Almost a complete bubble episode. I was never really worried for Sonny. I hoped they saved a lot of money on this to put towards a really good episode.
Well that was a disappointing turn. Using the same plot device twice in a series is just too lazy
A one-sided piece of propaganda. Truly disturbing in what it wants to convey.
Pretty weak mid-season finale..
"Send the dothraki first since they are barbarians"
"Dragons are our heavy artillery let's keep them flying in circles without doing NOTHING for say 2/3 of the battle. Even if they all stop before a flaming trench and sit there nearly aligned for tenths of minutes. We can not win the easy way this must be EPIC"
"It's a massive invasion of Savage, quick and merciless undead but we like to walk orderly and calmly in libraries"
"By the way, libraries are still dead silent while people are being ripped to shreds outside"
"Hey, look, Arya slipped past 4.000 undead and learned Rey's air saber trick"
"Every major character gets to live even after being surrounded by dead. (jorah and theon were already half dead - oh yeah, theon, seems Arya waited in the shadows while you were impalled too. Go team.".
Bran: I can never be Lord of Winterfell, I can never be Lord of anything, I'm the Three-eyed Raven.
Also Bran: I'm the King.
Here’s an unpopular opinion for y'all.
Very excited to finish The Haunting of Bly Manor, because watching it has been a boring experience. There's a difference between a slow burn and watching an unlit candle. I honestly couldn't get into this one. I mainly continued watching it hoping it would get better. I should have known that it wasn't going to be as good as The Haunting of Hill House from the first episode and how it didn't seem to intrigue me at all.
Plot was terrible, so many plot threads unfinished. They changed the main bad guy 3 times:
First - the fiance. He disappeared after showing himself at the end of the episode and never talked about again, no further explanation;
then - Quint and Rebecca. They dropped them as if they were any other random ghosts. If you spend so much time building up characters at least give them a meaningful ending;
then finally - lady in the lake. Speaking of which, the black and white episode was annoying as hell. The entire episode was a narrator telling you everything, felt like an info-dump episode, and that goes against the “show don't tell” mantra. You can fast forward through about 90% of it and still get the whole story. I found myself repeating “get on with it already!”. I didn't get that “shay wood slipe, shay wood wawck”? until they repeated for the 50th time! It stopped being poetic quickly and just started getting old for me. And I was hoping for something a bit more substantive than a 1700s ghost story. So predictable. I believe this was an attempt to create a second outing of a story similar to the bend-neck-lady, and I think it could have worked if I had already known more about Viola. To have an entire story about two characters the viewer have never met on the penultimate episode of the show just feels out of place.
Other major problems with this season:
The first half was episodes that were just backstory on each character and droned on and on. The characters kept making predictable and dumb decisions that are typical of cheesy Hollywood films - “Why don't I go in the closet alone at night....oh, look at that, the kids locked me in! Wow, how surprising.”; :rolling_eyes:
The uncle haunting himself was pointless. I was expecting something more sinister about how the parents died, instead we got no explanation about what happened;
How the hell had no one in the family ever heard of Viola or the other ghosts before? The Wingraves are just so lucky to have never been up at the same time that Viola was visiting;
Why the lady in the lake didn’t immediately kill Dani when she grabbed her neck? Peter got killed in two seconds, meanwhile Dani’s being shown a house tour;
There are no rules around who is able to see ghosts and who isn’t. I also couldn't understand how Flora seemed to know so much about the ghosts. She even says the other ghosts told her to stay away from the lady in the lake but how did they tell her? The ghosts have no faces and can't speak;
How didn't adult Flora connect the dots? Sure, Owen said the kids don’t remember much but even still Flora knows that her rich parents died in a tragic accident, her uncle took care of them, and they moved from England to America when they were kids. This is incredibly specific, how doesn't that ring any bells?;
There is so much useless dialogue that just goes absolutely nowhere. I felt a strong urge to stab my ears watching that first interview scene with Hannah and Owen over and over again. Every character was given a 10 minute monologue about their complicated feelings. Jamie’s plant monologue stood out to me as the most unnecessary one;
Speaking of which, there is so much exposition and explaining. So much repetition. The flashbacks while the characters are trying to figure out if they’re dead are an absolute bore to watch. There wasn't enough content for 9 episodes, could’ve easily been reduced to 5 episodes and still kept the emotional impact. And SO many scenes dragged on forever. There were a lot of points where I was just thinking, "get to the obvious point and move on". I get that the Scottish guy is going to take Becky into the lake, he doesn't need to keep alluding to it for 10 minutes. Same with them about to take the kids, while Dany was whining in the background. Why she was even there … so that she can hear the magical phrase, “it’s me. it’s you. it’s us.”. How convenient;
I don't like any of the characters. Dani annoyed me to new extremes, her character was just so dramatic. How many shots of Dani’s mouth kinda open do we need? I swear this was her only face expression during the whole season;
The ending felt so forced, rashly thrown together, with the unnecessary and convoluted time shifts leading to the most obvious, overly sentimental and corny reveal, with some more terrible dialogue, written to tug at the heartstrings of people. Flora’s quote at the end about how, “you called it a ghost story, but it’s a love story” just seems like a huge cop out. And people agreeing are just regurgitating the horrible ending. It was not just a love story until the end. If it wasn’t for the LGBT representation, people would have been more honest and called it what it is. :nail_care:
For the people (especially the Brits) complaining about the accents and asking for English actors. Where were you when you LOoOOvED Chernobyl? A show without even one Ukrainian actor? You guys are such big, fat, dumb hypocrites. :face_vomiting:
Overall, Bly Manor is aimless, dragged out, and sloppy. Not even close to being as good as its predecessor.
"Two wrongs make a white" Seriously? Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a comedy series. No one watches a series for it to be woke garbage. I'll give it a chance but If I'm getting politics thrown at my face 24/7 I won't finish this series.
[7.4/10] Gosh that was long. I don’t think that any episode of television, even an epic season finale for one of television’s marquee shows, needs to be two and a half hours long. Sure, many movies are that long. But movies have the structure and pacing for it, with rising and falling action, act structures, and other foundational elements that make 150 minutes not feel that long. “The Piggyback is basically” fifteen minutes of prelude, followed by two hours of a third act climax, followed by fifteen minutes of an epilogue. It’s just too much.
But there’s good moments here! Eddie’s death is meaningful. Him playing Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” to lure the bats with Dustin is cheesy as hell, but just as awesome. His choice to stand and face the horror rather than run away from it as he did with Chrissy is inspiring and earnest. And there is irony and tragedy in his demise. He was the town pariah and scapegoat, but secretly one of its biggest heroes. The world will never know how he gave his life to save a town that hated him, but Dustin knows, and his uncle knows too. It’s sad, but comes with a certain poignancy.
The same goes for Max’s heartfelt admission that she spent so much time feeling guilt over Billy’s death that she wished something would happen to her, something that would make her disappear. It’s one of the most honest renditions of survivor’s guilt I’ve seen on television, and Sadie Sink owns the scene. The loss of someone who hurt you, but who was also hurt, is a complicated thing, and for all season 4’s missteps and questionable story choices, it gets Max’s vulnerability and strength in the shadow of unspeakable thoughts just right.
As tired as I am of “power of love” stories, I did like that it’s Mike finally saying the L-word that gives Eleven the strength to do her thing. It completes Mike’s arc, with him worrying that he’s not good enough to be with a superhero and that admitting his feelings would make it hurt more. But him deciding that’s baloney and affirming his love for Eleven in every form makes for a beautiful little monologue. The finale lays things on a little thick with visions of everyone’s plans failing and good folks suffering, but the idea that love spurs us to “fight” is a simple but effective tonic to that idea.
There’s a number of lesser but still good moments in the lead-up to this. Argyle finding a kindred spirit in a Nevada pizza shop is a fun win for him. Jonathan validating his brother and wanting to support him no matter whom he loves is a wholesome moment. The Russian prison guard convincing Yuri to once again be a “great man” and help save the motherland by saving “the Americans” is the best thing to come out of that storyline.
But again, there’s just too much going on, and a lot of it seems superfluous. It’s admirable that the Duffer Brothers want to give everyone in the cast something to do. But most everything outside of the Eleven/Max/Vecna confrontation seems like perfunctory piece-moving rather than a vital part of the action.
Lucas closes off the jock jerk/satanic panic storyline, but randomly finds the strength of will to avoid being strangled out of nowhere. Erica likewise beats up a bully twice her size almost at random. Steve, Robyn, and Nancy burn up Vecna in the Upside Down, but it doesn’t even kill him, so it feels like they just mildly inconvenience him. Eddie and Dustin fighting bats includes some cool sequences, and keeps Vecna’s minions from attacking the others, but is a sidestory at best. And once again, Hopper, Joyce, and Murray fighting the demogorgons and demodogs in Russia is the most tangential, tenuously-connected part of this whole season.
Jumping around to all of these storylines is just plain exhausting. While I wouldn’t call any of it filler (okay, maybe the business at the Russian prison), a lot of it feels much less urgent and essential than what’s going on in the main event.
The main event is good though. Max retreating to her happy place, and it being the finale of season 2, is a nice surprise. Eleven finding out how to “piggyback” and fight Vecna via Max’s mind is a cool trick and thrilling moment. And Eleven turning the tide and defeating One, however temporarily, is rousing.
But things quickly devolve into tired exposition and monologuing, where Henry explains how he’s going to shatter the borders between his world and ours, and how it was Eleven, not Dr. Brenner who made him. We already got a giant infodump at the end of episode 7, which was already kind of a stretch. This one is probably necessary, but listening to One simply announce his backstory with some of the usual visuals doesn’t add much intrigue or excitement to the proceedings.
Plus, the episode makes a big deal about how our heroes lose for the first time, but...it seems like they shouldn’t have? Sure, Henry succeeds, and there’s a giant Upside Down-fueled “earthquake” that devastates Hawkins. That’s unfortunate, and I’m glad there’s some kind of cost to all this interdimensional adventuring.
But Eleven found her inner strength and obliterated the guy in the mind realm! Robyn, Steve, and Nancy burned the hell out of him in the Upside Down and blasted him with a shotgun out the window! I’m not saying plausibility is the key in a show where the supernatural is the rule of the day. Yet, nothing in this feels like a loss. It feels like, by all rights, they should have been able to finish the job here and now with Vecna, and the only reason they didn’t is because there’s another season of Stranger Things that needs a villain, and the Duffer Brothers don’t want to have to come up with another one. It would have been better if Vecna had enjoyed more of an outright win than something that seems like a complete loss that turns out to be mere table-setting for season 5.
That said, we do get some great work with Max. It is harrowing watching the life leave her body as she cries out about how scared she is in all of this. It’s a nice contrast to where she’s reminded of what she has to live for with her friends and doesn’t want to disappear. Caleb McLaughlin does an extraordinary job as Lucas reacting to Max’s apparent death with his own cries of pain. And we’ve added to Eleven’s messianic nature by having her effectively revive Max, creating the second of two “miracles” in the episode, even if poor Max remains in a coma.
The epilogue is nice enough. There’s the bevy of tearful reunions you’d expect, with Eleven and Hopper being the best of them, naturally. I’m glad that the show didn’t just jump from climax to cliffhanger. It’s nice that we get some of the denouement and emotional aftermath of all these grand events. But considering how many concurrent storylines and characters they’ve been juggling to this point, even that soon feels overextended.
Regardless, Robyn forming a friendship that has the potential to lead to more with her crush is a really nice scene, and it’s good to see her get the win. Nancy and Jonathan’s deal continues to be confusing and pointless. Lucas reading a Stephen King book to a comatose Max is a creditable homage to one of the show’s clear inspirations. And seeing the town of Hawkins wonder why they’re cursed and forced to suffer like this, with the aftermath of Vecna’s handiwork coming to the fore, helps add a sense of place and scope to the scheme this season.
Overall though, this season finale bites of way more than it could chew. Why this couldn’t have been broken up into three episodes, or even just been built into a better act structure, is beyond me. There’s a lot of good material here. Some of it’s even great. But it’s presented in a way that makes it really hard to get your hands around.
Still, I like some of the big swings the show’s taken in season 4. Vecna introduces a retroactive backstory and mastermind for all that’s happened which is kind of hard to swallow. But having a villain with a face and a personality and a motive escalates this struggle into something broader and more meaningful as a reflection of Eleven’s own struggles. The show’s done good work with a number of the key relationships in the series, and introduced some solid new characters while reintroducing old ones. (I’m glad we got more Owens this year.)
But at the end of the day, this also feels like half a story, despite the ridiculously bloated runtimes for every episode. This is as much a prelude to season 4 as it is its own distinctive thing. Maybe that’s to be expected in the streaming era, but while there’s high points and quality elements at play, the season’s never more than the sum of its part.
Still, a friend described Stranger Things as a show that’s still exciting and worthy of investing in even when it’s missing half of its shots, and I think this finale is a good representation of that idea. Not everything works, and the time required prompts a certain exhaustion factor. But this feels epic and grand and satisfying enough as a temporary resolution to the season’s events. There’s a lot more ground to cover, but also enough to tug the heartstrings and make you cheer, which is still worth appreciating.
Had I known a little of the backstory I might be invested in the episode, but this was pointless
I have no hesitation in saying this has been the worst KyoAni show I have seen. People were harsh on Tamako Market but that was Citizen Kane compared to this. Thank god it's over now and we can look forward to the likes of Hibike S2 etc.
Jesus Christ this is a stupid fucking series.
These fillers are getting out of hand.
It tries to tackle things like porn addiction, queerness, dysfunctional marriages and polyamorous relationships, but ultimately it just wraps things up too quickly and neatly. It even lacked the signature Black Mirror tragic twist. I feared that Danny's son would log on at some point and get virtually raped by Karl.
"iF yOu ThInK tHiS hAs A hApPy eNDinG, yOu hAvEn'T beEN pAyInG aTteNtIOn"
Literally everyone except Daenerys got a happy clean ending.
This episode and this season as a whole have been a complete and utter disaster. the decline of storytelling quality from the last seasons is shocking. The show is barely recognizable at this point.
A character who wasn't a contender for the throne ended up on it even though they have done absolutely nothing this whole season, had lots of potential to make for a very interesting role but was ignored and swept aside then suddenly elected king.
Daenerys's character being completely butchered as she was turned from someone who never showed the slightest disregard to innocents' safety to someone who commits mass genocide and shows no remorse afterwards, all in the span of 2 episodes.
So many character arcs were neglected or wrapped up poorly. Jon being reduced to a secondary character with a combination of three sentences of dialogue, Jaime's development being thrown out the window, Cersei barely doing anything and then getting killed by bricks, Tyrion, the master tactician, turning to a gossiping idiot then getting promoted after he quits his job (seriously?)
So many plot points were discarded or turned out insignificant. Azor Ahai, Jon's lineage, The Lord of Light, Cersei's prophecy...etc
The whole White Walkers storyline being eliminated in one episode, then the whole Iron Throne storyline being eliminated as well in the end (FFS)
So much shit not making the slightest bit of sense. Dany's army multiplying, Arya's impenetrable plot armor, The North getting the independence while the Iron Islands didn't when they were the first ones to demand it, Drogon not killing Jon after he killed Daenerys, hell, the Dothraki and the Unsullied not killing Jon after he killed Daenerys, The point of the Night's Watch now that the WW are gone. Tyrion being in chains and holding up a presidential vote over who would run the 6 republics. HBO c'mon man.
Overall the pacing was too fast and inconsistent, the ending was rushed, anti-climactic and nonsensical. This couldn't have ended in a worse way. Kudos to D&D!
So robot dogs, huh? Not that great of a concept and boring episode.
Trump bashing is getting old.
I was so thrilled and excited to have B99 back in my life... then the episode started. This show has become too woke for its own good. Let's hope the cringe AF writing was all crammed in the premiere so they get it out of the way and move on politics free for the rest of the season.:fingers_crossed:
Carrie girl what are you doing!! These endings. They're trying to break a record for most cliffhangers at end of episodes.
I hope the president is still alive, though it might be too unrealistic for this show. Maybe if we were in 24!
8 seasons in and the writing on this show remains high quality.
Somethings in this epsode felt in poor taste to me. It's like the writers didn't want to invoke neo-nazi imagery so instead they softened the mob to be low-IQ hicks. It's an easy target and the show is basically saying "Hah! You're not smart enough for the jobs we have and the jobs you used to work now have all been shipped off to China and India!" Sure. That's kind of the problem isn't it? Nothing insightful or funny about that. In fact it's kind of horrifying, given that low IQ people who have no job prospects historically lead to uprisings. South Park can often be cruel and find humor in that cruelness but not usually when doing social commentary. It also just wasn't funny. Dumb hicks are tired humor. There was nothing risky or all that original. There were some good bits with Seri and the parody of home repair shows. Last season had a weak opener so I hope it will pick-up (but also not devolve as the later episodes of the previous season did.)
At least they don’t have to build a new throne now that Bran is king.
Season 2 was by far not as hilarious as Season 1 but still fine.
Was watchable until that idiot started to talk about not being able to date a white woman because he wanted black kids and another one just had to refer to God as "she". It would be so nice if Hollywood could produce something without SJW or general leftist preaching and nonsense in it.
F*cking stupid filler again
Wow... that was some of the worst TV I’ve ever seen. So corny and cheesy.
Aw man, this always ends too soon :(
Another hilarious outing by our lovable idiots. I do hope we get more of this in the future as it's definitely one of the best and funniest of it's type out there. It's the kind of show where it feels like everyone involved in creating it is having a blast. It has also (along with Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju) improved my opinion of Studio DEEN massively, to the point where I might not actually assume a series is doomed if it ends up being animated by them (Like S2 of Cool-headed Hoozuki later this year, another comedy anime I really enjoyed).
Well that was a cute and enjoyable series ultimately. Probably not particularly memorable in the long-term but it looked pretty nice and had some fun characters and endearing moments.
I suppose if you had come into this expecting something like "Everyday Life with Monster Girls", you may be disappointed since was more of a slice-of-life comedy rather than a raunchy harem comedy.
This is a direct rip off of the meow meow beans episode of Community. Even segregation by point levels! Not sure what to think about that... They also could have made this episode 20 minutes shorter, a lot of repetition, staring, walking, etc.
Wasn't going to watch this as the story was complete in just the 1st season. Gave it a look though & have to admit, it doesn't look like it will have much/ anything interesting to add to the original premise.