S06.E06: Extinction

[transitfan]

On 3/17/2017 at 10:43 PM, dr pepper said:

Ok, i'm just going to jot some things down as i watch this episode.

1. Rowan Pope gets a package. He does not treat it as a possible bomb. I don't care how much he expected it, the caliber of his enemies requires a great deal more caution than he's shown. I think the writers flubbed this.

2. Rowan switches to bubbly science nerd mode. Apparently in addition to being Mycroft Holmes, Machiavelli, John Gotti, and Svengali all rolled into one, there's a good bit of Stephen J Gould in there as well. How does he ever find time for his cover job?

3. Meet Sandra. Rowan has a semi girlfriend from way back, with strong chemistry. Another glitch; the writers seem to have forgotten who he was married to. This woman should have died years ago in a freak accident, possibly by falling on to a triceratops horn.

4. Oh hey, here's Olivia back for more humiliation thinly disguised as advice. What we have here an emotional form of incest. She might as well be moaning, "oh hurt me Daddy!".

5. Oh yeah, "everything you love is a weakness". Maybe that's what's going to happen with Rowan and his globe hopping paleontologist.

6. Oops, play time's over. While acting as lab supervisor for some eager grad students, Rowan lets his guard down so thoroughly he's actually shocked to discover spy cameras.

7. So *now* he checks out his old friend. And her mysterious benefactor.

8. And then goes back into mysterious warning mode, freaking out Olivia without giving her any usable information.

9. I refuse to feel any sympathy for Rowan. I don't want a storyline in which Olivia and crew must ally with him against this new conspiracy. Surprise us Shonda, just shoot him, already! Ok, i kind of like that he met his match but it's really too late.

10. "I've got you." Oh, please, just kill her too, i refuse to take on another source of anxiety.

11. Another Pet and Daddy confrontation. She starts out sure she's won this one, but leaves crying.

12. Yup, Rowan gets Rowaned.

13. No exit plan? Why do people continue to be so loyal to him?

14. Rowan is making something. I have no idea what it is.

15. Wait is he installing a trapdoor under Vargas? No, just a gunport. So why did he send his man out to snipe?

16. Oh, it was in case Rowan couldn't do his own dirty work. Is he showing pangs of conscience. Again, too late for me to care.

17. Ah, he does do his own dirty work, the sniper is just to distract people while he gets away. Almost away, anyway.

18. But how does he expect the bullets from a silenced pistol at short range to pass for long range rifle bullets?

19. Hey, Sandra's safe! So now should be when Rowan springs a trap of his own. But of course, she's not actually safe. I'm half expecting him to kill her himself.

20. Oh. He did. But why didn't he immediately shoot the conspirators?

21. But the conspirators dare him to do the same with Olivia. He concedes. For now.

22. Time to lie and bluster at Olivia while walling away his feelings. I wonder at what point the young dino hunter became a sociopath. No i don't, i refuse to be intrigued over Rowan's backstory.

 

Love your notes!  :D

 

Re #20--because they had someone watching Olivia, and they probably had a setup like "if you don't hear from either of us, by X:XX time, waste Livvy".  And Eli/Rowan probably had figured that out, because who ever these folks are, they are (to borrow a line from a great movie that Joe Morton appeared in) "seated at the crazy but not stupid table".  :)

[love2lovebadtv]

On 3/17/2017 at 1:52 AM, J-Man said:

Joe Morton is 15 years older than Tonya Pinkins.  And when she said "that was 40 years ago" -- that means she would've been around 14 or 15 at the time.

Add that to the ridiculousness of focusing on San Benito County and I'm getting more and more frustrated.

I didn't recognize the actress at first until I heard her speak. And I didn't know her age until I read your post and googled it for myself. Unless we're talking about kids, who will literally grow throughout the course of a TV show, I don't think we can really go by the actors' ages. People look and age differently but despite their real ages, I think she and Joe Morton were believable as age-mates. Actually, I think Tonya Pinkins looks older than her age.  Joe Morton is believable as Liv's father, yet he looks younger than his real-life age of 69 (to me, at least). He certainly looks younger than Jeff Perry, but he's a full 8 years older than him.

But if we're going with everything else we know about Papa Pope, then 40 years ago seems accurate and he's playing a character who got married and had his daughter after completing a PhD, right? I think Liv is supposed to be in her late 30. So that would make Papa Pope close to the age of Joe Morton's real age. 

[love2lovebadtv]

On 3/17/2017 at 4:05 PM, Oblique Angle said:

Wonder why they didn't write Kerry's pregnancy into the show? All these ponchos and capes and swing coats they have Olivia wearing are getting old. If they didn't want to have to deal with a baby in the future storylines they could've had Olivia suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth.

What was the Coolio thing all about? If Crazypants Henchwoman was trying to find a racist insult, that one was relatively weak. Rowan probably doesn't even know who Coolio is--or was.

What a copout. They set Random Day Player up to kill Vargas and but then Rowan does it himself. Won't the FBI be able to figure what direction the bullets came from? By Vargas' wounds it should be obvious that the shots came from nearby and beneath him and not from a distant parking garage.

"My wish becomes your command." Heh. Your evil Command chickens came home to roost, Eli. And yeah, you are a predator, just not an apex one, apparently.

What is this racist insult/Coolio that I missed? I think I was bored and stopped paying attention to all the dialogue. 

I don't see Olivia's character proceeding with a pregnancy. Not to say that more unlikely events haven't occurred on this show. 

[love2lovebadtv]

On 3/18/2017 at 8:08 AM, slade3 said:

I keep asking myself why Olivia still lives in her apartment. It's a fabulous apartment, but just about everyone has broken into it. In season 2, Jake routinely went in to refresh his spy equipment, not to mention remove it just before Huck did his sweeps. And then Rowan sent someone in to kill Olivia in the episode she slept with Jake for the first time. Olivia's kidnappers got in there and set up cameras, and then kidnapped her. I would also think she'd live in a doorman building. In the season 2 finale, we do see a man sitting by the front door, but why doesn't he ever let her know when various people are coming upstairs.

I've also had the same feeling about Rowan's house. How it's so accessible. Why hasn't someone tried to assassinate him? All that time everyone was searching for him, why didn't they just ring his doorbell?

I have repeatedly asked myself some variation of all of these questions. And why wouldn't Huck know to change up his sweep day? If Liv's father knows what day Huck does the sweep and has previously had someone spy on her by circumventing that, wouldn't he change up frequently to keep her safe? And yes, Liv, move already!

[Oblique Angle]

Quote

What is this racist insult/Coolio that I missed? I think I was bored and stopped paying attention to all the dialogue. 

It's been a couple of weeks but as well as I can remember, Rowan was going on about how he wasn't going to be treated like a plantation slave or some similar notion and in her response Crazypants Henchwoman called him "Coolio". In context it was clearly meant to be racist. However, I'm not sure how unless she was thinking of Coolio's struggle braids which in some people's minds hearken back to the depictions of so-called "pickaninnies" from the slavery era. Whatever, I thought it was an odd and relatively obscure reach for a seemingly elite, middle-aged White woman to be making. Whoever wrote the line doesn't seem to have thought it through unless it was some kind of inside joke.