Review by LeftHandedGuitarist
A strong and effective send off for Daniel that does hit the right emotional spots. It's handled with care. Of course, even back in 2002 it was widely reported that Michael Shanks was going to be leaving the show, so there wasn't a surprise factor here. But that didn't diminish how sad it was to watch.
While the episode does remove his character, it has the foresight to not "kill" him off as such, leaving the possibility open for appearances in the future. But even so, this manages to feel final. The farewell between him and Jack is played very nicely, and it was the right choice that Daniel selects him to say goodbye to. Their friendship has been rough along the way (even as recently as a couple of episodes ago with the ending of 'Meridian'), but it's really grown into one of the most solid relationships here. The tears in Michael Shanks eyes feel genuine which is a testament to his acting abilities.
Whether you agree with Daniel's reasons for leaving is another matter. He seems to almost be giving up, despite his protestations that he's not. He claims to feel useless and that he's done all he can; I'm not sure I quite feel the same. The episode attempts to justify his state of mind, but the fact that it's not been built up kind of makes it not ring entirely true for me. He and SG-1 have accomplished a LOT over the past few years.
Other than that, this introduces us to the naquadria element and also Jonas Quinn. I like Jonas and I think this episode helps to establish his morals quite well.
I remember a lot of online discussion back in the day about Carter's goodbye scene with Daniel where she's talking about "why do we always wait to tell people how we really feel?". This was misinterpreted by a lot of people, myself included, as her declaring some romantic feelings towards him. I think it's an easy mistake to make given the words she chooses, but it's definitely not meant that way.
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(even as recently as a couple of episodes ago with the ending of 'Meridian')
I believe you meant "Menace"? This episode is "Meridian" :grin:
Clipshow episode #2, and they are still a bit painful to sit through. Much like 'Politics', the surrounding story is moderately enticing and I always liked the way that Stargate at least tried to make clipshow episodes fun. The re-use of existing sets in a new capacity is clever enough as yet another method of saving money, but still this episode is difficult to really get into. It lacks the spark and heightened tension that 'Politics' had. However, one thing I did kind of appreciate was that the clips actually related to each other, and were put together in a way that summed up the overarching alien narratives so far.
The reveal of Hathor isn't all that welcome given that her previous appearance was one of the worst episodes of the entire series, but they do better here. The episode has a really awkward moment when we see the two "future" base staff speaking Goa'uld, because the performances there are laughably bad.
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tbh I was pleasantly surprised at how much original footage this part incorporated. Like you, I didn't care for the last episode Hathor appeared in, but with fewer/shorter flashbacks and less lethargic pacing I think this would be a pretty good episode.
So, comatose Emily had been cheating on Howard for weeks? Can't our Howard get a break? Meantime, still showing that he's the world's greatest person, he naively tries to make up for all the emotional damage Howard Prime did on the other side... Those last few seconds before the episode ended, with Anna, were heartbreaking.
One thing's for sure: both Howards will not be pleased when they return to their respective sides, if they get to know what each one of them was up to while the other one was gone.Oh, also, that guy who lives with his wife from both sides, meaning he has two wives who are both the same, but from different realities, the three of them living together... This show can get quite messed up, if it puts itself to it.
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Oh, also, that guy who lives with his wife from both sides, meaning he has two wives who are both the same, but from different realities, the three of them living together... This show can get quite messed up, if it puts itself to it.
I find this extra funny because it comes from a user whose display name, at the time I read it, is "kinky" :rofl:
[7.6/10] Lots of good stuff in this one. The main debate gets a little cartoony with the soul-patch douchebag opponent’s desperate gambit. But this is really the first gasps of Jeff and Annie as a pairing, and it’s not hard to see why fans latched onto them, with the sort of uncomfortable but undeniable chemistry between the two of them. I like the idea of Jeff thinking this is stupid and doing it just for a parking spot, then doing it because he actually cares about losing and is more bothered by the prospect of being beaten than he lets on, and then realizing that he’s more affected by Annie than he lets on. The whole “man is good”/”man is evil” thing gets a little silly, but overall, still good.
My favorite subplot, is the one where Abed, as a studier of human character, is basically able to predict the future. It’s a little fourth wall-breaking, as Abed should be, but it’s just chock full of great setups and payoffs, particularly when it comes to Shirley being so freaked out by it and the hints that a professor is a werewolf.
The one real weakspot in this one, as is sadly becoming common, in the Pierce storyline. Him doing a terrible job of being a hypnotherapist for Britta is pretty weak, and the twist that the image of a threesome in his hottub is what dissuades Britta from smoking is a pretty mild payoff.
Overall, a quite good episode that launched a thousand Jeff/Annie ships!
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I'm honestly wondering at this point how Pierce made it through series development. Did the producers contractually obligate themselves to cast Chevy Chase? Is that why his character didn't get replaced by a better formula? Nine episodes isn't a huge sample size, but whichever subplot involves Pierce has been pretty consistently the weakest so far. :confused:
No reason to evacuate the school because there was a dead body found in the locker.
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Just leave the body unattended and unguarded, that makes sense. No need to call the coroner or anything. A boy's corpse found in the girls' locker room is definitely not potential evidence in a criminal investigation.
First off, from a technical perspective, this is a masterpiece. Everything that is shot in a ship looks phenomenal. The moon landing itself is breathtaking. See this in IMAX if possible. That being said, everything outside a ship is just ok. The acting is good overall but I’m not sure if it Oscar worthy. Claire Foy really gives the best performance. It feels a little too long. They used shaky cam a little too much. It makes sense on the ship scenes but it felt overused on the ground drama. It might be my least favorite Chazelle movie but this is still a great movie.
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@nmahoney416 Camera shake: my number one complaint about this film, hands down. Haven't seen such excessive camera shake since the last Bourne film I watched (can't remember which; I found those kind of forgettable).
Why the fuck would they explain their code when they should be keeping it confidential, so much for being geniuses.
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@sunny_senpai That's why it's a comedy.
[9.3/10] At first blush, Baby Driver writer-director Edgar Wright and fellow director Wes Anderson don’t seem like a natural pairing. Wright’s films, like Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead tend to be overtly comedic, include a good quotient of action, and bring an adventure-focused quality to the proceedings. Anderson’s, by contrast, tend to be quieter, more droll pictures, that are certainly funny and have their share of exciting moments, but which find their form in the more reserved, music box sensibilities of Anderson’s oeuvre.
And yet, Wright and Anderson’s films have something very much in common. They both create films where it seems like the world was built to fit their characters, rather than more typical films where the main personalities find themselves struggling in a world that’s indifferent to them or even more commonly, which doesn’t fit them at all. Whether it’s Anderson’s elegant dioramas or Wright’s “everything’s foreshadowing” rube goldberg machines, the environments of these films bend to our heroes, not the other way around, resulting in some wonderfully well-choreographed cinema.
Baby Driver is the apotheosis of this tack, brought to bear in the form of car chases, gunfights, and the best jukebox soundtrack this side of the galaxy (and any attendant guardians). Indeed, Marvel Studios’ Guardians is a nice reference point, as both films not only feature countless rockin’ tunes, but also center on roguish but decent young men, holding onto to the last holy artifacts of their mother, finding solace in music and falling in with a rough crowd before deciding to stand for something more. It’s kismet that star Ansel Elgort, who plays the lead (appropriately named “Baby’), is signed on to be the past and future Han Solo in the latest standalone Star Wars flick, a character who’s very much in the DNA of Guardians’ Peter “Star-Lord” Quill.
Independent of any comic book counterparts, however, Baby Driver doesn’t offer much in terms of an original premise. Baby is a badass driver and a decent kid, mixed up with some bad folks, tentative about the prospect of blood and his hands, wanting to start a new life with his lady love. There are a lot of tropes in the film: the quiet but effective young naif, the loose cannon gangster, the slimy mastermind, the ingenue who represents a beacon of hope, the inevitable moral dilemma.
But what the film lacks in originality in its setup, it more than makes up for in performance, texture, and execution. Baby Driver has a murderer’s row of performers who chew up and spit out Wright’s script and make what could otherwise be stock character come alive and compensate for any dearth of depth with the sheer vividness of their presence.
Kevin Spacey looks alive for the first time in ages, bringing a blasé menace as the organizer of each heist. Jamie Foxx is at his extroverted best, rolling through pointed monologues and bringing a lived-in flavor of crazy. Lily James has enough homespun, wanderlust charm to balance out her underwritten part. Elgort is necessarily more reserved, but equally endearing and a fine fulcrum for the movie. And Jon Hamm brings his Mad Men practiced-gentility in a fashion that makes him seem like that much monstrous when the scales fall.
But while the performances carry the film in its quieter moments, what sets Baby Driver apart is sequence after superlative sequence of breathtaking kinetic cinema. Not content to simply toss in explosive but empty action to keep the heart-pumping, Wright, cinematographer Bill Pope, and editor Paul Machliss create these elegantly constructed set pieces of gorgeous synchronous stunts, twists, and turns, the hum right along with the music, just like the protagonist.That works whether Baby is blowing the doors off the film’s opening with a series of death-defying terms perfectly sequenced to his backing track. It works when the young man finds himself embroiled in a firefight where surprise shots and returned fire blast back and forth in time with the beat. It works in chases on foot as the rhythmic thump of the tune of the moment matches the energy of pursuers and pursued alike. Even when Baby goes to get coffee, the world moves with him; from the graffiti on the walls to the buskers on the street everything goes where he goes.
In the same way, the film doesn’t so much present action scenes as it does ballets of chrome and octane. Baby Driver oozes with style and tempo, knowing how to hold the audience’s attention through great escapes that and close scrapes that keep topping one another, and quieter scenes where the tension comes from sweet interactions juxtaposed with combustive elements, leading the viewer to wonder which will win the day.
It’s also a near perfectly-paced movie. Like a perfect mixtape, Wright knows when to kick things into gear and when to slow things down to let the audience catch its breath before putting his foot on the gas once more. While the film starts to feel a bit overextended at the very end, with the villain creeping into unkillable slasher territory, for the vast majority of its runtime it holds your attention from moment to moment and scene to scene expertly. In that, Wright matches the talents of his protagonist, directing and maneuvering this complex machine like it were a rough-and-tumble ballerina, full of slick thrills and inimitable grace.
He achieves this with a movie, a setting, and a lead character, that each move like clockwork in sync with one another. While Baby Driver is neither as quiet or twee as Wes Anderson’s work, it brings with it the film’s own sense of longing and melancholy beneath an intricately constructed world. Every scene is a dance, every moment a confluence of sound and imagery and movement, whether in the pulse-pounding races against cops or robbers, or gauzy imaginings of another life that might be. In Baby Driver, Wright has built his most elegant, intricate toy, and it’s a treat and a pleasure to see him play on the screen once again.
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@andrewbloom This should have more likes. Why doesn't it have more likes?!
There's nothing particularly bad about this episode, it's just so very forgettable. It's a great showcase for Dax and Terry Farrell finally gets to show us the slightly more fun side of her which will become a trademark of her personality. I like Trill culture so it's nice to get some info about how it all works, but the whole relationship between Jadzia and Arjin is quite dull and just feels half hearted.
Odo has a great mini disagreement with Kira and makes his points beautifully, the voles on the station are a humourous background story and the Klingon chef is always welcome back.
But the whole thing with the tiny universe is just uninteresting and feels without any real stakes. They just end up putting it back where they found it, but isn't it still going to pose a risk there once it continues to expand?
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@lefthandedguitarist They did kind of explain where it came from initially in a bit of a throwaway line… Sigh.
When Voyager tackles big story lines, it can take me by surprise. This is a gorgeously twisty episode that doesn't worry about how much it tries to fit in, starting in one place and taking us on a winding path to get somewhere new. I have to congratulate the writers on handling it all so well.
I'm really glad to see that the Maquis are still not entirely comfortable on board the ship, because they do tend to blend into the background in most episodes. It's just a shame that any time we meet one it has to be a new character and actor. The show would have been so much better if there were all people that we had been seeing since the start.
The death and funeral scene at the start really didn't work for me at all for exactly the reason that we don't know or care about the character who died. All of our main cast were talking about how well they knew him, how he had saved their lives and it falls flat. Chakotay especially fails here as he gives one of the most underwhelming and unemotional funeral eulogies - I don't really think that guy truly cares about anyone, or else Robert Beltran was just bored out of his mind.
Always happy to see Seska back, and her interactions with Maje Cullah were a bit more nuanced here, less evil villain. The Trabe kind of suckered me in, I was hoping they would actually be good guys. Nice nod to The Godfather Part III with the big mass execution.
The ending is a bit of a letdown with Janeway realising that the Starfleet way is the only way (it really shouldn't be), and giving a cheesy motivational speech.
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@lefthandedguitarist I love when I don't have to write a top-level comment at all because someone else read my mind :)
Ugh. Where to start? I'm embarrassed to admit that, as a teenager, this was one of my favourite episodes when it first aired. I though the concept of being trapped inside a board game was really cool. And yes, the idea still is pretty great, but when it's executed like this it just makes you want to turn away in shame.
The concept of the episode isn't the problem, it's the poor writing and absolutely horrendous acting involved, from both guest stars and the main cast. Alexander Siddig again comes off the worst here, I can only assume that it's a mixture of him following direction and having very little experience. Falow is way too over the top, and the Wadi in general are a stupid design in all aspects. The less said about the hopscotch scene the better, you can almost feel the embarrassment the cast members were experiencing.
The only ones who come off well here are Quark and Odo. Odo gets a fantastic scene with Lt. Primmin (we won't be seeing him again), mocking him about Starfleet procedures. Quark has a funny grovelling scene in which Armin Shimmerman doesn't hold back chewing up the scenery. And the writing of the episode itself isn't a total loss, the opening scene with Sisko and Jake is just a beautiful father/son piece.
To make matters worse, the episode drags. The final sections in the cave just seem to go on endlessly. This is a really weak moment for the show, but for all that I think I still prefer it to the terrible previous episode ('The Passenger'). There's at least an element of silly fun to be found, but for God's sake don't show this to anyone you want to introduce to the show or sci-fi TV in general.
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@lefthandedguitarist Ah, first season Trek spin-offs… They never get better, do they?
(Your comment like brought me back to see that I left two shouts on the same day… Why, past self?)
FedEx containers? Syfy are you serious?!
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Oh, it's not about the in-universe use of them. "Syfy are you serious" as in, they really put a present-day brand into the show. Given how completely unbranded the Expanse universe is overall, it seemed out of place. The characters' use of those containers makes perfect sense!
The movie might be showing its age, or maybe I'm showing mine. The structure just felt off. The pacing was much too slow until the last quarter. There's something grating about Maverick's character—there's supposed to be, but I couldn't really find anything to like about him. And of course the romance is entirely unnecessary, but that's been a Hollywood problem since long before this movie (and still is).
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@mr-sackamano Or maybe you do…
Shout by hljrichard
Is there anything more evil than Winnie Cooper ?? Man, it hurts !!
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@hljrichard I'm combing through memories of what Kevin's done and honestly, I can't think of much. If my recollections can be trusted (and that's somewhat in doubt :sweat_smile:), generally speaking, Kevin occasionally makes Winnie jealous by e.g. being too flirty with a waitress, or totally overreacting to her interactions with another boy. Meanwhile Winnie cheats on him at least twice, in addition to overreacting any time he so much as glances at anything with long hair.
It's tempting to see if anyone published an academic analysis of their relationship. This show seems like it could be great material for a college writing class like the one I took freshman year (except mine was about music in TV, not relationships).
Shout by Alexander von Limberg
There's only good joke about hiring a guy as a lead character of a TV show without previous acting experience.
It's probably the most homophobe episode in this show 3/10.
PS: was that how soap operas were made? It was a live show?
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Live used to be the standard way to create television. The earliest shows are lost forever because they simply weren't recorded anywhere.
Soaps held onto live production longer than other scripted-fiction genres. It's hard to beat the turnaround!
Shout by Alexander von Limberg
The thing I watched in a 16:4 wooden frame TV as part of a show aired in 16:4 on my 16:9 TV was actually funny. For this moment alone, Phil dancing and Geoffrey dressed like Bootsy Collins this episode ain't totally shabby. I like most of the episodes focused on Phil anyway. Like in last episode, you feel how important the relation between Phil and Will is for this show. Question: Was Soul Train a real show?
PS: one of the best Carlton dances on the show. Geoffrey is extra naughty in this episode. Hillary's miniscule B-plot is funny. It leads to nowhere. I adore her anyway. She deserves her own episode.
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Question: Was Soul Train a real show?
Yes, and Don Cornelius was its real host up until shortly before this episode aired. https://trakt.tv/shows/soul-train
(I'm over here laughing at the idea of cropping Fresh Prince to 16:4, btw. You'd lose most of the picture!)
Another one Trakt thinks is 23 minutes, but is actually 25…
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@thatvegasguy Mm, I figured out how to edit the external data sources. Or maybe for this show, someone else did. Fixed either way.
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:
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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:
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???
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
