Gina Rodriguez ("Awake", "Miss Bala") shows some surprising comedic chops as a once promising writer, who chased after a relationship that didn't work out, only to return home to her old gig and find that her besties have kind of moved on without her, one now being her supervisor, and the stuck up rich girl they used to make fun of now runs the newspaper where she works. Rather than simply continuing where she left off, she finds she was a pity hire, and is stuck in a LITERAL closet to pen obituaries for obscure people who have shed their mortal coils.
Hilarity ensues when she meets a friendly old man while she is drowning her sorrows, only to find him in her flat the next morning, where she discovers she is pretty much channeling "Cole" from "The Sixth Sense", until she figures out what they need from each other, and pens the appropriate commentary on their life and passing. In the interim, she ends up discovering just as much about herself, and learns there may be more to herself, her workmates and others than her first impressions.
Pilot episode had some laugh out loud moments, and, I look forward to seeing if they can keep this fresh and interesting throughout the season.
Hah, when Sybil said "I want him dark, vulnerable, actual blood on his hands" it sounded like she was describing a fashion shoot or something.
Also, did Caroline not tell Alaric and Matt what Stefan and Damon did or are they just complete idiots? They just killed one of the dynamic duo that took your children's place - isn't that going to push them back to the top of the list?
Regardless, though, I still don't fully get what exactly the point of these emissaries is, anyway - they kill bad people so their souls go to hell? That makes absolutely no sense. According to Damon and others, it does not matter how much good you do, if you've done bad you go to hell. So why is there any reason to kill these people when they will end up in hell no matter how long they live? I can think of only two goals here: To keep them from doing any more bad things to good people, which I could actually kind of understand but which also no one has actually ever mentioned in any way - or, and this is starting to look more and more likely, because Cade for some reason needs those souls in hell (or, perhaps, he just really enjoys torturing people). I mean, if Cade actually cared about what happens to good people, he wouldn't let his emissaries cause so much pain to people like Bonnie who are very obviously good.
Reading all the comments is depressing. This show is not about drama or being interesting to watch. It is about making a comment on society.
The build up was obviously to get us attached and interested in the characters. Maybe even make us question if this kind of "relationship" is OK. They made it purposely vague by making him right at the edge of the age of consent.
Climax was obviously when Claire gets caught. We are now at the point where they are exploring the consequences of this kind of trauma. The point of the time jump is because sometimes you don't always realize the effects of the trauma until much later, especially when the trauma occurred when you are young. We are seeing Nick be glorified and focused on because of his trauma because unfortunately society does not look at it as a trauma, hence why they made this show to begin with. He is OBVIOUSLY struggling and being re-traumatized over and over. He doesn't actually miss her, its a form of a trauma bond. He needs to talk to someone but he also needs to be ready to talk to someone. I'm just hoping he is ready before he gets hurt more severely.
And everyone out there thinking he is loyal, envious of him, or thinking this show is boring is obviously missing the point of this entire show.
I don't know why some people are shocked at the ending. It’s basically the plot line of Crime and Punishment (the allusions to the book were given frequently). Joe isn’t punished in the sense of being in prison, and even though he’s technically free, now he is stuck with a girl just like him and a baby on the way when he would rather be with a “normal” girl he can manipulate and control. He is trapped and it’s a Gone Girl-esque ending. He even compared his new home with Love to a Siberian prison.
It was so funny watching Joe judge Love for all the shitty things she’s done. Like she was somehow worse. His murder sprees are not repulsive to him because he did them and he felt justified. That logic does not extend to others, just him. It’s a perfect mirror for showing just how delusional Joe is. The series isn’t about how he finds love. It’s about how Joe is a predator, using love as a way to convince himself he’s doing things for the right reasons. The whole point of Joe's character is that he will never be satisfied. It’s in his nature to crave what he can’t have. That’s why I thought the ending was perfect. Of course he is already interested in his “normal” neighbor. He is going to start fantasizing about her to escape his “tortured existence”.
Totally saw the Love twist coming from a thousand miles away. She was always coming on strong. Her killing Delilah was super predictable too. I actually liked that they made her psycho because Joe somewhat got a taste of his own medicine.
Overall, I enjoyed this season, but:
I’m a little disappointed in the lack of creativity. Season 2 had a lot of similar storylines to the first one: Love is the new Beck, Ellie - the new Paco.
Realism isn't necessary in fiction but some of the plot holes were annoying. How did Candace know exactly which storage unit was Joe’s? How could Forty turn on Joe so fast? Officer Fincher thought Joe could have been the murderer because of some expensive headphones but has done absolutely nothing about it. Joe reconstructing the glass box in the storage container was a bit of a stretch for me. This whole season, while entertaining, is completely unrealistic. It requires all characters to be morons and the hugest of coincidences to happen at every turn.
I was incredibly disappointed absolutely nothing from Joe's old life came back (other than Candace). He moved to a new city and changed his name - poof all his problems are solved? What happened to the PI the Salingers hired?
Candace's character had potential. They hyped her up in the first season so I thought she would do something but no, she didn't have an actual plan and was outmatched at every turn.
Was it the writers intention to insert cringy millenial jargon into every possible piece of dialogue? Really went too far compared to last season. And all the "woke" dialogue was so cringe, boring and trite.
[9.2/10] Avatar: The Last Airbender has been scary before. There’s moments where our heroes are under threat or some strange new monster or power is after them, or some freaky thing called “the face dealer” is in play. But never before has the show been as downright creepy as it is here. “The Puppetmaster” plays like an episode of Tales from the Crypt, with a mystery, a friend turned tormentor, and a dark secret.
The very idea of bloodbenders, of someone who can control other life forms, be they animals or human beings, is intriguing and haunting in turn. The episode builds up to that nicely, with Hama initially taking water from plants, and seeming slightly unnerving in her presence before the big reveal. One of the things I like about Avatar is that it takes the natural nerd-y questions about these elemental powers and takes them to their logical, sometimes disturbing extremes, whether that’s Toph being able to bend metal or Hama being able to manipulate human beings filled with fluid.
But what I like about Hama is that the show doesn’t make her just an evil witch. For one thing, she is a link to Katara and Sokka’s history and tradition. She is, for all we know, the last water-bender from the southern water tribe. There is a sense of communion with her and Katara, a connection between them that Katara cannot forge with anyone else given the circumstances and what the Fire Nation did to their people. That immediately makes her reveals, her attacks, and her methods more damning and haunting – because she is, at least nominally, on the side of the good guys.
And yet what I love about Hama is that she’s basically Magneto from X-men (right down to breaking out of prison built to evade her powers using substance contained in a human being). She does terrible things and she has a binary, retributivist view of right and wrong that perpetuates the cycle of violence. Still, you absolutely understand who she is and what she does and why she is that way given what she’s been through and what’s been done to her. She’s seen the worst of the fire nation’s trespasses against her people; she’s seen the way they wiped out her brothers and sisters, and she has no forgiveness in her heart for them or anyone who bears their brand. She is a victim rounding up the descendants of her tormentors. That is horrifying, but complex.
It’s also unnerving because she tries, and arguably succeeds, in passing that legacy down to Katara. Hama is worried about the practices of her people dying out, and so works to teach bloodbending to Katara, to force her to use the techniques. The very sight of her controlling Aang and Sokka and using their bodies to attack Katara is creepy enough, and the same goes for the way she contorts Katara’s arm. But the real tragedy is that she forces Katara to use the bloodbending to stop her, passing this terrible mantle down to her in the process.
AtLA can be scary, but it can also be much deeper than that. “Puppetmaster” succeeds at telling a horror story as good as any that could be whispered around the sort of campfire at the beginning of the episode, but it grounds it in complicated notions of vengeance, legacy, and agency that take a horrifying thing and given it an unavoidable human dimension.
7.4/10. A very representative episode of Bob's Burgers -- nothing that will knock your socks off, but a well constructed episode with a lot of good humor and heart, and good emotional beats in both stories. The B-story with Bob not wanting to put up the mafia murder plaque, only to find that Jimmy Pesto steals it, is classic restaurant rivalry stuff. But the twist that Bob can't take it away from Jimmy because of how happy it makes him, and Jimmy's skin-deep appreciation for Italian culture are both great.
And the A-story is a nice continuation of the Boys 4 Now story the show explored previously. The whole plot to throw up on Boo Boo gets a little convoluted, but the idea behind the story, as explicated by Tina, of admitting that you like something even if it's a little embarrassing, is a heartening one, and it's framed in the perfect awkward Tina way. It's nice to see Louise pushing her Boo Boo love off on others until the moment of truth when she admits that she likes her pre-teen idol. Plus, the way she calls him a "garbage angel" and other similar lines that perfectly sell how conflicted her attraction and repulsion to this kid are is perfect.
Overall, it's not necessarily one of the more memorable episodes, but both stories end on high emotional notes, and there are a good number of laughs to get there. Even the relatively ho-hum episodes of Bob's Burgers are better than a lot of the shows' best.
The show itself started quite strong. It was intriguing despite some weird story decisions (having students do leg work for a well known lawyer like Keating).
But throughout the story the writers pretty often went "full retard" to provoke. My best guess: all for better ratings.
The amount of cheap shots are stacking high but that isn't necessary considering the general strong acting in this show.
At the beginning up until roughly the middle I had my problems with the portrayal of Connor and his homosexuality. How it was exploited to get what Connor needed, mostly information for Keating. The time she called him out on it was kind of redeeming for the show but soon after it was taken over by other crap.
Most recent was the plot of two gay men blaming a woman for raping one of them so they could get a decent amount of money, instead of using such a plot to deal with a real issue: men being raped by women while it's not taken seriously.
Now Oliver got HIV, from all the people it's one of the gay characters. Again, stereotypical prejudices used in this show exploited to "shock", or rather provoke. Maybe it's even the payback that Connor was such a whore at the beginning and he actually infected Oliver but we'll see...
But what strikes me the most here is the fact that fans claim this show advertises safer sex or getting tested for STDs. F*cking hell. It's a sideplot without any of that meaning, it's mentioned without any focus on those two and is another example of the crucial problems this show has but it's blindly praised.
Considering the plot in this double episode, I have my doubts that the outcome of Frank being the one who killed Lila was the initial idea. I guess it was supposed to end differently, hadn't this gotten another season. While Frank was always this mysterious, cool-headed character, it feels like a backdoor that was kept open for a second season order. Otherwise it feels too easy and I wasn't really surprised. He wouldn't be my first guess but definitely not my last and if what the flashback shows was the actuall truth, Sam ultimately killed Lila nontheless as he was the one blackmailing Frank to do it even if he wasn't choking her to death in person.
In terms of who is the murderer of Rebecca: My best bet is Bonnie. She vanishes from the episode after she sends the doucheface home without any word and she was the one who got a lot of her confidence back the last couple of episodes, proving herself to Keating as she desperately wants her approval. It opens the chance of showing what happened from her perspective afterwards and fill another episode.
I definitely rule out the obvious ones: Frank, Keating and Wes.
I've got my doubts about Connor. Other two suspects would then be Michaela, who recently discovered she's from the "Ghetto" and can't hide it (stereotypical, so it fits the show) or Laurel, who is also rather cool headed.
Somehow, the cliffhanger has some resemblance to the season 3 cliffhanger of Breaking Bad but without any of its brilliance (and shock value).
