#anyways i love the original episode but the one line about ford running gets me every time | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mellicose · 5 years ago

Text

Doctor ... WTF?

An impassioned rant about the steady decline of Doctor Who, the trajectory of the Thirteenth Doctor, and the righteous indignation after The Timeless Children, not only as a Whovian, but as a woman-

I love how certain people are spinning The Timeless Children as being good, yet the BBC has released (2)TWO statements basically telling fans the following:

“Doctor Who is a beloved long-running series and we understand that some people will feel attached to a particular idea they have of the Doctor, or that they enjoy certain aspects of the programme more than others. Opinions are strong and this is indicative of the imaginative hold that Doctor Who has – that so many people engage with it on so many different levels.

We wholeheartedly support the creative freedom of the writers and we feel that creating an origin story is a staple of science fiction writing. What was written does not alter the flow of stories from William Hartnell’s brilliant Doctor onwards – it just adds new layers and possibilities to this ongoing saga.”

Creative freedom, huh? Ask Joe Hill about it. Or Gaiman. The writers, including Chibnall, are only free to do what the Beeb and the other show investors tell them.

They go on:

“We have also received many positive reactions to the episode’s cliff-hanger. There are still a lot of questions to be answered, and we hope that you will come back to join us and see what happens, but we appreciate that it’s impossible to please all of our viewers all of the time and your feedback has been raised with the programme’s Executive Producer."

Uglylaughing.gif

There is a huge, monumental difference between 'not being able to please everyone all at the same time' and basically making a whole fandom, New and Classic, young and old, come together with the same level of disgust and disappointment.

I also find the people arguing "Canon? What canon?" about the Doctor now being the Lord and Savior of the Shining World of the Seven Systems to be foolish at best, and disingenuous at worst.

No canon?? So what have I been steeping myself in for years - a vague approximation of a tale? Please. Of course, writers have embellished and alluded, but tampering with the unspoken but well-known 'no touch' rule about the Doctor's origin is ... well, it's canon, in and of itself...

...which Chibnall completely wrecked, and I can't imagine why. Hubris? By all accounts, he was a fan. I thought Moffat was a dick for bringing back Gallifrey, but now, to me, my disappointment then vs now is like comparing a fart to a shitstorm.

Please excuse the scatological references, but I'm using it deliberately. It is a swirling turd, which I and many others wish we could flush down and forget forever.

In another RadioTimes article - which basically is the BBC - amongst the usual apologetics, Huw Fullerton drops this little gem:

“The glory days of David Tennant et al were in a different TV landscape, and if the Tenth Doctor touched down now it seems unlikely he’d command anything close to the ratings he did over a decade ago.”

Yeah, you can all take a break to have a hearty laugh. Or throw up. Whichever. Did they just hint that, basically, the incarnation of the Doctor who continues to get as much love (if not more) than Four, who still consistently gets thousands of butts in seats in conventions worldwide, and has made the BBC hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling in merchandising “wouldn’t command the ratings he did in 2008?”

As Gary Buechler of Nerdrotic said in his response to this article: “Actually, if David Tennant had been given as many chances as Jodie Whittaker, it would’ve had Game of Thrones-level ratings.”

And I agree. Not because I’m a Tenth Doctor stan, but because it’s just ... categorically true. His seasons consistently got average rating of 7.5 to 8 million viewers - and this in a time before BBCiPlayer, so 7-day catch up ratings meant nothing. It was butts on sofas then, which, to me, speaks of a massive, sustained interest.

But Huw goes on to say that such things mean nothing. And that the huge, telling sink in both overnight and 7-day ratings between the 11th and 12th seasons, and the dismal 4.69m 7 day ratings for The Timeless Children - the lowest for a NewWho finale since its reboot - shouldn’t be taken as a loss of interest from the fandom.

Then, pray tell goodman, what does it mean? Does it mean that fans are following the Thirteenth Doctor’s adventures in spirit? Ratings are tanking. Outside of the precious few who blindly tweet and write articles about the show solely based on its now female protagonist, people are notoriously furious, especially after the execrable season finale.

Yet BBC’s Piers Wenger, who once produced the show, says “I don’t think it’s been in better health, editorially. I think it’s fantastic and I think that, the production values obviously have never been better.”

Right. Okay. So, putting Tom Ford makeup on a pig makes it haute couture, huh? The writing is appalling, and after two excruciatingly painful to watch seasons, the Doctor has failed to appear - all I’ve seen is borderline sociopathic navel gazing from an ‘alien’ wearing a pastel duster.

How dare you besmirch the unfailingly cool reputation of the long coat, Chibnall? Jodie? How??

I will not let someone piss on my head and call it rain ... ‘because it’s a woman.’ Assuming I’ll accept it just adds insult to injury. Who do they think we are, as female fans? I will not cosign garbage to further an agenda that is ultimately damaging one of my favorite things ever, Doctor Who. I agree that politics, and a positive moral, have always been a part of DW, but at it’s best the writing was so good that it only added to the entertainment. Now, the BBC is feeding us all the bitter pill, without the kindness to hide it in a piece of tasty cheese. It gives the impression that they believe we are already so indoctrinated that we no longer need artifice!

Well, not only am I not indoctrinated, but I refuse to ingest.

I refuse to allow people to silence me because the Doctor is now a woman, and so am I. That, I shouldn’t say anything, or complain, because it’s an act of rebellion on womankind, not only in entertainment, but in general. Well, to that I say ... er ... I disavow.

Disavow. Disavow.

And this from a woman who once criticized Peter Davison for saying that casting a woman was “a vital loss of a role model for boys,” taking it as a sexist comment when in truth, it was just a relevant narrative concern about gender-swapping the traditionally male-presenting Time Lord. Just changing a character from male to female doesn’t do anything but demonstrate a tone-deafness about the emotional and physical differences between men and women, which exist whether we want to address them or not. This is why genderswap reboots are terrible. They are trying to further the feminist agenda, while surreptitiously painting traditional, every day femininity as weakness, and something to be avoided at all costs. I reject the modern Hollywood representation of what a ‘strong woman’ is meant to be. I can be clever, yet sensitive enough to comfort a friend when they confide their fears about a cancer relapse. I can be funny, and not at the expense of the man in the room. I can be brave, but not at the expense of my friends. The mind boggles as to why they thought their current tack with the Doctor was going to be any good. The Doctor is a woman, but more importantly, she’s a Timelord. Where are they? Is the alien that we’ve known and loved for the last 60 years truly gone away, and Thirteen is from a whole different timeline? If so, I don’t want to know her.

And it breaks my heart.

Why continue to support a corporation who thinks of me, the fan, as no more than a heartless, thoughtless consumer? A drone? A sheep who has no conscious idea of what I like or need?

I’m done. It’s been two seasons of absolute dreck, with absolutely no sign of a course-correction due to the overwhelmingly negative response. I may be many things, but I’m no masochist - even in the name of love. And Chibnall, knowing that many fans would go back to the classic stories to cleanse ourselves, went back to the beginning and took a giant shit there too.

Oh, the cleverness! the absolute schadenfreude of not only tampering, but rewriting the Doctor’s origins! I suppose that tells me he truly was once a fan. But no longer. Even if it turns out that the Master is as full of crap as Chibnall and it’s all an orchestrated lie, I don’t care anymore. Every inexplicable, terrible thing that happened before has already exhausted my patience with the narrative.

As veteral DW writer and script editor Terrance Dicks said:

If you’re concentrating on putting forth a political message, rather than on doing a really good show, I think there is a danger, maybe, you can do both but it would be hellish difficult, and I think that there’s maybe a danger that the show wouldn’t as be as good as it could or should be, because you’re not looking at the right aims.”

It seems like all that has been lost in time. Big corporations are buying up beloved science fiction properties, and systematically destroying them by trying to mix their politics into the mythos. [see ‘the fandom menace’]

I say, don’t support things that make you unhappy, in the name of nostalgia. That’s how they continue to upset us, while lining their pockets with our hard earned money. Complaining amongst ourselves, writing emails, or making angry Youtube videos no longer works anyway. Now is the time to just ... let it go. No more special edition DVDs, novelizations, or pretty action figures. Hit them in the pocketbook. We will still have fond memories of better times. I will not let them hijack, retcon, and retool them too.

There is a telling paragraph hidden in the depths of the article, which makes my DW fangirl sink:

It’s not as simple as “the ratings are down so Doctor Who will be cancelled,” as for the publicly-funded BBC there’s an interesting question about exactly what ratings are for beyond bragging rights. Obviously they need to make TV that people want to watch – but which people?

Not us, Huw. That’s who.

#dw #doctor who #doctor who season 12 #doctor who season finale #tenth doctor #dw negativity #the timeless children #or as I call it:#the timeless sham #issa no from me dawg #that little comment about dt really made me snort #i really hope he heard about it and had a long knee-slapping laugh #oh dear #the bbc really are deluded #they are truly drinking a koolaid whose potency boggles the mind #like can they see how off the mark they are?#do they have friends?

31 notes · View notes

fly-pow-bye · 5 years ago

Text

ThunderCats Roar! - “Exodus (Parts 1 & 2)”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Victor Courtright

Directed by: George Kaprielian

Well, here it is, whether one likes it or not.

ThunderCats Roar seems to have all the hallmarks of a bad reboot: a silly art style that's just aping OK KO, a completely different and comedic tone for a show that tried to do something serious the last time, and the teaser for this show, which is one of the most disliked videos on YouTube, is just the reboot's showrunner talking about how cool it is.

This show turned out to be a really like it or hate it affair from what I can tell. The people that hate it are really vocal about it, too. What camp do I go in? Let's find out.

The new series begins with some narration. narrator talks about what a lovely planet Thundara is. Even people who aren't familiar with the original is thinking "it's going to explode, it's going to explode, it's going to explode," and sure enough, it does. The narrator doesn't seem to be phased by this at all, saying "everything explodes someday!" That seems insensitive.

We then zoom to the ThunderCats, and I am glad to say that they are wearing the same costumes we know they wear. Thank you.

We get to see all of the characters introduced via trading cards, complete with those animated holographic pictures. Maybe this was meant to be a joke on how merchandised the original was, but it seems more like a way to introduce all of the characters in a way that's cheap to animate. It's not that the rest of the episode fails to do this.

If one freeze frames, they can see they gave all the ThunderCats various RPG stats, and a specific skill. For example, Cheetara has a 20 in dexterity and has skills with "fancy footwork, sick burns, and evasion", and Snarf has 20 in everything and has skills in "all". Wait, what?

The narrator, who described all the ThunderCards via showing his trading card collection, reveals himself to be Jaga. I guess that explains the "everything explodes someday" quip; the original Jaga woke up the kid to see the fireworks show. He's already far more jokey than the original, something that will be common with everyone in this show.

We see one major change this show did to the backstory: Jaga was on the planet when it exploded. I would argue that him not dying while he was getting the ThunderCats to Third Earth does take quite a bit of his emotional weight, and we can't have emotional weight in this silly show. Also taking the weight is this line, describing how he could possibly be looming over the Earth and be so blue.

Jaga: So now I'm a ghost! Hee hee hee! (flies away in a ridiculous fashion)

I feel I should be somewhat insulted by this. I mean, the original Jaga protected the original ThunderCats until his very end. On the other hand, that is Larry Kenney, Lion-O's voice in the original, voicing him. That's cool.

But enough about that, here's the Mutants from Plun-Darr! We can tell these guys are going to be total maroons just by the background of this scene. At least they had the intellect to attach an "e" Post-It note after that poorly made sign. We mostly get to see Slithe, and he's just as much of an 80's villain as he was in the original.

I've seen this show be compared to those abridged series that used to be big in the 2010s. They must not be lying, because all of this happens in the first minute. To do this, they heavily simplify the backstory. No other ships getting blasted, no Jaga dying on screen, no necessary clothing scenes, and no suspension capsules.

One blink, and the ThunderCats already on Third Earth, and the ThunderCats each have their own personalities show in how they react to being stuck on a planet. Panthro's the first to come out, talking about how awesome it is that he can tinker with the scraps on the blasted ship. WilyKit and WilyKat act like this is some sort of amusement park ride, asking if they can do that crash again. Cheetara is the first person to not be happy about this predicament, but only because there's nobody around to see how cool she is. Tygra gets smashed right after saying that they're all the coolest ThunderCat, and he says, "well, at least we're still alive."

Yes, aside from Cheetara, they all seem oddly happy to land in what seems to be a desert. We get maybe three seconds where they get to be sad that the planet they used to live on just exploded, but we don't have time for that. This is a comedy, we can't have "not comedy"!

Oh, and Snarf is there, too! Let's listen to his first line in the show!

Snarf: (animal sounds)

And here's another one!

Snarf: (animal sounds)

Roar Snarf wins. Then again, I only watched one episode of ThunderCats so far, but I can imagine this is an improvement. Maybe PPG 2016 has given me a hatred of animals that talk just because, or maybe I just haven't seen the strength of the original Snarf. Maybe it is a little bit of Column A, and a little bit of Column B.

Oh yeah, there was one other ThunderCat, and the most important one of them all.

Much like the original, Lion-O is the rightful heir of the ThunderCats, and wielder of the Sword of Omens. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to use the sword, which was a plot point in the original. In the original, it was pod-induced amnesia, in this show, it's because this is a silly show, and our protagonist is the biggest maroon of them all. The very first thing he does is use the Sword of Omens to help him get out of the ship, because he couldn't find a way out of it. No, not with the "sight beyond sight" feature on his sword, which isn't even mentioned in this episode, but by cutting a hole in the ship.

Speaking of maroons, Slithe manages to catch up to the ThunderCats, and plans to attack them. Since Jaga was stuck on the home planet, he couldn't be bothered to tell him how to use the sword, but maybe we'll get to see him use it! I mean, how hard is it to use a sword?

Well, he does, but not in the way anyone would want him to. Admittedly, this is probably the best way to use a sword against a flying ship anyway. It only takes out one of the blasters, so Panthro ends up using the remaining exhaust on the ship to blow them away.

At least Lion-O is happy about it, and even Panthro seems to give him praise.

Tygra: He just threw a sword at a spaceship!

Panthro: And did it not totally work?

Cheetara and Tygra: Good point.

I'm pretty sure Panthro's idea to light them with rocket exhaust did the job a lot more, but you do you, Panthro. Lion-O goes out to adventure, because he wants to be the cool leader and this episode really needs some sort of moral for him to learn. Not because he's a little kid that was aged by a suspension capsule, everyone's just like that in this show.

The rest of the ThunderCats go back to working on scraps, when Panthro lifts up a steel bar to reveal a Berbil.

Who are the Berbils? Builders, definitely. Much like the ThunderCats, they still seem to be happy about it. That seems to be the theme of this episode: everyone just seemingly takes all of these problems with a smile, not taking any time to mope about, well, anything. At least they have a good reason for it: building and repairing is exactly what they were built for, as shown by having two scenes of them running in a burning town and seeing the town fully repaired in the span of a minute.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to be bright in other ways, as they then talk to them about this guy named Mumm-Ra, a person so evil that even speaking his name will cause that speaker to get struck by lightning. We get a very much extended scene that lasts longer than the backstory of them getting electrocuted because they can't stop saying his name. They really use this running gag a lot in this scene and throughout this episode; It's almost as if there's some huge payoff in the end. Honestly, I'm not used to those.

Lion-O and Snarf do their best to find where those Mutants flew off to in the series' first montage. He finds a frog, a giant turtle, and unfortunately for him, none of them can talk. He then finds this lizard guy and asks where the Mutants are, only to find out that lizard guy was one of the mutants he was looking for, and their ship is fully repaired outside of losing that one blaster.

After a comedic chase scene that has almost no backgrounds at all, he gets chased to a wall, and Lion-O can't seem to leader his way out of this situation. All Lion-O has is this sword he has no idea how to use, and some dragon cat thing that can't even talk this time...

...who is also a robot with a laser beam? Yup, one of the biggest twists of the series is that they changed Snarf from a Snarf that complains about everything to a robotic Snarf with various weapons at his disposal that can only make cutesy animal sounds. Maybe someday he will ta...maybe I shouldn't tempt fate.

Don't worry, he still has batteries, which appear to be his one weakness and a good excuse to not have him defeat everything so easily. Fairy godparents have Da Rules, Robo-Snarf has what appears to be Lion-O's reluctance to charge him. However, this scene seems to imply that he didn't even know he was a robot until now. We didn't, but why wouldn't he know? It's not like they have the amnesia excuse here.

...Mumm-Ra The Ever Living, who really, really doesn't like loiterers on his front lawn. Don't worry, he will look slightly better in future scenes. This show definitely has a loose style that seems to work against it. Don't worry, the Mutants outright shout "we're still alive!" That reminds me of that Futurama episode where they parodied 80's cartoons, and President Nixon had to sanitize it for the young viewers. Maybe I should think about that a little more.

Commercial Break!

Oh good, shouting text humor, or murmuring text humor as it is here. It only appears here. It feels like a placeholder, and that might actually be the case.

He tries to find his giant blue savior who likes to laugh while thunder surrounds him, yes, they do that joke, and he goes into that savior's awesome pyramid lair. Or, as he puts it, the AWESOOOOOME pyramid lair. They sure seem to love that word; it’s like this show’s fistbump gag.

Unfortunately for Lion-O, his savior turns out to be a really rotten person. Almost literally, as right before Lion-O barged in, he was busy making a pollution monster. He tries to show off his Sword of Omens, complete with the Eye of Thundera in its only time it is pointed out in the episode, and Mumm-Ra counters by showing off his Doom Staff. One of its many abilities is its ability to shock people whenever they say his name correctly, which is that running gag from before. Again, the payoff is coming, I'm sure of it.

Lion-O also totally lets him know about his own awesome home base that would make a great shot for a credits sequence. Okay, they didn't really break the fourth wall that badly in this show.

Panthro: Well, this construction is going about as well as it possibly could.

(Mumm-Ra makes the home base's head explode)

Wah, wah, waaah. But don't worry, the Berbils will be on that. Lion-O, upset over his poor, poor base, decides that he's going to give him a royal spanking.

Needless to say, we never find out what he meant by that, as he gets tied up by a chain that can transform into a much easier to animate ribbon.

Mumm-Ra ends up cannonballing into his teleporting pool right to the home base, and the rest of the ThunderCats try to stop him. Unfortunately, they are at the mercy of his feet. No, seriously.

Mumm-Ra: Oh, how eager you are to get a taste of DE-FEET!

Never thought we'd already get to see Mumm-Ra's feet in about as much detail as this show's art style allows. I do not know to know if anyone wanted that. I sure didn’t.

Cheetara: Ahh, that pun!

See, pointing out the joke makes it funny. I would say this joke was really easy to miss; it took me about three times to figure out what she was even saying.

We get our first fight scene that lasts more than a few seconds. It's as wacky as the art style allows. It actually does the same job those trading cards were trying to do, except we actually get to see them in action. The show's wacky art style actually works well with the style of animation they use here. No slideshow beatdowns, everything is very much animated. I will say that it looks a little better in motion than it does in stills, though if one does not like this art style, I can't imagine the animation would convert them.

Lion-O shows up, hoping he's not too late, only to find out that yes, he's too late. At their lowest moment already, can anything stop Mumm-Ra? I won't give it away here, as I've already revealed one of the biggest twists of the series so far, so I'll just say that we do get a payoff to that one running gag. While it was expected, I was kind of hoping that it would happen.

We're not done with the fighting, and honestly, it's better the second time. The running gag even shows up here in a way that I honestly didn't expect. Also unexpected: the sword transformation scene, one of the most iconic parts of the original, is parodied here in a way that shows that Lion-O still doesn't really know how to use that blasted sword. However, they still manage to win anyway, with Mumm-Ra devolving into his Rookie form and running away to try to gain his powers back.

In the end, we get the "sorry I was such a jerk" scene from Lion-O, and he gets to say the catchphrase. That is, "ThunderCats, hoooo!" I did wonder why they decided to call this show "ThunderCats Roar" when that isn't the catchphrase, but maybe Cartoon Network didn't need a show with the word "ho" in the title, and calling it "ThunderCats Hooo!" would make people think it was "ThunderCats Who?" That title probably wouldn't help with a problem I haven't even mentioned yet: how is this going to appeal to kids that aren't familiar with the original? I guess some silly jokes can distract from that.

How does it stack up?

All in all, this is not a bad episode to start this brand new series. It introduces all of the characters, it has some pretty decent humor, and, most importantly, it knows what its doing. That is something I cannot say for a certain other reboot involving superheroes. The show really is pretty occupied with how silly it is, and it does seem to fast forward through parts that are necessary.

So yeah, I don't hate it, but I didn't exactly love it, either. It's just a silly 80's cartoon parody. I don't really know what to expect out of this show, so I'll put this episode right in the middle and see what happens. Who knows, maybe this episode will be a highlight! I hope not.

Next, cookies.

← n/a 🐈 The Legend of Boggy Ben →

#fpb tcr #thundercats roar #cartoon network #fpb reviews

3 notes · View notes

duhragonball · 5 years ago

Text

Talkin’ ‘Bout Star Wars

I just realized someone might see this title and think it’s a review of Episode IX, which I kind of forgot about. Actually, I was gonna talk about this Count Dooku audiobook I bought, but I guess I only got back into Star Wars books because of Episode IX, so maybe I should back up.

I liked Rise of Skywalker. I went in unsure of what to expect, because a lot of people hated Episode VIII, and I thought it was awesome, so when I saw scathing criticism of IX, I had no idea whether to take that seriously. “Man if you thought VIII was bad, IX’s even worse.” Stuff like that where I didn’t know how to interpret it.

The fundamental problem with IX is that they were going to do a Leia-centric movie and Carrie Fisher died before they could get started. I’m pretty sure this had a lot to do with why Darth Sidious is all over the movie, but maybe he would have been in it regardless. He definitely brings a lot of star power to the movie. He makes it feel more important than it would have been if it was just Kylo Ren horsing around as the main bad guy. And while I enjoyed Carrie Fisher as the hardboiled-but-sensitive General Leia, she never seemed quite as comfortable on-screen in the sequel movies as Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford. I mean, she was in VIII, but she spent most of it in a coma, and Laura Dern seemed to be her understudy. Maybe Carrie was just waiting for the spotlight of Episode IX, and maybe she would have risen to the occasion, but if not, they would have done well to have the Emperor in the same movie, just to carry some of the load.

I’ve seen complaints about how fast-paced Episode IX is, and how ridiculous some of the revelations are, but you know, Episode IV realllly drags for the first half-hour, so I’m happy they made a new one that caters to six-year-old me’s desire to get on with things. As for the whole Rey Palpatine thing, I don’t know, was that any less absurd than whatever fan-theories were floating around in 2016?

I liked Rey’s character arc in this movie, where she goes from having no family to being terrified of her pedigree, to declaring herself to be “Rey Skywalker”. Also, I dig her yellow lightsaber, even if she never got a chance to use it in the movie. In fact, let me get a picture of that up here....

Niiiice. Whenever I look this up, I see all these links to fan theories about what this means, or how it’s a callback to eight other characters from the comics who had yellow lightsabers, but I’m pretty sure she only ended up with this color because they wanted to give her something different and uniquely her own. If she had a blue or green blade, fans would think she took the crystal out of one of Luke’s old lightsabers, but this indicates that she built her own from scratch. Also, Rey even having a lightsaber is probably intended to demonstrate that she still has a mission in the galaxy, even after the First Order and Sidious are defeated.

Anyway, the main issue I have with the movie is that it does play fast and loose sometimes. It felt like they had a plan for Finn and a plan for Poe, but both plans sort of got lost in the shuffle, and we sort of have to take their big victory as newly minted generals to serve as a finish to their character arcs. Leia’s big moment is basically her lying down to take a nap, and I get it, that was probably the best they could do, but still. I read Nein Numb got killed in the movie, and that kind of pisses me off.

Mostly, it just doesn’t hold up as well as “The Last Jedi”. I think part of the reason “Revenge of the Sith” is the most popular prequel movie is because it pays off the thing everyone wanted to see: Anakin becoming Darth Vader. I remember the first time I saw “Attack of the Clones”, and I was kind of surprised to see Anakin kill all the Sand People, like they were turning him evil a little too early, so that had me wondering if he might turn to the dark side in that movie, which sort of distracted me from what was actually happening on the screen. With Episode III, you knew exactly what you were getting, because they couldn’t save any big moments for “Revenge of the Sith, Part 2.” In a similar vein, I think the big thing audiences wanted from the sequel trilogy was to find out whatever happened to Luke, and Episode VIII answered that question completely. It sort of undercut Episode IX, and I guess that was what J.J. Abrams was complaining about.

Darth Sidious’ whole comeback is kind of a problem. I love the character, and it makes sense that he could somehow survive and come back. In the movie, he just quotes his line about “unnatural” abilities and that’s the only explanation we get for how he survived Endor, built his new fleet, and made Snoke. People call it a cop out and they’re not wrong, but he’s the one character who can get away with it. That said, his return raises far more questions than answers, and somehow he’s even stronger than he was before, which raises even further questions. I mean, if he could just go to this secret planet and build a fleet of planet-destroying ships, why did he bother running for public office?

I’m sure there’ll be a novel that tries to tackle some of those issues, but the bigger problem here is that Episode IX made me realize that I missed the more vulnerable Darth Sidious from the prequels. What I love about Episode I is how you’ve got the Sith, looking very similar to the Emperor and Vader in Episode VI, except they don’t have the might of the Empire behind them. In Episode I, Sidious can’t just force choke his subordinates when they displease him, because he needs those guys. Darth Maul can’t send a legion of troops to capture Queen Amidala; he has to do it by himself. They have to be sneakier and trickier than they are in the original trilogy, because they’re still trying to get the Empire set up, and that’s really fascinating to me. Even in the original trilogy, Palpatine is supreme, but still vulnerable. He dissolves the Senate, but only once the Death Star is available as an alternative. He worries that Luke Skywalker “could destroy us.”

In Episode IX, he seems to have no worries at all, I guess because he’s counting on Rey to murder him for whatever essence transfer he was planning. I suppose this was why he finally died to his own Force Lightning, with Rey deflecting it with two lightsabers. Critics ask why he didn’t just stop shooting lightning, but that’s kind of his deal. He kept shooting at Mace Windu, even when it wrecked his face, and he kept shooting when Darth Vader turned on him. I mean, if he stopped shooting lighting at Rey, what then? His fleet would lose the battle, and Rey would refuse to kill him, and he’d just be stuck. The Sith crave power, and power only matters when you exercise it, so it makes sense that all the Sith characters get wrecked because they bit off more than they could chew. If you asked Sidious why he didn’t just turn off his lightning, he probably wouldn’t even understand the question.

I think it might have been cooler if Darth Sidious had been a ghost, or maybe an electronic backup of his brain, or something like that. He looked pretty cool hooked up to that life support system, and I liked the idea that he was reduced to a shell of his former self, but even that would still be a grave threat to the heroes, especially if he got Rey or Kylo Ren to take orders from him. Maybe he should have actually gotten to possess Rey, and then he would finally get all the gonzo powers he displayed in the movie, and Rey would have to kick him out of her body. I dunno, maybe that’s not so different from what we actually got.

I see fans talking about all these alternative versions of Episode IX, like that leaked script, or the concept art, etc. They lament “Why didn’t we get this movie?” and I think that misses the point. Maybe one version or another would be better, but in the end you really only get one movie, one shot at telling the story. At some point, someone has to make the decision as to what makes the cut and what doesn’t. The problem with writing a story is that the version in your head always looks better than it does in print, because in your head it’s this nebulous, ever-changing thing. When you sit down to write it, you have to commit to one version, and decide whether to do this or that. In this day and age, it’s a lot easier to find out about alternate versions and unused drafts. You can watch the “This” version of a movie, and then go on the internet and see details about the “That” version they didn’t use. And it’s easy to complain that they made the wrong call. “Justice League” fans are convinced that there’s a secret “Snyder Cut” of the movie that would somehow be better than the version that actually made it to theaters. That’s kind of sad, because they clearly must have enjoyed the theatrical cut to some extent, or they wouldn’t care about some other version of the same movie. But instead of appreciating what they got, they obsess over a supposedly better version that may not even exist.

I’m probably no better, because I sort of went into Episode IX figuring that it didn’t matter if it was good or bad, because there would be comics or novels that might expand on the stuff I wanted to see. I think what I really want is a story of how Sidious survived Endor, and how he got set up on Exegul or however you spell it. That, and Rey buckling some swashes with that yellow lightsaber. Everyone’s mad about Rose Tico getting a small part in Episode IX, but to me it almost doesn’t matter, because she can be in whatever Rey comic series they make after this. I mean, that doesn’t do Kelly Marie Tran any good, but I think she’s got a good career ahead of her, with or without Rose Tico.

I don’t know, maybe this is why I don’t watch movies very much. I’m mostly into franchises, where the movies themselves are just tentpoles for all the other media. They don’t really need to be good, so long as some good lore comes out of them that someone else can use. I was thinking the other day about how Episode II is widely considered one of the weakest Star Wars movies, but every Clone Wars story that came after it was directly inspired by that film. And there’s a lot of good Clone Wars stuff out there. It just makes me wonder if Episode II can really be as bad as they say it is. Then again, it probably doesn’t make sense to say that spinoffs can retroactively fix what should be a standalone work.

Anyway, I started this post because I wanted to talk about how YouTube keeps recommending me Star Wars meta videos, mainly about the Sith, because that’s what I’m into, and they’re usually covering stuff I already knew. There’s at least three channels devoted to recapping stories from comics and books, or just straight up repeating information that was directly stated in the movies. “Did you know Palpatine wanted to KILL Darth Vader?” Yes, I’ve known since 1983. He told Luke to kill him and he wouldn’t do it. Then he and Vader killed each other. It’s not complicated. The funny thing is that I watch all these different Star Wars videos, and I can tell they’re narrated by different people, but they all sound like the Burger King Foot Lettuce guy.

I got bored with these, so I started listening to the Dooku audiobook that came out last year. It’s been pretty decent, but I was hoping for more Sith lore, and this book seems mostly focused on Asajj Ventress learning about Dooku’s Jedi career. I’ve only got a half hour left in the book, and Dooku hasn’t even resigned from the order yet, so I don’t think I’ll see much of what he was up to between Episodes I and II.

#/#//#///#////#/////#star wars

2 notes · View notes

andrewmoocow · 6 years ago

Text

Fooly Falls 2 Ride on Shooting Star chapter 3: Beach Episodes for the Win! (originally posted on March 28, 2019)

AN: Now this is where things will get pretty deep. We already got hints of Haruko's past last chapter, plus the confirmation that she ran into Rick Sanchez at some point in that past. But that leaves the question: will there be an adaptation of FLCL Alternative set in the Rick and Morty multiverse? Who knows? ZKDW ZDV VXSSRVHG WR EH D VXQQB EHDFK GDB VRRQ EHJDQ WR ORVH LWV ZDB. RQ DQ LVODQG LW OLHV KLGGHQ VHFUHWV WKDW ZHUH PHDQW WR EH IRUELGGHQ.

Gwen's next nightmare began when she found herself walking in a single file line with tons of other unfamiliar people in an even more unfamiliar place. "M-Mama, Daddy, Tyrone?!" she asked while quietly panicking over her current situation before her location changed from the crowd to a cruddy apartment. That was when she began to hear voices. "Do you realize what you have done Haruha?!" "Who said that?" Gwen wondered in response to the invisible male's stern voice. "Look at your father when he's talking to you Haruha!" A smacking sound soon followed. "Your slacking off and playing that infernal music nearly got us all in trouble! Either behave like every other girl on this godforsaken planet or never show your face around me again!" The moment Gwen closed her eyes in fear, she next found herself on a stage with various pitch black people clearly resembling shadows with an orange head glaring at her before it began to bellow "PLANET WASPRUS, SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT!" Gwen winced for a moment while the audience watched patiently, begging her to get on with it as if they were fearing for their lives before she noticed her shadow in the spotlight. It was still the shape of a girl, yet her facial structure and hairstyle gave away who's eyes Gwen was viewing from. "Haruko?!" She then began to hear more voices, the three present sounding even more unfamiliar. "Aw shitballs you guys, we gotta run!" the first voice belched loudly as color-coded silhouettes of a human man, a birdlike creature and a bipedal feline became more opaque. "Running from what? The Galactic Space Patrol Brotherhood, the Cromulons or Medical Mechanica?!" a second more high-pitched voice responded that sounded like a character from one of the old cartoons Soos loved. "All of the above!" "And it's not just them. Look." the final voice stoically added pointing to the sky. A gigantic red phoenix with a wingspan that encompassed the entire planet of Wasprus suddenly appeared, startling the large head. "IT SEEMS WE HAVE A SPECIAL GUEST DISQUALIFIER THIS EPISODE!" it boomed. "LEGENDARY PIRATE KING ATOMSK, SHOW US WHAT YOU GOT!" The Pirate King flapped its wings, slowly tearing the planet apart as Gwen continued staring at it. There was something majestic about the bird's appearance that made her slowly step forward. Her hair began turning pink and she started reaching out to the bird while the belching man's voice sounded once more. "Don't do it babe, that's Atomsk! His power will seriously screw with your head!" Suddenly, a chibi version of Jinyu landed right in front of her. "I tried to warn you!" she scolded in a squeaky voice. As more chibi Jinyus fell from the sky, Gwen came closer to Atomsk as it looked down on her and screeched loudly. That was what caused the girl to finally awaken with a jerk. Gwen panted quietly clinging onto her bedsheets as she looked around her and Tyrone's room. "What's with these dreams lately?" she pondered before another voice was heard, this one she could recognize from miles away. "BEACH DAY, BEACH DAY, BEACH DAY, BEACH DAY!" Tyrone excitedly burst into their room and ran around for a bit before pouncing his older sister while she continued to lay in bed. "Come on Gwen, beach day!" "Oh right." his older sister muttered. "Beach day."

"So Ezra, what do you think of my new bikini?" Leia asked Ezra showing off her school swimsuit themed two-piece. "Please just stop with this." Ezra responded turning away in embarrassment. "I have far more important things to do, like stare out into the distance." "I think that blue is really your color!" Tyrone complimented the older girl. "Though I don't see the point of the big nametag on the top." The Pines and Ramirez familes have decided on a day at Lake Gravity Falls's beach with Haruko, Jinyu and the Chius along for the ride. However Ford was not present on account on having someone over while they were having some fun in the sun. "Okay Arnold, today marks your first day of manhood!" Juan announced rubbing Arnold's shoulders while Jorge stood by with a bottle of sunscreen in hand. "One of the most important aspects of being a man is being brave around total jalapenas like Haruko over there!" As he set the stage for the lesson, Haruko laid down in a beach chair with a cold drink in hand catching some rays in a rather skimpy bikini. "Or maybe baes like Jinyu!" Jorge added pointing to the other guitar player building sandcastles with Melody, Imelda and Abby. Arnold just blinked for a bit before asking "Okay, what did you just say?" "We're workshopping new slang that I'm sure will become the talk of the town within a few days." Juan answered taking the sunscreen away from his brother to hand to the Northwest boy. "Anyway, the best way to get a girl on the beach to have the hots for you is to give them a very good applying of the good ol' sunscreen. But it's your choice bro." "You could either go for them or maybe a certain other duo." Jorge added. "Grin grin, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more!" "I know you two have a crush on both my moms! Can you two not creep me out like that?!" Arnold yelped fumbling with the sunblock. "Hey, who's at fault for making Pacifica so extra thicc?" Juan argued before Haruko called the three boys over. "Yoo-hoo, young male friends! Does one of you want to help this jalapena put on sunscreen?" "This is your chance young grasshopper. Go to her." Jorge beckoned their student in manliness. As the two boys proudly watched him awkwardly step forward, Stan on the other hand was stewing in his wheelchair. "Don't get a nosebleed Stanley, don't be like those old anime men who lust after any female that moves!" he commanded himself. "Don't do it, don't do it! Aw, here it comes." Thankfully for Stan, blood didn't fly out his nose. But instead, his own heart started acting up and made him fall out of the chair onto the sand. "Still better than a nosebleed." "Oh my God, Stan!" Dipper cried as he and Mabel raced to their great-uncle's side. "Are you alright?" he asked. "I'm fine Dipper, simply failed to resist looking like a horny senior." Stan answered while his speech was muffled by the sand. "Think I might need to get outta the sun for a while." "Here Grunkle Stan, just sit down with Gwen and you'll be just fine." Mabel stated guiding the con-man to a table where Gwen was sitting in the shade. "Women. Am I right Gwen?" Stan snarked to his great-great niece. "By the way, where's Ford at?" "Stanford said he'll catch up with us later." Jinyu answered appearing from behind. "He just has some business to attend to."

"So Mr. Kanda, what is your history with Raharu?" Ford asked his new friend Tsukata Kanda in his laboratory. "I remember her quite well from when I was a boy." Kanda stated. "She quite literally crashed into my life and pulled a variety of things outta me, but the only one I kept was this." The agent reached into his jacket and out of it came a small squirt gun. "A water gun? How quaint." Ford commented examining the toy. "My great-nephew and great-great niece had giant robots and guitars come out of their noggins." "Then they must be lucky. Their heads must be ripe with N.O energy for her to use." Tsukata explained. "Use to become strong enough to find the Pirate King and take him back from Medical Mechanica." "That's what I've always wondered about her ever since she first met my family." Ford added. "What's her deal with Atomsk and where did she come from? Is she even from this dimension?" "Dimension?" Kanda wondered before Ford pulled out that old photo of him with Rick. "As it turns out, she may have encountered one Rick Sanchez at some point in her life which would explain her sociopathic behavior; as Rick here is a wanted criminal across multiple universes." "So you're implying she might not be of this world?" the Department of Interstellar Immigration agent continued. "I have no idea either." Ford answered with his shoulders slumping in confusion. "But from what I've gathered, she's become more villainous since we last met. We need to keep the kids on high alert should she ever try anything funny."

"Wow, Arnie sure is taking his sweet time." Jorge commented gazing at his watch as Arnold pretty much started slowly crawling on the sand before he realized what time it was. "Hey Juan, don't you have a girlfriend coming to see us?" "Wait, when did Juan get a girlfriend?" Tyrone asked catching the twins' attention as Juan began panicking. "Beneath all that silliness, you're a sweet guy but when did that ever become a thing?" "I am terribly sorry my brotherhood of man!" Juan exclaimed nervously. "I've just nearly lost track of the time!" He then proceeded to run away from the beach at high speeds. "This way fellow knights of masculinity, follow me!" With the three boys running away followed by Arnold deciding to just give up and cower under the shade, Haruko simply shrugged. "Talk about toast not being good in milk." the Vespa Woman snarked. "Hey Gwen, wanna do it for Shaggy over there?" Dipper and Jinyu were quick to defend the younger girl from the former housekeeper's advances. "I'm fine with either you or Jinyu doing it as well, Pine Tree." the orange-haired woman added smiling, causing Dipper to turn redder than blood. Meanwhile the bus had dropped off a young girl around Juan & Jorge's age who had blue hair, a white knee-length dress, a red jewel pendant, green diamond earrings, matching hair-bow and a flower pot in her hands. "Gentlemen, I'd like you to meet my girlfriend!" Juan declared. "This is Aiko." He then lowered his voice for Aiko. "Come on sweetie, say something." "Uh, hello there. My name's Aiko and I'm dating your friend Juan here." Aiko muttered nervously before she hid her face behind her flower pot. "Haha, she's perfect!" Juan laughed pridefully. "What a beautiful lady! She doesn't drink, swear or sweat! A perfect cinnamon roll as they once referred to people like her!" "My name's Tyrone, a friend of your boyfriend. Hey, nice flower pot you got there." Tyrone introduced himself and complimented Aiko's pot. "You like gardening? I kinda like gardening too." he stated trying to find some common ground between the two. "Uh, yeah." Aiko answered. "So tell us Aiko, what made you want to date my brother?" Juan asked her as the four began walking back to the beach. "What qualities do you find attractive?" "Well I just really like him, that's all!" Aiko responded with a squeak. "Oh, I'm so embarrassed!" She hid herself behind the flower pot again making Juan laugh. "So why did you bring that flower pot here?" Tyrone asked again. "It's my emotional support plant." the flower girl answered shyly. "It may not look like it, but this was very expensive." "See, what did I tell you?! So precious!" Juan cackled loudly. "Oh don't say that Juannie, it's embarrassing!" Aiko blushed with a giggle.

Back at the beach, Jinyu had been nominated to put sunscreen on Haruko. Or so she thought, as the Vespa Woman recoiled upon feeling the solution on her back. "So oily! What SPF is this?!" she cried frantically rubbing herself. Jinyu just gazed at the bottle in her hands and read the label. "Oh, it's tanning oil." "It's what?!" Raharu shouted as her skin suddenly turned a golden tan. "Haha, oldest trick in the book!" Stan applauded with a booming laugh. "Up top!" He held up his hand for Jinyu to give him a high-five, but didn't receive any. "Come on, I just want to feel like I accomplished something with someone as a team!" Jinyu rolled her eyes and returned the high-five. "Yes!" "You're all still holding a grudge I see." Haruko commented. "Just for the past three weeks." Dipper stated scowling. "You were stalking us at Greasy's where we went out to lunch, in the streets and even in Gwen's room! This is nothing!" "You've already gotten what you wanted once before." Jinyu added. "It's time you just gave it all up. Quit it already." "No way." the Vespa Woman declared. "I need to fulfill my wish in order to fulfill my-" She was suddenly interrupted by a volleyball to the face thrown by Aiko jumping for joy while the Ramirez children, Candy, Ezra, Wendy and Mabel stood by. "How embarrassing!" The ball was tossed into the air and Haruko jumped high preparing for a spike. "ATTACK NUMBER...ichi." she shouted smacking the ball downward and crashing it into the sand, blinding everyone. "So, why don't we all call it a truce now?" she offered to Jinyu, Dipper and the Stans before joining the game. "Ready or not, I'm gonna come at you all!" "Yeesh, talk about unsubtle." Dipper snarked before the two heard Gwen approach. "That woman over there, what does she want?" Gwen wondered as they watched Haruko toss volleyballs from above at rapid fire speed. Jinyu gave her answer, as stoic as ever. "That woman's the same as me." "Who wants to go next?!" Jinyu's other half challenged making funny noises into a megaphone. "Uh Jinyu. What is it that you want?" the daughter of Dipper asked the Bel-Air driver. "I was once with someone amazing." the older woman answered. "He was big, strong, and simply amazing. With him, one could simply fly around anywhere in space and live forever. But then, he suddenly disappeared; he abandoned me." "We're talking about the bird guy, right?" Stan interjected. "I said it once, and I'll say it again: dead bird reproductive organs taste terrible!" "Not now Stan." Dipper cringed at the thought of it. "Aw come on kid, you really think I was expecting it to taste like frozen peas?!" his great-uncle complained before Jinyu cut them both off. "As I was saying, it turns out in the end I just wasn't his equal." she continued. "I'm not enough for him. At least, not by myself. And yet we still continue to look for him." "We?" Gwen asked as her father put a hand on her head. "She means Haruko sweetie." Mason stated. "Right Dipper. You chase something because you simply can't catch it. Want to touch it, but you know you can't." Jinyu responded before she turned to Gwen. "You must've experienced something like that in your life, correct?" "You're asking what I really want?" Gwen muttered in surprise. She pondered for a moment before Arnold gave an impressive receive to Tyrone, who retaliated with a spike. "All I want is for me and my family to be safe." she muttered picking up the ball after it rolled to her feet.

Throughout the rest of the day, everybody spent their fun in the sun playing volleyball, eating barbecue, smashing watermelons, surfing and building sandcastles. Even Ford joined in when he finally arrived. "The blue spring of adolescence." Haruko remarked burying Jinyu in the sand with a shovel. "Perhaps this is an extension of our friendship, delayed adolescence if you will." "I'm content with you changing your mind about our relationship." Jinyu replied barely reacting to her other half plotting to get rid of her, even as Haruko began mixing cement. "But regardless, this still doesn't mean I'll let you use any of the children for your schemes. No point in fighting anymore." "Is that so?" Haruhara wondered. "Brainwashing suppression mechanism. They took extra measures ahead of time." Julia replied. "And she's got quite the geniuses to defend her when those fail." "You mean the nerd herd?" Haruko snipped before the two women turned their attention to most of the kids and adults working together on a particularly big sandcastle. Everyone was talking about how tall they can make it, except for Gwen who was perfectly silent as she picked up a crab fawning over a gold coin in its free claw. "By the way," Jinyu spoke again as she was now trapped in a concrete cocoon. "I fail to see the fun in this." "Oop, potty emergency!" Haruko chirped leaving the Jazzmaster woman encased in stone. "When you gotta go, you gotta go! AND I'M GOING!" "You need a lift there Jinyu?" Ford asked towering over the woman, and she quietly replied with "I am perfectly fine Stanford, but thanks anyway." As the kids continued working on the sandcastle, Gwen sat under the shade with Aiko and Ezra. "So, you not gonna swim in the ocean?" Aiko asked cheerfully to the dour girl. "No, no I'm not." Gwen moaned. "Then why even go to the beach if you're not going in the water? Do you have aquaphobia or something?" Ezra commented kicking his feet up on the table. "Better question is, what about you?" the younger girl in the cap replied. "Is it because of Leia?" "W-what gave you that idea you aesaekki?!" Ezra screeched in embarrassment as his face turned redder than Gwen's hair. "I don't know, you just seemed to blush at her swimsuit." Gwen remarked with a barely visible smirk. "Speaking of which, why didn't you bring yours Aiko?" "'Scuse me? That's just what Juan and I didn't agree to." Aiko grinned much to the two's confusion.

As the sun began to set, Juan & Jorge taught Arnold how to make a campfire while Aiko watched, Ian, Leia & Tyrone skipped stones, Ezra sat on a rock by himself and Imelda was getting ready to put Abby to bed. Meanwhile the adults chatted while Jinyu remained trapped in dry cement, with the waves gently taking her off the sand. "So now I have to use these sticks?" Arnold asked trying to light a fire with a pair of twigs. "Exactly my boy! You've been paying attention!" Juan exclaimed as their student in manliness rigorously rubbed the wood together to create a few sparks. "Hey, I'm doing it!" "You're doing amazing sweetie." Jorge congratulated Arnold before the sparks became a full ember. "Woohoo! Hey Aiko, over here!" Juan called to his girlfriend. "Do you think it's cool how much we've taught him?!" The flower pot girl beamed brightly before Dipper stepped toward the three boys. "Hey kids, have you seen Gwen anywhere?" "Beats me. And Haruko is gone too." Jorge responded. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go find her!" Arnold shouted racing up and down the shore in search of his cousin. "Wait, Gwen is gone?!" Tyrone added just as concerned for his older sister. "We have to find her before nightfall. I'm getting worried sick." Dipper announced alerting everyone on the beach to the current situation. After an hour of searching, they regrouped at the table with no success. "Where could Gwen be?" Candy asked. "She couldn't have gone far, but we combed every last centimeter of the beach." Ford stated. "Then there's only one place left on this lake that we haven't touched yet," Stan theorized. "And that's Scuttlebutt Island." "Or as Mabel and I call it, Butt Island!" Soos interjected. "Oh you scallywag!" Mabel giggled. "Uh, excuse me." Aiko squeaked. "I still need to get home. Can someone walk me to the bus?" "Why I'd be Patrick Stewart to milady!" Juan politely exclaimed taking his girlfriend by the hand. "Aw, that's my little gentleman." Melody said grinning. "But on an unrelated note, how are we going to get there?" "I think I've got a plan guys." Jorge announced adjusting his sunglasses. "It's time to set sail on the SS Cool Dude II!" At the bus station, Aiko dropped her timid facade for a more harsh and stingy one as she said goodbye to Juan. "Just so we're clear, I'm being charged overtime! Are we clear?" she demanded. "I am terribly sorry." Juan moaned, which earned him a scoff. "Give it." "Uh, here." Juan whimpered handing Aiko a wad of dollar bills. When she snatched it, all the Ramirez boy got in return was her flower pot. "So, was the character I created to your liking?" Aiko asked examining her earnings. "Oh yes, positively adorable!" Juan answered excitedly before the driver announced the bus's oncoming departure. "Okay, all there." the girl stated hopping onboard. "You boys think girls who're only shy and timid are just so precious. And by the way, the pot is yours." "Oh, uh..." Juan stuttered at the thought before Aiko switched back to her character. "A present for you!" she chirped gleefully. "Thanks Aiko! I'm gonna take good care of this-" Juan responded gratefully when he was cut off. "No. No it wasn't. Let's just say that you exchanged the envelope for that. Wouldn't want people finding out that I'm a rent-a-date." "So I bought this from you!" Juan realized as the bus began to leave. "Bye or whatever." Aiko bluntly said farewell before the vehicle drove away, leaving her fake date in the dust. The boy's train of thought went off the rails when Jorge snuck up from behind him to his shock. "Hey bro, you wanna be pirates?"

"Yo-ho, yo-ho. A pirate's life for me." Tyrone, Juan, Jorge and Leia sang onboard the SS Cool Dude II that was now captained by Ford as it left Melody, Imelda, Abby and Candy on the beach. "An insect took our friend away from her hut, look out me hearties yo-ho. And whisked her away to the island of butts, look out me hearties yo-ho." "We've just set sail and I'm already feeling seasick." Ezra groaned growing tired of the singing while he and Arnold leaned over the back of the vessel. "But we still have to find Gwen." Arnold declared trying to be bold as he was suddenly cut off. "When you were a kid, did you ever draw pictures of fireworks while watching them with your family, only for it to be too late?" "W-who's there?" Arnold yipped in shock. "Wait, Jinyu?! Where are you?" he said looking around for the woman. "Do you know where Gwen is?" "You'd try to draw every last colored speck of light. But the only way to color the night sky itself was with just a black pencil." Jinyu continued monologuing. "They lit up the dark sky so beautifully with all the colors." "What does fireworks have to do with finding Gwen?!" Ezra shouted. "All beautiful things eventually fade away." That was when Arnold reminisced on the sandcastle they all built together. Turns out Gwen put on a small smile at that time. "LAND HO! LAND HO!" Ian roared when the Cool Dude II finally reached Scuttlebutt Island. "Weigh anchor everyone!" "Well, this is it." Dipper declared dropping the boat's anchor as the crew disembarked. "Everyone needs to stay sharp. There's no telling what awaits us here." As they marched onward toward the depths of the island, Jinyu washed up on shore just as a shooting star glimmered over her. "Oh, the first star."

"So why do they say three square meals a day anyway?" Tyrone asked while the group continued exploring the Scuttlebutt woods. "A square only has four sides and I have no idea where the meal part came from?" "Last I remember, it means eating well." Pacifica replied. "That makes sense, but what do squares have to do with it?" Tyrone continued. "Quiet everyone, I hear noises!" Ford alerted putting a stop to their sojourn. The noises in question were quite unusual, ranging from beavers chittering while chainsaws roared and dinosaurs snarled. "Dinosaurs, here?" "Oh no. How hot is it today?" Mabel groaned in wonder. The dinosaur stomped closer and closer until it revealed itself as a cute little T-rex that seemed around Tyrone's height with a peculiar red plate on its back, orange boots and a large snout. "Aw! Hey there little guy!" Juan said becoming amazed at how cute the little dinosaur was before it revealed its frog-like tongue that grabbed the boy by his ankle and swallowed him whole. "HELP ME!" "Oh my God, Juan!" Soos cried out shaking the dinosaur by its torso trying to free his son. The creature relented and laid an egg with green spots patterning it that hatched to reveal a traumatized Juan. "You okay there little dude?" "I think I learned what it's like to be reincarnated. And I also learned what flavor the universe is." Juan stuttered utterly astounded at the experience as the dinosaur walked away. "Really, what was it?" Jorge asked. "It was black licorice. Yeah, we're utterly doomed." his twin brother stated. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just gonna lie down here and contemplate on how the platypus came to be. You all go on ahead." "Where did that thing come from?" Tyrone asked. "I think I know what." Ford stated taking a knee towards a toxic waste spill. "Radioactive ooze, classic!" Stan exclaimed. "And it's not just that. Look over there!" Dipper added as a colony of beavers with chainsaws for tails emerged chittering cutely. "Sweet, chainsaw-tailed beavers!" Leia cheered becoming distracted by the little critters. "Oop, stay back sis! They do have chainsaws for tails." Ian cautioned his younger sister. "Now let's not get too distracted, cause I feel all these freaks of nature must mean we're close." "Yep, I can definitely see a Medical Mechanica factory from here." Pacifica noted turning her gaze to a giant iron nearby. "When did that show up?" Wendy asked. "I honestly have no idea. Weren't they supposed to be done with Gravity Falls when Atomsk first showed up here?" Ezra wondered. "Though I have a strong feeling we'll be proven wrong soon enough." "No turning back now. Gwen is nearby." Dipper declared stepping further into the dark island forest. "Come on guys." While the others followed, Ford stayed behind to examine the waste before putting on some protective gloves to scoop it up in a beaker. "This should be useful." he muttered.

When they finally reached the Medical Mechanica plant stationed on Scuttlebutt Island, the factory was horrendously dilapidated and a small hole was there to serve as their makeshift entrance. "Okay, here's the plan everyone." Ian announced. "Me, Leia, Dipper, Mabel, Ford, Arnold, Pacifica & Wendy are gonna go in first while the rest of you serve as lookout. This could be a bumpy ride ahead of us." "Aw come on Ian, why can't Ford be lookout while I join you guys?" Stan complained. "If you switch us, I'll let you become your dad's successor!" he tried to barter with the eldest Ramirez son, but his offer fell on deaf ears as Ian snuck in first. "Time for me to put that fencing club practice to good use. And Leia, now might be a good time to whip out all you learned from the kickboxing class Stan signed you up for." "I came prepared." Leia grinned determinedly preparing to use her sarong as a whip. "Wish us luck Grunkle Stan." Mabel said to Stan before she joined her group in exploring the factory. "Oh just you all wait, I'm gonna maim her the hardest by the story's end." he grumbled. Ian's group tiptoed into the Medical Mechanica factory watching out for any sign of Gwen. "Just gotta be quiet everyone. No sudden movements." Dipper whispered just as he began hearing the voices of two familiar girls. One voice was struggling to escape while another must've been her captor. Upon hearing the voices, Dipper scooted to the source hiding behind a pair of large doors. "Let's get to know each other better." he listened in on Haruko as his daughter continued to struggle. The father yipped in fear for her safety and began to peer through the doors to get a closer look. "Everyone, over here." he signaled for the others to group up with him. "Oh no." "Let's get to know each other better." Haruko remarked towering over Gwen in a nurse's uniform. "Please stop." the younger girl whimpered before the Vespa Woman unbuttoned the Hawaiian shirt and the shorts she had on to reveal a pink, purple and white striped one piece underneath. "Oh my, looks like someone was planning on having fun today. Now tell me, where can I hit you so you can overflow?" "Overflow? What kinda hot garbage is she on about?" Leia wondered incredulously as they felt an enraged Dipper about to break down the doors. "Oh dammit, someone help me stop Mr. Pines before he makes a huge mistake and blows our cover!" she ordered trying to hold the father back from barging in, but was too late as he kicked down the doors screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HER RAHARU?!" Arnold on the other hand got one good look at his captive cousin and made a bright green blob creature emerge from his forehead to everyone's shock. "What, it came outta him?" Haruhara muttered as the creature slithered for a bit before it faced Arnold. "I have no idea what you're supposed to be, but let me give you one command." he said. "Go save Gwen!" Back outside the factory, the rest of the Cool Dude crew awaited their teammates' return when a loopy Juan came wobbling towards them carrying a flower pot in his hands and a strange stone shape on his back. "Oh hey bro, you're back!" Jorge cheerfully greeted his twin. "How did contemplating the universe go?" "I just paid a visit to the Garden of Eden. And the apples were terrible!" Juan exclaimed shaking his head to relieve himself of his daze while planting the stone on the ground, revealing itself to be the same one that Jinyu was trapped in. "Where'd the flower pot come from? Was it a gift from your girlfriend when she dumped you?" Stan asked the pompadour boy, who then screamed at his brother "YOU TOLD THEM YOU IDIOT?!" "I cannot tell a lie!" Jorge quoted George Washington before bringing his brother close. "But I didn't tell them she was basically a callgirl." he whispered into his ear. "That's between you and me. We can Tony Hawk about it later." "Where are the kids?" Jinyu asked Soos. "Oh yeah dude, they just ran in there after Haruko to save Gwen." the former handyman replied brightly. "I'm sure things will be all hunky-dory by sunrise."

Meanwhile in a small house back at Gravity Falls, Aiko had arrived home to her father who was reading the papers. "Hey Aiko." Masurao asked the girl. "Do you know what happened to the flower pot that was in this room?" "No clue." Aiko fibbed going upstairs, prompting suspicion from her father before he put down his tabloids & shut the door behind him, and the room gave way to reveal various machinery hooked up to a screen with the eyepatched man on it. "This is codename Eyepatch." Eyepatch said. "Do you have an update?" "Actually, I have a slight problem." Masurao proclaimed. "What is it?" Eyepatch asked. "The flower pot seems to have gone missing. What about you and the others?" the capped male replied. "Tonkichi and I are waiting for the right moment to strike. But Kanda on the other hand was able to fish info from Stanford about that motorbike chick." Eyepatch explained making a picture of Haruko mindlessly picking her nose while giving a peace sign. "If what he says is true, she's not of this world and we got an interdimensional apocalypse on the horizon."

"So what species of flower is this supposed to be?" Ezra wondered examining the pot. "Doesn't seem like anything I've researched, so I assume it's just a simple weed." Suddenly the factory behind them exploded while Haruko soared high above it with Gwen in hand and Dipper, Mabel, Tyrone & Arnold clinging onto the green creature chasing after her. With a smirk, Haruko tossed the younger girl away to smack the beast with her bass and send it flying with another hit. "Hey, leave my niece alone you creep!" Mabel shrieked clinging onto the biker's front and giving her a hard slap across the face. Haruko returned the slap and it soon devolved into the two women flailing their hands at each other as they kept falling. As for the boys, they continued grabbing hold of the green blob while it continued going after the airborne Gwen. Thankfully they were able to catch her, but she landed face-first into Arnold's chest causing her cap to react and spawn a mass of wires & metals from her forehead that roped her in and absorbed all nearby metal, even the Medical Mechanica factory. "What the hell is going on now?!" Ian shouted while he, Leia, Pacifica, Ford and Wendy evacuated just in time. "More N.O." Ford declared looking up at the giant object above them. "We have to save Gwen quick before it gets any worse!" "G-Gwen." Arnold muttered in shock at the sight before him. "Sis." Tyrone added just as worried sick. Out of complete nowhere, the flower pot made a comeback by landing on Arnold's face and making him lose his grip on the creature. Dipper & Tyrone were sent flying as well due to the shockwave until the three Pines were rescued at the last moment by Jinyu's Bel-Air. "Listen Arnold, you are the only one that can save Gwen." Julia stated from the backseat of the car. "Back here." she called to the trio lying down in her cement confinement. "So that's where you've been!" Dipper exclaimed. "Not even going to ask how you ended up like this." he added before turning to the giant hunk of metal in the sky. "So that thing's got Gwen?" "We've seen some crazy stuff since you and Haruko came into our lives, but this is the last straw!" Arnold added fiercely. "You gotta help us Jinyu, please!" "If you are unable to draw fireworks; well then," Jinyu declared. "Try shooting one in the air!" Her shades twinkled before her limbs burst from the dry concrete and she stepped onto the hood of her car. "Do it again, as many times as you need!" The Bel-Air once more turned into a mech ready for another fight. "On second thought, maybe you should be one instead!" Jinyu exclaimed folding her arms in a similar matter to a certain fusion of a pair of buster machines before tossing Arnold her bass. "Aw yeah, this is amazing!" Raharu cheered mounting onto the green creature while it waved a white flag in defeat. She smacked its butt with her Mustang to make it fly further toward the machine holding Gwen captive before spotting the Bel-Air giving chase with Arnold standing on the hood with guitar in hand. Haruko wordlessly commanded the blob to fire from one of its hoses, but the Bel-Air blocked the energy spheres and the two charged. The nurse gave the transforming car a mighty smack on the arm and chased it once more. "Cream her Arnold, make your mothers proud!" Pacifica cheered her son on before realizing that Mabel was still falling. "Oh my god, Mabel!" she cried politely helping Stan out of his wheelchair so that she can use it to catch her wife. "COMING IN HOOOOOTTTTT!" Mabel hollered descending into the seat of her grunkle's chair. "And she sticks the landing! Thank you, thank you very much!" she declared to an invisible crowd before Pacifica grabbed her face to give her a big kiss. "Knew you'd come through honey." The blob continued firing at the Bel-Air, but thankfully Arnold refused to back down while Dipper was desperate to escape. "I can't take this anymore!" he screamed lighting up three cigarettes to calm his nerves. "Are you kidding dad?! BEST BEACH DAY EVER!" Tyrone shouted excitedly. Haruko on the other hand wasn't feeling the same way as she commanded the creature to once again fire, this time at one of the automobile's rocket boosters giving her an opening. "Hah, got you now!" Then suddenly, the metallic creature roared and whipped the Bel-Air away, ejecting Dipper & Arnold from it and the latter still armed with Jinyu's guitar. This would prove the perfect chance for the son of Mabel & Pacifica to land a fatal blow upon the beast, which led to Gwen finally being revealed. "Are you okay Gwen?! Say something!" Arnold cried for his unconscious cousin. "Oh no no no no! What am I going to do now?!" "Hmph, she doesn't have enough yet." Haruko suggested having already touched down behind the two on the green blob while it deflated. "Enough of what?" Arnold asked the older woman standing over them with her bass. "A tundra? Tsun-dora? Tsundere?" Haruhara muttered to herself before making her findings clear. "She's definitely one of those people." "Just shut up already Raharu!" Dipper snarled dusting himself off after a nasty landing before racing to his daughter's side. "Please wake up Gwennie! Please!" he exclaimed clutching the girl's shoulder which made her moan. "Saying her name ain't gonna help Pine Tree, let an old friend do the heavy lifting." Haruko lifted her guitar skyward ready to bludgeon Gwen, but Arnold had finally had enough. "Leave them alone!" he shouted shoving her away with tears in his eyes. "Aw." Haruko cooed putting down her string instrument and getting close to the boy. "Then take that hat offa her." she whispered into his ear. "Go on, don't be shy. No need to worry. Your voice will reach her." "Don't do it Arnold, it's a trap!" Jinyu called dropping Mabel, Pacifica, the Stans and Tyrone from her car just in time for it to be shot down. "Leave my son alone you maniac!" Pacifica growled, but the five were too late as Haruko sat down with Arnold in her arms. "You can reach it, it's deep inside of her." she continued toying with his arm. "Why don't we do it together, kay?" Arnold gasped, realizing what was happening, and made her back off. "I don't need your help! Let me help her myself!" he shouted defiantly reaching for the bobble of Gwen's cap. "Don't do it Arnold! You have no idea what will happen next!" Dipper cried to his nephew, but his words fell on deaf ears before the cap started whirring violently. Red sparks erupted from the girl's head as it felt like her hat was literally drilling itself into her skull. When all was said and done, Haruko rapidly tip-toed toward Gwen and attempted to remove her beanie from her head with little success. But what was successful was the fall of the metal creature as its pieces began falling into the lake before the eyes of everyone still on Scuttlebutt Island. As the Pines began to get up to see what was happening, they barely had time to react before the beast collapsed underneath them. When all the metal was completely submerged in the ocean, the sun rose and they were saved by Jinyu as she parked her car on the new metallic part of the island. "Come on Gwen, please come back to us!" Dipper cried trying to wake his daughter up one last time. "What is even going on?!" "I told you all not to touch that!" Jinyu cautioned the Pines just as the rest came racing toward them, along with Haruko freeing herself from the scrap. "That was perhaps the best dogfight I had ever seen." Soos commented. "Yeah, you both totally went Red Wedding on each other!" Juan added excitedly. "As in murdering hundreds of innocents, including a few pregnant women and their unborn children?" Ezra bluntly replied adjusting his glasses, prompting the two boys to remain silent. "Yeah, let's just drop the slang thang." Juan announced and Jorge quietly nodded. "The emergency system has been activated." Jinyu informed her other self. "And there's nothing you can do to stop it." "Aw geez!" Haruko complained. "Damn, they're so sneaky. Those schwifty bastards." she remarked staring up at the sky. "This is all because you tried to tempt my son." Pacifica coldly responded. "That's right, Hakama tried to..." Arnold tried to speak up before Gwen finally began to rise from her slumber. "W-where did she come from? H-h-here comes Gwen." "What did Arnold do to her?" Juan asked. "I do not want to know." Jorge replied just as puzzled. "Yeah, let's just keep this an enigma til next time." a raccoon with a strange accent suddenly appeared behind them. "Hehehehe, most of the characters in this story are SOOOO stupid!" "W-what the hell, where did he come from?! We didn't see him at all throughout this entire chapter!" Jorge cried in shock over the raccoon. "Ah yes, I'd like you to meet Bawuu, my new pet raccoon, or so he calls himself." Ezra introduced Bawuu while he perched on his shoulder. "He just showed up to me and declared that we should live together, because he claims most of the animals on the island are imbeciles. And I have a feeling he'll barely add anything to our adventures going forward." "Well, guess we got no other choice everyone." Stan announced. "You're right Stanley, we'll have to search for the makers of the hat. And it's not from some chic fashion joint." Jinyu added. "I suppose I'll just have to bust on in." Haruko remarked knowing what their next objective was. "Right," the white-haired woman replied. "our objectives may be different, but our target is still one in the same." Haruko just stared up at the sky for a moment in silence when she finally revealed the name of that target. "Medical Mechanica."

AN: At long last, chapter 3 is done! Apparently I'm just as talented at procrastinating as I am with everything else I'm good at. Ooh speaking of which, still need to finally get back to work on Gravity Soul! Until we meet again some sunny day everyone!

1 note · View note

j-philly-b · 6 years ago

Text

WW 2x09 – Happy Fathers Day, William!

��Tell me one true thing.”

“Is this real? Are you real?”

Well, pretty sure this episode just derailed my William is a host theory. I’ve been waiting for Emily to get shot since her first episode to close the loop on her way of testing her potential lover to make sure he wasn’t a host. However, I was not expecting William to be the one doing the shooting. If William were a host, his killing Emily would lose all emotional impact. Plus, based on that final scene, it’s clear that William is hoping he is a host so he can have an excuse for what happened rather than face is own breakdown.

The flashback to the gala for William was a nice parallel to the flashbacks of Jim Delos’ retirement party, even to the point of William displaying a physical discomfort with the way he was rubbing at his arm to parallel Delos’ cough of impending death. But now, what makes that parallel even more interesting is the fact that we saw Delos’ reaction to finding out he was a host and not in control of his responses and action, how his consciousness was too much for the external storage unit, and how that made him slide into madness as a result of the degradation of the technology holding his consciousness. So now, I am expecting to see the juxtaposition of William’s reaction to finding out that he is not a host and is in control of his responses and actions, and that his slide into madness is not a technological failure, but rather the result of his obsession with the park and with Dolores.

All along I was assuming that Ford’s ultimate fuck you to William would be setting up this game for William, who has been on a suicide march since S1, to discover that he has been a host who can be brought back to life over and over again, regardless of how many times he tries to die. However, at this point, I would not be surprised to learn that part of William’s goal in setting up the Forge was to find a way to implant his consciousness in a host body and go back and live in the park with Dolores for eternity, as his twisted version of a heaven.

The parallel between Teddy and Juliet’s suicides was also interesting to see. Each of them devastated by the person they love, being turned into something else as a result of their love and trust in that other person. Each thinking that the only escape from the other person’s control was by taking their own life. And each one’s suicide being used to further their SO’s story…

The one disappointing aspect, to me anyway, was that the playback of William’s profile showed him attacking Dolores from the 1x01. I had been under the impression that William started his search for the maze after Juliet’s death and that he didn’t start getting violent with Dolores until then. In other words, I assumed Juliet’s suicide was the trigger for William to start his full emersion into the park. Which would fulfill the parallel of Teddy’s suicide being the trigger for Dolores to stop or change her march of death and destruction and change to a more compassionate/conscious goal.

Things I’m still thinking about:

Ok, first things first, the final battle of the robot revolution is going to take place at Valley Forge? oy vey...

Teddy and Bernard each fighting so hard to overcome the forced changes to their personalities by Dolores and Ford, respectively.

The buzzing/network overload sound effect every time one of the woke hosts fights being controlled fitting in with the original fly theme, and also perhaps showing the strain on the network caused by hosts becoming conscious?

Although Bernard didn’t have to fight at all to avoid the effects of Clementine’s control over the other hosts even though he was in close proximity to her.

Did the moustache twirling tech isolate to few lines of code so that Clementine has no control over any host that is some level of woke?

Or is Clementine’s reach limited to hosts that are within five feet of her? Which will make her useless in a fight against Maeve.

Was Ford’s ride along with Bernard long enough for Ford to have time to integrate himself into the hosts’ mesh network?

Speaking of, if the mesh network is still up and running that must mean there is a different server somewhere hosting that right? If the cr4-dl was the server, wouldn’t the network have gone down when the server was destroyed?

Also, is there a little bit of Ford in all the hosts now? The creator is a part of them all?

Alright, Dolores is Arnold’s child and Maeve is Ford’s – so are we getting an Adam and (St)Eve, Cain and Abel set up?

I still can’t get over the revolution being fought at Valley Forge…

Calling the server for the human consciousness “The Forge” feels more like greek or norse mythology than the typical Christian symbolism the show has been (over) indulging in.

I don’t buy Ford/Bernard’s explanation to Elsie about the purpose of the Forge. It felt like Ford took over in that moment to stop Bernard from telling her the truth.

What exactly did Elsie ever do to Ford that he’s so hell-bent on having Bernard off her?

We’re calling Ford in Maeve’s head Faeve from now on, right?

#westworld #ww 2x09 #ww 2x09 spoilers #ww speculation #ww spec #ish

5 notes · View notes

koganphrancis · 7 years ago

Photo

And Now Shameless Slanders The Littlest Milkovich? FUCK YOU

My recap of Season H8 Episode H8

They really had Vee refer to Yevgeny as a “little psychopath”, just to retcon every decent Milkovich that ever was. Completely unnecessary and untrue, and WHERE THE FUCK IS IAN, WHY ISN’T HE IN THIS KID’S LIFE ANYMORE, HE STATED FLAT OUT HE LOVED YEVGENY. Thank goodness there’s a gif of a Henckel flipping the bird to help me through this trying time.

I’ll try to temper my bitterness for the rest of this, but I make no guarantees.

That horrific remark about an innocent child aside, this episode had little to get me riled up over-it was one of the most boring episodes they’ve ever done-every week they seem to outdo themselves on that front.

This piece of shit-pardon me-episode was written by day-to-day showrunner Nancy Pimental and it was either her lame attempt at trying to win Macy that Emmy OR her purposely sabotaging him, because his storyline was the longest and most painfully unfunny this week.

Also it was directed by Emmy Rossum and she gave herself a shit ton of close ups which I suppose is her prerogative and heaven knows the writer didn’t give her much story to shoot.

This week opens with the dog Rusty staring at a still in bed Fiona and kicks off the aforementioned close ups. I still want that dog to be explained-the law isn’t “dogs that have eaten human flesh must be destroyed-unless someone’s willing to take a chance on rescuing them”. Why is there zero fucking research on this show?

Meanwhile, Franny’s screaming but Debs is too busy in the bathroom taking a half dozen pregnancy tests and acting like the world owes her something-that will be her theme throughout the episode, as it has been for the past few seasons.

Nancy tries to capture some of that “all the Gallaghers in one place at one time” magic by having everyone crowd around the bathroom and giving Ian his first spoiled toddler line of the ep, “Guess I won’t shower today-gonna get filthy anyway cleaning that shitty building my sister found for homeless kids.” Whatever that meaningful moment on Ian’s bed was last episode is being forgotten or ignored by this dumbass show. Will it ever be revisited? Who knows.

Lip, who this season is like Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched and seems to have this compelling need to insert himself into other people’s drama while ignoring his own, volunteers to take Debbie to Planned Parenthood where she again acts like a total bitch who needs a reality check, and where Lip just happens to be there to see Charlie (Snore’s ex) walk in with a very pregnant woman. Such fortuitous timing!

There’s a gross scene of Carl peeing into a toilet between Kassidi’s legs as she sits on the back of the toilet-good god, Nancy, is that what you think the kids are into these days? All I’m gonna say about Kassidi is that she’s exactly like Sammi only younger and even more charmless. Whoever the fuck thought the show needed that vibe back needs to be fired. And I get that Carl is supposed to be thinking with his self-inflicted deformed dick, but, really? After seeing his father and Monica over the years, plus living with Sammi for a bit, he wouldn’t know enough to run from that type of chick?

Frank has this totally convoluted “only on Shameless” business venture going where he’s going to smuggle immigrants who feel unsafe in the USA over the Canadian border and bring back his car loaded with prescription drugs. Sure, Frank. Anyway, the only scene of note in the many long and boring scenes he got this week is when he’s listing talented Canadians-and when he DOESN’T say “Noel Fisher” we all hear it anyway and laugh at this lame show for letting all that talent go. Assholes.

Instead of recycling Mickey’s shirts this week, the show does something even more stupid: they use the VFW hall where Mickey got married as the new youth shelter AND they use the basement where Mickey and Ian banged before his wedding as the food bank Debbie goes to! Okay, Cam, I gotta say, that’s a version of audacious-reminding us of those classic Mickey moments the show can’t come close to having using any of the characters they’ve kept on.

Speaking of Mickey (not that the show ever does), Nancy tries to recreate some of that old Mickey magic with having Terror call Ian a “Negative Nellie” when he bitches some more about the new youth shelter. Pinning nicknames on Ian is a Mickey thing only-why are they constantly reminding us of the gaping holes that losing Noel has left?

Anyway, here’s how Nancy tried to bring some shit talking South Side back into the show: Ian: This place is a dump. Terror (to Geneva): Don’t listen to Negative Nellie he’s still mad about the church. I: (sarcastic) Ye-ah, cuz you got pity fucked by my sister with this building. T: (imitates Ian) Ye-ah-and she was really good.

Side note-can you imagine Ian ever trying to joke with Mickey about him fucking his sister? Sheesh.

I: I bet-she’s great at getting what she wants and screwing everybody else.

WTF? Has Nancy ever seen the show? Fiona always winds up screwing herself over. I’m not a huge fan of Fiona’s big sister act, but even I can admit she sacrificed a lot for her younger siblings and never did things to screw them while advancing herself. The thing Ian should be mad about is Fiona’s comments about Mickey-and even then she didn’t screw Mickey or Ian, she just said some stupid shit that Ian didn’t have to listen to.

Anyway, Geneva tells Ian and Terror about the gay conversion church, so now I know taking on organized religion wasn’t what Ian referred to as “larger concerns”. One of the youths tried to commit suicide after being subjected to it, so Ian and Terror go visit him and the kid holds up his bandaged wrists and asks if they like his hot wristbands and even though it’s canon that Ian witnessed his mother moments after she slit her wrists and Terror spent his prom night in an emergency room because he slit his, neither of them bat an eye or react in any way to the kid’s injuries.

Emmy throws in a way too long scene of Fiona dancing around in her underwear (after more way too long Frank scenes). Again it amazes me how this show just recycles the same shit over and over-anyone remember Fiona’s happy dance in the church she went to check out for her and Sean to get married in?

Ford catches her in the act and entices her to go out and look at Chicago architecture with him-I want the jobs that either of them have where they have all the free time in the world to lollygag. And why is the show wasting all this time on all this crap in one episode? Paint drying on those historic buildings would’ve been more interesting to watch than this hour of television.

At the end of their tour, Ford shows her the inside of a house he’s working on (all by himself, apparently, I guess he doesn’t work with a crew) and asks her to lie down on an improbably placed mattress and she’s a tad hesitant at first, but when she does it, he points out art on the ceiling to her. She’s impressed with its beauty and then starts making out with Ford in a total recreation of Ian with Faileb and thinking that guys who show any bit of interest in them as people must want to fuck them. It was stupid with Faileb, it’s stupid with Ford.

There’s a scene somewhere along the line with Kev and Vee that’s bordering on spousal abuse-I really wish they’d end this “Kev grows some balls” idea immediately. "Big neanderthal man” is not a thinking person’s idea of an ideal partner.

Ugh, now for more of the Ian crap. He goes home and asks if they have a Bible laying around. He finds one, and the next day-THE VERY NEXT DAY-he and Terror go to the gay conversion church and Ian gets into a Bible quoting match with the pastor/minister/whatever he is. I’m sure Cam was hard as a rock thinking he was coming off like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, but the movie character I was thinking of was Rain Man-how else could he have memorized several Bible passages overnight unless he’s some sort of idiot savant?

Terror is basically an Ian accessory in the scene-a backpack or a briefcase or a Trapper Keeper, holding Ian’s Bible for him until he needs it. And the whole, “We’ll probably be banging again soon” right after Terror calls himself Ian’s ex was stupid-not funny or sexy, which I bet was what good old Nancy was going for.

Cut to a scene of Snore getting a bit of a story thread that they probably originally kicked around for Mandy, and she has the triggering line that she’ll “run away to Mexico” if her father is released from prison. Sure, Snore, whatever.

Then there’s the scene where Kev is trying out his domineering dick act for the second time this ep on Svetlana, and Vee gets turned on and hands Yev over to Svetlana calling him that P word. Fuck you, bitch. I hope Svetlana is scheming to fuck Kev and Vee over big time-they have a scene where it looks like Svet’s doing that, but with this show, who knows if it’ll be alluded to again?

In the time it took Ian and Terror and the refugees from the gay conversion church to walk to the youth shelter, a video a person recorded at the church on her phone has been uploaded to You Tube and Geneva tells Ian it has a thousand hits already-cuz, yeah, Nance, that’s how the You Tube works. Homeless kids working to clean up a dilapidated building have their iPhones turned on to get alerts whenever a video that has anything to do with gays gets posted to YT and they all drop everything and watch it.

The only other thing I want to mention is the preview for next week-they show a quick clip of Ian and Terror pulling their shirts off that’s a ripoff of Mickey and Ian’s first time, a shot of Ian watching Terror asleep next to him in his bed where he’s awkwardly as fuck touching his face, and then a clip of Ian saying, “Kinda nice-us being a thing again.” (WHAT HAPPENED TO GET OFF MY PORCH, DICK???? But I digress.) Terror answers, “Jury’s still out.” Well, if by jury he means FANS, we handed down our verdict a long time ago.

I wonder if the show is trying to set up them finding their way to be a “true” couple (GAG), and then “tragedy” will strike and pull them apart when Ian gets arrested and they think it’ll be poignant and painful for the fans, when actually we’ll be cheering and yelling, “Throw Ian in prison for 15 years, bitches! Throw away the key and don’t have anyone visit! Have Terror say it’s too painful for him to see him behind glass like that!!!!”

But then again, this show is so inconsistent maybe that’s not where they’re headed at all. Maybe they just think Ian needs the chase to stay interested, and for some misguided reason the writers think that’s what the fans want to see.

We really, really don’t, though.

And I can’t say it enough: Fuck this show for that line about little Yev. It seemed like another very deliberate slap to the face of Mickey Milkovich fans everywhere.

#Spoilers #Recap #TW: mentions of attempted suicide #Season H8 Episode 8 #They didn't even try to disguise Mickey's wedding hall #Or the basement for that matter-altho they did at least shoot that from a different POV #But the columns holding up the ceiling the high windows and the big square tiles on the floor are very distinctive

21 notes · View notes

jillmckenzie1 · 6 years ago

Text

Make It Stop

I kind of hate January. There, I said it. Yes, it’s the first month of a new year, and it represents a new start and new possibilities and blah blah blah. After the warmth of the holiday season, January is cold, bleak, bereft of life. The main reason I hate January, though? It’s the month where movies go to die.

For the most part, certain times of the year correspond with certain movies. Summer is for big blockbusters. Late fall is when then Academy Award hopefuls are rolled out. January is the dumping ground of the studios. People are going back to work or back to school, and there generally isn’t much of an appetite for filmgoing. The studios know this, and when they have a film that can’t compete in other months, one that’s too quirky or just plain bad, they kick it out the door like a misbehaving dog. Then, they cross their fingers and pray to the nearest available deity that someone will see their misbegotten movie.

Unfailingly, that someone is me. Let’s take a moment and imagine if I emailed my editor and said, “So…yeah…January is the worst. Is it cool with you if I just don’t write anything for the next 30 days?” Let’s take a moment to imagine the silence, then the peals of dark laughter, then the command to release the hounds. Rather than becoming chow for the Official Metro Sampler War Dogs (patent pending), I have no option but to trudge to the theater and steel myself for the coming onslaught.

At this point, maybe you’re expecting me to pull a reverse and talk about the pleasant surprise I viewed on this week’s cinematic sojourn. Nnnnope. January smacked me around. January said, “You thought 2018 was a garbage year? Hah!” January brought the movie Replicas into my life, and for that, I will never forgive it.

We’re introduced to William Foster (Keanu Reeves), a scientist employed by vaguely defined tech company Bionyne. He thinks he’s developed a way to transplant human consciousness. The body of a recently deceased soldier is brought to his Puerto Rican lab, and along with his trusty sidekick and lab partner Ed (Thomas Middleditch), William takes a crack at performing a resurrection.

A resurrection into what, you might ask? Well, the “plan” is to transplant the dead soldier’s brain into a synthetic body. When the consciousness finds itself in a horrifying artificial monstrosity, it freaks the hell out and tears itself apart. We’re less than ten minutes into the film, and I thought to myself, “This is potentially a good start. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get a weird-ass movie where Keanu Reeves has to deal with multiple human consciousnesses having nervous breakdowns in super-powerful robot bodies.” Guess what? I’m not lucky.

Anyway, after the failure of the experiment, William is cornered by his boss, the imaginatively named Jones (John Ortiz). He’s informed that if he can’t perform a breakthrough, his funding will be canceled, so no pressure there. Under mounting pressure at work, what does he do? Go on a family vacation, of course! William packs his family — oldest daughter Sophie (Emily Alyn Lind), middle son Matt (Emjay Anthony), cute-as-a-button youngest daughter Zoe (Aria Lyric Leabu), and his doting wife Mona (Alice Eve) — into the family minivan.

In a very poorly-staged sequence, the Foster family is in a car wreck. Every member of the family is killed, with the exception of William.* He does what many of us would do, which is to call Ed, who is conveniently an expert in cloning. In a film awash in terrible plans, William’s plan is as follows:

Steal cloning pods from the Bionyne facility, which is easy.

Clone the family. Also easy.

Implant the original consciousness of the bodies into the cloned bodies, which is super-easy, barely an inconvenience.**

Discover that there are only four cloning pods and Zoe cannot be cloned, so the memories of her are scrubbed from the family. A piece of cake.

Do things go horribly wrong? Yes, but in the least interesting way possible, so sorry about that.

Guys, Replicas is bad. I would rather reread Twilight than see Replicas again. I would rather watch an entire Trump press conference than see Replicas again. I would rather drive through Missouri than see Replicas again. When people talk about terrible January movies, they can only be referring to Replicas.

Where does the fault truly lie, though? A heaping helping goes to director Jeffrey Nachmanoff, who’s made a film that is visually flat, underlit, and incredibly unimaginative. The film was shot in Puerto Rico with a $30 million budget. What does he have to show for it? A generic-looking upper-middle-class home, a weirdly empty laboratory, and a little bit of jungle. There’s also some truly unfortunate CGI that would feel right at home in Season One of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.***

An even larger heaping helping of blame can be flung at the lousy screenplay by Chad St. John, known for writing the racist and stupid London Has Fallen, and the racist and stupid Peppermint. This script is not racist but it’s twice as stupid. I could harp on the bad dialogue, such as characters throwing around pseudo-scientific nonsense like “bring me the algorithm.” I could harp on the almost non-existent characterization of the Foster family. What personality traits do the kids have? None; so why do we care if they die? The most unforgivable sin of the script is that it takes an intriguing idea, a story about a man who hides the dead bodies of his family and attempts to clone them, and makes it boring. I guarantee you that if I gave you 30 seconds, you would come up with at least three approaches to the material better than what we’ve got. Instead, the script takes intriguing ideas about memory and identity and just shrugs at them.

The cast isn’t great, but I can’t get upset with them since they have a rotten script and poor direction to contend with. Meryl Streep couldn’t make this work. And Keanu? Look, I genuinely like Keanu Reeves. He’s the greatest action star produced in America so far,**** and despite having a limited range, he’s excellent when you cast him within that range. Here, you can see Reeves really, really trying. He’s obsessed, a little charming, and there’s even a scene where grief-stricken, he hilariously curls up with his daughter’s stuffed unicorn. If there had been more bananas acting choices like that, we’d at least have a 30 percent more entertaining movie.

In the last few years, I’ve been working very diligently at having more of an optimistic outlook. While the bad news is that I had to watch Replicas and write about it, there’s a silver lining in this especially dark cloud. In a few short months, John Wick: Chapter 3 will be released. If it can sustain the quality of the previous two films, we’ll have possibly the greatest action trilogy in American film history. Better news? It also means nobody will talk about Replicas ever again.

*William escapes a horrific car wreck with a minor head injury. This is nowhere near the most ridiculous thing that happens.

**Special thanks to Ryan George. You can check his stuff out here.

***I say that as someone who deeply loves Buffy, but the CGI in some of those early episodes? Woof.

****Seriously! Reeves has done The Matrix trilogy, the John Wick movies, Speed, Point Break, and Constantine. Only Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford can give him a run for his money.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/make-it-stop/

0 notes

movietvtechgeeks · 7 years ago

Photo

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/orville-majority-rules-social-justice-space/

'The Orville' Majority Rules: Social justice in space

I finally saw the latest Orville episode, Majority Rule. The Orville is absolutely a great series. It reminds me so much of Star Trek: The Next Generation. As every geek probably knows by now, it parodies and emulates Star Trek to great success, even better than Star Trek itself. Many of us are probably waiting for Eaglemoss to roll out Orville miniatures. Anyway, the latest episode was both an homage to how sometimes Star Trek manages its budget and our current opinionated social media status. Can’t do this little piece without spoiling much of the episode or at least its synopsis. So SPOILER ALERT for Orville fans. Now read on. You know in Star Trek: The Original Series, most of its episodes take us to worlds where its residents look all too human. They’re either colonists, human-like aliens or metaphysical beings. The TOS budget on costumes and makeup is notoriously low. Heck, even the Klingons look all too human which is a stark contrast to the Klingons on Star Trek: Discovery. But now, with TV budgets rivalling B movies and Indie films, Star Trek episodes and films are filled with loads of alien races that now look very alien. The point here is, episode 7 of The Orville is a budget filler that does away with much of the costumes, makeup and effects for alien races, ships, and backdrops; but it’s a very good one. Much like the TOS episode Miri, A Piece of the Action and The City on the Edge of Forever, the latter which I really love. This episode takes the crew to Sargas 4, that has a civilization, not unlike current 21st Century Earth complete with cars, TV, coffee shops, similar clothing, and smartphones. The main difference between Earth and Sargas 4 is its system of absolute democracy where everybody’s opinion counts. Everyone’s opinion is logged and recorded using smartphones and personal badges with an Upvote (Like) and a Downvote (Dislike) button. It’s literally Social Media in space but with a Dislike button. Here, we voice our approval of something with a Like button in Facebook, the Heart button in Twitter and the Save button in Pinterest. We don’t have a dislike button, but if we totally dislike something on Facebook, we share it and voice our disapproval (because there’s no dislike button). That dissatisfaction grows viral, and that’s what happened to navigator Lt. John Lamarr because of his lap dance on a respected statue while teasing Alara Kitan. Much like today’s society, such a thing catches the attention of mobile phone owners who record it and upload it. The same thing happened to the two exo-anthropologists whose disappearance the crew was sent to investigate. They didn’t allow a pregnant woman to be seated on a bus while they were absorbed in their work. A great thing about the Orville that aligns it with Star Trek is how it tackles current issues. This episode does so in a great way. Allow me to digress a bit as what happened to the scientists remind me of a viral issue that happened about a year ago. There’s a fine line nowadays between chivalry, equality, and practicality. A lady rode in the men’s section of a train but was forced to stand. Everyone seated in front of her was probably either old or a woman except for a guy whom she focused on and was greatly expecting to offer her a seat. The guy was asleep or in her mind was pretending to be. So she popped a photo of him and uploaded it on Facebook where she complained the guy wasn’t a gentleman. Thankfully common sense prevailed because the guy looked absolutely exhausted (probably from a night shift) and the girl was admonished for being entitled. We are required by law to give our seats to the old, the pregnant and disabled and the girl, judging from her profile feature and latest photos wasn’t any of them. In terms of practicality, if men are on the train for most of its entire route or, carrying plenty of stuff they tend to keep their seats. Rarely do such men offer their seat to a woman clearly able to handle standing up. Now back to our recap. The scientists failed to lend their seat to the pregnant woman resulting in a huge drop in their personal approval ratings thanks to uploads, dislikes and popular opinion through social media and network TV. One got killed trying to escape, and the other was ‘corrected’ or lobotomized. The same fate awaits LaMarr if public opinion isn’t swayed. The Orville as a copy of Star Trek also has its own Prime Directive and covert anthropological studies. The crew is forced to work with the planet’s system of opinion-based absolute democracy. A system I used to actually dream of and I bet many do as well, where you get to decide an issue with a green or red button. Today’s social media society allows for such judgement with Like and Share buttons no matter how ill-informed either side people are on an issue. Then there are the trolls who would like nothing more than to see the world burn or a man fry. A system which condemns a man to mental impediment or even death because of ten million downvotes is terribly flawed. This Orville episode emphasizes why our current justice system, flawed it may be, is better than mob rule. Imagine a mob running Harrison Ford to the waterfall because he didn’t give an old lady a seat on the bus. Suffice to say, the team makes it out in one piece but in spectacular fashion without any phaser fire. Again, Majority Rule is a very good episode. Very Star Trek. See it if you haven’t yet done so. Check out The Orville if you haven’t done so. Make it so.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

#Featured #Seth MacFarlane #Star Trek #The Orville #TV Recaps

0 notes

trentteti · 8 years ago

Text

The Logical Rose-ning Section: Your Recap of The Bachelorette

Rachel Lindsay is a practicing attorney who once took the LSAT. And you, dear reader, are an aspiring attorney who will soon take the LSAT. Rachel Lindsay is also an aspiring married person, serving as the bachelorette on this season of The Bachelorette, the love story these depraved times deserve. And you, dear reader, may also be an aspiring married person? Either way, you definitely have at least a few things in common with Rachel. So every Tuesday, we’re going to be tracking Rachel’s romantic journey on The Bachelorette, and see what we can learn about love, loss, and the LSAT. Welcome to the Logical Rose-ning Section.

We pick up in the Bachelorette Man-sion, with our dudes still reeling from last week’s premiere episode. And so are we, frankly. I mean, so many mans, so many potential futures for Rachel. We get a little recap of the first night’s action with Chris Harrison. Other than the usual parade of squared-jawed white dudes with job titles that include some combination of the words “Consultant,” “Tech,” “Finance,” and “Senior,” we got a more diverse line-up of contestants with more interesting back stories than is typical for this show.

We got Josiah, who after a tragic childhood and a juvenile criminal conviction as a teenager, became a prosecutor at the very same district attorney’s office that once charged him with a crime. There’s Kenny, a father of a ten year-old girl and professional wrestler with the amazing stage name Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King. And then there’s Lucas … who says “Whaboom” a lot. Like so much. Anyone who watched this episode has definitely heard that exclamation enough times for a lifetime, so we’re not going to repeat that here again (also, he’s probably trademarked its use, and we don’t want any legal trouble here. Again, there are a bunch of attorney contestants this year, so we’re willing to guess that this is season is a little more litigious season than most). Also, Rachel was warned by a contestant from Nick’s season of The Bachelor that DeMario is not to be trusted, a warning that clearly had no meaning or implications for the following episode of television.

Anyway, Chris Harrison, still the nominal host of this program, shows up to see what these guys are thinking about Rachel. And these veritable Romeos drop romantic bon mots like, “You look at Rachel, and you’re just like, struck” and “She’s not only beautiful, but she walks … she smells so extreme … she smells so good.”

This is all a pretext to introduce the very first group date of this season. The contestant with the most extreme Richard Spencer haircut ever reads the cards of the contestants that will go on the very first, very normal date where eight guys vie for the attention of one girl during a highly structured activity set-up by producers. Richard Spence-hair reads off the names Dean, Jack Stone the law student, Jonathan, Blake, Iggy, the aforementioned Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King, Fred, and Whablam guy. The card reads, “I’m looking for husband material – Rachel.”

Onto the first group date! Rachel throws a barbecue with a sad portable grill and, like, two burgers. Realizing that there is no food to eat, Rachel and the guys decide to play a little touch football, with Rachel playing the quarterback position. Rachel runs an up-tempo spread office akin to Chip Kelly. Looks like she wants to be Marcus Married-ota (sorry).

During this, Whablooey annoys everyone with his Whablooey-ing. He especially annoys aspiring drummer boy Blake, who apparently knows something about this guys past. Drummer boy Blake looks like he is going to do something really dumb like confront Rachel about the guy. Which would actually play into WhamBamThankYouMa’am’s favor. The contestants who make it their sole mission to take down another contestant never go further than a two-on-one date on this show. Just ask Taylor from last season of The Bachelor. So while Blake is playing checkers, Wattaburger is playing … well definitely not chess. Maybe he’s also just playing checkers, but he’s slightly better at checkers.

After football, these guys are put to the task of seeing who is the “most husband material.” We are introduced to a competition hosted by none other than Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. Kutcher is wearing a t-shirt with “Trophy Husband,” and they are described as “the most perfect couple in Hollywood.” Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson would like a word.

These guys are put into a relay race where they have to do dad tasks like change a diaper, strap on a Babybjörn, vacuum a carpet, de-clog a sink, and set a table. At each stage of the race, the contestant in last place will be eliminated. Kutcher describes the race as testing the contestants’ skills in “husbandry,” which doesn’t actually mean “the act of being a husband,” as Kutcher suggests. Unless crops and animals are your wife, I suppose.

Iggy, who is wearing a dope gold chain, is eliminated immediately, mostly for trying to care for the baby doll as if it were an actual sentient human being. He looks sad in the “dog house,” which is where they put the loser, not-fit-for-Rachel husbands. As these dummies are scrambling around treating the babies like a relay baton, I’m hoping Rachel pulls a King Solomon and gives the win to Iggy with the dope chain, for not treating the stand-in for their flesh and blood progeny like a maniac.

The race ends up as a two-man competition between Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King and Wham!Boom as the last two. Wampum is literally drowning the baby as he’s trying to de-clog the sink. As they’re sprinting to the end, Waikiki gives an illegal stiff arm to Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King, who, let’s reminds ourselves, is like twice the size of WaxOnWaxOff and is an honest-to-goodness professional wrestler (on an independent circuit, but still). Wahlberg, despite eventually winning the race, is not long for this world.

After the race, the contestants go to a creepy-looking vintage store in North Hollywood that looks the set of a B-52s video. Rachel is super not impressed by these dudes at this stage of the date. Wallabang reads a terrible poem. Fred, who was a child Rachel supervised at summer camp as a child, ties to convince her to stop seeing him as the bad little boy from summer camp. Maybe stop talking summer camp, dude. Jack Stone the law student has a v. creepy posture when talking to her, head cocked and leaned in, like a snake about to strike its prey. Rachel is, perhaps instinctively, repulsed. Iggy with the dope chain does not have a dope chain of questions, sweating profusely through questions like “So career-wise, what are the prospects?” Blake apparently used to live with Whack-a-Mole’s ex-girlfriend. Brings it up with Rachel. Rachel is literally ready to use a peremptory challenge to axe all of these guys, looks like she literally couldn’t care.

Somehow, Dean does the best. He was, as a reminder, the guy that said “I’m ready to go black, and never go back,” when introduced to Rachel. They go into depth on his use of this dated, problematic cliché. He gets the group date rose. Dean has a clean-cut white face, a slightly-past-its due-date haircut, a tasteful plaid button up, and will clearly say whatever the producers tell him to, as evidenced by his “go black” comment. He seems like a composite of every successful Bachelorette contestant ever. Until this is disconfirmed, I’m just going to assume he’s the first BachelorBot designed and manufactured by the producers for the inevitable event that the U.S. depletes its reserves of attractive, straight business consultants and software salesmen who are really into Crossfit and are eager to go on TV.

Meanwhile, Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King is awesome. In describing the bubbling feud between Blake and Whackadoodle, he gives a great definition of circular reasoning, and drops a little inside knowledge of some of Los Angeles’s worst tourist traps: “Listen, I’m a pro wrestler. I know all about white dudes acting crazy. But everybody is just talking around in circles. So if y’all want to get on the merry-go-round, take your ass to Santa Monica and get on the merry-go-round. You white dudes are kind of bugging right now.” Kenny, you’re great, but leave the explaining of logical fallacies to us, buddy. We don’t go into your workplace and tell you how to properly execute a diving double axe handle.

Afterwards, we have a kind of boring interlude with Rachel’s one-on-one date with Peter, who looks like a young Viggo Mortensen. Piggo Mortensen and Rachel, accompanied by Rachel’s dog Copper, take a private jet to Palm Springs. Copper is adorably wearing a cast on his front leg. They go to a Coachella pool party for dogs called Bark-fest. They discuss his parents’ impression of going on The Bachelorette, their gap teeth, and therapy. He gets the date rose, and will live to fight another Sentinel. They then watch fireworks with Copper, who is probably terrified.

Finally, we get to the second group date. The date card reads, simply, “Swish.” Will, Jamey, Diggy, Alex, Adam, Richard Spence-hair, Matt, Eric, Josiah, and DeMario. The show could have just been making up half of these people and I would have had no idea. They could have told me the second date was with Chet, Dirk, Hologram Chris Pine, D’Angelo from the “Brown Sugar” video, Tommy, and Deepak Chopra and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

DeMario is the star of this date, which is set up with his quote, “You can either sink with the fishes, or swim to shore. We’re going to see who’s built Ford ToughTM.” DeMario. First of all, the date card says “Swish.” It literally could not be any more obvious you’re playing basketball. The only alternative date would be a group discussion of whether Kanye should have kept Swish as the title to The Life of Pablo and whether the original tracklist would have made for a more cohesive album. I don’t know where this water metaphor came from. Second, fishes don’t just sink. It’s not like they’re just born and then immediately drown and die and sink to the bottom of the ocean. That’s not how fishes work, DeMario. Third, a Ford truck would probably be very bad at swimming to shore, mostly because it is a vehicle made for land and has, as far we know, no person volition or autonomy. So that’s an inapt comparison.

The guys show up to play basketball in their best ath-leisure. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shows up to teach them the Skyhook. Some of the guys are laughably bad at basketball. Some of the guys are better. There seems to be an inversely proportional relationship between height of hair and basketball skills with these guys. DeMario can dunk. He drunks on Rachel, very disrespectfully.

They then play a real game to a “packed house,” which apparently refers to a high school gymnasium mostly filled with extras they found on Craigslist. The producers take Chris Harrison out of his mothball-strewn box to introduce the teams. DeMario’s game is a little like Boogie Cousins. He takes over the second half of the game to lead his team to victory. A group date rose is all but assured But after the game, a girl named Lexi shows up, completely unexpectedly and unplanned by any producers, surely. Lexi informs Rachel that DeMario was still dating Lexi up until literally hours before DeMario showed up to meet Rachel on the show. Rachel goes straight into attorney-mode and holds a deposition with DeMario and Lexi. DeMario, acting on advice of counsel, denies pretty much everything, claiming that he hadn’t initiated any contact with Lexi. Lexi starts going off, addressing the camera and swearing on the graves of her father and the (future … we hope) graves of the kittens sleeping on her bed that DeMario is lying. Rachel, ever the attorney, looks at the evidence. She sees messages on Lexi’s phone indicating that DeMario was still trying to get it, and promptly dismisses him from the show. Case closed!

After the game, the remaining contestants go to Clifton’s Cafeteria in Downtown Los Angeles. They hang out next to a big tree. Rachel, shaken from the DeMario experience, calls DeMario a “dirty, dirty dog.” The editors smash cut to a taxidermied fox, which is like, close enough I guess? The guys on this group date, on the whole, are much smoother than the losers on the first. Both Josiah and Eric get some kissy face time in. Josiah snags the group date rose.

Somehow, after two hours after Bachelorette-ing, we barely even have time for the rose ceremony. During the cocktail party, Bryan the Chiropractor, Iggy with the dope chain, Jamey the Anonymous, and Summer Camp Fred are getting in some one-on-one time when DeMario arrives, wanting to speak to Rachel one last time. Chris Harrison, again de-mothballed, asks Rachel if she wants to talk to him. Rachel, wearing a dress that looks like it has literal armor on it, feels bulletproof enough to address him. All the other guys talk about wanting to kick DeMario’s ass. TO BE CONTINUED …

What we learned about love

To find love, it’s better to spout a mildly offensive cliché based on your beloved’s race than it is to have a massively annoying catchphrase that’s not based on anything. Also, a love of dogs helps.

What we learned about loss

If you’re going to dunk on your future wife, you probably shouldn’t have a current bae who is willing to show your text messages on national television.

What we learned about the LSAT

Not very much! A cursory Google search into what score Rachel got on her LSAT didn’t reveal much. We will report back details in this progressing story as they become available.

The Logical Rose-ning Section: Your Recap of The Bachelorette was originally published on LSAT Blog

#LSAT #The Bachelorette #trent teti #lsat

0 notes