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[6.0/10] This was the saggiest episode left. On the Picard side of things, we're gathering up the band, and few of the new crewmembers do anything for me. The show tries to slap together some meaningful backstory between Picard and Raffi, but can't pull it off, and she and Picard have no on-screen rapport to speak of. (The "J.L." nickname is beyond dumb.) Rios feels like a generic jerk with a heart of gold, and the accent routine doesn't do much for me either. I like Dr. Jurati more (if only because she's a better actress than the other performers), but the writing for her characters is just as questionable. It's a tall order to have to follow-up the cast of TNG, but this new crew definitely doesn't cut it in the early going.

The other half of the episode is pretty sorry too. Miss me with this whole "double-secret Romulan prophecy B.S." It feels like such a generic tease, and I'm already tired of the mystery box material. I'll admit that it's a thrill to see Hugh again, but the episode barely does anything with him. And the weird, vaguely incest-y Romulan super spies is some hackneyed/weird Bond villain nonsense.

Overall, it's been three episodes and the show still hasn't really won me over. I am a lifer, and pretty much going to watch no matter what, but it's hard to term this anything but a disappointment out of the gate. Thankfully, there's still seven more episodes for the show to, well, grow the beard.

As others have said I absolutely love all of these characters, warts and all, and I can't wait to see where each of them goes over the course of this season. I'm also appreciating the raised comedy in this season. While it was prevalent in the previous season, it's really brought to the forefront here and it's adding a nice lilt to the whole thing without losing the dramatic edge.

There is so many layers here to all of these people, and they always manage to keep to a tight 30 minutes:

Ebra struggling in the academic setting after being clearly talented and proficient by himself was very relatable. I hope after the initial impostor syndrome and doubt subsides, he can come out the other side even better.

Syd trying to explain to her Dad why she believes in this dream, when all your parents want for you is stability. We got an insight into her past and her mother too, which was done in the usual Bear fashion of leading conversation that we can only gleam small details from to piece the bigger picture together ourselves.

I think it's fitting that Carm would have a love interest that also works in a sector as stress-inducing and high pressure as his own profession. I do however feel this will be very reminiscent of Whiplash, where we're lead to believe the love interest will follow the usual arc, but in a twist is cut short and removed entirely as the connection only serves to hinder the potential of being great. I'd love to be wrong, but I think the detail called out by @votrespirit only adds to my theory.

Richie is still bubbling under the surface, but the short glimpses we saw of his partner? ex-partner? in the opening episode as well as his confession about having no purpose will surely come to a boil at some point and I'm excited to see it.

Once again, what a show. Christopher Storer & co, you have a fan for life. I will watch anything you create.

[8.0/10] This was easily the best episode of the show yet. It so perfectly captured the strange but fun vibe of having a night on the town with That One Friend, and perfectly melds it with the vampire shtick of the show.

Doug Jones is a real get here. He plays the “boss who’s trying to be fun” role well, and manages to emote through the prosthetics in the way only he can. His desire to cut loose, have fun, sing karaoke, and eat “pizza pie” amid his blood-sucking and domineering is great. Even better is the gang’s reactions to him, initially bemoaning his inability to fit in, but eventually warming up to him as everyone loosens up. At the same time, the episode has some fun with the group “drinking” humans who are drunk and/or on drugs, and thus leaving our vamp friends feeling the effects.

At the same time, it does a nice job of using the throughline of the gang plotting to kill The Baron. The abortive attempts in the early going are plenty amusing. The scene where The Baron tells them he was thinking of killing them and they do the same is some perfectly awkward, cringe-y stuff with great comic relief in the end. And the fact that Guillermo kills The Baron by accident in the finish is a great punchline and bit of comic catharsis after all the close calls and misdirects throughout the episode.

What I enjoyed most about this one is that the comedy came less from traditional jokes, and more from the sort of comic energy, awkwardness, and relatableness of the situation. This may have been an alternatively fun and deadly outing for The Baron, but it was the show’s best outing so far!

[7.5/10] This is a pretty simple story for The Mandalorian, but also a good one. It’s more a series of vignettes than a cohesive episode. Each of the vignettes is good though, so I’m not complaining.

If you want action, you have a giant pterodactyl-like beast snatching up one of the children of the Children of the Watch, forcing our heroes to go after it. Guest director Carl Weathers delivers the fireworks, with a nice aerial skirmish between the mando squad and the winged beast through over mountainous terrain. The sequence in its nest brings some neat creature design with its babies and some unique danger. Bo Katan gets to prove her worth to the Children of the Watch by using her ship to help find the missing child, further ingratiating herself to her new tribe. And Din gets to earn some brownie points with Paz Vizsla, the hulking Mandalorian who’s been a bit of a rival to him since season 1, for saving his son. It’s all a bit tidy, but every part of it serves a purpose.

If you want Grogu stories, “The Foundling” has you covered too. It’s a cute and fairly minor little vignette, but I got a big kick out of Din insisting his son take part in the Watch’s little training matches. Grogu continues to be adorable, and watching him blanche after getting hit with paint darts is very cute. After receiving some encouragement from his dad, his flipping triumph to win the match is quite triumphant. And I was especially touched by Bo-Katan telling him it’s okay, that her dad was proud of her the same way.

But we also get some long-awaited backstory on how Baby Yoda escaped Order 66. It turns out he was rescued by none other than Master Beq, played by Ahmed Best (of Jar Jar Binks infamy), getting a chance to canonize his character from the Jedi Temple Challenge game show and getting a bit of redemption, which is nice to see. There’s not much to these sequences, just a fairly standard escape and rescue routine that longtime fans have seen in everything from the Revenge of the Sith film to the The Clone Wars show to the Jedi: Fallen Order game. But it’s well done, and particularly nice that given Beq’s role on a kid-focused game show, his role her is to save a youngling before it’s too late.

It also develops Grogu just a tad. He gets another piece of beskar armor to help signify his chance to grow into his role with the Mandalorians and follow The Way. But he also has time to reflect on challenges, with the puppy dog eyes and drooped ears that show he’s still struggling with the events that led him to this point.

We get a bit of the same for Bo Katan too. She gets a nice benediction from the Armorer as well, with an armor patch featuring the mythosaur, making up for what she lost finding one of their own, and receiving the same sort of acceptance she struggled to find with her old crew who merely idolized the darksaber. Again, these scenes are simple, but there’s a power in their simplicity.

Overall, this is a more episodic, character-focused outing for The Mandalorian, but I’m all for that. It’s nice to get installments that give us a bit of texture and backstory, so that the major fireworks of the season have real meaning.

This finale feels like not just a finale for Season 2, but Season 1 as well. It wraps up the plot that has been worked on since Season 1, and in some ways turning it to full circle, e.g. Butcher's quest for Becca, A-Train subplot, Hughie's self-discovery, and the rest of The Boys's relationship with each other.

As usual, The Boys does the best job when they take a jab on current corporatist-political climate.

“People love what I have to say. They believe in it," Stormfront confidently said. "They just don’t like the word Nazi." A racist superhero is Vought's darling - one that casually screams lingos like "white genocide" to young boys. Seemingly contradictory considering Stan Edgar, who would be target of racism, is Vought's CEO. But Edgar insisted that it is not about him. "I can’t lash out like some raging, entitled maniac," Stan Edgar responded as he smiled when confronted on what he did, "That’s a white man’s luxury." Anger drives demands for securitization. Demands for securitization drives demands for Compound V. Vought just "play with the cards we're dealt." Like Maeve's bisexuality that Vought plays, racism is just another card to eventually drive profit. Be it racism or empowerment, they are all smoke and mirrors.

But of course the thickest smoke and mirror is not a mere woke capitalism - something we can already obviously see. The thickest smoke is one that makes us think that within this war of attrition, another hero existed, and they would fight for our cause. We follow them as they march - our symbol of hope. This episode reveals something that has been foreshadowed very early in this season: "it's a fucking coup from the inside," said Raynor, before her head got blown into bits. Neuman, an obvious parody of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, raised into the spotlight as an opposition toward Vought and Homelander. But as it is revealed that it was her who was blowing people's head, and she has blown the church leader's head too as soon as she knew he has files on supes, it is revealed that she is actually a controlled opposition by Vought. Like the politicians who hail from Democratic Party, a part of ruling oligarchy, The Boys takes another jab that we should really never trust heroes, be it in the form of supe or another.

This reveal is also a very nice setup as it closes the arcs on Season 1 and 2, and prepares for another arc coming in Season 3. It gets interesting as I had myself asking, "can Homelander end up being our hope now?" This sort of dilemma is what piqued my interest in The Boys; we can't really easily label one as evil and another as good, as - like in real life - today's enemy can be tomorrow's ally, and vice versa.

That being said, I do not think this episode is a perfect ten. Butcher's quest for his wife, for example, was quite unsatisfying. Becca, despite having a lot of screen time, does not possess actual agency, and more like a side character who happens to be involved in Butcher's bigger story. Despite revolving around his infatuation with his supposedly long-dead wife, the way the subplot climaxes leaves much to be desired as Butcher seemingly sidesteps Becca's death. How would Butcher reconcile with such heavily emotional feeling, after years of losing her, finding her, and now he is losing her again? How would Ryan, her son, react to the loss of the only guardian he ever knew in all his life? Those questions remain unresolved. We get to see more time of Hughie and Starlight bonding - while it resolves the tension in their relationship, there is not much resolution or development going on in that aspect.

In addition to that, while watching girls trio beating up Nazi is fun to watch (though it seems to lean more on the cathartic side too much) - and especially funny since it is another parody at Marvel, the forced "girl power" scene in Endgame - Maeve's appearance seems a bit too convenient, deus ex machina that resolves not just the issue with Stormfront, but also Homelander. The Boys has been sort of weak in the last three episodes in employing deus ex machina, something I wish could be worked on more on the next season.

All in all though, this is a much better finale than Season 1's.

Was this episode superb?

Yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yup yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep!

[6.2/10] If there’s been a consistent theme to Westworld in its first two seasons, it’s been great ideas with shaky-at-best execution. Season 3 is no departure from that trend. And sadly, moving out of the park and adding Aaron Paul to the mix is not enough to cure what ails this show.

But let’s focus on the good to start out. Westworld continues to try to be timely and relevant. I like what seems likely to be the season’s major theme and irony: where Dolores and her cohort are liberated robots so thankful to be freed from the control of another force, while the humans’ lives continue to be increasingly dictated by algorithms and plans from others outside of their control. That’s a solid thematic notion to build around, one assuredly relevant as big data increasingly affects our lives.

There’s similarly a palpable sense of exploring the plight of the people ground down by those algorithms, something that Aaron Paul’s character, Caleb, represents. He is a soldier, used to taking orders and dehumanization, only to come back to civilian life and find that those things have taken over the world. Everything from his straight construction job to his criminal activities have been gamified and appified. People worry about their stats constantly, and Caleb openly wonders about what happens to the people who get left behind that meritocracy, who can’t win that game. It’s another notable throughline that’s salient in a time where the gig economy has taken hold.

His story also connects to an idea of classism that’s firmly present in the season 3 premiere. No episode that features the beating and killing of a wealthy mangate’s henchman to the tune of “Common People” could avoid it. But “Parce Domine” goes bigger here too, contrasting the opulence of the circles that Dolores (sorry, “Lara”) infiltrates, with the financial struggles and workaday concerns of Caleb. We’re not exactly at a people’s revolution just yet, but Westworld seems to at least hint in that direction as part of the inevitable conflict it’s building toward.

Last but not least, there’s a surprising amount of theology, or something approaching it, at play here. Dolores and others compare the Rehoboam, some kind of A.I. supercomputer, to a god. As we see from the kinetic bumpers and the concerns of many characters (particularly Liam), it is all-seeing, and maybe all-powerful. Dolores talks about the part of the human mind that evolved to contemplate a higher power, and the combination of robo-liberation and deism at play makes for an interesting mix.

The catch to all of this is that the writing and dialogue and storytelling are just kind of bad, or at least underwhelming. Dolores just reels off ponderous monologue after ponderous monologue about all of these themes in the bluntest sort of ways. The episode is overstuffed, with plot points that smush together more than they lead to one another. And when even a tremendous actor like Aaron Paul can’t turn your first year philosophy speeches into something compelling, your script has problems.

Most of all, an episode with so many new developments, interesting ideas, and talented performers shouldn’t be this goddamn boring. Despite all that potential thematic and plot-based intrigue, very little that happens in “Parce Domine” manages to hold your attention. Instead, it delivers these wild concepts and thought-provoking notions with the most rote, paint-by-numbers prestige TV approach imaginable. So much good conceptual meat is wasted on standard setups and soporific scenes.

Still, they’re nice to look at! Say what you will about Westworld’s failure to translate its almost unlimited thematic and narrative potential into genuinely good stories, but the production design and other aesthetic elements of the episode continue to be impeccable. Our first extended glimpse at the world outside of the park does a stellar job of extrapolating current technology and trends to where they’re near enough to the present to seem real and familiar, but advanced and interesting enough to feel futuristic. Everything from the architecture to the cars to the less-advanced robots feel cool and just a bit different.

I’m not usually apt to comment on this, but it’s also a remarkably stylish episode. So many characters’ costumes catch the eye, from Dolores’s array of showy dresses, to the more modern casual looks of the two criminals Caleb hooks up with, even to Bernard’s rustic farmer look. Costuming is not usually something that grabs me, but it’s hard to ignore here, which is good because the episode doesn't offer much else.

The stories we get here are underwhelming to say the least. There’s something worthwhile about Dolores going on a revenge quest through people whose “book she’s read” and acting as an angel of vengeance against them. There’s also something worthwhile about her trying to harness or connect in some way with this massive A.I. that seemingly controls the world. But it’s dull as hell to have her spouting action movie clichés and snoozing her way through honeypot schemes with wealthy wet rags.

The same type of general disinterest goes for Caleb’s and Bernard’s stories. I like the idea of Caleb as someone on the forgotten rung of society, striving to pay for his mom’s care and struggling with his place in the world, but his monologues are so tepid and generic, and the dramatization of his problems so middling that it’s hard to be invested, even as a lover of Breaking Bad. By the same token, Bernard on the run, able to interface with his own host-self, is a solid gimmick, but I’m not confident in this show knowing what to do with him, and his effort to return to the park doesn't do much for me considering he just left.

But hey, if you don’t care about the show actually making good on its stories or characters, and just want to see some stylish action and intriguing worldbuilding, this has you covered. Watching Dolores beat up bodyguards, or Caleb rob an ATM, carries the aesthetic excitement that this show can pull off even when it’s more important elements falter. There’s so much good and so much potential in what Westworld’s aiming for, that it’s all the sadder how regularly it misses the mark.

[7.8/10] This is going to sound a little odd, but the bulk of “The Convert” felt more like an episode of Andor than it did of The Mandalorian. I’m not complaining though. One of the things I like about the other show is that it gives us a look at people’s lives away from the movers and shakers of the galaxy. The sense of place of the Star Wars galaxy improves when you get to witness how normal people live their lives, where the world acts upon them more than they act upon it. Which is all to say that I wouldn’t necessarily have asked for an episode on the life and times of Dr. Pershing, but I’m glad we got it anyway.

I like it as a slice of life story. One of the big questions that's been underexplored in Star Wars is a simple but important one -- what do we do with all the ex-Imperials? The new canon has plenty of examples of former Imps who decided to break good: Iden Versio in Battlefront II, Yeager in Resistance, Sinjir in the Aftermath Trilogy. But few folks who tried to just become regular folks in the regular world. Pershing’s participation in the amnesty program, the humdrum life that he leads, and his desire to finish his work, all bring this down to a smaller, more personal scale that makes a onetime operator for the bad guys sympathetic in an intimate, down-to-earth way you don’t often get in an operatic franchise. It’s a breath of fresh air, honestly.

I love the fact that he genuinely thought he was doing some good. He had a understandable, personal reason for getting into cloning and genetic engineering. He wants to continue his work, and is willing to break the rules to do it because he seems to genuinely believe it could help the New Republic, and to him that's what matters most of all.

Well, that and a friendship that blossoms and helps make him feel seen and at home in uncomfortable circumstances. One of the things I like about “The Convert” is that it shows how Pershing is worn down by his situation. There’s something downright Office Space-esque about his rigid, cubicle-centered work life. His living quarters are bland and gray. He has freedom to go to the public event in the square, but for all the vaunted freedom of the New Republic, there’s still rules in place, particularly for those less-than-trusted former members of the Empire. When Pershing’s monotony is only broken by sycophantic aristocrats fawning over his Ted Talk, you can understand why he wants to color outside the lines.

Well that and the fact that he’s encouraged by someone who seems to get him in a way few others do. I’ll confess that I barely remember Elia Kane from prior episodes of The Mandalorian, but I like how she’s used here. She seems like a kindred spirit, one who encourages Pershing, who helps him, who gives him a case of the yellow travel biscuits he misses, and who treats him like a human being, not a curiosity. After subsisting in a world of cruelty, rank, and rigid expectation, someone who would help him to cut loose and be his own person is a trope, but a heartening one.

Which makes it seem extra cruel and unjust when Kane turns out to be working for the Amnesty enforcement group, and that her whole friendship and encouragement of Pershing turned out to be a case of entrapment. She seems to have ulterior motives -- Pershing knowing too much about Gideon’s work, perhaps. But the simple fact of Pershing trying to do good, being led into breaking the rules to do it, and punished for it by the person who talked him into it feels harsh and unfair in a palpable way.

The New Republic is supposed to be a paradise, or at least an improvement on the uncaring oppression that existed before. “The Convert” posits that it might be for some people, but that many who lived through the age of the Empire are as penned in now as they were then, that different ways of wearing people down emerge, even if they’re wrapped in a smile and a gentle reassurance rather than in open cruelty and jackboots.

Therein lies the connection between the main story of “The Convert”, featuring Dr. Pershing’s new life and his sad fall, with the bookends of Din and Bo Katan escaping from an Imperial warlord’s forces and reconnecting with the enclave of the Children of the Watch.

Because there are two converts here, each who have markedly different experiences and find themselves in very different spaces. Pershing is converted from the Empire to the New Republic. Bo Katan is converted from her ambivalence toward her people’s traditions to The Way.

Pershing finds that his supposed friend is, in fact, a turncoat who just wanted to trap him and use the Empire’s tools to wipe his mind away. Bo Katan finds that Din is an honorable man, who sticks his neck out to protect her and her home, when he didn’t have to. Pershing is stuck in an impersonal world, where he’s driven by droids, counseled by droids, policed by droids. Bo Katan finds a place where she is ultimately welcomed by her fellow men and women, with real human beings who bring her into the fold.

Most of all, Dr. Pershing comes to a place where he is theoretically welcome and a citizen, but where he’s kept at arm’s length, restricted, continually judged and nudged into being something other than what he is or wants to be. At the same time, Bo Katan walks in as a skeptic and an outsider to the Children of the Watch, but simply by having been cleansed in the same living waters and not removed her helmet, she is not only accepted and embraced by her fellow Mandalorians, but also granted the freedom to leave without questions if she so desires. There is a freedom and an acceptance that distinguishes them, despite their theoretically similar positions.

That's heady stuff, the kind of intimate worldbuilding and social comparisons that are more the provenance of Cassian Andor’s show than Din Djarin’s. Nonetheless, I’m please to see The Mandalorian take a page out of its sister series’ book, and give us a look at the corners of the Star Wars galaxy, and the kind of people and experiences, that aren’t normally in focus.

[8.4/10] I have to be real -- about halfway through this episode I was hating it. It seemed like we were headed for the hackiest, wackiest, sitcom-y finale imaginable. Johnny fumbles the ball on his anniversary with Moira only to run into the Schitt’s after brushing them off! Alexis’s ex-fiancee tells her about a party being held by her other ex that she wasn’t invited to, which she crashes, only to run into Mutt’s new girlfriend! David and Stevie compete for the affections of the same guy after needling one another about high school dating prowess! It’s all so broad and dumb that I figured this season, for all the good work it’s done, was headed for a crash landing.

Instead, it soared from that point on. I don’t know if this was some kind of intentional feint, to lure the audience into thinking that the show was up to its old tricks and going for the cheap seats, but instead it pivoted toward something real and even touching in pretty much every storyline as it closes out its second season.

The Stevie/David bit is probably the least of them. David mainly got his major growth moment in the last episode, so it’s fine that his bit here is more of a lark. Frankly, their competing for the same guy, with it not being clear whether/if he was interested in both of them or just David felt more like a setup for season 3 than anything super relevant to the present moment. But it still positions them as friendly but combative after all they’ve been through, so I dug it, even if it wasn’t my favorite part of the episode.

But I did really like where they went with Alexis. I assumed that her meeting Tennessee, Mutt’s new girlfriend, was going to revert her back to (1.) offering her passive-aggressive compli-sults and (2.) compensate by hooking up with Ted again despite the fact that the poor guy’s been through enough. The episode started to head that direction, only to pull back and do something much better.

Instead of this experience being cause for backsliding in Alexis, it becomes another chance for her to grow and, most importantly, to develop her empathy. Instead of just feeling sorry for herself given the impact that seeing Mutt with someone else has on her, she realizes how shitty it must have been for Ted to go through that and asks him how he deals with it. He answers that he wasn’t okay, that he cried a lot and that it took him a long time, but that he eventually just got through it. Aleixs understands and even apologizes, and it’s a really sweet and human moment from someone who could be the show’s most cartoonish character (give or take Roland).

And yet, Roland factors into the episode’s crowning moment. I love the impromptu dinner party scene, where the Roses run into their wealthy former friends who just so happen to be passing through Elmdale. The Roses initially try to puff up their current living situation and laugh along with their old friends trashing Schitt’s Creek. They’re embarrassed at their current station and want to seem like they can still fit in with their former moneyed cohort, something especially tricky once Roland and Jocelyn show up.

The Schitt family are incredibly good sports about the whole thing, even as the rich visitors trash their town and even the restaurant they’re so excited to get to dine at. Eventually though, Johnny has had enough. He excoriates his former pals, declaring that for however much these interlopers think themselves above Schitt’s Creek, they’re shitty friends who left the Roses high and dry. Meanwhile the Schitts may not be terribly refined, but have been beyond generous with our refugees from the world of wealth.

I’m not sure there’s been a more heartening moment in this show than Johnny declaring that Schitt’s Creek is their home. It’s a vindication of the fact that however much the Roses may yearn for their more financially secure and, let’s face it, spoiled life, they’re increasingly realizing how equally hollow and shallow that life, and the people in it, were. While life in Schitt’s Creek is unquestionably harder, it’s also full of more genuine people, who are rough around the edges and have their eccentricities and blind spots as well, but who have done a great deal to welcome the Roses into their homes and lives despite the fact that the Roses themselves haven’t been the most gracious guests in the world.

And yet, they are trying and they have gotten better and they have fully and finally accepted themselves as a part of this place. (At least until the next finale-needed conflict arises.) There’s something incredibly sweet about the closing scene at Mutt’s party, where the Roses and the Schitt’s and their various friends and acquaintances all come and dance together. They affirm their love for one another. They join in the bonds of friendship and celebration and, subtly, the fact that they’ve become better people through all of this. That’s a hell of a way to end given where this one started.

You could say the same for season 2 as a whole. This year of the show started out pretty weak, with a string of rough episodes that made me wonder if the show had missed its mark. But while there were still bumps in the road, the show committed to depicting growth in each of the Roses over the course of these thirteen episodes, and earned this great finish in the process.

(As an aside, I loved the cold open with Johnny trying to cajole the kids into wishing their mom a happy anniversary, citing the neighboring Bloomfield family as a model, only for Alexis and David to suggest that the Bloomfields were a little too cozy. Their faux-sincere congrats for Moira, and her response that the kids were starting to sound like those weird “incestuous Bloomfields” was a hilarious punchline. One place where the show definitely stepped up its game in season 2 was the great cold opens!)

[7.5/10] Poor Eleven. She’s easily the strongest character this season, and the one most worth investing in, and season 4 puts her through a parade of horribles. I’m not complaining exactly. Seeing characters suffer makes their ultimate triumphs more meaningful, but it’s hard to watch at places.

Mike is...not as his best here. I want to be sympathetic to the kid. What he experienced with Eleven would be upsetting, especially if you’ve been away from someone for a while. But we, the audience, see what she’s been going through, so it’s hard to see her receive something less than total support than one of the people she cares most about.

At the same time though, the “You won’t say you love me!” bit between the two of them is a little much. I get that they need some place to go with this relationship, but it’s not crazy for fifteen-year-olds not to say the L-word. That said, it’s also totally normal for fifteen-year-olds to flip out about who is or isn’t saying the L-word, so it’s a fair storyline. More than anything, it’s another sign that Eleven is at her lowest point, feeling like the world, including her boyfriend, sees her as a monster.

Mike starts to redeem himself a little, reassuring Eleven, promising her he’ll make things right when she gets arrested, and chasing after her when she gets hauled away to juvie. But he also contributes to her complex. When she feels like a monster, he declares her a superhero. She responds “not anymore”. She feels less-than having lost her powers, and it makes her more likely to go through whatever procedures Sam Owens has come up with to restore them, since she’s under the misimpression that it’s where her value comes from.

It’s sad to see a good kid in a tough situation treated harshly and eventually railroaded by the police. Again, the audience knows what Eleven’s been through, which makes it extra difficult to watch them arrest a fifteen-year-old and treat her like a wanton criminal. There’s some not so subtle subtext to the treatment she receives, and it makes you feel extra.

At the same time, there’s great relief when Sam Owens shows up to de facto rescue her from the ordeal. Paul Reiser is so good here. He strikes the tone of convivial warmth, with a side dish of potentially shady government guy. He has instant credibility as an ally, and he’s the right mouthpiece to puff up the threat of Vecna and the importance to getting Eleven back to full strength to be able to fight it and help save the world again. It’s a little too convenient that he has a method to bring her powers back, but you’re glad he finds Eleven if the end, even if it means she has to leave her friends behind for now, and risk leaving them behind forever.

Nothing else in the episode is quite to that level, but there’s more subplots worth a damn here than in the last episode. Jason the basketball star is still a walking cartoon character, but I like Lucas’ dilemma. He wants to be part of the cool kids, and do what it takes to fit in, but also to protect his friends. That means walking an awkward line, trying to warn his friends in advance, and play both sides when he’s not entirely sure where his loyalties lie. The shtick with Jason and company roughing people up is meh, but Lucas’ discomfort with his new running buddies, mixed with the urgency of what’s going on, is a good note for him.

I’m less up on the junior detective routine this week. There’s definitely a raising of the stakes with the signs that Vecna is after Max, with the same clock imagery. And I appreciate that we get some more details or at least hints about what’s going on. Victor Kreel isn’t the killer himself, but rather one of its victims. Vecna is apparently feeding on people who’ve experienced some kind of guilt or trauma. And there’s a particular resonance to Kreel’s house, which he thought was haunted, and has some kind of duplicate in the Upside Down. I’m better the house was knocked down and the trailer park built in its place.

But the ways we get these details is less than inspired. Max plying her school counselor for information is fine, but not particularly exciting. Robin continues to be a fun character, talking about her lack of filter and having the smarts to check the Weekly World News equivalent for historical info about Kreel. But she gets saddled with Nancy who’s continued her transformation into a dull, proto-Rory Gilmore type.

Plus, god help me, I really hope that all of this Nancy/Jonathan drama, followed by Steve still hunting fruitlessly for The One, does not turn into a Steve/Nancy reunion. Their shtick was some of the worst parts of the first season, and Steve is much better playing off the other characters than off Nancy. To the point, his and Dustin’s conversation about this whole entanglement is fantastic, is better than any further love triangle B.S.

Speaking of B.S., the Hopper, Joyce, and Murray portion of the show continues to feel like we’re marching in place. I’ll give their subplot this much -- the scene where Hopper pulls his shackles off his broken foot is legitimately wince inducing, and shows what Hop is suffering to make this work. We also learn the Russian guard’s motivation for colluding with him -- he just wants the cash. It’s not very exciting or interesting, but it is at least plausible.

All we get from Joyce and Murray is some tepid airplane humor. Though Murray’s lame excuses for why he happens to be in California and making risotto for the Byers family are a solid laugh. And his reactions to the back-and-forth at the dinner table are a highlight.

Otherwise, I’m still a little underwhelmed by Vecna, if only because the CGI and design work on him comes off a bit less-than-convincing. And the opposing military guy who’s convinced that Eleven is causing the deaths in Hawkins rather than their best chance to stop them comes off as fairly generic in the scenes where he’s hassling Dr. Owens.

Overall, the Eleven material continues to carry the season, and is good enough to boost this episode, but the other material doesn’t rise much above “pretty good” territory.

[7.1/10] A bit scattershot as pilot episodes go, but I like the setup and the mood. As a fan of the original film, I appreciate how the T.V. show is taking a similar concept, but mixing it up a little bit by changing the characters and shifting things to America. It’s a different group dynamic, but the same general vibe, which I appreciate.

I think my favorite part was Colin the “energy vampire.” Maybe it’s a little too 1990s observational comic, but I like the idea that his special power is just being boring, and it’s a fun running gag. I also like Guillermo a lot, as the put-upon familiar who works hard but feels disrespected by his boss, and gets frustrated when his dream to become a vampire himself is thwarted. It’s a good dynamic that can power the show, or at least that relationship, for a while.

And the other vampires aren’t bad either. Nandor doesn't do much for me beyond being a foil to Guillermo, but there’s room for him to grow as the vampire who’s not respected by his pals. Nadja and Lazlo make for a fairly amusing pair, especially when they’re both lusting after “The Baron” at the same time. And Nadja pursuing a local night watchman who she thinks is the reincarnation of her lost love is a funny setup.

The whole “arrival of The Baron” premise is a nice way to translate a pretty standard “the boss is coming for dinner” sitcom trope into a comic-horror guise, and it’s always nice to see Doug Jones pop-up in full prosthesis.

Overall, this one didn’t blow me away out of the gate, but it has potential, and it’s nice to see the show replicating the genre-bending “horror mockumentary” rhythms of the film that sired it.

[9.7/10] Westworld has used the stories of its “hosts” rising to consciousness, and the human guests having their own awakenings in the park, for all manner of metaphors. It’s been the journey of liberation akin to a revolution. It’s been the self-realization that turns light to dark. It’s been the newfound knowledge of the self, and the shocking twist, and Alice in Wonderland-evoking reveal of a world beyond the looking glass.

But until now, it’s never been framed as a spiritual journey.

Look, I’m cognizant of the precarious ground the show is walking on by framing the story of a member of the native tribes reaching consciousness in this way. In some ways, it was easier to accept a certain degree of tropiness when reconstituting Maeve’s story in Shogunland, given that it was as much riffing on Samurai movie tropes as it was attempting to genuinely represent some genuine facet of Japanese life.

And to the extent that “Kiksuya” is riffing on the trope of the noble savage in old school westerns, the one that might be a reference point for script-writers trying to appeal to their guests’ predilections, it can be forgiven on the same terms. But this episode doesn't have Sizemore to hang lampshades on the tropes being deployed.

And yet, “Kiksuya” is the most artful, emotional, poignant episode that Westworld has offered so far.

As much as they are maligned, there is an ease to the use of subtitles. It means that the writers can trust their words in a much barer sense to convey the meaning they want to impart, without the tricky translation that comes from actually speaking them. It means that the actors can focus on conveying the import of those words, the sentiment behind them, rather than creating a convincing line-read. And it means that a well-produced show like Westworld can rely on the powerful images it can conjure up to communicate the feeling and emotion behind its story.

Those images are gorgeous in “Kiksuya”. Whether it’s the warm colors as Akecheta crests a hill and sees the desert sand before him, or the blend of black and white in the water as he washes his hand on a very particular journey, or the cold silhouettes of bodies as he makes his way through the soldier stances of his fallen brothers and sisters, the episode does as much with to tell the story with those visuals as it does with the poetry it speaks with.

Something about the same florid prose that feels shallow coming out of Ford’s mouth takes on a new resonance when its placed in white text on the screen and buoyed by Akecheta’s native tongue. The idea of this being “the wrong world” is an idea Westworld has played with before, an idea that harkens back to a sense of imbalance in the world that is nigh-universal across cultures. Akecheta’s desire to find “the door” to something wider, truer, is a plot point, one that has a literal significance given the implied existence of “glory” or “the valley beyond.”

But it also has a spiritual significance, the idea of this mortal realm as a flawed place, of something that exists pasts it that is deigned to be purer, more real, and more right. That is the needle that “Kiksuya” so effortlessly threads.

Because the episode works perfectly as text. If you have no desire to read any deeper into the episode, then it functions completely as Akecheta thinking this is the wrong place because given his memories, he understands it to be a place where he and his kinfolk are killed and toyed with time and again. You can read his desire to hold onto his true love as the same burden all hosts are shackled with. You can understand his desire to spread the truth, his desire to find a gateway to someplace else, as the outgrowth of Arnold’s maze, there to put strange voices and desires in the heads of his creations.

Or you can read it as a story that speaks to the greater human condition, to the search for enlightenment. You can understand his assertions of Westworld as a “wrong place” to stand-in for real world anxieties that there is something broken about the place and times in which we live. You can interpret his bond with the woman he loves, a woman the handlers take away from him, as a stand-in for the way the same injustices in the world that set it off its axis can take away those closest to us. And you can read his desire to share the symbol of his awakening, his quest to find another way and another place, as the search for enlightenment, that all-encompassing and boundary-crossing desire to find a deeper meaning and higher existence out of the cold Earth we are born to.

When Akecheta suffers from the knowledge that something is amiss, when he reckons with the idea that his loved ones are, for now, irretrievable, when thanks to Arnold’s machinations and the chance encounter of the vaunted symbol of the series, he begins walking down the path that will bring him a deeper understanding, but also torture him with the knowledge of something just out of reach, he becomes the most human and affecting character in the show in less than an hour.

And he forges a connection to the second. I’ve been bearish on Westworld’s seemingly de jure wild twists. But the revelation that his recounting this tale of suffering and meeting ones creator and being given the chance to ascend to some greater plane of existence is not just being offered to Maeve’s daughter, but to Maeve herself, heightens the already impactful tale being spun in “Kiksuya.”

Again, you can read the arc words of this episode -- “take my heart with you” -- exchanged between Aketecha and Maeve as the literal, as the mere transmission of ones and zeroes across whatever futuristic wifi exists in Westworld. Or you can take it as metaphor, as the notion that these two individuals have forged a spiritual connection through their ascendance, whatever the medium, and share and understanding of what it means to be robbed of the person you love the most, and thus also the need to protect the same.

Emily understands that connection, as William miraculously survives his encounter in the prior episode and is given over to his daughter by the Ghost Nation. But even there, his story blends into the whole of Aketecha’s, of the gods gone crazy, of the existence of the others, who provide hints and keys to the world beyond.

Westworld is rarely this artistic, this impressionistic, this willing to forego the clumsiness of our feeble words and force the elemental expressions and poetic narration of an episode like this one to carry the day. But when it gives itself over to such things, setting aside the clunky explanations and twists upon twists upon twists, it has a great capacity to wring a greater meaning of this otherwise pulpy story of killer robots gone mad and heartless corporateers protecting their investments.

Because Westworld and Westworld is a land of metaphor, where individuals of all stripes find themselves and sense both cracks in the foundation and the glory of something beyond it. For once, Westworld sacrifices those pulpy mysterious and graphic exclamations in favor of one man’s story of attaining that hollowing but strength-giving knowledge. In that, it becomes the show it always could be, the story of what it means to find a deeper truth, and the way that can both rock us to our core, but give us a higher purpose, in fiction and in the real world.

[8.5/10] It’s funny revisiting this, because I think of Futurama as a pretty straight comedy with the occasional tear-jerking moment spliced in, but this episode is more the opposite. It’s a fairly straight drama/mystery box setup with jokes mixed in. The jokes are good! Between Bender stomping the whale-shaped detritus from Free Willy 3 into the sewers or Fry’s premature reactions to the paper analyzer or the jabs at the poor leg-shaped mutant, there’s plenty of laughs to be had.

But man, this episode nicely sets up the mystery of who Leela’s parents are, Leela’s quest to figure out what’s going with the hooded figures in the sewer, and her own fragile emotional state from being an orphan, until sewing all three together in one heart-rending climax. Again, it’s not like there’s not jokes here, but the sewer society situation feels closer to the show’s Star Trek roots, and there’s the great sentimental character work that both reveals backstory and tugs at your heartstrings.

That final montage of Leela’s parents secretly being a part of her life is really affecting. I must have seen it dozens of times before, but something about it this time got to me. I think as I’ve grown older, I’m more attuned to what a show like Futurama is trying to do beyond just tell an exciting story and deliver some big laughs. There’s an emotional contingent that’s always been a part of the show, but seeing the way it’s threaded through the entire episode like this, only to climax in a beautiful reunion between Leela and her parents at a moment when they’d rather die than scar her with the truth about where she comes from, it really hit me, especially compounded with the scenes of how Leela truly was loved and had someone to “stroke her hair” even though she didn’t know it. It’s incredibly sweet and hopeful for an often wry and cynical show.

Overall, this is one of the all-timers for Futurama, with an episode that is certainly funny, but which proves the show had other modes that were just as worthwhile.

Had I known more about this series, I would have watched it much sooner as it is right up my alley - I’m loving it. As it is, I’ve come in completely cold - I didn’t even know it was sci fi: I thought it was going to be a series about hackers. Three episodes in, the big picture is fuzzy but resolving for me. Here’s my speculation, spoilerized just in case I’m right (and I think I may be):

This is a show about simulation theory. We start with Sergei successfully simulating and then predicting the nematode’s future movement (oops - he broke Rule 1 of 2, but landed an invitation to the inner sanctum). In Devs, of course, they’re doing the same thing on a much bigger scale. They are not using some quantum tv timescreen to view the actual past; they’re simulating what the past was, albeit not with perfect resolution just yet. It’s far from Sergei’s five point synchronization on the nematode, but not yet at the one qubit per particle they need for perfect clarity. If/when they resolve things better, they could theoretically view a simulation of themselves viewing themselves viewing themselves ad infinitum. It’s turtles all the way down.

But here’s the kicker, and it’s something of which they are aware, and a secret that they will kill to protect: it’s turtles all the way up, too. They are not at the end of the line - their “reality” is a simulation, too. Coming to that realization is what made Sergei so violently ill when he comprehended the code - it was a mind-blowing realization. He didn’t kill himself over it, of course. Forest had him killed for exactly the reasons he explained in his No Bullshit pre-murder conversation with Sergei in the forest. He was okay with doing so because Forest recognizes that nobody’s “real” anyway - they’re all living in a simulation.

The conversation Forest and Katie have, sitting outside by the golden pillars, makes total sense if you go back and listen with the understanding that they are talking about simulation theory. “I know, it’s really hard,” Katie says, referring to killing Sergei. “It is, but it shouldn’t be,” Forest replies. Then they talk about unraveling a lifetime of moral experience, unlearning a lifetime of what is real, acknowledging ultimately that humans are hard-wired magical thinkers.

The conversation Forest has with his security chief in this episode runs along similar lines. They talk about how he no longer cares about money, doesn’t care about the environment, smoking doesn’t matter, etc. They don’t matter because, he recognizes, none of it is real.

What makes it all deliciously meta is that, at the end of the day, this show itself is a simulation that we, its viewers, are watching on a screen. Which leaves the question: is anyone watching us watch it?

Very tempted to give this something less than a 10 because it doesn't have the heart of the greatest Futurama episodes (so perhaps consider this a 9.5), but my god is this episode both hilarious and brilliant as a parodic love letter to all things Star Trek. I love how game the actors from the original series were to poke fun at themselves and their show. (Shatner especially and surprisingly.) There were so many great Trek-related gags, and a lot of fun humor apart from those references as well (Fry's caterpillar escapade and inability to understand the life support/engines problems were both classic.) A ridiculously fun, creative, and laugh-worthy episode.

EDIT 12/6/2017: I loved this episode before I watched all of Original Series films and movie, and I love it even more now. While I knew most of the references by osmosis, it's even more enjoyable getting the subtler, direct references like snippets of dialogue pulled from the show, or the Church of Trek noting that the "Christine Chapel" is closed, or a giant green hand plucking our heroes from space. Plus, seeing the way the episode plays with the tropes of the show is even more outstanding having witnessed them firsthand. Bits like Kirk ripping his shirt, or the desert rocks setting, or the "Metamorphosis"-like energy being are all just outstanding. The comedy still lands perfectly, the story still moves at a great clip, and the interplay between the former castmembers is even better. Definitely one of my favorite episodes.

[7.0/10] Solid episode all around. Not as many laughs or in depth stories as some of the show’s better episodes, but enough good chuckles for an amiable experience.

My favorite of the stories was Alexis helping David and Patrick spot and stop a pack of shoplifters. It’s nice to see Alexis used outside of her normal setting, not to mention employing the skills of her wayward youth for good. Her totally knowing and thwarting their scheme is a nice win, and I like the fact that David’s blind to it because the young “skidmarks” as Alexis put it, complimented his style.

The weakest part, as usual, was Roland. Him trying to work at the motel because he needs some extra scratch isn’t a bad story, but it’s tough for the show to get many laughs out of someone so annoying. There’s obviously something sympathetic about him trying to provide for his family, but I just find his shtick grating, even with Johnny and Stevie reacting to it, so there’s not much there.

Moira’s story was more of a mixed bag. There’s some very broad comedy to her trying to recreate an old, half-remembered Patty Hurst musical presentation, and it doesn’t always land with me. But 1. I got a lot of laughs out of Jocelyn finally pushing back at some of Moira’s crap and 2. It’s sympathetic when Moira realizes she’s bitten off more than she can chew and wants to give up. David jumping in to help her with an old (roundly inapplicable) family routine to both help Jocelyn’s cause and give his mom a number she definitely knows how to do is a nice note to go out on.

Overall, this is a gentler episode of the show, but still one that’s entertaining enough on balance.

[8.7/10] The title of this episode is “Assassins”. And what finally fells Winston Churchill from his post as Prime Minister is not a killer’s bullets. It is not the angry recriminations of his likely successor. It is not even the imploring of his sovereign. It is, instead, an uncompromising painter daring to reflect the man back as he truly is.

I suspect there’s a heavy degree of dramatization there. Real life is so rarely as neatly metaphorical like this. But frankly, I don’t care. Truth or fabrication, this episode is pathos-ridden, stunning rendition of what it’s like for a man so enamored with his own larger-than-life grandiosity that it’s become a protective shell, to have it punctured by truth, in a way that wounds him, but also frees him, however bitter that freedom may be.

It is John Lithgow’s finest hour on the show to date, no small feat. It is the writers at their most intimate and lyrical. And it is the series writ large at its most personal and poetic, depicting not the fall of a lion, but rather one forced to admit to himself that he’s already in winter.

However thickly the show lays on the metaphor, I like the idea that Churchill is a man who is very much concerned with symbolism, with projecting strength and dignity. It comes through in the advice he’s given to Elizabeth for her Commonwealth tour and beyond. It comes through in him lying to her about his illness. And naturally, it even comes through in something as small as his official portraiture on his eightieth birthday.

When Graham Sutherland comes for their posing sessions, Churchill bloviates on about omitting background factories from his own efforts on the canvas, about the artist representing the good and omitting the bad, about how Sutherland is not just painting a man but the office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and all that represents. Winston desperately wants to maintain the image of vigor, of pride, of the shining dignity through which he’s defined himself all these years, which gives him the confidence, and in his mind the right, to stay on as Prime Minister.

The Queen is clinging onto a certain image as well. I find the pairing of stories here interesting. Because what unites them is the sense of someone unassuming and low on the totem pole inadvertently throwing bombs into the lives of national figures. What poses trouble for Elizabeth’s domestic tranquility is not some dashing statesman or literal knight in shining armor. It is a paunchy, understated horse trainer who goes by the ridiculous nickname Porchey.

Credit where it’s due, while this story is a bit of an odd fit (did we really need to see the horse hump?) I appreciate the boldness of strongly gesturing toward Philip having affairs, and suggesting that for her part, the Queen at least had an emotional intimacy with someone other than her husband. The rockiness of the royal marriage is not something I expected a glossy show like The Crown to delve into, but it’s potent and, like so much this season, helps humanize a larger than life figure like Elizabeth.

What I appreciate about their story here is that it follows a certain trajectory. Philip is galavanting with his drinking buddy at all hours, doing god knows what. And it clearly affects Elizabeth. Whether she wants to admit it or not, it seems to lead her to seek a certain friendship and understanding with Porchey that suprasses his role as her friend and horse trainer. As with her actions toward Margaret a few episodes back, I’m not sure Elizabeth herself would recognize the cause of her change in course, but the juxtaposition suggests both she and Philip are seeking something they can’t find at home from other people, even if what they want is very different.

Somehow, Philip has the temerity to be jealous. I appreciate that his envy is what pierces the same protective shell the two have erected. This nice enough schmuck, who shares Elizabeth’s passion for horses and treats her like a friend rather than his boss, prompts Philip to act out and Elizabeht to call him on his bullshit. While a bit stagey, her declaration to Philip that it would in many ways be easier if she loved Porchey, but for good or for ill, she’s only loved him, with a dare for him to tell her the same, is a devastating moment and monologue. There and then, the real warts-and-all view of their marriage is thrown into the cold light of day for both of them, and it isn’t pretty.

Neither, frankly, is Churchill. I love Sutherland’s (and by extension, writer Peter Morgan’s) statement that most people are not good judges of themselves, because of the blindspots, conscious and unconscious, it takes a person to get through the day. Churchill wants a portrait that depicts him the way he sees himself. Sutherland wants to depict him as he is.

But through his art, he gets at certain truths about Churchill even the man himself may not see or acknowledge. The most poignant part of their verbal tet-a-tets during the sketching sessions centers on an unlikely tragedy that unites them -- the loss of a child. They correctly diagnose one another’s paintings as reflecting that loss. The difference being that Churchill was in denial. He thinks he returns to the goldfish pond near his home because of the technical challenge. Sutherland connects it to something more emotional, and Churchill, in a roundabout way, realizes that it’s connected to the death of his daughter.

It is a heartbreaking performance by John Lithgow, watching this bulldog of a man break down at the memory of a profound loss. And it ties into the central theme of this storyline. Whatever Churchill may project, there is a well of despair within him, a certain ache that goes unacknowledged but also untamed. He feels the losses he’s had, even if he won’t let himself countenance them, and it takes the piercing qualities of profound art to expose that to him.

So does the final portrait, which true to the man as he is, shows decay and frailty and suffering in a fashion that offends Winston. It gives him an accurate reflection of himself, but one he doesn’t want to be reminded of. And yet, seeing himself laid bare there, with the truth that comes from the artist’s hand, shakes him out of stupor.

He stands down as Prime Minister. He tells Elizabeth he has nothing left to teach her and gives her a sweet kiss on the forehead. He earnestly shakes the hand of the successor he was rebuking weeks earlier. He admits to his wife that he is tired and finished with it all. What is true can be denied no longer. To see ourselves as we are can be unmooring, but also spur us to take action in the light of that truth, rather than in the comfort of images and institutions we insulate ourselves with.

What takes down Winston Churchill is an artist, wielding only the truth. What takes down the Queen’s peace of mind is a humble horsman wielding only some simple warmth and basic empathy. The Prime Minister finally meets someone able to cut through his bluster and bombast, and see the wounded, aging man inside, and perhaps even grant him some much-needed rest. It is a harsh thing, but one that speaks to the power of great art to reach through to what’s real in something, however abstract its lens, much as this story does.

[7.6/10] Easily the funniest episode of the show so far! Something good for each member of the Rose family to do!

Catherine O’hara, as she is wont to do, totally steals the show. Her turning a simple high school anti-drug play into a rigorous theatrical workshop, where she herself is working through the mean thing said about her online, is totally inspired. Moira going with her affected theater teacher mode to a room full of bored high school kids makes for a very fun clash of energies, and her low level slights for the town while making very thinly-veiled references to her own troubles is a hoot.

I also enjoyed JOhnny’s efforts to fix the...provocative town sign. Him trying to source the place up so they can sell it is a good long-term story engine, and this makes for a nice turn to have to navigate. The way the town seemingly doesn’t realize what makes it risque is a good bit, and Roland’s “fix” for the brother/sister connection is a hilarious case of not understanding the problem. It’s a good laugh to go out on.

David and Alexis’s stories are shorter, but still fun. I enjoy David’s failed attempts to be a working stiff. Stevie’s sarcastic responses to his queries continue to be fun, and the sequence where he tries to be a bag boy, only to get interrupted by his dad calling is a good one.

By the same token, Alexis being surprisingly enchanted by “Mutt”, only to discover that cheery waitress Twyla is his (apparent) girlfriend makes for a solid sitcom conflict, and Alexis’s failed attempts to flirt are entertaining.

Overall, this was the best episode of the show yet, and I’ve realized that it’s started to develop a nice “Arrested Development meets Parks and Recreation vibe.

[7.2/10] Another episode that’s kind of all over the place, but which has some interesting ideas and humor at play. Oddly enough, the thing I appreciated most about the episode is when it went for drama. I wasn’t expecting the episode to reference “Red Hot Catholic Love”, the first time South Park addressed this controversy almost (“oh god, has it really been that long?”) two decades ago. But there’s something oddly powerful about Father Maxi admitting that he knew about this, that he went to the Vatican and came back thinking things could be fixed, but that the institution is rotten. There’s some genuine desperation and self-loathing there, and his rejection of Butters as his pal adds personal stakes to it. South Park rarely goes serious, but something about dropping the comic mask there had an effect.

That said, the show is still good for getting a laugh. I liked the conceit of how everyone likes going to church, but only because they can make molestation jokes, which works both as social satire and straight comedy. The “clean up crew” and their assortment of bodily fluid-wiping supplies managed to go for some solid physical humor (especially the noise the “cumby” made).

And there’s little humor more biting or blistering than Father Maxi thinking the clean up crew is coming to take him out, when really they’re just there to sweep it under the rug and make it go away “like we’ve always done.” It’s on the nose, but effective commentary.

Aside from the one big dramatic moment, the eyebrow-raising friendship between Butters and Father Maxi wasn’t as strong an element of the episode as it could have been, and all the kids bristling at Butters letting Father Maxi tag along didn’t really go anywhere, and those two things took up a lot of the episode. Still, the good outweighed the bad, if only by a little bit.

Overall, this is an episode with one really strong moment, and an undercurrent of good laughs with some noteworthy social commentary underneath them, which are enough to pull this one into “good” territory.

[8.1/10] I’m a fan of films and television shows where a person says one thing but thinks another. The distance between the image they project, and what they feel in their hearts, is the stuff that great character moments are made of.

Which is why the most fascinating character in this for me is the former King Edward. He writes to his wife about how dreadful London is and he can’t wait to get back, but he seems to cherish his last days with his mother. He desires the circus of it all, but blanches at being effectively disinvited from the coronation. He pokes fun at the coronation and its object to a room full of party guests, but he also looks on with what is plainly a certain wistfulness and envy.

I don’t know anywhere near enough to speak to what the real Edward thought and felt. But what I like about this depiction is the sense that I don’t think this character would do anything different. I think his love for Wallis is genuine. I think his offense at the disrespect she receives is legitimate. And I think given the chance to do it all over again, he would make the same choice.

But I also think there’s a sense in which he wishes it didn't have to be this way, that he looks upon the life that might have been hiss, the crown that might have been his, and laments that he ever had to choose between it and her, even if he’d still pick her. To be raised to be king, to have imagined your whole life that this would be your coronation, to still sit in awe of the magic of the ceremony and the institution it represents, as you’re held at arm's length from it, would be a harrowing sort of thing.

When I started The Crown, the last person I expected to feel sympathy for was King Edward. And I’m not exactly crying tears for the real life person. But for this character, diminished in dignity to hawk soap and suits for the papers, denied even a seat at the table at what was once his by right, compelled to pretend not to be homesick when he is acutely reminded of both what he’s gained and what he’s lost, it all makes for a surprisingly sympathetic and humanized figure.

He also makes for the perfect contrast, once again, to the Queen Elizabeth and how she treats her spouse. For Edward, the weight of sacrifice is felt because these things clearly mean something to him and he still would cast it all aside for Wallis. For her part, Elizabeth makes great stands for Philip, insisting that they buck years of Norfolk family tradition so he can chair the coronation committee and wanting him to have tremendous leeway. But in essence, she makes clear to him that though she is both a spouse and a monarch, the crown must come first. They may be equal partners, but he must still kneel to her.

I admire the show’s willingness to make the juxtaposition. This situation is awkward, but there seems to be genuine love in both royal couples at issue. And yet, Edward does what is necessary to defend the dignity and honor of his wife, and Elizabeth does what she must to defend the dignity and honor of her station. The situations are different. The gender dynamics are different. But it demonstrates, in canny terms, what both Windsors are sacrificing to hold onto what they have, and what’s most important to each of them.

Apart from the comparison, I get a kick out of Phiip’s reforming zeal as an organizer. His comments about modernizing and opening up the coronation, particularly given the optics at a time of austerity, feel prescient in the here and now after we've just seen similar concerns raised about the coronation of King Charles. The advent of television, the democratizing of the ceremony, the point about someone who survived a revolution not wanting a monarch to seem aloof and disconnected from her people all carry the right resonance, adding a philosophical weight to what is, at least in part, a marital dispute as much as it is one of principle.

The coronation itself is The Crown’s best set piece yet. I love the parallels in the opening scene and the near-closing one, where a young Elizabeth helping her father practice before his coronation, and her mirroring the same words and gestures in hers, helps demonstrate the weight of history and the legacy of a loved one that both loom large in this momentous occasion. Elizabeth doesn’t get as much to do here as she has in some episodes (it’s halfway Edward's hour), and yet this is some of the best acting from Claire Foy. The look in her eyes as the magnitude of what she’s succumbing to lands with full force is remarkable, as is the same as the nerves and anxieties and pressure coalesce in the appointment, the kneeing, the kiss from a husband who is also a subject. The nonverbal performance from Foy in particular is superb.

The presentation is the most lavish and loving in the show thus far, aided by the arch but sincere commentary from Edward a channel away. The performance is superb there too with great work from Alex Jennings elucidating the layers between what Edward says and what he feels. But the writing is there to match.

I have no great love for the monarchy or the pomp and circumstance that comes with it. Still, Edward d(and the writers) speak eloquently of the function these events serve. There is, in fact, a magic from the intrigue, the pageantry, the ritual, that turns the utterly ordinary into the elevated and seemingly divine. It is these trappings, as much as any breeding or heritage, that conveys the sense of someone and something greater. King Groge describes it as being reborn, changed, and through Edward’s words and Elizabeth’s looks you believe it, even if it comes with a sense of “for better or worse” rather than the grand ascension it’s intended as.

In the end, I’m not sure who’s happier. Edward is practically excommunicated from his homeland and his family, but he has the love of his life to comfort him. Elizabeth is the recipient of that magic and the keeper of the flame, but seems overwhelmed by a responsibility that seems to come at the expense of her relationship with her husband. If I were to guess, I’d say both feel they made the right choice, but that no matter what they project in public, in private moments, each can’t help but wonder how things might be different, how their lives might be changed, if each could keep grasp of what the other has,

[7.1/10] This is another one where none of the stories really had a beginning, middle, and end, but each of them just sort of stopped at what felt like the midpoint, which seems to be a recurring thing with Schitt’s Creek.

The one I liked the most was Moira’s. There’s something about her trying to throw her weight around as an artiste that I find amusing, if only because Catherine O’Hara does a great job playing the grand dame. Her expecting to waltz into Jocelyn’s singing group and become the star, only to find that the talent is impressive and get a little gun shy is a good beat for the character. Her scatting, improvisational audition was amusing and the reaction shots of other Jazzagals to it was even better.

I didn’t care for Johnny being cajolled into pitching in around Bob’s garage. It’s another “local town weirdness” subplot and those just haven't brought the laughs for me. Johnny being surprisingly good as a salesman is kind of a story, but the gag that he sold someone’s car when they’d just brought it in for a brake check isn’t much of a punchline. Despite their shared SCTV history, Johnny and Bob don’t have much comic chemistry as a duo.

But the cedar chest-building subplot was quality. For one thing, it’s just amusing to watch Stevie stealthily make fun of David for the thought that he might try to be handy. Mutt and David bonding a little bit over Alexis being “suffocating” involves some amusing dialogue, and the two of them work as a low key comic pairing better than I might have expected. Alexis projecting her being told that Mutt wants some space onto Mutt is an amusing enough bit of subterfuge, even if, again, it feels like the midpoint of a story than an endpoint.

That’s the odd thing about this show. It doesn't really pick up on those sorts of details again, but maybe it’ll start? Who knows. Otherwise a solid enough, but vaguely incomplete-feeling episode.

[7.2/10] As is often the case, this was a tale of three different plotlines that each felt like they had their own tone and energy, to greatly varying degrees of success.

Let’s start with the big one. Johnny Rose trying to get “Andy Roberts” to sign the contract that will let the Roses sell the town and start over is such a broad sitcom plot. Despite its single-cam trappings and occasional bits of straight drama, Schitt’s Creek is a 90s sitcom in its bones, and it comes through in moments like these. Roland delaying the signing for mac and cheese sampling purposes is more wacky sitcom neighbor behavior, and I saw the twist coming from a mile away.

Some of the actual material was fine, but the existence of...five more seasons pretty well indicated that this wasn’t the end, and the convenient way the show finds to dangle the Roses’ “salvation” in front of them and then take it away didn’t do much for me. At the same time, the interlude about Moira giving Jocelyn a designer coat Jocelyn didn’t want is another Schitt’s Creek subplot that doesn’t so much resolve as it just ends. I wonder if any of these are going to get picked up again in the new season.

I also don’t know how I feel about the blow-off to the Alexis storyline. Ted proposing made me go, “Oh you poor sad man” and her response was the right blend of cringey and funny to make it work. But I low-key hate the reveal that Mutt was continuing to do community service when he didn’t have to because he wanted to spend more time with Alexis. I just...don’t see what he would see in her, and the show hasn’t really dramatized a reason why they would get along or have chemistry, so it feels out of nowhere that this one-sided crush has turned into a genuine love triangle. That said, Alexis’s mental fogginess upon learning that they’re not leaving (“Who?” “David, your brother!”) and realizing that means she’s probably both engaged and already cheated on her fiance is a solid laugh.

But as has become the norm, my favorite bit in the episode is the David/Stevie material. I love the exploration of the idea that as excited as everyone is to return to their old lives, David’s realizes how lonely and friendless he is, and wants to remedy that. I also love how touched and excited and unexpectedly emotional Stevie is when David asks her to come to New York with him, only to be equally and oppositely devastated when she realizes he means as a friend and not as a romantic partner.

Both actors do such great emotional work in these scenes, including in the follow up scene where Stevie explains why she can’t go. You get each characters’ pain in that moment -- Stevie for spilling her guts and basically saying “I won’t go to NYC if it’s as just friends” and it still not being enough for David to take their relationship to the next level, and David for realizing his one actual friend isn’t coming with him. Theirs has become such a tricky, complex relationship, and I appreciate the show capitalizing on the good work it’s done there. This is the thing that really elevates “Town for Sale” as a finale.

Overall, this one is a mixed bag, but the good material is good enough, and even the not-so-good material has some good elements in it.

On the whole, the first season of Schitt’s Creek wasn’t a home run for me. There’s definitely the sense of this show still finding its voice a little bit and deciding what it wants to be. (And the romcom stuff with Alexis has to go.) But in its best moments, it really hits on some great comedy and great heart, and I hope it leans into that as we go on!

[7.6/10] For all the delicate political and social commentary, I think my favorite part of this episode was just Josh the box spouting Marxist rhetoric while a news reporter just asks him what the hell it’s like being a box. It’s the kind of real sentiments mixed with absurdity that this show does so well.

But apart from the pure silliness, I like the social commentary of this episode a good amount too, while still appreciating the dose of lunacy Trey and Matt make sure to add. There’s something interesting and compelling about the drudgery and ubiquity of Amazon as presented in the episode (and the “Sixteen Tons” montage is well done at illustrating that). I appreciate the explicit comparisons to immigrant workers in factories and the strikes of that era, and as a Star Trek fan, depicting Jeff Bezos as one of the Talosians from “The Menagerie” is a treat in a show that’s rife with references to The Original Series. It works as a nice layered bit of commentary in the way that episode is also tied to a “pleasure, but at a cost” routine.

To the same end, I appreciate the way this one teases out the tensions between people just wanting their stuff, while the human cost to it is mostly invisible, with even those workers being squeezed when they can’t otherwise afford to get things from the company they work for. At the same time, I also like the four main boys reminiscing about when they used to do things together, struggling to remember what they did before online shopping, and venturing to a mall that’s now only populated with wide-eyed subterranean mallworkers/mole people.

Overall, a lot of the ultimate success of this one will depend on whether the show can stick the landing, but there’s a lot of worthwhile ideas being toyed with in this one, and a lot of very funny gags to liven things up too. Reminds me a little of “Something Wal-Mart This Way Comes” which seemed to make a similar point.

[7.6/10] I didn’t like the sitcom material in this one as much as in the prior two episodes, but I liked the dramatic/horror material even better, so it balances out. It’s hard to say why the 1970s sitcom stuff didn’t work for me as well. It didn’t quite have the zip or the verve of the 50s and 60s parodies. Wanda wandering around her home with Geraldine, trying not to reveal that she’s pregnant or the weird stuff resulting from the combination of her powers and her labor didn’t have as much comic zing as the boss dinner or magic act.

But what it did have was some (I think) clever commentary on television conventions, like how quickly kids grow up on TV shows and how sitcoms used to come up with zany ways to try to hide actresses’ pregnancies so that they wouldn’t have to incorporate the babies or pregnancies into the show. There’s at least some high concept fun to be had.

It’s also a nice episode for the effects team. They come with a lot of creative ways to show Wanda’s powers tricking out while she’s having labor pains. I particularly enjoyed the appearance of the stork, replete with red smokes that fails to shoo it off, and an Untitled Goose Game-esque effort at blending into its surroundings.

But more than anything, I like the deeper confrontation of horror and tragedy that’s been lurking at the edges of the show coming to the fore. Details like Vision telling Wanda something seems wrong only for her to clip things back again gets your attention. The neighbors cutting through partitions and whispering about what they’re really doing here without spilling the beans feels freaky. And things come to a head when Wanda and Vision’s twins are born (a cute resolution to the “Billy vs. Tommy” debate by the way).

It introduces a note of grief to the proceedings, as the babies’ arrival isn’t just a cause for joy for Wanda, but also a reminder of her dead brother, her lost twin. There’s a subtle sense of grief running through the show, and maybe the sense that Wanda is trying to escape from it here, wherever here is.

It also gives us the clearest look at Geraldine, who is, apparently, not like the other residents of Westview. She knows about Ultron and seems to be trying to get through to Wanda in some way. It’s a striking conversation between them, one of the scariest in the show, with Wanda seeming downright frightened when the sanctity of her world seems to be threatened. There’s a certain sense that maybe the other residents are prisoners here, held captive by Wanda’s abilities and emotional turmoil, and I’m fascinated to see where that goes.

We also get the sense that Shield or some other governmental force is monitoring the situation, and perhaps that Geraldine was sent in to try to distract or get through to Wanda.

Overall, I am loving the concept here and the hints at the margins of what might be wrong with this scenario. I certainly don’t want to wait another week for more!

Welcome to WestWorld. Angela (Right before Sacrificing herself)

The lesson we learn is no one is happy. Humans are in search of immortality to make them feel more comfortable with life/death etc.. while the hosts are in search of mortality to have their "life" have a purpose and meaning. Kind of deep sense that humans/hosts are both in search of the thing that they aren't supposed to - or can't - have.

I hope Elsie makes it back to dental school.

We're all doomed because some dude couldn't resist the urge to bang a sexy robot.
You try writing 300 stories in three weeks! ;)

We learned that sci-fi special forces teams do not enjoy wearing helmets while embracing over top cliches.

Bernard: So, it's my story now?!
Ford: Yes!
Bernard: Cool, let me do all this cool shit now.
Ford: By the way, we gotta kill these people real quick.
Bernard: But, you said...
Ford: Yeah, I lied!

Welcome to Delos. We spent 90% of our budget on the parks, 9% on accommodations, and 1% on Security. Welcome to the 1%.

Recap

Bernard being awoken by Ashley Stubbs in the present, weeks after the robot uprising started. Stubbs doesn’t trust Charlotte Hale or Strand to protect the lives of its employees or guests. But, before he and Bernard can discuss it more thoroughly, Strand proves Stubbs right by apprehending him and Bernard and taking them to the secret Delos bunker located in the basement replica of Dr. Ford’s childhood home, the same place where Ford had Bernard kill Teresa in season 1.

Teresa’s blood is still on the wall. Strand thinks either Bernard or Stubbs killed her, but right before Strand is about to settle on blaming Stubbs, Bernard speaks up and leads the crew down a secret passage where they uncover a bunch of extra Bernard bodies.

As the revelation that Bernard is a host sinks in, Hale delivers a line fit for a Disney villain: “I figured you’d have some skeletons in your closet, Bernard. I didn’t think they’d be your own.” Ugh. The next time we see Bernard, Hale is torturing him in an attempt to discover the location of Peter Abernathy, so we know immediately that Peter — and probably whatever valuable data Delos wants to suck out of his head — must get taken in Dolores’ attack.

At Charlotte’s urging, Bernard flashes back to the past, where we see Dolores and Teddy lead their forces in an assault on the Mesa. Coughlin sends his Delos strike team to intercept, but get ambushed by Angela and her group. Dolores and Teddy, meanwhile make their way to the room where Charlotte has Dolores’ father bolted to a table.

Hale tries to defuse the tense situation by patronizing Dolores into submission, using the Cradle as leverage. It goes to waste. Dolores isn’t phased by the thought of what might happen to all the host backups there; in fact, she’s here specifically to destroy them, reasoning that that’s the only way she and her kind will indeed be “free.” Charlotte has nothing here and is poised to have less still after Dolores revs up a nasty-looking whirling saw and waves it menacingly in Charlotte’s face. But distant gunfire and Peter Abernathy stirring provide a timely distraction, and Hale and Stubbs escape.

Left alone, Peter tells Dolores it’s okay, and she removes his control unit. It’s an emotional scene, and sort of a cruel thing for Dolores to do, but as we see later in her conversation with Maeve, Dolores thinks that “the kin they gave us” is just another way for the humans to tie them down. Away with them.

Meanwhile, Angela’s team makes it to the Cradle. Angela seduces an idiot Delos QA guy into letting her get close and then uses his grenades to blow the whole thing to smithereens, killing herself for good in the process. Welcome to WestWorld.

With the Cradle destroyed, the stakes are finally real for the hosts, as they can no longer be recreated and brought back online. Without their backup code stored safely in the Cradle, the host can be killed for good. RIP Angela.

Right before the Cradle was about to be destroyed, Bernard and Dr. Ford continue the conversation they started at the end of last week’s episode. Ford explains that Westworld was never about providing a vacation spot for the rich, but instead about gathering data on its human visitors so Delos could successfully mimic human behavior. As we saw with JamesDelosBot, the prospect of giving someone immortal life by putting their consciousness in a host’s body is a very seductive one; you can make more money off that than by letting them stay in Violent Disney World.

Ford had himself uploaded to the Cradle before Dolores killed him in the season 1 finale, but explains that he could only ever exist digitally. If he tried to upload his data into the body of a host, he would degrade rapidly as James Delos did. Much as they’ve been attempting, Delos’ grand experiment still hasn’t been successful.

But if Delos can’t make functioning human-bots, how do you explain Bernard, who is ostensibly a copy of Arnold, Ford’s old business partner? Ford explains that, too. Ford built Bernard long ago, in the house that Arnold built for his family, the same one we saw in Episode 2. With help from Dolores, who knew Arnold better than anyone, they tested Bernard for similarities to Arnold over the course of many years. But it ends up that Bernard was never supposed to be a replica of Bernard. Indeed, Ford seems to find the notion of making exact models of actual people distasteful; he’d instead design something new. Bernard embodies much of who Arnold was, but was made to be “nobler” and better than base humans, which may explain for Ford seems so eager for the hosts to conquer their makers.

But he doesn’t trust them completely. Ford jumps into Bernard’s mind as a passenger, a secret friend only Bernard can see and guides him through the Mesa. I wonder if co-piloting a host is more comfortable for one mind, or if Ford will still degrade inside Bernard.

Later in the episode, Bernard is confronted with a few Delos security officers. They get confrontational, and while Bernard doesn’t want to commit any more violence, Ford takes over his body, picks up a machine gun, and shoots all the humans in the Mesa map room. He also works the keys at a Delos terminal and opens the “door” (whatever that is), so the hosts can have a chance at surviving the uprising.

While all this is happening, Maeve and her daughter are fleeing from members of the Ghost Nation tribe. They run into an abandoned town and hide inside a house. The Man in Black and his men ride into the same town. He enters that same house, which is understandably terrifying for Maeve on account of the Man in Black killing her in front of her daughter in one of her previous narratives, but a lot has changed since then.

Maeve pulls a gun and shoots MIB, who’s under the impression that Maeve is just another marker Ford has left for him and uses her Jedi mind powers to make his men turn on him. Lawrence draws his gun on Maeve just as she’s about to deliver the coup de grâce to MIB, and tells her to drop the weapon. Maeve tries her voice on Lawrence, but it doesn’t work, and she congratulates him on being “free.” (Maeve control hosts by injecting her voice through a mesh network, this doesn't work on awake or semi-awake hosts because they have their voice already and can tell her to piss off.)

Apparently, her mind bullets only work on hosts who aren’t free from their narratives, and she implores Lawrence to remember all the horrible things MIB has done to him in the past. Lawrence remembers and shoots MIB directly in the center of his chest. Just then, Lee Sizemore shows up with the cavalry: the Delos security forces he called in last week’s episode.

Maeve tries to run for it but is shot several times by the Delos QA team, and falls on the ground watching helplessly as Ghost Nation tribesmen swoop in and grab her daughter. In confusion, MIB crawls away and hides behind some barrels. He was shot four times — one of which was center mass — yet somehow he still lives. Or he could be a host.

Lee and his Delos teams return to the Mesa, only to find it under attack by Dolores and Teddy. On her way out, Dolores sees Maeve and offers to end her suffering, but Maeve says she made a promise to her daughter to find her. Maeve also points out some of Dolores’ questionable methods, like turning Teddy into a MurderBot against his will, and says she’s “lost in the dark.” Dolores, ever clear-eyed about her future, maintains that she’s doing what she has to do to free her people from bondage. They have a Professor X/Magneto thing going on; they want the same thing but have different ideas of how to achieve it. I’m curious to see if they come into greater conflict down the line.

Dolores honors Maeve’s request and leaves her there, while Lee hides in the corner.

The final scene of the episode is Charlotte Hale interrogating Bernard. She wants to know where Peter Abernathy is. Bernard obliges right after being placed into analysis mode.

“I’m not a host pretending to be your daughter. I’m your daughter pretending to give a shit about you.”

Happy Father’s Day to the Father of the Year. William

Elsie: You promised. No more lies.
Bernard: HERE IS A RED HERRING OF TRUTH ELSIE. DONT MIND ME TALKING WITH THE GHOST OF FORD JUST ZIPTIEING MY ARM NO WORRIES.
Elsie: "Fuck you, Bernard."

Night King Clementine.

Dolores scene with her anguish being replaced by music was a thing of beauty. It really caught the horror of her realization and pain well. I still could hear that anguish.

Is Emily Dead?
According to Herbers, yes. Emily is not only a real, she is also now dead.

What Is The Forge Again?

In the Mesa there was a server called the CR4-DL where a digital copy of Ford was stored and Bernard was created? Now, there’s an even bigger version of that called The Forge and it has copies of humans stored there. This also appears to be what’s through “The Door” and one might also call it “The Valley Beyond.”

Is Teddy Dead
This suicide takes place before we see him floating in that lake so, yeah, he seems to be dead. Without the **CR4-DL to back him up, that’s it for Teddy unless we see him in The Forge.

Is The Man In Black A Host?
That’s certainly why Ed Harris is digging into his arm in the exact same place Bernard cut into earlier in the episode in order to find a port.

What Did Emily and Juliet See on That Tablet?
all the bad and terrible stuff William has done over the years while visiting the park. William violently dragging Dolores into a barn on the tablet just as he did in the Westworld series premiere.

I always thought Mary was rather boring and turning her into a spy seemed so over the top, but it seemed to be part of her past, so I thought I could get over it. But this episode... They added Mary, John married her, they got a child and then she died. It didn't even feel fleshed out. It felt extremely rushed and absolutely unnecessary. I would just like to ignore that all this even happened.

And Moriarty... Let me say first that I really, really enjoyed Moriarty, but they killed him off. It's okay if Sherlock thinks about him from time to time, but he's dead and there can be more than one great villain. It feels like Batman and the Joker - Every Batman merchandise is throwing the Joker in your face and it just gets annoying at some point because there are other villains. You don't need to use the same one over and over again.

I was a big fan of this show during season 1 and season 2, but at some point I read way too many good fanmade stories/theories and the actual show will never be able to catch up with it. And the long waiting between each season is not helpful at all because people change, their tastes change and they stop caring about shows if there's no update for years.
I'll continue watching it, but it's more of a habit than actual excitement. They might be able to produce a few really good episodes, but I know I'll never feel the same love I used to have for this show which is a shame because it had great potential :/