It's Time to Watch...

All those things you're always planning to watch, eventually? Well...

[itstimetowatch]

My Big Fat Greek Rush Week

Oh holy shit! I didn’t put it together last episode but Veronica walked in on Parker’s rape and didn’t realize it. Wow! That’s fucked up!

And it’s Sheriff Shithead back in rare form. Wait a minute, wasn’t he treating these rapes as, like, a big fucking deal back in “The Rapes of Graff” or was that only because he had a hand-wrapped suspect and he wasn’t going to have to do any actual policing to close the case?

Jesus Christ! Just say “vibrator”, Veronica. Standard and Practices weren’t that strict in 2006. You mistook an electric razor for a vibrator.

BTW, I didn’t mention it last time because it didn’t really matter, but the fake shaved head wigs look terrible this season. Alia Shawkat’s looked so good I almost believe that she actually shaved her head for the role. These are so bad it actively detracts from the scenes they are in.

Still don’t like the new theme song.

Dan Castellaneta! From so many things, but probably most recognizable as the voice of Homer Simpson, Krusty the Clown, and Mayor Quimby (among many others) on The Simpsons. And he’s recreating The Standford Prison Experiment. Joy! I’m not going to get into it but The Stanford Prison Experiment is bullshit.

Mo the RA back again. So he’s going to be important down the line. And he’s a dumbass.

The wedgie girl is Madison, isn’t it?

And Veronica is undercover at a sorority? So two storylines I don’t want to have to sit through? This is going to be a slog. Maybe there’s just a whole, whole lot of Keith wandering in the desert?

(Also, Rush Week is not when the hazing happens. That’s Pledge Week. Rush Week is when the Greeks put on their best faces and entice you into joining the frat/sorority… and then initiation comes after that, so the whole premise of this storyline is flawed.)

It’s still so weird seeing Veronica in a dress.

Rider Strong of Boy Meets World and Girl Meets World. And Samm Levine from Freaks and Geeks. This episode is guest star central. Hoping to cover for a week script, maybe?

HA! Keith repurposed the coyote trap! Oh, man, it’s been too long since I said this, but Keith, you are the king!

So Liam and Cormac aren’t working together? Certainly not after that!

This is going to be really short, I can already tell. There’s just nothing interesting about either of these stories. There’s a macho dickbag guard picking on the nerdy guy prisoner in the prison experiment. Surprise! There’s a vapid airhead and a “cool girl” in the sorority. You’re totally blowing my mind here! Little Dick is at a sorority party. Shock!

Like there’s no chance that we’re going to find the source of the rapes in episode two and whatever untoward thing is going in this house it’s going to pale in comparison to that.

It strikes me as more than a little odd that the Safe Ride Home girl is so nakedly contemptuous of other girls. I mean, it’s a volunteer program, right? She’s not being forced to do this. It kind of just reeks of girls bashing girls for no good reason, which (Madison notwithstanding) this show has mostly avoided. Which given the context of the season, comes off a lot like victim-blaming... and that’s gross.

Hey, look at that! You put Veronica and Keith in the same room and things suddenly get interesting. What a shock! You should do that more often, Show! And also, thank you for acknowledging Backup’s feelings in all of this. He’s a very Good Boy. I’m sure he was extremely concerned for Keith’s wellbeing.

They let guys drive the Safe Ride Home carts? That seems like just the sort of thing that would get taken advantage of by… say, a rapist. I’m not saying that guys can’t work at Take Back the Night, but there are certain tasks that probably shouldn’t be delegated to men if you’re trying to keep women safe on campus (or, well, anywhere else). Contrary to popular belief, you can’t tell a rapist just by looking at them.

There’s something off about Mo’s answers… like he’s almost too prepared to answer them. He didn’t seem surprised to find out that Parker was raped.

Okay so setting Horshack up with the wrong info is a semi-clever twist.

So Mo has an alibi… unless…

Okay, so that’s… kind of a lot... more than one patient’s personal use. I mean, I believe the story that it’s just meant for her, it’s just that TV people have no sense of scale when it comes to anything outside their own base of knowledge. Laws vary from state to state, but six plants the general rule of thumb.

I mean, technically the sorority only wanted the girl Veronica was pretending to be to join, not the real Veronica. So…

Well, that’s certainly a nice subversion of expectations on both parts that I honestly wasn’t expecting (maybe if this had been in Season One I would have, they were a lot better about that in Season One) and it, for the most part, works in the prison scenario. Torture might work, sometimes, but you can never trust the information you get from it so it’s ultimately useless as an intelligence tool.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the sorority story. They subvert the expectation of girls being catty and awful to one another but they don’t actually replace it with anything. The girls are nice, if uninteresting, mostly harmless, but underage drinking is still against the law. The pot twist doesn’t really work because California legalized medical use of marijuana in the mid-90’s, so unless the school has specific rules against it (which, if so, the show failed to establish that) then she did nothing wrong.

Like I get that it’s actually the Take Back the Night girls who are the “mean girls” and that the editor of the paper who’s meant to look like she’s the one being unreasonable but I didn’t need an entire plot to establish that. One or two scenes would have done nicely.

Not a terrible episode, just a kind of boring one. The subversions of expectations redeem it somewhat but they don’t make the journey to get there any more interesting in retrospect, so they only get so much credit.

Regarding Kendall and the painting, are we meant to understand how she came into possession of a multi-million dollar piece of art, and also when did she get it? Because not too long before she walked into Keith’s office with it, she was hooking up with Aaron and helping him obstruct justice in order to not be stuck working for a living. Was the painting how Aaron paid her for her assistance in creating reasonable doubt? Is this going to be elaborated upon? Because the scene with Keith and the guy at the auction house had a sense of finality to it…

[itstimetowatch]

Welcome Wagon

Season Three! At long last!

This better be better than Season Two.

And the first thing we see is a Take Back the Night banner, just in case anyone thought this season wasn’t going to be all about rape. *sigh* This may be hard to get through. At least the show takes the subject matter seriously.

Veronica’s Criminology professor is played by Patrick Fabian who is renowned for playing creeps and scumbags. Is it too soon to say that he’s the Hearst Rapist? Probably. Maybe he’s just the scumbag of the week.

Um, that TA is definitely the same actor who played Lucky last season, wearing a, frankly, terrible wig and some quintessentially 00’s facial scruff. Which, I mean, other than the unfortunate hair things going on is good overall since he was good as Lucky. The reuse of an actor is awfully blatant.

Okay, so fuck this Tim guy! Sexist shithead! Your smug ass wouldn’t be here to be smart mouthing Veronica without Elementary Education majors, fuckstick!

BURN, TIMOTHY, BURN!

Yeah, I don’t like the remixed opening them. Lame.

Sooooo… Wasn’t Hearst meant to be a fairly exclusive college? And yet nearly the entire cast of last season (that are still alive and in Neptune) got in? Veronica, Wallace, and Mac I get, but Logan has never been shown to be academically minded even in the slightest. Dick gets in because of family connections, fair enough, but Logan has no family left (aside from Trina and no one has ever considered her a positive association) and what he did have was accused of murder shortly before being mysteriously murdered himself. (Which, btw, is that going to be followed up on? I assume not since we, the audience, already know who done it.)

VINNIE!

Oh, Veronica and Keith, I’ve missed these two!

Sorry, Veronica, Keith’s right on this one. That is The Chrysler Building, as notable by the street number visible behind them, 405. As in 405 Lexington Avenue, the address of The Chrysler Building, whereas The Empire State Building is located at 350 5th Avenue. “Fun” facts.

BACKUP! And he’s in charge? Great call Keith!

What? Veronica, first of all, how can you put Backup’s business out there like that? Secondly, if Backup has a lady friend, I need to know all about her. You can’t just drop that sort of nugget and cut to the next scene like that. This is cruel.

Stosh? What kind of white nonsense is that name? Also, Piz is not a name that a person would choose to go by. I mean, be honest, a person that chooses to go by the name Piz is gonna get called “piss” and “puss” and all related derivations thereof. That is just not something someone would subject themselves to willingly.

And here we finally have the mystery of the week. (Also, Piz is Bash on GLOW, so apparently this guy has a thing for characters with stupid names.)

And, holy crap, Veronica is actually getting paid for one of these things? It’s about time. As noted in the past she has been out a lot of money on a fair few of these cases with little or no potential of return. I’m glad she’s turned this into an actual business deal.

Jason Beghe, yet another actor who has a history of playing scumbags. He can’t be Keith’s bail jumper since he literally just walked out of a prison… unless he jumped bail in Mexico or something.

Mac’s back! And as predicted, Beaver seems to have successfully passed on his sexual dysfunction. And her roommate is the opposite. I’m guessing the new name in the credits to be this free-spirited lady. Does she have a ridiculous name too? Mulva?

So the Take Back the Night crew wants to shut down the fraternities? Has this been shown to help the campus sexual assault problems at various universities? Serious question. Like I understand the line of reasoning, that frats engender and compound attitudes and behaviors associated with toxic masculinity but has shutting them down helped?

Ski mask and Union Jack Speedo is Little Dick, right? Seems like a thing he’d do… actually, he’d probably do it without the ski mask... or the speedo.

So Jason Beghe is a Fitzpatrick? He seems kind of a lot older than Liam. Also, Liam is out to get Kendall now? Why? Because she couldn’t get the life insurance for both Casablancas boys? Or is it that she didn’t want to share? And if Liam is after her, wouldn’t it stand to reason that Cormac, here, could be as well?

Okay, well… that makes a certain amount of sense, I guess.

So Cormac saying that Kendall knows who she can and can’t trust means that she can’t trust him, right? Keith is unknowingly delivering Kendall’s would-be murderer to her hiding spot.

Parker, okay, not a terrible name.

So this kid with the info on the thieves who supposedly a townie from Neptune? Has this crazy thick Boston accent. It’s really weird since most actors on American TV have this trained, generic, bland Midwestern accent and now a kid who’s supposedly from Southern California is very obviously from Southie.

So the fat blonde girl isn’t actually fat, so she’s the sophomore Veronica was talking to when interviewing the other victims.

“The Needs Hosed Down,” is perhaps the aptest description of Little Dick Casablancas.

Donald Fagen? As in the lead singer of Steely Dan? That reference was too old for this show when it was new, much less Tumblr.

Yeah, I’m not sure what to think of Cormac’s quiet calm. Could honestly be that he’s learned patience in prison, that doing something is not always better than doing nothing… or it could be that Keith is the only person who knows where Kendall is and doesn’t want him to risk the desert for all the reasons he said.

So is Veronica honestly interested in the mentoring program or was this just a ploy to get into the files? Because she seems rather flush with extra-curriculars already, what with needing to help her father keep them fed and having a social life and all. But if she’s not, what’s the connection between this scene and the conversation with the other victim?

So Logan only barely got into this school and he’s chronically ditching class? Why go to all the effort to get in if you have no plans on actually doing anything?

Oh, Piz is wearing Duncan’s sweater! Okay. I was confused, because he clearly wasn’t, like, upset that Veronica was talking to another dude or whatever, but it took me a minute to work out what that look was.

AH! The Southie kid and his bros were a false lead! Okay. Veronica was not interested in the mentorship program. That was a misdirect to get this dude to admit that he knew and had access to juvenile offenders and their records.

Too soon, Piz! You are not a high enough level friend to unlock her tragic backstory! You know beyond a certainty that she has a boyfriend so fucking chill, my dude! Not even a little bit, huh? Not even a tiny drop of chill, eh? You should go to the store and get some, then, friend-o, because this is just coming on way too strong.

Yep. Cormac’s trying to kill her.

Scratch that. Killed her.

And now Keith is stranded in the desert. And Dick “messed up bad”… like Hearst Rapist Bad?

And Parker is the next victim… so not Dick then. That would be way too obvious. Serial rapists don’t knock on doors and linger far too long in hallways leaving themselves to be easily identified by a plethora of witnesses.

Again with the cliffhangers. This does not need to become a thing again this season. It gets old.

So this was a much better opener than was Season Two’s but then that’s hardly surprising, given that “Normal is the Watchword” was just a huge mess. Obviously, it’s benefitted by the Hearst Rapist story having already been set up last season, but the reintroduction of it here would have been a perfectly good introduction even if it hadn’t. The standalone mystery was a little thin, but that’s not surprising considering the show has to introduce two new main characters in the form of Parker and Boring Boy #4 (because Piz is a stupid name), as well as the professor, his TA, and the Take Back the Night team, all of whom are almost certainly going to be important as the season rolls on.

I’m not sure how I feel about Dick being turned into an actual character with actual depth. Like, on the one hand, all of last season he basically existed to show us the audience how much worse he is than Logan to make Logan more palatable a match for Veronica, now the show wants us to actually care about him. It didn’t work when they rebooted Jackie’s character, not sure this is going to come out any better. On the other hand, if he’s going to stick around past the end of last season, then I guess they should at least do something to justify the screen time he’s taking up.

Weevil’s still in the credits despite him being arrested for… they didn’t say, but conspiracy to commit murder is what he’s guilty of. Though I don’t think they could make that stick without also arresting and convicting the actual killers, The Fitzpatricks. So I guess it was just an assault charge, in which case, he could be out in time to still be part of the story… so where is he?

[itstimetowatch]

Same Old Story (Fringe)

So I couldn’t really decide between the shows which one to dive into fully so I guess we’re going to do another round and then we’ll see from there. Anyway, Episode Two, let’s go!

If this lady is meant to be a prostitute/escort, then this is some silly crap, here. Her putting her underwear back on to lie around in bed and talk her heart out with her John. Pretty sure that shit never happens.

Also, some mad science shit going on in the bathroom.

More lens flairs! Great!

So the… whatever that was growing inside her grew so fast it killed her before they could remove it?

Why is Mark Valley still in the opening credits if John Scott is dead? This isn’t another flashback-heavy show, is it? Because I’m a little tired of those.

Also, why does Nina Sharp get to second-guess the decisions of Agent Broyles? She is, as far as we’ve been told, a private citizen. He’s (one assumes) a fairly high-ranking agent of the Department of Homeland Security. What is she even doing here?

Y’all cut Walter some slack. When he went to the hospital most cars didn’t even have decent heaters and now there’s one just for your ass. I mean, granted, he’s a fringe scientist, so the idea of having a heating element in the seat cushion should be a little more passé to him than it first was to me, but still… let’s calm down.

So the baby was an actual human baby but for reasons yet undetermined it aged with extreme rapidity and died of old age within a few hours. So what are we talking about here? Artificially advancing people to adulthood? Growing soldiers in a vat? Some sort of cellular regeneration testing gone wrong? Did he get the escort pregnant on purpose? Because he didn’t seem prepared for that.

So this is connected to an old case.

Why is Charlie acting like he doesn’t know what Olivia is working on? He’s been to Walter’s lab, he’s even seen the cow. I mean, maybe he doesn’t know about The Pattern or whatever, but he knows she’s investigating weird cases.

I’m pretty sure most human women, even those in sex worker jobs, aren’t going to respond, “Oh, wow! Look at this place!” to some guy they just met taking them to an abandoned building instead of an apartment or a motel. Have these writers ever met a woman before?

Walter’s Station Wagon of Horrors is lovely.

So the pregnancy was inadvertent. He was really after her pituitary gland. To what end? Does his not function due to some science thing?

Soldiers grown in a vat, I guessed it from the outset. So are they harvesting typically functional pituitaries to replace the atypical ones they were born with? If so why this pattern? Why five at a time? Are there only five of them left? And they need a new gland every couple of years?

Or pituitary hormones used as a treatment.

Yeah, there’s absolutely no reason that Broyles needs to know that. Oh, because it’s a nightmare. Okay, then.

Again, with the somehow luring women to a warehouse…

I’m assuming with the way this guy is aging as he runs that he was an imperfect result of the experiment. Walter said they were meant to grow to physiological adulthood in three years. This guy (like his offspring at the beginning) is aging decades in just a matter of minutes. Even if the stress of the chase is exacerbating the situation, theoretically they were meant to be soldiers, more or less constantly under stress.

So Massive Dynamic is essentially a rogue nation? That’s... terrifying.

Peter’s medical condition? Something missing from his file? Interesting…

So I still don’t know about this show. Like the main characters are all well written and I feel about them the way I am meant to feel about them: I like Olivia, sympathize with Peter, have various reactions to Walters swinging moods, suspicious of Nina, etc. Beyond them, however, the writing is still kind of sloppy and haphazard. A lot of the behaviors of the one-episode characters don’t really make a lot of sense if you think about them for more than a minute. How did Pembrose come to think of his experiment as a son if he was constantly having to save him from dying of old age? How did he ever stop being an experiment if the murders/treatments were ongoing? If he (the vat soldier) thought Pembrose should have let him die, why didn’t he just take off and let himself die of old age years ago?

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aliceinthinkland replied to your post: “Pilot (Person of Interest)”:

Honestly some people like it right from the start but I found it took a long time to build up, like most of season one tbh! It changes a lot season to season, becoming less of a procedural and a bit more cyberpunk/AI heavy as it goes along. Also Root and Shaw both show up later and they become very important characters whom a lot of people like.

Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. This kind of had the “tip of the iceberg” feeling to it.

[itstimetowatch]

Pilot (Person of Interest)

So we start with a “Dead girlfriend/wife leads to despondent homelessness” for one of our lead characters. This is not a strong start.

Beating the shit out of four entitled-ass street punks is a better step in the right direction. Good course correction, show!

Oh and he mumbles. This is going to be something…

Mister Finch, is it? Like the bird? Seems only fair that if Reese has many names that his soon-to-be employer might also.

Okay, that’s an interesting twist on the premise. They know “who” but not “what”. They have to figure out if their Person of Interest is a potential victim or a potential perpetrator. I guess if they didn’t it would hard to full 42 minutes with just stopping them or just saving them.

Makes sense that he would be skeptical of such an offer… he was CIA, after all.

Created by Jonathan Nolan… brother of Christopher Nolan. See, that’s how you get me interested in a show. Take note, Fringe.

Diane Hanson, this episode’s POI, is played by Natalie Zea, from, among other things, The Shield and The Following.

So all of this stuff they’re doing to get information on her is all rather terrifying, mostly because it’s all pretty legit. I mean I don’t know how easy it is to hack someone’s cell phone and turn it into a hot microphone. It’s almost certainly more difficult than depicted here, but it can definitely be done.

So Reese is assuming that she’s the potential victim because she looks similar to the woman he lost, right? Granted she’s an ADA with a hell of a conviction rate so it’s not a completely baseless assumption but it is still an assumption.

Reese, what are you going to do? She’s inside the prison. You’re outside it. Are you going to force your way in before a) he chokes her to death or b) the guards get to him?

Backstory ties to 9/11 are a little tired.

So the shitheads from the train are gun runners. Now I’m even happier Reese beat them up and even better he shot up their shop and stole all their guns.

Dirty cops? Still convinced that Miss Hanson is the victim here, Reese?

Finch is hobbling. Michael Emerson isn’t disabled so this is a character thing, then.

Yep, I had a feeling that she wasn’t the victim. She’s set up to look like the victim but then the show wants to throw everyone off in the first episode, so she’s actually the bad guy. She’s a part of, or even the head of, Stills’ ring of corrupt cops. Stills and those guys steal the drugs and money and then she throws them in jail to make sure they can’t do anything about it.

Yeah, she’s definitely the ringleader of the group.

Reese knows this guy’s name, so did he wind up in the back of this car on purpose?

These guys managed to miss the fact that he had a flashbang? I guess the big bag of guns was a big enough distraction.

I take it Stills didn’t take one in the leg?

How did Lionel make detective without noticing someone the size Reese in the back seat of his car? Like this was something I had trouble buying when it happened to Veronica Mars in the season one finale, but she at least had the justification of being untrained and in a hurry. Neither of those applies here. I get that Reese is meant to be a super-spook but even he can’t change the overall mass of his body size.

Okay, so really interesting premise, seemingly great cast… a little underwhelming execution. I take it this is one of those things that build slowly over time? Otherwise, why would so many people be so up-in-arms about how great it is?

[itstimetowatch]

It’s Time to Watch Person of Interest

Okay, the third and final sampling of other shows to watch and comment upon brings us to Person of Interest. I have to be honest, it’s going to have a serious uphill battle to win out over Pushing Daisies, but I guess we’ll see how it goes.

What do I know going in? For a change here, I actually know a fair bit about this one. Reclusive, paranoid billionaire builds a machine that surveys everyone (which, I’m assuming the show is going to bend itself into knots explaining how that not MASSIVELY illegal) and recruits CIA/black ops agent to protect people that his machine picks out. It stars Jesus of Nazareth, Ben Linus, Cookie Lyon, Fred Burkle, and Carmen de la Pica Morales/Dani Reese.

Also, a German Sheppard named Bear!

Now it’s time to watch…

[itstimetowatch]

Pie-lette (Pushing Daisies)

Oh my god the color palette on this show is amazing!

WHAT! The show literally starts with a dog dying? WHAT! I was not prepared!

Oh, but the dog gets better! Excellent! And a squirrel dies? Is this the law of equivalent exchange in effect?

Also, the narrator has a great voice.

Jeez, this show doesn’t skimp on the mood whiplash at all, does it? One second Ned and a girl named Chuck are having the most fun ever being dinosaurs and trampling clay people and then the next, boom, Ned’s mother suddenly drops dead. Is this typical of this show? I mean, Dead Like Me had a decent amount of this too, but Pushing Daisies is in a class all its own so far.

Yep, thought so. He can bring people (things?) back but only if something else takes its place. Also, Dark! (And yet the show hides its darkness behind bright colors, which is interesting.)

And, yeah, that’s horrible! Once he brings someone back and leaves them alive longer than a minute, he can never touch them again lest they die permanently… which means that Anna Friel’s character (is she the girl named Chuck?) is dead and he’s raised her. That’s why they can’t touch each other.

“A renowned synchronized swim team, they shared matching personality disorders and a love of fine cheese.” LOL, and the delivery on this was top notch. Now, serious question time. Are Chuck’s aunts sisters or lovers? Because obviously Ellen Greene and Swoozie Kurtz look nothing alike, so it that a visual joke or a clue?

“The Pie Hole”

And I’ve somehow stumbled into another show with a lead character who works with/for a private detective. Weird. Which also makes three straight shows with investigations/mysteries… it’s almost like I have a type or something.

This is, by the way, an overwhelming amount of information to have dumped into our laps all at once. Less than eight minutes in and… just, wow! In retrospect, I appreciate them taking a little bit of time in going into any more details about the nature of Chuck’s aunts’ relationship.

Hurray! Justice for Cantalope!

“How was your convention?” “Conventional.”

Poor, Olive!

Poor, Digby! Of course, your dog minds not getting pats, goofball. It’s like one of the top five things when you’re a dog: Sticks, Treats, Pats, Balls, and Belly Rubs. Invest in some latex gloves, my dude.

Charlotte Charles? Her name is Chuck Charles?

And the grave robbing funeral director is the one who will pay the cost of Chuck’s new life? I mean, why else show him to be a giant pile of shit, except for us to be glad that he’s dead while Chuck is alive. Fortunate I’d say that Emerson wasn’t the one selected to meet the reaper.

Strangled by a plastic bag? Didn’t see the attacker? One assumes this would have to come up semi-regularly.

“I think someone’s truck is on fire.” Cut to the giant blazing bonfire that they somehow didn’t notice. LOL!

These two are really great together. (Ned and Chuck, Lee Pace and Anna Friel)

“I’ve been ruminating, and by ruminating I mean pondering, not chewing cud…”

Oh, you’re right Digby, I forgot that digging in the dirt is also one of the top things when you’re a doggo, my bad.

So the mysteries on this show? They aren’t really the type that can be solved by careful viewership, like on Veronica Mars, right? Or is that just this episode because we have to spend so much time introducing everything about this world and the characters that we’re going to be following?

Still not clear on if the Aunts are supposed to be sisters or lesbians. 

(I’m going to assume they’re lesbians until the show tells me otherwise.)

“The homeless love it.” So Chuck’s “Honey for the Homeless” wasn’t a fundraiser, it was just a giveaway? HA! Also, well-planted brick joke there, show.

So we don’t actually learn the name of Chuck’s killer? I take that to mean, in reference to my earlier question, that I was right. These aren’t mysteries that we’re meant to work out for ourselves. And that’s fine, I can give the deductive reasoning a break.

So the tone, the palette, and the characters for this show are all wonderful. The story was a little bit thin, here, but one can assume that was largely due to this being the Pie-lette and having to introduce seven characters plus Ned’s powers and the rules and limitations of same and still somehow squeeze in a murder mystery. Hopefully, subsequent episodes will be better balanced.

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It’s Time to Watch Pushing Daisies

Okay, so attempt number two at switching shows however briefly before going back to finish Veronica Mars brings us to Pushing Daisies. Now, obviously, the big draw here is that it was created by Bryan Fuller, he of Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me fame. More lately he’s created two of my current favorite shows: American Gods and Star Trek: Discovery

So what do I know going in? Almost nothing, honestly. It stars Thranduil and Marcella Backland and Glinda (or Annabeth Schott, if you aren’t into musical theater). Something to do with pies and dead people and the lead couple can’t touch each other for some reason.

So, now it’s time to watch…

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Pilot (Fringe)

Okay, who’s this guy all hunched over? Oh, he’s Steve Newell from True Blood. He’s also injecting himself with something that is definitely not insulin. So this is a case we’re jumping right into? Excellent!

Oh my God! The co-pilot’s fucking jaw!

Wow! I was not ready for that!

So he loves her and she didn’t say it back? Is this one of those relationships? if so it’s an interesting dynamic reversal with the guy being the committed one and the woman non-commital.

Regardless of the answer to any of those questions. Her name is Agent Olivia Dunham, FBI, and she’s getting called in with regards to the plane full of dead people (one hopes they didn’t live through that, anyway).

So, she seems to care about him but still doesn’t say it. Emotionally closed-off?

I like the driving at the location name-thing. That’s pretty original.

Charlie is from Band of Brothers.

Another Steve Newell? Well, since it’s a show about weirdo sci-fi, let’s guess that rather than a twin brother, maybe he’s a clone, Orphan Black-style.

Daniels is Special Agent in Charge Broyles and he is every bit as authoritative as I remember him from The Wire.

So there’s some hostility there.

Wait? This is a Kurtzman/Orci show? As in the writers of the oh-so-amazing Transformers movies and Star Trek Into Darkness and the shit-awful Amazing Spider-Man movies? As in Bob Orci the ridiculous 9/11 truther nutbag? And I’m watching this with my own two (2) eyes? Individuals whose opinions I trust told me this was a thing that I need to have watched already, and it’s written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci?

One chance, show! You get one whole episode and if I don’t like what I see, then I’m out!

Um, “honey”? Do not try to make me hate Lt. Daniels, show! I won’t work.

“I have a gun! I will shoot!” I’m pretty sure that running from law enforcement is not punishable by summary execution, there, John.

So Olivia was thrown a country mile by the explosion, but the guy never even budged? Okay… now I’m thinking he may be a cyborg, instead

Oh, and now we introduce Denethor… or rather Dr Walter Bishop.

“Not exactly,” she says, understatement of the decade. Baghdad is definitely not local.

And that’s the second time in 20 minutes that someone has called Olivia “honey” and I have to tell you I’m not liking the way this feels already.

Oh, that is so a bluff! She doesn’t know anything about him.

Okay, I just realized that I was mistaken. Peter and Walter are not a team. They barely know one another or at least Peter barely knows anything about Walter.

“Sweetheart” isn’t much better.

“I thought you’d be fatter.” LOL!

I’m glad they didn’t stick with that beard. I mean, it obviously wasn’t in any of the promotional material, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have to endure it for the duration of the pilot. Glad I don’t.

Massive Dynamic? That sounds ominous.

Agent Farnsworth, there, was on Underground this season. I think she may have also been on Scandal as well, but I can’t swear to that.

Yeah, I’m with Peter on this. Walter with a scalpel is worrisome... not because he’s a dangerous mental patient or whatever, but simply because he has some rather obviously shaky hands.

So on the one hand, she’s barking orders at her boss… or at least the agent in charge of this task force. On the other hand, being polite and asking for things doesn’t seem to be the way to accomplish things with Agent Broyles, so I can’t really fault her for doing what she needs to do to get the job done.

So Peter and Olivia are going to bone at some point, yeah? Maybe not soon, since I can’t imagine them going to these extraordinary lengths to save John and them not being successful, but that’s going to end at some point and then Peter and Olivia are going to be A Thing, right?

“Get him a cow.” I knew there was a cow.

“Only thing better than a cow is a human… unless you want milk and then you really need a cow.” I don’t know if Walter is going to be worth it alone to continue this show, but he is pretty damned entertaining.

Just walking the cow through the building, past all the students.

Dream sharing? I’m guessing this is where the (somewhat) iconic image of Olivia floating in a sensory deprivation tank is from.

Why on Earth does Broyles go along with this? I mean, I get why Olivia wants to do it, she’s in love with the guy, but (I mean, I’m guessing here) Broyles isn’t. There’s no rational justification for this. Peter, the voice of reason, just spent a couple of minutes going over all the reasons this objectively shouldn’t work, all of which ought to sound pretty convincing to a DHS agent.

“Somewhat.” Oh, okay, Broyles doesn’t know.

John Noble is such an amazing actor.

Ah, the J.J. Abrams lens flares! Can’t tell you how much I haven’t missed those. Although, they do seem to serve a little more purpose here, in this scene, than they do everywhere else.

So, not a clone or a cyborg? That’s disappointing.

Holy Crap! Nina Sharp has a robot arm? What was I saying about a cyborg? This just got a whole lot cooler!

The Pattern? Arc words, I suspect.

Oh, Peter’s gonna break him. I was beginning to wonder how he was going to fit into this group dynamic but now I’ve got it. He’s smart like Walter but not emotionally and psychologically traumatized like him. He reads people well but he’s not an agent. He can work outside the law if the situation warrants it. Okay, cool.

Though I’m not sure how he’s going to be allowed to stay after that. Patriot Act, I suppose.

The doctor treating John was Henrik Johannsen on Orphan Black. I didn’t place him the first time around, but I figured you out, my dude.

WHAT?! John is… wait, what was… he was threatening the guy who caused the incident. What does that mean?

Well, I guess it means that he’s going to murder him.

What? What is all of this about? Does John have something to do with The Pattern? I assume he must.

Oh you know he’s dead. All that trouble to save his life only to end up rolling his truck five times.

That’s not going to help Miss Emotionally Closed Off now, is it?

So Bell has taught others how to interrogate a corpse as well, huh? So Bell is going to be an antagonist, then?

Okay, so this is not bad. Definitely much better than I thought it would be once I saw those names in the opening credits. I think I’m going to sample the other shows (Pushing Daisies and Person of Interest) and then I’ll make up my mind how I want to proceed.

[itstimetowatch]

It’s Time to Watch Fringe

Okay, friends, as I said last time, we’re hopping shows for a bit. I can’t really say how long, honestly, maybe just a few episodes, maybe a full season or more. Can’t say when precisely I’ll jump back to finish Veronica Mars. I just have to go with my gut and right now this is where it’s leading me.

So, what do I know going in? It’s crime/procedural sci-fi/horror show. It stars Pacey and Denethor and Lt. Daniels, aka Joshua Jackson, John Noble, and Lance Reddick. She show’s lead is Anna Torv (whom I only know from seeing her on my dashboard) as an FBI agent who investigates weirdo science things with the help of Pacey and Denethor, a weirdo science team, I think. At some point, Leonard Nimoy shows up.

And something to do with a cow?

Anyway, it’s time to watch...

[itstimetowatch]

Veronica Mars Season Two

For a summary review I always try to start by saying something nice, but honestly, everything nice I have to say somehow seems like damning with faint praise. The things that I enjoyed about this season are most of the things that I enjoyed last season. Kristen Bell and Enrico Colantoni are really good as Veronica and Keith and that relationship is central to the show. They are without a doubt the reason that this season, which was all over the place, didn’t completely fall apart and veer into an unwatchable mess.

Veronica’s relationships with the characters from Season One remain strong. She and Wallace are probably my favorite, followed closely by her and Mac, but Veronica’s stuff with Weevil and Duncan are always good too. Even her stuff with Logan always shines, even if I’m still not sold on them being back together yet.

More-or-less everything held over from Season One still works.

I wish I had more positive things to say, but…

The Bus Crash story is a mess. I’ve beaten on this subject quite a bit already, so I’ll keep this as concise as possible. This was the most atrociously paced season-long arc of any show I’ve ever watched, two or three episodes at the beginning of the season and then just nothing until like the last five or six. I’ve said before, it almost feels like UPN forced them to have a season-long arc when the producers didn’t really want to do that. Regardless of how it came about, it was just bad.

In keeping with that, Jackie’s character is just… I don’t even know if I know the adjective. Jackie Cook v1.0 is just the worst person in the world. There’s literally not one redeeming quality about her. I don’t buy Wallace being that taken with her because she’s just awful. I mean, we’ve never seen Wallace with a girl before but he’s a star basketball player, there can’t be a shortage of girls who would love to have themselves some Wallace.

Then she comes back after Wallace’s return, and honestly, they could just as well have cast a different actor to play her and like spelled her name Jacky or Jacki, or whatever, for all the similarities Jackie v2 has to her original incarnation. Suddenly she’s selflessly saving a special needs kid from being talked into publically humiliating himself and nice and helpful doesn’t hate Veronica for no obvious reason.

Also, I’m not wild about the idea of the only black girl on the show with a decent amount of screentime is a teen mom, daughter of a struggling single mother and a (seemingly) deadbeat dad. Stereotypes are not strong storytelling.

The season itself (separate from the main mystery) wasn’t great either. It really struggled at the beginning, found its footing in middle somewhere and was building to a crescendo towards the end and then it completely failed to stick the landing. The climactic scene of the season finale was just a huge fail for reasons I’ve already gone into.

To me this season equates roughly to Season Four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there are some really good parts in there, but as a whole, it’s a giant mess.

So I’m going to watch Season Three of Veronica Mars but I’m going to take a break from it for now. I’ve got a couple other shows that I’ve been thinking about giving a whirl in this format (Pushing Daisies, Fringe, Person of Interest). I haven’t decided yet, but if you want to watch me watch shows then stay tuned. If not, well… I understand.

[itstimetowatch]

orkindofamazing replied to your post: “Not Pictured”:

The CW line was meant to be a little in-joke. A lot of shows were cut in the upn /wb merger and it was really uncertain as to whether VM was going to continue.

Oh, believe me, I remember all too well about the doubts surrounding the merger. I was a Smallville watcher back in the day... and well, a wrestling fan, so I was excited to actually get to watch Smackdown without having mail a tape back and forth to my cousin. (No, UPN in my area.)

Thanks for the info.

[itstimetowatch]

Not Pictured

So this is going to be weird going into an episode where I’m pretty damned certain of the outcome. I think the only thing I haven’t figured out is the “Cliff’s Briefcase” thread. It was stolen by a prostitute hired by a guy that kind of looks like someone that Aaron Echolls once shared a jail cell with. I don’t see how that ties back to anything unless it was something I missed last episode when I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the courtroom scenes?

Anyway, on with the finale!

Mr Manning is offering the reward for Woody? The child abuser wants the child molester found that badly? I guess this falls under the heading of Even Evil Has Standards. Also, shouldn’t the state of California be the one offering? Maybe this is just preemptive. The state’s reward will take too long to process so Manning is getting the jump on it now before the trail goes cold.

HAHAHAHA! Oh, Vinnie! Please never change! Please be in the movie ten years later every bit the actual worst person ever!

Woody had Chlamydia? So on top of all the other horrible shit he did, Beaver also raped Veronica.

Oh and we’re back in Veronica’s Dreamland. At least she’s not on the bus anymore. That was really long and seemingly pointless, other than an excuse to bring back Duncan and Lilly one more time. Also, the idea of Veronica and Wallace not being friends makes me incredibly sad.

Mr Underhill? How dare you besmirch the name of Frodo Baggins by associating your disgusting self with him.

“I don’t know if I like the idea of you running around a place full of armed, drunk businessmen.” “That’s why I rarely go to Texas.”

I’ve heard at least three writers names called out during this ceremony.

So this is yet another example of Sheriff Shithead being a dickbag, right? Like they’ve known Weevil did it for, what, days now and they wait until the middle of graduation to come drag him out in handcuffs? They could have arrested him anytime but Lamb wants to humiliate him as publicly as possible.

Little Dick isn’t in Veronica and Logan’s class? Or he just can’t walk at graduation because he has to take too many summer school classes? I mean, I remember him failing physics but were there more? Because most of the time if you’re just one class short the school will still let you walk and just hold off on your diploma until you make up the class you failed.

“A PONY?!”

It seems weird seeing Veronica in a dress outside of like Prom. Correct me if I’m wrong but that’s the only time we’ve ever seen her in a dress, dances and other formal wear occasions, of which graduation is not one?

Wallace is just going to track down Jackie? In Paris? A city of like 12 million people or whatever? Wallace, I know you’ve watched Veronica work a lot and you have picked up some not inconsiderable skills along the way, but with this, I think you’ve overshot your potential.

And apparently, Jackie’s in Brooklyn, not Paris… and when she said she learned the birds and the bees the hard way… not only was she pregnant but she’s a teen mom? How is that in any way in keeping with the character we were introduced to at the beginning of the season? And does Terrence think she’s actually in Paris? Or is that just the “official story” that they’re telling everyone?

I don’t think that’s how legal emancipation works, Aaron. Once you’re out, you’re out. Also, Logan is almost certainly eighteen by now. He has his own money left to him by his mother. I mean, he may need to move out of the Neptune Grand and into something a little more permanent and less costly, like an apartment, but then again, so do you as you undoubtedly have a mountain of legal bills forthcoming and no career left to speak of.

A deer’s head, Woody? Just be caught already.

Yep, okay, called it. Like I said, I was 99% sure but confirmation is always good.

Hart Hanson is another producer’s name… I think it’s also the name of the kid who taped Lynn’s suicide, who mysteriously turned back up last episode. In which case, he’s a sophomore and almost certainly is not listed with the phone company.

Cassidy BEAVER, you son of a bitch, on top of everything else, you do not get to shoot… fucking anyone, not Mac, not Veronica, not even fucking Dick! (Also, what did I say about him having plans to put one in Dick’s head at graduation?)

Um, just over halfway through the episode and we’re already up to the big climactic showdown with the bad guy?

“A better place”? You piece of shit! All that girl did was love you!

Oh yeah, I didn’t think about the fact that Beaver would have to have killed Curly.

Um, how long has this bomb been on Woody’s plane? Because those things get inspected regularly, whether they get used or not.

First of all, that plane wouldn’t be visible in the Neptune skyline yet. Secondly, WHAT THE ACTUAL EVERLOVING FUCK?!

Beaver, if you want her to jump, you’re going to have to stop tasing her, genius.

Good riddance, Shit Bird!

Okay, so Mac is alive! Thank God for that! Although Beaver has almost certainly passed along his sex-associate psychological trauma to Mac, so he’s just the fucking gift that keeps on giving after he’s a stain on the fucking sidewalk.

And speaking of sex-associated psychological trauma, this show has forced me to endure seeing with my own eyes Kendall and Aaron together, which I could have gone my whole life (and several more besides) without.

Oh, damn! Well good riddance to that pile of shit, too!

CW? As in The CW? The network that aired Season Three? “It’s a done deal.” Was this an announcement? (I mean, I know CW, Clarence Wiedman, but I can’t think of another good reason for them to phrase it that way.)

I have some pretty serious issues with the idea of Duncan ordering Aaron’s murder. Kidnapping your child to keep her out of the hands of monsters and living on the run from the law is one thing…

Yeah, none of that makes Jackie’s characterization from the beginning of the season make any more sense.

KEITH! HALLELUJAH!

“And pepper spray, in case we run into that Trump character.” GOOD CALL, VERONICA!

Keith, you are not standing Veronica up for something to do with Kendall Goddamn Casablancas! What the hell, my dude?

Okay, so there were a few surprises after all. I didn’t expect Aaron to get clipped. Once they dragged him into this season of the show, I figured he would become an on-going menace in Veronica’s life, but I guess not. I also didn’t expect a resolution to Veronica’s rape. I thought that would spill over into next season where I’m still assuming that the Hearst Rapist is still an on-going problem, maybe there was an upperclassman at Neptune that graduated when Veronica was a sophomore and went to college at Hearst or something and he could be a suspect.

So… this episode was good but felt kind of lacking to me after my epiphany last episode, and then Veronica got the message to go up to the roof and the whole thing kind of came apart for me. There’s no good reason why Veronica would go up there. She did it because the script needed her to have a private menacing conversation with Aaron and then needed her to be in danger of being killed by Beaver. It’s yet another example of Veronica doing something she’s smart enough to know better because the script needs her to be in peril. It’s happened a lot this season and doing it in random, middle-of-the-season episodes is one thing, but in the season finale? No, sorry.

Then she gets to the roof and there’s no good reason why Beaver doesn’t just shoot her in the head. He doesn’t need to know what she knows about him. She’s not explaining it to him, she’s explaining it to the audience and that’s just bad writing.

Beaver’s plan doesn’t really make a ton of sense, either. If he’s so scared that Marcos and Peter are going to spill his secret, why does he wait to kill them? Why do they wait to be killed? Why he wait until Woody’s on his way back to Neptune to blow up the plane instead of on the way to his hideout? Why does let Woody live in the first place? Incorporation/Phoenix Land Trust came way later. Why set-up Woody (or anyone, for that matter) for the bus crash when a criminal investigation of Woody would be exponentially more likely to reveal Woody’s paedophilia than just letting an incompetent sheriff bumble his way through a pile of circumstantial evidence for the next couple of years?

Full thoughts on Season Two will be forthcoming.

[itstimetowatch]

Happy Go Lucky

Ah, the trial of Aaron Echolls. I kind of figured that’s what this episode would be about. Packing it in with the season finale would seem like too much for one hour of TV. And since noir stories have to get worse before they get better, I’m going to go way out on a limb here and assume that Aaron’s going to weasel his way out a conviction and we’re going to have to keep putting up with him for the duration of the show.

Keith telling Veronica to keep her cool on the witness stand… meaning Keith will be the one to lose his temper?

I’m not sure why Veronica is trying so hard to keep Gia as a friend, here. Their friendship this season has been mostly about Veronica using her relationship with Gia to get inside the Goodman household whenever it’s been relevant to whatever case she/they were working.

So Angie Dahl is still in contention for the scholarship? Even though she almost certainly bombed out the test over Crime and Punishment (and let me tell you, as someone who studied English in college, that is the last book in the world that you could bullshit your way through the exam). Let me guess, family money smoothed that pothole over?

Speaking of which, why is Veronica so hell-bent on Stanford? Like I get the whole “Get the Fuck Out of Neptune” part of the plan, and I get that it’s a great school, but is she aware of what, or more accurately who is waiting for her there? A bunch of rich kids, many of whom will be every bit the entitled assholes as the ones she’s leaving in her wake.

Holy SHIT! School shooting and the trial and finals in one episode?

And Veronica saves Gia again.

Oh, God, it’s Lucky! Since he knows what’s going on with Woody, that means this situation is going to end with him being killed.

Wallace, what are you going!

Blanks? Well… that’s a relief for those of us who (like me) like our Wallace alive, not so good for Lucky. 

Not sure why Lucky would bring blanks. He can’t be so far gone as to think it would accomplish anything or save him. Seems like it would be less contrived to just have his gun jam instead.

Yep, called that one.

So Lucky was a bat boy for the Sharks. That’s almost certainly where he knows Woody from, and where whatever happened to make him hate Woody happened. Woody is almost certainly lying about not knowing him well.

“Mister Goodwood.” Ugh!

I like the look Logan gives the prison phone right before he puts it up to his ear like he’s not quite 100% certain that Aaron’s not somehow going to slither through the line. An abused child never fully stops being an abused child, even when there are six inches of bulletproof glass between them and their abuser.

I’m fairly certain that the DA is going to give Logan immunity from the destruction of evidence charge in exchange for his testimony. Like even if Logan is still employing Cliff as his attorney, I’m fairly sure he could make that deal.

This random kid standing next to Cassidy was the one that inadvertently taped Lynn Echolls’ suicide, right? Why is he back all of a sudden? Is he connected to… anything?

And again, the full extent of Veronica and Gia friendship is Veronica using Gia.

“Kill Incorporation or Else” the world finds out that Woody is a child molester! And he did kill incorporation. The whole thing with the staffer and the booze and the pills. He did that on purpose and blamed Keith knowing that after everything Keith would almost certainly push back. Woody would rather have a reputation as a cheater and a lush than a prison sentence and a place on the sex offender registry.

“The outing of all outings” is now obviously Woody.

The second voice on that audio file is the same voice from Ahoy, Mateys! Which means it’s Marcos Oliveros. I’m assuming the first one is Peter Ferrer. The line “the three of us”, though… Lucky? Someone else?

Why would Lucky edit himself out of the audio file? Was Lucky even smart enough to know how to do that? Lucky’s e-mails are all rambling and incoherent. His videos are all vague threats, like “I know where you live and can get into your home” or “I know your kids’ schedules”. The audio file was a clear threat with a specific goal. The audio file is from someone else. Lucky, though absolutely certain to be one of Woody’s victims, is not one of “the three of us”. Who else is there? The dude with Lynn video? Cassidy? Dick (unlikely, since he hasn’t already appeared in this episode)?

So Veronica is sworn in and then is immediately cross-examined by Aaron’s lawyer? I mean, I get we don’t need to see Veronica recount what was on the videotape since we saw it already, but just leave out the swearing in.

Um, so now Aaron’s lawyer is just testifying himself. This show officially sucks at courtroom and courtroom-adjacent stuff. Please never do this again, Show. You’re usually pretty solid at the mysteries but, my god, are you bad at courtroom drama.

Unless something relevant to anything else comes up I’m going to more-or-less ignore the courtroom scenes from here on out, because this is just absurd. I can’t believe anyone in Neptune ever gets convicted of anything if the prosecutor is this bad at protecting their witnesses.

Leonard Lobo? This is just the episode of random re-appearances from a dozen (or considerably more) episodes ago.

Dammit, Show, stop making me agree with the things that Sheriff Shithead says, especially since I know it’s coming from a place of selfishness. Lamb doesn’t want Terrence to be cleared because then he has to reopen the case and do the actual work of finding out who did it. He’s going to like it a whole lot less when he finds out that all evidence is currently pointing, once again, at one of the most powerful men in the town.

Oh, Cassidy, it’s a good thing you’re so good at business, because you absolutely suck at tutoring.

Mac, on the other hand, is the actual best. (Just don’t get back together with Cassidy.)

Keith’s “Oh no!” as charges out of the office because now has to go save the child molester from his explosive chickens coming home to roost.

What the fuck kind of reaction is that? “Hey, there’s a bomb, maybe lots of them, in your house. Call your family and save them!” “What? That’s crazy it’s over!” If someone told me there was a bomb in my house, I’m gonna fucking believe them and GTFO!

Sorry, Woody, Keith’s been threatened by rich and powerful men much more intimidating than you.

I’m sure Mac would be glad to work things out in a coatroom, but her wanting to do that is how they got where they are today.

Oh! Holy! Fuck!

Cassidy’s issues with sex are because he was molested. He’s smart enough to be able to edit himself out of the audio file. He’s desperate enough to not have to deal with his problems that even if he outs Woody, he still doesn’t want it connecting back to him because toxic masculinity bullshit. I can’t imagine he was a batboy but Woody has a fucking Little League team, and I can easily see Big Dick signing Cassidy up for it to try to “toughen him up” or whatever.

What else? Cassidy was in the limo behind the bus so he would know when to set off the bomb to send it over the cliff. He knows Curly through his dad so he could have acquired bomb materials that way. He killed Peter and Marcos to keep his secret (everyone else was collateral damage) and then put the C4 in the hangar to get Woody busted, but Terrence was blamed instead so he had to switch tactics.

Beaver’s a fucking lunatic! Mac! Run for your life!

The Fitzpatricks and their connection to Kendall are incidental. They really were just nearby because they wanted to get even with Cervando.

That has to be it. No one and nothing else fits like Cassidy.

With all of that presumed to be true then I can’t imagine that he didn’t also get his dad busted for fraud, as well. I mean, if you’re planning multiple murders and outing one abuser, why not get rid of another one as well. He probably plans to quietly put a bullet in Dick’s head after graduation as well.

Good lord, there’s still like eleven minutes of this episode plus all of the next one…

It’s weird to spend fifteen minutes going through all of that about Beaver and then turn the episode back on and they’re still talking about Lucky which now seems like a lifetime ago.

Why, yes, Keith. His ego is exactly that big, and his general disregard for actually doing his job will let Woody get away. I mean, you just handed him pretty solid evidence of child molestation and he’s not moving on it. Why should murder be any different?

But don’t worry, he’s going to get right on the death of Thumper… probably since he can already guess that the perpetrator is going to be from a poor neighborhood.

Aww, Veronica and Wallace are my favorite.

Ditching out on the test to go see the verdict of Aaron’s trial? Veronica’s going to be doubly disappointed. He gets off and she’s going to have mountains of student loans in her future… though to be fair, from the way she was talking she’s probably going to have the student loans anyway. Also, she’s probably just deciding to stay with her friends in Neptune. 

(Wait, did she apply to Hearst? She was pretty adamant about not doing that. College applications cost money that Veronica and Keith seemingly don’t have a ton of...)

And Jackie just up and left without even a word to Wallace? So it’s back to Early Season Jackie, then, is it? Whatever, at least she’s gone.

Woody fled? Who would have thought that would happen?

I should go pick some lottery numbers with this kind of hot streak I’m on.

So yeah, I’m 99% certain I worked everything out just then. It’s the only scenario that makes total sense and I can’t think of anyone who could take Beaver’s place at the center of it all. The other scenarios that the show has floated have holes in them. Weevil and Veronica rode up to the scene of the crime so Weevil wouldn’t have been able to time it properly. The Fitzpatricks would have tried again since Liam doesn’t strike me as the type of guy that would just give up on a multi-million dollar payout, just because Plan A went to pot.

As for the episode itself, the courtroom stuff was just awful, everything else was really good.

[itstimetowatch]

lisawolfe80 replied to your post: “Look Who’s Stalking”:

It's sooo fun to read these! One quick thing I noticed at the start is you have Duncan where you meant Logan on the class warfare. Funny fact (not trying to throw you off!), I was reading about pet doves and birds can carry and pass on chlamydia too. May be a different strain/diagnosis, but they can give it to humans. Maybe it was Polly the Parrot!! (JK)

How are you just gonna put Polly’s business out there like that? 

Thanks, I got that edit made.

[itstimetowatch]

Look Who’s Stalking

Veronica has Chlamydia? She seems to imply to the doctor that she’s only ever been with Duncan, presumably she and Logan were always being interrupted by random acts of class warfare. (Which by the way, that plotline just disappeared, didn’t it? Back at the beginning of the season, that sort of stuff was jumping off all the time but I can’t remember the last time it happened.) Do we have an accurate count of who all Duncan was with? Veronica and Meg, obviously. I guess there’s no way of knowing.

I love you so much, Mac! Please be around more often next season!

Woody’s a creep and a freak. Good to know.

The Cliff’s missing briefcase story! I’d honestly forgotten all about that! Hopefully, this means we get to see Cliff again soon!

Um, Leo? Weird. Never expected to see him again.

*sigh* I’m still not super psyched to see Veronica and Logan get back together. I mean, that’s very obviously where this is going.

In other news, Veronica and Meg do seem to have been Duncan’s only sexual partners. So that’s weird. If Veronica’s only been with Duncan and Meg was only ever with Duncan and he’s only been with the two of them, then they are a closed system. There’s nowhere for an STI to have come from. Which means that either Duncan was with someone else (which would seem like a weird thing to reveal at this point), Meg was with someone else (which I’m certain is not true), or Veronica’s been with someone else and I can’t help thinking about the time Veronica spent unconscious at Shelly Pomroy’s party…

Now Leo looks even more like Schmidt.

Okay, so Woody’s not so much a freak as he is a world class asshole.

Though as it turns out, Woody had good reason to have personal security assigned to Gia. So this is the second threatening video sent to Woody. The first one was proven definitively to not have been about the incorporation vote, so there’s no reason to think this one is either. I knew immediately that that stupid gardener story was a load of shit. Woody was the one meant to be set up by the C4 in his hangar and when that went sideways the perpetrator went this way. Someone else Woody stepped on or slept with in the past, probably.

“You might just have a future in this racket.” Says Veronica to the future Jessica Jones! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Incorporation goes down.

Jackie learned the birds and the bees the hard way? Meaning she was pregnant at some point?

Lucky is the stalker! And boy what a terrifying motherfucker he is, too. Holy shit, with that knife!

“He deserved it!” He being Woody, I assume. Lucky was stalking Gia to scare the shit out of Woody. Did Woody hurt Lucky or Lucky’s family in some way? Sleep with Lucky’s mother leading to his parents’ divorce? Cheat them out of a patent?

Aww, Mac and Madison are so in sync… they’re almost like sisters!

Logan looks pretty slick in his white tux.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Veronica torturing Madison about Sheriff Shithead is the best thing! Get her ass, Veronica! No one ever had it coming more than her.

And now we, once again, have someone mention Shelly Pomroy without her actually appearing. Is this meant to be a running joke?

Logan being super-chatty without being sarcastic? He must be drunk. I admit this is not my most clever deduction what with the dangling tie and the fist wrapped firmly around the open Champaign bottle, but they can’t all be genius brainwaves. But anyway, now comes some manner of drunken confession that Veronica isn’t ready for in the moment and he can’t remember on Monday.

Stuart Manning? Is he trying to pawn Lucky off on Lizzie now? I mean, it was a third-hand account, but that certainly seemed to be the impression that Papa Manning was trying to set Lucky and Meg up as an alternative to Meg and Duncan. I mean, it makes sense from his point of view. Lucky is, like himself, religious and unstable.

Also, how did he get bailed out without bail being set? He’s only been there for a couple of hours. There’s no way he’s been in front of a judge already, especially not handcuffed to Keith.

Well, look who’s psychic? And for my next trick!

Another pretty good episode, a lot of development here building towards the finale. At this point its’ looking pretty obvious that Woody is the bad guy of the season. It’s just not clear if he caused the bus crash or if the bus crash was meant to hurt and/or scare him into/out of doing something. I don’t think it was meant to target Gia anymore than it was meant to target Veronica and for the same reason, there are much easier ways to kill one person than all of that. Also, there are (obviously) much easier ways to threaten Woody, than blowing up a bus.

Two episodes out from the season finale it’s probably worth reviewing some dangling plot threads:

“Outing of all outings” This plot thread has been brought up multiple times, so it’s almost certainly going to be important.

Connected to the above, Peter Ferrer, the closeted gay student who made the statement, was on the bus for reasons unrelated to baseball. This is largely Veronica’s deduction but it is well supported by the fact that Peter won some kind of premium tickets while on the trip and threw them away. (It is possible that he just hates The Sharks.)

Also possibly connected to all of this is the presence of Marcos Oliveros, a young man who was seemingly questioning his sexuality as well.

David “Curly” Moran, Hollywood stunt coordinator, was at the Cliffside memorial for the bus and shortly after was found beaten to death with Veronica’s name written on his hand. Professional connections to both Aaron Echolls and Richard Casablancas. Tipped off the PCH biker gang that the Fitzpatricks were after Cervando Luna, another victim of the crash, for hustling one of them at pool and then bragging about it.

Two (or more) members of the Fitzpatrick family were in the general vicinity of the bus when the bomb went off.

Kendall Casablancas, aka Priscilla Banks, is an associate of the Fitzpatricks, and is the beneficiary of a life insurance policy on Dick Casablancas Jr. and Cassidy Casablancas worth 7(?) million dollars. They are worth more dead than alive.

There was a dead rat taped to the bottom of one of the seats in the rear of the bus. The most likely purpose of this was to create a stench so powerful that it would drive all the rich entitled kids off the bus at the first available opportunity, which happened.

The question remains whether the bomb was meant to go with them or to remain on the bus. Essentially, were the rich kids the target or the poor kids?

As of this moment, I’m not sure which of and how these threads fit together.

[itstimetowatch]

Never Mind the Buttocks

Okay, so that version of “Little Dick and Cassidy were the intended targets” makes more sense. It wasn’t Big Dick, it was Kendall, though that doesn’t explain why she hasn’t tried again, especially in light of her more recent money troubles. I mean, just off the top of my head, why didn’t she burn down the house with them in it right after Logan’s house went up in flames? Makes it look like a series of arsons.

“Sacrificing a rat” is meant to sound ominous, obviously, but Thumper wasn’t a rat in the traditional parlance of a snitch, one who tattles, usually to the authorities. Maybe it’s just a momentarily apt metaphor… or it meant to evoke the rat on the bus? But why would he want to drive rich kids off the bus and not Cervando?

If you want a favor, Mac, sometimes you have to give one in exchange. Although, if she’d realized the favor she’d have to give, Mac might just consider just letting her friend at Radio Shack get fired.

Also, how exactly did Clemmons and/or Deputy Sacks even recognize a cell interceptor for what it is? It’s not as if either of them is especially tech savvy.

That’s an interesting theory and certainly one I hadn’t thought of. 

Slight problem in the reasoning, though. “Dick’s goodie bag” wasn’t Dick’s, it was Peter’s. Dick just grabbed it out of the trash and gave it to Betina. I can’t imagine he was just carrying it around all day but not paying attention to it. Also, you generally have to walk through a metal detector to get into a baseball stadium. I highly doubt Cervano was just lugging a bomb with him waiting for the opportunity to deposit it on Dick. Also, the limo was a last minute thing. They didn’t know ahead of time that the rich kids and the poor kids would be travelling separately and you can’t just whip up a bomb last minute. And, of course, as I pointed out last episode, Veronica and Weevil were well out of line-of-sight to the bus/limo when the bomb went off. So all in all, not a great theory. (Also, isn’t the prevailing theory that Kendall did it or had it done?)

On the other hand, I’m not sure why Veronica is being this confrontational with Weevil when he’s basically just admitted to setting up Thumper to be murdered.

I am going to try to remain calm about this dead dog story. I am breathing. I am remaining calm. I am going to try to refrain from flipping all the shit.

So Kendall has no alibi, which is bad, but hardly surprising, because if she knew she was the beneficiary of Little Dick and/or Cassidy’s deaths, why hasn’t she tried again?

HOLY SHIT! The coincidence of all coincidences! This random case about a dead dog is going to break the bus crash case? Because someone mooned Gia Goodman? I mean, there are lucky breaks in investigations all the time, but this seems almost contrived. Tell me this isn’t the break that solves this case.

Kendall is living under an assumed name? The name of someone she may or may not have had something to do with getting them killed? And she has a wire fraud conviction? Well, that’s certainly more damning than just her lack of an alibi.

So who’s grandmother or aunt or whatever is this old blind lady? Isn’t this maybe the kind of thing that Veronica would investigate before walking into this situation blindly? (Pardon the expression.) This seems to be a recurring theme this season, Veronica does something monumentally stupid just because the script needs to put her in some kind of jeopardy.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish logo? So the dearly departed owner of this car is one of the Fitzpatricks?

So the Fitzpatricks were following the bus because of Cervando and Weevil was there to watch his back? Is that why there was no confrontation at the gas station? If so then why were they still following him right up until the crash? Weevil’s already said that they wouldn’t have killed a bus full of kids just to get back at Cervando. That tracks since an organized drug trade family wouldn’t want to call attention to itself by doing something that high profile.

So Jackie seems a remarkably competent server for someone who’s never had a job in her life? Ballet, huh? Seems suspect to me.

Wallace, you’re a good man.

An empty gun is significantly lighter than a loaded gun. In the heat of a gunfight when you’re steadily unloading it you might not notice, but just picking it up you’d almost certainly notice, especially if it’s your gun and you are familiar with the weight of it.

So Kendall knows Liam Fitzpatrick? Interesting. I’m not sure that this actually increases the chance that either of them did it. It would almost certainly confirm that Little Dick and Cassidy were the targets, much more plausible than all this work of getting hustled out of two hundred dollars. But it still doesn’t explain why they haven’t made another move on Little Dick and Cassidy.

Please make Veronica and Mac dorm mates next season!

The kid being beaten on here is the younger brother of the kid who recruited Veronica onto this case. He’s been short two weeks in a row and that’s why Liam killed the dog. It wasn’t some random thing.

Duncan’s hair on Aaron’s Oscar? Planted by Kendall when she went into Duncan’s side of the suite that was supposedly so poorly cleaned that there was hair easily accessed.

Good call, Veronica, because, yeah, that kid might kill Liam, but he certainly won’t kill all of the Fitzpatricks and those are not the type of people who forgive something like that lightly. I imagine they’d probably kill both of the brothers and maybe their parents as well, just to make a statement.

So this was a pretty good episode. The “guy and his dog mystery” was a touch weak, I think primarily due to him being so closed off emotionally about the whole thing. Unlike Mandy, who was visibly an emotional wreck about her missing dog, this guy is a stoic wall of hostility, so we don’t ever really get to feel his loss at the death of his dog.

Other than that it was all pretty good stuff. We now have a solid, evidence-based theory regarding the bus crash, even if I still remain unconvinced for the moment. We have some solid backstory for Kendall, which I kind of never expected. Liam Fitzpatrick is now a good all-purpose sort of threat. That’s always good for this type of show to have.