noticed when Joanie was going through the box of old clippings that EJ gave her (Cole's stuff), there was a small newspaper article that Ben had previously been arrested for aggrevated assault.  His PTSD never left him.

Interesting that Cole did keep obsessing over Ben through the years.

[scrb]

So Joanie was in that marriage where she didn’t love her husband or their adopted kids because she was counting on those indoor strawberries to feed them and give them oxygen when the climate disintegrated?

OK I think climate change requires urgent measures but no responsible advocate believes the world will become uninhabitable in 30 years.

They needed a reason for her to return to Montauk, to think about Alison, how she died.

But it didn’t have to be this apocalyptic vision of the world on the verge of ending.  It’s going to make many viewers scratch their heads at least.

If things are really that dire, then the last thing Joanie would be worrying about is how her mother died.  She should be caring for her family, even if she didn’t love them, unless her husband and their adopted kids are horrible people or something.

Also, Joanie didn’t approve of EJ’s gas-burning car but she sure had him driving her around all over the place.

[Stad15]

Joanie remembered when Cole was carrying her and he bumped into Ben last season (Ben was going on a date with Alison). Joanie, even at age 7, knew Ben was shady AF.

[DoubleUTeeEff]

8 hours ago, cardigirl said:

I guess the world is really going to end in 2060 or thereabouts, if Joanie's conversation with her husband is anything to go by?  Hmmmm.  Very dark view of the future there. 

Hey, now. Joanie said the mushrooms will break everything down to make room for something better! LOL.

Here's the thing I don't get. IIRC, Cole was absolutely convinced that Alison didn't kill herself. It seems that he was obsessed with Ben so he obviously suspected something. We also know that he lived to age 72. Given all that, why wouldn't he share his theory with Joanie? Even if he didn't give her the whole story, wouldn't he have least mentioned the he didn't think Alison committed suicide? I get that he wouldn't be able to explain it to a child, but he survived to Joanie's adulthood so why not tell her how he felt about it? I know it doesn't bring back Alison and having a parent die so young would still hurt but having to deal with knowing a parent committed suicide must be a special sort of pain that you'd think he would want to alleviate for Joanie. And it's not like he ever moved on either so it's not like it was in the past for him. Maybe he didn't want to look like a crackpot since he couldn't prove anything.

OK, here's another thing I don't get. In season 4, we saw Ben throw Alison into the water and her floating around in it. There was definitely more than a bathtub level of water. I guess we are to believe that she saw it that way? Even though she was dead?

[preeya]

10 hours ago, NeenerNeener said:

Finally! The main plot for the whole season should have been solving Alison's murder; it's a whole lot more interesting (to me ) than watching the Solloways disintegrate further.

By watching this episode I have no recollection of the five preceding it and I'm quite happy with that.

[NeenerNeener]

58 minutes ago, DoubleUTeeEff said:

Here's the thing I don't get. IIRC, Cole was absolutely convinced that Alison didn't kill herself. It seems that he was obsessed with Ben so he obviously suspected something.

Also, based on the police report that Joanie read it looks like the cops just took Noah's word for it that Alison was depressed and suicidal at that point. Noah screws Alison over yet again.

[LydiaE]

I really and truly hope the show runners/writers aren’t trying to be clever and bring the plot back round to the series beginning by making EJ somehow Scotty’s son. That would be ridiculous.   

[chick binewski]

19 hours ago, scrb said:

Did they just want another broken family and infidelity to depict?  Can’t let the viewers forget the name of the show is “The Affair?”

13 hours ago, NeenerNeener said:

Finally! The main plot for the whole season should have been solving Alison's murder; it's a whole lot more interesting (to me ) than watching the Solloways disintegrate further.

10 hours ago, scrb said:

OK I think climate change requires urgent measures but no responsible advocate believes the world will become uninhabitable in 30 years.

They needed a reason for her to return to Montauk, to think about Alison, how she died.

But it didn’t have to be this apocalyptic vision of the world on the verge of ending.  It’s going to make many viewers scratch their heads at least.

That the show is circling back to the destruction of infidelity I appreciate. And I believed at the start of the season they were using climate change as a way to address Joanie's fatalism (like maybe things weren't that bad, she was just a little bonkers about the earth - but that does not appear to be the case). I just find Paquin almost unwatchable in this part. The actress who plays Whitney conveys more maturity. I didn't buy for a minute that the character would have harbored so much hatred for her mom, then solved her murder after shtupping EJ.

Also, still not a fan of Luisa nor her selective truth-telling about Alison.

[AngelaHunter]

Welcome to the new installment of "Sex with Joanie." This time it's a stereotypical, bespeckled, cuddly, nerdy Science Guy who picks up our surly heroine at a cemetary. Coincidence! He just, by a twist of fate, happens to be obsessed with the Lockharts and knows all about them! Wow. He speaks in one-liners that would make Rodney Dangerfield envious. His quips about movies got real old real fast.

Joanie is miserable and sour and treats Science Guy like an indentured chauffeur and snarks about how disgusting his gas-powered car is (even though she didn't mind parking her butt in it) but he doesn't care. He takes her to some moldy old place with mushrooms growing out of the walls and shows her family stuff, police reports,etc.  Then they have sex but keep their clothes on. Joanie still likes being choked. Could it tie-in to when she says being everything to Cole made her feel like she was "suffocating"? So subtle, these writers. So after unpleasant, icky sex (have we ever seen pleasant sex on this show, where both parties enjoy it?) which is coitus interruptus so Nerd can theorize about some shit Joanie goes home where she also feels suffocated by the screaming, bratty kids and the deterioration of the strawberry garden. We get closeups of 3 or 4 moldy strawberries, just in case the yelling computer didn't sufficiently let us know that something is wrong.

Joanie rips out all the plants and then tells her husband she cheats on him all the time. He throws her out. She runs to Science Guy (where does he live and how did she get there so fast?) and demands a drink. He welcomes her and informs her how great he is in bed. No, really. He's "dynamite". Then we get more "Sex with Joanie", but with no choking this time. Joanie awakens with a revelation and hears Alison's voice. Science guy thought Cole was into a Brokeback Mountain thing with Ben but Joanie magically figures out that Ben killed her which makes her much smarter than everyone, including the cops at the time.

[mommalib]

Don't like Joanie at all. And definitely don't like the way she treat her husband. Paul can do much better.

[Razzberry]

I just wanted to punch her in the face so bad... is that wrong?

She's clearly unhinged.  It only got interesting in the last 5 minutes, by that time I just done with her.  Meeting a guy in the cemetery who just happens to be obsessed with the family?  I guess that's the only way to explain why anyone would want to be in her company for more than 5 minutes.   And he just happens to live in her hometown?  

[ScoobieDoobs]

Anna Paquin is a really good actress.  The prob here is there's nothing to like about Joanie.  Yes, Alison was someone deeply in pain, but her child died tragically, right in front her -- so pretty much anyone could sympathize with her terrible grief.  But Joanie?  I just find her really annoying.  An hour with her was way more time than I wanted to spend, watching this self-absorbed. bitter sad-sack.

Was this a great ep?  Not to me.  But it was a welcome break from Helen & Noah, who are getting stale.  I had enough of Trevor & his Glee shit, & screechy Whitney & the now smuggy Helen with the underhanded/sinister actor.  So it was nice to see a total change of scenery.  This ep was sorta interesting, but there was too much that made no sense.

OK, so Joanie is at the cemetery & sees a creepy/weird dude, that she herself says is creepy, & yet accepts a ride from him?  Did he appear out of nowhere?  What was he doing there?  Was he following her?  It seemed like a dream.  It was like the 2 of them were the last people on earth.  I didn't understand his movie references or his connection to Cole & why he was interviewing him.  I was getting so bored with him, I was admiring the decor of his apartment.

Honestly, I'm mostly ignoring the climate change stuff.  I half expected Greta Thunberg or Lisa Simpson to pop out & give a lecture.  What's with the push on this stuff, Treem?

So Cole never got over Alison, he tossed off Luisa & never dated again.  Uh, that quick clip of Alison & Cole (and how great Joshua Jackson looked) made me laugh at that one.  Look, there were some things to like about this ep, but I wish Treem would have her writers make sense consistently.  Guess that's too much to ask for this season.

Edited October 4, 2019 by ScoobieDoobs

[stormy weather]

Wow, this episode was SO boring. The writing was terrible, we didn't learn anything new and there were so many things that just didn't make sense! Here's a few, some of them I left out because they have already been mentioned:

- so, Alison died in 2021 and it's now 2050. I can't believe NONE of the police records were digitalized and instead they were just lying there in piles of rotting and moldy paper in a basement among orange fungi like they had been written in 1874. It's been 30 years, not 150! Which leads us to the next point,

- when exactly was Montauk abandoned? From the state of decay of roads, buildings and the fact that not a soul lives there (ScoobieDoobs is right, it did seem like Joanie and EJ were the last people on Earth!), one would think it's been at least 70-80 years. Yet, Cole still lived there (alone? Were there other inhabitants?) until not long ago and his house still has electricity! And EJ can still get gas somewhere!

- And now about EJ: the "chance encounter" at the cemetery was ridiculous, the fact Joanie got to the cemetery on the bike but couldn't leave on the same bike because the wheels that were fine 10 minutes ago were now both flat was ridiculous, Joanie accepting a ride from him was ridiculous, him hitting on her after 5 minutes and banging her after 5 hours was ridiculous and so on. At this point I swear I wouldn't be surprised if EJ turned out to be Gabriel. You heard it here first!

- so who told Joanie the story she tells EJ at the end of the episode? Who did she get her facts from? Luisa? Cole? Noah? Cole's mom? If Cole raised her, what did he say? Does she even remember Noah? Where is he now? Are they still in touch? Because I'd rather see that conversation than a strawberry garden planted in cotton balls being ripped out so that Treem can have an excuse to sneak a couple words in about open relationships and the end of the world. 

Edited September 30, 2019 by stormy weather

[weaver]

I was relieved to get a break from Noah and Helen, but I didn't really anticipate an hour of Joanie and EJ.  EJ the creep, and Joanie the cold, beacty daughter.  So Cole was so overprotective that after Joanie graduated from college, close to 20 years ago, she never saw him again?  But seemingly she kept in touch with Luiza?   Why?  

What kind of house and car will Ben have?  Treem's attempt to portray the future of technology is pretty lame for the most part so that will be interesting, or not.  

I find it hard to believe that in a community of fishermen that no one knew the levels of the water on the night Alison died and it has taken Joanie's future binoculars to reveal this gem.  

The only good part of the show was that it did advance the Joanie/Alison story a bit.  I am not much interested in anything else at this point.  I do hope Sasha is safely in Chad without Helen and Sienna has given Eddie to Priya and we need not see any of those characters again.  

[tomsmom]

Well we wanted more Joanie. Zzzzz

[Mindthinkr]

3 hours ago, stormy weather said:

And now about EJ: the "chance encounter" at the cemetery was ridiculous, the fact Joanie got to the cemetery on the bike but couldn't leave on the same bike because the wheels that were fine 10 minutes ago

Unless EJ flattened the tires on purpose. To cement his interaction with Joanie would last more than two minutes. 

[TexasGal]

I really hope that at some point future Joanie decides to track down Noah and instead meets older, even more jaded Whitney.  Successful gallery owner, sucking down martinis etc.  She could have a Norma Desmond moment. 

3 hours ago, stormy weather said:

- so, Alison died in 2021 and it's now 2050. I can't believe NONE of the police records were digitalized and instead they were just lying there in piles of rotting and moldy paper in a basement among orange fungi like they had been written in 1874. It's been 30 years, not 150! Which leads us to the next point,

Plus, it floods and the police are just like - see ya!  We'll just leave all these records chilling out here no big deal.

[AngelaHunter]

11 hours ago, nara said:

Everyone throws themselves at Joanie...Are we sure she isn’t really Noah’s child?

OMG! I swear I was thinking exactly that.😮 Maybe she has some Solloway genes by osmosis or something. No man can look at her scowling, sulky, perma-bitch face without going into a fit of uncontrollable lust.  Of course, every man wanted Alison too.

10 hours ago, Razzberry said:

I just wanted to punch her in the face so bad... is that wrong?

If that's wrong I don't wanna be right.

4 hours ago, stormy weather said:

 I can't believe NONE of the police records were digitalized and instead they were just lying there in piles of rotting and moldy paper in a basement among orange fungi like they had been written in 1874. 

Records actually from 1874 - and much earlier -  have been taken care of better than these ones!

4 hours ago, tomsmom said:

Well we wanted more Joanie. Zzzzz

Speak for yourself! 😂 But really, at this point, I can't think of a single character I wish to see more of.

52 minutes ago, TexasGal said:

even more jaded Whitney.  Successful gallery owner, sucking down martinis etc.  She could have a Norma Desmond moment.

Yes, that might be kinda fun.

[PrincessPurrsALot]

Paramours,

Let's keep away from mentioning political figures in our posts that were not mentioned on the show.  It takes us down a political path.  

[HC87]

Who, when they started watching this 5 or so years ago, thought it would wind up in a partially flooded Montauk in 2054? Not I.

[ScoobieDoobs]

Joanie’s convo w/EJ was like a therapy session.  I’ve asked this before — does Treem think shrinks won’t exist 30 years from now?

Oy, Treem’s vision of the LIRR 30 years from now still gives me a hearty belly laugh.  Hey Treem, hire a writer who’s actually lived in the NYC area & they’d know the shitty LIRR trains that are barely chugging along now will surely still be used 30 years from now cuz that’s the nature of the LIRR.

This whole ep had such a dream-like feel.  Interesting, but really weird.  At least EJ has a sense of humor.  Joanie?  Jeez, she ain’t exactly a fun gal, is she?  Ugh, and more mechanical, icky sex scenes.  Man, I’m still hating this season’s sex scenes.  They make me cringe.

[nara]

1 hour ago, AngelaHunter said:

OMG! I swear I was thinking exactly that.😮 Maybe she has some Solloway genes by osmosis or something. No man can look at her scowling, sulky, perma-bitch face without going into a fit of uncontrollable lust.  Of course, every man wanted Alison too.

Lol. You’re right about Alison, but I think in her case it was mostly people who knew her and had spent time with her, right? Cole, Oscar, Scotty...she grew up with them. Noah was the first lust at almost first sight. 

[LotusFlower]

On 9/29/2019 at 10:33 AM, scrb said:

So Joanie was in that marriage where she didn’t love her husband or their adopted kids because she was counting on those indoor strawberries to feed them and give them oxygen when the climate disintegrated?

Why do you keep referring to her kids as adopted?  

[nara]

3 minutes ago, LotusFlower said:

Why do you keep referring to her kids as adopted?  

I thought it was mentioned that they were adopted because she didn’t want to pass down her genes...

[TexasGal]

10 minutes ago, nara said:

I thought it was mentioned that they were adopted because she didn’t want to pass down her genes...

Her husband also asked why she agreed to adopt the kids and bring them into their home if she had such a fatalistic view of the world, and she threw it into his face that it was his idea not hers.

[scrb]

Husband specifically mentioned Senegal, which is where those girls came from.

[ScoobieDoobs]

I was really annoyed by EJ’s assumption that Ben was Cole’s bf cuz he kept a bunch of clippings on him.  That was so lame.  Uh, hate to break it to ya, Treem, but there would certainly be way more obvious tipoffs if Cole was gay.  Just shows Treem shoulda hired writers who could effectively write gay storylines, but as we’ve seen from Trevor, that’s not the case . . .

[LibertarianSlut]

Joanie's husband also mentioned that they adopted the kids from Senegal, and I was like, what?  Those kids don't even look a little Senegalese.  Second week in a row for odd casting for babies/children.

This show has no idea how to portray Long Island.  It's mind-boggling how wrong this show gets it if you're actually from there:  Montauk was not a fishing village circa 1985 (Joanie said Cole liked the decline of the tourism, as Montauk reverted to the fishing villlage when Cole was growing up, and the headstone said he was born in 1979).  Also, I have no idea where EJ and Joanie could have been driving where there were only, like, tumbleweeds in the background for a long stretch of time.  It's not like they were on a private road.  He was driving her back to Cole's house.  Montauk is very populated compared to the rest of the country, and if they want to show us that everyone left, they could have shown houses that looked abandoned, not a road that looks like it's in the middle of the Arizona desert.

Also, Montauk, is basically two hours away from anything by train.  It's at the tip of Long Island, the complete other end from NYC.  Once you took the 2 hour-plus train ride back into NYC, you could go anywhere from there, but how was Joanie traveling around so freely, going back and forth?  It didn't make sense.  I thought she and her family lived in the New Orleans area for some reason, but even if I'm wrong about that, they would have to live on Long Island or certain parts of Connecticut (assuming the ferries were still running, which I doubt) for Joanie to be able to get there and back in a hop, skip and a jump. It's so annoying.  They did this last season, with Alison jetting around between New Jersey and Montauk, and it made me crazy.  It's as if they lived in LA and they were like, "I just have to run over to Santa Barbara for some groceries," and you're like no, has anyone looked on a map??  Probably not.

And....yes, I'm nitpicking, but, according to Joanie's glasses, Alison died in 2021?  So last season was the future?  Whaaaat?  I hate the retconning.

Treem's idea of the future is bullshit to me.  I'm not buying the "It's a cookbook!" hysteria (and for those who didn't get that reference, it's from The Twilight Zone.  Don't you watch TV?  What about Moana?  Come on, tell me you've watched Moana!).  I think Joanie's just a hysterical bitch.  Luisa said Joanie's life was perfect.  Joanie's husband is invested in the future.  So I'm not interested in Joanie freaking out about it.  She has trauma, as EJ would say.  It's not the earth, it's her.  That's how I read it anyway.

The flashback to Ben from last season was not necessary.  It felt very much like the show was trying to bring viewers up to speed about who Ben was.  If we didn't watch Season 4, that's our fault.  Don't clue me in on every little thing.  Joanie saw Ben; I was surprised she didn't remember his name as soon as EJ said it; this was the guy her mom was seeing right around the time of her death.  No one checked him out except Cole?

Why was Luisa so insistent that the death was a suicide?  If it's not clear, don't they put "cause of death:  unknown"?  I don't think the medical examiner will just jump to suicide, even if there's evidence it was possibly a suicide.

Yeah, not to reiterate, but the police department had a responsibility to destroy anything that wasn't public record.  No way in hell would they have just abandoned it.  And, yeah, I think that when we're at the point in the future where gas-powered cars are antiquated, all the records would be scanned in.  

A lot of this future bullshit would have made a lot more sense if the story went that we were invaded by a foreign power at some point.  Then I would buy into an abandoned police precinct.  Not just...rising tides, or whatever bill of goods they're trying to sell.

I didn't like that Joanie got a whole episode.  Who the hell has ever gotten a whole episode?

ETA: I just remembered that episode one had Joanie living with her family in Houston.  How did she leave her home in Houston at night and get back to EJ's house on the same night with enough time to bullshit and have sex while it was stil dark out?  If they invented some super-duper high speed whoseywhatsit  a.) they should have told us about it and; b.) why was Joanie riding the train to Montauk if there was a much faster, affordable way to travel?

Edited September 30, 2019 by LibertarianSlut
Foolish writing; must comment further

[AngelaHunter]

36 minutes ago, ScoobieDoobs said:

 Just shows Treem shoulda hired writers who could effectively write gay storylines, but as we’ve seen from Trevor, that’s not the case . . .

Never mind gay story lines. It seems these writers can't even do identifiable human story lines any more. The thought of Cole, even if he were gay, spending his life lusting from afar over Ben and saving newspaper clippings and newspaper photos of him, like some teenaged groupie, is beyond ludicrous.

[ScoobieDoobs]

Still not buying Treem’s vision of climate change 30 years from now.  I think she’s bonking us over the head with her political opinions, by an exaggeration of what’s coming.  Change is certain to happen, but gradually.  That Montauk will be decimated 30 years from now seems over the top to me.

Yes, Joanie is a scientist, but as a scientist she would be talking about facts & not making loopy predictions about the whole of Long Island quickly falling into the sea — as she was telling EJ why he shouldn’t buy a house.  She sounds more like a political activist than a scientist. 

When Joanie was describing Alison, did she actually say she stole someone’s husband?  Jeez, I always hated that kinda description of an affair like what first happened on the show.  Nobody “steals” anybody from anyone   But I guess that was what asshole Noah pushed in his book, so it is believable it would be gospel decades later.

Edited September 30, 2019 by ScoobieDoobs

[ScoobieDoobs]

Yeah, as stated above, Treem is getting some basic facts about Montauk’s history very wrong.  Those who don’t know much about Montauk may not notice or care.  But for those of us who know Montauk, it shows very sloppy writing.

Given Cole’s age, when he was a kid would have been in the nineties.  Montauk was well established by that time as a summer destination for the wealthy — an alternative to the Hamptons.  So Joanie’s description of Cole’s memories of Montauk as a child, being still “undeveloped”, made absolutely no sense.  Maybe (just maybe) Cole’s mother might have such memories.

[Jadzia]

Since EJ was researching the family why did he leave the important files abandoned so they could further rot and be looted? Maybe he scanned them with his phone or something but I thought it was weird that Joanie asked to go back there to see the file and he would have just left them there since they were important to his work.

I'm a genealogist and if I found some abandoned files about my family I would have rescued them rather than assume they would be intact if I ever needed to go back and see them again.

Are we to assume that they have high-speed trains in the future? I was confused at how she was able to get to his house so fast after she returned to Houston. Unless he just happens to also live there?

[chabelisaywow]

Quote

she returned to Houston.

I basically have just skimmed these episodes.  I remember the first episode mentioning the husband had a meeting in Houston.. I didn't realize they lived there. 

[LotusFlower]

3 hours ago, nara said:

I thought it was mentioned that they were adopted because she didn’t want to pass down her genes...

2 hours ago, TexasGal said:

Her husband also asked why she agreed to adopt the kids and bring them into their home if she had such a fatalistic view of the world, and she threw it into his face that it was his idea not hers.

2 hours ago, scrb said:

Husband specifically mentioned Senegal, which is where those girls came from.

Thanks.  Missed that detail.

[nara]

34 minutes ago, LotusFlower said:

Thanks.  Missed that detail.

I think you can be forgiven for not giving this tripe your full attention! 😉

[preeya]

5 hours ago, AngelaHunter said:

 I can't believe NONE of the police records were digitalized and instead they were just lying there in piles of rotting and moldy paper in a basement among orange fungi like they had been written in 1874. 

With all the high-tech stuff she (Joanie) has why didn't she just digitize and save eveything with he Google glasses. We don't need no stinkin' papers! 🤣

[AngelaHunter]

3 hours ago, ScoobieDoobs said:

When Joanie was describing Alison, did she actually say she stole someone’s husband?

Yes. Alison "stole" Noah away from the bosom of his loving family. I hate when anyone says that. No one can be "stolen" from a happy marriage, except maybe some medieval bride. Noah left Helen because he was not happy and he wanted to be with Alison. No matter that it turned out to be the wrong choice, Noah was a middleaged man who was not kidnapped and it was his choice to make.

2 hours ago, ScoobieDoobs said:

 Those who don’t know much about Montauk may not notice or care.  But for those of us who know Montauk, it shows very sloppy writing.

I've noticed laughably wrong facts on shows other than this one. These days, there is no excuse for glaring errors. Don't these writers know how to Google, FFS?

[Andyourlittledog2]

Quote

I've noticed laughably wrong facts on shows other than this one. These days, there is no excuse for glaring errors. Don't these writers know how to Google, FFS?

If I had a dime for every TV scene where someone in a high rise in downtown LA says they have to leave now or they'll be late for an appointment in fifteen minutes in Santa Monica I'd be a wealthy woman. They'd be lucky if they got out of the building's parking garage in fifteen minutes.  Or indicate their rent is really high at 10% of the price folks in LA would pay for the place indicated. Writers simply don't care and think we are all too stupid to notice.  This show is no different, irritatingly.

If this were really the end of the world Joanie is the last person on Earth I'd want to spend it with. She is such a sour unpleasant self-absorbed woman.  In other words, Alison's daughter. I see nothing of Cole in this woman.

[ww92]

Lurker here who has decided to delurk to ask, are we supposed to like Joanie? At this point I don't really care if she figures out what happened to Allison or not and I hope her husband has changed the locks and filed for sole custody of those two girls.

[AngelaHunter]

30 minutes ago, ww92 said:

Lurker here who has decided to delurk to ask, are we supposed to like Joanie?

I don't know if we're supposed to like her. I certainly don't. She is unrelentingly hateful, sour, unpleasant, rude, and nasty I cannot imagine anyone thinking we'd sympathize with her. OTOH, I don't feel anything for anyone on this show now, so I guess she fits in.

2 hours ago, Andyourlittledog2 said:

Writers simply don't care and think we are all too stupid to notice. 

Yes, that's where the insult truly comes in. We're able to suspend disbelief for certain things in movies that are done for expediency, like someone instantly finding a place to park on a downtown city street. Personally, I could circle all day in my city and not find one, but it's okay since watching someone drive around the block for a few hours wouldn't add anything to a movie plot. Things like that I don't mind. BUT making up shit about real people or real places through ignorance or laziness just bugs me big time.

[stormy weather]

5 hours ago, LibertarianSlut said:

Joanie's husband also mentioned that they adopted the kids from Senegal, and I was like, what?  Those kids don't even look a little Senegalese.  Second week in a row for odd casting for babies/children.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that, it really bothered me too. If you can't find two child actors who look Senegalese (and I wonder how that's possible), why do you still have to say they're from Senegal like it's somehow relevant for the plot? Just say you adopted them, full stop! It doesn't matter where from! 
Also, thanks to the flashback scenes, I was reminded of the other child actor casting disaster that was 7-year-old Joanie. She looked more like Luisa than anyone else. 
I know this is minor stuff, but it really annoys me 'cause I don't think it would be that hard for casting directors to find more fitting actors for the role. I mean, that's practically their whole job. 

[AngelaHunter]

2 hours ago, Andyourlittledog2 said:

If this were really the end of the world Joanie is the last person on Earth I'd want to spend it with. She is such a sour unpleasant self-absorbed woman.  In other words, Alison's daughter.

Maybe just me, but I did sympathize with the fucked-up Alison. To me she was a sympathetic character, unlike Joanie.