#i need an S5 callback like i need air

[even-keel]

they just went for it in episode 2 and I love that for them

Tarlos Wedding Celebration Event [Week 14] -> favorite kiss(es)-> 1.02

[ohtobealady]

If you'd want to do another one-word prompt, I would like to suggest: provoke! <3 I'm living for all your new drabbles! The Cobert content that feeds me <3

Hi, sweet friend! Thank you so much for this prompt word--it's a great one. I set this as a missing scene during S5E8. Existing dialogue is at the top of the drabble (which you'll likely recognize) as well as some callbacks to JF's dialogue throughout S5. (I also included an original one of mine.)

There was a little line in this episode that struck me...along with the realization that Robert definitely goes to Bond Street (and therefore Sotheby's) after hanging around Susan and Shrimpie.

---Provoke------

He really hadn’t been paying much attention to what his valet was saying, but when Bates paused, silent, Robert realized he should speak. “Ah,” he tried. “Do let us know if you need us to do anything for you.”

It seemed to work, and Bates moved the slippers closer to Robert’s feet. “It isn’t necessary, my lord. Not yet. But thank you.”

He nodded at Bates, feeling a little sorry he’d not paid better attention to what he’d quietly said to him. Instead Robert’s thoughts had been on the dinner he’d endured, Susan’s ugly words tossed carelessly about, provoking everyone just the way she always did. He smiled at his valet, wishing Bates a good night, before slipping his feet into his house shoes. Truthfully he’d been eager to discuss the dinner with Cora all evening, but everytime he sought her out there was another person there beside her—Susan twice, which wouldn’t do. So he went through the small dividing door to their bedroom at Grantham House, happy to have her alone at last.

“Sinderby's going to be quite a challenge for Rose,” he said immediately upon entering, hardly waiting at all for the door to close behind him. 

His wife barely looked up as she sat on the small settee at the end of their bed, scribbling notes in her little notebook that she’d rested upon her lap. “No doubt about that.”

“And what possessed Susan?” he continued, untying his dressing gown as he stood before her. “‘Do you have any English blood?’” he repeated what his cousin had said to the boy’s parents. How had she had the gall to say that to them? “Really.” 

Cora, sighing and shaking her head in agreement, lifted her eyes to look around the room as if she were trying to find the answer floating in the air. “She speaks without thinking.”

And just as Robert was about to open his mouth, to continue saying what he’d stored away in his mind to tell her when they were finally alone, Bates’s words from his dressing room only moments ago came rushing back. Robert looked at Cora, and he dipped his brows. “By the way, did you know Bates and Anna are going to Scotland Yard tomorrow morning?”

“Certainly not!” she exclaimed. “Why?”

Robert frowned. “Bates didn't really give a reason.”

“Do they want character testimonials?”

“I offered, but he said no.” The weight of remorse that he’d been distracted earlier made his limbs heavier, and he walked to the bed. “Not yet.”

He picked up his book and dropped upon the mattress. He flipped through the pages he knew he’d already read, and then, just as he did at Downton, he swung his legs up and into the sheets before lifting his eyes to Cora who still sat upon the blue settee. 

She looked pretty there. He watched her for a moment, watched the braid of her hair as it moved upon her back when she looked down again into her notebook. He heard her pencil writing, and he wondered, distantly, what about. 

“Seems a strange business,” she said quietly, still looking down into her lap.

“Yes.” He drew in a breath, and although he made his eyes find the page of his book, it did not work. He still thought of Bates: the way he’d moved the muscles in his jaw when he mentioned their errand; the flippant way Robert had spoken to him; the way Bates had said his wife’s name, nearly reverently. And next, Robert’s mind inexplicably went to Susan. He sighed when his mind heard again what she’d said: “We’re not in one room? Together?” Her voice had not been soft. Her voice had been strained and annoyed.

Cora had been so embarrassed for Shrimpie, standing there in the foyer, fresh from the gangplank, his wife affronted that they may have to share a room. And Cora, in her way, had tried to diffuse it, giving some sort of excuse in order to bring some reason into it, but Susan could not be diffused. 

Robert’s eyes, like his thoughts, drifted up to find his wife once more, her delicate frame all dressed in creams and ivories as bent over her tiny notebook, writing. 

What had Cora said a moment ago? Whenever Robert had come in grumbling, incredulous at what Susan had said at dinner? What was it that Cora said? 

“She speaks without thinking.” 

Robert frowned. No, Susan did not speak without thinking. She thought about every single word that came from her lips. She was angry and bitter, and she made others angry and bitter, too. And Cora’s gentle assessment of his dreadful cousin—Cora’s nature to think better of everyone, to think that Susan had no malice there and instead only blundering impulsivity—-was far more than Susan deserved. 

But that was Cora. She didn’t consider the mean and undignified qualities that most people acted on from time-to-time, and Robert admired that in her—usually. He was grateful for it when he’d been on the receiving end of her grace, but then … Oh. Though he didn’t want to, he thought of the night weeks ago that she’d come into his dressing room, telling him to come back to her. He thought of the way Cora had shook her head when he argued with her, even after he’d joined her in their bed. He thought of the way she’d told him, tearily, as they trudged uncomfortably through the conversation, “I never expected him to think I’d do anything. He never gave any clue that’s what he was after.”

It made Robert angry then, for that man had given her clues. It made Robert angry that Cora had not noticed them. How could she not have noticed them? How could she possibly not have known that man—Bricker—didn’t simply want to speak of art; he didn’t just want to flirt. How had she not known he’d want to bed her? 

Again, he watched Cora’s braid move upon her back as she wrote in her little notebook, and he listened to the little sounds her pencil made … and suddenly Robert’s heart ached for her. 

“Cora?” he asked softly. “Aren’t you nearly finished?”

She twisted to glance at him over her shoulder. “Oh. Yes. Sorry, darling.” 

He smiled when she closed her notebook, and he watched the soft silk of her nightdress billow out behind her as she walked towards the bed. She slid her notebook upon her side table, and then her fingers unbuttoned the two small buttons at her neck to remove her cape of a dressing gown. 

He’d been staring at her, wondering at her. How had he not seen her this way weeks ago? 

“What is it?” she nearly cooed, a bashful smirk upon her lips, and Robert broke her gaze and laughed.

“It’s nothing,” he smiled down at his book. “You look very nice is all.”

He was rewarded with one of her real laughs, a surprised sort of burst of air that warmed the space around them. “In my nightclothes?” she asked as if Robert had lost his senses. He heard the switch of her lamp before her small weight rocked the mattress beneath him, and then came the subtle wafts of the warm, sweet smell of her perfume. And Robert closed his eyes. 

Beneath this very roof, two of the men he admired most likely lay in their beds uncomfortably. Bates, the echo of his voice feeling more and more like a pit of dread in one’s stomach. Shrimpie, his stiff features at dinner like an over-starched collar cutting into the soft flesh of one’s throat. 

And yet Robert lay here, in his soft bed, surrounded by sleepy whispers of jasmine perfume and a soft silk nightdress he knew was wrinkled and bunched beneath the sheets.

How did he deserve it? 

His eyes, those disobedient things, moved again from the printed words they would not read and to Cora beside him. He indulged himself by looking at her, at how she still shifted to find a comfortable position on her side, at how she tilted up her chin and how his lamp cast golden light on her face. He looked at her closed eyes, her still mouth, the fingers of her hand that rested upon his pillow. 

And instead of smiling, he frowned. 

“She speaks without thinking.”

No. Cora was wrong. 

“I never expected him to think I’d do anything. He never gave any clue that’s what he was after.”

Wrong, but he loved her so much more for it than he ever had before. 

“Cora.”

She opened her eyes and found him. “Mmm?”

He must’ve looked very serious, for she blinked at him, and he forced himself to grin. “I—-.” But he hadn’t a single thing to say aloud to her. Nothing that would make sense to her. Nothing he could put into words that could express how sorry he was that he’d ever imagined she was anything but … good.  

In spite of his grin, his silence alarmed her for now the blinking was also a furrowed brow. “Robert?” She lifted herself slightly upon an elbow. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” He swallowed. “Only I find myself unable to sleep.”

This did the trick, and Cora laid back down, her features softening and relaxing once again. “Well you are reading,” she said. “It’s difficult to do both at once.”

Chuckling, Robert closed his book, and he slid it to the table beside him, and like his wife, switched off his lamp. 

“I didn’t mean you had to stop,” he could hear her saying as he shifted down into the bedding. “That is, if you aren’t tired.”

He ignored that, and instead he lifted his arm and invited her closer beside him. “Come.”

“Oh?” But she was laughing, lowly, in her throat as she moved to touch his side. 

With his arm around her, and her hand in his own lying in the dark, his heart beat madly against his ribs. Eventually, after a few still and silent moments, Cora whispered, and her breath was warm even through his nightshirt. 

“This is unlike you.”

“Nonsense.” He pressed a kiss to her head. And then to her forehead. And then, when she looked up at him, to her soft lips. “It’s exactly like me, to want to hold you.” 

She inhaled against him, and he could feel the lift of her thin shoulders and chest. “Well, since I like it, I won’t argue with you.”

“Do you like it?” His voice had been deeper than he thought it’d be, and he saw in the darkness of the room the way Cora’s lips parted before she nodded against his shoulder.

And he kissed her.

“We really shouldn’t,” she whispered against his mouth, even as he could feel her breath quicken. “Someone may hear.”

“And if they should?”

She laughed at this, a rumble of a laugh that hardly filled the space between them, before he caught her again in a kiss and began to move her beneath him. 

“Darling,” he heard her sigh, and he smiled at how sweet it was, even if he longed for more. He wanted to hear the care in her voice, the contrast to all the bitter and angry words at dinner.

“Say my name,” he asked of her as he kissed her ear, as he settled his weight upon her hips, between her knees. 

He heard her soft noise—confusion or surprise, he wasn’t sure, but it was quiet and if her lips hadn’t been against his jaw, he’d have missed it. “What?” 

“I want to hear you say my name.”

“Robert–” but it wasn’t soft or quiet. It was only the prelude to her small resistance. “We can’t.”

“Won’t you let me?” 

She hummed against him as his hand felt the thin silk of her nightdress. His breath caught at the sensation. 

“But what if we embarrass Susan? If she hears?”

“She won’t.”

“Her room shares a wall—“

“No one’s ever heard us before.” He closed his eyes at the soft skin of her thigh. She kissed his shoulder, his cheek. Her hands were at his chest. His back. And his heart beat madly. “We won’t make a sound.”

“The bed and …. everything’s been so uneasy between them … I wouldn’t want to make her feel—if—“

“Let me,” he begged as his head fell to her throat. She’d lifted her chin to give him access, and he could feel the soft curls in her braid against his forehead. Robert’s mind whirled, thought after thought, each one reminding him how he’d been such a fool. Reminding him how wonderful she was. Reminding him that he loved her so terribly, terribly much. “You’re my wife,” his voice prayed against her skin. 

And she stilled. 

He felt that she had. Her fingers that had been at his jaw slipped away. Her head tipped away from his lips. And when he lifted himself to peer at her in the dark, he could see she was not cross, but she did look different. For beneath him, she drew in a breath. Although she smiled, it didn’t reach her eyes. It was not one of her real smiles, not the ones that were so often in the heated air between them—the ones that wrinkled her nose, and Robert wondered what had happened. What had he done? 

But then, she nodded. “Very well. But please be very quiet.”

It wasn’t until she’d drawn in another deep breath that Robert realized what she’d heard: “You’re my wife.” Possession. Which, of course, she was his as much as he felt he was hers. But he’d not meant that. He meant it with gratitude, pride, love. And also guilt. 

Her fingers were working at his pajama bottoms when he stopped her, quickly pulling away and feigning a quick chuckle. “Wait.”

Her eyes met his.

“You’re right.” He sighed. “Of course you’re right.” He rolled from her and to his back.

“Oh?”

“Not that I care much for Susan’s feelings…” he mumbled as he fixed the bedclothes.

“Are you certain?” 

He looked at her, and just as he’d done before, he lifted his arm to invite her in. “Yes.” 

Like before, she moved to him and rested against him, his heart beating a little quicker in his chest. Again he pressed a kiss to her head, and his hand found hers. 

“I’m sorry,” her voice rumbled against him. “It isn’t that I don’t want to—“

“Don’t apologize,” he answered, and again he thought of buried memories so recently made new again. Of flirtations gotten out of hand. He thought of the break in her voice when he’d accused her of letting that man in her private life—into Robert’s place in her heart. “He thought it. And he was mistaken.” He thought of her smile when he entered the gallery at home, after he heard that man pour compliments upon her as she showed him the Della Francesca. “It’s nice to show it to someone so appreciative.” 

And at last, he thought of her soft little words about Susan. Words that couldn’t be more wrong: “She speaks without thinking.”

Robert blinked in the dark. Cora’s head on his chest. His heart beating beneath her. And suddenly he knew what he wanted to do.

“I think I’ll go to Bond Street tomorrow.”

“Oh?” He felt the warmth of her breath. “What for?”

“I want to see about something.”

He heard her yawn, but quietly. “Do you want company?”

“No.” Robert pulled his wife closer to him—-his darling wife—-and he closed his eyes. “But thank you.”

[missholloween]

I will need like a solid week to articulate my feelings towards season 6 of wwdits. But I'm not even angry, I'm just dissapointed. Vague spoilers under the cut

It feels so disrespectful to people who have been watching and loving this show for years (4 in my case, but I know some people were here since the beginning), but also to the team itself. Did you not care about your show? Did you think your characters were pointless? Your plots were just mindless entertainment for stupid people?

Season 4's "nothint changes" reveal at the final episode didn't feel great, but at least I could at least understand some of the choices of the season, and it did tied up well to Colin's plotline. But season 5 led it behind! There were new plotlines, stakes were high by Guillermo's transformation, Nandor and Guillermo's relationship would never be the same! And the worst part is that with the first episodes of s6 I thought we would go somewhere, that they would adress their new relationship status... And they did, halfway there, as most plotlines after s3 have been.

And this is not only because of Nandermo. The Guide was barely a character this season after the s5 finale, and they made her a Trump supporter!!!! In two of the ten lines she has this season!!!! Nadja has been doing nothing, just pointless tasks because they couldn't think of a plot for her when NADJA DOLL IS RIGHT THERE. Colin has had a weird fixation on family this season, and it's POINTLESS because they don't do anything with the raising baby Colin plotline except some weak callbacks.

Even if it's not only about them, i'm furious about nandermo too. The site I watch the episodes in had the "nandermo" human ending and it made my blood boil. Why would you do the audience feel stupid for thinking that two of the leads, which you wrote as any other sitcom couple (Rachel and Ross. Jake and Amy. Jim and Pam), for thinking that they were more than platonic besties? The interviews are being really nasty too, I can't believe Harvey (haven't read Kayvan's, I don't have the stomach for that rn), who has been a vocal supporter of nandermo, has turned to that 'deep bond between two bros that shouldn't read as (ew) romantic' bulshit. Why do you think fans only want freaky nasty nandermo sex when they say they should be together? And also, what if they do? This is (or was) the freaky nasty vampire sex show. Guess they have forgotten that too.

I don't know, I guess I now know what Sherlock fans felt like when The Empty Hearse aired. I thought we had got over queerbaiting, but we're back! And it's way worse now, as they do lean in the queer <3

Whatever.

[variousqueerthings]

unreal that silver beat the shit out of johnny last season and it just didn’t get acknowledged literally at all

what did it meaaaan???? what did it do????? how did it change kreese and johnny??????? it was pretty clear what it was all about for silver, but not even an acknowledgement? not even a sneering "beat you just as easily as last time pretty boy" when he's got johnny on his knees again (okay that's me projecting some silverlaw into the scene, but hey -- not even a callback to promising to "take good care of" him? no indictment of johnny doing the exact same thing he did in s4, which was to drink and go fight him?), no kinship offered to daniel when he gets beaten to hell by the same man, no sense from johnny that silver is really dangerous and that a skittish terrified daniel coming to him might want to know that this happened so he knows he's not going insane???? kreese would never apologise for its happening, but he's not the sort of guy who likes to be misunderstood, so no need to clear the air there, even if it still ended with johnny disowning any connection to him??? (would that have made that moment - which I do like - even stronger??)

johnny end s5 really just deciding to drunkenly break into silver's home after he got beaten half to death the last time around, what was that all about????

honestly, as much as I Did Not Want Chozen To Die and am glad he didn't, I was so confused by this narrative choice -- they beat the bad guys because they all get drunk and randomly decide that now is the time to beat them. If anything they deserved, narratively, to lose -- to have the rug pulled out from under them, to have their hubris challenged. guess daniel just didn't have the right tactic which was... idk uncoordinated violence I guess

but in s4 johnny's uncoordinated violence got the shit kicked out of him, just as silver had planned for it to

why did it matter? what did it change in the characters?

(characters not being changed beyond a few scenes by what happens to them is a big thing with this show, opposite of characters changing within a moment because the plot wants to move on, see ex. robby and miguel becoming besties from one scene to the next. I had robby and miguel becoming besties on my cobra kai bingo, but I thought that would be an ongoing plot, not a one-and-done)

(the other problem is that the violence is meaningless)

this isn’t really my biggest gripe, I could happily-ish shut off my brain and continue the show, but now I’m like... oh it’s a symptom of how off course it’s all been going, especially with johnny, to whom things now just “happen” and don’t scratch the surface layer of funny drunk man straight guy violent anger guess he’s gonna be a dad now which is the same as character development

it would just be so easy to acknowledge that it happened

[mymostimaginaryfriend]

QoTS 5x02 Reaction Post

My brain has basically been Jeresa airhorns since the episode aired lmao but I’m going to try to add some Thoughts to my liveblog from last night.  Here goes:

First of all thank you to @gild-and-fire​ for making this tag meme for me that is ALREADY coming in handy.

Iiiiiiiinteresting that the moment James’ name is cleared the Ice Queenpin of last week thawed quite a bit, right?  Sure the trademark cool under pressure business dealings were there for Teresa (including a bit of ruthlessness) but in very calculated, ultimately successful way rather than terrifying.

James is back like what? 48 hours and already throwing up speed bumps for the descent of Teresa’s soul.  It’s gonna be a tough job, but if anyone can do it....

How to say I love you without saying I love you: Some guys bring you flowers, some bring you a personal army.

This episode was a Jeresa Callback All U Can Eat Buffet

There were SO many from the greatest hits: Take Care of Yourself, You too / “Smart” / You Deserve That / I Want You to Stay etc.  to even visual cues from past Jeresa scenes - the talk outside about going to NYC / 2x04, the lunge into the kiss from 3x09.  And of course the cigarette scene that @medievalraven​ goes over in her great meta.  It was an episode tailor made for parallel gifsets. 

I’m kinda shocked they didn’t add a driving together scene for old times sake.  Still holding out hope for a S5 Jeresa adventure episode too.

These two, as ever, are so so soft and so so stupid lmao.  But even with the interruptions of their private scenes, they packed SO much in. And I loved how you could both tell they’d learned from their past miscommunications.

They were a little rusty at first - doing that thing they do approaching it from an angle instead of head on - T: “You didn’t have to come back.”  J: “Yeah I did.”   T: “Are you staying?” J: “Do you want me to stay?” But right out of the gate James is like this is what I feel, I need you to verbalize what you want from me. Which by end of the episode Teresa does.

But then he says “these Russians are animals” and you can practically SEE Teresa visualizing his death in her head so she’s like "you should go”.

LOL at James playing the emotional game of chicken with THE master of the game Teresa Mendoza.  Him being like “Okay I’ll pack...this is me walking to the bed slowly...packing...to leave...this is me leaving....and I’m going to wander around the house...slowly... in case anyone needs anything...just in case...do a shot with Pote...get to know Chicho...oh hey, I’m already packed let’s go to NYC” lol.

“I’m a quick healer” If only, my friend.

The laugh!!! the smiles!! the heart eyes!! the “people who you love” meaningful eye contact!!

The KISS - THE LUNGE - THE WAY JAMES CUPS HER HEAD WITH HIS HAND AND THEY TILT THEIR FOREHEADS TOGETHER - THE WAY JAMES TOUCHES HIS LIP AFTER LIKE WE’RE IN GODDAMNED PRIDE AND PREJUDICE!

The smoking scene.  Poor James was probably thinking of a victory celebration a la 3x09 like “will my stitches hold for that?? Lets find out” and then

Teresa comes out with a CLEAR “I want you to stay”!!!! growth.gif

Only to  drop the (albeit heart eyes included) hammer of “You and me can’t happen.”

I love how James didn’t technically agree.

Can’t wait to see if Teresa caves physically or emotionally first....

Just gonna leave these lines here: “I thought we could be like normal people” / “Get lost for awhile, get these hands clean” / “[change] is the only way to survive in this life” / “we can’t happen...maybe in some other life but not this one.”  Mmmhmmmmmm.  

Non Jeresa stuff:

I really like Oscar the Dominican so far.

Teresa’s “We can double our business or go to war. These are my terms.” CLASSIC Teresa smarts with Queenpin power...I loved it.

The judge: “You’ll be the next Mexican I set on fire”. He can’t just die now, his death better top Cortez’s death by chainsaw b/c this had me ready to drive to NOLA and do it myself.

I loved the expression on James face when Oksana said “[Kostya] wasn’t sure you’d save my life.” LOL like saving other ppl’s lives is kinda what Teresa does, if only I could get Teresa to save her own.

Is the Oksana stuff legit?? It felt really convenient that the “sleeper cell” was dead before Teresa could talk to them.  Were they really rogue or did Oksana just kill off everyone who knew otherwise?  We’ll see. Kostya agreed to her new terms for now.

I loved that of all the many conflicts introduced in the first ep (James, NYC Russians/Dominican rivalry, waterfront $$, the kill team, etc) so many had some sort of resolution or solid movement FORWARD in this episode.  That’s something I really missed from the earlier seasons: mini conflicts that had a 2-3 episode arc instead of *cough* dragging out all season (s4).

Speaking of which, Boaz’s sixth sense of when things are going too well for Teresa remains unparalleled lol.  But I can’t wait to see what JT does next. He’s killing it. Maybe literally...

And now.....the baby news.

At first I was too happy to get an extended James and Pote conversation to care but is anyone else kinda irked that it was POTE who shared the Tony story? I get it story wise w/ his own Tony redemption opportunity on the horizon with KA’s pregnancy they wanted to get that “this world is not for a child they make you weak and vulnerable” ominous foreshadowing in there but oof.  I wish it had been a Teresa/James convo first. 

A baby can be a catalyst for a lot of things (as if Teresa isn’t already feeling the pressure to get legit fast) but what I’m wondering is this:  If it comes down to protecting pregnant Kelly Anne or Teresa, in the heat of the moment, who will Pote choose? He violently reacted to the incarcerated teen boys and that was before he knew KA’s news.   

I’m glad James stayed.  Teresa needs someone who is focused on HER safety alone and as evidenced many times this episode, she definitely will need it.

CANNOT WAIT TO HAVE MARCEL BACK NEXT WEEK!

[thestupidhelmet]

Why did the writers have Eric break off the engagement with Donna right when they were about to get married? What was the point of Eric even proposing to Donna in season 5 if the writers knew that there would be no wedding?

I don’t have much primary behind-the-scenes info on that. But everyone at T7S believed season 7 would be the last season -- because it was until season-8 was greenlit about half-way into season 7′s production (after episodes had already aired and all the scripts had been written, some of which then needed to be rewritten).

This is speculation, but had season-8 not been greenlit, Donna and Eric’s story at the end of the series (the last ep of season 7, the original series finale) would’ve been quite different. Maybe Eric’s way of paying for college would’ve involved Donna; for instance, they would’ve gone to Africa together. She wanted to have adventures, and this would’ve been a great one to have with Eric.

Donna might’ve even said, “I don’t care where I go, as long as I’m with you.” That would’ve been nice callback to “The Promise Ring” (3x25), where Donna envisioned herself having adventures in other states and countries without Eric.

Since the original series finale (S7) likely had Hyde proposing to Jackie --

according to various accounts from people connected to people who worked on the show

J/H’s season-7 arc supports this endgame story for them

as does most of the script of “Take it or Leave It [7x23], whose ending might have been changed to fit the new version of the S7 finale

as does the Filgos being the showrunners at the time, who were big J/H fans, put J/H together romantically in S5, and very likely asked the outgoing S4 showrunners to split Jackie/Kelso apart by the end of S4 to make way for the J/H romance --

Eric and Donna becoming re-engaged by the (original version of) end of the series seems unlikely.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Please please give us some of your thoughts on 10x18. I'm dying.

All right. Here we go. How is everyone feeling this morning? I know the fandom is very emotional right now, and I’m here to support you. I get it. I feel you. I really do. But I’m not worried. I’m not going to give you my full analysis until Sunday. And guys, I have a LOT to post. I literally got nothing productive done yesterday because I spent all day talking to people about this, watching both TWD and TTD multiple times and analyzing. (Thank goodness for working at home and flexible deadlines. 😉)

***There will be very minor spoilers below, but nothing I haven’t already posted on my account from what was leaked before. Still, if you don’t want spoilers, stop reading now.***

So I’ll just give you a few jumping off points here to hopefully ease your minds, and then I’ll explain in full after the episode airs.

1. In terms of the plot, it’s pretty much what we thought and prepared for. Did he have a relationship with her? Yes. And it follows the Tobin/Jessi/Ron pattern perfectly. But the part I think everyone needs to pay most attention to that when she gives him the ultimatum, HE DOESN’T CHOOSE HER. It’s the exact opposite of the funeral home with Beth where he’s the one who volunteered to stay there with her and stop searching for Rick. Think about the complete opposite thing we saw in this episode. And yes, he later changes his mind and goes back, but I promise that’s not because he suddenly realized he loved Leah. There’s a whole other thing going on there, which I’ll explain in detail on Sunday. 

2. What Angela Kang says after the episode and what the episode writer says on TTD confirms everything we’ve been discussing this past week. AK even says that now this period of Daryl’s life is over and he won’t be going back to it. And remember that they put out a promo for the bonus episodes that brands Leah as Daryl’s “friend.” They also confirm in TTD that Leah was made to be a great deal like Carol. So, in short, they confirm everything we thought anyway. Leah is just a stand in and a stepping stone. She’s not Daryl’s true love or the one he’s going to end up with in the long term. In fact, because of the crosses we see in this episode (and also what happens to other short term love interests--Jessi/Ron/Tobin) I think there’s a good chance Leah will die relatively soon. 

3. There’s a TON of Beth symbolism in this episode. And I know that’s probably freaking some of you out because it feels like they’re recycling Beth symbolism and giving it to Leah. Again, I’ll explain in more detail on Sunday, but I promise that’s not what they’re doing. I’m going to challenge you to look at it from the opposite angle. They aren’t giving this symbolism to Leah. Rather, Leah is a replay of Beth. She’s simultaneously a callback to Daryl’s happiness with Beth in S4/S5, and a foreshadow of when/how he’ll find Beth and achieve long-term happiness with her. So, the symbolism gets complicated, but Leah is a callback, a foreshadow, a stand-in, a proxy, and a parallel to Beth. Yeah, I’m serious. (Sirius. 😉)

4. Pay attention to Dog in the episode. Dog = Beth. And I know we’ve said that for a long time because of Sirius symbolism, but in this episode, Dog = absitiviely posolutely, 100% literally meant to represent Beth in this template. So look at each segment, each flashback, and ask yourself how Dog could = Beth here and how this might be a callback to Beth and Daryl in S4/S5. That will help, and I’ll lay it all out for you on Sunday.

5. In short, this episode is a template. It’s one great big representation of Daryl’s arc, with the river representing his character path and his search for Rick representing the people’s he’s always searching for. From Sophia to Beth to Rick, and now Connie and (sort of) Leah. It’s abstract and will take a lot of words to explain, but I’ve already sent it to several of my theorists peeps and it’s making them feel much better about the episode. 

So, I hope this helps everyone feel at least marginally better. If not, hold the line. We only have a couple of days until Sunday. 😁 Xoxo! 💖

[lee-em-dee]

A Season 6 Bellarke Recap [a.k.a. the Receipts]

Before the finale airs, I thought we were due for a recap of some of the major B/C moments of Season 6, episode by episode.

6x01 “Sanctum”

[a.k.a. “It’s not crazy.”]

This felt like such a turning point for Bellarke, particularly on Bellamy’s end, because you can finally see him starting to fill in the blanks of their relationship. Clarke is so tentative and reticent about addressing the radio calls. Bellamy recognizes her vulnerability, understands the significance of this admission. And by assuring her “it’s not crazy” that she depended on him for six years, he reveals that he relied on her memory just as much, thus affirming the strength and stability of their relationship. Devotion is the name of the game.

6x02 “Red Sun Rising”

[a.k.a. “I don’t need you anymore.” + “This time, you die. Not me.”]

Talk about Foreshadowing™. This episode allowed audiences to get into the heads of each character (sans body snatching) and fully grasp what it is that drives/haunts them. Case in point, during Bellamy’s red sun psychotic episode, his compulsive need to protect and save his people is underscored, as is his deep-seated fear of being abandoned by/losing Clarke. This illustrates how, to a certain extent, Bellamy is terrified of how much he depends upon Clarke, knowing fully well the toll her death took on him for the past six years.

6x03 “The Children of Gabriel”

[a.k.a. “She is. She can speak for us.” + “We’ll bring Madi back. I promise.”]

Though the two are separated for the majority of this episode, Bellamy and Clarke’s “Together” partnership and co-leading dynamic are back in full force. Theirs is a relationship built on trust and mutual respect, a fact made very apparent when Bellamy doesn’t hesitate to allow Clarke to unilaterally conduct diplomatic affairs in Sanctum while he reconnects with their people. Likewise, Clarke entrusts the safety of her daughter to Bellamy in spite of the calamitous series of events that transpired in Season 5. It’s truly a redressal of S5, and it establishes how a relationship as profound as theirs is only strengthened by past disputes, betrayals, and grievances.

6x04 “The Face Behind the Glass”

[a.k.a. “You’re my family, too.” + “You’re too important to me.”]

I found this moment particularly significant when juxtaposed with the B/C dynamic in Season 2. Clarke’s “You’re too important to me” is very reminiscent of her S2 “I can’t lose you, too,” only this time around Clarke doesn’t attempt to diminish Bellamy’s value to her and, instead, recognizes that her love for him is a strength, not a weakness. She conveys to him how deeply she regrets abandoning him at the pits (much like her abandonment of him at the gates of Arkadia in S2), vowing to never lose sight of the fact that he is and always will be family to her.

6x05 “The Gospel of Josephine”

[a.k.a. “How are we on different sides of this?”+ “Who are you?”]

The strength of B/C’s relationship is even further bolstered with Josephine acting as a foil character to Clarke. Bellamy and Clarke know and understand each other so well, and her absence is glaringly obvious to Bellamy when he recognizes how uncharacteristically out-of-sync they are. He is the first and only person to have figured out that Clarke had been bodysnatched purely from knowing who she is as a person—her mannerisms, the way she speaks, the way she thinks, the things she values most (the same cannot be said of her own mother, but c’est la vie).

6x06 “Memento Mori”

[a.k.a. “...the hardest decision of his life: he will not take revenge.”]

Bellamy reveals the depth of his love for Clarke not by being consumed with his desire to exact revenge on her murderers, but rather by pushing aside his rage and grief in order to honor her. His inconsolable, bereaved, emotionally volatile state screams at him to perpetuate the cycle of war and violence, yet he overrrides his natural bloodthirsty instincts, all for Clarke. Bellamy is a fighter, and him choosing not to fight to preserve Clarke’s legacy is precisely why his love for her must be true and abiding—a love that stands the test of time and transcends death.

6x07 “Nevermind”

[a.k.a. “You’re too afraid to face him.” + “I’ll take your deal.” vs. “We’re gonna get her back.”]

The noticeable absence of Bellamy in Clarke’s mindspace (save for the drawings of him on her cell walls) is very weighty, especially when accompanied by Mindspace Blodreina’s spiel about Clarke‘s subconscious being unable to conjure Bellamy up due to fear. Fear that he will always resent her for her mistakes, fear that he views her as a selfish monster. It’s evident that Clarke values Bellamy’s perception of her to an unparalleled degree. Pieces of him are scattered throughout her mindspace (notice how a sketch of him is hanging in the area of her mindspace that symbolizes home, happiness, security, and family). He is literally ingrained in her head. This makes her decision to sacrifice herself to Josephine all the more meaningful. It is only when Clarke assumes Bellamy had given up on her without a second thought that she, herself, gives up. What she doesn’t get to see is how devastated he had been by her death and how determined he is to get her back when he discovers she’s still alive.

6x08 “The Old Man and the Anomaly”

[a.k.a. “You only care about Clarke.” ATTA BOY, JORDAN]

Bellamy is a man on a mission, and he’ll stop at nothing to save Clarke, regardless of the fact that doing so potentially endangers his people and their prospects for peace. While it’s inaccurate to suggest that Bellamy “only [cares] about Clarke,” you cannot deny that in this precarious situation she takes priority above all else. Saving Clarke is more important to Bellamy than ensuring that the peace deal for his people is fleshed out without a hitch. “He’d do anything for her. To protect her. Just makes sense.” Yet another S2 parallel. Bellamy will do whatever it takes to bring Clarke back, consequences by damned. If that entails leaving his people to fend for themselves, then so be it.

6x09 “What You Take With You”

[a.k.a. “Your people are in trouble. I guess you care about her more.” + “Now that’s a weird relationship, isn’t it?” + “I won’t let you die.” + “I’m not leaving you.”]

This episode was truly an ode to the history between Bellamy and Clarke—a complex history characterized by its highs and lows, by reconciliation and betrayal—but a history of devotion, nonetheless. Bellamy’s interactions with Josephine are enlightening, to say the least. The clinical way she breaks down the complicated relationship between Bellamy and Clarke is not only a testament to who she is as a person (i.e. a psychopath) but also to how deeply B/C must care for each other. In spite of everything that’s happened between them, their love and devotion to one another remains. Josephine leaves no stone unturned when it comes to recounting the bad and the ugly aspects of Bellamy and Clarke’s relationship, yet she redacts all of the good (those deep, intimate, emotional moments must be difficult to comprehend through the eyes of a psychopath). Everything about this episode—from Bellamy’s heartfelt “I won’t let you die,” to the terror and desperation in his eyes when J!Clarke is on the chopping block, to Clarke’s adamant “I’m not leaving you”—affirms that their bond is unbreakable.

6x10 “Matryoshka”

[a.k.a. THAT SCENE]

It takes real acting chops to simultaneously rip my heart in half and stitch it back together, yet, within the span of two measly minutes, Bob Morley accomplished the feat seamlessly. When Bellamy is confronted with the reality that Clarke is dead on that operating table, his greatest fears in 6x02 paradoxically come alive before his very own eyes. “I’m not losing her again.” “I need you.” “I’m not letting you go.” The shift from denial to desperation to devastation is as breathtaking as it is heart-breaking to watch. Speaking of the heart, what elevated the CPR scene to a caliber rivaling that of poetic cinema was its overt symbolism. Bellamy is Clarke’s heart. Clarke is Bellamy’s heart. When she’s trapped in her own head, it’s Bellamy’s voice that brings her back and jumpstarts her fighter instincts. When her heart’s stopped beating, he pumps it for her. He’s begging for her to come back to him because she is his touchstone, his other half. “The heart and the head.” “The head and the heart.” In other words, we belong Together. In other words, I love you, and I don’t want to live without you.

6x11 “Ashes to Ashes”

[a.k.a. “You saved me.” “So how do we save everyone that I left behind?” + “For Monty.” “For Monty.”]

The guilt sets in for Bellamy as he begins to think about the potential repercussions of his actions. Leaving everything behind to save Clarke was purely a heart move, and now that he’s got Clarke back, his head is starting to punish itself for shutting down and abandoning his people. Bellamy is off kilter and guilt-ridden. His plans for a peace deal fell apart, and he’s terrified that he won’t be able to protect his people just as he had failed to protect Clarke before (a 6x02 callback). Now, more than ever, it’s evident that Bellamy relies on Clarke to center him. She is his voice of reason, the head to his heart—a heart that, in a lot of ways, beats for her, as evidenced by his adamant refusal to allow her to jeopardize her life by acting as the inside man. Objectively, he knows her plan is the smart play and the only way to ensure that they “do better” per Monty’s charge, but he can’t risk losing her again. Bellamy eventually conceding to her plan illustrates how ideologically-attuned they are now. They’ve never been more Together, and, above all else, they uphold faith in each other.

6x12 “Adjustment Protocol”

[a.k.a. “I left them.” + “What took you so long?”]

Though this was definitely more of a fast-paced, plot-driven episode, the flashes of Bellarke peppered throughout are very telling, teeing up a major emotional moment for them in 6x13. While waiting for Clarke to shut down the shield, Bellamy is once again plagued by guilt for leaving his people behind without a second thought. Octavia’s verbal consolations do little to ease his mind, which goes to show how tormented he is by his actions. He genuinely believes dropping everything to save Clarke was a selfish decision on his part because he couldn’t bear to live without her. It wasn’t so much about Clarke needing Bellamy than it was about Bellamy needing Clarke.

He needs her. Not just as a co-leader, not just as a partner. Bellamy needs Clarke. His person. Never mind that his people may need him. If Clarke’s in trouble, he’ll go through hell and back to save her.

Pivot to the Becho reunion. Bellamy’s just been reunited with his girlfriend, the person he’d entrusted to protect his people while he went off to galavant around the woods with J!Clarke. The pure relief on his face upon being reassured that Echo okay is apparent. He left her behind, she was in trouble, but now she’s okay. He’s comforted by her presence in the same way that he’s comforted by the knowledge that a member of his family is safe.

But that look on Bellamy’s face when his eyes meet Clarke’s and everything around them seems to melt away? That’s more than relief. That’s yearning. That’s devotion. That’s “You came through. I knew you would.” That’s love.

[blodreina-noumou]

The Salt, 6x03

Okay, we all knew this was coming.

How and why does Bellamy suddenly trust Clarke so much that he’s willing to say “she is” to the question of whether or not she’s their leader?? (Oh man I just realized that shippers must’ve gone nuts for that 5x03 callback.) She left him to die like a week ago!! They have had exactly zero conversations about anything important in their histories, and no, the fucking radio calls do not count. It just feels so fan-servicey and wrong. I don’t know if the new writers missed all of last season or only got a synopsis of what each character has done, but a lot of people are regressing and Bellamy is getting the worst of it. I now completely see what Bob Morley meant when he responded to a fan’s question about what s6 Bellamy would say to s1 Bellamy with, “They’re not that different.”

It feels like s5 basically didn’t happen for them. Everyone else is still rightfully seething at Clarke, questioning her leadership abilities (Raven you’re doing amazing sweetie), and Bellamy’s just blindly trusting her again. They keep sharing these tender, quiet moments that, without shipper goggles, just feel unearned. 

I’m worried unearned emotional moments are going to be a theme this season. We are diving headfirst into the dynamics and problems that come with Sanctum as a society and Alpha as a world. The reasonable gap for actual, meaningful conversations about these things is narrowing faster and faster. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything else, but I am disappointed.

On some level, I can see the writers’ attempts to make this feel genuine. All of the emphasis on “a second chance” and “a new world” is supposed to make us feel like the slate has been wiped clean. But only for Clarke, and only in Bellamy’s eyes? It’s just weird that everyone else is demanding she give better apologies, is demanding she do “good works” to redeem herself, and Bellamy suddenly understands everything because Madi told him about some radio calls, and Marper woke them up first, and yadda yadda yadda. Even Echo’s defenses of Clarke have been more practical than anything else, in line with how she tends to defend Octavia. Murphy and Raven are the only ones having reasonable reactions to things, and Murphy is now going to be distracted with trying to drink away his existential crisis. Emori has gotten 5 minutes of screentime, and while the spectacle of her breakdown was fun, it was so devoid of any complexity towards anyone but Murphy.

I’m not fooling myself, I know the B/C dynamic is the major focus of the show. But since that’s the case, I want their relationship to feel fleshed-out and fully conveyed to the audience. Bob and Eliza do some amazing work, and they have great chemistry, and thank god for that, because they’ve carried every single B/C scene alone since like, s3, on the workhorse that is their acting abilities. The writers have not helped them in the slightest. If I’d been given these scripts, I would’ve been confused as fuck.

I know it’s television, it’s a bombastic post-apoc teen drama on a network known for its cheesy teen drama. There have just been enough bright spots in The 100′s narrative overall that I expect a little better from them.

My main issue with this whole narrative is that if B and C are endgame, but if they’re not going to start forcefully moving that potential plotline forward, they are wasting everyone’s time by not actually addressing the issues between them, on-screen. And it is clear that there are still issues! Psychosis or not, Bellamy was speaking the truth when he asked Clarke how many times he’d tried to kill her, when he told Clarke he didn’t need her anymore. But everyone’s just kinda goin’ “Wow what a crazy day lol” and moving on.

I’m intrigued by Murphy’s arc, his new belief in an afterlife - specifically one where he’s doomed to an eternity of torture. I’m also anxious about how it’s going to pan out, because The 100 has rarely treated religion with any level of dignity, grace, or reverence. Even the Faith of the Flame has been stripped down to a science-fiction explanation, so far removed from the original spiritual grounder belief of “reincarnation” that everyone pretty much just accepts that Madi is walking around with a computer program in her brainstem. And yes, this show plays with the whole idea that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” but I think we can all agree that the way The Flame works is a Little Much. Even I know that, and I am a sucker for that storyline. Just knowing how it plays out makes me concerned about where this Sanctum stuff is going, and the Children of Gabriel, and how “two opposing cults” it all is. 

There are a lot of things about this season I’m enjoying. Unfortunately, too many of our main characters and their arcs don’t make that list. I’m going to do my best to distract myself with the strangeness and wonder of Sanctum and Alpha moving forward, and try to lower my expectations in terms of what this show will actually do in terms of meaningful, character-driven conversations that exist to do more than just further the plot. This season has been an exposition overload, and on some level, it feels like they’re trying to distract from how quickly s5 was tied up, and how so much was left unaddressed.

I don’t think I hated it as much as a lot of people did. But I was definitely disappointed, and I’ll be relying a lot on a good plot to keep me interested, since the character moments have been so lacking, and so frustrating. Given how haphazard the plots have been the past few seasons, I’ve got low expectations. They have planted quite a few seeds for an interesting conflict, one with two distinct sides and a host of main characters who all have different motivations around which side will be best. Obviously I think the Children of Gabriel are basically the grounders in s1 again - they seem really scary now, but they’ll be friends later. And while Sanctum is beautiful, there’s a lot of potential pitfalls there. I’m absolutely expecting Sanctum folk to end up as “the bad guys” and the CoG to end up as “the good guys”.

Spill your salt, my friends. Tell me what bothered you. Air your grievances. Even if I don’t agree, I always love seeing what other people think.

[papermoonloveslucy]

LUCY AND MISS SHELLEY WINTERS

S1;E4 ~ October 14, 1968

Directed by Jack Donohue ~ Written by Milt Josefsberg and Ray Singer

Synopsis

Shelley Winters needs to slim down before filming her new picture, so Lucy is employed as her private secretary and diet coach.  

Regular Cast

Lucille Ball (Lucy Carter), Gale Gordon (Harrison Otis Carter)

Lucie Arnaz (Kim Carter) and Desi Arnaz Jr. (Craig Carter) do not appear in this episode.

Guest Cast

Shelley Winters (Shelley Summers) was born Shirley Schrift in 1920 (some sources list 1922) in Illinois. Her screen acting career began in 1943 under the name Shelley Winter (no ‘s’).  It culminated in two Oscars for Best Supporting Actress in the films The Diary of Anne Frank in 1960 and A Patch of Blue in 1966. She also won a 1964 Emmy.  One of her final roles was as Nana Mary on TV's “Roseanne.”  Winters was married four times and known for her brash sexuality.  She had an uncredited role in the 1946 Lucille Ball film Two Smart People. She died in 2006.

Bartlett Robinson (C.B. Wellborn) had played Mr. Wilkins in “Lucy Gets Trapped” (TLS S6;E2).  This is his only appearance on “Here's Lucy.”  He died in 1986.

The title refers to her as “Miss Shelley Winters” just as she was billed in the 1955 film The Big Knife when she was between husbands having divorced Vittorio Gassman in 1954 and not married Anthony Franciosa until 1957.  During “Here's Lucy” she was also single, having divorced Franciosa in 1960 and not remarrying until the day before her death in 2006.  The original title of the episode was “Lucy and Chubby.”  

This was the first time Shelley Winters guest starred on a sitcom.  She is the first guest-star on “Here’s Lucy” to have won a competitive acting Oscar at the time of her appearance (The Diary of Ann Frank in 1959). She was followed by: 

Elizabeth Taylor - who earned an Oscar in 1960 and appeared on the show in 1970

Ginger Rogers - who earned an Oscar in 1940 and appeared on the show in 1971

Helen Hayes - who earned Oscars in 1931 and 1970 and appeared on the show in 1972. Hayes has the distinction of being the only multiple Oscar winner on the series as well as the only actor playing a distinctly different character than herself without her name in the title. [Winters plays Shelley Summers, and essentially is different from Winters in name only!]

William Holden holds this same distinction on “I Love Lucy” and Ed Begley Sr. on “The Lucy Show.” 

As the episode opens, Lucy is listening to Harry on the dicta-phone and decides to try out the newfangled recording machine for herself, first quoting a bit of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, then singing “The Man I Love,” a torch song by George and Ira Gershwin.  The song was written for, but deleted from, the 1924 Broadway musical Lady Be Good.  

Overhearing Lucy sing into the dicta-phone, Harry quips “Thank you, Tiny Tim!” Tiny Tim (born Herbert Buckingham Khaury in 1932) was a singer and ukulele player known for his cover of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.”  He was a regular cast member on “Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In” which aired opposite “Here's Lucy” on NBC.  

Harry reminds Lucy that “This is a business office, not Tin Pan Alley!” Tin Pan Alley is the name given an area of New York City where music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the  late 19th century and early 20th century had their businesses. The origins of the name Tin Pan Alley are unclear but one account claims that it was a derogatory reference to the sound of many pianos playing (comparing them to the banging of tin pans).

Once Lucy leaves the office to get Harry's lunch, Harry also uses the dicta-phone to record himself.  He sings “Shortnin' Bread” by James Whitcomb Riley in 1900.  The song was famously sung by Vivian Vance as Ethel Mertz in “Ethel's Home Town” (ILL S4;E15) in 1955.  

Satisfied with the sound of his voice on the playback, he remarks “Wayne Newton eat your heart out!”  Wayne Newton (born 1942) is a singer and entertainer who played a version of himself on “Lucy Discovers Wayne Newton” (TLS S4;E14).  He will make two appearances as himself on “Here's Lucy.” 

Lucy is looking forward to meeting movie producer C.B. Wellborn (no doubt named after Cecil B. DeMille), because she says hopes to break into show business, something Lucy Carter has in common with the other Lucy characters. “After all, lots of people are discovered in drug stores and elevators...”  This is a reference to the legendary but apocryphal story that actress Lana Turner was discovered at Schwab's Drugstore in Hollywood.  In “Lucy Gets Into Pictures” (ILL S4;E18) Lucy went down to Schwab's to be discovered but all she discovered was a stomach ache from too many ice cream sodas.  Dorothy Lamour was an elevator operator in Chicago when she was discovered.  

When Lucy theatrically plays up to Mr. Wellborn, Harry says to her “That will be all, Theda Bara.”  Theodosia Burr Goodman (aka Theda Bara, 1885–1955) was a silent film and stage actress.  She was the first to play Cleopatra on film in 1917 (now lost).  Lucy played Cleopatra on the very first color filmed “The Lucy Show” in 1963, in which Lucy was also compared to Theda Bara.  

On the mantle of Summers' apartment is a photo of Shelley Winters from the 1950 film Frenchie. She glances guiltily at the photo when she is about to overeat.  

Summers brags about having two Oscars, just like Shelley Winters. Wild in the Street starring Shelley Winters had opened in late May 1968. In December 1968 Winters opened in the film Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell starring Gina Lollobrigida.  

Shelly Winters' dresses were padded to make her appear bigger then she really was. This is done so that in the final scene she appears thinner in her new black dress.

Shelley hides food all over her apartment:

A box of candy in the chandelier

A banana in a framed fruit basket

A bowl of spaghetti from the TV (which is actually a mini-fridge)

A whole pizza pie on the turntable of the stereo

The scene is underscored with Theremin music, which is an electronic instrument mainly used during dream sequences and in sci-fi and horror movies. It was first used to underscore Lucy Ricardo's dream of Ricky's infidelity in “Lucy and the Dummy” (ILL S5;E3).  It was also used in “Lucy Gets Mooney Fired” (TLS S6;E9) when Lucy Carmichael and Mr. Mooney are 'gaslighting' Mr. Cheever into rehiring him!  

When Lucy catches her with the pizza, she claims it is a Dean Martin record and sings “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore!”  “That's Amore” was written by Harry Martin and Jack Brooks and recorded by Dean Martin in 1953.  “Amore” means “love” in Italian.  Dean Martin guest starred on “The Lucy Show” in 1966 playing himself and his stunt double, Eddie Feldman.

Lucy discovers a rope of sausages hidden in the sofa cushion that Shelley claims are her love beads!  Love beads were a necklaces worn by hippies in the 1960s as a symbol of peace and goodwill.

Shelley humorously remarks “Honey, they invented CinemaScope to get my hips in the screen!“  CinemaScope is an anamorphic lens used from 1953 to 1967 for shooting widescreen movies. Its creation in 1953 by 20th Century Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection. The anamorphic lens allowed the process to create an image almost twice as wide as the previously common format. Winters' first CinemaScope film was I Died A Thousand Times in 1955.  

When Lucy bumps into Shelley and says she didn't see her, Shelley replies “Baby, on a clear day you can see me from Catalina!”  The Island of Catalina off the California coast has been used as a punchline in “Lucy and Tennessee Ernie Ford” (TLS S5;E21) when the bell captain smugly says of a swanky hotel penthouse “On a clear day you can see Catalina.”  This same claim was made about the Cugamonga high rise apartment in “Lucy Helps the Countess” (TLS S4;E8). In reality, it is highly unlikely (even on a rare smog-free day) to be able to see Catalina from Los Angeles, which is nearly sixty miles away.

The episode allows Winters to stretch her comic abilities.  The script assigns her all the physical comedy that would normally be done by Lucy.  Like Ball, Winters is game for anything and pulls it off.  

Other Hollywood stars have had their surnames slightly altered for their appearances, such as Joan Blondell (Joan Brennan) and Mel Torme (Mel Tinker).  

Callbacks

Preparing to make a home cooked meal for a hot date behind roommate Viv’s back, Lucy hides food all over the house in “Lucy Builds a Rumpus Room” (TLS S1;E11) just like Lucy Ricardo did when she faked a hunger strike in “Lucy Gets a Paris Gown” (ILL S5;E20).

Lucy Carmichael dieted and exercised at a fat farm in “Lucy and the Countess Lose Weight” (TLS S3;E21) in 1965.  They wear pink sweat suits just like Shelley Winters!  

Lucy Ricardo tried to lose weight to get into Ricky's act (and a tight costume) in “The Diet” (ILL S1;E3) in 1951. I wonder if Lucy Ricardo’s workout clothes are also pink? 

“Lucy and Miss Shelley Winters” rates 4 Paper Hearts out of 5

Oddly, Shelley Winters is basically playing herself, so it is unclear why she had to be re-named Shelley Summers.  Many “Lucy” guest stars have used their own names and played very different versions of themselves on screen (Wayne Newton and Joan Crawford, for example). This episode may be considered politically incorrect in today’s society, which seeks to celebrate the fuller figured woman and not measure acceptance by body size.

[siancore]

I binged watched twd from 3-6 & playing catchup with 7. I wasn't sure if they would put richonne together romantically at first even tho I shipped them from 4. Then the weird stuff with jesse happened & I didn't get it & had some doubt for richonne. Then they got together & it was the best! Can I ask how long have you shipped them & when did you know for sure they would be canon? Love your blog btw.

Hello there! Thanks.This is a great question, because for a while, pre-canon, there were some rough times being a Richonne shipper. S3 there were hardly any of us; S4 Richonne was an underdog ship. Then S5 and 6A were really difficult because of how Rick was written and the Jessie debacle (which was so unnecessary) with the addition of racist arseholes in fandom. Some people, not many, but some, gave up on our OTP ever going canon. It was rough, but I bring it up now because looking back to that time reminds me that our fandom is tough as nails. Even when there were those of us who felt disillusioned and thought our ship was never going canon, we still loved them and supported one another as shipmates. Sorry, I'm getting to answering your question, but I just needed to say that 😊 I'm a From the Fence Richonner; I shipped them as soon as they laid eyes on each other. Never meant to, but blame DG and AL for that hehehe 'Clear' had me in my feels because Michonne opening up to Rick about talking to Mike, and Rick flirting with her and thanking her more than once! I knew something was forming between them then, but I was certain they'd be canon when the episode 'After' aired. I know, they didn't share an on screen scene or anything, but the symbolism of what happened in that episode made me believe they were going to be together. Michonne alone, reverting back to her old ways; Rick and Carl hurting and trying to keep it together. They were all so broken in that ep. We had the insights into Michonne's past and saw her talking to Mike (callback to 'Clear'); we had Carl blaming his father; we had Rick trying to be strong. It was heartbreaking to see them like that, so fractured. But what solidified in my mind that they were going to be a family was: 1. The fact that Michonne chose to live when she chose to follow their tracks; she chose Rick and Carl. 2. Rick's relief when he saw that Michonne had found them; he smiled and laughed, after everything they'd been through with the fall of the prison. It was as if everything would be okay because Michonne was with them. I'm crying right now because I always think back to the interview Andy did where he spoke about that scene and called Michonne their future *sighs* forgive me, I'm getting sentimental. I hope you find an answer in there somewhere hehehe Thank you!

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Predictions - The Sequence Leading to Beth (as Hinted at by 10x01)

 Okay, Gang! Prediction time is here! I’m going to lay out the sequence for how I think TF will finally run into Beth. We’ve had lots of theories about how this will go in the past, but it was hard to zero in very specifically on one. I feel like we’re finally starting to hone in on what will go down and who will be involved.

So I really wanted to get this posted this week before episode 2 airs. Not that I expect a ton about this to change due to episode 2 (it seems to be focusing on Alpha and Beta’s backstory, rather than TF) but I just think I’ll have very different things to focus on after episode 2. And most of what I’m going to say here came from what I’ve posted this past week, and specifically the symbolism we saw in 10x01.

Let me first give the disclaimer that, while what I’m going to predict here IS based on the symbolism we’ve seen, and precedent in the show (in other words, things we’ve been right about in the past) it’s still conjecture on my part, and it’s very broad. While I do think I’m barking up the right tree with the major concepts I’m going to lay out (dog pun intended ;D) I’m absolutely positive there will be many small, cause and effect events in between that I have no way of predicting. The details are very probably wrong and my opinions will change as the season progresses and we learn more.

But overall, I’m still thinking this is the basic gist of where they’re heading and it makes me super-excited!

So, let me start with Daryl and Carol. I said last week in THIS POST that they’re following a template from S5. So I do believe Daryl and Carol will leave together on his motorcycle at some point and that will lead to them running into Beth.

Well, I’ve gotten some resistance to that theory, which is perfectly understandable. Other than people not liking the idea of Daryl and Carol running away together, the biggest objection I get is the fact that Daryl is pretty much Lydia’s father now, and he really wouldn’t just leave her.

I 100% agree with that. Unlike Carol, Daryl doesn’t just take off and leave those who need him. So I didn’t know how to square that, exactly, and the only thing I could come up with was that maybe Lydia will die. That would definitely depress Daryl and perhaps make him want to take off with Carol. They could bond over lost children (in a platonic way, of course) and just want to get away from it all. Understand, I didn’t want Lydia to die or anything. It was just the only explanation I could come up with.

Well, I’ve changed my opinion on that. And the answer came from 10x01.

I made a big deal about Connie bringing Dog back to Daryl, right? We have a case of Connie LITERALLY returning Daryl’s dog to him when they parted ways. A literal representation of what Daryl said to Beth in the funeral home (“Go up the road. I’ll meet you there.”) Because of the Sirius symbolism, Dog = Beth (I mean that in a symbolic way, not a derogatory one, but check out this edit for proof.). 

So I came to the conclusion that Connie is literally going to bring Beth back to Daryl in some way. THIS is why they need to establish Daryl and Connie’s relationship so heavily. THIS is why all the reminders and callbacks to Beth around her.

But that is not all, my friends. No, that is not all.

In thinking about this, something else occurred to me. In S5, Daryl and Carol didn’t take off for Atlanta simply because they wanted to leave together. Actually, Carol was attempting to leave on her own and Daryl was trying to stop her. (Kinda like she keeps leaving on the boat this season.) But the real reason they left was because Daryl recognized the Grady car and that it might lead him to Beth. So they left to go find someone who’d been separated from the group (Beth).

I honestly think it will go down that way this time around too. Despite talking about leaving together, I don’t think they’ll just take off for the reasons they talked about here. The foreshadow is that they’ll leave together on his bike, but not why.

So what does that mean? If they go somewhere (New Mexico, perhaps) and Connie is with them, what will that look like? Are the three of them going to ride Daryl’s bike to New Mexico together?

No, I don’t think so. The thing is, Connie is a Beth stand-in. She always has been.

So, my theory is that Connie will be taken by someone. Taken captive, I mean. When Daryl and Carol leave, it will be to find her and bring her back to the group/the community. Connie even has a sister (Kelly), so Daryl may want to bring Connie back to her, much like he wanted to bring Beth back to Maggie.

(And yes, I know there are some rumors that Kelly may die. Honestly, I think this may be true. So bringing her back to Kelly may not be part of it if Kelly has already died. We’ll just have to wait and see. But the parallel to Maggie and Beth is still there.)

Now, I know this will cause some problems for people in our fandom. They’ll see it as more evidence of romance between Connie and Daryl because he’ll be looking for her, the same as he looked for Beth. Or they’ll see it as the writers stealing/recycling Beth’s story line. But I don’t think that. They’re following a template and, as with S5, this is how Daryl will finally come face to face with Beth again. Connie is not Dog. She brings Dog back to Daryl. Beth is Dog. (Again, see edit above.)

Now how about Carol? Another thing that makes me think Connie will be taken is that, when Carols stepped off the boat in 10x01, she and Connie hugged. 

That really caught my attention because we haven’t seen much interaction between Carol and Connie. When they first met, Carol showed Connie she could sign her own name, but that’s pretty much it. So why the hug? Maybe more has happened that we haven’t seen yet since The Storm that has brought them closer together, but the point is, they seem to want us to understand that these two women are friends. So if Connie is taken, much like with Beth, Carol will want to help Daryl rescue her

In short, I think Connie will be taken, and Daryl and Carol will leave to rescue her. But they also specifically mentioned New Mexico, which kind of suggests Connie will be taken there. Also, getting on the bike to go find her suggests that it won’t be a matter of simply being taken by Alpha to her camp or something. It suggests a long distance (just as Carol and Daryl drove a long way into Atlanta to find Beth).

So who will take Connie? I don’t know. I’ve considered three possibilities, but this is one of those things that could happen any of a thousand different ways. 

1) the helicopter people take her, much as they took Rick and Jadis. And how/why would that happen? No idea. 

2) Alpha, like Jadis, knows about the helicopter group and is selling people to them. We haven’t seen a whole lot of symbolism for this, I’ll admit, but I could see Alpha taking Connie for various reasons having to do with the Whisper War, but then Daryl and Carol learning she’s been given to some other group. Alpha (or another of the Whisperers) tells them about the helicopter group and where she’s been taken, and they take off to find her.

 3) Alpha takes her. We know the Whisperers range far. They basically migrated to the south for the winter before returning. So maybe it has nothing to do with the helicopter group (at first) and it’s just a matter of Alpha taking prisoners and then leaving the area. Meanwhile, Daryl and Connie follow.

Again, these are just some possibilities I’ve considered. It could be something completely different as well.

And what happens from there? Well, you know by now that I think Beth, like Rick, is with the helicopter group. So either Connie ends up with the helicopter group or else, if it’s something closer to #3, and it’s just Alpha who takes off with Connie, perhaps they end up in an era where they come upon the helicopter group. Again, Carol and Daryl talked about New Mexico, so that’s going to play into things somehow.

But I said it was complicated. And I meant it. Did you notice above, I suggested Alpha might take prisonerS? Plural?

So here’s the thing. After looking over many seasons of symbolism EXTENSIVELY over past weeks, the characters I think will be most heavily involved in bring Daryl and Beth back together are Carol, Connie, and Aaron.

Michonne and Maggie get honorable mentions, and I’ll get to them in a minute. But the symbolism is much less heavy around them than around these other three. So how does Aaron end up in the mix?

Again, it’s hard to say when it comes to the details. But remember what I talked about with Gracie last week? A Nonny sent in an Ask and we decided that when Rick stumbled upon Gracie, it probably foreshadowed that Rick would stumble upon Beth…in the helicopter group. That’s why the Blue Heron painting appeared in that scene.

But we also know the helicopter group will have a lot to do with the water scarcity situation that’s coming up after the Whisper War. They know how to purify water. And remember that in 5x10 (red letter Beth episode) Aaron brought TF water and left it in the road for them just before the storm. (X)

Even more telling, the music box woke up when Aaron showed up. He’s also been a stand in for Beth at various times, getting her dialogue and having scenes with Daryl. So I firmly believe he’ll have something to do with her return.

 But back to Gracie and the scene with Daryl watching Rick give Gracie to Aaron. I’m wondering if Gracie will be taken too. Along with Connie, I mean. I think it’s possible that multiple people will be taken. Such as Gracie, Judith, RJ, and/or Ezekiel.

Originally, I felt sure Ezekiel would be in this group, but after analyzing the symbolism more carefully, I think his death fake out will come before this. I think Carol will already believe he’s dead at this point. It’s always possible that he IS taken and she learns he’s alive and with Connie. In that case, his death fake out will simply be short-lived. But again, I’m not entirely sure how that will all work itself out.

I include Judith and RJ as possibilities because we’ve always believed Beth might save Judith in some way. We (me, @wdway and @frangipanilove) have a theory that Beth, with the helicopter group, might be taking care of the kids there. Hence all the children and baby symbolism around her. Like she’s just taken it upon herself to look out for the kids and make sure they’re okay. So if kids were brought in, they would probably go to her.

And I don’t know if you guys even remember this, but I once did a post about the scene in 4a where Michonne had hurt her ankle and Beth was singing to Judith. This was the part where she sang about being a Dog (in other words, Sirius symbolism: leaving and returning). Judith then throws up on her (carrots of all things) and she asks Michonne to hold the baby. Michonne is mad at first, but then cries and hugs Judith. I always thought that foreshadowed that Beth would bring Judith back to Michonne in some way. And because of the dog reference, it would be specifically when Beth returned.

Then there was that episode last season where Michonne’s old friend showed up and took Judith. I always saw that as a foreshadow. I figured Michonne’s friend was an anti-parallel to Beth. She was evil, where Beth won’t be, but both are taking care of groups of kids. In that episode, it jumped back and forth between the past, when Judith was kidnapped, and the present, where Judith went outside on her own and Michonne went to get her. Just before Michonne finds her, we see a random bicycle. Perhaps representing Carol and Daryl taking off on his motorcycle when Judith goes missing?

The other thing I’m seeing now, that I didn’t before, is that Michonne’s evil friend kidnapping Judith could foreshadow some other evil woman *coughs Alpha* kidnapping her sometime in the future.

I mean, imagine Beth taking care of kids in the helicopter group, and suddenly new kids are brought in. Doesn’t mean anything in particular to Beth…until one of them says she’s Judith Grimes. Beth would probably have a complete meltdown. Not to mention, Rick should be there somewhere too.

Okay, I’ll admit I’m letting this run away with me a bit. It’s totally a headcanon. But it would also be the perfect way to explain all this symbolism we’ve been seeing for years but didn’t know exactly how to interpret.

So, Gracie would explain Aaron going along. Ezekiel would explain Carol (although she also hugged Connie, and I honestly think that would be enough).

Also remember that Carol and Michonne (or at least Danai’s stunt double) were seen filming in Texas, which suggests Michonne and Carol, at least, crossing paths in the Texas/New Mexico area at some point.

I said I’d come back to Michonne and Maggie. I already talked about the possibility of Beth bringing Judith back to Michonne.

I recently rewatched Inmates, and learned some interesting things. I’ll do a full post on it later on, but one thing that caught my attention was something Beth said when she and Daryl were sitting around the fire. She’s talking about how they can’t be the only ones who survived the downfall of the prison. There must be others. First, she says, “Rick and Michonne. They could be out here.” Then, “Maggie and Glenn could have made it out of A block.”

Now, on the one hand, she was kind of naming the death fake out couples (Richonne, Glaggie, Bethyl) with the exception of Carol. You could argue that Ezekiel wasn’t acquainted with them and so it would have been impossible to name them as a couple. Plus, to Beth’s knowledge, Carol wasn’t even at the prison when it went down.

But because of the “A Block” comment (remember Jadis was getting As and Bs for the helicopter group), I feel like it’s a foreshadow of some future thing as well. A foreshadow of Beth’s return, perhaps. And my only point here is that she mentions Rick, Michonne, and Maggie.

The other thing I can point to with Maggie comes from 5x10. When they go into the barn, and see the walker in the back room with the blue coolers, it’s Maggie and Carol who see her there. We can also connect that to Maggie and Carol being taken by Paula’s group in 6x13, and how many Grady parallels there were in that episode. So it makes me think Maggie and Carol will have some arc together that has to do with Beth. But again, no idea what it will be or how it will play out.

Finally, let’s touch on illness. There are the theories about Ezekiel’s coughing from 10x01 meaning he has cancer or something. I’m honestly not convinced of this. Maybe, but I think it’s probably more symbolic than literal. So what does it mean? Well, it occurred to me that if it’s correct, and he does have cancer, he may end up with the helicopter/Grady group. Remember, they’re probably using radiation to fight the virus, which means they might have the resources to actually cure his cancer.

But again, I think that’s getting ahead of the symbolism we actually have. It’s entirely possible that this represents some injury or illness for him, but not specifically cancer.

And that leads to the last thing I want to mention. One of my fellow theorists—either @wdway or @frangipanilove; we have so many conversations I can’t keep track and I’m constantly crediting the wrong person in my posts, lol) came up with the following idea.

Remember how Jadis was telling the helicopter people she had an “A” to give them. We all conjectured about what A and B might mean to the helicopter group. Strong people? Leaders? Something else? Then, when she sees Rick on the bank, she says she doesn’t have an A, she has a B. Well, if “A” were a strong person or a leader, why would Rick NOT be that?

Remember that Rick was blown off the bridge and into the water with a LOT of walkers. Many were on fire. Some were probably put down in the blast. But others might have been alive with him in the river.

Is it possible B stands for “Bitten?” We think it’s possible that Rick was bitten, and Jadis could tell he was, but they didn’t show the viewers that.

If that’s true, it doesn’t worry us. It would just make him that much more heavily paralleled with Beth, and if he ends up with Grady/the Helicopter group, they can probably treat it, the same as they did with Beth.

Which brings me back to Ezekiel. I’m just saying it’s possible that doesn’t have cancer at all. Perhaps it’s just a foreshadow that he’ll be “treated” with radiation, which suggests he could be bitten during his death fake out, and end up with the helicopter group in the same way. How would that go down? No idea. I get that it’s a bit of a reach given what we currently know. I’m just throwing it out there as a possibility.

The other thing I thought of is that if at some point, Beth, Rick, and Ezekiel are all with the helicopter group and then return to their significant others, what that amounts to is the return of the three living death fake out characters. (The fourth being Glenn, who is deceased.) In other words, three resurrections. Which would be the fulfillment of the St. Nicholas/pickle symbolism.

So I think that’s basically it. I know this is a lot to process. The short of it is that I’m looking for Connie (and perhaps some others) to be taken or go missing. Once Daryl and Carol have some idea what might have happened to them, they’ll follow. At least, once we see that (may not be until the end of the season, honestly) we’ll know we’re on the right track.

Thoughts?

[twdmusicboxmystery]

9x14: Scars - Details and an Epiphany!

As I said yesterday, this episode was loaded with parallels, most of it very subtle. If you haven’t read my post from yesterday, click on the link and read it because I’ll be referencing it a lot here. The other great thing about this episode is that it seems every scene and line of dialogue is packed full of callbacks and parallels. I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of them.

***As always, spoilers abound for TWD 9x14. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

The short of it is that Rick and Michonne’s story is closely mirroring Beth and Daryl’s (one member gone and presumed dead by the other).

We saw some water symbols, such as when Michonne and Daryl searched for Rick's corpse by a body of water. Daryl said he'd followed it all the way to the ocean. We've seen a lot of ocean symbolism around Beth, especially in conjunction with Oceanside. Now, that cannot extend to Rick. So, the two people believed dead by TF but who we know are alive will probably both returned by ocean. So that reinforces that Rick/Michonne are going through the same arc as Beth and Daryl.

In that same conversation, Michonne asks Daryl if he's coming back to Alexandria. He says yes, once he finds something. Michonne says, "Plenty of reasons to come back. Finding something doesn't have to be one of them." I think that's part of the, "we get to come back," theme.

Of course, Daryl says he will never stop looking, and we definitely want to compare that to him looking for breath after she disappeared. Again, because the arcs are the same, this confirms what we’ve always theorized: that Daryl looked for Beth but never found her. Just as he’s never found Rick.

Then there's the sad line where Michonne asks if he's okay being alone. First of all, part of the “it’s okay/not okay” theme. When I saw this scene before the episode aired in a sneak peek, I actually this interaction. I thought Daryl said, “Yes,” but he didn’t. He simply nodded and then asked Michonne, "You?"

So, when Michonne replies, "I'm not." I thought she meant she was not okay being alone. But what she really meant is that she wasn't alone because she had the baby.

This line is actually much sadder for Daryl because he is alone. I think we all know him saying he’s okay being alone is a load of crap, given his reaction to Beth’s statement about him being the last man standing. The most obvious parallel here is to be episode Alone from S4. Obviously Daryl has been alone in the woods for several years after the time jump, and he is surviving, but he's not really okay. (Beth: "it's not okay.")

And I know Michonne didn't mean anything negative, by it, but it's really kind of insensitive thing to say to Daryl. After all, he doesn't have Beth’s baby to remember her bad, does he?

Michonne finds Rick's gun, which is a lot like Daryl getting Beth’s knife. I can't help but wonder what this means for how Carol came to have Beth’s knife. Because, as we’ve established, this is such a close parallel to Beth and Daryl, we can draw conclusions from what they’re showing us here. So did Carol find Beth’s knife in the mud somewhere AFTER her body went missing? The parallel probably won’t be that close, but we really don’t know what went down during that missing 17 days, and I’m willing to be that in a broad way, the parallel to how Michonne found Rick’s gun will be direct.

I noticed when Michonne puts Rick’s gun in Judith’s box, there's a picture behind her with purple flowers in it. That jumped out at me because I remember in S7, when Maggie woke up at Hilltop after Glenn died, there were purple flowers that looked exactly like those ones. Because of the way they showed Maggie wake up, we compared it to Beth waking up to Grady. We also saw similar flowers when Rick woke up in the hospital in S1. I’ll talk more about this at the end, but it could be a tie to Beth at Grady, or simply to Maggie having lost Glenn at that point. Michonne has lost Rick for all intents and purposes right now.

When Daryl and his group arrived at Alexandria, I noticed a couple of random references in the dialogue. Connie holds up a note to Michonne and says she wished she had worn different shoes. 

Super random, and kinda funny, but I wonder if it's a reference to the lost shoe/foot theme. I also noticed animal cages hanging in the background. They’re square, not like the rounded birdcage we saw in Beth’s cell, but still similar.

We all agreed that Henry’s scar reminded us of Beth’s. Probably just because you can see the stitching. Henry, with all the Beth parallels he's had this season, now has a scar.

Aaron tells Daryl that he once told him he would be a great dad and it turned out to be true. A couple of things about this. It does show that what Aaron said back then was a foreshadow. (Another thing TD has been written about.) And we did suggest that, while we do think Daryl will eventually have his own children, a part of that could have foreshadowed him being a father figure to Lydia and Henry. This is a confirmation that that was the case.

(Quick aside: those people to swore to high heaven Daryl would have a romance with Lydia? TD was right about that too. Definitely not a romance, and he is definitely a father figure to her. Daryl didn't even bother denying it in this conversation. Just saying.)

You could argue that the father foreshadow ONLY referred to Henry and Lydia, but I don't think so. My evidence for it comes from this same conversation. Aaron specifically says, “you got to skip the exploding diaper part,” to which Daryl replies, “A lot’s changed. Back then, we were still building bridges.” It feels like a contradiction of what Aaron said, which to me says Daryl may have to deal with the diaper situation at some point.

The dialogue itself is also important. “A lot’s changed,” is a callback to Beth’s, “I wish I could just change.” And then there’s the Bridge Theory.

There is a part where RJ asks for more tomatoes. We’ve seen the tomato symbol a lot. In general, they represent peace and prosperity. I'm not sure where they had RJ asked for them. Perhaps to show that RJ is doing well at Alexandria, or perhaps because Michonne thinks there is peace there, which right now there largely is. It's right after that, the Judith goes missing.

When she finds Judith gone, Michonne goes to see Negan. He makes an interesting horse reference. When he realizes Judith is missing, he says, "maybe she's off petting a horse." The way he's using it in context is to say, maybe she’s off doing something idle or little-girlish. But we know she's not. He says she's Michonne's daughter and, like Michonne, she's not taking shit going down.

The first thing petting the horse made me think of was Daryl and Buttons, which happened in S5, right after Beth. We can also point out the Horse Theory in general. So, not sure exactly why they used this line here, but it's interesting. Again, with how closely this whole thing is paralleling Beth and Daryl, the horse reference makes a certain amount of sense.

Judith took Rick’s gun and left a note. Naturally, we always went to compare any written notes to Beth.

We also saw a super-random bicycle in the middle of the woods, maybe meant to be Judith’s? I’m honestly not sure what to make of that yet, but it was obviously a symbol of something, and it was mostly yellow (Beth color). I know a revamp of my bicycle theory is long past due, so I may come back to this.

Overall, I thought the end of this episode was very sweet and very good in showing not only Michonne and Judith bonding, but Michonne’s character development.

I gotta say, I loved the horse drawn minivan.

So, in a more general way, this tells us a lot about Michonne’s new attitude at the beginning of this arc, why she wouldn't let people in, etc. It was a flawed way of thinking, but after seeing what happened, we understand more where she's coming from. It does seem that she's now moving back toward the Michonne she used to be and what Rick and Carl would have wanted.

Quick note: While this does explain a lot of the questions we had about the time jump, it definitely doesn't explain them all. It doesn't explain why Tara, specifically, was so angry at Michonne. Even in the flashback with Carol and Tara and Jesus, Tara’s says Michonne isn’t her favorite person these days. She’s already very angry with her. Maybe it's just because Michonne decided not to let people in, but Tara's anger almost seems a little too heavy for that. So, we don't know specifically why Hilltop is angry at Michonne. We don't know why they all dropped their farming tools and ran inside the gates when they heard riders coming.

We also still don't know how Daryl lost the wing on his vest. When I noticed he had both wings when the flashback started, I thought when he got shot by the arrow by one of the kids, maybe somehow that made the wing fall off his vest. But I did find this shot when they returned Alexandria with the kids, and both wings are still on Daryl's vest. So still not know how that happened either.

We also don’t know how he got the scar over his eye, as that doesn’t seem to have been a result of this incident either. So again, he answers a lot of the questions we had, but not all. Other stuff must have happened to result in the rest.

Jocelyn:

Jocelyn, who just so happens to know Michonne—Denise Huth confirmed on TTD that it was a mere coincidence that Michonne ran into someone she'd known before the turn—pretends to be hurt and needs help finding the kids she's caring for. Michonne and some others going find them in an abandoned building and bring them back to Alexandria.

They employed a TON of dialogue foreshadow in these flashbacks. Some for what would happen later on (still in the flashbacks) and others for what's happening in the present with Whisperers.

When Michonne went to get the children from that abandoned building, there are diagrams of how to string animals up for gutting. An obvious foreshadow of her and Daryl being strung up in a similar way and branded. The animals in the diagrams were even cows. And what animal is most famously branded? Cattle. 

Which, btw, we can relate back to Carol and Mary at Terminus. “You’re either the cattle or the butcher.” In this case, Jocelyn’s group = Terminus and TF had fallen prey to their “mask of evil” as Daryl would have called it. A lot of things in this episode felt like Terminus, actually.

The second chart shows rabbits. Remember that Lizzie also killed rabbits.

When Jocelyn makes off with the Alexandria kids, they disappear through the drain tunnels in the ground. This is really an interesting callback. I think Michonne’s terror comes mostly (other than the fact that Judith is gone) from the fact that she probably associates the tunnels with Carl's death. It was down there, after all, that she found out he'd been bitten. Now Judith, her other child, has disappeared via that same route.

But the other thing I really want to callback to is when we first found out about that the existence of those tunnels, when Maggie went looking for Glenn in S6. She and Aaron went down there, but didn't end up actually leaving to look for Glenn. Why is that important? First off, because that was during Glenn’s death fake out. There was a million parallels between Glenn and Beth during that fake out.

Also, earlier in S5 we learned that Alexandria had exiled three people. The walkers Maggie and Aaron ran into in those tunnels were confirmed to be some of the people who’d been exiled. So just as Jocelyn went down through that drain to escape Alexandria, we saw others doing the same in the midst of Glenn’s death fake out. Which in turn had lots of parallels to Beth. (I promise I’ll tie that all together at the end. Bear with me.)

Okay, Daryl and Michonne at the abandoned playground. As I said yesterday, ots of people picked up on Daryl's line about how some people are evil, but they hide it, as if wearing a mask. That’s a perfect example of how they’re foreshadowing what's going on in the present day with the Whisperers, which is why I think this Jocelyn thing will replay at some point during the Whisperer arc.

Earlier, when Jocelyn and all her kids are at Alexandria, a couple of interesting things. We see them all playing “the quiet game.” I seemed just a little bit random to me. Maybe a foreshadow of Connie and her being deaf, but the quiet game is about not talking, more than it is about not hearing. And given that Jocelyn's group turned out to be evil, I feel like this is a sinister foreshadowing of some kind. Something we haven't seen fulfilled yet. Like maybe someone isn’t able to be quiet and it means their death. We did have the crying baby, which Connie saved, but that doesn’t ring true to me either. I'm not sure, but this was just so random, I think it has to lead to something.

When talking to Jocelyn, Michonne says that when she heard Jocelyn's kids could hunt, she assumed it would be a few squirrels and a slingshot. The slingshot is an obvious foreshadow of Connie. I also noticed that when Jocelyn told the story about Michonne getting signatures for a petition in high school, she showed up at some "fancy ass Regent’s dinner” with double the number of signatures she needed. Regent is another word for ruler or King. Fancy academic dinners often have names like that. But I couldn't help but think that foreshadowed Michonne showing up at the Regent’s (King Ezekiel’s fancy ass fair). See what I mean about how they were using dialogue foreshadows for the present day?

When Michonne and Daryl get free, they split up and I noticed that Michonne grabs a water pipe. (Water =s Beth). 

She drops it after fighting the kids I the hallway in favor of her katana (which one of the kids had). Yet another way to show that this arc is being paralleled with Beth in some way. Because Michonne wielded the water pipe as a weapon, I also thought it could be a way to show that Beth is the weapon they will use to defeat this (or some other *coughs Alpha*) evil group.

Michonne kills Jocelyn and then all the kids still try to kill her. I thought alternating between Michonne killing walkers in the present (while looking for Judith) rather than showing her kill the kids was really smart way. Obviously, the alternative would've been a lot darker and probably not allowed on TV.

Everything works out, Judith and all the Alexandrian kids are found, and there's a happy reunion.

Winnie does get away, which is super-interesting. As I said yesterday, I think she’ll resurface, but just a couple of details about her. Since this happened roughly 5 years ago, I think she could be with the Whisperers. Even though she’s evil, I naturally want to read into the fact that she was part of this group who disappeared, and no one knows where she is now. Feels like an anti-Beth thing. Oh, and she's blonde. I mean, I would've read into her as a Beth parallel one way or the other, but they just so happened to make her blonde. Just saying.

I will mention one point of unreality in all of this. No way all the parents from Alexandria wouldn't have been there to help get their kids back. I get that in terms of the story, they needed Michonne and Daryl to bond and go through something together, just the two of them. It has everything to do with the parallels to Beth and Daryl’s arc. But no way those parents would have just twiddled their thumbs in Alexandria while Michonne (pregnant lady) and Daryl went to get the kids. Just doesn't happen my friends. But since I know what the show was trying to accomplish, I'll let it slide. ;D

Okay, in closing, I said there was something I wanted to pull together at the end. This was a small but kind of important epiphany I had while writing this post and thinking about the episode. I’m surprised it didn’t occur to me sooner, but now that I say that, I realize it really couldn’t have until I formulated the “Carzekiel will also get a death fake out” theory. In other words, I couldn’t have put it all together until this season.

Many of my past leadership predictions for Michonne and Carol (and by extension belief that Beth will lead as well) are based on one of her lines during her and Daryl’s fight in Still. “I’m not Michonne, I’m not Carol, I’m not Maggie…but I made it.” Anyone who’s followed me long knows I can really beat this line and it’s symbolism to death.

Many TDers made early predictions about it that didn’t pan out. Or else we had theories…but they had holes in them. The leadership is the one that really seemed to work out for us. Maggie leading at Hilltop, Carol at the Kingdom, and Michonne at Alexandria. So by definition, Beth will have to lead somewhere, sometime too, and we definitely didn’t see that before Coda.

Minor aside: this is yet another reason I do think it will be Ezekiel, rather than Carol who is “just gone.” Because I think Carol will have to lead alone at the Kingdom for a time, just as Michonne is leading without Rick and Maggie led at Hilltop after losing Glenn. By the same token, if Beth woke up alone, then she lost Daryl as much as he lost her, and might have started leading at any time after that. We simply don’t know yet.

Anyway, so the epiphany I had was that three of the four ladies mentioned in Beth’s line in Still—Michonne, Carol, and Beth herself—all had death fake out arcs. So I had the thought that maybe her line foreshadowed that.

The odd one out is Glenn and Maggie. Because, although I obviously believe Beth is alive, we know Rick is, and I think the same will be true of Ezekiel, I do NOT think Glenn is coming back. I doubt anyone does.

Well, it took all of about twenty seconds for it to click for me. Glenn ISN’T coming back, but he already had his death fake out. In season 6.

So this line did foreshadow that these four couples would all have a death fake out. We know they planned from very early on that Negan would indeed kill Glenn, just as in the CBs, so they had to do something a little different with his fake out. The whole point of doing it in S6 was to include him and Maggie in this arc. And it really wasn’t even a matter of him being paralleled with Beth per se (I mean, it WAS, because hers was the only fake out that had happened at that point; Richonne’s and Carzekiel’s wouldn’t come for several more seasons) but rather that the same symbolism has been and will be employed in each case because they’re all following the same arc.

Hence, the Sirius/Serious piggyback images we’ve seen around Carzekiel, the hand-holding, the clocks…

I think the writers figured out the major characters that people loved from the first three seasons—which included Rick and Michonne, Daryl, Carol, Glenn and Maggie—and figured out who their love interests would be in the long term. These are the four main couples of the apocalypse. There have been other awesome couples, sure, but these are the most mainstream and epic. These are the couples who were given death fake outs and resurrection arcs. Glenn’s was simply shorter than the others, spanning only a few episodes where Bethyl’s spanned several seasons. I’m assuming Michonne will figure out about Rick sometime next season, and of course we have no idea what kind of time span Carzekiel will have, but you get the idea.

So, for what I said earlier: this is why the purple flowers behind Michonne—the same ones we saw Maggie wake up to RIGHT after Glenn died—are important. It’s why the tunnels being part of this Jocelyn story are important. We first saw them in the midst of Glenn’s death fake out. It’s also why the Xs are important. Michonne and Daryl both have them—rather than other characters—because they’re both part of this same arc. See what I mean?

So yeah, that was my other other epiphany. :D And it, you know, makes me happy. *Does creepy TD dance* 

[twdmusicboxmystery]

9x06: Details - A Lot of Them!

Okay, you know how yesterday, I said I didn't have much to say about this episode? Yeah, I lied. I re-watched yesterday, when I wasn't super tired and hadn’t had such a long day, I found TONS to talk about.

And yes, this will be kind of long. 

***As always, spoilers abound for 9x06, so don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

Daryl:

Daryl’s tent at the beginning reminded me a lot of the tents we saw in 4x01 and the parking lot at Grady. Just saying.

Of course he was fishing, which I naturally want to relate to Oceanside. But more importantly, we saw him standing in water, and Beth = water.

Then there’s his new poncho. I honestly hadn’t thought too much about it until I saw an edit someone made on IG. They changed his poncho to red and gave it a “Little Red Riding Hood” caption. Now, some of you may remember me doing Little Red Riding Hood posts a long time ago. (X, X) Like, before S6 aired. Mine were based around Red Poncho Guy in 5b. But when I saw that edit, I realized something. We saw a red poncho in Beth’s cell and then Red Poncho Guy in 5b, who Daryl saw briefly and then lost track of. Kinda like Beth. So, what if the red poncho represents Beth’s missing/kidnapped arc? Then maybe Daryl’s green poncho (opposite color) represents that she’s about to return.

I think I've talked about Songbird enough for you to know what I think it means: songbird = Beth and Beth is about to appear.

One thing I didn't talk about it in as much detail as is the walker attached to the tree that Daryl sees. This is a major parallel to the blonde woman he and Aaron saw in 5x15 that was tied to a tree. You’ll notice a pattern as we go along of symbols we saw in S5 and haven’t seen since that are cropping up now in S9. Seems to me like things that happened in S5 are about to come back around.

Michonne:

Michonne finds the van in the woods. The box she digs through is a cigar box, which is a callback to Abraham. But the box itself really reminded us of the music box. The color and size are roughly similar. The things she takes out of it are all highly symbolic.

We see Rick's ring on Michonne’s necklace. (Wedding Ring Theory)

1). The sheriff. I think this could feasibly represent two different things. A) That the new sheriff is about to appear. In other words, it represents Beth. B) Obviously Rick. It definitely represents Rick for Michonne. I think it also foreshadows Rick's return. In a way, she's holding onto this in the same way Daryl holds onto Beth’s knife.

2) The four-leaf clover. (X) Not only is it green, but represents Luck (X), and then there’s all the Irish symbolism, such as Paddy Reilly, etc. Like maybe the person all that symbolism ties to is about to appear.

3) The yo-yo. I totally didn’t catch this when I first watched the episode, but they talked about it on TTD. It must be important if they’re drawing attention to it. The only other time we saw a yo-yo on the show was in S5. They made a big deal about it in the show, but then we never saw it again. The only thing I could think of back then was that, because yo-yos go down and then come back up again, it represented that the person about to go down (Beth) would bounce back up again at some point. Once more, we haven't seen any yo-yos since then. Now, were suddenly seeing one. That's a big deal.

 (I tried and couldn’t get a non-blurry pic of the yo-yo, but it’s red and green.)

Michonne finds toilet paper. See the Toilet Paper theory, plus I talked about this in THIS ASK. I'm not sure what it means but I have a halfhearted forecast for it. I’ve noticed that toilet paper is often seen at the beginning of a long journey. Could that mean a long journey for Michonne? In the comics, Michonne is with Ezekiel rather than Rick. When Ezekiel dies, Michonne leaves TF for a long time. I wonder if they'll keep that arc, but in this case, it's Rick that “died” for Michonne, rather than Ezekiel. If Michonne leaves, that might be what the TP is about. It would also leave leadership of Alexandria wide open.

This is yet another reason why I don't think Ezekiel will die. It could be that Rick's "death" replaced Ezekiel's death, especially where Michonne is concerned. I also noticed that just before this episode, the official TWD account did posts saying, “Who Will Lead?” They had one for each Daryl, Carol, Ezekiel, and Michonne. Asking who will lead is very interesting because it's basically asking who will step into Rick's (or the sheriff's) shoes. 

I found Michonne’s post to be particularly interesting. The caption says, “She’s got what it takes, but what will she choose?” As though she may choose specifically not to lead. I think that will have something to do with her arc this season and I'm interested to see where it goes.

We see that the bridge was never fixed. Again, I need to re-vamp my Bridge Theory, but it’s become clear to me that the bridge represents the community or TF as a whole. Basically, as I said before, it broke when Rick blew up the bridge. It has never been fixed. Which is a symbolic way of saying that the four communities have fractured and have no cohesion anymore. Ezekiel says, "If we could bring the communities back together as full partners…" So, the communities definitely aren’t working together anymore.

Michonne is being very negative in this episode and refuses to give Magna’s group the time of day. I did like the she was sharp as ever and knew Magnet was hiding things, but she's definitely being close minded. Rosita later tells Gabriel that Michonne knows prison doesn't really mean anything and she riled up the crowd on purpose.

We don't really understand the reason for Michonne’s actions until Judith hears her talking to herself.

I breezed over this yesterday, but I think it's important to know what’s she saying when Judith listens in. It's obvious that Michonne is talking to Rick, who she believes is dead. The “him” she mentions is obviously Carl. This is what she says. "Thought I was done with this. Done with talking to you and never hearing you answer. But I watched what you did to protect him…nothing else mattered except him… And I need to be that now for them. And I know it's not what we planned, not what we wanted, but you weren't here. Neither was he. You didn't have to go through the…". At that point, the floorboards creak under Judith and Michonne cuts off.

Okay, a couple of takeaways from this:

1) Michonne is acting as she is because she believes she needs to protect her children at all costs. She’s basically become ruthless Rick in order to protect Judith and RJ. It’s what she believes she needs to do right now, even though it's not the future she and Rick envisioned together.

2) Then there's that last line. Something definitely went down in the six years since Rick left, and from this, it was something that happened after he left because she said he wasn't there for it. I'm willing to bet whatever it is, how she got that X-scar, and also is the reason for what Carol says about people going out and never come back. We just don't know exactly what happened yet.

I wonder if this entire season is going to be full of flashbacks telling us what happened during those six years. I kinda hope so, because essentially what we’ll have to see with Beth. They skipped over whatever happened during those missing 17 days, and they’ll have to go back and show us what it was. So, if the entire season is structured around figuring out something that was skipped, maybe we’ll see other things that have been skipped over as well.

Incidentally, Michonne has done this before: talked to the dead. Remember, she told Rick early on in 3x12, Clear, that she has. “I talk to my dead boyfriend sometimes. It happens.” So I thought it was an interesting continuity of her character to show her doing this with Rick, now. Also a very obvious way to show that she 100% believes he’s dead.

I thought Judith and Michonne’s conversation on the stairs was heartbreaking. It made me sad when Judith said she was starting to forget Rick’s and Carl’s voices. “I’m not trying to, but they keep fading away.” But Judith is a lot like Carl. She’s growing up in this world, so it’s second nature to her. That makes her strong, but also less sentimental and utterly unapologetic about who she is. I’m loving Judith so much!

When we saw the X scar on Michonne, I also noticed a butterfly picture of some kind of butterfly picture on the wall behind her. (Transformation?) 

And the curtains in her room look a LOT like the wallpaper at the funeral home in Alone. They’re black and white, rather than green and yellow, but covered with a very similar bird and vine/tree pattern.

Let's talk about callbacks season four. There's a Council ruling at Alexandria, much as there was in S4 at the prison. Also much like at the prison, there's no clear leader. Remember in S4, the council led because Rick stepped down from leadership. He didn't really become the sheriff again until after disaster struck in the MSF. So, perhaps we won't see the sheriff emerge until then.

It's also interesting to note that Michonne is in pretty much the same place she was in at the start of S4. She's obviously more angry right now, but her horse is almost exactly the same color as the one she rode in 4x01. We even see her ride into Alexandria at the beginning of this episode in a similar fashion. 

So, Michonne isn't really leading. She's going outside the walls a lot and still struggling with things, much as she did in S4. She’s KIND OF leading in name (FG calls her the “head of security”) but hasn’t truly stepped into Rick’s leadership shoes either.

Carol:

Carol sees a flower. My first (and somewhat rebellious) thought was that it's definitely NOT Cherokee Rose (Hehe). But it’s growing up through cracks, which goes with the theme of light coming through the cracks.

Henry calls Ezekiel and Carol Mom and Dad. We also see an entwined-fingers hand hold for Carzekiel. All is right with the world. ;D

They’re holding some kind of fair at the kingdom. Not sure what that's about, but they keep talking about it. Henry leaves with Carol to go to Hilltop and apprentice to Earl (that's the guy that tried to kill Maggie but she ended up letting him out of prison). Henry says he'll be back before the fair starts. Sounds kind of ominous to me.

They also talk about dreamers. Henry is a dreamer. Carol says he gets it from Ezekiel, but it's not a bad thing. And the world could use more dreamers. Beth was most definitely a dreamer. Once again, we’re seeing that Daryl and Carol are very alike, which is why they wouldn't make good romantic partners. They’re too alike. They both need someone more optimistic to complement their tendency toward darkness. I’ll illustrate in a second how much Henry is like Beth.

Ezekiel also makes a point here of saying that Hilltop is distant. Remember in 9x05, Daryl mentioned, just before Rick blew the bridge, that the walker horde had run right through Hilltop? So, I’m thinking Hilltop probably had to be completely rebuilt. I think we can assume it was, because Michonne is taking Magna’s group there. Still, I’m curious to what’s happening at Hilltop these days.

After Jed’s group gets a hold of Carol and Henry, we get a quick look at the vegetables Carol was transporting. They include tomatoes and carrots. I think the tomatoes represent the communities prospering and moving forward. But the carrots? They’ve always been a Beth symbol. Remember, The King of Carrot Flowers from Alone?

Here, we got more information about stuff that's been going on during the six years we don't know about yet. Jed, chewing on a match, says the Sanctuary went bust. Before Rick blew the bridge, they talked about how nothing would grow there, so it’s not surprising it would be defunct now, but still, it’s something else we didn't see.

Jed also said they got hungry and ate horses. Carol says they could have joined the other communities (and several of them did; Laura and some other recognizable saviors are at Alexandria) but obviously Jed and his followers opted for a Negan mentality and don't want to be a part of a community. They’d rather just take people's stuff.

Then Jed said, "You spared me back in the day, so I'll do the same for you." He’s probably referring to when Rick and Carol got the better of them in 9x04, but we still don’t know what happened between Carol and this group in 9x06. The last we saw, shots were fired that brought the walkers toward the bridge and led to Rick blowing it up. I’m wondering if what Carol does to them has to do with her blaming them for Rick’s death. Not sure, though.

Obviously Carol burning the Savior is a callback to S4 with Karen and David as well as to Carol burning Saviors in 6x13.

I’m very curious about what Carol is doing. Even before they were tricked by the saviors, she’d already told Henry they were going somewhere other than Hilltop first. She'd always planned to go visit Daryl, and I wonder why. She must have a reason.

Then we get to Henry and Carol making camp for the night. This is where I became convinced that Henry is something of a Beth proxy. He said, “I don’t get it.” The opposite of Beth’s, “I get it now,” but still. The parallel is there. He also tells Carol, “That’s bullshit.” He’s calling her on her crap, and he’s 100% right because she says she let Jed and the Saviors go, but then goes and kills them while Henry sleeps. Also, Henry and Carol hang cans for an alarm. We saw that prominently with Beth and Daryl in Alone.

I’m kind of thinking we might lose Henry. I hope not, but I just felt an ominousness in his story line this week. There was a lot of emphasis on Carzekiel and him as a family, on keeping him safe. They didn’t like the idea of him going to Hilltop to train with Earl. I really hope I’m wrong, but I’m wondering if we’ll lose Henry, which would put Carol and Ezekiel in a super-dark place again. Let’s hope not.

Rosita, Father Gabriel, & Eugene:

Just for an instant, we see feet running at the beginning of this episode. 

Even though it's just feet that we see (not arms or torsos) it reminded me of the opening credits Beth-flash. In this case, it was Rosita, Aaron, Eugene and Laura looking for Judith.

Eugene carries a deer. This could be an example of the Deer Theory. I'm not sure who it would apply to here, but Luke calls it a buck, so I think it works. Maybe foreshadow of Beth about to appear? Or it may extend into further episodes. Not sure yet.

Magna’s group calls walkers “sickos.” That struck me as hilarious because my 4-year-old nephew is going through a phase where he calls everybody sickos. ;D

They show the passage of time by the length of people's hair. Michonne’s dreads are longer, Daryl's hair has gotten really long in the back, though you can always tell that from the front. 

Obviously, Judith. Eugene is sporting a long braid, Native American-style.

Father Gabriel wants to use a radio to find more people. I noticed a lot of symbolism that we saw in FTWD this past season, and this reminded me of that. This could also be part of the Communications Theme.

Rosita and FG are a couple. I know not everybody is a fan, but I thought they were kinda cute together.

Father Gabriel says, "I think Michonne is wrong. I think they're good people." So, more of Beth's “there still good people” theme. But that's just the beginning. Rosita and FG’s conversation was super interesting.

Talking about the transmitter, Rosita says, "But trying to find people and reach out to them with that thing? It's like stumbling around in the dark." It reminded me of Beth stumbling around in the dark with Noah when they were trying to escape Grady.

FG then answers, "But think what we might find. Who we might find. What else might be out there." So, we have several different references to Beth in the scene. There's the “good people” remark, the “stumbling around in the dark” remark (which may or may not be around about Beth; I may be reaching).

Plus, we had the broken picture in the background. 

Remember this window was broken when FG and Sasha fought over the gun in 5x16. So, yet another S5 reference (we seriously haven’t seen that picture since) plus we’re pretty sure the picture represents Beth. It has white cypress trees and it was shot with a bullet. My point is that we have a lot of Beth references in this scene, and FG says with emphasis, “Just think WHO we might find.” I think that’s super-significant.

So I’m feeling like this relay Eugene and Rosita set up may be how the group comes back into contact with Beth again.

Eugene is trying to get up his courage to tell Rosita how he feels about her. I thought it was interesting that she seemed to want him to tell her as well.

I felt like there was a lot of symbolism in what they said about the walker tracks. They notice hundreds of walker tracks heading East. Eugene is comforted by the fact that he and Rosita need to head west to get to the water towers, where they set up the relay. Then the walker herd ends up coming toward them anyway. Eugene says it must have done a U-turn. I'm assuming that's probably be because the Whisperers are doing something to push the walkers back that way. Still, we have the east-west symbolism.

The more I watch it, the more I think this sequence with Rosita and Eugene is super-significant and a major foreshadowing, which is not necessarily a good thing. First, they’re near graveyard. I had to look two or three times very carefully, but the water towers are directly next to a graveyard. 

So, we have the Communication theme (because of the relay) a water symbol (the towers) and a graveyard that looks a lot like the graveyard in Alone.

We also saw a ladder fall and Eugene hurting his knee. 

We saw a ladder fall around Maggie in S6, and I don’t think we ever nailed down exactly what the ladder symbolizes in TWD. But at the least, it means they're in danger. Maggie almost died when the ladder fell in S6 and Eugene almost died here because the ladder fell.

Okay guys, I’m gonna put an unpopular opinion forth here. I think we saw a lot of foreshadows in this episode that Eugene is going to die. I love Eugene these days, especially his long hair and seeing him as a bad ass, so I don't want him to die, but I'm worried he might. I mean, there's the graveyard, there's him falling and hurting his leg, the ladder, him offering to sacrifice himself for Rosita and trying to admit his undying love for her first. It all felt really ominous to me.

Then there's the fact that they used Rosita and Eugene to introduce the Whisperers. I feel like whoever they used, it was always going to be significant. The could’ve Daryl and Carol to introduce them, Magna’s group, or any character on the show, but they used Rosita and Eugene. So I’m wondering if, rather than Rosita and Ezekiel losing their heads to the Whisperers, it might be Rosita and Eugene. Again, I hope I’m wrong and, you know, nobody else dies EVER on the show, but I feel like that's what they might be telling us. Guess we’ll find out soon whether I’m right or not.

One more thing about this scene with Rosita and Eugene that made my jaw drop, though I’m actually not 100% on it. I noticed at one point, they focused on a shot of Rosita and Eugene’s feet as they ran. And I thought I saw something on the ground. So, I looked more closely. I’m not sure what this is, but there seems to be something metallic on the ground where they’re walking. I even think there might be two things, one on each side, and Rosita and Eugene walk between them. Is it possible that…this is a bear trap? If so, that’s HUGE! It’s a major symbol of Beth that TD has known about for a long time. But again, I’m not positive that’s what it is. Any insights?

Magna’s Group:

We always love music references, and Luke is a music teacher. What really jumped out at me, though, was when they asked him, “Who are you now?” he answers, “I’m still a music teacher.” You know, like “I still sing.”

And we can link the title to Beth as well. Remember when she talked o Daryl in Still, she said, “You gotta stay who you are, not who you were.” So the question, “Who are you, now?” goes along with that theme.

I thought Magna’s prison tattoo was interesting. Michonne said the four dots represented the four walls and in the middle one represented the prisoner inside. It made me think of Four Walls and a Roof (5x03). There's been plenty of conjecture about what the title meant. Maybe the whole time, the idea was that it represented a prison. (Also another callback to S5).

Which brings me to my next point. While arguing against letting Magna’s group stay, Michonne says, "I remember." 1) It has to do with what happened during the six-year time jump that they haven't told us yet. Michonne seems to be referencing a point when they let someone in and it went wrong. Probably the same thing she’s talking to Rick about later. 2) It hearkens back to the title in 5B. 5x12 was called Remember, so yet another reference to S5. 3) Beth said the exact same thing to Daryl in Still. "I remember."

Siddiq says the injured woman in Magna’s group (Miko) has a concussion and is dehydrated, but should be back on her feet soon. That made me think of Beth at Grady because she was also told she had a concussion, which she probably didn't. Can you see the parallels? Miko is part of a group, has a head injury, and wakes up in a new community.

Not sure what my opinion of Magna is yet. So far, she seems like a little bit of a loose cannon. She was about to break into Michonne’s house with the knife necklace. What did she plan to do? It was only when she saw Michonne’s son that she stopped, changed her mind, and went to knock at the front door. Hmm.  

I also caught another theme at this part. When her and Michonne are talking, she says she’s done terrible things. Michonne answers that they all have. It’s the only reason they’re still here. Then Michonne says, “They aren’t always easy to live with.” To which Magna replies, “But it’s better than losing everything.”

I think that will be a theme this season. They have to learn to live with the things they’ve done. It may not be easy, but if they don’t, they could lose everything.

Reasons I think still Rick will be back:

1) In the opening montage, Michonne says, "I'm still here too." The “I'm still here” is a theme we've heard a lot in the show. When someone says it, it means they've survived and are still fighting. Michonne says, "I know you're still here. I'm still here too." She doesn't necessarily mean she thinks is alive, but I feel like it's symbolism that Rick will be back.

2) There's also the 7x12 symbolism. Remember Michonne thought Rick was dead and was utterly devastated, but he came back out through the yellow door (yellow equals escape) and they had a reunion. It's really only a matter time before he shows up again.

Judith and Negan

She reads him her math problem, and we get some more A/B symbolism. She says, “Airplane A and Airplane B are 1000 miles apart. If airplane A is flying east at 500 mph, and Airplane B is flying west at 650 mph…” She doesn't finish the question because Negan cuts her off. If the writers wanted us to hear the question, we would have. The only reason to hear the rest of the problem was to get that A/B and east-west symbolism in. Negan says she should book a seat on Airplane C because it sounds like one hell of a collision.

So, the idea is that these two planes are on a collision course. We have A, which we think represents leadership, and B, which is more like a follower. But we've also thought B might represent Beth and C represents TF and/or where they’re living. So, together with Daryl saying a storm is coming, it seems like a lot of things are about to collide here. Just not sure what form that will take yet.

Negan tells Judith his twisted little story about how he used to bring home stray dogs. Okay, so first of all, DOGS! (Sirius/Dog Star Symbolism). He uses his story to illustrate that even if the people seem to be good, it only takes one to kill everybody. That could most definitely foreshadow something.

Finally, the timeline was really jacked up. We saw three days in the Michonne/Alexandria story line. The first day where Magna’s group is brought to Alexandria, the second day where the trial is held, and then the third day where Michonne offers to take them to Hilltop and they set off.

Carol/Henry only went through two days. We saw them in the morning of the first day when they left the Kingdom and ran into the Saviors, at night, and then the next day where they meet Daryl.

For Rosita and Eugene, we saw only one day, and it wasn’t over yet at the end of the episode. No idea if that will be important moving forward, but I’ll keep an eye on it.

Okay, I’ll shut up now. Lots of setups in this episode for the coming arc. But definitely lots more interesting symbols than I thought there would be. Thoughts?

[twdmusicboxmystery]

8x09: Analysis

Good morning! How did everyone like the episode last night? Today I'm going to talk about broad plot points. Tomorrow I'll do a post about the details.

I thought it was a beautiful episode. A really good send off for Carl. I cried several times.

***Warning: Spoilers for 8x09 about in this episode. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

Carl

5x09 Parallels. I've said several times I thought there would be parallels between this episode and 5x09, where Tyreese died. There weren't as many as I expected, but they were there. The biggest one was seeing Rick and Michonne dig Carl's grave at the beginning, even though we didn’t actually see him die until the end. 

Very similar to Ty’s death. We saw the grave being dug at the beginning of 5x09, but didn't understand whose grave it was until the end. In that case, we had no idea Ty would die (unless we read spoilers) until the end of the episode. The difference here was that we knew Carl would die when his bite was revealed in 8x08.

Carl told Judith that he didn't beat the world, as Lori said he would. I have to say I disagree. He was bitten. Of course he still beat the world in his own way. But he said to everyone, as he was dying, to recognition, especially, showed that almost outgrown the world. It was his own special kind of transcendence. In a way, that’s a parallel to Tyreese too, as Tyreese died thinking about forgiveness and peace.

Huge emphasis on the fact that he got to say goodbye. In the flashbacks, Michonne left him a note saying “I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye” for when she left with Rosita to see the Sanctuary. 

Of course, she DID get to say goodbye because she made it back in time. They talked about goodbyes several times throughout the episode. Remember that Beth hated goodbyes, and no one really got to say goodbye to her because her death was so sudden. Major anti-parallels there. Of course, it's all-important that he got to say goodbye and we saw his burial.

It's important that we saw the flashbacks at all. We have major precedence for this. When they don't show us something, they always flash back to it later. It. For example, in S4 we saw Ricky kick Carol out of the prison. In S5, they showed us flashbacks to what happened to her during that missing time. The same thing is true here. And it wasn't just Carl's point of view that we flashback to. We also saw flashbacks how the Saviors escaped the sanctuary. Before, Rick was imprisoned at the junkyard, and when he returned, he didn't know what happened. So it flashed back to Morgan's point of view as well, showing what happened what we missed.

This is important because it shows that everything we missed with Beth will have to be shown eventually. They ALWAYS eventually show us events that are skipped. There's a lot of unexplained things around Beth, the biggest ones being unexplained stuff that happened the Grady, and of course those missing 17 days after Coda.

I also thought it was interesting that he that they juxtaposed Carl’s words with Morgan's brutality. I’ll come back to this, but we could see Carl's goodness and transcendence and then they put it side-by-side with Morgan and his cold, rage-driven killing.

Carl talked about 3x16! Guys, this is huge! We some of the dialogue in the trailer, so I’ve already touched on this when it comes to callbacks to S4, but him talking about 3x16 is pretty much a confirmation everything I wrote in my Beth Greene was Always Gimpel's Sheriff post, and a lot of the stuff both me and @thegloriouscollectorlady have been talking about lately. Carl talked about shooting the Woodbury kid in 3x16. 

Not only was Beth present, which we would read into any way, but more importantly, it's what led to Rick becoming a farmer and the entire arc in 4a. I'll talk a lot more about this later this week, but we’re seeing major story arcs from S4 come full circle this season. It’s extremely significant and it makes me super happy.

Carl gives Judith the hat. I don’t think I need to tell everyone how significant that was. The sheriff will live on, specifically in the little one that Beth always took care of. I remember back when 5x10 first aired, I noted that Carl took care of Judith. He even used the sheriff's hat to protect her from the rain.

So Beth took care of Judith most of her life. When she disappeared Carl stepped in that role more fully, taking on Judah's care almost entirely while they were on the road. I feel like they tried to have Carl specifically step into that role, which Beth previous occupied. Now they put the sheriff's hat on Judith, who has only ever been worn by few other characters. (Rick, Carl, Beth)

Now Daryl has assumed the role. We knew he would bc of the trailer, but it’s significant that his attitude wasn’t one of sadness about taking Judith. It wasn't something he had to do, it was something he wanted to do. He was very firm and confident about it. He picked up Judith, sheriff's hat and all, and, wearing his vest, walked out with her. I thought it was really interesting the way the camera focused on his back. We can almost see this is a return to S4 Daryl. He's confident and strong, he's got his best back, and he's caring for the "new sheriff." So we don't know exactly where this will lead, but symbolically it's very significant. 

Remember those wings have always marked him as a guardian and protector, which is why, symbolically, he needed to regain the vest before he took over protecting Judith.

Finally, Carl actually died with the sunrise. 

So now we’ve gotten through the night, and we have a new day. There were several parallels to Andrea's death. Carl shot himself, rather than waiting to succumb to the fever. The other thing I noticed is that Rick and Michonne stood outside on the porch and heard the shot. That's almost exactly what happened with Andrea's death. Even though Michonne stayed with Andrea, will the viewers didn't see her shoot herself. We saw Daryl and the others outside the door and their devastated reactions to hearing the shot.

So what does this mean for TD? I hope it means that with this new day we’ll see Beth next episode. I also want to point out that Andrea's that happened in 3x16, which was mentioned here a lot. Almost like they’re trying to align this episode with 3x16. In the next episode, 4x01, we got the Bethyl hug. So I’m really, really hoping, that we’ll get at least the beginning of Beth’s return in the next episode.

Siddiq

Siddiq is a freaking doctor! That, we did not see coming. In the comic books, Siddiq is a fisherman and a construction worker, not a doctor. This is something they are doing for the show. We don't see any evidence that he knows how to cure bites, but he did talk about treating one, at least insofar as reducing the fever and making the patient more comfortable. He’s the first person we’ve ever heard talk about treating a bite at all. That’s a big deal. We need to watch this story line closely.

Honoring Carl. Siddiq talked about honoring Carl. He said because Carl saved him, he would honor Carl by doing whatever he could to help TF. We don't know exactly why yet, but from the trailer, he, Daryl and Rosita go on a mission that takes them through the swamp. So whatever Siddiq is up to, he thinks it will help TF in some. I repeat, I really think something about Siddiq will both bring Beth back into the picture, and perhaps help TF win the war. That's why Carl’s sacrifice will be worth it.

 The last time we heard a lot of talk about honoring someone was right after Beth's death. To honor Beth, Rick wanted to take Noah home to Virginia. And he did. @thegloriouscollectorlady pointed out that while there's definitely a parallel here, it's kind of an anti-parallel. In S5, TF honored Beth by taking a in stranger (Noah) and doing something for them, because it's what Beth wanted. In S8, the stranger (Siddiq) is going to honor Carl by helping TF. So it's the same thing, but in reverse. With that being the case, let's hope we see the reverse of Coda next. Like this represents 5x09 and perhaps were moving backward toward Coda and the opposite result.

Carol and Henry. I had a major epiphany during this episode. In THIS POST I said that in order for Carol's arc to resolve, she needed to figure out how to love and nurture another child as she did Sophia. Last night, I realized I’m missing one big element. Henry kill Gavin, which was disturbing. Go back and watch that scene. Watch the reaction of all the adults. Ezekiel was merely shocked. Carol was so horrified she turned away for a minute. Morgan looked like he might throw up.

While it’s understandable because he obviously holds Gavin responsible for Benjamin’s death, the way the show portrayed this was as something very dark. It came across as a callback to Lizzie, who also had no problem killing the living. It’s like they’re trying to say Henry is straying onto a dark path. Carol wouldn’t be able to help but think of Lizzie when this happened, which is why she was so angry at him, and Ezekiel couldn’t understand. So, it's not just a matter of her loving the child, but her saving him from becoming like Lizzie. She failed with Lizzie. She should've seen what was wrong and didn't, but perhaps she will with Henry.

I’ll talk about this more later in the week as well, but for now, it’s important that Carol, Ezekiel and Morgan were there. We’ve thought since S7 that Carol and Ezekiel will be parents to Henry, but it’s interesting that Morgan is entangled in this too. He and Carol both lost biological children, specifically because they failed to save them (a theme between Rick and Carl in this episode). Now these three adults all saw Henry kill a man. It doesn’t matter whether or not Gavin deserved it. The point is that Henry did it without hesitation and wasn’t as bothered by it as he should have been. That’s not good. So now these three need to figure out how to save Henry in the same way Rick saved Carl in 4a.

The two, final “shocking” scenes we hoped would be Beth. I'm pretty sure the one the blogger referred to is the one that showed Negan at Alexandria. That's what she meant about the future. It was part of Carl’s vision and shows that he wants Negan to actually become part of the community, integrate with Alexandria and have everyone work together.

 Sorry to keep saying this, but I will do a separate post on how significant this is, especially where S4 is concerned. I don't know that Negan will ever actually integrate into TF’s community the way Carl wants, but this will most definitely drive the plot forward for Rick.

The second scene is still very unexplained. Remember that in 8x01, we saw two flashes forward: Rick’s old man coda (which I now have to call Carl's) and then the one where Rick’s eyes are red-rimmed and the plate-glass crosses hang above him. We always figured that might be Carl's funeral. It's not. They buried Carl in this episode, and then showed that scene separately. It’s definitely not the same thing. 

Rick sits against a tree, bleeding from a wound on his ribs. He has blood all over his hand. Honestly, it looks like a scene where he could be dying. (I still don't think he actually will; I feel like they’re trying to make us believe that. I could be wrong, of course.)

I had a somewhat disturbing thought while re-watching last night. Perhaps Rick will try and make nice with Negan to fulfill Carl's best wishes, and Negan will betray him by either stabbing or shooting him in the ribs. Maybe that's what we’re seeing in this scene. That would explain why he says, "my mercy prevailed over my wrath." It sounds like he's very resigned to his own death. It's like he's saying, “well, at least I was merciful, as Carl wanted.” This is just me musing over what it might be. We really have no idea.

I've never thought that Rick would die, and still don't. But remember THIS POST about Dawn's back story and how it's going to relate to Beth's future arc. Dawn actually killed Capt. Hanson. I’ve always said Beth won’t do that, because she's a much better person than Dawn. But maybe it's not about Beth killing Rick. Maybe someone else will either kill him or try to. Whether he's dead or just severely incapacitated, someone else will have to step into leadership. Based on the back story and foreshadowing surrounding Beth at Grady, it will be her. Either way, it would be tied to Carl, Carl's death, and Carl's last wishes. But again, this is just conjecture.

Overall, I really loved this episode. I thought it was beautiful. All the symbolism in it, which I'll go over in more detail tomorrow, makes me as hopeful as ever for TD. What did everyone else think?

[papermoonloveslucy]

Lucy Meets Sheldon Leonard

S5;E22 ~ March 6, 1967

Synopsis

Mr. Mooney allows TV producer Sheldon Leonard to film a hold-up scene at the bank. Lucy, trying earn a raise, thinks he is really a gangster and is determined to foil his robbery.

Regular Cast

Lucille Ball (Lucy Carmichael), Gale Gordon (Theodore J. Mooney), Mary Jane Croft (Mary Jane Lewis)

Roy Roberts (Mr. Cheever) does not appear in this episode, although Mr. Mooney does have two phone conversations with him.  

Guest Cast

Sheldon Leonard (Himself) was born Leonard Sheldon Bershad in New York City in 1907. In 1953 he played fast-talking salesman Harry Martin, who sells Lucy Ricardo the Handy Dandy vacuum cleaner in “Sales Resistance” (ILL S2;E17). Leonard was an integral part of the Desilu family off-screen as well, directing “Make Room for Daddy” including an episode that featured Lucy and Ricky Ricardo in 1959. He was one of the creators of “The Andy Griffith Show,” also filmed at Desilu. Leonard may be best remembered as the Nick, the bartender in the classic film It's a Wonderful Life (1945). He died in 1997. His name served as a namesake for the characters Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter in the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” as the writers are fans of his work.

Sheldon Leonard is a very important client of Westland Bank.

Fred Stromsoe (Louie) was an actor and stunt man who later appeared in a 1968 episode of “Gomer Pyle: USMC” produced by Sheldon Leonard. This is his only appearance with Lucille Ball.

Stromsoe does not have any dialogue.

Harvey Parry (Harry, above right) played one of the Keystone Cops in “Lucy Meets Mickey Rooney” (S4;E18). He was an experienced Hollywood stunt man and actor who appeared with Lucille Ball in The Bowery (1933) and There Goes My Girl (1937). He acted opposite Sheldon Leonard in To Have and Have Not (1944) and Guys and Dolls (1955).

George Sawaya (Pete) had a small role in the 1967 film A Guide for the Married Man along with Lucille Ball. Sawaya appeared in “I Spy,” “Gomer Pyle: USMC,” and “The Andy Griffith Show,” all produced by Sheldon Leonard.  

George DeNormand (Bank extra, uncredited) appeared in three films with Lucille Ball from 1937 to 1963. This is the just one of his many appearances on “The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy.”

Judith Woodbury (Bank extra, uncredited) makes one of her many background appearances on “The Lucy Show.” She also appeared in one episode of “Here’s Lucy.”

Characters such as the voice on the intercom, Maggie the teller, and the bank customers go uncredited. Off-screen characters Frankie and Charlie are referred to but never seen or heard.

This is the final episode of Season 5 to be broadcast, although the previous week's episode “Lucy and Tennessee Ernie Ford” (S5;E21) was actually the last filmed. “Lucy Meets the Berles” (S6;E1) was filmed before the break but held over to the next season. At just 22 episodes, Season 5 was the shortest of all Lucille Ball's sitcoms with the exception of “Life With Lucy,” which was canceled after 8 episodes. Season 5 ended in fourth place in the Nielsen ratings (26.2 share), the same as Season 1 but down one place from Season 4. 

This is one of 30 episodes to have fallen into public domain, the results being it has been reproduced on low-cost, low-quality home video. 

This episode was filmed on Friday January 20, 1967, one day later than the show's usual filming day. The day after this episode was filmed, actress Ann Sheridan died at age 51. Sheridan starred in Murder at the Vanities with Lucille Ball in 1934.  

The day this episode first aired (March 6, 1967) singer and actor Nelson Eddy died at age 65. Eddy starred in a 1956 episode of “Make Room for Daddy” produced and directed by Sheldon Leonard and shot at Desilu Studios.  In 1956, Eddy, Lucille Ball and Desi Aranz were all part of “MGM Parade” saluting romance. Eddy was mentioned by Rudy Vallee on the very first “Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” in 1957. In 1971, Richard Deacon played Nelson Eddy to Carol Burnett’s Jeanette McDonald in “The Hollywood Unemployment Follies.” There’s no doubt that Ricky Ricardo’s Prince Lancelot in “The Pleasant Peasant” was heavily influenced by Nelson Eddy. 

Lucy's excuse for being late to work is that the smog was so thick she couldn't find the bus. This is the second episode in a row to mention Los Angeles' smog problem. A week after this episode was filmed, Time Magazine ran a cover story about it.  

Lucy jokingly says the last time she got a raise was on Flag Day – but when the flag still had 48 stars. If this were factual, it would be prior to July 3, 1959. The next day the official flag of the United States went to 49 stars to include Alaska, which last only one year until the most recent iteration of the flag with 50 stars to represent Hawaii. We also know this is a joke because Lucy did not meet Mr. Mooney until October 1963 and didn't start working for him until 1965.  

Lucille Ball gets applause on her entrance into the third scene, indicating the episode may have been shot out of sequence.

Sheldon Leonard also gets a round of applause from the studio audience when he finally enters nearly 11 minutes into the action. Up until then, the episode has been about Lucy wanting a raise.

Mr. Mooney quotes the Bible when he says “The laborer is worthy of his hire.” The adage was also spoken by Chaucer and Gandhi.  

We learn that Westland Bank is the third largest financial institution in the city of Los Angeles with assets of 31 million dollars and 31 branches. We also hear that Mr. Mooney got his job with the bank by marrying the boss's niece. This means that Irma Mooney’s uncle was president of Westland Bank! 

Over the telephone, Mr. Cheever tells Mr. Mooney that Sheldon Leonard produced “The Danny Thomas Show,” “Dick Van Dyke” and “I Spy.” Leonard himself adds “Andy Griffith” (which followed “The Lucy Show” on the CBS Monday schedule) and “Gomer Pyle” to his credits. Mr. Mooney and Leonard discuss his history of playing gangsters as well as his transition to behind the camera. This exposition also helps “Lucy Show” home viewers realize that Leonard is more than just an actor, but a successful Hollywood producer as well. Leonard introduces the concept of 'shooting a pilot' – explaining to Mr. Mooney (and the viewers) that this does not mean gunning down someone who flies airplanes!

Mr. Mooney (perhaps jokingly) says he speaks seven languages – but not Lucy's!  

Mr. Mooney ends up all wet – again – when Lucy throws a bucket of water on him thinking he is a bank robber.

The end of the episode turns very meta when Leonard says:

“I suddenly got this idea for a new television series. It would be about this kooky red headed girl. She works in a bank and she gets into all sorts of impossible situations and... forget it.  Nobody would ever believe it.”

Blooper Alerts!

Health Check! When Lucy reports for work, she kindly asks Mr. Mooney “How are you? “How is Mrs. Mooney?” but never asks about his children! Much like Lucy’s own offspring - out of sight, out of mind!

Credit Check? Leonard asks Lucy if she's ever done any acting. Lucy says “No, sir.” Faithful viewers will know this is not true. Lucy Carmichael has appeared on stage (as Cleopatra), TV (with Danny Thomas) , and film (as Iron Man Carmichael).  

Alarming Bravery! Lucy says that it it brave for Leonard to enter the bank through the front doors. She should have known something is up when the bank's alarm didn't go off!  

Cart Conundrum! As scrub women, Lucy and Mary Jane push a cart labeled “LAUNDRY.” Why would a bank's cleaning staff have a laundry cart? The laundry cart has been noticeably padded to accommodate Leonard's stunt of falling into it, a stunt which he performs himself! 

Callbacks!

Lucy convinces Mary Jane to play a scrub woman to go undercover, just as Lucy Ricardo convinced Ethel Mertz to do in “Cuban Pals” (ILL S1;E28).

Lucy asking Mr. Mooney (Gale Gordon) for a raise by sheepishly asking “You’re not going to give me a raise, are you?” is nearly identical to when Ricky sheepishly asked Mr. Littlefield (Gale Gordon) for a raise on a 1952 episode of “I Love Lucy.”   

Sheldon Leonard and Gale Gordon both appeared in the feature film Here Come the Nelsons in 1952, eight months before the debut of the TV series “Ozzie and Harriet.” 

Like Lucille Ball, Gale Gordon was directed by Sheldon Leonard when he made several appearances as Landlord Heckendorn (and other characters, including the Devil) on “The Danny Thomas Show” from 1959 to 1961. 

Lucille Ball first worked with Sheldon Leonard when he played Harry Martin, slick salesman for the Handy Dandy Company in “Sales Resistance” (ILL S2;E17). 

In January 1959, Sheldon Leonard directed Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (playing Lucy and Ricky Ricardo) on an episode of “Make Room for Daddy” titled “Lucy Upsets the Williams Household” (S6;E14), a reciprocal appearance for the cast of Thomas’s show appearing on “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.” 

In 1965′s “Danny Thomas’ Wonderful World of Burlesque II” featuring Lucille Ball, Sheldon Leonard made a cameo appearances as a cigar vendor in the theatre aisle. Ball and Leonard did not share any scenes. 

In May 1966, both Lucille Ball and Sheldon Leonard participated in a documentary TV film titled “The Magic of Broadcasting”. 

Fast Forward! 

Before his death, Sheldon Leonard was interviewed by The Television Academy Foundation for The Archive of American Television to talk about the influence of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz on television.

In his 1995 book, And the Show Goes On: Broadway and Hollywood Adventures, Leonard wrote:

"Operating on the well-founded belief that a comedy show needs an audience to give it the authentic response that canned laughter can never duplicate, Desi brought in an audience to watch and react, while he used multiple-camera shooting technique borrowed from live TV."

“Lucy Meets Sheldon Leonard” rates 4 Paper Hearts out of 5