#I think I was watching Will or Mike but then took their perspective (specifically when it was in my home)

[blortch]

You've probably answered a question like that before but what would you say was your favorite episode of each of the rlm "shows" (for lack of a better word) if you had to pick one from each? Interpret "favorite" however you want

I actually haven't gotten an ask of this sort before! The closest I can think of was when I ranked the Halloween BOTW sets. I know you prob meant like HITB, BOTW and Re:View but like I'm gonna go a bit more extensive and include other small series they have. I'm gonna leave out anything Spitballs bc idc and anything Plinkett-related bc in the 100 years I've been watching them I skimmed through like the first part of the phantom menace review and Nothing Else.

Going to start with Re:View bc it's fuckin' easy. It's Obviously the FWWM Re:View. It's what got me into Twin Peaks, and it means a lot to me. In hindsight Jay's kinda off with some of his takes (nothing Bad, just a different perspective as a massive Donnie Darko fan and projecting too much of that dynamic into the movie):

BOTW-wise this might be a super normie pick but like it's a good BOTW for a reason. Best of the Worst: Wheel of the Worst #16. Jackpots guy followed by Surviving Edged Weapons was too great. You can kinda see that They themselves Knew this was going to be a BOTW Classic because when Mike tells Jay to talk about the tape he's Legitimately Nervous over Talking about it. ("Oh man...this is a lot of pressure...I don't know if I can do this..."):

For HITB...I'm sorry but this one's going to be a complete cop-out, (but hey at least I didn't choose the Death Cure HITB...) it's Half in the Bag Episode 138: 2017 Movie Catch-up (part 2 of 2). When I think of what I want from them review-wise it's honestly like... pointed discussions about a movie or show and this delivers exactly that. Whenever they go a little too deep they often dig themselves into a grave of either caring about something too small and inane or something they think is funny but isn't at all (cough Mike's tangents cough) so honestly letting them talk for only a few minutes tops about a movie is the absolute sweet spot. The reviews where the entire discussion is good are rare imo:

Of __ and __ Talk About I wanna say... probably Rich and Jay talk about the Boys? Just because it's the only show/movie I gave a fuck about among this series? I don't get what Rich sees in Garth Ennis' work specifically bc he's kind of a suckass but the show itself was interesting to find out more about regardless through them:

Of Nerd Crew I have to go for The Nerd Crew: Episode 2, the bit with the nerd box+geek crate was fucking hilarious. Not to mention the ending where Rich knocks over the cameras... I imagine Mike prepared the Nerd Box and Jay the Geek Crate? Just because Mike seemed to comment a lot more on the nerd box' contents (Rich said too that the knock-off Rey figure inside it was his doing) and seemed bewildered by the geek crate while Jay laughed nervously at everything Rich took out of it. Jay's such an asshole for making poor Rich gag uncontrollably with those sliced up sausages if so 😭:

ig by now they've put together enough Mini Docs to have a playlist for them so I'll pick one out of those too - I have to go for We Finally Watched Nukie: The VHS Grading Video just because the fact that it lead up for years from them collecting all those Nukies to joking about donating to charity in their trivia video, their tape destructions etc...And the entire video is just legitimately well-put together:

Talking about Trivia...of those videos I like the first one (Star Trek Trivia Showdown: Mike vs Jay (Episode 1 of 2,873)) the best just because it tortured Jay specifically. That's it that's the entire reason I shan't pretend otherwise. He was flustered throughout its entirety and also seemed smitten by the suggestion in the patreon bts of it to be compensated with a Twin Peaks trivia after:

From the Dudebros I have to go for Dudebros Episode 3 - The Dinner Surprise, ig out of all of them it was on the meatier (no pun intended) side (unlike Too Glose for Comfort) and the choices in this one are the most bizarre out of all I think...I'd like to have been a fly on the wall as they decided that Nate should cum in his pants over watching Tommy and Ronnie eat:

I'm not gonna name a season from the Grabowskis I think it would be too cheap for me to not pick a specific episode so I'll go for the third season episode where Honey gets chosen as the Face of the company Wings and Things and Cliff thinks she's gonna leave him. The whole ep makes me think that they cared a lot about the show at some point, or at least enough to make a cute little pigeon trap prop:

Out of their horrible, horrible 48 hour film projects (Das Foot, The Great Space Jam, the Western Ore Musical) I'm gonna have to go for The Western Ore Musical... just bc it was like... something as opposed to Nothing... Das Foot is very Jay I think and respectively The Great Space Jam is very Mike which makes them both super embarrassing and unwatchable:

ty for the ask! t'was fun to put together B]

[gibbearish]

it is with a heavy heart that i must announce. the five nights at freddy's movie was really good

sorry for how much of a behemoth this post is im fnaf autism just bear with me also i can't keep my thoughts straight for the life of me so this will be a bumpy ride. as an additional note i got very lucky and had literally 0 spoilers whatsoever for this movie, i haven't even seen the trailer

so first of all: i thought all the changes they made to the plot to make it work for a movie were good decisions, altho some of them did take a minute to actually feel like good changes lmao. once i thought about em a bit more though they made sense.

one of the things i really liked was that they also did include a lot of the things i wanted them to, or more specifically things that you're like "you literally can't have a fnaf movie without these, it just wouldn't be right", like we got mike schmidt, we got fucking VANESSA??? altho she might be in the trailer so that might not be the same reveal for yall as it was for me but still. they heavily alluded to vanny? (altho that's a part i'm kinda sad abt is they didn't /actually/ include vanny, vanessa just makes an offhand comment about how she "wouldn't be much help" if she was around afton and then. comes to help anyways and doesnt have any issues? lame they shouldve had him hypnotise her and then she fought her way out to help mike and abby. or alternatively they couldve used the family restructuring to make vanny be a result of afton giving vanessa osdd-2, like thats kinda functionally what he does with the mask anyways but this would make it more obvious).

also swinging back to changes they made that i liked!! VANESSA AFTON?? like this is the one that took me a while to get used to bc it feels like such a cliche from an outside perspective but it also kind of Super Isn't considering what the original plot is? like all the family restructuring they did makes pretty good sense to me, i do think it loses a bit of the weight having michael be Just Some Guy Whose Brother Happened To Be Kidnapped By Afton Forever Ago and now coincidentally has this weird guy offering him a job as a night guard, but also the og lore. absolutely would not fit into a movie lmao. so i like that they kept the characters everyone wanted around while also rearranging it to keep the spirit of "learning about all of this for the first time through the eyes of a security guard" you get from playing the games. it's fun for people who don't know the lore because it's easy to follow and it's fun for people who /do/ know the lore because they can pull apart all the differences.

oh right back to things they included that i wanted them to. we gotttt chica's cupcake murdering people, we got FUCKING MATPAT? SAYING THE ITS JUST A THEORY LINE? SOUNDING THRILLED OFF HIS ASS TO BE THERE??? i dont like the man and his opinions vis a vis addressing nonbinary characters but. goddamn was that a funny cameo. why couldnt you include markiplier too you fucking cowards. who said that. anyways. oh we kind of tangentially have a canon name for crying child? aka garrett? like idk this one could go either way because like. yeah he's mike's younger brother that died tragically and scarred him for life, makes sense that theyd be the same character in function but also it is technically a different family so who knows.

umm what else. oh this doesnt rlly fall into either category i just really liked it, the intro sequence for all the animatronics? showing what they can /really/ do with the breaking and entering dudes?? that was such a cool sequence i really liked the whole thing honestly. chica being introduced in the kitchen and the dude finding the cupcake then looking back and it's gone? bonnie in the supply closet? foxysprint??? AND FREDDY!! THE BITE!!! in case anyones reading this before watching the movie so they know what to expect: youll know when this moment is coming and if youre watching it at home with friends i HIGHLY recommend having the "was that the bite of 87" clip ready to play right after, they WILL lose their shit. i had it queued up from the very beginning of the movie cause i was like. they can't not include it /somehow/, it's the fnaf movie there has to be A Bite. and sure enough. oh also it's not at the same time but the golden freddy reveal is really good too, they did a good job of setting it up so even if youre already aware of golden freddy conceptually you still go "oh freddy's here? i mean i guess that makes sense he's the leader and all. or wait what happened to his eye why's he only got one? oh. oh i see. ohohohohohohohoho" 100/10. also very funny that they just straight up. MURDER THE AUNT? AND SHE NEVER GETS MENTIONED AGAIN SHE JUST IS DEAD??? the kid isnt like. hey what happened to aunt jane?? i get none of them liked her and with good reason but youd think at least one of em would be like "damn she sucked but she didnt deserve that, rip jane"

oh and the springlocks of course the springlocks. like as soon as we saw aftons name in the cast list we all knew he was gonna get springlocked, it's such a cherished memory for so many of us and there's no way in hell The Fnaf Movie™ wouldnt include afton getting springlocked, they just legally can't leave that out. and they do it pretty well too like yeah if you know what's gonna happen you can see it coming way ahead of time and it's kind of a slow crawl to get there but like. idk i think it still works pretty well. i don't personally like how long the actual springlocking itself took, i think they couldve milked that a little bit less cause i was under the impression that if one springlock failed they All Would Instantaneously And Your Flesh Body Will Become Occupied By A Full Endoskeleton. but no we just get very slow rib beartrap. w/e though still cool and again the leadup to it was really good even knowing exactly how it would end, like just the really slow shuffling of the animatronics towards him? like yeah it's slow and kinda tedious but its also like. theres literally nothing you can do, youre surrounded and defenseless and theyre infinitely faster and stronger than you and now they remember that you killed them. and you just have to sit there and watch them slowly slowly get closer all while trying to talk your way out of it knowing youre fucked. 10/10 they did that part well

oh and that also falls under changes i liked, i liked that instead of "afton tries to escape intangible ghosts by getting into old decrepit suit which then fails and kills him" it was "afton was already in the suit to do murders in and has brainwashed the bots to follow him" wait omg point postponed i just realized that part is from security breach. i thought vanessa was the only thing they brought over from that i didnt even notice that they werent doing the theyre-attacking-all-adults-indiscriminately thing goddamn. omg wait and the fact that the restaurants already closed in this one, it really is just a blend of all the games huh. scott do you see how much more coherent your plot couldve been if there wasnt So much going on. anyways. back to what i was saying. instead of "afton tries to escape intangible ghosts by getting into old decrepit suit which then fails and kills him" it was "afton was already in the suit to do murders in and brainwashed the ghosts into thinking he was their friend so they would help him do murders while possessing the robots. then they get their memories back and the robots turn on him and.. i think deliberately? set off the springlocks, or were just aiming to regular kill him and the springlocks failing was a happy accident? then the robots drag him away as they keep slowly one by one collapsing into him", like the first one made a lot of sense for the game and the timeline and the second one just feels right for this too. it's still his hubris that kills him, still his springlocks, it's just in one version the hubris is "trusting his springlock design to still work after however many years" and in the other its "thinking he has conplete control over the ghosts he killed", plus the ghosts finally get a bit more direct participation in his death than in the other version lol.

one change i did not like. forced het romance. like i dunno i guess im happy for them, both of those characters have certainly earned happy endings by this point so its nice they can get something cutesy. but also. like cmon man it's vanessa and mike do we have to do this she just got stabbed stop holding her hand

oh also this change wasnt really good or bad i just thought it was funny, vanessas a full on cop now? like i get they prolly just dont wanna have two security guards or something but i mean. it wouldve been really easy to just say she was the day shift guard? thatd explain why she had more information on the bots and the place's history than him, why she's always Around, it wouldve even flowed into the vanessa afton reveal pretty well too because like. yeah obviously a guy doing murders would want his main security guard to be someone he trusts and who better than his theoretically brainwashed daughter yknow? as it was she just kinda Showed Up Knowing Stuff And Ignoring Questions and later afton's like "you were supposed to be keeping an eye on him" but like of course Mike was getting dodgy about the weirdo cop loitering nearby for no reason, thats sus as hell lmao. vs "experienced security guard here to show you the ropes" he would have a much easier time trusting that she actually did have his best interests at heart. idk it just seemed like a weird change to me lmao

ummm oh my roommate pointed out the fact that when they tried to springlock abby the suit they were aiming for looked suspiciously like circus baby and abby and baby are anagrams so thats fun. it's hard to tell though if shes intended to be a rework of elizabeth or if vanessa's filling that role now. cause like on the one hand, michael's younger sister whose name is v close to baby, on the other hand, vanessa is afton's daughter. so idk i feel like it could go either way. if abby's elizabeth i guess that negates the thing about garret maybe being crying child's name bc then theyd prolly just be keeping mike's name the same. w/e

oh my god i completely forgot when i was talking about changes to the afton springlock thing, they had him deliberately put his mask on after the other springlocks started releasing and say the "i always come back" line, i thought that was an excellent touch. like he's actively dying a horrific death and is like. no no. im not leaving this bot. this shit is going to suck ass no matter what so i might as well do all i can to ENSURE my soul gets locked in this fuckin thing, go on stab me in the brain lets do this. i will however also say that having him say "i always come back"... before he's even come back the first time? is a little bit weird, i know thats another one of the "we have to include this in the fnaf movie" things so im not mad but just in the moment it def flows a bit weird. like mf you don't even have one example of that yet much less several to be saying "always" about

OH AND THE BIGGEST ONE. THE ANIMATRONICS. theyre so good. like im so glad they went all in on that, i think they probably knew that if there was one single thing they had to get absolutely 100% right to avoid a fan uprising it was those and by god did they deliver, theyre so big and so unsettling and so fun. chica's wink at abby was the best part of the movie no questions asked. or alternatively bonnie falling over after they built the fort. like theyre all just so good. OH MY GOD OR IN CHICA'S INTRODUCTION SEQUENCE WHERE YOU CAN SEE HER JUST. SCOOTING BY THROUGH THE VENT?? THAT WAS THE FUNNIEST THING OF ALL TIME HELLO???

god. but yeah i was honestly expecting it to be a lot worse than it was. also this mike is a bad brother/dad figure. but i guess in the games he also kind of is the pinnacle of bad brother so i mean it couldve been a lot worse. theres definitely some rough parts, i mightve mentioned this already but i felt like a few of the dramatic pause things were a bit too drawn out, like i said the springlocks locking is one good example of that but another that i REALLY found slow was like. in the opening we watch a guy get turbomurdered by the swirly blade mask and it takes. way longer than i feel like was necessary. also unnecessary: a jumpcut a second from scared eyes to swirly blades to hands fumbling and repeating during that. oh another thing that was weird to me, why was mike so insistent on sleeping specifically at night? to the point of deliberately sleeping on the job? like i get he wanted to revisit the kidnapping dream but like. presumably he could dream just as well during the day, no? done his night shift then once it was up rolled out a sleeping bag for a quick powernap before heading home? idk that just felt. forced to me

more random things, i am sad we didnt get a whiff of henry emily (my fringe theory was that their twist to change it from the games was they were gonna make henry be evil, rip to that idea) or the puppet/charlie, and kinda sad they changed the kid possessing golden freddy to be a boy like. we love cassidy and her Undying Rage Towards Afton's Soul smh why would you get rid of her. also loved balloon boy, kinda wish mangle had gotten like a similar level appearance but thats w/e. oh also while i did appreciate the low gore level there were also a few times where it was a bit weird how minor the injuries the dead people had were. like this man just had his face put in a blender mask and he just has like. some forehead gashes or whatever? he should look like someone stirred up jello

anyways with that gross thought i think i am out of things to say about the movie for now. if anyone else watched it already and somehow read all of this blease tell me your thoughts

[the-rewatch-rewind]

New episode!

Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in the 20 years from 2003 through 2022. Today I will be discussing number 27 on my list: MGM’s 1949 courtroom comedy Adam’s Rib, directed by George Cukor, written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, and starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, and Judy Holliday.

When housewife Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) shoots her husband Warren (Tom Ewell) at the home of his lover Beryl Caighn (Jean Hagen), assistant district attorney Adam Bonner (Spencer Tracy) is assigned to prosecute her. Adam’s wife, defense attorney Amanda (Katharine Hepburn) is moved by Doris’s story and fed up with the double standard for men and women regarding adultery, so she decides to represent her. The tension in the courtroom leads to tension at home between the Bonners, which is further strained by their neighbor Kip (David Wayne), a musician who is very openly interested in Amanda.

I think this was the first Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn movie I watched, but it was the sixth that they made together, out of nine total. Somehow this is the only one to make it into my top 40, although Pat and Mike was very close, with 14 views. Both Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike were written specifically for Tracy and Hepburn, who were together in real life, by their friends Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, who were married to each other, so it’s unsurprising that the stars and the scripts were perfectly suited for each other. And yes, I am talking about the same Ruth Gordon who was also an actress and won an Oscar for being delectably creepy in Rosemary’s Baby. Looking back on my viewing history of Adam’s Rib is very interesting to me: I watched it twice in 2003, once in 2004, and three times in 2005, then took a fairly long break and saw it again in 2009, then 2011, then another break until 2016, and then I watched it twice in 2018, once in 2019, once in 2020, twice in 2021, and three times in 2022. So I watched it a lot soon after I started keeping track, then hardly revisited it at all until the last five years I was tracking, when I watched it a lot again. This wasn’t a conscious decision so I’m not sure exactly why it happened, but I do know that there are things I appreciate about it now that I didn’t quite catch when I was younger, and I think I needed some time away from it to realize that.

There are two main reasons I enjoy this movie. One is that it’s very entertaining and funny, and the other is that it’s fascinating from a historical socio-political perspective. When I was younger, I mainly focused on the first reason, but more recently the second reason has particularly compelled me to keep rewatching. I’m definitely still there for the comedy though. Some of it is broad and over-the-top, such as the scene when a witness, who is also a female weightlifter, picks up Adam in the courtroom and lifts him over her head, but most of it is more understated. As I mentioned at the end of last episode, I’m pretty sure my favorite part of the whole movie is when Beryl Caighn is on the stand and says she heard a noise, and when Adam asks her to clarify what kind of a noise, she pauses for a moment and replies, “Like a sound.” That is so perfectly tailored to my sense of humor that I can’t believe that my parents weren’t even alive when it was written. Also I would like to acknowledge that this was Jean Hagen’s film debut, and while she doesn’t have much screentime, every moment of her performance is gold. (Jean Hagen is, of course, best remembered for playing Lina Lamont in Singin’ in the Rain three years later.)

Adam’s Rib was also an important steppingstone in Judy Holliday’s career. She was starring in Born Yesterday on Broadway (which was also written by Garson Kanin) but was relatively unknown in Hollywood and was initially not considered for the film adaptation. Her performance in Adam’s Rib convinced the producer of Born Yesterday to give her a screen test, and she ultimately got the part and won an Oscar for it. Katharine Hepburn in particular worked hard to get her recognized, asking director George Cukor to focus more on Holliday than on her in their shared scenes, and then leaking stories to the press about how Holliday’s performance was so fabulous it stole the spotlight from her and Spencer Tracy. This behavior is particularly surprising from Katharine Hepburn if you recall how competitive and envious she was when working with Ginger Rogers in Stage Door. Clearly she was far more mature and self-assured at this point in her career than she had been 12 years earlier. And she was also correct: Judy Holliday gave a fabulous performance in Adam’s Rib, and nobody else could have played her role as well as she did in Born Yesterday. She had such perfect comedic timing. My second favorite part of Adam’s Rib, after the “noise like a sound” exchange, is when Amanda is interviewing Doris in jail – which was the main scene that convinced the producer of Born Yesterday to consider casting Judy Holliday. The way Holliday just keeps talking every time Hepburn thinks she’s finished and is about to say something is brilliantly done. Apparently Holliday was trembling because she was so nervous to be working with Hepburn, but she managed to turn that into part of her character and it works perfectly. That scene also features Eve March as Amanda’s secretary Grace, whose snide remarks greatly add to the humor as well. Watching these three women masterfully turning a serious situation into comedy never gets old.

The character I’ve changed my mind about the most over the years is the neighbor Kip, played by David Wayne. Kip is the kind of guy who clearly thinks he’s the funniest person in the room, and when I watched this movie in my early teens, I was inclined to agree with him. I enjoyed his antics, and I felt bad for him when Adam was mean to him. But as I continued to rewatch this movie, he started to irritate me, and now I can barely stand him. Granted, I do still enjoy his song “Farewell Amanda,” which in real life was written by Cole Porter, although the way he just casually walks into a married couple’s apartment and sings a love song to one of them is so rude. In last week’s episode I talked about the trope of the married couple’s male friend who is interested in the wife, and Kip is one of the most obnoxious instances of that trope. He’s not anywhere near as funny or charming as he thinks he is. This isn’t meant as a criticism of the movie; I feel like he’s intentionally irritating, and he’s definitely important to the plot and the message of the film. But I do think that when I was watching this movie mainly for the comedy, realizing that I no longer found Kip funny was a big part of why I started rewatching it less frequently.

But what I’ve grown to appreciate more recently about this movie is how progressive it was for its time, and the fascinating way that it has aged because of that. Bear in mind that this movie was made in 1949, shortly after WWII, very much in the “women stay home and support your man and raise those boomer children” era. So it was quite bold of this movie to question gender roles, particularly in terms of the infidelity double standard. After Amanda reads about the shooting in the paper but before she has taken the case, she asks Grace what she thinks about a man who cheats on his wife, and Grace replies, “Not nice, but…” and shrugs. Then Amanda asks, “What about a wife who cheats on her husband?” and Grace says, “Something terrible!” When Amanda demands to know why there’s a difference, Grace protests, “I don’t make the rules!” And Amanda retorts, “Sure you do; we all do!” And I think that’s such an important point: even if you don’t agree with social norms, accepting them and perpetuating them is equivalent to endorsing them. Amanda decides to argue that if a man confronted his cheating wife with a gun, people would consider him to be justified, and there shouldn’t be any difference in this case just because the genders are swapped. Adam, on the other hand, argues that nobody has the right to just show up at somebody’s house and shoot them. And what’s so great about this conflict is that they’re both partly right and partly wrong. Amanda’s right that women shouldn’t be punished more harshly for cheating on their spouses than men are, but at the same time, that doesn’t mean everybody should go around shooting each other. And Adam’s right about that part, but he’s wrong in the way he dismisses his wife’s legitimate concerns and fails to recognize the effects of misogyny on society and on his marriage.

It is a little odd that Doris is charged with attempted murder instead of assault with a deadly weapon or something like that, but this way it’s easier to believe that she is found innocent. She definitely did commit assault, but it doesn’t seem like she really meant to kill anyone. I’m kind of surprised the censors allowed her to be acquitted, since my understanding of production codes is that crime couldn’t be shown to pay. I guess Warren getting shot was his punishment for cheating, so now they’re even? I want to know what happens to the Attingers after the trial – hopefully they get divorced and manage to find some happiness – but we don’t get to find out because ultimately the story isn’t about them; it’s about the Bonners. Adam has moved out after the whole weightlifter-picking-him-up episode, and Kip has started to attempt to take his place. After the trial, Amanda is at Kip’s apartment to go over a contract with him, but she’s distracted with worry about what’s going to happen to her marriage, and instead of listening and being a supportive friend, Kip decides it’s a good time to confess his love for her, using the irresistible line that he’s in love with her because she lives across the hall and it’s so convenient. And then Adam bursts in with a gun, and Amanda, terrified, says, “You have no right! Nobody has the right-” and then realizes what she’s saying. Satisfied, Adam reveals that the gun is actually made of licorice, and Amanda is furious, but it’s kind of the best possible outcome here: Doris doesn’t have to go to jail, but her actions are not being condoned, which I assume is what appeased the censors. And then later Adam demonstrates that men and women are truly equal by crying to get what he wants, which is…not great, but…I guess it’s good to challenge the stereotype that masculine men aren’t supposed to cry? It’s just not great to perpetuate the stereotype that women cry to manipulate men.

And that’s when you have to bear in mind that this movie is 74 years old. In addition to outdated gender role assumptions, there’s some weird body shaming and normalization of domestic violence that is very uncomfortable. But on the whole, it does a pretty good job of supporting women standing up for themselves in a post-WWII, pre-second-wave feminism America. Also, in a time when pretty much the only non-white characters in mainstream Hollywood movies were servants, it is worth noting that there are some people of color in the background of Adam’s Rib. There’s a black man on the jury, and when Amanda brings in a bunch of witnesses to demonstrate that women are equal to men, there are a few women of color in the crowd. Granted, when the judge rules that only three are allowed to testify, all three are white women, and the juror doesn’t get to speak either, but the representation bar was so low that even this tiny amount of racial diversity among the extras feels noteworthy.

While I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intentional, this movie also shows the harms of amatonormativity, and possibly even heteronormativity. Doris and Warren certainly should not have gotten married, but amatonormativity told them that that was the life they should want. When Warren is on the witness stand, Adam asks him why he married Doris, and Warren responds, “How should I know? Why did you marry yours? Does anybody know?” The assumption that everybody wants and needs a long-term monogamous romantic and sexual relationship leads to so many incredibly dysfunctional marriages that the people trapped in them think they’re not only normal, but universal, and that’s a problem. Nobody should feel like they have to marry someone they can barely stand just to have a partner. And speaking of people I can barely stand, let’s go back to Kip. While I don’t like him as a character, I do find it interesting that he’s kind of queer-coded, and Adam in particular mocks him for being effeminate, yet he pursues and tries to seduce Amanda. Of course, being a rather effeminate man and being attracted to women are not mutually exclusive, but it does feel a bit like he’s going after Amanda because he thinks that’s what he’s supposed to do. I mean, he says he’s into her because she’s his neighbor and it’s convenient – not exactly the most convincing display of attraction. When Amanda finally understands what Kip is saying, she has this great line: “Now, you look here, Kip. I’m fighting my prejudices, but it’s clear that you’re behaving like a, like a – well, I hate to put it this way, but like a man!” – meaning in the entitled to women’s attention and bodies sense of the word. Which, as someone whose masculinity has been repeatedly called into question, is probably what he was going for. I can’t really blame him for struggling to figure out how to perform gender in a way that’s socially acceptable, but that’s not an excuse for being a jerk who refuses to take no for an answer. As Amanda pointed out earlier, we all make the rules. The only way to overthrow harmful norms is to refuse to perpetuate them. So to summarize what we’ve learned: only get married if you want to, not because you think you should; if you find out your spouse is cheating, either work it out or get divorced, but don’t shoot them; and listened to your married neighbor when she says she doesn’t want to have an affair with you.

If this movie sounds kind of weird, that’s because it is, but the true story that inspired it is, if anything, even weirder. When actors Raymond Massey and Adrienne Allen got divorced, they were represented by husband-and-wife lawyers William Dwight Whitney and Dorothy Whitney, who then divorced each other to each marry their client from that case. Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon then took the idea of married lawyers on opposite sides of a trial and turned it into Adam’s Rib. While the acting is fabulous, ultimately the script is the best part of this movie, and it was even nominated for an Oscar, which has always been unusual for comedies. While in some ways this movie presents a cynical view of marriage, it is worth noting that Kanin and Gordon’s lasted for 43 years until her death in 1985 and seems to have been a relatively happy one. They were clearly both very talented writers, and I think the film’s commentary on gender roles greatly benefitted from having a man and a woman working on it together. Gender roles have changed a bit in the decades since this movie was made, so from that perspective it feels a bit outdated, but it definitely makes some important points that are still relevant. And if nothing else, the script is clever and the performances are captivating.

Thank you for listening to my analysis of another of my most rewatched movies. I appreciate those of you who have stuck with me through this stretch of relatively obscure older films. If you’ve been enjoying hearing about them, don’t worry, there will be plenty more, but if you’re ready for a break, good news: the next movie was made in the 21st century, and you’ve probably at least heard of it! As always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “I haven’t slept with hundreds of men.”

[sunflowersand-bees]

*manically convulses in poorly concealed anticipation for no clear reason* what Conan Gray songs of his do you think relate to byler ?

holy. shit. one) i love you for this.

two) this is gonna be kind of long.

three) oh god. literally almost all of his songs. BUT specifically. i think that little league and fight or flight are the MOST byler songs that he has.

let's dissect these, because i can. first, little league.

the song is about someone looking back on the freedom of their youth and feeling pressured to grow up and change and it's about them missing everything that they left behind when they grew up.

this is basically season 3 byler. especially the rain fight. mike called will immature for still wanting to play dnd and for not liking girls, and both of them feel like/are told that kids their age should be acting and feeling differently.

this is potentially mike or will looking back on their childhood, before the demogorgon, before everything. "we didn't know how it would be". ignorance really can be bliss.

and obviously this all has to do with that time break in between seasons 3 and 4, where will moves to lenora. he moves to lenora and we're never shown that he has any friends besides el.

2. fight or flight

i really think that this song shows a dual perspective, between will and mike. i watched a couple byler edits to this song, which is what inspired this belief BUT I WOULD BELIEVE IT ANYWAY. anyway.

just, obviously, will is weirded out by how mike's acting, especially his performance at the airport.

this alludes to mike's jealousy. will isn't picking up his calls and he thinks that will has a crush on some random person in lenora. later he pins his suspicions on angela.

will byers. he turns away from mike in the car. i've seen a few different theories on why mike didn't comfort will, among them being that mike was dealing with his own shit, mike was afraid of jonathan and argyle being in the car, AND that mike knew that will didn't want to be babied, as will said in season 2. regardless of how successful will is in hiding his tears from mike, the point still stands that he didn't reach out for comfort as much as mike didn't offer it.

literally our one and only michael wheeler summed up in about three lines. do i even need to explain?

this is soooo season 3 rain fight coded. their argument? will destroying castle byers? this is literally what happened.

willel. i mean, i don't think that el ever loved mike and i dont think she'll be sad about byler, and i don't think mike loved el, BUT STILL.

alrighty well i hope that made any sense at all. so sorry that this took me so fucking long to finish, procrastination is a fucking bitch. i love you so much for asking me this because it was fun <3333

[gerardwaygirlmoments]

Okay I actually had a nightmare that I was being chased by the Demogorgon in my own apartment last night. Horror doesn’t usually do that to me so good job Stranger Things.

[madwheelerz]

Who’s Spying?

I believe that something that is decidedly not Vecna has been watching over Mike since before the events of season one even begins. We see him from some very odd angles at times and it’s almost like we peer in at him. We don’t do this nearly as often with other characters even if they are shown under framing that implies stalking. It’s not to the extent that Mike is.

(more stalking shots)

So, who do I think is spying? The mind flayer or maybe for the purpose of this post the “shadow”. Mike’s understanding of the shadow is very unsettling under this perspective, but I digress. @boysdontcryboycry pointed out that Mike’s name only appears in the second episode summary of a season, if it appears at all and so far it has appeared three times, mysteriously absent in the season three summary. The also noted that his appearance with different groups totaled to seven and all that I could think of was the relationship between seven and demogorgons.

In season two the main villain is the shadow, and this is the same for season three. In season one all signs are pointing to Vecna and we know in season four that Vecna is the big bad. This to me implies that Mike is opposite of the shadow and that while Willel are off fighting and defeating Vecna, Mike will have to deal with the eldritch monster that might have been spying on him. So many important numbers make their appearance in the Wheeler house: 8:15, the moment Karen calls off the game, 20, which we hear repeated a few times and is what will be needed to win, a campaign that took 2 weeks to plan and stopping breaks the flow. Vecna not being able to continue back-to-back once he’s been foiled.

There’s also 10 hours and two 10s make a 20. The shadow intends to utilize Will to spy- on what exactly? What is the shadow so interested in that it needs to be close to in order to understand? The shadow is capable of moving across plains so what does it need Will for? Perhaps to spy on Mike? It knows Mike’s name and nobody else’s.

The hivemind tries to grab Mike specifically.

This honestly makes the hub reference that much more ominous. Mike’s sensitivity to Will feeling the supernatural and Will feeling the supernatural specifically when it has to do with Mike. We have to remember that Will might be connected to Vecna, but the shadow is what possessed him and what likely continues to possess him. We learn in season three more fully that the shadow can go dormant and allow the host to do as it pleases.

We also see Mike in some very odd outfits, odd in the color choices. We see him in green in every season, but four. We see him in red in season one, we see him in outfits that seem to have all the colors of the clocks in stranger things, primary colors with a green background, in them.

El

I believe El is to Mike what demogorgons are to the shadow. That is, I think Mike created El in the same way that I suspect that the shadow created demogorgons. Micha(el) and (El)even. Now you might be wondering if he created her what about her number? What significance does the number 11 have to Mike? Well, it’s his birthday number. Mike’s birthday is 4/7/1971. 4 + 7 is 11 and even if you include the year and go 4 + 7 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 1 = 29, 2+9 = 11.

Also, the meaning of their birth names is reflective. Michael means “gift from god” while Jane means “god is gracious”. They imply something similar. The kindness of a deity. This also likely why there seems to be a glitch with the Ives because Jane didn’t exist instead her history is filling itself out as we go. That would be the kicker wouldn’t it all the parallels to Mike and different parental figures in El’s life leading up to this.

In conclusion my idea is that Willel will be going after Vecna while Michael will come face-to-face with the shadow.

[johns-prince]

I remember you said Tara was Paul's 'Stuart' but I don't think so.After asking around as well as doing some searching myself, I conclude Paul and Tara wasn't that close.Paul didn't take LSD with Tara,but with a bunch of guys including Tara(and his wife lmao).Robert Fraser was Paul's 'Stuart' (well if we really need some comparison then let's put it this way).But I think Robert was more than that 'cause he and Paul had been friends for 20 years. Paul also said he was his most formative influence.

There is a simple reason why Tara was Paul's Stuart: John's real dislike for the guy. That Guinness child/heir, he'd refer to Tara probably with a sneer, even after the boy's death.

He still did LSD with Tara though, and Tara specifically didn't take any so he could watch over Paul to make sure he didn't have a bad trip.

Paul knew John detested Tara, and his newfound artsy group of 'friends', and Paul went and did that regardless (because Paul's a lil brat, a grown man and he'll do whatever the Hell he wants, regardless if John stomped his foot and fumed; he was not a doormat, and those were his friends) That's what John would've seen-- Paul doing lsd with Tara (and a bunch of strangers, to John) and not with him even though John really wanted Paul to experience it with him. Practically to the point of begging Paul.

Robert Fraser and Paul were indeed close friends, but that's about it. Robert found Paul a genius in his own right and Robert helped open Paul's view up in regards to creativity, touched on Paul's Avant Garde side, so yes, formative influence. That and Paul has always been attracted to the middle class/upperclass life style (Robert Fraser, Tara Browne, John Lennon) There was no deeper attraction between them then that though. Robert did believe Paul was attractive, but he wasn't his type; Robert was drawn to Paul's mind, only, similar to how Paul was merely attracted to Robert's class and his artistic talent and perspective.

Tara on the other hand, clearly had a deeper attraction to Paul, even though it's clear Paul didn't see Tara anything more than a friend (and while Stu was certainly attracted to John because he was not only artsy but a big, mean Ted, I believe there truly wasn't anything deeper between them, just the closest of friends) Cor that'd only make things worse for John's opinion on Tara. And it wasn't Robert Fraser who Paul took with him on Christmas holiday with family, continued doing drugs with, got in that awful crash with-- it was Tara. When John would often be the one to go with Paul (though that Christmas Cynthia just wanted John with her and Julian) if you weren't close to someone, why invite them to a family get together during Christmas holiday?

"Tara Browne and Paul McCartney were actually very good friends. They ran in the same circle of artist types including John Dunbar, Barry Miles and Robert Frasier. The group met Tara one night out in a club, most likely the Bag o' Nails. Paul described Tara as a "sensitive" guy and he often invited Tara to hang out with him at his Cavendish home."

"December 1965, Paul felt Tara to be a good enough friend that he invited him on a trip back to Liverpool to visit with Paul's family. The two friends were traveling around the streets of Liverpool on mopeds, on the way to see Paul's aunt when Paul was looking at the full moon and ended up crashing his moped, causing his tooth to chip. "

Mike McCartney.

Especially if we're talking about Paul, who was the hardest to get close to.

John might've not liked Paul's new friends, might've been put off by robert but, he didn't hold the same dislike towards Robert as he did Tara. John got all aggressive with Tara, as if insulted, simply because the boy gave him this, book? Of the pygmalion. Paul had to literally pull John away to get him to chill. John didn't really get that way with anyone else.

That is why I see a parallel between John and Stuart, and Paul and Tara. Because of how Paul behaved with Stuart when it came to John, and how John behaved with Tara when it came to Paul.

Even Tara's wife pointed out how much John disliked her husband. John would always act so hostile or at least acerbic when Tara was at the same parties or he'd be at Cavendish when John would go over. The party that Paul took lsd at, Paul invited John to come with-- but John declined, because he hated Tara and hated how much time Paul was not only spending time with his new artsy friends, but Tara.

The point is John hated Tara, hated Tara simply because Paul liked him and spent time with him and Tara obviously bloody liked Paul. And Tara was rather 'perfect' wasn't he? Spoke different languages, well mannered, elfin in his looks, upper class, had so many connections, very nice, charming, artistic... And Paul seemed to really dig him. John was jealous, felt very threatened by Tara, and I can't blame John.

Similar to how Paul felt threatened and jealous of Stuart, and his relationship with John.

[spaceorphan18]

I'm new to fandom - what are the better boyfriend olympics? I've heard that phrase being used a lot to talk about Klaine but I'm not really sure what's going on.

Hi Nonny! Welcome to fandom :) Pull up a chair as I give you a history of the BBO and how it started.  I actually think it’s kind of fascinating now that I’m not living through it, lol. 

Okay, so let’s go back to 2010 when there wasn’t a Klaine fandom, there was a Kurt fandom.  A lot of the BBO stemmed out of the Kurt’s Boyfriend Shipping wars of 2010.  

Back then, there was just a Kurt fandom, and a lot of opinions about who he should date.  Believe it or not, Kurt was shipped a lot with the other guys on the show, there was a healthy dose of Kurt/Finn, but Kurt/Puck was huge, and there was a smattering of Kurt/Mike (I never really did see much Kurt/Artie now that I think of it, which is kind of funny in retrospect, but I’m sure it’s out there.)  Anyway - when the show announced Kurt was getting a boyfriend -- well, things began to get heated up.  

Three big ships emerged

Kurt/Sam - because the rumor was that Sam was originally supposed to be Kurt’s bf (probably not, but that rumor was big at the time).  Btw, they were the canoe ship (I have no idea why) and was also known as Kum (rolls-eyes).  This ship’s fanbase was so huge and lasted so long, that the show felt the need to address it head on in Season Two’s Rumours (not a joke).   

Kurt/Karofsky - Also known as Kurtofsky, they were also called themselves the Pirate ship (god, Idk why, shipping wars are weird, yo).  These people were also really passionate, mostly about Dave, but liked the whole idea that Kurt would save Dave and they would have this weird - enemies to loves love affair or something.  I don’t know, I could never get past the squicky assault aspect, but whatever. 

Kurt/Blaine - which. at the time, was... the biggest possibility? It’s funny cause the other two ships were just as big as the Klaine ship, and really the fighting became over who was going to be the best option for Kurt.  

And that’s the thing.  Fans of Kurt were so passionate about who was best for Kurt, because everyone had seen him go through hell and back on the show, so his boyfriend needed to be perfect for him.  And you know who was perfect (at first) -- Blaine.  More on that in a second... 

However, Blaine brought his own bit of baggage -- namely fans of Darren Criss (and/or Starkid fans).  Unlike Chord Overstreet or Max Adler, people knew who Darren was before he was on Glee.  So his own fandom joined in on the Klaine of it all.�� At first it was all fine -- as the shipping wars continued, it was less about Kurt vs Blaine and more about Klaine vs the other shippers.  Well, that was going to change.... 

Original Song happened and Kurt and Blaine got together ending the question of who would ultimately be Kurt’s boyfriend.  And things were nice and cozy headed into season 3.  You’d think the Kurt/Sam and Kurt/Karofsky ships would die out, but not really, they stuck around for a long time, and kinda morphed into something else.  

See, The First Time happened.  And for the first time Blaine wasn’t the perfect prince that he was in season 2 -- he had more of a developed personality, and more flaws.  And... some people didn’t like it.  (Also added to the mix was Sebastian -- and the Seblaine and Kurtbastian ships were born, but those kinda go off on their own thing and I’m not really going to bring them up much here.)  Anyway, what really got fandom split was Dance With Somebody. 

You had two sides of an argument, people who saw Kurt’s POV and people who saw Blaine’s POV -- and guess what happened.  The two sides began to fight with each other over who was “right” in the argument.  (My god...) And thus started what fandom started referring to as The Better Boyfriend Olympics. 

See - for reasons I don’t fully understand - instead of seeing that each of the boys have a fault and each were wrong in the episode, each side wanted to say that their side, and their POV was the correct way -- that one boyfriend was more oppressed and the other was not as good a partner.  

On the Kurt side, though, you had a lot of the old Kurt fans and ships who didn’t like Blaine (and/or didn’t want Blaine as his partner) so they vehemently decided that unless Blaine was the perfect boyfriend again, he didn’t deserve to be with Kurt.  Meanwhile, you had the Blaine fans, many of them Darren fans who wanted Blaine to have more depth to him than just being Kurt’s boyfriend, and not being Kurt fans first (or originally) they were going to push back at the Kurt fans who were lashing out at Blaine. 

Compounding this was the fact that during season 3, there were so many cast members and characters that unless you were Finchel, you were begging for scraps and your featured episode to come along.  Meanwhile - Kurt got a ton of screen time, but didn’t sing much, while Blaine sang a lot more, but didn’t get much story.  The Kurt fans resented that Blaine was always singing.  The Blaine fans were annoyed that the Kurt fans resented it, and tried to remind the Kurt fans that Blaine barely got any development.  

Either way, a war had begun.  And then The Break Up happened.  

Now Kurt fans had a specific reason to point at -- Blaine being a terrible boyfriend.  He cheated.  He’s terrible.  The end. 

The fandom was not firmly split into sides - you were either a Kurt fan - a lot of them who HATED Blaine - partly because he was getting more attention at the time, partly cause he did sing more, partly because they were made up of Kurt ships that didn’t work out, and partly cause they saw so much of themselves in Kurt that they projected onto him their own feelings, and loving Blaine was not a part of that projection.  Or you were a Blaine fan - who spent a lot of time defending Blaine to the point of exhaustion, and became so resentful of Kurt that they wished Blaine could be with anyone else because Kurt (fans) didn’t understand Blaine and should just stop trying. 

Weren’t there any Klainers you ask? Ha, well.... Klainers, people actually liked Kurt AND Blaine were stereotyped into two categories.  Category A) the really really loud fanbase (usually on Twitter) that harassed the creators, RM, Chris, Darren, various crew about Klaine every second that they got -- to the point that it started to feel embarrassing (that’s probably my own projection).   Category B) People who thought (think) that Chris and Darren were (are) in a secret relationship.  (Spoiler alert they aren’t, never have been, and never will be.)  The two of these categories overlapped A LOT, and many of the fans of one boy or the other just disassociated completely.  

You could still be a fan of the Klaine relationship, but you had a preference to which boy you were actually a fan of -- you couldn’t like both, or else you were a Klainer, and that was not cool.  (I spent a long time NOT identifying as anything, and trying to make sure everything I did and said was equal -- a) cause I was new to fandom and b) cause I hated that either one or the other of these characters were villainized so frequently.) 

Anyway - Season 4 continued.  Adam showed up, and Kurt fans got all excited, but the problem was that a lot of them saw him as the perfect boyfriend again -- not a real character but a prop that could make Kurt look good and be everything for Kurt.  Look, I liked Adam, I did, but he was underdeveloped, and this weird idea that your boyfriend needs to be perfect in order to be a functioning relationship is just unrealistic.  I digress.  Meanwhile, we didn’t get a lot of Kurt POV, which didn’t help things, and meant even more projection over his character. 

Meanwhile, the Blaine fans had formed their own community, which became viciously defensive of him.  I think the whole fandom was toxic during this time for a lot of reasons, and I really wanted to quit it.  Many people did -- the show wasn’t being fun anymore. 

Season 5 came along, the boys got back together, tempers simmered, but the whole idea of the Better Boyfriend Olympics came back every time a conflict happened.  Arguments about who was the better boyfriend ensued, gatekeeping as to why their pick was best and why your opinion sucked still ran through the fandom.  Not helping was the fact that Cory had died, and the creators, actors, and crew -- as well as media -- was tired of Glee.  

The one nice thing, though was that a lot of the old crowd had moved on by then, and there was an influx of newer people coming in during season 5 (and season 6) -- they weren’t here for the season 3 droughts and season 4 wars, and brought in a newer and fresher perspective.  

But still - we had the end of season 5 and the summer of spoilers and season 6 to get through.  At this point, the Kurt and Blaine camps had moved to their parts of the internet and really not speaking much to each other if they could help it.  When an argument happened on the show, the same kind of Better Boyfriend Olympics came up again -- one boyfriend was worse than the other, and unless they changed xyz they were not good enough for the other.  But at this point, it was incredibly tiring.  I know that I was just ready for the show to be done with. 

I should say, as an aside, not helping things were the rise of some rather vocal BNF-ish fans, who dug their heels in about their own opinions.  The refusal to even acknowledge that one side or the other might be right, or have valid points was not helping anything.  A lot of people on both sides refused to even listen to the points on the other side -- and instead of being frustrated at the show, the creators, or whatever, they took it against each other, which wasn’t fun to watch either.

Season 6 happened - Blainofsky happened, and that killed enthusiasm for the season on both sides, most people just kind of wanted it to be over.  And then the ending came quickly, and I think a lot of people who were just plain unhappy about everything left for good.  

The Better Boyfriend Olympics, or this weird competition that always pitted the boys and their fandoms against each other in the name of one being better than the other, leveled off after this.  I won’t give myself /that/ much credit - but one reason I created @todaydreambelievers was to give fans of both Kurt and Blaine a safe place where we could enjoy and discuss both boys without the BBO rearing its head.  And you know what -- it did mend a few hearts.  

For the most part, it’s been pretty quiet since.  Fandom is quieter, but I think the people who have come into it after the show has ended are a lot less judgmental and argumentative.  (I suppose it helps if you know how the story is going to end.)  And the cool thing, for me, is finding a group of people who enjoy Kurt and Blaine equally (or respectfully) -- and reclaiming the name Klainer as a good thing.  

I’ll end by saying this -- it’s been relatively peaceful, even with the influx of new people throughout the years, but I have been seeing shades of BBO pop up again.  Look, you don’t have to like Klaine to be a fan of one or the other of them.  But there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world, a lot of things to be angry and get indignant about.  How a fictional couple was written ten years ago is not one of them.  Be respectful of people, and know that maybe the side you understand better isn’t the only side worth listening to.  ;) 

[drspookulicious]

FNaF: Elizabeth Afton’s “Character” “Arc”

I was pretty sure for the longest time that she straight-up didn’t have one. In the voice lines in Sister Location that play through Michael’s head between nights, we really only see a bratty, disobedient, whiny, and entitled side of her, and by the end of the series, she wants to kill people with her dad.

Not the most flattering look, I’ll admit.

Some argued “but she’s corrupted by Baby’s programming! That’s what makes her want to kill!” Unfortunately, this would mean Elizabeth’s only appearance in the games that we can definitively say is 100% her and not corrupted in any way is the bratty annoying girl bugging Purple Guy in Sister Location. If this theory’s true, not only does Elizabeth not really grow throughout the series, (contrast with both victim!Mike and bro!Mike having interesting development in their respective theories,) but there’s no change. There’s no time for change if there’s only a solid thirty seconds of pure, raw, uncorrupted Elizabeth action.

     (And, no, I’m not including FNaF 4′s Pigtail girl. I’m not sure how much of a difference that would make if I did, though.)

These two seem to coexist, but not in a contradicting way.

When Circus Baby tells the story of how she “was on stage once,” she speaks from the animatronic’s perspective and refers to the little girl, Elizabeth, in the third person, leading many to assume the girl Baby “still hears sometimes” is a separate intelligence.

However, I believe this is a manipulation tactic - first, because that totally lines up with Baby’s motivation and other actions, making Eggs think she’s totally not haunted and definitely trustworthy - but second, because Scrap Baby seems very much like she’s speaking from Elizabeth’s perspective after dropping the facade of Sister Location, saying things like “it feels like home” and “it feels like my birthday.”

Animatronics can indeed speak from the perspective of the robot and the child. Withered Chica, in Ultimate Custom Night, says “I was the first” as Susie, and “Let me show you how to break your face and look like me” as Chica.

Henry addresses Scrap Baby as “Elizabeth” - I’m not claiming he knows exactly how possession of this lot works, but being a character in this universe that was friends with William for a good while, he knows Elizabeth better than we do, and I trust his judgement that this is really her.

SL’s Fake Ending also seamlessly flows from Circus Baby’s lines to Elizabeth Afton’s voice saying a lot of those same lines, but more innocently. And, yes, this could very well be Funtime Freddy’s voice mimic at work, but that’s the exact kind of manipulation I was talking about earlier with Baby referring to Elizabeth in the third person. Y’know, to trick you.

So in other words, it’s not that Baby’s AI talks to us and we only get a small glimpse of Elizabeth; it’s likely all Elizabeth, including Circus Baby.

Elizabeth is aware of Baby’s AI. We definitely see Baby’s programming overtake her in the mini-game when she devours Elizabeth, and it seems Elizabeth acknowledges this programming.

It’s also seems as though Elizabeth hates it.

Something bad happened yesterday. Something bad always happens. I don’t want it to happen again. There is something bad inside of me. I’m broken. I can’t be fixed. I’m going to be taken to the Scooping Room soon, but it’s not going to fix what’s wrong with me. What is bad is always left behind. Will you help me?

There are a few ways to interpret the “bad thing” that happened, and “bad thing” that’s inside of her that can’t be fixed.

This is spoken on Night 5, and only two things really happened on Night 4: she kidnapped Eggs Benedict, and killed the technicians. And if so, this would definitely seem like Baby’s programming forced Elizabeth to do it, meaning Elizabeth is speaking from the heart here. I doubt this is an AI talking about how she has a little girl telling her to do evil shit.

However, I think the bad thing inside her... might be Elizabeth. Hear me out.

Either it’s Baby’s killer-robot programming, or Elizabeth’s spirit. Thing is, it seems like Elizabeth is aware that the Ennard plot won’t get rid of the problem. Her going to the Scooping Room won’t fix what’s wrong with her.

But, I’d argue Baby’s programming is most likely gone by Scrap Baby. I definitely don’t think Baby, the robot, would by physically functional if it weren’t haunted by a child. So narratively, it seems most appropriate that the thing wrong with Baby, the thing that can’t be fixed, is that Elizabeth’s bound to the animatronic.

And if that’s all the case... that’s incredibly tragic, isn’t it? That what Elizabeth wants more than anything else is to finally be at rest?

Hell, she has to scoop out the insides of a loved one and use their body as a hiding place in order to escape an endless cycle of torture and anger. It makes sense she’s hesitant to do this, and feels remorse that there wasn’t a better solution. That she couldn’t just make the souls disappear.

So if Elizabeth’s consciousness isn’t being overwritten, or destroyed, or corrupted, by evil robo-programming, then what’s her story?

Well, I think Elizabeth considers Baby a separate entity. Baby was made just for her, as a friend, a playmate. Someone who was designed for her to play with. And I think Elizabeth’s arc comes down to a conflict between wanting her friend to be happy, and wanting the approval of her father.

It makes perfect sense that Elizabeth would have the interests of Circus Baby in mind, and the acknowledgement of her programming would only reinforce this. Hence the conflict here.

According to Michael, Baby thought Eggs was William. In Elizabeth’s mind, she isn’t scooping out her brother’s organs, but her father’s. The father she loves, and seeks the attention and approval of. That’s why she insists he won’t die; she’s reconciling with herself. It’s not that painful, right?

She’s torn between her father’s love, and the friend she died for.

Which is why the ultimate conclusion to her character is...

You played right into our hands, did you really think that this job just fell out of the sky for you? No. This was a gift, for us. You gathered them all together in one place, just like he asked you to. All of those little souls, in one place, just for us, a gift. Now we can do what we were created to do, and be complete! I will make you proud, Daddy! Watch, listen, and be full.

Elizabeth thinks that Freddy Fauxbear’s was an excuse to get all the souls in one place, (which was dead-on,) but more specifically gathering the souls so she and William could... be complete?

If Elizabeth’s inner conflict is between the interests of her father and the Baby animatronic, this is the perfect end goal for her. She wants to be reunited to William - to earn his forgiveness. In order to be complete, Elizabeth feels she and Dear ol’ Dad need each other.

This conflict began when William took back his promise that Baby would be a gift just for Elizabeth. She loved him, and wanted to be the best daughter she could be, but a single act of disobedience tore William’s heart, and most of Elizabeth’s organs, in two. By the end, she went from a sweet girl putting her desire for William’s attention aside and being bad for one crucial tragic moment, to embracing being bad and pretty much downright evil through her love of her father. From complaining about not having something she wanted and neglecting what she did have, to finally getting... or thinking she got...

Everything.

[keow]

What advice would you give to someone who grew up in an atheist household but feels a vague connection to God? My family wasn't for or against any religion so I grew up indifferent but also comforted by religious memorabilia, going in churches, etc. I know that sounds wishy-washy but I'd like to explore it more but I don't know where to start and what to read to learn more, to decide what I think.

There are probably better blogs you could ask about this than mine, but I'll try my best. I’m going to answer this under the cut because it got really lengthy hehe. Also sorry this took so long to answer, I've been pretty busy!

So firstly it seems like we had really similar experiences growing up. My mom was “spiritual” and agnostic, raising me without exposure to really any religion (besides maybe Buddhism and a little bit of nondenominational Christianity—she shopped around a bit). I think this sort of background is becoming more and more common in society, so you aren’t alone.

Because of this non-religious childhood I can also tell you firsthand that there are a lot of bad things out there. For basically the entirety of my adolescence I was involved in witchcraft, paganism, and “new age” spirituality. I’m just going to tell you straight up that this is bad news. Please don’t fall for any of their bullshit. I literally worshipped and communicated with demons for years and it turned me into a horrible, evil person. Don’t fall for the “law of attraction” bullshit either, no matter how seductive it seems.

With that out of the way…

I am still in the process of converting so I can’t give you the perspective of someone who has completed that process, but I can tell you what has helped me figure out a lot of things religion-wise.

Firstly, the most important thing is to ask questions. If you do not ask questions, you cannot learn. If you do not learn, you will never know truth. So ask questions.

You say you feel drawn to churches, so I’m going to operate on the assumption that you want to know more about Christianity. If this isn’t the case then… well… ummmm well I ummummumummm Uh.

You’ve probably heard “Jesus died for your sins” before, but it’s very easy to just gloss over that because the idea is kind of pushed around our society without anyone really explaining it. Like I had no clue what that meant or how it worked before I started asking these questions.

“What are the doctrinal differences between these two religions? What about between these two branches of the same religion?” “Why is this biblical event important?” “How does the Trinity work?” “How do we know Jesus is the Messiah?” Et cetera. Any question you can think of, find out the answer to it. Catholic Answers is a pretty good place to start!

Secondly, as you’re in this “research” phase, I highly suggest immersing yourself in media that deals with religion as a whole. I listened to a lot of catholic podcasts and watched a lot of YouTube videos that explained some very important theological concepts that I didn’t quite understand. It’s not a proper education by any means but it will help you get the basics down.

Ideally, you’d be able to ask someone about this in person and get proper responses (assuming the person is knowledgeable and can explain things well). Like seriously, you should do this. Online stuff is nice but it isn’t a replacement for finding a parish and talking to someone.

I couldn’t really do this because I didn’t have access at the time when I was really becoming curious (pandemic and stuck with anti-theist parents lol), so if you’re in a similar situation, the internet is your best friend. In that stage I also followed a lot of catholic and orthodox blogs so I would be surrounded with that content as much as possible. Kind of like how if you’re trying to learn a language you need to immerse yourself in it I guess?

In my pinned post I have a lot of resources that were useful to me linked near the bottom :)

I highly suggest getting a Bible or AT LEAST downloading a good Bible app. Multiple actually. Or listen to something like the Bible in a Year podcast by Fr. Mike Schmitz. I have a study Bible with a lot of footnotes which is GREAT if you love knowing about translations, original texts, and historical context, but not as great if you just want to read the story of salvation itself.

Now you can be the most knowledgeable person on a religion, knowing all the history and all the doctrine, but if you don’t have a relationship with God it means absolutely nothing. The most important thing is to pray. You can’t have a relationship with God if you do not pray. Ask for guidance, ask for assistance in becoming more virtuous, pray for others, just talk to God about anything.

Personally I bought myself a nice rosary once I started seriously considering Catholicism and started to pray using that, but there are countless ways to pray.

The ways that work best for me are lectio divina and the rosary. I can never seem to finish novenas, but those are also nice, and listening to hymns and chant helps me connect to God a lot! ALSO learning about church history and the various saints throughout it. Again, you might be different, so just find what works for you!

LASTLY.

IT’S NOT WEIRD AT ALL TO CONVERT AS AN ADULT!!!!! Speaking for Christianity, that is. For something like Judaism it would probably be a bit stranger, especially since Judaism is so heavily linked to a specific culture and ethnicity.

Christianity however is very open to adult converts. That’s how it got started in the first place. There are countless saints who converted later in life, so please please don’t feel weird about it. The Church is probably the most friendly to converts out of all religions. Here’s an article on the Catholic conversion process for adults!

TLDR:

Ask questions, learn, pray, learn some more, pray even more, go find an RCIA program so you can get catechized and baptized. LOVE YOU <3

[mcnuggyy]

hi i'm applying to art center, it's my dream school. Your link to black at accd helped me take off the rose tinted glasses & understand its reputation doesnt mean it's perfect. I still want to go though...Do you have any tips for how to be a successful student at accd? i know its been a while since u were there, but any scrap of info would be appreciated....

sure thing!!! This might be a bit harder to do during a pandemic but it can still be done through voice chat and discord and stuff! A big thing that really helped me that I wish I had done earlier when I first started was finding some friends I can work with, vent about the same professors too, etc. They’ll be going through the same hardships you will be and that bond is stronger than anything, god the intense work and projects you and your classmates will have to do, it can be hard to go through it alone. So even if you can find someone just to sit silently with while you work, quiet encouragement. It’s a great support system that helped me immensely. Like a study group but with art!

Art school is expensive, TOO expensive imo, so even when a profesor says “BUY THIS SPECIFIC BRAND OR ELSE” still try and find cheaper solutions! Lots of students sell old supplies, I’ve even given my supplies away for free to lower classmates! cause for a lot of classes you will really only end up using those supplies just for that one class and never again, so might as well recycle them and give them to someone else instead of keeping them in your garage forever! (Again this will depend on the pandemic situation but we would have fliers and stuff for people selling their supplies! People would even sell art tablets for 100$ or less!! Great resource!)

Don’t be afraid to ask upper term students questions! We are all going through it, and have had to deal with a lot of crazy professors and projects and shit, so don’t be afraid to reach out! They are full of good tips, advice, resources, etc. And just like Black at ACCD, they won’t be afraid to tell you who to watch out for which I think is super important when it comes to choosing classes. Most people are really kind, we just look tired from the lack of sleep 😔

Talk to people outside of your track/major too!! (NETWORKING!!!) this goes hand in hand with the first tip. The biggest thing that helped me, specifically for the future, is the friends I made, that’s how I got my first few jobs! Because unfortunately In the industry it IS very much about who you know. As for talking with other majors!! You never know when you might need a photographer or graphic designer or they might need an illustrator or character artist!! Like it’s great to be able to say “I know someone” and they can do the same for you! It’s great to build those healthy work relationships and also just meet and hang out with other creatives with unique perspectives! Good for your art AND good for actually getting a job in the future 👌

(this also includes networking with some professors, a lot of them have industry experience they can provide! some are willing to look at ur portfolio and even share your portfolio with recruiters!!!) 

Setting up a good work schedule is super important cause the amount of homework you will get is pretty much impossible to do at most times, then again I speed run college, I took no breaks and finished in 2 years because of poverty. I do NOT recommend this because o suffered from constant burn out, depression, stress, isolation, etc. So make sure your work schedule includes time to eat, sleep, chill out, ya know good mental health stuff!

Might be good to get a therapist. Art center WILL increase your mental health issues drastically. Everyone I know suffered from stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, etc. and are still feeling affects from Art Center to this day. So it might be good to prepare yourself for this, because it does get really bad for a lot of students unfortunately...

As always my inbox and DM’s are always open! If you end up getting a specific professor, or someone you know I might have had to deal with I’m more than happy to talk about my experiences with them! A lot of them have had the same assignments for yearssss. I was in the entertainment track specifically so I had professors like Will Weston, Jeff Smith, Rey Bustos, Gayle Donahue, Bob Kato, Adam Dix, Peter Han, Richard Keyes, Steve Turk, Paul Rogers, Aaron Smith, Mike Humphries, Ricardo Delgado, etc. (some of these u might be familiar with from the BlackatACCD account so yeah I had to deal with a lot of them :/ ) but I was fortunate enough to take some cool queer classes too, and those were some of the few minority professors in the school, they were the best honestly, I recommend taking a class with Rocio Carlos or Gary Kornblau for sure if you get a chance, they are a breathe of fresh air on campus. 

Hope this helps!! sorry for the long post jaja <3

[hellyeahomeland]

“False Friends” | Directed by Keith Gordon, Cinematography by Peter Levy

In case you hadn’t heard, Carrie smoked a few cigarettes this week. The opening of the episode is actually pretty interesting, the conversation with Yevgeny the previous night in the bar ringing in Carrie’s ears. (Carrie isn’t sleeping--again--and we all know that spells trouble for her.)

Carrie is, for the most part, a loner smoker. And a stress smoker. And a rooftop smoker, apparently! Here more than in previous instances where we’ve seen her smoke, the setting--all alone on the roof--visually represents her own headspace. 

She flashes back to the scene we’ve seen several times already this season. This time, however, we finally see Carrie clearly. She speaks, she’s lucid. There is real fear in her expression, but also longing. The reveal of course is that Carrie is on her meds and in her right mind, and she doesn’t want Yevgeny to leave. 

The camera turns to Yevgeny as Carrie’s dragged away. This is a shot we’ve seen already this season but, by the end of the episode, his expression takes on a different meaning. It’s not cold or detached. He doesn’t want to leave her either. 

The repetition of this specific memory and the way it’s morphed over the episodes is remarkably similar to early season one Brody. We all knew the Carrie/Brody parallels this season would be heavy; the show is not only retelling that story with roles reversed but also using many of the storytelling devices they used in season one. 

Then as now, the audience learns along with the characters what actually took place. First we learn that Brody actually did know Nazir; Nazir held him. Then we learn that Brody watched Tom Walker die. Then we learn that Brody is the one who beat Tom Walker to death (or at least he thought he did). The key difference obviously is that Brody was deceiving Carrie. Carrie is deceiving herself (or is she?).

IJLTP. (Any time this show does something with bokeh IJLTP.) (Bokeh is the way a camera lens renders out-of-focus points of light.)

We thought the framing of this particular shot was interesting. There are two blocks of color behind Carrie, orange and white, and her body lies squarely in the center of either, one half on either side. Maybe this was completely accidental, or maybe it’s symbolic and indicative of the way she’s being pulled in different directions. She also remains in the dark--figuratively and literally. In the first episode of the season, Carrie was often framed inside rectangular boundaries, now she’s half-in, half-out. Before, she felt trapped in the car, in her bedroom, in the fenced-in basketball court. Now, she finally gets some freedom (and maybe a dollop of “fresh” air, natch). 

(There is a similar Mad Men shot that Sara thinks about at least weekly that conveyed something similar about Don.) 

Linus Roache’s performance as David Wellington is fairly underrated. It’ll be interesting to see him in a context other than “Elizabeth Keane’s mouthpiece/bodyguard/sounding board/good cop/bad cop.” For example, this passive aggressive grin at new VP Ben Hayes when he makes a similarly passive aggressive comment about Princeton. 

...or this side eye when Ben Hayes suggests firing Saul, a “Keane holdover.” 

Carrie’s comment in the premiere that Mike was not an “alpha” looms large in this scene and throughout the episode. Carrie makes several comments about him finally doing the job the right way or her way. Their differing personalities and management styles are on full display visually here. Carrie towers over him, while Mike sits back, hands folded in his lap. 

Also, as a logistics person, it bothers Gail that Mike has set up his desk so his back is facing the window. With all of that top secret intel on his computer, isn’t having the windows right there a problem? Is this an intentional nod to his incompetence or did the better lighting of his office for the crew win out? (Sara thinks it can be both.)

The Saul/Haqqani scenes this episode were uniformly visually stunning. First, the show continues its use of light to reinforce who knows what. Here Haqqani’s face is cloaked in darkness while light falls across Saul’s face. 

Overall, Saul’s captivity plays out plot-wise obviously much differently this time than in season four. We’re struck as well by how different the mood is. Both men lean or hunch here. They’re tired, they’re old, they’ve done this before.

The slow pan around Jalal while he’s praying to reveal Tasneem is … *chef’s kiss* (and suggests so much her persona of being the ultimate puppet master, waiting around any corner).

More bokeh, more smoking. Smokehing. 

There’s more mirroring between Carrie and Jenna this week, which is probably how Jenna intends to befriend Carrie (“Carrie smokes? I should too!”), but it actually just feeds into Sara’s theory that Jenna is going to “single white female” Carrie. We love the framing here of Carrie, back to camera (and to Jenna), and Jenna lurking behind her. 

And some visual symmetry here. The camera shots of the two of them are often at a distance, speaking to the depth (or lack thereof) of their relationship. Throughout this episode we see a variety of different pairings between characters. The camera choices in these scenes illustrate closeness and proximity, or distance and mistrust.

In season four there were so many references to Saul losing his eyeglasses during the prisoner exchange. If you recall, he takes them off on the tarmac and Carrie picks them up after she convinces him to get up. Later, she returns his glasses to him just as their car is hit by an RPG. So, given that, two things: 

Saul losing his glasses and then getting them back is almost certainly a harbinger of shit to come! 

We absolutely loved the framing of this scene: Haqqani’s hands slowly coming into frame and gingerly placing the glasses back on Saul’s face. We mentioned above how different the mood was this time around with Saul and Haqqani and this gentle act seemed to encompass all of that.

Two old men, some (we, Jalal) would say past their prime, standing alone in the dark. 

And the dark gives way to a new dawn, a new day. We’re about to break out into song! 

But seriously, this was a gorgeously filmed scene. We do wonder how long they were waiting out in the mountains of Morocco for the sun to rise.

The scene between Haqqani and his son Jalal was the standout of the episode. It is such an eerie reflection of the end of “From A to B and Back Again” when Haqqani kills Aayan. That episode and its ending are at this point Homeland lore, which has the added benefit of making what was already a tense scene fucking unbearable. 

We love the use of perspective and shot/reverse shot here.

The parallels with “From A to B…” continue. Then as now, Saul looks on, helpless, wearing a similar outfit but this time with his hands unbound. Then as now, Haqqani makes a spectacle of it all, when he knows others are watching (the Americans via drone in season four, his entire crew in the courtyard now).

The kiss to the forehead. At this point we were about 650% sure Haqqani was about to shoot his son in the head.

And he does pull out the gun. Jalal literally stares down the barrel. 

Instead of killing him, Haqqani just throws him onto the street, which is maybe just as bad if you’re Jalal. The framing here is remarkable. Jalal stands in the center of the frame, back to the camera, ensconced in sunlight. He’s not awash in some heavenly light. On the contrary, it’s almost as if he’s just been spit out of it, cast out of the kingdom. It all seemed vaguely biblical, like a reverse Prodigal Son, though we’re not sure if that fits exactly. If you know, drop us a line!

We’re three episodes into the season, and we’ve gotten an “over Saul’s shoulder” shot in each one. This is now a theme!

Homeland is not a show that uses flashbacks that heavily (other than the aforementioned Brody/Nazir series from season one and when they de-aged Claire Danes by putting her hair in a half ponytail). They’ve been effective thus far, slowly peeling the layer on the onion that is Carrie’s Russian captivity. 

As Yevgeny recounts Carrie’s suicide attempt, we see split-second flashes in her head. At first, the images are blurry.

And just a few seconds later, they come into focus for us as Carrie remembers. All this is obvious enough, but we also think the way that the focus on the images shifts so suddenly and the way the sequences are edited serve to disorient the viewer in the same way Carrie remains disoriented and confused about just what happened during the seven lost months. 

This scene is notable for a few reasons. First, Carrie and Yevgeny remain so physically close. He leans into her. We also love that it’s more than just Carrie’s reaction to what he’s saying. We see Yevgeny’s reaction to her reaction, as well as his emotions in recounting it. He is remarkably free of judgment and shows legitimate, deep caring, possibly love, as he reveals one of Carrie’s darkest moments. 

And while Carrie makes an offhand remark about her relationship with Brody being accessible information in her “file,” the fact is she never talks about him. Like, ever. (Sara maintains Carrie has a mental and possibly physical “Brody box” that remains sealed.) The significance of Carrie opening up to Yevgeny about what is--sorry, folks--the love of her life really can’t be overstated.

All we have to say about this is “ughhhhhhhhhh.” 

We’re three episodes into the season, and we’ve gotten a “Carrie watches Yevgeny walk away” shot in each one. This is now a theme!

We really hope that the blaring red “ABSOLUTELY NO CELL PHONES” sign is a callback to when Brody infamously and inexplicably snuck his cell phone into the situation room in “Beirut Is Back,” allowing him to send a “DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!” text to Nazir just in the nick of time.

IJLTP.

Here is our Reverse Prodigal Son: lost and wondering, his face bloodied, bordering on delirious. 

And here is Tasneem, her beautiful aubergine scarf blowing perfectly in the wind (sorry, Sara forgot to do Things Tasneem Wore This Week, but she thinks this aubergine scarf is beautiful), looking like a goddamn puppet master goddess, coming to save him. And by “save” we mean “control and manipulate.” Saviors really do come in all different flavors on this show. 

[beatriceeagle]

I know its not the tag but I would love for you to talk more about your thoughts on the good place season 3 and the latest season of Bojack. I agree with you completely, I love both of them but didn't find either season emotionally satisfying enough and a little cobbled together. (Although the eulogy ep of Bojack is one of my fav episodes of TV ever probably). ALSO, thoughts on American vandal? Season 1 or 2? Feel free to ignore this, I just think you talk about TV really coherently and well!

I can do this thing!

BoJack

I know I said that BoJack Horseman was showing its age in season 5, but I actually think there were a couple of things going on that made its latest season feel a little less satisfying than the previous three, and neither of them are really directly about how long its been running. For one thing, the characters still mostly aren’t in the same place. That was kind of an interesting dynamic in season 4, but at this point it’s starting to wear. They tried to ameliorate it using Philbert as a way to connect people, which was both smart and a lot of fun, but it still didn’t entirely work, somehow. BoJack, in particular, is kind of always off in his own story, because just about everyone in his life is keeping him at arm’s length.

Which ties into the other thing: This was a season about BoJack’s lonely toxicity, which is a story we’ve seen before, and after a certain point, a story that just gets very draining to watch. I remember, after season three, reading an interview with Raphael Bob-Waksberg where he said that the show needed to move on from the constant cycle of BoJack being self-loathing and destructive, hitting rock bottom, and realizing the need for improvement. That at a certain point, you had to say, okay, we’ve brought this character to his lowest point, and now it’s time to do something different.

And season 4 really was something different! As dark as it could be, season 4 was also a deeply healing season. BoJack fucks up, but he fucks up, you know? He is on an upward trajectory. And although the main cast is off in their own worlds, the addition of Hollyhock and Beatrice means that there is a very real sense of connection.

Whereas season 5 is the story of a backslide, and of isolation. And while I can appreciate that any story about recovery is going to necessarily include stories about relapse, this particular relapse was a season long and like five orders of magnitude darker than the immediately previous season. We’ve had three seasons of BoJack fucking up and doing nothing about it, and only one season of BoJack really learning. And so instead of feeling like, “Oh, okay, we’re still telling a story about a recovery, but we’re in the backslide part,” it feels like, “Oh, okay, this is fucking BoJack being BoJack, round five.”

I think that in the very admirable desire to reckon with BoJack’s previous actions on the show – which I do think is something that had to be done in some manner – Bob-Waksberg just lost sight a little bit of the larger picture of “doing something different.” Because fundamentally, I don’t believe that BoJack Horseman is a show that believes we’re stuck in an endless cycle of misery and toxicity. For all that it’s very tapped into the voice in our heads telling us that the world will always be like this, I don’t believe it’s a show that thinks we can’t change.

All of which is to say that I’m hopeful about season 6!

The Good Place

My central problem with season 3 of The Good Place is that it just got swallowed by Eleanor/Chidi. I don’t have a problem with Eleanor/Chidi in principle, but a) this is the third time we’ve done this plotline, and I’m not enough of a shipper that that works for me, and b) the particular way that Eleanor/Chidi is being handled is indicative of some broader problems in the show.

To start with, let’s talk about the fact that this is the third time we’ve done the Eleanor/Chidi plotline. At least one person’s mind has been wiped after every time, so we’re going to get some version of a fourth plotline, too. It’s too much. It needs to stop. 

There’s something inherently disconcerting about the way that The Good Place wipes its characters’ memories at the end of every season. It makes it hard to track character progression, and it can destroy really lovely dynamics in ways that are hard to get back. (I’m still in mourning for the Janet/Jason of season 1.) But it’s also weirdly freeing. In theory, it allows them to reinvent everything anew, anytime they want. They can have a season where Eleanor and Chidi are platonic partners in crime, and a season where they’re soulmates. They can have a season where Eleanor/Tahani actually happens, instead of just getting teased all the time. They could have a season where Chidi and Jason’s friendship takes a central focus, and wouldn’t that be amazing? They can have a season where no one hooks up at all, but they all still make each other better.

But despite having clear evidence of how interesting that could be – season 2′s “Dance, Dance, Resolution” – they’re really determined to quickly force everyone back onto the correct path, every time. And because they keep retelling this same story over and over, it forces them to construct a narrative that this story is preordained or destined, when we actually know for a fact that although these people always make each other better, there are plenty of timelines in which they do it very differently.

And although Eleanor/Chidi is the most obvious case of repetition, it’s really only a symptom of the larger problem. Janet/Jason has started to feel kind of tired – I loved watching those characters fall in love, but I had no need to watch them do whatever it was they were doing in season three – and frankly, I’m ready to see these people start interacting in some different configurations.  Because when I say that Eleanor/Chidi swallowed the back half of season three, I’m not really exaggerating. When was the last time that Eleanor had a plot with Jason? With Tahani? With Janet? When was the last time that Chidi had a meaningful plot with anyone who wasn’t Eleanor? There are only six people in this cast. It should not be that hard to develop their individual dynamics, but Chidi gets maybe one scene with Tahani a season, and Jason never seems to break out of the the Tahani-Janet bubble. These people all used to get plots with each other, but by season three, we’re spending so much time rebuilding Eleanor/Chidi and the Janet/Jason/Tahani dynamic and sending Michael and Janet off to do plot stuff, that the little time leftover generally has to go to ethical discussions.

It’s just a little disappointing. I was talking in an earlier ask about shows that are beholden to the Way Things Are Going to Be, and The Good Place is beset by that both in and out of universe – characters keep finding out who they were in love with in previous timelines and then realizing that they’re in love with them. It’s happened to Eleanor twice! The Good Place is a show that could be doing literally anything, and it’s using that power to put the same six characters through the same events over and over and over. We’re even back in the old neighborhood now.

This is all a very longwinded way of saying that, for a show that started out feeling breathtakingly daring, The Good Place has come to feel somewhat formulaic. It’s beholden both to its own specific formulas – the endless cycles of memory loss and relearning – and to Mike Schur’s preferred formulas of low-key epic romance, which Eleanor/Chidi very much fit into.

(My one actual problem with Eleanor and Chidi as a couple is that they’re built up to fit Schur’s Ben/Leslie paradigm of one, true, soul-altering, best-friendship love, without ever having been given the time to grow into that space. They never have more than a season to get to know each other at any one time, and every time they fall in love, there’s an element of someone first telling them that they should be in love. The best thing about Ben/Leslie and Jake/Amy is how specific and lived-in those relationships feel, even as they take on mythic weight within their shows, but Eleanor/Chidi are by necessity talked about way more than they’re lived in, so I have a really hard time connecting to them. Which is a shame, because I’m basically rooting for them. It’s just that despite all the time the show devotes to them, I feel like I’ve never really spent any time with them, as a couple.)

HOWEVER, and let me be very clear about this: I love The Good Place. It remains a perpetual bright spot in my week when it’s airing, which I wish it were doing all the time. Despite running into a bit of a standstill when it comes to the relationship dynamics, it remains wonderfully inventive from a worldbuilding and comedy perspective, it’s absolutely packed with detail and humor, it’s thoughtful and humane and warm, and I do love its ethics. And I love the characters! I’m just hoping that season four will push them to new places. Shake things up. Get back some of that sense of surprise that made season one so magnetic. And there is some reason to believe that it will: Most of the characters survived season three with their memories intact. The moral arc of the season took them from “improving each other” to “improving all others,” which is a huge step, and one that really distinguishes season four’s aim from the aim of all previous seasons. And Simone is there, which can only be great!

American Vandal

I’m not sure I actually have all that much to say about American Vandal except to say that it’s shockingly good and that its cancellation was a crying shame. I think that what made it such a watchable show was that it was such a perfectly executed version of the very thing it was parodying, and it really nailed every detail. There was no exaggeration or mockery, and if there had been, it wouldn’t have been nearly as good. The humor was all about subject matter and scale.

I do remember wondering, in perfect true-crime docuseries fashion, how they were possibly going to pull off a second season, and then they did it. It’s a little broader than season one, a little more bloated -- it lacks the inherent joke that comes from comparing the size of the crime to the intensity of the documentary -- but it’s still just as fun to watch, and genuinely affecting by the end. Some of the performances are fantastic.

[thesportssoundoff]

What Went Wrong: A Belated NFL Black Monday Piece

Joey

Jan 11th

Black Monday in the NFL came and went and despite my best inclinations to write a somethin', I had a nothin' to offer. In many ways, most of the firings were easy enough to figure out. Guys who probably deserved to get canned did get canned. Teams that felt the pressure to save their fanbases made the moves to do so. All in all, it was kind of an expected grouping of firings when you add in the in season removals of Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy and Cleveland coach Hue Jackson. So since it's been a while, I wanted to approach this from a different perspective. Here I want to talk about the eight coaching jobs, what went wrong (on a grander level) and what their replacements need to do to avoid suffering a similar fate. Hold onto ya butts, folks:

Cleveland Hue Jackson

What Went Wrong: Everything

Seriously. Cleveland hired Hue Jackson under the philosophy of taking a long and painful route to relevancy, amassing draft picks, essentially tanking without admitting and hoping that Hue Jackson could in theory keep the organization stable enough until the time came. Depending on who you ask, Cody Kessler was either Hue's idea or some massive analytics based gamble that backfired on Sashi Brown and company, made worse by Cleveland trading BACK in the draft and away from the likes of Carson Wentz. At the end of the day, the plan had some merit to it (as seen by the successes of Sam Heinke and the 76ers eventually) but like most plans that require patience, that patience eventually runs out pretty quickly. It doesn't help that giving Hue Jackson, a guy who was fired from the Raiders after an 8-8 season where undisciplined penalty laden football marred progress, a young team and expecting him to get them up to speed to become eventual contenders was probably a bad idea overall. The arrival of former Kansas City Chiefs GM John Dorsey meant that the patience was out and Hue needed to produce something, especially when hiring a proven OC in Todd Haley and #1 overall pick Baker Mayfield. This job was going to be lost eventually but when Baker looked flat and the team continued to play this broken level of uninspired play, the plug was pulled. Everything that could've gone wrong in Cleveland did go wrong under the watchful eye of Hue Jackson and while I don't fault a guy for taking a gig, immediately jumping over to Marvin Lewis and the Bengals as an assistant probably did little to squash the belief that Jackson was a weasel of sorts who had no problem looking out for #1 at the expense of everyone else. It would take a novel to state everything what went wrong from 2016 to 2018 but just know that at the end of the day, nobody stood up for Hue Jackson when he was ousted and the team took off when he was shown the door.

Enter: Freddie Kitchens

Kitchens' ascent from lowly RBs coach to offensive coordinator to head coach from Jan of 2018 to Jan of 2019 is shit straight out of Narcos. In many ways, I wonder if the thought process went a bit like this: Cleveland had a bunch of candidates in mind with the thought process being that they could find the best offensive mind for their bright generational QB. At the same time, teams began calling for Kitchens to potentially interview for either their head coaching gig or their offensive coordinator position. Cleveland wants to keep Kitchens, other teams want Kitchens and Cleveland probably wants a head coach who will keep Kitchens but can't find him. Cleveland looked around, realized the guy they wanted was probably  in house already and they didn't want to lose him SO Kitchens gets to be the head coach. Kitchens is actually surprisingly well traveled; a coach under the likes of Bill Parcells, Ken Whisenhunt and Bruce Arians. Kitchens and Mayfield created some beautiful magic together and so I imagine continuity (as well as a supremely improved offense) pushed Kitchens over the other candidates. There are three factors at play here; 1) Cleveland has expectations now. The 5-3 end of the year plus the young star QB who should only improve makes a lot of people believe you can win. Kitchens will probably not be afforded two abysmal years to figure it out the way that Hue Jackson was. 2) Kitchens has just 8 games worth of play calling experience to his name which means he's got a lot to learn in a short period of time. 3) Kitchens just canned Gregg Williams which means he'll need a new defensive guru of sorts to handle that side of the field.

Green Bay Packers Mike McCarthy

What Went Wrong: #12

Mike McCarthy deserves a lot of credit for what he did in Green Bay from milking the final years of elite play out of Brett Favre and then grooming Aaron Rodgers into one of the best QBs to ever play the game. I think people forget the job McCarthy and company did when the Packers lost seemingly half of their team to injuries and still won the Super Bowl in 2011 or how he got into the playoffs relying on Matt Flynn in 2013 when Rodgers got hurt. All things go sour eventually though and the whispers that Rodgers was carrying McCarthy year in and year out got a bit too loud. Those whispers combined with the body language yelling whenever Rodgers and McCarthy seemed to have something go wrong became a bit too much and so McCarthy's reign in Green Bay ended unceremoniously after a loss to lowly Arizona. McCarthy might just be a case of "How can I miss you if you won't go away?" and about how everybody in sports eventually gets tired of one another. Aaron Rodgers is a veteran QB who probably did plenty of checks and audibles at the LOS which in turn pissed McCarthy off and conversely I'm sure McCarthy's outdated gameplans and suspect development of talent over the past 2-3 years drove Rodgers crazy. McCarthy's outdated gameplans cost him in the end, especially when it became readily apparent that Rodgers' decline (be it due to age or injuries) made him incapable of overcoming those woes.

Enter: Matt LaFleur

Matt LaFleur's hiring is simple enough I suppose. Aaron Rodgers is in the twilight of an amazing career and "offensive guru" is a hot to trot catch all term. LaFleur cut his teeth under Kyle Shanahan and then moved onto Sean McVay before leaving for the Titans to call his own offense. It was an up and down run for him as the playcaller, probably hurt in no small part by the injuries to Marcus Mariota. LaFleur is a gamble on upside with a somewhat impatient QB who is battling the aging curve. It's a risky move but if LaFleur can get the best out of Rodgers before Father Time takes over? It just might be worth.

Denver Broncos Vance Joseph

What Went Wrong: 50% John Elway 50% In Game Management

Vance Joseph being tabbed to replace the retiring Gary Kubiak always felt like a somewhat shaky hire. Vance Joseph in my estimation was a totally qualified hire but perhaps not quite the hire needed for this specific team. John Elway's teams were mostly veteran squads headed up by veteran head coaches like John Fox and Gary Kubiak. Vance Joseph was a rookie head coach who had proven himself to be an adept and solid defensive coordinator riiiight when hiring THOSE kind of guys was going out of fashion. Elway hired a young coach and then gave him an aging offensive core, opening the pocket books to bring in veteran free agent talent that hasn't quite worked out. Of course we'd be here all day talking about the QB situation from sticking with Trevor Semian a bit too long to the Paxton Lynch draft spot (want to have a fun alternate history for a minute? Picture a world where the Cowboys actually successfully outbid Denver to get Paxton Lynch and Denver has to take another QB later on) to the Case Keenum gamble. Denver in a way tried to replicate the Cowboys formula; run the ball a lot, have a ball control QB and rely on a tremendous defense. It just didn't work as the offense struggled under Joseph (in large part due to the RBs not being Zeke, the QB not being Dak, the OL not being peak Dallas and Demariyus Thomas falling off) and his inability to figure out what he wanted out of Case Keenum throughout the season has left him out of a job and Denver in need of a new QB. Joseph was dealt a bad hand from Elway but in game management was such a glaring problem for Denver, often made worse by their team absolutely not showing up in prime time games. Vance Joseph was the wrong guy for this job and then proceeded to remind people of that every single time he made a bad decision late in games.

Enter: Vic Fangio

First the obvious; Vic Fangio has paid his dues, done his part and at 60 years old, it's very much now or never for an NFL lifer. I have zero qualms with Denver hiring him. I just hope he's being hired because he's the guy they want and not because they had this compulsion to keep Gary Kubiak in some sort of capacity. If Vic Fangio edged out Mike Munchak because one was fine with Kubiak and the other wasn't then it's a bad call. If that's the case then just hire Kubiak to be your head coach again because this sort of helicopter head coaching is sort of unnecessary. Fangio and Kubiak make for a very old duo but also a very credible couple of coaches at the top of the helm. If they manage to get Ed Donatell to become the defensive coordinator then you're now talking about three qualified long term NFL lifers running a young roster.  It's a gutsy move by Elway at a time where young hip offensive minded coaches are all the rage. Hopefully it works out better than Vance Joseph did.

New York Jets Todd Bowles

What Went Wrong: Bad drafting + bad optics

I think Todd Bowles is somewhat of an overmaligned figure in Jets land. After the Rex Ryan Era, the more low key Bowles was probably more of an overreaction to not having to deal with Ryan's madness anymore. Todd had tremendous success in his first season and rallied the Jets to a 10-6 record before the wheels fell apart. In a large part, the talent fell apart around Bowles and the QB situation never truly situated itself with veterans not being good enough and the Jets spending actual draft capital on guys like Christian Hackenberg and Bryce Petty. Bad draft picks led to bad talent on the field which in turn led to the optics. The Jets in 2016 and 2017 seemed to end every year with people wondering about why the Jets looked so disinterested and broken under Bowles, complete with plenty of shots of Woody Johnson's stadium looking emptier and emptier as the year went on. Bowles entered 2018 as basically a dead man walking with a rookie QB and a brand new fill in offensive coordinator. Bowles did about as well as he could but by week 10 or so, the writing was on the wall. Bowles' laid back persona compiled with the Jets' lethargic October and November painted the picture of a team that had given up and given in.

Enter: Adam Gase

The Jets candidates for the most part all have a similar theme. They're offensive minded QB whisperers; guys like Jim Caldwell, Mike McCarthy, Kliff Kingsbury, Adam Gase and Todd Monken. Some are old, some are young, some are retreads and some are college guys (Matt Rhule and the aforementioned Kingsbury). Kris Richard, Dallas DB coach and playcaller, is the only defensive guy to this point who seems to have a shot. The Jets want somebody who a) fits the New York atmosphere that for some reason seems to be harder to figure out than any other spotlight seemingly and b) a coach who can connect with young talented arm Sam Darnold. They'll see if Adam Gase is that dude.

Arizona Cardinals Steve Wilks

What Went Wrong: The defensive guy didn't have a good defense

Black Monday brought a lot of very open discussion about the fact that the famed cut down day for coaches featured five African American coaches getting canned. Of the crew, I feel like Wilks is the one where there is a justifiable grudge to be had. Steve Wilks inherited a middle of the road team that embraced a full rebuild when they moved up to grab Sam Darnold and let some of their star defensive players walk. In response, Wilks was given an undermanned team with a broken Sam Bradford and a green Josh Rosen behind him with some sketchy coordinators to keep everything afloat. It didn't work out, the Cardinals were jabroni'd for pretty much the first eight weeks of the season and OC Mike McCoy got canned halfway through the year even if Byron Leftwich wasn't much better. Cardinals star RB David Johnson struggled after a big deal, defensive players were unhappy with just about everything, Josh Rosen looked horrendous for 85% of the snaps he was on the field for and the Cardinals OL was rough in all facets of the game. I believe Wilks deserved another year (only because of what was given to him at the onset) but if you get the 1st overall pick, you clearly did nothing right during the season. I bet if Wilks' defense wasn't the worst in the league and he fielded a competitive defense while going through rookie QB growing pains then I'd feel pretty confident about his chances to stick around. As it is, he's gone and per the GM, it boiled down to a disagreement on what Wilks considered to be the plan of attack for 2019. Still how do you allow the GM who put this situation together AND chose the head coach to pick the next guy? That's some utter tripe.

Enter: Kliff Kingsbury

We can begin with the obvious reasons for why this move doesn't make any sense. For starters, Kingsbury was just an average head coach at Texas Tech. You can give me plenty of excuses for that record of 35-40 ranging from "It's hard to recruit in Texas when you're not the top school" or "The defenses were bad!" but the record speaks for itself and isn't his job to a) figure out recruiting and b) find a way to fix your defense? I mean Mike Leach and Tommy Tuberville both won more games than Kingsbury at Texas Tech. The question is whether Kingsbury can find a way to get Josh Rosen back to UCLA levels and still somehow win at the NFL level despite his lack of success at the collegiate level.  The Cardinals weren't the only team willing to take the plunge obviously but they'll be the ones who get laughed at if this doesn't work.

(Also real quick let's take a second to acknowledge either the absurdity of this situation or the honesty of at least one NFL team to embrace the change here. After years of hearing how QBs and OL and WRs were being hampered by collegiate schemes, we now have pro teams hiring college coaches to run their gimmicked offenses at the NFL level because they can't develop QBs or OL anymore at the pro level. Either the NFL has learned its lesson or it's just about given up. Either one is an acceptable choice.)

Cincinnati Bengals Marvin Lewis

What Went Wrong: Everything over time

Kudos to the Bengals organization for their loyalty to Marvin Lewis, likely in no small part due to Marvin rebuilding that franchise and then keeping them stable from the Palmer to the Dalton eras. I have zero doubt that Lewis is a good coach but like Mike McCarthy, eventually you run out of rope and time. It didn't help that Lewis was incapable of stopping the gradual decline from consistent playoff team (lack of success aside) to mediocre team, in no small part due to his inability to replenish the well along the coaching staff. Marvin Lewis was just too old, too stubborn and too incapable to overcome the changing NFL scene.

Enter: ?

The current word is the Bengals are looking at Rams QB coach/passing game coordinator Zac Taylor. Taylor was a disaster as the Dolphins interim OC under Dan Campbell but resurrected his stock as a key hand in the development of Jared Goff as well as his tutoring under Tommy Tuberville in Cincy. Taylor is at least an intriguing hire as a 35 year old passing game guru and, of course, the Bengals could be back on the market for a QB eventually as Andy Dalton enters his age 31 season.

Tampa Bay Dirk Koetter

What Went Wrong: The QB

Lovie Smith and Dirk Koetter ultimately shared the same fate after all. Despite paying Smith a lot of money and giving him the keys to the kingdom, Smith was gone after two seasons and Dirk Koetter was retained by Tampa Bay due to the feeling that 1) they were going to lose him elsewhere and 2) he could get the most out of #1 overall pick Jameis Winston. He couldn't. Winston off the field was a mess and on the field he didn't fare much better either. When you're the QB guru and the star QB has to be benched, you're probably going to get fired. It doesn't help that Koetter and chosen defensive coordinator Mike Smith struggled to field a competent defense for three years.

Enter: Bruce Arians

This...is interesting. Arians is a pretty damn proven and downright solid head coach who has technically won in two different locations (Indianapolis as an interim coach and in Arizona). Arians' health and his declining results in Arizona led to a year in the booth for Bruce but now it seems like he thinks he's ready to handle it again. Arians teams have only finished under .500 once at the pro level and while his success is somewhat overstated recently, there's no doubt that Arians will bring stability and fire to an organization that has felt marred with drama under Koetter.

Miami Dolphins Adam Gase

What Went Wrong: Greg Schiano-itis

It would be far too easy and perhaps even a touch unfair to simply say that Gase's problem is his player-coach marriage to Ryan Tannehill. A coach getting hooked on a QB and believing he can unlock him leads to a lot of firings and Gase may be no different. Gase's bigger problem, at least from my standpoint, is a problem most coaches have in various forms or fashions. I'll use Greg Schiano as an example because he's the one that's more readily apparent to me. Schiano took a bad going nowhere spot in Tampa Bay (Raheem Morris had 3-13 and 4-12 sandwiched around 10-6) and with a young roster, Schiano improved them to 7-9. That improvement combined with what most people consider to be a natural tendency to be a bit of a dick, lead to Schiano getting more egotistical and more aggressive as a coach. The second year everything cratered and Schiano was fired. Adam Gase took over a Miami Dolphins club that had gone through a pretty rough run over Tony Sparano and then interim coach Dan Campbell. Gase started off poorly and then earned some plaudits for cutting offensive linemen mid week after Ryan Tannehill had been pretty much caved in by pass rushers. A winning streak followed and Gase made the playoffs in his rookie year----but that apparently led to Gase becoming more and more of an authoritarian. Players seemed to hate him (There wasn't much love for Adam Gase after his firing with key offensive players past and present openly gloating about his removal) and the owner got tired of Gase seemingly toward the end of the season. That to me strikes me as a coach who got a little too successful early on and struggled when the NFL eventually humbled him as is often the case if you don't have Tom Brady.

Enter: ?

The Dolphins head coaching interview list reads like a true mish mash. Offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains, special teams coach Darren Rizzi, Pats defensive ace Brian Flores and Cowboys play caller/secondary coach Kris Richard seem to be the candidates in the running and so you've got two holdovers, one guy hoping to become a winning member of the Bill B coaching tree and Kris Richard who helped take the Cowboys defense to new heights in 2018. All seem logical----but none seem like any sort of a pattern or a theme is emerging. Maybe that's the best way to go instead of trying to force a fit because you NEED a QB guru.

[madwheelerz]

Who’s Spying?

I believe that something that is decidedly not Vecna has been watching over Mike since before the events of season one even fully kicks off. We don’t see Vecna really start stalking people until season four. We see Mike from some very odd angles far before that. It’s almost like we peer in at him. We don’t do this nearly as often, if at all, with other characters. Even if others are shown under framing that implies stalking. It’s not to the extent that Mike is.                             

(more stalking shots)

So, who do I think is spying? The mind flayer who, for the purpose of this post, I will be referring to as the “shadow”. Mike’s understanding of the shadow is very unsettling under this perspective, but I digress. @boysdontcryboycry​ pointed out that Mike’s name only appears in the second episode summary of a season, if it appears at all and so far it has appeared three times, mysteriously absent in the season three summary. They also noted that his appearance with different groups totaled to seven and all that I could think of was the relationship between seven and demogorgons. There is also the fact that we are introduced to the shadow as the second villain in the series after the Demogorgon.

In season two the main villain is the shadow, and this is the same for season three. In season one all signs are pointing to Vecna and we know in season four that Vecna is the big bad. This to me implies that Mike is opposite of the shadow and that while Willel are off fighting and defeating Vecna, Mike will have to deal with the eldritch monster that might have been spying on him. Additionally, so many important numbers make their first appearance in the Wheeler house: 8:15, the moment Karen calls off the game, 20, which we hear repeated a few times and is what will be needed to win, a campaign that took 2 weeks to plan and stopping breaks the flow. Vecna not being able to continue back-to-back once he’s been foiled.

There’s also 10 hours and two 10s make a 20. We learn that the shadow intends to utilize Will to spy- on what exactly? What is the shadow so interested in that it needs to be close to in order to understand? The shadow is capable of moving across plains so what does it need Will for? Perhaps to spy on Mike? The shadow was content staying in place and being dormant until the soldiers burned it as well. It knows Mike’s name and nobody else’s.

The hivemind tries to grab Mike specifically.

This honestly makes the hub reference that much more ominous. Mike’s sensitivity to Will feeling the supernatural and Will feeling the supernatural specifically when it has to do with Mike. We have to remember that Will might be connected to Vecna, but the shadow is what possessed him and what likely continues to possess him. We learn in season three with more concrete information that the shadow can go dormant and allow the host to do as it pleases.

We also see Mike in some very odd outfits, odd in the color choices. We see him in green in every season, but four. We see him in red in season one, we see him in outfits that seem to have all the colors of the clocks in stranger things, primary colors with a green background, in them. He’s worn every color associated with the upside-down.

I believe he wears blue the most frequently and red the least. Red is the color we see least associated with the Upside-down outside of brief flashes. Yellow is the color that the Upside-down was originally and blue is the color we see the Upside-down in the most.

El

I think Mike created El. Micha(el) and (El)even. Now you might be wondering, ‘if he created her what about her number’? What significance does the number 11 have to Mike? Well, it’s his birthday number. Mike’s birthday is 4/7/1971. 4 + 7 is 11 and even if you include the year and go 4 + 7 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 1 = 29, 2+9 = 11. Another reference to Eleven is the number of days Mike calls her. He calls her for 353 days. All these numbers add to 11 and right after his final call El goes on her hero origin journey.

Also, the meaning of their birth names is reflective. Michael means “gift from god” while Jane means “god is gracious”. They imply something similar. The kindness of a deity. This is also likely why there seems to be a glitch with the Ives family because Jane wasn’t supposed to exist originally instead her history is filling itself out as we go. That would be the kicker, wouldn’t it? All these parallels to Mike and different parental figures in El’s life leading up to this reveal.

There is also the word lifting that Mike does. It makes sense for him to be repeating what he heard from Will and/or Eddie, but for him to tell El that she “can move mountains” and “fly”? Where does that even come from? It’s not like he heard Brenner say it and if he had he definitely wouldn’t be repeating it. He also directly follows it up by telling her that she doesn’t have to do all that and that she just needs to survive.

My guess is that the words are his own and that Brenner and many other figures from El’s past are fabricated in a way by Mike. Afterall, Mike already thought that the lab was a place where the government made weapons due to stuff his father said. He’s probably also heard his father complain about Russians because the Wheeler’s are supposed to be all patriotic. I could see this plotline all coming from Mike as a part of some story that he’s made unconsciously being influenced by the people around him..

We also know how closely coke ties into El’s powers, but the first time we see coke is at the Wheeler house during the first DnD game next to Mike. Later we pan out and see that there is another one for Dustin. In season three we proceed to get an argument between Lucas and Mike regarding “new coke” and how Mike can’t believe that it’s good. In season four we see Karen give one of the cops a coke. Coke must be a pretty big deal in the Wheeler house.

(First time we see coke behind Mike)

There is also Mike’s understanding of El’s powers to consider. This isn’t necessarily about the coma comment because that makes sense. He’s seen El overuse her powers and collapse afterwards, but how did he know B*lly could hurt her in the mind space? Mike also calls their meeting “dumb luck” which is a major red flag because the events are leaning into something very different. El being a parallel to Will, El knowing where Will is, El’s powers in combination could’ve very easily been used to save Will, El appearing in Will’s color to help the boys find Will, and Mike understanding that what El is talking about is literally another world.

There is also something else that I hadn’t considered under this context before, but Mike is the only character we ever see take off his watch and actively lend it to someone else. We only see him lend his watch to El, temporarily. You could say he’s giving her time because he puts it on the same side as the other members of the party have their watches. He wants her to meet him at 3:15 which all together is 9. Upside-down that’s 6.

Someone also pointed out that the role Mike gave to El was the role of a mage, which isn’t actually a role in the 80s. Instead, a mage is a npc monster. Mike identified her this way. Contrary to giving El a npc role, Mike doesn’t actually give Max one instead she decides to identify herself a zoomer, which to quote Mike “doesn’t exist”.

In conclusion my thoughts are that Mike invented El as a way to find Will. He would’ve manipulated space and time in order to do this causing a butterfly effect.

We see in the above picture that one of Mike’s identifiers that they want us to focus on is his watch. Knowing all the references to time travel I find this particularly interesting.

As for the battle Willel will be going after Vecna while Michael will come face-to-face with the shadow. I’m not sure how far this power would extend to and how much protection Mike could offer El if this turns out to be true, but I doubt he would let her go because despite what people want to say – El is a very important person to Mike.

Numbers & Appearances

This is a mini section in relation to the number of times that certain characters appear in the summary. Lucas only appears twice in summary, Mike appears three times -mysteriously missing in season three and only in the second episode-, and Max appears four times, not including her titular episode. The order of that is literally going up 2, 3, 4 without Max’s titular episode and 5 once you include Max’s titular episode. Once again taken from @boysdontcryboycry​ post. Max is on there twice, but I digress. What I think this means is that Lucas will by the thessalhydra and Mike will step in which leads to him getting captured and meeting Max. I believe that the end of episode four and episode five will be the time Mike and Max really meet if this theory comes true.

Mike’s vs the Thessalhydra

Mike will battle thessalhydra. In fact, he will be leading the party against the thessalhydra and Will is going to deliver the final blow, but it will have the consequence of greatly injury or maybe even killing Mike. Will’s painting shows us Mike leading the charge against the creature, but throughout the series we see multiple scenes of creatures that greatly resemble it in Will’s art and a character that looks suspiciously like Mike’s dying at the hands of it. I also believe that the dragon will be from someone being turned.

In accordance with my theory, it’s likely that it will be El who is turned into a thessalhydra. Max isn’t there and all the boys are going to be fighting it meaning that El is, for whatever reason, unavailable. I believe they will save El and it will cost Mike.

There is also the final DnD game where Mike mimics dying after the thessalhydra is defeated and the painting depicting him leading the party against the thessalhydra. I believe he will be lost sometime during the battle against it.

My thought process is that they will be fighting the thessalhydra first. It’s weaker than Vecna as it only requires a fourteen to be completely neutralized, but Vecna requires a twenty in order for the hit to be deemed critical.

So, I think things will go like thessalhydra -> Vecna -> shadow monster in terms of the s5 enemies. This means that what they fight on the hill will be the thessalhydra.

The Therapist

I recall a long while back that someone made a comment about the Hawkin’s High Therapist and her watch necklace. I finally have thoughts about it and what it could mean. The watch itself is shaped almost very key-like as if saying that “mental health is the key” or “mental health is the solution”.

This leads me into the next stage of this theory. We only see the therapist take special interest in Max’s case. We see her call Max out and make sure that they speak. We also see something very peculiar with Max this season. She is wearing a lot of blue. Blue is a color we’ve associated with multiple things, but in particular we’ve associated them with the Upside Down, Mike, and danger.

Mike is very rarely out of blue in season four. He wears his hellfire shirt for a long period of time in the first episode. That shirt has a red face on it and it’s what he almost starts out wearing, but just before that we see him in a pure white top. We see him in pure white top again in the desert. In any case Max is heavily paralleled with Mike throughout the series and for her to be wearing colors that are normally associated with Mike while seeking therapy seems important.

In season four especially when it’s the first time we see Mike invalidate his own emotions and actively doubt his place in the lives of his friends and family. I believe this is meant to be signal that the key to solving things is for Mike to seek mental help. Plus, the green present in each meeting and Hopper the last season referring to Mike as the key with a green key in the background.

X-Men 134 Reference

So, X-Men 134. We see this comic referenced right before Will separates with Dustin. At this point we might not know the full story regarding the reference, but out of curiosity I went to search up the premise of the comic and I found some interesting parallels to the Phoenix, Jean Grey, and Mike.

Both of these characters are apart of the Hellfire Club. This club is noticeably antagonist in the comic, however. I’m not certain if that means that Mike’s feelings regarding the club are more complicated than what we see or if perhaps something else will be going down with the club.

Now Jean Grey and Mike. Jean’s name has the same meaning as El’s birth name, Jane, so I’ll spare you the details, but we already have a play on the similarity of names. Jean is associated with the Phoenix, a powerful cosmic entity. Her connection to the Phoenix lead to a great number of deaths, and resurrections. It’s also said that because the Phoenix force, the entity, felt a kinship with young Jean Grey that it kept a close eye on her.

Who have we been spying on almost from the shadows throughout the series? Mike. We keep seeking him out from behind the stairs, behind bushes, in the dark, and we see El spy on him through the void. It’s rare that we got those stalker shots in the light. I believe that this might be the connection between the shadow creature and Mike.

What I believe is Happening

I think we are quiet literally watching Mike manifest a DnD game in real life. I don’t think he manifested everything, but I do believe that a lot of what’s happening ties back to Mike and his deteriorating mental state. I believe what we are seeing is Mike’s mental state because the focus shifts quite literally depending on what Mike is focused on and what he is trying to do.

In season one he’s desperate to find Will and a girl with the perfect abilities to help them appears. She can find people across different dimensions and all she needs is tons of water plus salt. If they had never gotten the help of the adults and lab it’s possible El might’ve freed Will herself. In season two Mike’s mind is “Will, Will, Will” because he’s worried about how Will is dealing with everything.

I know we complain about Will being sidelined in season three, but who was trying to sideline him exactly? Who was pushing him away? Who was pushing Will to the back of their mind? Mike. Mike was quite literally sidelining Will. In season four we learn that he thinks of himself as just “some nerd” which would explain the sidelining off himself, and he felt like he “lost” Will. Hence both of them are on the sidelines that season.

It would also lend an interesting perspective with the fact that Mike’s feelings are constantly invalidated every season with the idea that “there are more important things” if those important things literally relate back to how he’s feeling and coping.

[alternativewinxcontinuity]

Winx Alt Con Season 02 Recap:

Previously: season 01, Weeks 9.2, 10/11, 12, 13, 14

Week 15: Episodes 212, 213, (partial) 214, 215

With two out of four magical macguffins missing, The Winx convince a few of the older students to help them train after classes. One of the students wants them to focus on thinking outside the square, using what they know from a sideways perspective.

She takes them down to the Magical Reality Chamber and sends them in, telling them to trying finding new ways to combine their powers, every trick they have in their arsenal, is one step further away from defeat.

Plus it's a great way to learn things you didn't know about your abilities.

With the pixies watching from the control room, the older student boots up the MRC.

The Winx are faced with an unusual, and somewhat hostile world, their enemy though, is a single large beast. The girls begin by flinging magic at it, but the monster only grows in size.

They dodge its attacks while they strategize, coming up with an idea that might work. Remembering what they'd been told about magical and physical immunities rarely overlapping, the girls swap in and out, distracting the monster while the build a titan of their own to beat the monster in combat.

Aisha crafts the body's base out of morphix, Flora gives it a skeletal system of wood and vines, adding in some hair just because it happened that way. Stella gives it eyes to see, Tecna and Bloom give it a brain and free will/intuition, and then Musa steps in.

The fairy of music gives the titan the ability to hear and speak, but Musa can also hear discord in their titan's being. She steps up and finds a way to harmonize the various magics, so the titan doesn't fall apart.

Once complete, the titan goes on the offensive and beats the monster soundly, ending the simulation.

The older student runs the simulation applauds them, then asks what they plan to do with their new friend, since the titan hasn't dissolved. Uncertain, the group calls down Faragonda, who takes several moments to be flabbergasted by what the girls have done, creating an artificial, magical life form. (not unheard of, but not typically first year magic, even by accident.)

The titan, being both sentient and sapient, is alive, and none of the fairies want to kill it/her, so Faragonda offers to let the titan stick around and figure out what she wants to do.

(The titan later takes up the name Titania, and can often be seen playing with Kiko and the pixies, or helping Knut maintain the grounds around Alfea.)

 Later in the week, Bloom finds Faragonda and talks to her about the break in at her mother's flower shop several weeks prior. Vanessa has gotten in contact with Bloom because a court date is coming up. Bloom is hoping to get the day off to be with her mother for it. Faragonda allows it, as long as Bloom doesn't go alone.

(Bloom mentions Earth's/California's truancy laws, and Faragonda writes up several 'day passes' for Bloom and the Winx.)

Musa and Tecna decline going, mentioning they've been talking with some people from Magix and the other schools, and have decided to help out with the concert the Magix council wants to host, to celebrate the last of the repairs in the city. (things go a lot faster with magical assistance.)

Aisha volunteers her assistance with the concert, and Bloom wishes them luck. Stella says she would help, but she wants to support Bloom, the girls agree Stella can step in later, and that supporting their friend is important too. Flora chooses to go with Bloom and Stella to Earth. The pixies all choose to stick with their respective fairies.

 On Earth, the trio of fairies spend the day with Vanessa, who is thrilled to meet Flora, a fellow plant lover. The girls are confused to realise Vanessa and Mike (who is also there to support his wife during the trial) can't see the pixies, until Stella gives them 'clarity of vision', an ability she learnt from her mother, who comes from a line of seers.

Random children they pass though, seem to have no trouble seeing the pixies, and the girls file that away to think about later.

 In Magix, the group of students and council members for Magix meet to discuss the concert. During the repairs, the governing body of Magix took the opportunity to upgrade some infrastructure, including an outdoor theatre, and they'd like to open it with a concert to commemorate the lost, and celebrate moving forward.

The group discus some things they'd like to do for the concert, and move their meeting to the new amphitheatre, to get a feel for the space.

Unbeknownst to the group, Stormy has grown bored waiting around for Darkar and Icy to come up with a new plan for finding the pixie village, (since he, apparently, has a plan already in play for Alfea) and has gone out by herself to wreak some havoc.

She stumble across the concert group in Magix, and decides to rain on their parade by summoning up a destructive storm.

At first, the group don't pay much attention to the sudden rain, beyond noting the oddly sudden change in the weather. It's not until it gets intense enough to start pulling signs from their foundations that someone realises the storm is very localised.

By this time, the wind is too much for any of them to fly through, and they can't find the source of the storm, so Musa suggests weather magic, reminding the other fairies of their first lecture with Avalon.

Musa summons a small hand drum, sets a beat and starts dancing, Aisha and Tecna falling into step, with the other Alfea students present joining in soon after. As the weather starts to lose intensity, the witches, heroes and even the council members begin to copy the fairies movements. Soon the storm begins to die down, then fall apart.

With the storm dissipated, Stormy appears before them, and in a fit of rage, hurls a bolt of lighting at the group, but Musa bring her drum up and strikes it, letting loose an unbelievable crash like thunder, causing the lightning to explode on itself midstrike, flinging the Trix back through the sky.

With a snarl she disappears, and everyone turns to Musa, who seems shocked at what she's just done. When asked how she did that, Musa can only shake her head and admit that she doesn't know, that she just felt 'very powerful in that moment.'

Riven, who was there to pilot the Red Fountain students, and had been the first of the heroes to join in, posits that as the fairy of music, maybe she'd been empowered by the 'anti-rain dance' and its accompanying song, since they'd all been acting in concert to the music Musa had provided on the drum. The group agree that's about as likely as any other explanation, and the very grateful council members get the group back on track for the concert, as soon as they put out an alert for Stormy with the local law enforcement.

 On Earth, after the trial wraps up, Mike and Vanessa take the trio of fairies and their pixies out for pizza, and ask the girls how school has been going. They are aware of the siege and Darkar, thanks to phone calls with Bloom, but hearing it in person makes it more real.

Bloom also, hesitantly and for the first time, tells her parents about Daphne and their shared parentage. She begins rambling as she tries to explain, and she just keeps talking trying to get it all out, and then a secret slips out amidst the verbal vomit.

Bloom is scared and confused and worried and lost. Her sense of identity has taken a hit, and between Bloom Peters, Earth girl, and Pyra, lost princess of Domino, she isn't sure who she is any more. Part of her wants to embrace her lost heritage, but part of her is afraid embracing it will mean loosing her Earth identity, her Earth family.

Her parents comfort her immediately, letting her know that no matter what, she will always be part of their family, and that Daphne, ghostly or otherwise, is welcome as well, they won't make her choose.

Flora tells Bloom, that she has a few truths about her: Bloom is a kind person, a great leader, and an artistic soul, but before anything else, she is their friend, she just needs to find something about herself that doesn't change, and start from there, no matter how long it takes, they'll be there while she figures herself out.

Stella agrees completely, pressing herself bodily and magically against Bloom in a hug that lets the fire fairy feel the love and support Stella had for her.

Surrounded by their love, Bloom finds peace within herself, a certainty of self she'd lost somewhere along the way.

Her magic surges and blossoms, and her Charmix materialises.

Which leads to a whole new round of celebration. (after a lengthy explanation of fairy levels and transformations and such, and why this was such a big deal.)

 That night, back at Alfea, the group catches up, and Bloom decides she'll begin writing and drawing a 'memoir' of sorts for her parents, so they can share in the adventures she's had.

In the meantime, the girls talk about the concert for Magix.

Given the reason for the concert, the heads of the schools allow the students to have half days in order to be ready for the weekend, since the Magix council want the concert to take place as soon as possible, to show the Magical Dimension they're back on their feet.

Riven makes an effort to help behind the scenes, as part of his 'I need to unlearn how to be an arsehole' self improvement project. He and Musa discover they get along pretty well, having quite a few things in common, like the fact they both have scholarships to their respective schools.

Musa, having heard the whole story of 'why Riven is the way he is', has helped come up with a few tricks (mostly specific hand signs) so that the group (the Winx and Specialists) can tell Riven he's being an arsehole, without actually being confrontational.

(The most used hand sign is 'run that by me again,' which is for moments when Riven says something super offensive or just outright annoying, and the group want to be sure he knows what he said wrong, and that he meant it. Most of the time it turns out he's just worded something badly and it's come out ruder than he intended. It goes a long way to helping group unity, and they find themselves using the signs for other team members, not just Riven.)

For the closing act, Musa and a few other students, and volunteers from Magix, write a song about the unity between the very different groups.

Stella helps organise the wardrobes, Tecna runs a team in charge of the electronics, and Aisha gets right into helping the dancers, one of whom is Mirta. (Musa has been unanimously voted In Charge of the project as their resident Fairy of Music, but also as the only person who has any experience in setting up a concert from scratch.) Bloom and Flora find places and people to help out amidst the preparations.

 The evening of the concert arrives, all the performers are nervous, they've done the best they could in the time they had, and they all plan to give it their all.

Musa has an additional reason to be nervous however, she's invited her father to come watch the performance. Musa is trying to show her father how much music means to her, not just because of her mother, but because music is who she is.

When the concert starts though, Musa and the other performers set their worries aside so they can give their best possible performances.

The show gets off to a great starts, all the acts go flawlessly, but as the evening progresses, dark clouds begin to gather over head, and thunder rumbles across the sky. When Musa steps on stage during the later half of the concert, a bolt of lightning strikes the stage, causing several of the lights and speakers to explode. Musa is flung across the stage, and in the crowd, her friends are scared, but the fairy of music gets back up quickly.

From the darkness overhead, Stormy descends, her Gloomix glowing an unusually bright, and menacing red.

Stormy calls Musa out for what happened a few days prior, saying that how ever Musa managed to fight her off, it won't happen again. Amongst the crowd, in strategic locations for just this scenario, fairies, witches and wizards bring up shields to protect the crowd. With the number of civilians in the area, there aren't a lot of people free to combat Stormy. Musa loudly declares that she beat Stormy before, and she can do it again.

Stormy proceeds to trounce her for several minutes before Riven manages to get close enough to Mirta to call out a plan to her. Mirta smirks and casts illusions all throughout the crowd, lyrics and the music for their concert's final song.

The Winx, and the members of the concert who were there for the last confrontation, realise what Riven is planning, and start singing, making music with hands and feet and instruments, and focusing on Musa. As the rest of the crowd looks at the music makers and the lyrics in confusion, Riven sprints through the masses, calling out for people to sing, that Musa if the Fairy of Music.

An older man vaults onto the stage and settles himself down in front of the piano, joining the song. At the back of the crown, a young woman with a long, pale blonde ponytail summons a small orchestra of instruments and helps out as well. (spoiler alert, it's Galatea.)

Musa feels the power swelling up inside her, and quickly turns the tide of battle.

Stormy is enraged as she is beaten back again, by the fairy, and attempts to summon a powerful lightning elemental.

On stage the man at the piano calls out in fear for Musa, who turns to him and asks for him to trust her, because this is who she is.

They share a moment as he agrees, and Musa feels like she's pushed through an obstacle she didn't even realise she was trying to overcome. A bright light flares on her chest and around her waist as her Charmix finally manifests, multiplying her powers even further.

She wraps Stormy in a bubble of percussive force, the elemental she was attempting to call falls to pieces, and the witch's ears start to bleed, her screams swallowed up by Musa's unrelenting display of power.

With no other recourse, Stormy teleports out.

The crowd cheers, and despite the near disaster, the show goes on, with even more energy than before.

(At Alfea, the students who stayed at the school and watched the concert on tv all break out into cheers as well. In the Headmistress's office, Faragonda and Griselda share a look and break out their celebratory alcohol for a single victory shot each... before writing up a pardon for Musa for classes since the girl will be recovering from her power boost for a few days. (The more a fairy boosts her powers above her normal level, the longer she has to sleep it off.))

Musa rides the high until the last song, which everyone sings along to now that they know the words. Musa has just enough time after the final curtain call to talk to her dad (the man at the piano) before she passes out.

Musa's dad sees his daughter and her friends back to Alfea, before he returns home to Melody.