SureCommaNot

After all the drama and deceit in the preceding episodes, it was nice to have an episode that felt so authentic. Sawyer and Kate acted so believably as they were sorting out their circumstances, we got answers to what happened to Juliet, and we got a backstory for Jack where all the drama made sense within a particular cultural context.

There are people who are annoyed by this episode, I'm aware, but I'm also aware this was the point where the network and writers were working out the endgame trajectory of the show (where ABC wanted ten seasons but the writers thought the strongest ending would require ending at six seasons), so this episode handled that situation impressively well, giving answers and some closure without too many new questions, and even reconnecting to the larger narrative through some unexpected cameos from Season 2.

We also got to spend more time at the cages and Hydra station, my personal favorite Dharma settings, while also seeing more of the building behind the cages (which I've also seen in person, and loved exploring).

More time with Alex's character was also welcome, not only because I was in a movie with her, but also because her father-daughter connection with Ben was explored more deeply than in any previous episode.

This episode gave us a lot, and is probably the most under-appreciated episode of the season.

This is my second attempt watching this show, and I just don't know how I can go on with it.

For one thing, when Jill and Nora are discussing whether or not Nora "has" a gun, they didn't account for the ambiguity of whether "has" means "owns" or "is currently carrying." Nora didn't lie. And yet this is presented as such a momentous and revealing part of her character to Jill.

And why didn't Nora notice her front door was unlocked? She's evidently in the habit of locking it, after all.

And then there's the scene where the cult is unloading a bunch of nondescript packages into their new building. The music is full of gravitas, and the camera work slow and dramatic, but it's meaningless because we don't yet know what's inside the packages.

I've had to suspend my disbelief so much so far, attempting to watch the show (and endure all its gaffes), and this episode might be the worst yet.

When does it get good?

Update: I pressed on, and the second season is suddenly way better.

It's a bit odd that Amazon (apparently) required a warning for this episode and not the previous ones.

Regardless, the show continues to be an enjoyable mix of corny food puns and relatively straightforward drama, including your basic political tension and soap-opera relationships. If you don't enjoy such things, you've probably already checked out, long before this episode.

The show overall will remind astute viewers of the Exodus account, where the people escaped slavery under Pharaoh, only to be met with some harsh realities, even begging to return to the land from which they'd just been emancipated. Foodtopia begins as basically that same story. But it works, it's funny, and if you liked Sausage Party, you'll enjoy spending more time with these characters.

Great voice acting too.

I lost my brother recently. And I must say I love movies like this (and In The Fade, for another example) where the director just takes time letting the main character process a tragic loss in their own way. Get a compelling actor, like this film does, and take the audience on a journey of healing, honesty, anger, whimsy, grief, disgust, and joy.

To me this is a watch-it-once experience, yet still I can't rate it any lower than a ten. This movie did what it set out to do, and I herald it for what it accomplished.

Everyone in the supporting roles nailed their part, too. Great cast all-around.

I never noticed the music in this show at all, until this episode. And suddenly the music was so full of character and expertise, even exploring multiple genres, that I could listen to just the score on its own in my everyday life. I am very curious why the sudden jump!

The acting continues to be excellent, especially Thanos, and the dude from Iron Fist, and the little girl from Hill House. And the CGI continues to appear low-budget.

Anyway, I usually don't mind a slow burn when it comes to sci-fi, but I will say the reveals about the hole are really too few and far between. You have to love the family drama, to really stick with this show.

The music was a pleasant payoff, though, albeit unexpected.

I find it hard to say anything strongly positive or negative about the show. It establishes a beautiful and consistent mood, but not in a way we haven't seen before. The music is also perfectly fitting, but doesn't take any risks (except by stealing a motif from Dexter). The storyline, I personally found really straightforward and sensible, as it uses philosophies and narrative styles that other productions have put on screen before.

That said, the show brings it all together in a way that is relatively smooth, without much fumbling. I just wonder, for the people who rave about its complexity or originality, if they just haven't seen much science-fiction. The whole thing was quite uninspired to me.

Final thought: Allow me to recommend watching this in the original German (with whatever subtitles you need). It's just better that way.

I love this show. Overall it's a 9/10 to me. It takes a truly artistic approach to the subject matter (rightly compared to Legion for its use of the surreal and the psychological). But this episode was the biggest misstep.

I can't tell if the director thought the rest of the show was a joke, and that's why she made this episode so ridiculous, or if she's just incompetent. I'm certainly not surprised she's gotten so little work in Hollywood. Only a few more credits to her name.

All in all, I have to agree with everything the other reviewer said. I don't know why he said all that, and still rated the episode 10/10.

Sure, the tone is different. But both shows have two things in common: poor storytelling and production value... and a lead actress who is just so compelling, it almost saves the show.

Immense respect for the lead here. She is just fantastic, and I hope she gets a lot more work. She's certainly perfect for this role, but is deserving of better quality from the showrunners. The pacing and editing of the show are pretty awkwardly disjointed, with a lot of characters who are just sort of... there... without really giving any narrative momentum. But I suppose it works (passably) for TV.

One critical note: When the cave dwellers became humans, their outer layer of skin fell off, but suddenly they had layers of fabric appear with no explanation. (They magically had clothing on.) This really took me out of it, because it made me aware they were trying to appease censors. But why dramatically show layers falling off, if you're going to make new layers appear a second later, without explanation? It would have worked better if either (1) the natives just didn't have clothes for that scene, or (2) the subtraction and addition of layers were presented in the same way, with similar effects. As it was, it was just disjointed, nonsensical, bad editing, and bad storytelling.

As many have pointed out, this show is relentlessly amateur. Very silly happenings, often with the most overly dramatic music and unearned gravitas.

The kids play theater for a black and white portion that could have been done well, but doubled down on the campiness instead, and ended with a twist that didn't make sense. All of it culminated in an equally shallow apology (because there are plenty of clearly deplorable things that people claim to "love"--it's not self-authenticating).

Many other Flanagan shows are pure works of art, and I recommend them: Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and Haunting of Hill House.

To the showrunners,

Agent Carter is supposed to be smart. So having her make stupid mistakes is going to undermine the audience's ability to believe your little show. So if she asks someone to dip her at a dance to avoid being seen, don't have her immediately look right back with her face clearly visible; this makes no sense.

And don't make her a hypocrite either. If she faults someone for standing up for her, don't end the episode by having her standing up for another character. (If something isn't appropriate behavior at one juncture, it's not suddenly going to be okay for the lead character to do it later.) The first time I attempted to watch this show, back when it first came out, this alone was why I stopped watching.

I am presently trying again. Hoping it gets better.

While this season has struggled overall to get back the solid footing of the first season, this episode in particular had so many suspend-your-disbelief moments.

For example, Shades comes up with a believable narrative to cover up the man he killed, but then suddenly shoots the guy again, from an angle that makes clear the killing was execution-style. Why?

And Bushwhatever's choices in that ending scene don't make much sense either. He undermines his own choices just like Shades did, in a way that undermines both the drama and his own intelligence.

I also find it hard to believe Misty would just go to a bar in the middle of all this. It undermines her character, given how devoted we've seen her to be, to the storyline, and the fate of the other characters.

Also, watch the extras during Shades' rendezvous with the snitch. I blame the director for how ridiculous and over-the-top they behaved. Unbelievable.

There are things I appreciate about this series. The actors and actresses themselves certainly show potential, and I hope they continue to get work. The idea of combining individual Goosebumps stories but telling an overarching narrative was ambitious and, I think, works decently enough. (Though, I know others don't think it works at all.)

But it continues to be frustrating seeing how often the directors and scriptwriters have the characters doing things that just aren't believable. Take the cellphones, for example. In the first episode, the director clearly had the teens keep their cellphone screens on (presumably to illuminate their faces) when they were using their phones as flashlights, even though this made no sense from the characters' perspective (as it would then be harder to see anything in the dark). And then in this episode, two characters are texting each other while inside the same car, without turning off their sound! No one trying to hide their text conversation (like they claimed to be doing) would ever be that daft.

Too many choices are made clearly for the sake of the audience, but don't make sense from a character perspective. If the scriptwriters were trying to be as childish as the source material, that's not a hard bar to meet. But that's not going to earn the show decent ratings either. They honestly seem to be aiming for something in the 4- to 6-star range.

I just wish they aimed higher.

The music and set pieces continue to be the best thing about the show, and this episode got especially creative with variations on the Loki theme. Listen for its appearances, both subtle and overt.

We notably stepped up the tension and smooth balance of action and storytelling, at the beginning of the episode at least, which gave me hope for the future of the season, though honestly the second and third act weren't as well-handled. I'm not one who enjoys watching awkward, stiff conversation, and the show-runners seem to be doing it intentionally (possibly because it's an approach other popular shows have taken).

Another thing the episode excelled at: giving a deeper glimpse into the psyche, emotions, and motivations of Miss Minutes, while still leaving room for much more to explore with her. And her animation quality is award-winning (or at least it should be).

Launching the second season with the protagonist being responsible for the death of an innocent woman was certainly a risky start. As was the deus ex machina trope that got him into her vehicle in the first place. (REALLY hard to suspend my disbelief there.)

The show has always been such a mix: gorgeous visuals, great actors, some of the best music in the MCU, betrayed by nonsensical narrative through-lines, inconsistent threats, and way too much spoon-feeding the audience while ignoring their most obvious questions.

This episode again excelled in visuals and music. But I got really annoyed every time Loki said "It's the past" or "It's the future," as if it weren't already 100% obvious.

I appreciated the opening shot wasting no time to pick up where we left off. Or at least I thought that was the case. The Season 1 finale left us wondering if we were in the same TVA and people's minds were just wiped (and the statue of HWR had always been there, but Loki simply didn't know who it was), or if Loki had entered a different timeline, or a different point on the same timeline. It was a great mystery. So why did this episode start with a closeup of a different statue? Why not use the same one? Later if you look in the background, you see there's more than one HWR statue, but it would have been far less confusing, and more dramatic, to start the episode with the same statue as where we left off.

Finally, fans of awkward humor will enjoy the drawn-out segments of purposely cringey, surface-level dialogue. But that's not I.

Launching the second season with the protagonist being responsible for the death of an innocent woman was certainly a risky start. As was the deus ex machina trope that got him into her vehicle in the first place.

The show has always been such a mix: gorgeous visuals, great actors, some of the best music in the MCU, betrayed by nonsensical narrative through-lines, inconsistent threats, and way too much spoon-feeding the audience while ignoring their most obvious questions.

This episode again excelled in visuals and music. But I got really annoyed every time Loki said "It's the past" or "It's the future," as if it weren't already 100% obvious.

I appreciated the opening shot wasting no time to pick up where we left off. Or at least I thought that was the case. The Season 1 finale left us wondering if we were in the same TVA and people's minds were just wiped (and the statue of HWR had always been there, but Loki simply didn't know who it was), or if Loki had entered a different timeline, or a different point on the same timeline. It was a great mystery. So why did this episode start with a closeup of a different statue? Why not use the same one? Later if you look in the background, you see there's more than one HWR statue, but it would have been far less confusing, and more dramatic, to start the episode with the same statue as where we left off.

Finally, fans of awkward humor will enjoy the drawn-out segments of purposely cringey, surface-level dialogue. But that's not I.

In one sense, this film was more inevitable than Thanos. What do you get when you're part of a society that fuels existential crises, by constantly eroding definitions and structures? Barbie and Ken aren't exactly human (they don't even have genitals); they're embodied ideas, and so they face this amorphous crisis of identity that pits their presuppositional views of a happy society against that of the "real world." But their perception of the real world is like seeing a plane for the first time and therefore thinking it's a dragon. So how much can an audience glean from the pontifications of characters who are essentially children? I would have greatly preferred scriptwriters more well-versed in sociology as well as comedy, writers who understand not only American ideals, and how those ideals have shifted, but the role that Barbie has played along the way. I get the sense that the writers here just KNOW Barbie had some impact, without really understanding much beyond that. There was so much to explore, and it could have been shown situationally, rather than through heavy-handed exposition.

Off-screen, apparently Ken had some interesting realizations about his misunderstandings of patriarchy, and Barbie had some realizations about how she treated Ken, but we don't get to see any of this nuance actually played out. Hugely missed opportunities there.

Bottom line: As fantastic as Robbie and Gosling were, I wish this movie just didn't exist. Keep the cast, but try again with a much better script and director.

Enjoyable start to the episode, but then it just flushes itself down the tubes of meta jokes. How many shows do we need where the script is full of obvious and subtle winks to the audience? This episode would've been fantastic if we haven't already seen this sort of thing 100 times.

But we have.

Even so, I can appreciate that the new episode still carried some of the old spirit of mildly funny gags. And I mean that sincerely positively. Futurama rarely felt like it was trying too hard. Rather than writers always needing a punchline, it was more about creating an environment of irony, idiocy, and sci-fi world-building, and the reboot did retain some of that. It was more-of-the-same Futurama at first, and then more-of-the-same other shows.

Hopefully they got the latter out of their system, and can get back to pure Futurama in the remaining new episodes.

I loved Fallout (10/10!) so I was excited for this movie. And I must say I'm disappointed by the overuse of deus ex machina as a scriptwriting trope. I'm still trying to head-canon a few instances to somehow believe what happened, and of course that repeatedly pulled me out of the story.

I'm not going to rate this until I see the rest of the movie, to be fair, as this was only Part One. I'm interested in what happens, and I'm sure I'll catch more upon rewatching. But sometimes it felt like the script itself was written by an AI, and I found viewing to be a frustrating experience. Way too much deus ex machina.

What a compelling actress. She really sells the whole concept of the episode, silly as the synopsis sounds.

Anjana, you had a lot riding in your shoulders, and you carried it. Well done. And you rocked that jacket too.

Honorable mention to the music and the cinematography. And the more-deplorable characters were well done, too. Some characters became heavy-handed caricatures, sure, but the piece was meant to be stylized.

Black Mirror, admittedly, excels most when it stays focused on the impact of technology (in moods both surreal and cautionary), and of course this season drifts from that norm a bit. But still I appreciate the exploring, as the show has always been a mix of hits and misses. (Metaphorically, I mean, not with a hammer.)

Okay, who saw Cate Blanchett and didn't immediately know what the twist was gonna be?

Even so, it was an enjoyable episode. A fun balance of humor and more-thoughtful matters. And the self-referential parts, though annoying, weren't as heavy-handed as they were in Bandersnatch.

I'd enjoy watching the episode again, especially with someone who doesn't have the stomach for the harsher episodes. But I honestly prefer the ones that leave you feeling devastated, through more-harrowing plot devices. Matter of taste, I suppose.

Black Mirror continues to posit some thought-provoking notions, fleshed out in compelling ways. What we saw in this episode may become nonfiction before we know it. And that's the cautionary beauty of the show.

This is a review of only the portion of the episode preceding the title card.

I don't know why I continue with this show. The idiocy of the characters and the production staff just continues to astound me. We open with a continuity error, as a bit of metal is forged. (The very last shot of the sequence shows the metal practically unbent, despite how crumpled it looked in the shot preceding.)

And then we have a fight sequence with a large crocodile-like creature. Despite the warriors having jet packs to fly, we see several of them tether themselves to the massive creature, who is not yet wounded enough that the tethering will accomplish anything but limit their options, and probably get them killed. Several of them probably died when the creature was blasted onto them at the end of the scene. (Darwin Awards for all!)

But Andor got really good, so maybe this one will too. And the score is fantastic as ever. To me that's been the one redeeming quality of this show. The rest has been no better than that one time the crew member in blue jeans was clearly shown in the middle of the shot, and somehow it still aired.

Not as good as Quantumania, but still enjoyable. This is the first Guardians release I can honestly say I like.

I'm in the camp of people who continues to stick by the MCU, and not feel fatigued by it, probably because I've always found the releases to be hit-or-miss. (If every release were an adrenal rush and emotional high, then yes, I'm sure I'd be feeling the fatigue.)

I will say, not getting to see my favorite Guardian much (except in flashback) was the biggest detractor for me. But the backstory was done believably and engagingly. And the villain was pretty darn perfect.

Excited for where the story goes. Would love a lot more depth to Adam Warlock in the future.

It's hard to get into a story where the main character will decry dependence on technology *while* repairing an espresso machine (technology) because she needs the caffeine. There are several hypocritical one-liners like this.

What makes the Addams family so morbidly comedic, to me, has been the twisted one-liners that show their fondness for torture, death, playful cruelty, and the like, making them outcasts from society but on the same page with each other. This show allows the schisms to divide the family too, and the darker one-liners always feel out of place, like they were written by another team and then later inserted into the script.

I've watched 3-4 episodes now and will probably finish the series, but what can I say? I miss what the Addams family used to be.

I love LOST. It's my favorite show of all time. But this episode makes no sense. I'll share my thoughts as I rewatch....

We open with a Latina woman giving birth to two boys who look nothing like her, nor anything like each other. Additionally, throughout the episode, the boys keep modern haircuts, and their clothes always look brand-new. That sort of thing really takes me out of it.

Early in the episode, the boy-in-black asks his new adoptive Mother what death is, as if he's never seen death before (in finding things to eat). In the very next scene, after all, we see him hunting. So why did he not understand what death is? Again, takes me out. Doesn't make sense.

I'm fine with the whole mythology of the light. Some people find it hokey, but it works for me. It fits my observations of people in real life: in awe of light, its interplay with shadow, and all things that sparkle and glisten and shimmer. We talk about bringing things to light; we talk about God being light; clearly there is something about light that is at the core of human existence, so making it part of the LOST mythology did make sense to me.

But the dialogue is so dumb. For example, when Mother takes adult Jacob back to the cave, they're looking at the light when she says, "Do you remember what I showed you here?" and he says, "The light," as if they aren't looking directly at it in that moment. Huh?

And then in that scene, we suddenly hear her speaking in Latin again. Haven't they actually been speaking in Latin this entire time (even though we are hearing them in English)? Basic storytelling mechanics get self-contradicted here.

And somehow we are supposed to buy that the Man In Black was the son that Mother loved most. It's a core part of Jacob's struggle. And yet we never actually see any indication of it. There's no depiction of any disparity, so Jacob just comes across as a whiny drama queen.

And I'm still trying to make sense of what happened with the Man in Black's well. First we see it having magnetic qualities, but then MiB is able to wield his knife while down inside the well, with no apparent difficulty. Then Mother comes down, rams his head into a wall, carries him up the ladder herself, fills in the well completely, and breaks the stone structures. Um... how? Where did she get superhuman strength, the ability to make her sons immortal, and all her other powers? There has long been a theory that there are two smoke monsters (perhaps one black and one white) because we sometimes observe a smoke monster behaving inconsistently. Is she herself a smoke monster? How else could she cause such superhuman levels of destruction? Somehow she kills an entire village too. It's hard to really get into the drama here, or accept the character motivations, with such gaping holes in the narrative.

The biggest hole, to me, is this: we never actually find out what the smoke monster is. One explanation of what we see in the episode: the black smoke monster is the Man in Black, having been converted to that form by the light. But then how is his body still found? To me an alternate explanation is much more consistent with how the mechanics of the show have worked thus far: the smoke monster already existed (perhaps it was hiding in the cave) and has always had the ability to take on the form of a dead body that's on the island, and now the Man in Black is such a body. The smoke monster isn't the Man in Black; it's just taking his form, like it's taken the forms of other dead characters. We didn't learn anything new about the monster in this episode, at least not for sure, and this episode was supposed to be, in large part, the story of the origin of the monster. Wasn't it? As viewers, we were robbed.

I'm also confused how different ages of Jacob show up on the island, throughout the season. To my recollection, all other on-island appearances of the deceased have shown how old they were when they died.

We get answers to some little questions, but not the biggest ones. Ultimately this episode is practically meaningless and a waste of time.

If you want to feel smarter than the average person, watch this episode. You'll likely answer every sensible question correctly.

I will say, I was a bit surprised there were people (in the episode) saying they believe their perceptions are accurate indicators of the world around them. People who believe that, definitely need a show like this. How can we truly see one another, and treat each other with kindness therefore, if we don't yet have a healthy distrust of our perspectives?

I may skip ahead a few seasons to see if the show ever goes deeper than surface-level illusions and common misperceptions.