Yay, more Kendra and more of her atrocious fake accent!
Seriously... kudos to the rest of the cast for keeping a straight face in her scenes. Must have been hard.loading replies
@ajperez81 If you believe what you read in magazine interviews, Bianca Lawson didn't much care for it either. It was a last-minute addition that kept being tweaked on set, away from authenticity in favor of being easily understood by American TV viewers. (IMDB trivia at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0533522/trivia?item=tr3427878 citing an interview in SFX magazine that I haven't yet tracked down, likely because it's from the pre-digital age of magazines.)
During this series Topanga has had 3 different actors portray her father. I guess continuity wasn't high on the writers list.
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@dobsonj We can understand why it wasn't feasible to bring back Peter Tork (I'm sure it would have been expensive), but they really should have avoided recasting Jedidiah twice. Once was bad enough, especially since the replacement wasn't believable. Peter's portrayal absolutely was.
Is the issue with Barney's new wingman a real thing? It seems so ridiculous that it has to be untrue.
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@legendaryfang56 Please, he's obviously just an anime protagonist. :wink:
Note: My rating is carried over from what I left on MAL, years ago, when I rated things very differently. I suspect this would receive closer to a 5 from me if watched today, but since I don't revise ratings on Trakt, MAL, etc. without rewatching the content, this stays as-is, as I left it in 2013 on MAL.
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@balazs955 Then encourage Trakt to add private notes. Or you can just keep scrolling.
If this whole New York vs. New Jersey debate is real, thank God I don't live anywhere near either one. It's so stupid.
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@legendaryfang56 Eh, it's about as serious as the Iowa hate around here (MN). Just a running joke kept going by tiny nuggets of true opinions from both sides, because the environments are very different.
Ted can tell these sex stories about threesomes and old king Clancy but he can’t say the word “shit”
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@kieranlittleuk Blame the network, since it was probably omitted from the script because that's one of the Seven Dirty Words broadcasters have been wary of using on the air for decades due to FCC obscenity rules.
Decent set up to the ending. I did appreciate the explanation that no matter what Ted did, his relationship with Zoe was destined to end poorly, and the rest of the group confronting him about that with the imagine spots made it work. I even appreciated the juxtaposition of the Arcadian and Ted's relationship as landmarks destined to be demolished. Sure, the metaphor wasn't exactly subtle, but it was a nice way to go. Ted giving his a Zoe's relationship a "last meal" so to speak was a nice beat.
On the comedy side, Marshall's rhymes got a chuckle out of me, and Barney's conversation with Arthur, especially their humorous jumps back and forward in time were amusing. That said, the whole plot twist with the tape recorder and the lions head stonework was pretty cheesy. It's a lot of narrative convenience, but it did what it needed to do. To be frank, most of the whole Zoe story has been pretty half-baked and full of misfires from the start, so it's no shock that the landing here was a little bumpy. Still, some good moments that made it worth watching at least.
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@andrewbloom About the tape recorder bit: Zoey said, "I erased the tape" near the end of "Natural History". So either she lied then, or the writers forgot about that in the name of narrative convenience here.
God, I still hate Lori
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@alex1798 Obviously this resonates with a lot of people, based on the like count, but… I must be thicker than the Hosts' colony walls. Who is Lori???
There are a lot of TV series that get cancelled and while I might get upset, I always understand why. Not this time though.
Every new season of Colony kept getting better and better; they took time to develop every character (except Bram, fuck Bram); acting was mostly good; even though it was centered around a family, they managed not to turn it into a family melodrama; avoided most of the clichés of the genre and created something good. Still it got cancelled. Not even a two part mini series to properly end things. Nothing.loading replies
(except Bram, fuck Bram)
@katebishop :clap::clap::clap:
I understand why they kept him instead of Charlie for season three (because he was old enough to do the Community Patrol + secret life + protect Gracie thing), but yeah. Bram was the show's one failure of characterization. Many characters were (political) puppets in-universe, but Bram felt like the writers' puppet to serve whatever plot need they had.
God, I still hate Lori
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@alex1798 Oh my god, I get it now. Thank you!
https://media0.giphy.com/media/87jGhdRVzUOJNh2s0q/giphy.gif
Holy wow. I did NOT sign up for this but Kim's Convenience can go toe to toe with The Office (US) for cringe. They be ruining one of my top 3 characters (Janet) with the cringe nonsense she does.
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@wolfkin Yeah, twice in three episodes so far this season, they've shoehorned Janet into social-justice storylines where she has to be the one to speak up about stuff that (I think) S1 or S2 Janet never would have said anything about.
I wouldn't complain if it felt like natural character growth—since I'm such a sucker for characters evolving over the course of a series—but it doesn't. It feels like what Brooklyn 99 did in its final season, shoving topical subject matter in just because.
I hope one day appa and jung can get along :(
But also again Jung terrible boyfriend, like of course you have the right to be annoyed when your partner interrupts your show, but then speak with them and tell them that you prefer to watch it on your own? instead of making an elaborate plan to scre them over? I'm sorry but I have a sof spot for Shannonloading replies
@aars26 Even with no soft spot for Shannon, I still think Jung was being an ass. :joy:
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP97.8/10. This one had three separate stories that each started out pretty rough but pulled their way into being great by the end, which is worth something! The slightest of these was Marshall's story with Daphne and Ted's Stepdad. As a committed Buffy fan, I enjoy Harry Groener as a general rule, but he's just not a good character even as a giant pester to Marshall. That said, the germ at the center of the story is sound, with the ever-yielding Marshall needing to assert himself, and the results being kind of scary. It's a great individual performance from Jason Segel, and even Sherri Shepherd does well with the "what did I just unleash" reaction to it.
Similarly, Ted dragging Cassie through a spiritless trip to the Lighthouse is a drag, with the humor of his resignation at settling being brief but not much fun. And yet, the end of the episode, which shows his proposal to The Mother is a lovely counterpoint (weak green screen effects notwithstanding), that serves as another instance of the show upping its emotional content by giving us little tastes of the future juxtaposed with sorry ones in the present.
The peak of this is Robin's egg-making competition with Barney's mom. While I like that the show explored the idea that despite numerous complaints about and appearances from Robin's dad, we've heard next to nothing about her mom, the fact that it comes to a head with a scrambled egg showdown was too broad for my tastes, even if I liked the little ringing bell notation for the few facts the gang did know about her mom. That said, the episode included two great moments in this storyline.
The first is the flashback where Barney hugs Robin after learning that she can't have kids. It's those sorts of moments, where Barney acts like a caring human being rather than a sex-crazed psychopath, that are all too scant when the show is trying to sell the Barney-Robin romance. It's a nice little instance of him showing that he cares for Robin with a simple but powerful gesture rather than a zany, misguided scheme. The second is Loretta coming around on Robin after Barney explains all this, and telling Robin to call her mom. Sure, the show doesn't lay that much groundwork for the transition, but Cobie Smulders conveys the quiet pain of her character's mommy issues really well, and makes that moment meaningful.
Again, I have some major issues with where the show goes in its final few seasons, but it's nice to see it still able to make these big, emotional moments land, even if it's a bit of a rocky road within the episode to get there.
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@andrewbloom About 5½ years too late, I'm here to point out that your closing spoiler tag uses { instead of [ and therefore the phrase isn't actually hidden. :smile_cat:
This season starts off pretty okay, with a great bit riffing on The Muppets and carrying through into David getting chewed out multiple times for offensive humor. It's still not my favorite show (and there aren't enough episodes left for it to earn that title, at this point)—but at least I'm not completely bored?
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@kevin-aguirre Oh come on, chill out! They are just my opinions!
Peace talks with a once hostile race, sabotaged by opposing populist fractions, humans suddenly caught in their inner political uphevels, a society at the brink of civil war. Such a plot isn't innovative. Call them Cardassians (or Romulans or Klingons) and you'll have a very classic Star Trek episode. It's a good variation of this topic though. It's shot and produced beautifully. Costumes, masks, stage design is nice to look at. The alien planet looks like a gaming PC case modder and a night club interior designer had a love child. I like. Earth is intriguing too. Space fights look fantastic. Picture the battles from DS9's Cardassian wars with modern FX in HQ.
By now it's clear that this is a serious show. Almost every element that made it a comedy/parody is gone (The joke about intoxicated commanding officers ain't bad though).
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The alien planet looks like a gaming PC case modder and a night club interior designer had a love child.
@alexlimberg I spat out my drink, well played
It's utterly impossible to believe that Sarah could be from Israel. Her accent and personality both scream English. I'll have to explain it away for myself by just saying she must be a UK special agent on loan to Israeli intelligence, or something.
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@fragmaster007 No one is forcing you to read my opinion, bruv.
What kind of idiot voted 1 point before the episode is aired?
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@thatvegasguy @borayeris My guess would be one of the Moclan black site guards.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.2/10] I can appreciate what The Orville is trying to do with this one. There’s some poetry in the character work. Ensign Burke starts as an anti-Kaylon bigot who wants to wipe them off the map and send Isaac to the trash compactor. By the end, she tells the other Kaylon that they could learn a thing or two from Isaac and is willing to sacrifice her life to save them from annihilation. In the season premiere, she has to be ordered to act to save Isaac and is almost insubordinate when the commands come down, and in this quasi-finale, she refuses orders to save herself in the name of saving the entire Kaylon civilization.
There’s a solid arc there. Her time with Isaac changed her mind about him, and her time with Timmis learning the Kaylon’s history changed her mind about them. I know a lot of fans weren’t happy with someone prejudiced being a major character on the show, but it gave her somewhere to grow as a character, and pays off nicely in how she sees the error of her ways on both an interpersonal and communal scale.
But the conclusion to her story comes with a few problems. First, Anne Winters has never given a particularly good performance on the show. Season 3 of The Orville, and this episode in particular, puts a lot on her shoulders. She’s not awful at carrying it, but she’s not great either, with flat or uninvolving line reads that detract from the gravity or severity of a moment or choice. It means no matter how good the writing is, Ensign Burke never really feels like a person in this world, just an actor reading lines.
Some of that, however, is on the writers, not the actor. Ensign Burke is more of a theme-delivery mechanism than a three-dimensional character. Effectively, her only character trait is that she hates Kaylon. They attempt to give her some shading with the idea that her true love perished at the hands of the Kaylon, and she misses Amanda dearly, but it all gets folded into the same hate brigade and is more told than shown. The only other thing about her is that she thinks in “four-dimensional space”, a magical talent that’s barely explained and allows her to save the day by fiat.
The end result is that I’m not really moved by her act of sacrifice or her death. I feel like I barely know her despite watching every extended length episode this season. Nobody mourns the redshirts who die in this battle or the crew of the other ships that are destroyed. That’s not unusual for Trek and (Trek-adjacent) shows, but still. The story of a bigot who sees why they were wrong and makes up for it in the ultimate way is a good one, and a tale that The Orville’s paced well over the preceding nine episodes. I just wish we had a more fleshed out, compelling, downright better character at the center of it.
I can also appreciate what the episode is doing thematically. It establishes a contrast between two titular “dominos.” One is a weapon of mass destruction, which takes advantage of the fact that the Kaylon are a hive mind to topple over one part of their network and thereby destroy everything that’s connected to it. The other is an act of mercy, of courage, of altruism in the form of Charly’s sacrifice, which sets in motion a set of causes and effects that help bring about peace from one of the most unlikely partners imaginable given the threats this season.
That is pure Trek and true to the spirit of the franchise that The Orville is paying tribute to. The essential message of this episode is that you can lean toward genocide in the name of self-preservation and praticality, or you can hew to your principles and give peace a chance, and only the latter will save your soul and effect the sort of change in the world all high-minded begins hope for. It’s true to the aspirational, violence as a last resort, respect for life ideals that those who grew up watching the adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise hold dear. I can’t possibly fault The Orville for that.
I’ll confess though, it always makes me bristle a little bit when our noble space heroes take the high road like this when they’re facing total annihilation themselves. Star Trek: The Next Generation did it with Hugh. Battlestar Galactica did it with an anti-Cylon virus. And each time I tore my hair out a little bit the next time people died in an attack from the Borg or the Cylons, each of which were trying to obliterate humanity.
“Domino” takes the idea closer to home, basically treating the “quantum core” (a big macguffin device that’s tangentially earned as a concept since it’s based on insights from Timmis’ design) like the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the Americans did, the Union chooses to use its super-weapon a couple of times as a show of power in the hopes that it will provoke a surrender, which it does.
The metaphor allows the crew and the admiralty to debate the ethics of using something with such destructive power in war. It allows them to argue over whether genocide is okay when you’re not the aggressor and face extinction yourself. These debates aren’t particularly deep and don’t go past the most surface-level arguments, but the show at least uses its sci-fi abstraction to engage with these weighty ideas, which I can appreciate.
Hell, I like the idea that the admiralty settles on a “middle ground” of using the weapon a couple times to provoke the “logical” Kaylon into surrender without need for further bloodshed (so to speak), while Admiral Ted Danson sneaks the weapon to the newly formed Krill-Moclan alliance because he thinks the Kaylon can’t be trusted. It shows the force and fervency on both sides of the question here, and given that the Kaylon wish to, and seem to have the ability to, wipe out all biological life, you can understand the motivations, even if it leads to working with the bad guy crew.
(As an aside, while the Moclan/Krill alliance is a little convenient, I appreciate how Teleya basically demands an equal partnership from the Moclans if they want an alliance, with no lower status due to her gender. Even evil zealots can be feminists!)
Is some of this contrived for maximum drama? Sure. But I appreciate that the show takes time to consider the moral weight of genocide and also the pragmatic question of how unfeeling machines who’ve stated and acted on their own genocidal intentions should be dealt with.
Where they lose me is on the Union choosing to work with the Kaylon, from stopping the Krill-Moclan alliance from using a mega-weapon to finish the job. I know this is an aspirational show, but good lord, it shows an impossible amount of good faith to trust the Kaylon not to turn on the Union in an instant when it suits them, destroy the one (and so far as we know, only) weapon that can hold them in check, and return to systematically trying to destroy all biological life. I am willing to give The Orville some leeway in the name of telling a good and hopeful story, but that was a bridge too far for me.
I’m also roundy indifferent to the action-y climax we get here. Seth MacFarlane and company seem to want to make this episode their Star Wars, with ample dogfights and races against time in desert climes. Unfortunately, it comes off more like the Prequels, overly busy in almost every shot, with all of the CGI elements having an unreal, immersion-breaking sheen and dodgy green screen effects that turn the whole escapade into digital mush. The hand-to-hand fight between Grayson and Telaya is no better, with all the firefights and fisticuffs along the way turning into the same overedited, unfollowable, thousand-cut nonsense you can see in any action movie or show. You can tell how much money they spent to make this raging climax epic, but I wish they’d spend more time on make it clear and, you know, good.
Not for nothing, with Star Trek: Enterprise alums Brannon Braga and Andre Boremanis on board, I can’t help but notice the similarities to the finale for season 3 of that show, with a race against time to destroy the big giant super weapon before it does untold damage and a hero-type reducing their prejudice by better knowing their enemy, at least until the crazy explosion happens. It’s okay to pull from something you worked on [gulp] eighteen years ago, but this outing has some of the same problems that one did.
Plus, as much as I appreciate the poetry of Ensign Burke giving her life to save the Kaylon from total destruction when it used to be her wish, and she and Isaac reaching an understanding in their final moments, such that the Kaylon change their view of biologicals, the episode really gilds the lily. We get too many dialogue scenes that spell out the significance and subtext of all these choices in blunt detail. No theme or notion can go unspoken or left for the audience to surmise on its own. Ironically, it weakens what the show is trying to say, rather than strengthens it.
Overall, I still admire the ambition of all this. The Orville does some strong longform storytelling to reach this point, including plenty of episodic installments that coalesce into a greater whole. That is no easy feat, and many shows attempting similar things botch it terribly. The thematic aims here, both vindicating a peaceful approach and showing a change of heart founded on mutual understanding, are laudable to the last.
I just struggle with how all of it’s ultimately realized in this capper to the Charly and the Kaylon story (for now). Problems with Charly as a character, the way the show abstracts the idea of a WMD and genocide into its sci-fi universe, and head-scratch-worthy choices that strain the limits of even the series’ optimistic bent, undermine what could have been The Orville’s finest hour.
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@andrewbloom "Andre Boremanis" is either a hilarious pun or a highly unfortunate typo, and I'm not sure which I wish to be the truth. I'll certainly go along with you that the super epic battle scenes are just exhausting, too busy and ironically boring despite how much is going on because it really is just for show.
The shuttle that takes the device from Earth to the waiting Krill ship is numbered ECV-197-1, matching the Orville's shuttle. The question is, is it really one of the titular ship's pods or is it the result of lazy VFX work? Personally, I lean toward the latter; another pod numbered ECV-197-1 is clearly visible in Orville's shuttle bay when the Kaylon pod docks about halfway through the episode, and in later scenes. (Looking at you, Defiant. It's the Sao Paulo all over again.)
I am frustrated by how shallow this episode seems, despite its attempts to seem deep. Getting too far into it would be major spoilers, but let's just say there are a lot of ships critically damaged or destroyed in this episode that go completely unacknowledged. The cynic in me says that "you know why" there's only one casualty we seem to care about. Maybe the next (and final?) episode will address the rest.
Maybe.
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@aeronmelon It isn't necessary for Mercer to have a whole memorial for every ship, true. That part was fine and as expected. It just would have been appropriate for someone to acknowledge how many lives were lost, especially while Kaylon Primary was still around, because he/they/it appeared to give Burke ALL of the credit for trying to prevent the Krill from using the weapon when it was obviously a huge joint effort.
The thing about CGI here is, I think all (or most) of the shuttle movement was new footage. Season 3 features redesigned shuttlecraft, meaning they couldn't just reuse footage from the first two seasons. That's why the most likely explanation is, someone forgot to edit the model's registry number.
Everything magically fitting in the ship's shuttle bay, yeah. They've done it before and they'll do it again! :joy:
Well, finally an episode that utilizes Winston in a more or less meaningful way. Nick and Schmidt and Winston and Cece, always good pairings.
Yet, I may be the only one, but I miss Coach. I've gotten used to him over the past one and half seasons.loading replies
I may be the only one, but I miss Coach.
@giskard You are most certainly not the only one. I wasn't looking forward to this season after he left, and the first three episodes didn't really help that feeling.
And they canceled it right there. Man, wish we knew what would have happened next. These last few episodes of S2 were 100% the best of the series.
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The show markedly improved after Rush's secret access to the ship/bridge got blown wide open and the whole crew could work on gaining more finesse with the controls. I know that it was "something different" to explore a Stargate story where the people who are supposedly on the same side don't necessarily work together toward their common goals, but this final run of episodes really brought back the feel of SG-1 and even Atlantis with the crew pulling together against an overwhelming outside threat.
Shout by giyex74541
They wasted 2 espisodes in a row (this is part 1) of showing clips from previous episodes...If I wanted to watch reruns I would watch those episodes. Total waste of time...
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@giyex74541 Total waste of tool time!
* What an ending.
* Favorite and scariest/most chilling part of this episode - the Indonesian professor telling the general to start bombing the city and everyone in it.
* Entire clicker scene was a masterclass in suspense.The set design is fantastic, that alone really puts a huge divide between it and other similar zombie shows. Pedro is solid, Bella I'm still not a huge fan but she was better this episode,
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Bella I'm still not a huge fan but she was better this episode
I suspect this will be a major "unpopular opinion" for this series, but for what it's worth I agree. There's something about both her performance and her appearance that feels "wrong" for the character as I remember her from the first game. She doesn't look quite young enough or innocent enough to fit the role, maybe? Ramsey's face is, for lack of better words, harder than the in-game character model, and even after two episodes I haven't gotten used to it yet.
(Casting a true 14-year-old probably would have been a very hard sell because of how heavy the filming workload is for the character, though, if they could even find one with a look closer to the game character. I get that in the end, the art form of television is restricted by production considerations.)
lol at the
struct ufsmount"Data Intake" window when Finch is telling Reese about their new number. Finch's screens are full of C and C-like code that makes absolutely no sense in context.loading replies
@vortilion Just let us nerds have our fun, hmm?
David and Patrick are the damn best.
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@larziej Dare we say, simply the best?
Nothing says 80’s like the mall. Damn great episode. The acting is so very good.
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I don't know why the mall should say '80s, since Outbreak Day in the HBO timeline was in September 2003
Man that was tense! I totally see why Bella said there would be some divided opinions on this one because David was one sick guy. Like... not even the game went there haha. IMO though it worked pretty well, as it made me sympathize a little less with David here than in the game. Great episode and tense all the way through! Sad we're coming up on the finale but man... The hype is real haha. (Nice work here by Troy, did a great job!)
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@shmuckle The game went close enough to there that it was obvious if you paid attention. Just requires a little reading between the lines, same as Bill/Frank.
Filler episode that added nothing to the story long-term. Meh.
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@drive95 World-building for Part II and giving Ellie a chance to show her own mettle is filler?
3 things needed to be achieved in this episode to ensure the success of the season finale and the build up to an epic season 2.
1) Ellie is the strong element on the equation, she is truly special and not a clever little girl. She is a natural leader and powerful women (super clear during the talk in the cell and when she grabs that cleaver, cleverly );
2)that Bella Ramsey can be adult, raw, fearless and agressive . Her face covered in blood, the knife cuts and the fire behind makes it very visual
3) and finally that the the relationship with Joel is of love and dependence. They would do anything to save the other. When they meet at the end we can see it in their eyes.Thats why this simple episode needed an amazing performance and we got it. Truly incredible and remarkable with so many small references to the game and one HUGE one: Troy Baker :)
7 days counting to that episode on the hospital and the inevitable moment where we will see Abby for the 1st time.loading replies
@movielijst Came here to say the same thing :joy_cat:
