S02.E12: Hail Marry

[shapeshifter]

Airing September 10, 2018

Quote

The government's final plans for a doomsday scenario set in motion a surprising chain of events for Grace, Darius and Harris.

thetvdb.com lists the title as "Hail Mary," but IMDb and Zap2it have "Hail Marry."
If no marrying occurs (or is threatened), I'll change the title later.
However, I am recording it in case I fall asleep at the half-way commercial break, as usual.
So, see y'all on the other side.

[willco]

Well, I'll give them credit, they managed to surprise me with that twist ! At least that's something. I did figure that Uncle "Walter" had no intention of fulfilling his promise of safety for Grace & co., but I didn't see him being in league with Crazy Cult Leader. But Darius must have suffered a serious lapse in his IQ to even trust Uncle in the first place. I assume Darius will escape somehow, probably with Jillian's help.

 

Are they going to wrap this all up in the finale ? Or are they betting on another season and we are going to be screwed over with a cliff hanger, only to see the show cancelled ??

[shapeshifter]

Will the finale at least (?) have Helen of Troy Grace realize that if she had told Darius about Harris's proposal and the bunker that the world would have been saved?

[AnimeMania]

I love riding the crazy train.

Did Jillian remember to turn on the GPS before making the phone call. Maybe they can triangulate her location from the cell towers. Darius being there would be the only thing keeping me from dropping a small nuke on the entire area.

How can Nicholas Tanz not have any money other that what available in Q17. Maybe that was him lying to appear more vulnerable.

Darius leaves Grace's (I never met a man I didn't like) bed in the morning and when he comes back in the evening for round two, he finds out she is happily married.

Alycia reveals her love for Liam by saying "When I was threatening to shoot you with that gun, I wouldn't have aimed to kill". Liam responds "You have a hot body, but a cold heart".

That huge asteroid should have enough "miracle mineral" to make 50 EM drives, so get busy Liam!

Plot twist: Darius (while on his suicide mission to crash into the asteroid) finds out that the asteroid is made out of the same "miracle mineral" as the other Tanz asteroid and grabs and safely steers the asteroid back to Earth, thus ushering in the Earth's greatest era of space exploration. Making Darius Tanz a kajillionaire and President of the Solar System.

They should let me write for the show, I can get them 50 seasons guaranteed.

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

They should let me write for the show, I can get them 50 seasons guaranteed.

And I shall be your assistant writer/editor/wing-person/rocket-person.

[Brooks]

3 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

Darius leaves Grace's (I never met a man I didn't like) bed in the morning and when he comes back in the evening for round two, he finds out she is happily married.

 

And then falls into such a deep depression that he no longer cares about saving the world.

[Latverian Diplomat]

Salvation Deleted Scenes:

 

[News Announcer]: In the wake of the Rail Gun Sabotage, small groups of people rioting have been able to do the damage of much larger crowds through the use of low camera angles...believing cash to be worthless people have to resorted to Amazon gift cards as currency...

==========

Bass: You are my inner circle, the only ones ready to accept "the Truth"...

Jillian: [Expression of finally catching on, whispers to Nora] Here it comes...

Bass: And "the Truth" is my penis...

Jillian: [Still whispering to Nora] It's my creepy creative writing professor all over again...

==========

Darius: A kinetic impactor of sorts...consider it an understudy for the Rail Gun.

Alycia: Well, everyone knows that understudies aren't as good as the real thing.

Darius: It's funny you should say that Alycia, you see, this episode is a little over-budget, so....

Alycia's Understudy: Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Tanz!

===========

Shelter Salesman: Sorry, cash is worthless, so unless you have truckloads of guns, medicine or Amazon gift cards...

Harris: We don't have any of those.

Shelter Salesman: Not sure why you're worried, Mr. Cabinet Member. As for the lady, well, there's one possibility.

Harris: Some sort of awkward marriage of convenience?

Shelter Salesman: I was going to say there are still some openings for "Indiana Mole Women" but sure, that would work too I guess.

============

Liam: OK, the meteor checks out. Arrest the creepy blond and take this guy back to prison.

Uncle Nick: But, we had a deal! I said "Checkmate" and everything!

Liam: Yes, but then our superintelligent AI pointed out that your sudden but inevitable betrayal was so certain that there was no reason not to double cross you instead. Not something a mere human genius like me, Darius, or Alycia could have thought of, so I'm glad Tess is on our side.

===========

Grace: [Answering door]I think it's time I make you breakfast...[sees Harris] eww...I mean Hi!.

Harris: Am I interrupting something?

Grace: No, all the interruptus happened last night.

===========

Jillian: Thank goodness I reached you Liam...I have some important information about Darius that can finally redeem me [phone battery dies] dammit why did I charge my fitbit instead of my phone? Oh well, at least rescuing Darius single-handed against impossible odds should be worth a lot of steps

Edited September 11, 2018 by Latverian Diplomat
fix a typo

[Latverian Diplomat]

Prediction: Uncle Nick, Bass, and crew of evil survivalists and Q17s take off for Mars in Salvation, only to be diverted at the last second to a collision course with Samson through the magic of (white hat) hacking and the last secret passcode Darius kept to himself. The day is saved?

[Brooks]

That doesn't help Darius-Grace-Harris.  Maybe Darius and Grace elect for adultery (I'm assuming Grace and Harris married), but Harris happily joins up with Alonzo because bro love is more important anyway.

[AnimeMania]

15 minutes ago, Brooks said:

That doesn't help Darius-Grace-Harris.  Maybe Darius and Grace elect for adultery (I'm assuming Grace and Harris married), but Harris happily joins up with Alonzo because bro love is more important anyway.

Darius retakes his President position and dictates a new law that marriage now allows for there to a significant other (in order to help repopulate the Earth faster). Then later amends the law to 3 significant others to increase the chances that Grace (call me Robin Hood because I have a lot of Merry Men) will eventually select him. 

[sjohnson]

Not altogether certain the Huntington's disease isn't destroying Darius' mind already. Unless he suspects how friendly Grace is and he wants to torment her by delivering her up to Uncle Nick? By the way, the Huntington's should be starting to manifest, as I understand the horrifying facts. And yes, it's idiot plotting for Darius to trust Nick. The Secret Service would have checked out the whole area, not just walked into a parking garage blind, no matter how cheap a set that is. 

Re Grace, the discovery that Harris is now sexually repellent says, without True Love, sex is disgusting. It seems to me the only way this could get more explicitly puritanical is to openly insist on a marriage license. Also, does she not know Darius' days are numbered already? 

Surely even Liam should have realized Alycia not shooting him when he killed her baby Tess meant something? At this point, Liam's thing for Jillian seems like it is really about how Jillian looks up to him (and therefore how he looks down on her.) No looking up at him from Alycia, a little bit the other way round. But I suppose by Hollywood standards, Alycia is out of his league.

So Q17 is wanting the asteroid to hit, presumably doing worse to some places than others. Shame there's no Re/Syst to extort a global rescue effort.

Incidentally, the nukes idea has the problems of radioactive fallout, but breaking up the asteroid is like chancing being hit by buckshot rather than a cannonball. A puncture of the Earth's crust, a supertsunami, a hemispheric firestorm are less likely with multiple impacts than a single monster strike. Also, the "alliance" with Russia and China is going to be every bit as shaky now as when there was a war scare back in season one, because the monster strike is going to hit some target much harder, and they'll know it. Shame there's no Re/Syst to threaten everybody equally.

[Latverian Diplomat]

31 minutes ago, sjohnson said:

Incidentally, the nukes idea has the problems of radioactive fallout, but breaking up the asteroid is like chancing being hit by buckshot rather than a cannonball. A puncture of the Earth's crust, a supertsunami, a hemispheric firestorm are less likely with multiple impacts than a single monster strike. 

Point taken on the volacano/tsunami consequences, but the buckshot will probably make a firestorm more likely not less, because even more of the kinetic energy is dumped into the atmosphere. 

I'm not a scientitian, but I've read more science-y discussions of this dilemma than this show has time that have generally ended up concluding that breaking up an incoming asteroid is at best useless, and maybe makes things worse.

Also, Samson will reach its peak velocity right before it hits the atmosphere, moving very fast. Even on reentry, they are supersonic. * It would be an incredibly hard to hit with ICBMs which are not designed for interception.

* Pedantic footnote: One thing the movies get wrong is large incoming meteors are are supersonic, people at ground zero wouldn't hear it coming in, and barely glimpse it unless they happened to be looking in the right direction.

[sjohnson]

^^^Yes, I've read similar discussions too. Almost always they emphasize the kinetic energy won't change if the asteroid is broken up. But I'm pretty sure they're forgetting that a thousand thousand pound TNT bombs going off in different place simply won't do the kind of damage a megaton nuke going off will. Energy per unit area matters, not just total energy. Even for firestorms, the polluting effects from a thousand firestorms that burn forest differ from the giant firestorm that is so hot it makes the nitrogen in the air itself burn, producing a vast amount of nitrogen/oxygen compounds. Even simple particulate pollution is more likely to be thrown into the stratosphere and block sunlight (except maybe UV, as ozone is destroyed by pollutants, the worst of both worlds,) by a gigantic blast than a group of smaller ones And a break in the crust is more likely to produce sulfur pollutants, with years of acid rain, too. I think, egotistical of me whether or no, they've got it wrong....except maybe, maybe the effects of the fallout are worse? The effects of asteroid strikes are highly variable on long-term environmental impacts, it seems to me. 

Actually it's not even clear to me that a nuke would break up an asteroid in the first place. The vaporized rock would immediately jet away, unimpeded by gravity or atmosphere, dissipating the energy to some degree.

[Latverian Diplomat]

2 hours ago, sjohnson said:

Actually it's not even clear to me that a nuke would break up an asteroid in the first place. The vaporized rock would immediately jet away, unimpeded by gravity or atmosphere, dissipating the energy to some degree.

Even if you vaporize the whole thing, the gas cloud doesn't just evaporate harmlessly in all directions. All that momentum  and kinetic energy) is conserved, the cloud of gas plows into the atmosphere at the same average velocity and same total kinetic energy as the original asteroid. The gas isn't unimpeded by gravity, it continues to fall towards Earth, just like the original asteroid was.

It defies our intuition based on everyday experience, but that's because the numbers are huge. It's a lot of mass moving very fast, no matter what phase it's in, it's going to do some damage, unfortunately.

[sjohnson]

42 minutes ago, Latverian Diplomat said:

...the gas cloud doesn't just evaporate harmlessly in all directions. All that momentum  and kinetic energy) is conserved...

In that remark I was thinking the dissipation might carry away the nuke's energy, and leave the asteroid relatively untouched. The jet effect would deflect the path, probably unpredictably. 

Yes, the KE is conserved. What I'm disagreeing with is the assumption that it's the KE that is the biggest problem. I think it's environmental after effects, particularly those causing a cascading collapse of ecosystems, which creates the mass extinctions. I mentioned acid rain from a giant strike. A giant strike can that happens to release enough sulfur can raise the acidity of the oceans, causing oceanic mass extinctions, including of coastal algae, which could affect oxygen levels in the entire atmosphere. The thing is, the fossil record seems to indicate there have been asteroid impacts not associated with a mass extinction. (Here's a link https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130214-biggest-asteroid-impacts-meteorites-space-2012da14/) Also, it can be difficult to associate the timing of the impacts with mass extinctions with the estimated dates of the impacts, sometimes maybe even to millions of years later. That again suggests cascading environmental effects rather than the shock of impact. If the KE per se is not the real killer for the whole biosphere, breaking up an asteroid may reduce the long term effects, Maybe.  When Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter what was noticeable was the way it brought up lower atmosphere materials within sight of telescopes.

Nothing within a couple of thousand miles (or twice that?) of the impact would be able to distinguish it from the end of the world. But planets are big.

Edited September 11, 2018 by sjohnson

[Souris]

Am I crazy to think the hummingbird is going to mean something beyond momentary cuckoo?

Why do TV characters persist in going into parking garages in a fit of dumb? NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS IN A PARKING GARAGE, PEOPLE!!

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, Souris said:

Am I crazy to think the hummingbird is going to mean something beyond momentary cuckoo?

Why do TV characters persist in going into parking garages in a fit of dumb? NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS IN A PARKING GARAGE, PEOPLE!!

I thought the hummingbird was a drone from Liam and Alycia, but then it appeared Darius was just loopy from being drugged. But maybe he wasn't loopy at all, just faking it so they wouldn't notice the drone?

I thought the same thing about the parking garage on Elementary right after.

[Souris]

22 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

I thought the hummingbird was a drone from Liam and Alycia, but then it appeared Darius was just loopy from being drugged. But maybe he wasn't loopy at all, just faking it so they wouldn't notice the drone?

Could have been a drone. I was more thinking it would trigger him to have some idea about the asteroid.

I am fully onboard with the idea of them somehow sending the ark with the Crazy Cabal aboard smack into the asteroid, if Liam can figure out the variable that caused the rail gun to miss.

Edited September 13, 2018 by Souris

[Cigale]

And Liam needs to find his true love!  No terrorist and no dumbass naive need apply...

But despite his “genius” status, he’s quite the pudding head!

Edited September 14, 2018 by sisterspoon
Auto correct hates me

[AnimeMania]

I guess there is also the possibility that the asteroid is directly under human control and they can hack it and land it safely in the Tanz parking lot in space number 27. That might explain why their calculations are off.

Just now, lora said:

For people who are trying to save the world, the characters of this show are quite stupid.

They have come up with several ways that would have stopped the asteroid, it's just that other people have come up with several ways to stop that from happening. The people are not stupid, it's that people don't want the same outcome. Serving yourself outweighs serving the good of humanity.

[Llywela]

Genius doesn't mean all-knowing or all-wise. It just means brilliantly clever in a particular field - doesn't give any special insight beyond that. And people in high stress situations don't always think straight - at this stage, they are all so desperate I don't suppose they know if they are standing on their feet or their heads! They are just scrambling to choose between one bad option and another.

I've got to say, I'm  struggling to see any happy ending for the main pairing of the show, at this point - I mean, even if Darius doesn't go on his suicide mission to the asteroid, he's not going to live happily ever after with Grace. He was bang on when he said he's on borrowed time, he is squarely in the age range where Huntingdons starts to rear its ugly head, it'll be all downhill from here - and it is a horrible illness. I can see where he might actually prefer to go out in a blaze of glory rather than slowly descend into debility and dementia.

I still really wish Jillian's story hadn't taken her down the road of inadvertent treachery, dooming the entire world, but I'm happy to see her snap back to her senses and find her inner resolve to make amends in the last couple of episodes - standing up to Crazy Nora to save Grace, Zoe and Alonzo, stealing keys and a phone to escape and contact Liam, going back into danger to try to help Darius...that's a lot more like the Jillian I want to see!

And we still don't know who Nero is.

I can't see all these plot strands being wrapped up in the final episode - they are going to go out on a cliffhanger, aren't they?