S03.E04: The White Room

[shapeshifter]

4 hours ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

but since Vaseline wouldn't dissolve in/mix with club soda, there's no real way Kimber got the Vaseline into those teeny bottles.  It would have been better if she had said olive oil and club soda, but I guess Vaseline is funnier.

I think — for reasons of liability — it's common for writers to list ingredients that fans could not easily put together in ways that would be harmful?

[Yeah No]

On 8/27/2023 at 3:39 PM, aghst said:

Just hand wave it, she's a young woman who doesn't have visible means of financial support, especially compared to the older characters who probably made a lot of money decades before she was even born and bought apartments then, sitting on millions of unrealized gains.

They had to give her a back story in the previous seasons and they showed a relatively humble background.

But they don't need to make it plausible how she lives in that building, how she continues to live there.

They don't need to make it plausible?  Perhaps not, but on a show that is increasingly making us hand wave possible implausibilities, that's being stretched a little thin at this point, in my opinion.

If they're going to make sure the audience knows how much that white apartment rents for, it seems like the show wants to make that an issue.  Otherwise why tell us?  If they just wanted us to hand wave it, they wouldn't have let us know the price.  We could have lived in the blissful ignorance that it was renting at a price Mabel could plausibly afford, and she just didn't think the apartment was for her.

Anyway, if nothing else works out, couldn't she just go back to living at home with Mom?  I have a feeling a living arrangement is going to pop out of nowhere very soon.  I'll keep my hunches for the speculation thread.

[Ohiopirate02]

1 hour ago, shapeshifter said:

I think — for reasons of liability — it's common for writers to list ingredients that fans could not easily put together in ways that would be harmful?

I've said this before, the writers are referencing a specific influencer with Kimber's Venom and it's homemade nature.  That influencer used an oil in her Snake Oil.  The writers here went with a similar product that does not scream "we are making fun of Caroline Calloway" while in fact making fun of Caroline.  

[Dobian]

Great to have a Steve Martin showcase episode where he can just be funny.  His trips to the white room were hilarious.

[cardigirl]

Rewatched this one recently and enjoyed it much much more the second time around.  

Also, is there a clue in the aquarium of some kind? Joy sure had a lot of stuff in there. 

[aradia22]

ngl, I know I didn't want a female killer, but Andrea Martin (Joy) as the killer would be very fun. Way too similar to the killer in season 1 but I'd allow it. Of course, now that it feels obvious in episode 4, it won't be her.

People seem to complain about Selena's acting, but honestly, I was finding Steve Martin a little flat this season. But he really dialed up his energy for the comedy in this episode. The patter song and the white room, it was so classically, effortlessly funny. Is that all there is to the song? It seems rather short if the part he sang making the omelet was all of it. Also THIS is the song they give the old guy who can't sing. 

It's a shame Cinda can't be trusted because working on true crime podcasts (with a paid salary) would be a good job for Mabel, especially given her lack of college degree and work experience. 

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I hope Joy has nothing to do with it, because a second girlfriend being a killer would be so awful for Charles. I think what happened is Joy was the one who fixed whatever red mark Ben had and for some reason her lipstick was left in his dressing room. If we assume that Ben really was talking to the cookies, he may have written the message on the mirror about himself after eating them, since he's pretty self-loathing.

Yes, my guess right now is that Ben wrote the insult himself thinking about the cookies. But it was a relatively bright shade of red so Joy wouldn't have applied it to his lips and it wouldn't cancel out anything on his face beyond maybe the shadow of his beard (and that'd be pretty excessive). Unless the lipstick was the red mark, but it's not difficult to get lipstick off. 

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Idk, from everything we've seen, Joy is overly obsessed with him and also super weird. This show: Charles being weird=charmingly quirky. Woman being weird=certifiable. Unless ofc this is all in his head, but I doubt it.

Maybe it's just a reflection of how much harder it is to date as an older woman. 

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I bet she gets a interior designer business. 

I could buy her selling art. You don't need a degree for that. It wouldn't be enough for an apartment at the Arconia but based on what she painted on the wall, I think people would buy those kind of art prints on etsy or whatever. 

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Is going to The White Room a real thing with stage actors?

I've always heard it calling "going up" or "blanking" but maybe they wanted an easy visual for the audience. 

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Paul Rudd really is aging backwards, its uncanny. How sure are we that he isn't a vampire? Or using some very fancy skin serum? 

See, I feel like VERY much looked his age when he was standing next to the actress for Girl Cop. I feel like when people say actors aren't aging, what they mean is they have a similar face and they've maintained it pretty well and they haven't gained weight. Like, Anthony Michael Hall doesn't look the way he looked when he was younger. Most actors have obviously aged but genetics and procedures keep them looking younger than they are and the basics of their face structure hasn't changed. Also, with celebrities you see them all the time so the changes feel more gradual. If you look at side by side photos of when they were young and now, there's a more dramatic difference. 

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Also, one aspect that's bothering me is the absence of any police in this season so far.  If this is a murder why don't we see evidence of a police investigation? 

The police think they caught the murderer (the obsessed fan) and Detective Williams isn't there to push to keep investigating. Also, I definitely think there's less urgency because the murder attempts feel less violent this season compared to how Tim and Bunny were killed. There's less of a sense of someone suddenly attacked our trio (even if two of them were briefly kidnapped). I don't mind this. I like a cozy mystery. 

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It wasn’t very funny, but my sense of humor isn’t very keen anyway, so I assumed some found it uproariously hysterical. 
But maybe it was just supposed to be absurdist?

Me. I found the White Room funny every time. 

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I don't think they needed the moving out storyline either. Why bother?

Because from the start the show has always been about Mabel's past trauma. I don't want her to be stuck forever. Yes, she had fond memories of the Arconia. But she should also finish college, get a job, find something substantial to do besides sleuthing... when even her former-retiree pals are getting back to their passions.

[SlovakPrincess]

Finally watching this season and got to this episode… lmao.  I died laughing.  I am now deceased.  I truly don’t know how Steve Martin carried that off.