S01.E04: If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

Reclusive trillionaire Lady Trieu finally enters the stage with a mysterious offer. With Blake getting closer to the truth of her coverup, Angela enlists Looking Glass for help. Meanwhile, The Lord trains two new servants.

Airing Sunday, November 10, 2019.

 

[AimingforYoko]

Pretty cheeky ep title, Lindelof.

I thought Manhattan was Veidt's jailer, now I'm leaning toward Lady Trieu. She has more motivation, and the opening showed when she wants something, she won't take no for an answer.

[mac123x]

The editing and camera work on this episode were both interesting and distracting.  I really liked some of the scene transitions, like Sister Night walking from one scene to the next, her background jump cutting to the new location.  On the flip side, her conversation with Agent Blake while driving to the clock tower was a rack-focus nightmare.  

I take it we're supposed to assume Veidt is trapped on the moon.  Fishing up fetuses for his servants was just weird.  I liked that he's doing ballistic studies with his catapult, adjusting the tension and repeatedly flinging Dead!Crookshankses.  It sort of justifies his slaughter the previous evening, since he needed test subjects that all weigh the same.  Of course, he could have used rocks, but that wouldn't have been as weird.

Lady Trieu's kid was creepy.  I'm not sure if it was the glasses, the haircut, or the IV she slept with.

Otherwise, I don't think this episode moved much forward.

[ottoDbusdriver]

1 hour ago, mac123x said:

Lady Trieu's kid was creepy.  I'm not sure if it was the glasses, the haircut, or the IV she slept with.

I'm thinking Lady Trieu's kid is her clone, and the nightmare was Lady Trieu's memories from growing up in Viet Nam.  Genetic memory, maybe ?

Couple of interesting tidbits -- we found out that the squids that shower from the sky only survive for 30 seconds.  And that Veidt's enclosure has limits.

I'm kind of curious if Veidt created the clones in the lake (that he was catching with what looked like lobster traps) or someone else, and how they are preprogrammed for language, etc. after their accelerated growth.

 

[Cardie]

The fetus lake may have something to do with Lady Trieu making a baby for the Clarks, perhaps  That whole sequence was super creepy. The clones go through hell. Their lives, and the squids’, echo Cal’s description of birth and death to the kids.

[arc]

If Lady Trieu is the same age as Hong Chau, she'd be well too young to have experienced the Vietnam war firsthand, esp in the shortened war in the world of Watchmen where Dr Manhattan ended it early. Maybe Bian is a clone of Lady Trieu's mom.

6 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

I'm kind of curious if Veidt created the clones in the lake

Veidt said he's not their maker. I'm assuming they were provided by his jailer. Manhattan did say he'd probably create some human life as he left Veidt at the end of the book.

"It tells time". Reminds me of a bit in a Discworld novel where there's a cosmic true clock or something which tells Time what it is, rather than how normal clocks just tell people what time it is.

I laughed quite a bit when Trieu criticized the pills as "passive-aggressive exposition" and "too cute by half". Funny that this should come up in the episode most devoted to clever scene transitions as well as neatly tying in Angela's trip to the museum with the car drop from the end of last episode.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I continue to enjoy Angela and Blake's scenes together. Petey interrupting himself to mention that the Minutement tv show was garbage made me laugh.

Watching Veidt catapult multiple bodies was both fascinating and horrifying. I really want to know more about how he grows all of his Crookshanks and Phillips servants.

I assumed Lady Trieu's daughter was her clone (especially after the bad dream she described) but Veidt's baby growing made me wonder if she used his technique to grow Bian.

[Cardie]

I wonder if the more vigorous Will Reeves we see at Lady Trieu’s house is also a clone or has gone through some sort of rejuvenation process as she would have to have undergone if she was alive during the Vietnam war. 

[Starchild]

I never read the graphic novel, so I imagine I'm missing some nuances, but I find this show delightfully fascinating. It is batshit in the best way.

[mac123x]

3 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

I assumed Lady Trieu's daughter was her clone (especially after the bad dream she described)

I really hope they're not doing the tired "clone with genetic memories" trope because it's so hacky science fiction.  Clones don't have genetic memories because genes don't work that way.

Did the show indicate when the opening scene took place?  I'm just wondering if the object that fell from the sky happened a few years ago or recently.

[Dev F]

31 minutes ago, mac123x said:

I really hope they're not doing the tired "clone with genetic memories" trope because it's so hacky science fiction.  Clones don't have genetic memories because genes don't work that way.

The implication of the pills and the IV is that it's not genetic but medicinal, right? It looks like Lady Trieu found a way to download a person's memories and encode them within a drug preparation, which would then transfer said memories to whomever ingested the drug.

It's complete sci-fi horseshit, but unlike the "clone with genetic memories" cliche, it doesn't attribute any magical properties to real-life genetics.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Dev F

[Affogato]

18 hours ago, AimingforYoko said:

Pretty cheeky ep title, Lindelof.

I thought Manhattan was Veidt's jailer, now I'm leaning toward Lady Trieu. She has more motivation, and the opening showed when she wants something, she won't take no for an answer.

And she knows what he looks like now and is deeply invested in artificial habitats. 

 

6 hours ago, Starchild said:

I never read the graphic novel, so I imagine I'm missing some nuances, but I find this show delightfully fascinating. It is batshit in the best way.

It is. 
 

the graphic novel is not long or hard to find, btw. It is often available in libraries, too, at least in my area. 

[arc]

7 hours ago, mac123x said:

Did the show indicate when the opening scene took place?  I'm just wondering if the object that fell from the sky happened a few years ago or recently.

There's no real indication as far as I can tell. We don't know how long the clock tower has been in progress. There's no indication of how built up it is when she talks to the Clarks. Bian (her daughter) appears to be about the same age as she is in the clearly 2019 scenes, but if Trieu's made multiple Bians over the years, who knows. Honestly though, considering HBO already has Westworld playing timeline shenanigans, I coulda done without having to consider this kind of nonsense in another prestige genre show.

Hey, here's a thought: what if Veidt is imprisoned on the far side of the moon? There's no always-hidden part of Mars, but the moon is tidally locked and thus almost half of it is not observable from the Earth's surface. Whereas people are somehow keeping tabs on Dr Manhattan on Mars, so whether that's with a telescope or a Mars satellite, it might be harder to keep Veidt hidden there.

Angela burning the "Please Watch Over This Boy" is complete plot nonsense. She has a mysterious grandfather who's also possibly the killer of her possibly secretly KKK boss and she just burns some key evidence? Just throw it in the garbage if you really don't think you need it! Also, it's evidence and even if you don't trust your own colleagues, you have your own secret Batcave bakery to stash stuff like this!!!

BTW, her Sister Night costume is cool and all, but that chase with the skinny spandex guy who slid into a sewer highlighted how impractical it is: it looks heavy and whatever it weighs the coat definitely adds tremendous aerodynamic drag -- a huge disadvantage in any kind of on-foot chase. She would have been so much faster without it.

I don't think the clock tower flying things were what took Angela's car, nor what returned it. In ep 2, whatever took the car made almost no noise aside from deploying the electromagnet. In ep 3, whatever returned the car made almost no noise. But the flying things that are building the clock tower are about as loud as regular helicopters. (Owlships are quiet, though.)

[mac123x]

6 minutes ago, arc said:

BTW, her Sister Night costume is cool and all, but that chase with the skinny spandex guy who slid into a sewer highlighted how impractical it is: it looks heavy and whatever it weighs the coat definitely adds tremendous aerodynamic drag -- a huge disadvantage in any kind of on-foot chase. She would have been so much faster without it.

I laughed out loud at that scene, because throughout the chase they remained equidistant like two people never have in real life.

[Ottis]

I echo that this show is nuts. It frustrates my brain, though, which keeps trying to make sense of it all. I don’t know why some characters have costumes, and/or are heroes, and others don’t. It all seems so random. 

Why did Ozy throw some babies back?

[arc]

Police officers in Oklahoma are costumed/masked. Uniformed cops wear a uniform plus a standard yellow mask. Plainclothes detectives now wear (pretty unimpressive, Sister Night excluded) superhero-ish costumes. This is because of the police massacre in Tulsa that only the police chief and Angela survived, so now police wear masks to hide their identities. (For what it's worth, I vaguely understand real world anti-gang police in Italy have to wear masks for basically the same reason, though I'm pretty sure they don't get the option to have cool code names and custom costumes.)

Also, random vigilantes like Mr Shadow from last episode dress up, but they're operating without Keene Act sanction.

Lady Trieu and Adrian Veidt just have distinct fashion sense.

[tennisgurl]

So when do we get to hear Dark Side of the Moon? 

Lady Trieu seems like she will be a really interesting character, although I have no idea what her deal is or what connection she has with Will. I also suspect that her daughter is really a clone or something, maybe even just the next in a long cycle of Lady Trieus? I also loved her telling Will to basically stop talking in riddles and being so Extra and just tell Angela what he wants to tell her. On a Lindelof show? Never! 

So we get confirmation (maybe) that Veidt is imprisoned on the Moon, and that he is supplied clones, and that he is trying to escape. The lives of his clones (that he fishes like lobsters!) is so short and brutal, it really makes me want to support a clone upraising. His whole plot is bizarre and disturbing, but also really fascinating. 

19 hours ago, Cardie said:

 That whole sequence was super creepy. The clones go through hell. Their lives, and the squids’, echo Cal’s description of birth and death to the kids.

Thats what I was thinking too. The clones and the squids are just created to live short painful lives and die afraid and in pain. Which is an interesting contrast to one of Doctor Manhattans famous speeches in the original comics, where he finds some beauty in humanity and how each life is so unique and how many things have to randomly align for just one person to exist and how meaningful he found that. While the squids and the clones are apparently created purposefully to die pointless deaths. 

[Lantern7]

Another fun-filled episode of political and social intrigue, interrupted by Adrian Veidt gathering and growing servants, and disposing of the old ones. Basically, when you are as rich and as smart as Adrian, you get to raise real-life Sea Monkeys to be your help. It seems fitting, whether it was his idea or not. The catapult? Reminded me of the Yard-A-Pult commercial from Saturday Night Live. All that was missing was Adrian telling his new staff that he just wanted to help their predecessors get to Heaven.

Seriously, I'm not straining to think of where Adrian has been kept. Mars? The moon? Maybe he's been shrunk down, and he's in a terrarium kept by Lady Trieu? And that he's been launching dead servants partially to try and get the attention of a passer-by? Hey, I do not dismiss much with this series?

Rejected scene: guy in the silver bodysuit slides into a sewer grate. Lady Night: "Fuck that. I am not dealing with Pennywise bullshit today. Life is too interesting as it is."

Well, there's no such thing as the Internet in this world. But they got at least one museum where you can get your family tree charted, with an "acorn" serving as their version of a USB drive. I think they broke even. Also: unbreakable eggs, and a mysterious trillionaire (I'm getting the red squiggle) that wants to buy your house in exchange for the baby you could never have conceived on your own.

[Dewey Decimate]

I'm liking redneck Mirror cop guy more as the weeks go by. His smooth, drawling monotone is close to meditation, and I was totally with him on his empathy for those poor little squidlets. 

[Xantar]

Review of Regina King’s Vietnamese: not bad, actually. It would have been understandable to a native speaker. 

[Dev F]

Folks over on Reddit have pointed out that the childless farm couple in the opening scene are pretty obviously meant to echo Superman's adoptive parents; the husband is even named Jon, like Jonathan Kent, and their surname is Clark. And then, of course, there's the mysterious something from space that crash-lands on their property . . .

What's interesting to me, though, is the way in which Lady Trieu imposes herself on that familiar origin story. We don't know what the thing from space is yet, but the Superman parallels suggest that it could play a central role in the greatest superhero story ever told. Which means that for all her talk of giving the Clarks a legacy, she actually steals the promise of that legacy from them. She doesn't like that story, so she writes her own.

And yet she does so by replacing the possibility of an alien foster son or somesuch with the Clarks' real son. In that sense she's almost the mirror image of Adrian Veidt: while he transformed the ugly reality of nuclear brinkmanship into an over-the-top comic book apocalypse, she turned a comic book origin story into the story of a farm couple having a normal baby boy.

Of course, there's a lot we still don't know -- about what Trieu intends to do with the extraterrestrial artifact, about how normal the Clarks' new son actually is, etc. -- so it's too soon to tell how much of Trieu's antiheroic methodology is genuine and how much is a convenient pose. But it's an intriguing starting point for the character.

[ottoDbusdriver]

12 minutes ago, Dev F said:

Folks over on Reddit have pointed out that the childless farm couple in the opening scene are pretty obviously meant to echo Superman's adoptive parents; the husband is even named Jon, like Jonathan Kent, and their surname is Clark. And then, of course, there's the mysterious something from space that crash-lands on their property . . .

What's interesting to me, though, is the way in which Lady Trieu imposes herself on that familiar origin story. We don't know what the thing from space is yet, but the Superman parallels suggest that it could play a central role in the greatest superhero story ever told. Which means that for all her talk of giving the Clarks a legacy, she actually steals the promise of that legacy from them. She doesn't like that story, so she writes her own.

And yet she does so by replacing the possibility of an alien foster son or somesuch with the Clarks' real son. In that sense she's almost the mirror image of Adrian Veidt: while he transformed the ugly reality of nuclear brinkmanship into an over-the-top comic book apocalypse, she turned a comic book origin story into the story of a farm couple having a normal baby boy.

Of course, there's a lot we still don't know -- about what Trieu intends to do with the extraterrestrial artifact, about how normal the Clarks' new son actually is, etc. -- so it's too soon to tell how much of Trieu's antiheroic methodology is genuine and how much is a convenient pose. But it's an intriguing starting point for the character.

I'm also intrigued by HOW Lady Trieu knew that something would be crashing on the Clark's farm.

[mac123x]

13 minutes ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

I'm also intrigued by HOW Lady Trieu knew that something would be crashing on the Clark's farm.

Extremely good radar tracking of interplanetary objects, because she didn't want to be Killed by Space Junk.

[rmontro]

This series is growing on me.  I thought last week's episode was better than this one though, this one seemed kind of slow.

How the heck is Veidt supposed to traverse the 238,900 miles from the moon to the earth with a freaking catapult?  Maybe there's a ship waiting outside whatever bubble he's living in.

[AnimeMania]

6 hours ago, Ottis said:

Why did Ozy throw some babies back?

He was probably checking the sex, he wanted a boy and a girl.

5 hours ago, arc said:

(For what it's worth, I vaguely understand real world anti-gang police in Italy have to wear masks for basically the same reason, though I'm pretty sure they don't get the option to have cool code names and custom costumes.)

The police in Mexico who fight Drug Cartels also wear masks.

I wonder if the lady breaking all her eggs was a joke about her infertility.

What is going on with Sister Knight's husband Cal, he seems really off to me. Almost not human.

Adrian Veidt should never kill all of his servants, it seemed like a chore having fish them out, dress them and drive them around.

[thuganomics85]

Lady Trieu is an interesting new addition to the story.  Hong Chau was a perfect fit in the role: just like almost everyone else here.  Definitely curious about what she is really up to.  Definitely think her "daughter" is actually some kind of clone and her dream was actually her reliving whatever happen to Trieu (or someone before her) back in Vietnam.

Of course, Tillman/Looking Glass has a bunker!

Reeves is not only with Lady Trieu, but can walk now?  Hmm...

Veidt's stuff continues to get more insane by the minute!  Apparently he gets his clones as babies from a lake (and even tosses some back in for whatever reason), and grows them in some kind of human sized microwave, which sounds pretty painful due to the screams.  Yeah, all of this is nuts!  Jeremy Irons is probably having a ball with all of this.

As I suspected, Angela and Blake are great together.  If HBO ever decides to do a fourth season of True Detective, I vote Regina King and Jean Smart be cast as the detectives and getting to continue with their putdowns and face-offs!

[Kip Hackman]

18 hours ago, Affogato said:

the graphic novel is not long or hard

[Enigma X]

I am not satisfied with not knowing what happened to Cal when he and Angela were attacked. I am also not satisfied with his non answer when asked why he did not mention being questioned by the FBI agent.

[rmontro]

22 hours ago, Affogato said:

the graphic novel is not long or hard to find, btw.

It's the equivalent of reading 12 comic books, since it collects the original issues in one place.  So if you can read 12 comics, you should be able to get through the graphic novel.

[Dev F]

Is anyone else super confused by how the reparations system's genetic ancestry database is supposed to work?

In this episode, Angela gets a call notifying her that there's new information about her family tree in the system. She breaks into the heritage center and discovers that submitting Will's DNA has added him to her family tree as her paternal grandfather. Okay, so far so good.

But then the system asks Angela, "Would you like to meet your great-grandparents?" Angela hesitates, as if this is genuinely a difficult question, and then accesses the information about Will's parents. She reacts to it as if she's never seen it before.

My question is: Why hasn't she seen it before? Shouldn't her own DNA have been enough to match her to her great-grandparents even before she put Will into the system? She would share exactly one-eighth of her DNA with each of them, which (unless one of her great-grandparents had an identical twin!) would absolutely differentiate them from other, more distant relatives.

The only explanation I can think of is that maybe when they exhumed her great-grandparents' bodies to put their DNA into the reparations system, they were too damaged by fire or decomposition to produce complete DNA profiles. With some of the genetic data missing, perhaps it took an especially close relative like Will to produce a verifiable match. Though if that was the intended explanation, you'd think they would've mentioning it in passing in the episode itself.

Does anyone else have a theory as to what might be going on here, aside from "The writers didn't really think it through"?

Edited to add: Or, wait, am I thinking about this wrong? You get exactly one-half of your DNA from each parent, but in each generation that half divides randomly. So compounded over the generations, maybe it's not that straightforward to differentiate a great-grandmother from a great-great-aunt or something? But possessing the genetics of two people who are otherwise not related to each other still pretty much guarantees that they are both in your direct family line, doesn't it? Now I'm just confusing myself further . . .

Edited November 12, 2019 by Dev F

[Charlesman]

14 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

I'm also intrigued by HOW Lady Trieu knew that something would be crashing on the Clark's farm.

Yes! With enough warning to 1) identify what it is and know it's valuable, 2) project exactly when and where on Earth it will land, 3) identify the property owners, 4) find their weakness, 5) get their DNA, 6) clone a baby and grow it to that size (though Veidt's machine seems to indicate once you have a fetus the rest can go pretty fast).

[Cardie]

13 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

He was probably checking the sex, he wanted a boy and a girl.

The police in Mexico who fight Drug Cartels also wear masks.

I wonder if the lady breaking all her eggs was a joke about her infertility.

What is going on with Sister Knight's husband Cal, he seems really off to me. Almost not human.

Adrian Veidt should never kill all of his servants, it seemed like a chore having fish them out, dress them and drive them around.

I agree that Veidt might be checking the fetuses’ gender, although that chamber seemed capable of making any transformation necessary. 
I thought that the eggs fell but didn’t break. They were rolling every which way  

[Dev F]

2 hours ago, Cardie said:

I agree that Veidt might be checking the fetuses’ gender, although that chamber seemed capable of making any transformation necessary.

It looked like one of the fetuses he threw back didn't have fully formed arms, while the ones he put into the incubator did. So I think he was doing a general check to make sure the two he chose were free of imperfections -- as if he were at the grocery store and making sure the pieces of fruit he bought didn't have any bruises on them.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Dev F

[Chicago Redshirt]

Lady Trieu apparently named herself after a real Vietnamese figure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Triệu

She has trillions, a vivarium, and she has bought Ozy's business. Is she basically the Ozy of this sequel? 

Re: buying the farm, Trieu is a trillionaire whose empire apparently includes satellites. (I think her name was on the phone booths that allow people to supposedly communicate to Dr. Manhattan). As the show says, one of her businesses had the Clarks' genetic material from when they were trying to get pregnant 10 years ago. A theory: somehow, like Dr. Manhattan, Lady Trieu can see different points in time and has used that knowledge to make herself a trillionaire. It seems like she was cutting it quite fine with the Clarks' purchase. Someone trying to sell me something who gave me only three minutes to think about it would probably be rejected as a matter of principle.

Re: genetics, I'd imagine that the database of genetics is incomplete and it uses a combination of actual DNA matches and photos like the one shown to figure out matches. Re: Angela not wanting to meet her great-grandparents, I imagine it will be developed further down the road, but it seems she doesn't want to know about her heritage on some level and yet does. From what we saw, she lost both of her parents while growing up in Vietnam, and so maybe never heard about Will or her other grandparents, let alone her great-grands. 

[AnimeMania]

2 hours ago, Charlesman said:

17 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

I'm also intrigued by HOW Lady Trieu knew that something would be crashing on the Clark's farm.

Yes! With enough warning to 1) identify what it is and know it's valuable, 2) project exactly when and where on Earth it will land, 3) identify the property owners, 4) find their weakness, 5) get their DNA, 6) clone a baby and grow it to that size (though Veidt's machine seems to indicate once you have a fetus the rest can go pretty fast).

1 & 2) Maybe Lady Trieu has a complicated "clock" that can tell you what "time" things happen with great accuracy, no matter if it was past, present or future.

3, 4 & 5) I believe Lady Trieu said the couple tried fertility treatments at one of Lady Trieu's hospitals so they probably mixed together the DNA to make a baby.

[Dev F]

My latest pie-in-the-sky theory: I was theorizing earlier that Adrian isn't in a literal prison but some sort of quantum netherworld created by his own mind after he tried to disassemble himself in his intrinsic field device in the hopes of becoming a god like Dr. Manhattan. What if Adrian's attempts at "escape" represents his efforts to finally ascend to godhood? Further, what if Lady Trieu has somehow found out that his ascension is imminent, and her plan is actually an elaborate attempt to destroy him before he can become omnipotent?

It's a pretty out-there theory, I know, but it's pretty neatly in line with the show's exploration of appropriation and overreaching nanny-state authoritarianism -- and with Lady Trieu's role in the series so far as sort of a disrupter of superhero origin myths.

[Cardie]

14 hours ago, Enigma X said:

I am not satisfied with not knowing what happened to Cal when he and Angela were attacked. I am also not satisfied with his non answer when asked why he did not mention being questioned by the FBI agent.

Then there’s the cryptic reference to his “accident.”

[Joimiaroxeu]

Quote

It's the equivalent of reading 12 comic books, since it collects the original issues in one place.  So if you can read 12 comics, you should be able to get through the graphic novel.

I'm reading the graphic novel now, in ebook form. Unless there's something different about the edition I'm reading, it's not all in comic book format. There are parts that are mostly text and that text isn't simple to absorb. (It also seems a bit tangential but maybe that's just me.) Anyway, while I appreciate now having greater background on what's happening on the show, I still feel like I shouldn't have to do homework to understand a TV or movie adaption.

Quote

Is anyone else super confused by how the reparations system's genetic ancestry database is supposed to work?

Yep but I'm just chalking it up to the artistic leeway of science fiction. However, I think it's interesting that the producers/writers chose to take that subject on because I've long wondered, in the extreme unlikelihood that reparations would ever be paid to the descendants of slaves, how those descendants would be identified. Would all African Americans have to submit their DNA to a database like on this show? What about bi- or multi-racial people who are found to have some percentage of slave descendant DNA? Would they be eligible too? Would there be some minimum level of DNA percentage to be eligible? It could get messy. (Plus, I imagine people who had knowingly or unknowingly been passing for races other than Black would be revealed once the DNA database started getting more "enriched." Just like today when people find out they've got siblings they didn't know they had. It's not always good news.)

[AnimeMania]

This society seems to have gone full steam ahead with the idea that it is perfectly acceptable to clone humans and collecting DNA is not used to discriminate against people with genetic predispositions.

[Affogato]

5 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

I'm reading the graphic novel now, in ebook form. Unless there's something different about the edition I'm reading, it's not all in comic book format. There are parts that are mostly text and that text isn't simple to absorb. (It also seems a bit tangential but maybe that's just me.) Anyway, while I appreciate now having greater background on what's happening on the show, I still feel like I shouldn't have to do homework to understand a TV or movie adaption.

Yep but I'm just chalking it up to the artistic leeway of science fiction. However, I think it's interesting that the producers/writers chose to take that subject on because I've long wondered, in the extreme unlikelihood that reparations would ever be paid to the descendants of slaves, how those descendants would be identified. Would all African Americans have to submit their DNA to a database like on this show? What about bi- or multi-racial people who are found to have some percentage of slave descendant DNA? Would they be eligible too? Would there be some minimum level of DNA percentage to be eligible? It could get messy. (Plus, I imagine people who had knowingly or unknowingly been passing for races other than Black would be revealed once the DNA database started getting more "enriched." Just like today when people find out they've got siblings they didn't know they had. It's not always good news.)

I think the reparations being made in tulsa are specifically for people with ancestors in the tulsa massacre. Hence the use if dna/historical documents/etc.  Reparations for general systemic racism could be handled differently. I don’t think we’ve learned in the story how far along the reparation program is—the Tulsa project may be the pilot program. 
 

i don’t think you need to read the comics to understand what is going on. If you weren’t in a group talking about the book vs show it wouldn’t be an issue. I think. 

[AnimeMania]

8 hours ago, Affogato said:

I think the reparations being made in tulsa are specifically for people with ancestors in the tulsa massacre. Hence the use if dna/historical documents/etc.  Reparations for general systemic racism could be handled differently. I don’t think we’ve learned in the story how far along the reparation program is—the Tulsa project may be the pilot program. 

I remember reading somewhere that Damon Lindelof imagined the the US government gave reparations to the descendants of people who experienced specific (the worst cases of) racial injustices in American history. This was done to limit the amount of money required to be paid out, so that other people couldn't sue the U.S. government later for other incidents in the past that might have occurred. It was kind of a Class Action lawsuit for all past racial atrocities committed that would absolve the U.S. government of any legal responsibility for any and all other acts that might have occurred in the past. 

[Joimiaroxeu]

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i don’t think you need to read the comics to understand what is going on.

Need to versus be better able to put certain aspects of the show and its characters in the right context. I've already learned some things in the graphic novel that I had somewhat misinterpreted in the show.

Quote

If you weren’t in a group talking about the book vs show it wouldn’t be an issue. I think. 

I didn't think I was in that thread/those threads.

[kay1864]

On 11/16/2019 at 10:55 AM, Joimiaroxeu said:

I'm reading the graphic novel now, in ebook form. Unless there's something different about the edition I'm reading, it's not all in comic book format. There are parts that are mostly text and that text isn't simple to absorb. (It also seems a bit tangential but maybe that's just me.) 

 Sounds like you might be reading some of the supplemental end-of-chapter material, such as the excerpt from Under the Hood. Interesting, but it can be skipped, as it’s just background to the main storylines. 

[pasdetrois]

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which sounds pretty painful due to the screams. 

I had difficulty listening to babies scream. It looked as if Veidt put on music to mask the screams a bit, and we saw him flinch a little.

Did it appear to anyone else that the last body he flung seemed to slip through a sky-filled barrier of some kind?

I am enjoying some of the twists and imaginative scenarios, such as the future Ancestry.com.

[Ubiquitous]

On ‎11‎/‎3‎/‎2019 at 9:04 PM, saoirse said:

"If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own".

Reclusive trillionaire Lady Trieu finally enters the stage with a mysterious offer. With Blake getting closer to the truth of her coverup, Angela enlists Looking Glass for help. Meanwhile, The Lord trains two new servants.

I don't trust Lady Trieu; she's up to no good!

On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 12:03 AM, ottoDbusdriver said:

I'm thinking Lady Trieu's kid is her clone, and the nightmare was Lady Trieu's memories from growing up in Viet Nam.  Genetic memory, maybe ?

I suspect her "daughter" is a clone, too, but she's way too young to remember the Vietnam war. Maybe Lady Trieu is using those memory pills she berated Will for using on her clone-daughter to bring a loved one back?

On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 7:29 PM, mac123x said:

I laughed out loud at that scene, because throughout the chase they remained equidistant like two people never have in real life.

That chase scene with Angela and Lube-man reminded me of a scene from Family Guy in which they mocked doing a chase scene in which the participants remain equidistant.

On ‎11‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 3:11 PM, Dev F said:

Is anyone else super confused by how the reparations system's genetic ancestry database is supposed to work?

In this episode, Angela gets a call notifying her that there's new information about her family tree in the system. She breaks into the heritage center and discovers that submitting Will's DNA has added him to her family tree as her paternal grandfather. Okay, so far so good.

But then the system asks Angela, "Would you like to meet your great-grandparents?" Angela hesitates, as if this is genuinely a difficult question, and then accesses the information about Will's parents. She reacts to it as if she's never seen it before.

My question is: Why hasn't she seen it before? Shouldn't her own DNA have been enough to match her to her great-grandparents even before she put Will into the system? She would share exactly one-eighth of her DNA with each of them, which (unless one of her great-grandparents had an identical twin!) would absolutely differentiate them from other, more distant relatives.

The only explanation I can think of is that maybe when they exhumed her great-grandparents' bodies to put their DNA into the reparations system, they were too damaged by fire or decomposition to produce complete DNA profiles. With some of the genetic data missing, perhaps it took an especially close relative like Will to produce a verifiable match. Though if that was the intended explanation, you'd think they would've mentioning it in passing in the episode itself..

I did some genealogy research in the past and if memory serves, Ancestry.com doesn't automatically join broken branches of family trees in its database. I assumed the reparation family database did not actively try to link everyone together, especially if there were generational gaps.

[Kel Varnsen]

On 11/11/2019 at 9:01 PM, arc said:

Plainclothes detectives now wear (pretty unimpressive, Sister Night excluded) superhero-ish costumes. 

I like that they are unimpressive. Most people aren't like Stan Lee level creative. So if you ask someone to come up with a costumed secret identity and design the costume, odds are the whole thing is going to be pretty lame.

On 11/12/2019 at 3:11 PM, Dev F said:

My question is: Why hasn't she seen it before? Shouldn't her own DNA have been enough to match her to her great-grandparents even before she put Will into the system? She would share exactly one-eighth of her DNA with each of them, which (unless one of her great-grandparents had an identical twin!) would absolutely differentiate them from other, more distant relatives.

The only explanation I can think of is that maybe when they exhumed her great-grandparents' bodies to put their DNA into the reparations system, they were too damaged by fire or decomposition to produce complete DNA profiles. With some of the genetic data missing, perhaps it took an especially close relative like Will to produce a verifiable match. Though if that was the intended explanation, you'd think they would've mentioning it in passing in the episode itself.

In the opening scene of the series Angela's grandfather as a kid saw a bomb dropped on the building his parents were in. It is possible that their bodies were never recovered. So perhaps DNA makes the link between Angela and her grandfather and then historical records make the link between him and his parents. 

The use of Islands in the Stream for a long stretch at the beginning was such a Lindelof thing. Totally reminded me of Make Your Own Kind of Music from Lost. I think he did the same move at least one in The Leftovers as well.