S04.E08: I Don’t Belong Here

[Scarlett45]

Quote

Mariana helps Joaquin search for his sister; the Revitalize girls make a decision regarding Bulk Beauty; what happened on Alice's tour; Isabella and Gael's baby has a medical scare.

Air Date: April 27, 2022

[Brian Cronin]

So Mariana told the other two women not to tell their idea to Liza and just casually leave.

WE SAW THEM LEAVE.

Mariana, on the way out to a clean break, decided, like a moron, to go back to comfort Liza and then unilaterally invited her to join Bulk Beauty.

Liza told Jackie. Okay, all that's fine.

But now, the two other women said they THEN told Liza their idea? Do the writers just not think shit through EVER? That doesn't even remotely come CLOSE to making any sense, right?

[KaveDweller]

1 hour ago, Brian Cronin said:

So Mariana told the other two women not to tell their idea to Liza and just casually leave.

WE SAW THEM LEAVE.

Mariana, on the way out to a clean break, decided, like a moron, to go back to comfort Liza and then unilaterally invited her to join Bulk Beauty.

Liza told Jackie. Okay, all that's fine.

But now, the two other women said they THEN told Liza their idea? Do the writers just not think shit through EVER? That doesn't even remotely come CLOSE to making any sense, right?

No, it doesn't make any sense. We saw Liza being a bitch to those girls about not having any ideas and they decided to quit. Then they did. I have no idea when they would have gone back to tell them their idea.

But also, you can't own an idea. You can own someone's work product, but not an idea. I am not a lawyer, but I did take a communications law class in college and they told us an idea is not tangible, so you can't copyright it. If you have an idea for a movie script and tell a bunch of people, they are legally free to then write a script with the same idea. If you write a script or even an outline, that becomes copyright protected. But an idea is not. So I think the same would be true for Jackie owning ideas they have while they worked there. If they had coded the face scan thing, Revitalize would own that. But no one can own the idea of a face scanner. And Marianna and her partners could legally code their own scanner thing and not be sued.

I guess new guy's sister is actually alive and was texting him? That is a twist.

Gotta love Marianna slipping into conversation that she went to MIT. Couldn't you just say, "I coded a program to....."? She has to say, "I coded a program at MIT to....."

What happened to Alice sucks, and what's worse is that she's letting that asshole take away her dream of being a comedian. I get that she was traumatized by the assault and had to leave the tour, but she worked so hard to get where she was. 

Davia's storyline was okay, I guess. It must suck to get criticized for being overweight, then lose weight and get accused of having an eating disorder. People really suck. 

[circumvent]

As I watched the episode I told myself that it was a relief that there was no Bulk Beauty bad storyline. Then, Bulk Beauty bad storyline on the screen. UGH!

There is too much unnecessary drama in the show. I get Alice's trauma, but we saw the parent's grieving last week as if there was an end of life news in the family; the new guy running from Kelly in the wherever place he is, the need for Davia and Dennis to hide from everyone was over the top; the whole secret story of the sister is too secret for the reasons given; the baby scare was pointless. I was actually hoping they would say that the baby had Down Syndrome because the show runners, with all their inclusion push, have been lackluster on disabilities, since The Fosters. It would give a good discussion about abortion, acceptance and choice that are very important and valid. Davia's story is good and I was happy that Malika wasn't there.

[possibilities]

Somehow Jackie is not in trouble for stealing Bulk Beauty's code, but the women can't leave her company because she owns their idea? And who starts a business with no legal advice?

I didn't understand why Davia was delaying talking to the housemates about hosting the guy, rather than hiding him in the basement or storage area or wherever he was. And if she knew he didn't have money for food, why would she not think of the issue of him not having money for his costume, til he told her?

I hate that the only story they could think of for addressing fat oppression is "actually she's not fat and she also doesn't have an eating disorder, she's just being attacked for not being fat enough". If these writers are so tuned in to the culture they claim to be, surely they could think of a fat-positive story that doesn't hinge on the body-positive people actually being cruel?

I noticed they seemed to forget Gael was bi, when in last week's (or the previous week's?) episode they were saying something about how if he had another girlfriend... and didn't mention the possibility that he might have a boyfriend. More and more I think this show has been taken over by pod people who don't actually come from the communities they used to try to represent. So this week, I was not at all surprised that they were using the disability red herring merely for tragedy porn, and not for any kind of actual examination of an issue-- disability OR abortion. 

I understood why Alice was traumatized by the attack. I also understood why her parents were scared about her going to the police. I didn't think it made sense for them to also want her to not tell Sumi or her other friends, though. And I'm pretty sure that Margaret Cho would understand and be supportive of Alice one way or another. It's an important thing to show how even an attack where you aren't murdered or raped or a bloody pulp afterwards can cause PTSD. The show has the problem that they have put Alice in a very supportive community, so when something bad happens, her being unable to tell anyone seems odd, even if it's actually a realistic scenario in a more general way. She was doing so well dealing with the heckling, that her suddenly being unable to cope with the attack was a little surprising, but these things have the weight of a lot more than generic heckling, when the entire edifice of racism gets piled on top. And it's true that she might need more physical security around her after that incident. Asking for and receiving that right away would have prevented them from showing how traumatizing the event was, though. The show seems to want to highlight issues, but is not setting them up in ways that match the circumstances well.

I have not trusted the brother looking for his sister, ever since he showed up being so secretive. Clearly the sister doesn't trust him, either. I don't know whether they have an actual story that makes sense here, or if they are just setting it up to be as nonsensical as half the other plots. But her suddenly not wanting to even send her mom a postcard on mom's birthday anymore, to me suggests some kind of abuse from the family. It's certainly possible that she's in a cult or otherwise lost her mind, as the ex boyfriend suggested, but I really don't want to see the brother painted as a hero who somehow got out of the family intact and heroic while his sister went bananas and needs him to rescue her or some equally self-congratulatory patriarchal shit. I also thought him believing the ex-boyfriend killed her was absolutely unfounded based on what we saw of the ex, and that makes the brother seem rather nuts himself. Also, why did it take Mariana to give him the idea of using social media to try to find the sister? I am not on FB or twitter and even I thought of that. It's not like the brother was so out of touch with the world that he couldn't have thought of that himself.

I don't think the writing was always this bad. Maybe it was and I didn't notice??

 

[circumvent]

1 hour ago, possibilities said:

More and more I think this show has been taken over by pod people who don't actually come from the communities they used to try to represent. So this week, I was not at all surprised that they were using the disability red herring merely for tragedy porn, and not for any kind of actual examination of an issue-- disability OR abortion. 

Good point on Gael. As I mentioned, the show is already pretty bad on disabilities and instead of actually having a story, they decided to go for the tears of worry. I can have a whole story full of meaningful plots surrounding the abortion v. disability issue. I have my opinion, I know exactly how I feel about it but it doesn't mean that there are various implications to be considered in a decision like this. Plus, the possible conflict that would possibly generate. In my opinion, it looks like cowardice, to pick a disability that is "90% fatal" as if this already rules out continuing the pregnancy - which we don't know because tragedy porn relies only on the possibility, not on actual discussion of an issue. It is cowardice because they don't want to ruffle the feathers of an audience that is pro-choice and wound't consider a pregnancy that carries such a bad statistic, and they don't want to anger an audience that is anti-choice. They don't want to debate the issue, which would be good, in my opinion. They could even have the same outcome, the baby does not have the disability, but it is a missed opportunity to have meaning on this badly developed plot  - I am not over people who have multiple partners not usind protection when having sex, in the 21st century. 

 

1 hour ago, possibilities said:

I don't think the writing was always this bad. Maybe it was and I didn't notice??

I always thought the writing was pretty bad, and my main complaint is that they throw all the social issues out there - like you said speaking for groups of people without a representative of that group of people - just for the sake of throwing the issue in the pot, then forget about it and move on to the usual soap opera pattern. It is all virtue signaling, without any (maybe very little) meaning

[TVForever]

On 4/28/2022 at 9:03 PM, Brian Cronin said:

So Mariana told the other two women not to tell their idea to Liza and just casually leave.

WE SAW THEM LEAVE.

Mariana, on the way out to a clean break, decided, like a moron, to go back to comfort Liza and then unilaterally invited her to join Bulk Beauty.

Liza told Jackie. Okay, all that's fine.

But now, the two other women said they THEN told Liza their idea? Do the writers just not think shit through EVER? That doesn't even remotely come CLOSE to making any sense, right?

This is why corporate espionage should be left to the professionals. Mariana was out of her depth from the very beginning.