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S02.E07: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker


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Congresswoman Victoria Neuman’s sham Congressional Hearing against Vought takes place in 3 DAYS. Are we going to let her criminalize Superheroes when we need them most? We have to stand up against such blatant partisan politics. Please join fellow Patriotic Americans and send $20 to VOUGHTPROMISE.COM to tell Neuman and her Kangaroo Court Cronies that they won’t win, “Not On Our Watch”™.

 

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They seem to become available at midnight Central European time.

And this is not the first show or movie that did it, but it reminded me again to never use biometric security. When I'm dead or asleep or unconscious nobody is going to use any of my bodyparts for access to any place or device.

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You can tell its the episode before the season finale (I think it is anyway) because things are going even worse than usual and even more shit is going down. Annie has been outed as the mole within the Seven, Stormfront and Homelanders fearmongering is leading to violence, Lamplighter killed himself, and before he could testify against Vought, Maeve gets dumped and is in full dont give a fuck mode again, Ryan is so mad at Becca for lying to him that he ran off to be brainwashed by Homelander and Stormfront, and when they finally get their hearing, someone starts making heads explode, including Vogelbaum before he could testify. The only real win was that they managed to save Annie. 

You know, as horrible and evil as Homelander and Stormfront are, and how terrible it is that Ryan has gone off with them to be exposed to their awfulness...I cant say they were wrong about the movie thing. I mean, Terms of Endearment? There was no movie in the world that a little boy might like better? I dont know if this was Vought's idea or Becca's, but you gotta update the poor kids movie collection! Even if they dont want to give him anything more modern for whatever reason, you cant even toss him some Sandlot or something? So whos idea was it to keep Ryan in the dark about living in the creepy fake suburbia? I assume it was Vought, even if Becca seemed to think it was for the best. 

A wild John Noble appears! Billy is really getting hit over the head with the similarities between him and Homelander. Both are violent, and use violence to solve their problems, both hate a different group of people (supes or non supes) both hate being criticized, and both had crappy fathers that led them down the the violent path they are on now. Granted, Homelander is still the worst of the two, but its still something that Billy has been noticing, and he is not thrilled by the comparison. 

I am sad to see Lamplighter go so soon, Shawn Ashmore was great in the role and his character was really interesting. He really was just a broken shell by the end who wanted to die, despite everything that he did, and I wanted to see more of him. 

So is this Scientology place going to tie more into the main plot? I dont dislike it, but it feels kind of separate from the rest of the story. 

In such a downer of an episode, the biggest bright spot was the chat between Frenchie and Kimiko, which was so sweet and warm. Kimiko doesn't really get to smile a lot, especially lately, so it was great to see her smiling and happy to listen to Frenchie's story about his mom and asking about her mom, and her finally starting to teach him her sign language. 

So who the hell is exploding heads left and right? I dont thinks even Homelander and Stormfront know, or even Vought, so what is going on? Some unknown Supe is doing something for some reason, maybe a new bad guy for season three? 

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It was really weird to hear the C word coming out of Mrs. Patmore's mouth.  She's a long way from Downton Abbey.

I need to insert that meme of "when someone you don't like makes a good point" here.  Homelander wasn't wrong when he told Becca that they were making the same mistake with Ryan that Vogelbaum did with Homelander.  Granted, Ryan has a mother, but he's still being reared in almost total isolation.  Homelander and Stormfront certainly went about it the wrong way, but they weren't completely off base.  

Speaking of Vogelbaum, I was surprised to see him alive.  I figured Homelander killed him last season after squeezing the truth about Ryan from him.

"My daughter looked like that 80 years ago.  It seems like yesterday."  Stormfront is the queen of manipulation -- she had to already know about Ryan, so she just conned Homelander into introducing them to each other.  Ryan will be one more way for her to control him.

Who is making the heads asplode?  I don't think it's Cindy from last week's episode.  Whoever is doing it is working to keep the government off of Vaught.  I'm guessing it's an undisclosed power of Stormfront's.  Regardless, it's going to be damn difficult to blame this incident on foreign terrorists.

Maeve attacked Black Noir -- did she kill him?  It looked like she kicked his epi-pen away.  If he's not dead, then he can rat her out for helping Starlight escape.  I guess she just doesn't give a shit about anything any more.  

Starlight only blasted Noir once.  I guess they were saving the VFX budget for the head game in the last scene.  She should have blasted and blasted and blasted him until he was a cinder.

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So some unknown person is exploding heads. Someone who probably can do that with some kind of mind power. Someone who wants to protect Vought. Someone who is operating independently of Homelander et al. This all leads me to: Stan Edgar.

That would also explain why he wasn't intimidated by Homelander in an early ep this season and didn't seem to care one bit about pissing off the most powerful supe around.

Not sure why he would've been there to explode Raynor's head tho? Unless Black Noir (dat nut) was surveilling Raynor and Edgar can pop heads remotely as long as he has eyes on his target via bodycam?

Also, Shockwave's head exploded too, and considering the Not!Scientology guy said he has as good as gotten A-Train (and the Deep) back in - have to wonder if he struck some deal with Edgar and so Edgar killed two problems with one stone...

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I wonder how many of these plot threads are going to be resolved next week and how many are hooks for next season.  Right now I'm seeing NOTHING getting resolved.  Maybe Maeve will escape but that's it.  I like that they set up long-term plot lines but I wouldn't mind if they had a few short term ones also.  

Oh, I know:  Starlight will forgive her mother.  A plot line that I don't really care about.

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I always hated Almond Joys 😃

Great episode. Who the hell is exploding heads? I was thinking Cindy was going to show up but, then remembered CIA Lady from episode 2.

Those Homelander/Butcher parallel anvils are starting to hurt...we get it. 

I have to give Anthony Starr credit, I actually felt for Homelander when he talked about being Ryan and how it fucked him up to learn the truth.

This was a really good episode and, we got confirmation that Ryan is the first natural born super child...maybe I wouldn't be shocked if Stormfront was behind that.

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6 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

You can tell its the episode before the season finale (I think it is anyway)

Wow, I thought there were 10, but you are right, next week is the season finale. That was quick. 

3 hours ago, mac123x said:

Who is making the heads asplode?  I don't think it's Cindy from last week's episode. 

I was thinking Cindy, but I don't know what her motive would be. We shall see. 

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16 hours ago, mac123x said:

Who is making the heads asplode?  I don't think it's Cindy from last week's episode.  Whoever is doing it is working to keep the government off of Vaught.  I'm guessing it's an undisclosed power of Stormfront's.  Regardless, it's going to be damn difficult to blame this incident on foreign terrorists.

Super easy! Barely an inconvenience!

The fact that Shockwave's head exploded provides cover for the notion that Vought or one of the supers aligned with it did it. Even though we the viewers know that Vought and their supers are fully capable of murdering congresspeople and others without blinking and of course sacrificing one of their own, the average person in the Boysverse probably wouldn't believe it.  

The only others out there with the ability to do this are superterrorists. And it is an act of terror. If Vought wanted to kill the hearings against it, they could have done so in all sorts of ways that were lower profile. 

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57 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Super easy! Barely an inconvenience!

I love those videos 😂

You're probably right but, I saw something online last night that got me thinking. What if the Scientology guy is a Super secretly working for Vought? He did tell The Deep and A-Train that he could get them back in The Seven and, Shockwave (A-Train's replacement) was killed. 

Vought was totally using those Christian Groups/Festivals last season. Wouldn't be shocked if this new Church was part of their plan as well. They did have Hawkeye seek out The Deep to recruit him into the Church and then tossed Hawkeye out once they had A-Train.

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23 hours ago, paulvdb said:

They seem to become available at midnight Central European time.

And this is not the first show or movie that did it, but it reminded me again to never use biometric security. When I'm dead or asleep or unconscious nobody is going to use any of my bodyparts for access to any place or device.

This annoys me so much. Part of how these biometric scanners work is detecting capillary blood flow in the skin. It would never work with a dead hand, especially not one burned so badly.

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27 minutes ago, Morrigan2575 said:

I love those videos 😂

You're probably right but, I saw something online last night that got me thinking. What if the Scientology guy is a Super secretly working for Vought? He did tell The Deep and A-Train that he could get them back in The Seven and, Shockwave (A-Train's replacement) was killed. 

Vought was totally using those Christian Groups/Festivals last season. Wouldn't be shocked if this new Church was part of their plan as well. They did have Hawkeye seek out The Deep to recruit him into the Church and then tossed Hawkeye out once they had A-Train.

It definitely could be the case that Vought is behind Not!Scientology as just another market to exploit. They planted Stormfront as an edgy rebel against Vought when she in fact must be a major shareholder as the widow of actual Vought. They seemingly have fingers in most other pies as well.

I think they would have been happy to keep Eagle along with Deep and A-Train, but like the clip said, he got too uppity.

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Didn't realise next week is the season finale, that makes me sad.  I felt like they were just getting started.  There seems like there are so many plots to resolve and I guess they have just decided not to resolve them all this season.  Apart from the exploding heads, there's Ryan, Maeve's beef with Homelander, Maeve and her girlfriend, Starlight's situtation, and the Deep.  I would find it hard to believe that we've been following the Deep all season and if he doesn't have some kind of storyline advancement.

I thought Homelander was the one exploding heads... he could easy have some kind of microwave eye ray that isn't visible.  He was walking around a little too calmly.

Lamplighter is dead.  Shockwave is dead.  Is Black Noir dead now too?  Is Eagle the Archer dead?  

I truly cannot stand Stormfront and I hope she dies next week.  The flippant condescending attitude is too much.

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6 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

They seemingly have fingers in most other pies as well.

I got a chuckle out of Stormfront (or might have been Homelander) suggesting taking Ryan to the Vought theme park.  They're like an evil version of Disney.  So, Disney.

 

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Boy it sure took a looong time for C-Span to cut to the "Technical Difficulties" screen. I thought it was hilarious how the screen said "C-Span Your Unfiltered View of Government", but then they went ahead and filtered the view of government in a way. I was missing the classic technical difficulties music playing underneath to make it perfect.

I appreciated how the spurting blood must have swerved to avoid all the supes in the room in order to splatter directly on Ashley countless times.

I wonder how long until that goldfish A-Train gave to Deep dies a horrible death...

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On 10/2/2020 at 6:55 PM, mac123x said:

Maeve attacked Black Noir -- did she kill him?  It looked like she kicked his epi-pen away. 

Maeve was in the courtroom in the final scene - but I did not see Noir. How could she have gotten away with helping Starlight and attacking Noir? Unless Noir is dead or in a coma, he should have been in the courtroom - and he would have reported Maeve as a criminal, since Noir seems to be Vought's personal enforcer. 

It seems as if there has not been seven of The Seven for a while. Translucent is dead. The Deep appears to be out. A-Train was fired. Now Starlight is branded a traitor. I think Vought would consider this a serious image problem. 

Becca seemed smarter than someone who would try to lie to their child about almost every part of the outside world. Maybe the plot forced her to be dumb. Once Ryan's powers manifested, she should have started being honest with him. Becca overplayed her hand. 

There are a lot of dangling threads and only one episode left. It would be nice if just a couple of story lines could get some type of resolution.

Edited by shrewd.buddha
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Was this the first confirmation that Black Noir is African-American? 

I guess it raises a question for me. If Stormfront is telling the truth and she's the wife of Vought, it would make sense that she has a lot of juice behind the scenes with the company. It would seem like she'd impose her white supremacistviews pretty widely.

Yet, Stan Edgar is black, and two of the Seven are. Presumably more lower-ranked Supes are also minority.

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The opening scene of this episode was disturbing in how on-the-nose it was with current events, racism, conspiracy theory paranoia, and anti-immigrant politics. 
But how can Homelander continue to be the beloved Captain America role model if he is making public appearances with Stormfront? He would quickly become a controversial personality among many groups of Americans.  

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Stormfront hasn't actually publicly revealed her Nazi viewpoint though, has she? She's ratcheting up xenophobia in the public, but it's supposedly directed at "super-terrorists," not ordinary people with too much melanin or the wrong religion. We know that's her ultimate goal, but she plays to the public like a snarky truth-teller with America's best interests at heart.

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1 hour ago, Bruinsfan said:

Stormfront hasn't actually publicly revealed her Nazi viewpoint though, has she? She's ratcheting up xenophobia in the public, but it's supposedly directed at "super-terrorists," not ordinary people with too much melanin or the wrong religion. We know that's her ultimate goal, but she plays to the public like a snarky truth-teller with America's best interests at heart.

"super-terrorists", God, and people pouring across our borders

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I thought Becca was being held hostage by Vought in the fake neighborhood?  She should have been honest with Ryan about who Homelander is and why she's wary of him.  It's sickening to see the boy embrace a rapist and supremacist as new parents.

It seems like the majority of the parents are shitty people - Annie with her guilt-tripping mom, and Butcher with his conniving mother and abusive father.  I was afraid that he would throw his father off the balcony.

I could have sworn that Lamplighter would last all season and into the next. 

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On 10/4/2020 at 8:13 AM, shrewd.buddha said:

Maeve was in the courtroom in the final scene - but I did not see Noir. How could she have gotten away with helping Starlight and attacking Noir? Unless Noir is dead or in a coma, he should have been in the courtroom - and he would have reported Maeve as a criminal, since Noir seems to be Vought's personal enforcer. 

It seems as if there has not been seven of The Seven for a while. Translucent is dead. The Deep appears to be out. A-Train was fired. Now Starlight is branded a traitor. I think Vought would consider this a serious image problem. 

Becca seemed smarter than someone who would try to lie to their child about almost every part of the outside world. Maybe the plot forced her to be dumb. Once Ryan's powers manifested, she should have started being honest with him. Becca overplayed her hand. 

There are a lot of dangling threads and only one episode left. It would be nice if just a couple of story lines could get some type of resolution.

Maybe it wasn't really Becca's choice?  Maybe Vought said they'd do something to them if she told him the truth.  Someone mentioned it was basically a controlled experiment.  So in that sense Homelander would have been right, it may have been in a different way but Ryan's upbringing was as much an experiment as his.  We know Vought will kill it's "failed" experiments so maybe there was that.  It's like "OK raising 'em in a lab doesn't work, what if we raise 'em with a mom in an apparently normal suburban household without any unapproved influences".  And given Homelander is such a psycho, she may have thought they knew better than she did because they had experience.  Esp when she first started, she really wouldn't have known what to do and would have probably been willing to listen thinking they had their better interests in mind and then feeling it was too late to do anything about it, after realizing they did not.  She also probably thought she still had time, to sort of "ease" him into it.  A mistake on her part but an understandable one.  Time does have a way of getting away from you.

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On 10/3/2020 at 12:10 PM, Morrigan2575 said:

I love those videos 😂

You're probably right but, I saw something online last night that got me thinking. What if the Scientology guy is a Super secretly working for Vought? He did tell The Deep and A-Train that he could get them back in The Seven and, Shockwave (A-Train's replacement) was killed. 

Vought was totally using those Christian Groups/Festivals last season. Wouldn't be shocked if this new Church was part of their plan as well. They did have Hawkeye seek out The Deep to recruit him into the Church and then tossed Hawkeye out once they had A-Train.

Not only that, but it means Vought gets two fired members of the Seven back but rehabilitated by the Church PLUS the Church has a huge pile of shit on both of them to keep them in line now. It's definitely a win for Vought if Vought has access to all this. 

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On 10/3/2020 at 12:14 PM, AdorkableWitch said:

This annoys me so much. Part of how these biometric scanners work is detecting capillary blood flow in the skin. It would never work with a dead hand, especially not one burned so badly.

All the security issues in that scene really irritated me. 

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2 hours ago, tessathereaper said:

Maybe it wasn't really Becca's choice?  Maybe Vought said they'd do something to them if she told him the truth

I thought it was her choice to leave? The scene of her in the park was her making the decision. 

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Also, Shockwave's head exploded too, and considering the Not!Scientology guy said he has as good as gotten A-Train (and the Deep) back in - have to wonder if he struck some deal with Edgar and so Edgar killed two problems with one stone...

I wonder if Alastair Adana (the head of the church group) is behind the exploding heads. He seems to have a vested interest in restoring The Deep and A-Train to The Seven, which would also account for exploding Shockwave's head. I don't know about Edgar - they seemed to have dropped him after the first couple episodes.

Putting aside the spectacle of it, that was a truly horrifying scene with all those heads exploding. I can imagine how terrifying it would have been to be in that room and thinking you might be next.

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I'm wondering if we might be making a mistaken assumption that the exploding heads are due to a psychokinetic like Kimiko's brother or bald Kristen Stewart in the hospital. We've seen a super that can shrink down tiny—what if such a person, either working for Vought or on their own, booby trapped the victims at that hearing with minaturized bombs in the fashion of the one Frenchie and Hughie put in Translucent?

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Just now, Bruinsfan said:

I'm wondering if we might be making a mistaken assumption that the exploding heads are due to a psychokinetic like Kimiko's brother or bald Kristen Stewart in the hospital. We've seen a super that can shrink down tiny—what if such a person, either working for Vought or on their own, booby trapped the victims at that hearing with minaturized bombs in the fashion of the one Frenchie and Hughie put in Translucent?

Remember the theory from S1 about that fly that kept showing up? Everyone thought it was a Super and Kripke was like nah...

Would be funny if they decided went that route.

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55 minutes ago, Morrigan2575 said:

Remember the theory from S1 about that fly that kept showing up? Everyone thought it was a Super and Kripke was like nah...

Would be funny if they decided went that route.

Maybe Vought has a prototype transporter and during a test with some Supe, a fly accidentally got trapped inside? Could someone on the Vought research team be a fan of old horror movies?

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3 hours ago, Morrigan2575 said:

I thought it was her choice to leave? The scene of her in the park was her making the decision. 

I didn't say it wasn't her choice to leave back then.  It seemed to me the conversation was mainly about what had happened since then and most particularly more recently.  She couldn't necessarily know what it was going to be like when she made the initial decision to leave many years ago and go with Vought and also it may have seemed like a good idea at the time, given she'd been raped, was pregnant with a rapidly growing possible super-child and didn't trust her husband. 

But after that I doubt she'd have had much control over how things went with regards to her life with Vought and she may have just thought she had more time, the whole "I'll tell him when he's a little older" idea.  Then Homelander showed up and that would have been kind of traumatizing for the boy, so she probably would have thought, well now he knows that, I'll give him some time to process before going into too much more.  I just think, as I said, it's possible she had plans to do these things but it didn't work out like she'd hoped.   That doesn't make her "dumb just for plot reasons" as the post I responded to suggested.  I think under the circumstances, it's understandable enough and didn't require her to be "dumb" for the plot to work.  She can still be smart and make a bad decision or a decision that turned out to be bad under these particular circumstances, but maybe under others may have worked out OK.

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On 10/5/2020 at 2:20 PM, tessathereaper said:

I just think, as I said, it's possible she had plans to do these things but it didn't work out like she'd hoped.   

Agreed.  Also, she might not have much choice.  Becca and Ryan are living inside a well-disguised laboratory.  The Vought people in charge of it can decide to limit Becca's access to the internet, computer games, and pop culture in general.  She couldn't show Homelander: Origin to Ryan even if she wanted to without approval from Vought.  She's as much of a prisoner of this gilded cage as Ryan is.

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6 hours ago, Accidental Martyr said:

Are there no security cameras or any type of surveillance in Vought Tower?

Seriously, WAY too many plot holes and contrivances there. My own office is more secure, and I assure you we do NOT house superheroes or pharmaceutical secrets. 

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13 hours ago, Accidental Martyr said:

Are there no security cameras or any type of surveillance in Vought Tower?

I can see the surges from Starlight drawing on the building's power (not to mention her knock-down drag out with Black Noir) having disabled/disrupted such systems so there's no evidence of what went on. Lamplighter and Hughie snuck in using the former's forgotten biometic security clearance, so it may be that when he set himself on fire it drew all the people who should have been monitoring feeds live.

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On 10/8/2020 at 6:07 AM, Superclam said:

Seriously, WAY too many plot holes and contrivances there. My own office is more secure, and I assure you we do NOT house superheroes or pharmaceutical secrets. 

Or do you?

But on a serious note, I can buy the notion of their being security but that the people running it are extremely overconfident and/or lazy. 

After all, who is going to try to attack Vought Tower, home of Homelander and the Seven? It is kind of a suicide mission to try, because the Supes would easily find and defeat you. I imagine that the average Vought Tower guard makes a mall cop look like a member of Seal Team Six.

There shouldbe someone watching Starlight's cell but again there could be arrogant enough to think that the walls plus denying her access to electricity meant that she was unlikely to break out. Or the fact that Black Noir was on scene within just minutes means that he was the security.

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7 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Or do you?

But on a serious note, I can buy the notion of their being security but that the people running it are extremely overconfident and/or lazy. 

After all, who is going to try to attack Vought Tower, home of Homelander and the Seven? It is kind of a suicide mission to try, because the Supes would easily find and defeat you. I imagine that the average Vought Tower guard makes a mall cop look like a member of Seal Team Six.

There shouldbe someone watching Starlight's cell but again there could be arrogant enough to think that the walls plus denying her access to electricity meant that she was unlikely to break out. Or the fact that Black Noir was on scene within just minutes means that he was the security.

Yes I could easily see Lamplighter's security clearance NOT being cleared from the system.  That sort of stuff happens in real life.  Add in the over confidence of "who is going to attached the home of The Seven"? I don't really have a problem with it.  It's not like they had "random guy" break into the building.  Lamplighter is an insider, he knew ways of getting in unseen, the only issue was finding out whether or not his security clearance to the building had been wiped.  It hadn't.  Luck, sure, but not unrealistic. Then like you say Black Noir was on Starlight within minutes so clearly the were was some security and Black Noir was it.

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36 minutes ago, tessathereaper said:

Then like you say Black Noir was on Starlight within minutes so clearly the were was some security and Black Noir was it.

Starlight happened to be in a room where a fire alarm had just went off, so it wasn't like somebody noticed that they were roaming around the building.

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On 10/6/2020 at 6:16 AM, Morrigan2575 said:

Remember the theory from S1 about that fly that kept showing up? Everyone thought it was a Super and Kripke was like nah...

Would be funny if they decided went that route.

The fly has popped up this season too. So there must be something to it. 

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On 10/4/2020 at 9:30 AM, shrewd.buddha said:

The opening scene of this episode was disturbing in how on-the-nose it was with current events, racism, conspiracy theory paranoia, and anti-immigrant politics. 
But how can Homelander continue to be the beloved Captain America role model if he is making public appearances with Stormfront? He would quickly become a controversial personality among many groups of Americans.  

Yes.  It was very much on the nose.  Especially when someone got rachteted up to take matters into his own hands.  Kripke's not afraid to go there.  A lot more freedom with Amazon than regular network television.

But even with Amazon - Kripke went after Scientology this season and not the Evangelicals.  Scientology is a safer target than Christian festivals.   It's not surprising given the initial reviews I saw for the series.  People were most displeased that the show went after Christian faith the first season.

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