#They only ever finally find him when Pizza Sim occurs

[anneapocalypse]

RvB 16.04

Episodes continue to be right in the ten minute range, about the same as last season, so if Joe’s journal still holds true, we can probably expect some pretty long eps in the back half of the season.

I really enjoyed this one. I’m especially thrilled that I was right about Tucker and Kaikaina and the stable time loop! :D My extra-convoluted sub-theory didn’t pan out, but Tucker did indeed cockblock himself and I’ll take it.

Joe’s Tucker writing has been hit or miss, but his Kaikaina writing has been about 95% slam dunk, and I am absolutely loving her presence this season, with so much personality and even character development. It was very cool to hear why she decided to take a break from the music festival business for a while, and to see her and Tucker share a relatable moment of wishing things could just be simple again. I really loved that.

I also couldn’t be happier that everything between Tucker and Kai this episode supports the way I have long seen Tucker in Blood Gulch: young and a little insecure, a little overeager to prove himself and be liked, and underneath all his swagger, a little nervous. I love that he says, “I’m basically the new Church.” Tucker thought Church was cool! He saw Church as someone to aspire to!

And he bungled what was possibly his first attempt at having sex, because he got nervous that he was being watched! “Thanks for the... tip” might be the greatest pun in RvB history. Also, “You wanted a slice!” because slice... pizza... heh... get it... both of the Grifs want a slice... yep.

We also learned that Tucker’s mother is dead, which gave me a sad.

And Tucker is now also a teamkiller, which is about par for the course for Blue Team and time travel.

(Incidentally, it’s not RT’s fault but god the shoulder emblems are ugly. At least present!Tucker actually looks teal again in Blood Gulch.)

Sarge’s cavernous lack of self-awareness is alive and well, as it should be. This episode seems to confirm that the battle of Broken Ridge was in fact a Red vs. Blue battle, not a Human vs. Covenant battle. So Sarge managed to get himself a demotion in a sim trooper battle. That’s... fairly impressive.

I’m liking the Grif and Doc interactions a lot. Poor Grif deserves all the pizza. And hey, Doc managed to save Grif from his own grenade, meaning that Doc has technically saved another life!

Which brings me to... have Grif and Doc just traveled in time, or have they hopped universes? Because for pizza to never exist in their universe, someone would’ve had to go back and change the past, and everything points to that being impossible due to the Law of Stable Time Loops. So the only explanation is they accidentally jumped to another universe where pizza was never invented. Which certainly does complicate this storyline further!

Oh, and we’ve now learned that Grif was in college and dropped out right before he enlisted. There’s Word of God from Geoff that Grif was drafted, though I’m not sure if that’s ever confirmed in canon material (the word “draft” doesn’t show up at all in a roostertooths search, and it’s not in the book either; I checked). It’s not necessarily incompatible with this new information, though. Being enrolled in college can get you a deferment from the draft in some cases, so it’s possible Grif dropped out knowing he would have to enlist if he quit school. Maybe he had a reason to think the military couldn’t be worse than his final exams. 

And well, thanks Doc for lampshading the problem with a time travel plot I guess. You all know how I feel about that lampshading thing when it’s to the effect of just highlighting narrative issues instead of solving them. At least Grif’s response is in-character for him. It’s other characters I have questions about.

Speaking of which, remember Tucker’s mom? His exact words were: “Before she died, my mama always said, ‘You can’t unwind the clock.’ Wait ‘til she sees my time machine!” What if Tucker’s planning on going back to see his mother? What if he’s planning to try and save his mother?

Ouch.

And therein, I think, we’ve found the real reason Joe felt it necessary to get Carolina offscreen. There is no character on this show with more personal regrets, more things she wishes she had done differently, more people she feels personally responsible for not saving. (And don’t tell me “Wash.” Wash might have the same number of dead friends but Wash has never felt the kind of personal responsibility and shouldered the kind of blame for his past that Carolina does.) You hand a time machine with seemingly unlimited power to Carolina and what will she do? Go back and try to save the rest of the Freelancers? Try to warn the ones Temple killed? Try to save her mother, for crying out loud? You can’t tell me none of that would at least occur to her.

With the Blood Gulch characters, and even with Wash, it’s much easier to play off the serious implications of things for laughs. With Carolina it’s always more difficult to do that. 

But damn it, she’s part of the main cast now and she has been for years and I wish the writers would do the work of finding a way to integrate her into their stories successfully from the start, rather than just writing her out for half the plot because it’s too much work and they can’t be bothered.

That part really burns my bacon, to be honest.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy this episode and I look forward to seeing where we go next.