Thogek

VIP

8

Anyone else feel the movie suffered from a bit of "unfulfilled potential" in not really closing the full circle of its plot?

The weird choppy visual of the worlds coming within "sight" of each other, like some sort of TV signal being erratically interrupted, was odd. I very much doubt something like that would look so sharply back-and-forth choppy. But, IMO, that's a relatively small complaint in yet another solid segment of the story.

A larger complaint might be: Why does no one seem to remember the existence of others who might be able to help: Kara, Barry, Jefferson, etc? That story-hole has been annoying me much more, lately.

So the Fountain of Imperium is sort of a cousin to the Mycelium? Iiinteresting...

"I call it the Kessel Run."

That look, and the sudden-but-smooth deflation-transition to it, was so damn perfectly delivered, that it easily deserved a couple of rewind-and-rewatches.

Did we just see the energy-absorption powers of DC's Parasite?

So the Lazarus Pits here are pretty different from the ones on Earth Prime, eh?

Mostly good, except for the wild technobabble overdrive, and...

At the end, couldn't Jane have hit that door button and then slipped out the door before it finished closing? At least tried? Sigh.

I'm half-expecting to find out that, either due to the ZIP released in the room being from the "denatured" batch or due to Jane's previous experience with ZIP (and ZIP poisoning) that she now has some degree of immunity to ZIP, and will end up having some sort of weird memory-lane finale experience before waking up to an all's-well end... maybe... as long as they don't make it some overly simple "just kidding!" sort of save...

Just one episode left to wrap it up, one way or another.

Given how Patterson clearly knows those bunker tunnels better than anyone and has clearly planned a series of discovery contingencies, I have to wonder if her sad "I'm sorry"s through the closed-door window were about having failed everyone (as it seemed to suggest) or about having to leave everyone behind and captured while she slipped out yet another way from under all that fiery doom. Wishful thinking, perhaps, especially near the end of the series when writers are most likely to give some characters heroic ends, but... maybe...

So, they have a strict directive (Protocol 3) to not kill anyone.

However, in this case, due to the nature of the situation, shooting down (or even just wounding) a few soldiers would have resulted in the same number of deaths in the end (due to the final explosion) and a much higher chance of mission success (mandated by Protocol 1) without having to send back (and waste) more travelers to occupy the soldiers. No deadly force (and thus no direct Protocol 3 conflict) was even necessary; shooting the soldiers in the legs (sharpshooter?) would have sufficed.

Which seems to suggest that either (1) the writers were careless with such plot details or (2) something else (more complex/insidious?) is going on.

That sight at the end, of John lighting his cigarette by leaning into the fireball, was worth pausing on for several seconds to appreciate the poster-shot appropriateness of the moment.

It does seem as though every time I see Adrian Pasdar, he's playing a bigger eviller jerk than last time, and increasingly convincingly so. Nathan Petrelli (Heroes), Glenn Talbot (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Nolan Burgess (Colony), Morgan Edge (Supergirl). Almost like he's refining... something...

Why do I now kinda feel like the line "You want a war?" was a foreshadowing of the later shift in cancellation-disappointed Sense8 fans' attitudes toward Netflix...? :-(

Efforts like http://bit.ly/RenewSense8 might have something to do with that, too. Sigh.

Is it too much that I almost want Kirkman to designate Agent Hannah Watts's new office as "The Division"?

Trust Marlee Matlin to show up just about anywhere and make things even more interesting.

Alan kept me wondering 'til the end what he was really playing in that intricate mind of his, knowing that his daughter's fate might still depend on what he does and where he goes...

I've grown used to expecting Will Bowman to go into full blown family-protection mode and start dropping bodies of anyone and everyone threatening his family, but there's something entirely different about seeing Katie Bowman do the same. Wwoooww.

That and, I gotta say, I was not-that-unpleasantly surprised to see Bob get a true gut-feel for the pain he's been inflicting on others. Not that he'll take it as a hint of any such thing, of course. But still...

I have to wonder what they saw, and how much of that we'll see in near-future episodes. Maul is clearly after something specific -- some one specific, apparently now -- and I thought I heard Ezra say "twin suns" which sounds very Tatooine. Iiinteresting...

Good tough start to follow last season's cliffhanger.

I do wish that the Stormtroopers weren't always portrayed as hosing great splays of blasterfire and still utterly unable to hit any actual target (at least come up with some reasons why these professionally trained too-accurate-for-sand-people soldiers still miss every single shot).

But other than all that, good stuff. And wondering if we're gonna see more hints of A New Hope comin'.

The momentary reference to the 1985 movie "Gotcha!" was a nice touch.

"My cabbages!"

For viewers who haven't seen the original animated series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuQJDVIEnfs

Gotta say, I liked this take on Johanna Constantine. Wouldn't mind seeing more of her contributions.

And Matthew. Keep us going, here, Matthew.

So, I mostly liked this finale (and season), but...

Some of this episode's personal-demons confrontations felt a bit blunt, although it's difficult to do this sort of thing without it feeling blunt. And this season's villain is all about surfacing your painful memories to the point of despair. So... okay.

More of an issue for me was how many transitions into and between those confrontations, seemingly at Andre's all-powerful whim, felt so arbitrary and discontinuous. Fleshing out the cause-and-effect connections of those power-flexes and transitions could have produced a much stronger result.

Who else saw moments in which Magnifico looked a bit like Homelander?

Somehow, to me, Rita's farewell is so suggestive of a potential new J.D. Robb-style book title: Elegant in Death. Bravo.

I do remember thinking that it'd be great to somehow get Isabelle and the butts to take each other out, but somehow I hadn't thought of doing it quite like that...

There's just something about a bunch of butts singing Shipoopi...

The whole time, I was thinking that one call to Gene and/or Sara expressing concern that the call warning Jimmy about the sting might have come from Josh (which Gene or Sara could then easily find out), and just sit back and let Josh experience the same arrest-and-trial and blind-jail-prisoner hell he was so determined to see Murphy get. Much easier, much more poetically appropriate.

But instead...

Not at all what we all wanted for Murphy or Felix, after everything they've been through, especially once someone finds Josh and fingerprints the big knife right nearby (or did she pick that up on her way out?).

Pretzel deserves better.

i think my only plot objection is that, when they ran upstairs to help, Max and Darnell should've gone up, knowing the lunk they'd have to get through, while Felix made sure to copy that recording and Leslie made the call. But in the heat of such a moment...

Felix did show up surprisingly well upstairs, though.

Otherwise... daaamn.

And, dammit, Josh, look what you did. :cry:

Wow. An episode in which a lot of progress happened and everything seemed to go well.

We all know what that means for this incarnation of Murphy's Law (even without the flashforward bits)...