#it just happened to be what i wanted to rewatch at the time and i decided to kill two birds with one stone so to speak

[housemcee]

1x1 — PILOT (everybody lies)

welcome to the start of my house md episode by episode rewatch/recap/analysis series. i’ve never met a bandwagon i’ve not wanted to jump onto i guess! (SPOILER: THIS IS INCREDIBLY LONG. LIKE 7000 WORDS LONG.)

i’ll start by acknowledging the elephant(s) in the room: in a lot of ways, this episode, well as the episodes immediately following it, don’t exactly feel like the rest of the series. the basic formula is there—cold open with a patient mysteriously being struck down, house being browbeaten into taking the case, clinic duty subplot, various trial and error diagnoses and treatments that fail on increasingly serious levels until a last minute third act revelation and Correct diagnosis—but tonally things feel a little…off, and not just because of the orange filter. house comes across as more earnest and serious, there are far fewer one liners-per-minute, cuddy seems distant and almost distinctly antagonistic, the patient is the absolute focus of the episode as opposed to a backdrop.

i think you can go back and forth as to the point in s1 where the formula becomes standardised and the episodes start to feel like the rest of the show (or at least, like they could be from s2-3)—i personally think this happens no earlier than 1x11 detox, and no later than 1x13 cursed, but i’ll save my reasoning for when i get to that cluster of episodes—and you can probably brush a lot of this off as generic ‘early episode weirdness’ and the show finding its feet, but controversially: i don’t dislike these things about the pilot. i think things feeling so alien in this episode serves, unintentionally or not, as a great metaphor for how it feels to be chucked into princeton-plainsboro somewhat in medias res, both for foreman (who serves as a secondary protagonist in this episode and in s1 more generally) and for us as an audience. if a pilot episode’s success is defined by how accurately it tries to give a sense of what the rest of the show will look and feel like, then i think this fails—but i think it’s perhaps more fruitful to think of the pilot as an introduction, and not a ‘first episode’. this is a very long way of saying that the pilot is weird, and i like it anyway, and i won’t be criticising it for not matching the tone and feel of later episodes. this will also likely be the longest out of all my recaps just because…well, it’s the pilot. are ya with me? ok cool.

INTRODUCING REBECCA ADLER

controversially, i love the long establishing shots of adler on the bus/running into work at the start of this episode. there’s something to be said for the power of suspense here—who is she? why are we following her? what’s going to happen?—and the subversion at the end; adler is not going to be our main character. there are a lot of establishing details here that i really love: starting a new relationship (only for the payoff later on in the episode: three dates, and he left after she started getting sick), her gossipy relationship with her coteacher melanie, the first ever mention of lying and lies in the series (MELANIE: You’re lying, aren’t you? REBECCA: I wouldn’t lie to you) and the immediate follow-up of how adler twists the stayover story into a lesson about making new friends to her students. i think this level of detail and time would be tedious on EVERY patient of the week, but there’s something to be said about getting to know adler before the shock symptom reveal. we are invested in her wellbeing separately from simply rooting for house’s team to solve the case. i think a lot of the better episodes in s2 and s3 do something similar—getting to know the heart donor in absentia in sex kills, the back and forth between house and coma guy in son of a coma guy, foreman and his patient in house training—and again, i wouldn’t want this to be the case every episode…but for a pilot, it works.

GETTING TO YES

i’m actually not a huge fan of this introduction of house and wilson—i think a lot of the dialogue and exposition is fairly clunky (‘Hey, you’re the oncologist. I’m just a lowly infectious disease guy’)—but there are aspects of it that i really like. we don’t see a lot of wilson in s1 (there’s a reason why his fandom catchphrase is ‘i too am in this episode’ lmao), but when we DO see him he’s almost exclusively with house, and this is a great way of introducing that dynamic: even though hugh laurie is the only name that gets a special fade to black sequence, house and wilson arrive on the scene together. i’m also weirdly fond of the fact that neither of them refer to one another by name in this scene (more on names/character introductions more generally in a bit); it feels like we as an audience are stumbling in to a very habitual conversation, and i think it goes a long way in terms of establishing their friendship and degree of intimacy and familiarity with one another.

as an aside, wilson does two things in this scene that fascinate me:

1) his mention that house has ‘three overqualified doctors working for [him], getting bored’. this is something that crops up a couple of times in these early s1 episodes—the idea that house’s team spend a lot of time sitting around listlessly, and have been for a while. it’s never clearly spelled out why this is the case, other than the implication that house is generally workshy and finds most cases boring, but i do wish this got a bit more attention in fandom spaces in conjunction with house’s first conversation with cuddy and the reveal that he’s been shirking all responsibility, including clinic duty, for a very long time (cuddy even specifically says that the only reason why house hasn’t been fired yet is because his ‘reputation is still worth something’; that ‘still’ seems to imply that this is in spite of his current work output). in the later seasons, we get various whisperings about house being world-renowned and patients with influence specifically lobbying to be treated by him, but this seems to be a reputation he has actively re-cultivated throughout the course of the show; before the pilot, he hasn’t been doing anything for a while. you can read into this however you like (i think the conclusion we’re supposed to come to is that this is residual post-infarction depression, given that cuddy mentions him being 6 years behind on clinic duty and the infarction happened 5 years prior; most of the backlog occurred post leg), but i do think it has some fascinating implications as to why house bothered hiring foreman specifically for ‘street smarts’ if he’d been in some kind of long term slump, and what exactly cameron, and especially chase, were doing while they were on the team pre-canon (we know from a deleted pilot scene that she had been there 6 months, and chase a year). the post-stacy pre-pilot era is a bit of a canon black hole, and so these little throwaway references do a lot of heavy lifting.

2) his lie about adler being his cousin. it’s easy to say this having watched this episode a dozen times over, but i don’t think this was ever intended to be a believable lie; wilson’s wearing a pretty shit-eating grin at the end of the scene (and when house throws his grand hissy fit to get adler’s mri and then tells wilson he better ‘love this cousin a whole lot’), he fumbles a little when house references his uncle dying of cancer to refute adler’s lack of history, and, as a bit of a rogue piece of evidence, in the turkish remake (hekimoglu) it is revealed almost IMMEDIATELY to the audience that wilson is lying and multiple scenes are inserted into what is otherwise a shot-for-shot remake of wilson panicking and trying to keep up the pretence. we obviously find out that adler isn’t wilson’s cousin anyway when foreman exposes him towards the end of the episode, but i just love this as a piece of establishing characterisation: that for all wilson is playing ‘good cop’ in this scene, and in his relationship with house more generally, he is lying and manipulating his way into doing so. sets the tone for his and house’s chronic dysfunction in such a beautiful, show-not-telling way.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

we’ll gloss over the weird cgi invasion of adler’s brain tissue, and get back to business: the introduction of the big three, foreman, cameron and chase. or non-introduction, rather; in this opening scene, none of them are addressed by name, and it’s only really foreman who gets much of a back-and-forth with house (cameron gets to say house’s name for the first time and smugly tell foreman that house doesn’t like dealing with patients; chase, making a running start as the fellow the show cared about the least in s1, gets a token contribution to the differential and a dream). but i still love this scene a lot, and i’ll break down what we get, fellow-by-fellow.

FOREMAN: as briefly mentioned, foreman makes his mark as daddy’s favourite child EARLY. he gets the first line in this scene (with house getting the second), and then the order reverses with his getting the second to last line and house getting the last word at the end. not to go all english major on everyone, but opening and closing lines (in poetry, in novels, in plays) tend to be very deliberate choices because they set the tone for what comes afterwards; foreman getting a hand in both of these is the literary equivalent of the show waving a big red sign that says THIS GUY’S IMPORTANT. he absolutely dominates this scene; much of it is a back and forth between him and house, with foreman playing the skeptic who lays out all the rules of conventional medicine (horses, not zebras; treating patients is why we became doctors)—but he also catches on very quickly to the way house’s brain works by suggesting the lab messed up the bloodwork. although the final version of the pilot doesn’t make it explicitly clear that this is foreman’s first week on the job, i think this scene does a great job of establishing him as an outsider—while chase and cameron stay quiet and composed in the background, foreman is asking all the questions. it’s handled really, really well, and really sets the trend for the next few episodes, wherein foreman spends a lot of time trying and sometimes failing to convince cameron and chase to take his side over house’s. even though foreman becoming dean of medicine in s8 was unplanned, i think you can see from this opening scene why it was him who got forced into that role and not any other character, because from day one he’s willing to go toe to toe with house. it’s a great introduction for him.

CAMERON: cameron doesn’t get nearly as much focus in this scene as foreman, but there are two points of interest. the first is her aforementioned aside to foreman—‘Dr House doesn’t like dealing with patients’. it’s telling that it’s cameron giving foreman this head up, and not chase; it’s maybe an early glimmer of chase’s own laziness/disdain for foreman, but also hugely revealing of how, even at the very beginning, cameron is someone who prides herself on knowing and reading people…especially house. she does it publicly in front of house, too, and not after they leave the office. it’s a performative gesture; she wants to be the friendly face seen as helping out the new guy, and she also wants house to know that she knows this about him. this is maybe the distant ancestor of cameron’s infamous ‘i know you like me and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind’ speech in love hurts. fabulous characterisation. the second point of interest for cameron is a very brief reaction shot: foreman accuses house of wanting to eliminate the humanity from medicine, to which house replies ‘humanity is overrated’ and we cut to a lingering shot of cameron, sitting stone-faced, while house continues to talk. honestly this shot alone is why i don’t think reading the livejournal transcripts of each episode (as brilliant of a resource as they are!) serve as a sufficient substitute for rewatching an episode in its entirety, because this goes entirely unmentioned in that transcript despite it being such a key bit of characterisation for cameron. the implication is clear: cameron’s the humanity on this team. hurray for subtle character work!

CHASE: lol. chase, bless his cotton socks, doesn’t get a lot to work with here—no lingering reaction shots aside from a look of furrowed confusion while he stares at the MRI, and his only two lines are to suggest an aneurysm and then clarify that cameron’s creutzfeld-jakob suggestion is mad cow. this in itself is kind of revealing; chase just isn’t as important as the other two (even though he’s later the one to save the day with the x ray suggestion!) and won’t be for a while. ironically enough, we do find out chase’s name first; while wheeling adler to radiology, he corrects her assumption that he’s house and introduces himself. but, uh, this scene makes it pretty clear that this does not translate into chase being more significant than foreman or cameron lol.

LISA CUDDY, DEAN OF MEDICINE

i’m going to be talking about all of cuddy’s scenes here, as opposed to just her first one, because most of them aren’t really significant enough to talk about on their own. cuddy’s introduction in this episode is a bit of a rogue one, because in a lot of ways it comes closer to her and house’s later dynamic than the rest of s1 does—the immediate rapidfire back-and-forth filled with veiled insults, them following each other around to continue a conversation, their various attempts to ragebait one another and get the last word—and yet something about it nevertheless feels a bit…off. it might just be because the quips themselves feel a little mean-spirited—cuddy’s deadpan ‘to what?’ when house says he’s going home, her later ‘but i’m pretty sure i can outrun ya’ zinger—or maybe it’s just that the first conversation is actually fairly mundane and professional underneath all the quiplash (cuddy wants house to do his job—not even as an appeal to sensibility, but to literally just do the bare minimum—and house is refusing and generally disengaged), but it feels like there’s a lot of energy that doesn’t really have much place to go here. i know huddy’s will they/won’t they can be, uh, divisive, but i think edelstein was spot on to recognise the chemistry between her and laurie and push the writers into going somewhere with it; this dynamic plays out a lot better later on when it feels like the bickering has real subtext. sometimes the actors do know best guys!!

that criticism aside: i think the pilot does a really good job of establishing not only who cuddy is, but the role she plays in the show as Big Boss Lady. she’s uptight and obsessive, but also entirely willing and able to stoop to house’s level; she can be naïve and trite (my favourite, FAVOURITE gag in this episode is cuddy’s ‘when we make mistakes, people die’ line later being echoed in the medical soap house is watching), but she’s willing to recognise house is right when she sees tangible evidence. i especially adore that we get her name introduction not through it being spoken aloud, but by seeing it on the door to her office; this is just sooo cuddy to me, and it feels exactly like how she would want to be introduced lol. and i love that she is the person to complete the second half of the ‘you can’t always get what you want’ motif—not only is ‘but if you try sometimes, you get what you need’ very, very cuddy coded, especially during her s5 adoption arc, but it’s a (perhaps unintentional) piece of evidence that house and cuddy aren’t actually that different, that their approaches to medicine are really two sides of the same coin. lovely stuff. also rip to cuddy’s cunty little glasses, which get their first and last outing in this episode. apparently only one woman on this show can wear glasses at a time and the writers chose cameron as their initial glassesbearer. i miss you, glasses cuddy.

(NOT REALLY RELEVANT TO CUDDY BUT INCLUDING IT IN THIS SECTION BECAUSE IT COMES UP IN THAT FIRST HOUSE/CUDDY CONVERSATION: house’s immediate rebuttal to cuddy threat to fire him is ‘i have tenure’. this IS something that crops up again later in s1 and becomes a pretty core part of the vogler arc, but after that we don’t really hear much about it again. it’s kind of a shame. because first of all, what idiot approved of emboldening house by giving him tenure (probably cuddy, let’s be real). and second of all, the whole ‘house having tenure’ thing could have been incorporated a lot more firmly into his relationship with cuddy as an extra dimension as to why she doesn’t stop him from doing all the insane shit he does—she can hide behind the tenure excuse because she doesn’t necessarily want to admit she agrees with him. don’t get me wrong, i don’t think i would have actively preferred this to what we got (i like that it’s fairly undeniable that cuddy goes along with most of house’s excesses because she likes him as a person and as a doctor), but maybe it’s a missed opportunity. idk. something i thought was worth mentioning.)

[MRI ROOM INTERLUDE]

shoutout to the pilot for giving us not one, but TWO interludes in the MRI room; the first is interrupted by house’s authority to order procedures being pulled (it also gives us cameron’s name, as called out by the tech in the booth, and a quick chekhov’s gun explanation of how the contrast dye works) and the second is interrupted by adler going all lily rose depp in nosferatu and almost dying to gadolinium-induced anaphylaxis. since the first scene is so short and mostly serves as obligatory precursor to adler’s allergic reaction (though it is hilariously perfect that cameron steps in to reassure adler with her christmas tree analogy after foreman’s very science-heavy explanation, and chase is…idk, twiddling his thumbs somewhere out of shot), let’s talk about the second.

all of the fellows get a moment in the sun in the pilot (even poor chase), and this is cameron’s: she’s the one to immediately clock that something is wrong with adler after she fails to respond to a check-in question, and is quick to brush off chase’s attempts to argue otherwise (sidenote: lol of course chase tries to take the path of least resistance here. bless him, he doesn’t come off looking great in a lot of this episode). i am honestly so obsessed with how perfect this is as a piece of characterisation that i don’t even know where to begin; you could transplant this scene into a s3 episode, and it would still feel totally and utterly cameron in a way that is really admirable. she immediately proves house’s earlier flippant claim that ‘humanity is overrated’ wrong; it’s her compassion and attempt to check in on adler that allows her to realise something is going awry, and her insistence on standing by her gut instinct (something is wrong, adler went from feeling sick to going silent) saves adler’s life. this is something the show explicitly congratulates her for via chase’s repentant ‘good call’—for all that house later prods her this way and that throughout the seasons, cameron’s core compassion remains something to be admired. i also think it’s kind of fun that cameron, an immunologist, arrests an allergic reaction. we don’t know her specialty yet, but it’s a fun little nod. big fan.

other things to note: i like that foreman takes a bit of a backseat in this scene—it’s a nice bit of balance, given how foreman-heavy the rest of the episode is, and also illustrates that there are scenarios where being booksmart isn’t enough; it’s cameron’s emotional intelligence (and chase’s practical skill) doing the heavy lifting here. again, great way of showing, not telling, the team’s various strengths and weaknesses. i’m also strangely fond of how…quiet this whole scene is? it’s very elongated and eerie and there aren’t seven million beeping noises in the background; it’s totally different than the various disasters that occur in every other episode. it’d drive me crazy if every procedure-gone-wrong scene went like this, but i do like that it’s different.

MOMENT I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO PUT ANYWHERE ELSE: directly after this, there’s a fucking hilarious moment where house meets the team outside adler’s hospital room and tells them to get a better history. when foreman questions the logic of this if everybody lies, house replies with ‘truth begins in lies. think about it’ and walks off. at which point foreman stares after him and goes ‘that doesn’t mean anything. does it’ in the most clearly skeptical tone of all time that it fucking kills me. meanwhile cameron gazes thoughtfully and chase is clearly trying not to burst out laughing. this doesn’t really have much relevance other than that it’s another early example of foreman desperately trying to appeal to cameron and chase for some semblance of common sense and getting nothing back, and also it makes me giggle every time.

CLINIC DUTY INTERLUDE/VASCULITIS?????

not much to say about house’s initial clinic duty blitz, other than the obvious ‘lol everyone in this episode is orange’ and that i like how this breaks up the action a little. i especially like the asthma kid scene, which has a first time watcher’s most pressing question (what happened to house’s leg?) spoken aloud and ignored, and also features house’s steroids explanation leading him to the vasculitis epiphany—this trend of house’s clinic patients leading him to some revelation about the main case (and thus undermining his claim that clinic duty is USELESS) dies out pretty early on, and it’s probably for the best since it’d make things too predictable, but it is fairly satisfying while it’s here.

of more interest is the next two scenes with adler. getting to see her phrase her family history in her own words is a fun one-off—hereafter, it’s usually just reported to us by either the fellows or whoever is convincing house to take the case; it is also, lol, kind of funny that chase is once again off twiddling his thumbs somewhere else (when foreman is absent for the steroids being administered, we immediately cut to him searching the school; we never find out what chase is doing lmao. i know it’s pedantic of me to keep pointing out how useless he’s being, but it never stops being funny how disposable he is in the pilot LOL). and i know the shot of house shadowed in profile through the blinds is kind of cheesy but…it WORKS okay!! it reminds us very sharply that despite running the show, adler hasn’t actually met him yet. it’s another factor that makes this episode more patient centric than any other. and as a throwaway moment: cameron questions what will happen if they’re wrong about the vasculitis steroid treatment, to which house responds with ‘we learn something else’. another example of cameron winning the ‘caring the most about the patient’s welfare’ game, but also another possible example of evidence that supports the whole ‘house hasn’t had a case in a LONG TIME’ theory that i’ve been trying to build throughout this post. i mean realistically i know that this is just meant as exposition, but it’d make more sense if it were foreman asking that question as the New Guy than just cameron. the fact she’s been here a while and doesn’t know this suggests that something is a bit different with adler.

after this, we get one of my favourite moments in the whole episode: chase and cameron administering adler’s steroids. we get a whole lot of information about adler—the guy she was dating in the opener has since dumped her (as mentioned at the beginning), she claims not to have any friends at work (despite seeming very friendly and gossipy with her coworker)—that again supports this whole episode’s through-line of ‘everybody lies’/the truth being murky, but we also get this grade a confrontation between cameron and chase after cameron blurts out that adler is now being treated for vasculitis:

Chase: You should have told her the truth. It’s a long shot guess.

Cameron: [to nurse] Thank you. [To Chase] If House is right, no harm, if he’s wrong we’ve given a dying woman a couple days hope.

Chase: False hope.

Cameron: If there was any other type available I would have given her that.

it’s more great characterisation for cameron, obviously (she who turns out to be awful at delivering bad news), but also pretty revealing for chase. he’s fairly blasé while adler is telling him about her lack of a support network (it looks like he’s laughing in places, even), and hasn’t really exhibited much concern about her as a person prior to this, but cameron telling adler she doesn’t have a brain tumour—giving her ‘false hope’—really riles him, to the point where at the end of the conversation he huffs and storms off back the way he and cameron came. this idea of distributing false hope really bugs him in a way that i think can be linked to his speech to house about his father in 1x13 cursed: ‘no disappointments’. and as a little treat to myself (stalwart camchase shipper and defended): i think it’s kind of sweet that chase throws a hissy fit like this with cameron, given how stilted and cordial a lot of the other fellow interactions are this episode. great teaser for how much of a dysfunctional mess this team dynamic will be and also shows how comfortable chase and cameron are with one another as opposed to foreman. it’s fun!

ERIC “SEARCH AND DESTROY” FOREMAN

yeah don’t be misled by the section title; we still don’t know foreman’s name yet (we are twenty minutes into the episode, by the way, for those playing along at home, and, spoiler: we have a while to wait). not much of note happens while foreman is searching the kindergarten (aside from him physically making this face ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ after finding out a kid dropped a book on a gerbil), so we’ll cut to The Cafeteria scene.

other scenes in the pilot might be my favourites, but i think this cafeteria scene between foreman and house is, objectively, the best. for just a moment, it elevates foreman to house’s equal—no other fellow get a proper tête-a-tête with him like this in the pilot; although cameron manages to get him alone for the ‘why did you hire me’ chat, it’s only because she actively ambushes him—and then it comes crashing down as soon as foreman refuses to buy into house’s justification for searching adler’s apartment, via cafeteria lady metaphor, and house whips out the juvie record reveal. (side note: here, we are told foreman broke into someone’s home. almost exclusively afterwards, it’s referred to as him being a car thief. obviously this is just a continuity error but Lol). this alone isn’t what leads foreman to agree to the break-in—it’s house’s later choice to stop all treatment and watch how fast adler dies in lieu of more information—but it’s an important precursor. time and time again, we see foreman make the choice he does after this cafeteria scene—to acquiesce to being like house, and even mimicking his language (later, he parrots house’s ‘she might have a meth lab!’ comment to cameron), but nevertheless hold on to his more romantic beliefs in people’s choices (he eats the potentially contaminated sandwich anyway). there are a lot of recurring points in the show where foreman tries not to be like house, and then immediately fumbles and buckles under the pressure; this scene makes it clear he was doomed to fall into this cycle from the start. the next time someone tries to argue chase was the chosen one from day one i’m going to sentence them to watching this cafeteria scene ten million times because it is so, so obvious that foreman is being singled out here in a way cameron and chase just aren’t. house interrogated his high school gym teacher, for god’s sake. if that doesn’t scream chosen one, idk what does.

IRRELEVANT SIDE NOTES: we never see this cafeteria set again, the first of many cafeteria set casualties to come. also, house trying to watch tv behind foreman’s head for the first part of this scene sends me and could be right out of an s3 episode.

HE’S YOUR FRIEND, HUH?

other people have spoken about adler and wilson’s conversation and how it illustrates house and wilson’s relationship far more eloquently and with more substance than i can ever hope to do, so let’s put that mostly to one side and talk about everything else that comes up in this scene with them both. i am of course contractually bound to laugh at the following: wilson randomly checking up on adler despite having nothing to do with her for the rest of the episode (ostensibly this is to further make us question whether she’s actually his cousin, since they interact with zero familiarity, but come on lol), and also wilson’s throwaway comment about how adler might see house ‘at the movies, or on the bus’. house on a bus…likely place for him to be. anyway back to the serious stuff.

adler gets one of the thesis statements of the show in this scene: ‘it’s not what people say, it’s what they do’. if the show has any one big thing to say, it’s about the importance of action: people CAN change, doing things changes things. there’s even payoff for this later in the episode; house and adler talk themselves in circles, and it doesn’t change her mind about wishing to be discharged—only doing something, getting that cold hard proof of the worm in her leg, changes her mind. every single romantic relationship in the show fails for this reason; action outweighs feeling or sentiment. this so easily could have been a trite, throwaway line, but the show has the courage to act upon its own internal ruleset and make it mean something. i really, really appreciate that.

sorry i got too earnest for a second. MOVING ON!

SO HOW’D YOU GET THE JOB?

i already covered foreman’s break-in breaking point (lol) in the cafeteria section, and, uh, even i can’t spin chronic fatigue guy into some deep allegory for rest of the show, so let’s skip to the break-in!

this scene is sooo playful—i love the jump cuts between cameron and foreman open-and-closing cabinets, cameron’s casual ‘i managed to make it to 17 without a criminal record’ (cameron are you implying you got arrested at 17???), foreman just straight-up giving up on keeping his criminal record a secret and having told cameron the full story off-screen (and cameron comparing him to jean valjean and taking house’s side), foreman still being in his full suit while cameron’s in a tank top with her hair down…even the simple act of foreman having the audacity to be bitching and moaning about being hired for his past while simultaneously making himself a sandwich out of adler’s groceries. foreman and cameron are probably the duo who get the least amount of screen time together in s1 (for all that i’ve mocked him for being an afterthought, they’re both usually paired up with chase instead of each other) so it’s nice that we get such an extended moment of them together…and also makes me wonder if there’s an alternate universe where forecam was the big fellows love story instead of camchase.

what makes this scene really fruitful, though, is the complete role reversal that takes place. we open with cameron, smugly telling foreman about how house ‘doesn’t believe in pretence’ and that it’s ridiculous of him to be upset about being hired for his criminal record; we end with foreman teasingly asking cameron what she did to get hired, after cameron attempts to point out all the reasons why foreman likely got the place on merit regardless (he went to a better school, he got better grades), and a slow zoom on cameron’s blank expression. in the span of less than a week, foreman has begged a question that cameron has never even thought to ask—and it clearly unnerves her. cameron’s later disgust at being hired for her looks is, imo, less about the perceived sexism (although cameron does seem to have a complex about being dismissed because she’s a woman, because she’s pretty, etc—she says this practically verbatim in 1x14 control) and more because it did not even occur to her that there could be a pretext for her hiring. she is upset at having not read house as well as she thought. something similar happens during s2’s articlegate; cameron lets her article rot on house’s desk for months, assuming her patience will be rewarded, whereas foreman assumes the worst and immediately forces his under house’s nose. we get the set up for this IN THE PILOT!!! ugh i’m obsessed.

SILLY THINGS: the way foreman says ‘her dog definitely has fleas’ is so satisfying. i already mentioned it but shoutout to cameron’s les mis reference. i like how tenderly cameron examines the drawings from adler’s students. also, foreman mentions them ripping up the carpet. in the kindergarten scene he was sniffing the carpet. there’s a joke here about how carpets are a euphemism for a certain part of the female anatomy and what that might imply about foreman…but i’m not going to make it.

ADLER’S NOT HIS COUSIN!

THIRTY MINUTES INTO THE EPISODE and we finally get wilson AND foreman’s names revealed. by one another, no less! phew. now i can finally find and replace all the sentences where i just described them both by epithets. jokes aside, it does feel a little silly that it took this long to get names for either of them (especially foreman, who is by far the most prominent character in the episode after house!) but there’s something to be said about the order of name reveals maybe alluding to their narrative importance in the episode (in reverse order): chase, cameron, cuddy, wilson, foreman. or maybe it’s just that this episode had a big deleted scene where the three fellows hung out together and addressed one another by name and mentioned how long they’d all been there and that scene being cut messed up the flow a little bit. i guess we’ll never know!! (to be clear: it is probably the latter).

other great things about this scene: cameron’s little look at foreman before he reveals adler isn’t wilson’s cousin because she had pork in her fridge. chase’s eyes playing ping pong between foreman and wilson while they’re arguing about adler (not) being wilson’s cousin. chase having to cover his mouth because he’s openly laughing after wilson claims he calls adler rachel instead of rebecca. house’s little call and response explanation of tapeworm larvae overlaid with a cgi worm sequence. also i can’t believe i haven’t mentioned this yet but i find it so very charming how everyone keeps cramming themselves into house’s inner office instead of using the perfectly nice conference room next door. more proof that this is the first differential they’ve done in months lmaoo.

WE CAN LIVE WITH DIGNITY, WE CAN’T DIE WITH IT

there is no way i can express everything i want to about this scene between house and adler, but i’m going to try my best.

i think there’s something so beautiful about this scene—the conversation, yes, but also just the way it’s shot. the sudden cool, blue tones; the rain and sleet in the background; house and adler facing each other head on. them both wearing blue shirts. i think it’s telling that we only get the truth of what happened to house’s leg when adler puts it in the most ugly, cruellest terms:

ADLER: What made you a cripple?

it’s taken to mean house’s leg, but she’s also asking what made house the way he is—why he hides himself away, why he has refused to see her. he answers this head on, but the next question—what makes you think i’m so much better than you, adler asks—house avoids. adler convinces house to leave her alone not because her own reasoning is so convincing, but because she asks questions house cannot, or at the very least will not, answer. this is confirmed later, when cameron surmises wilson’s reasoning (that adler is not just a file to him anymore, that he respects her) for house’s refusal to treat adler in one succinct question: ‘so because you respect her, you’re gonna let her die?’. house doesn’t verbally respond, but he does shake his head slightly. he does respect adler, but that isn’t why he’s letting her make her own decisions. it’s because he cannot give her an answer that will satisfy her.

(NICE CHARACTER DETAIL I CAN’T PUT ANYWHERE ELSE: when house gives the news that adler is still refusing treatment, foreman and cameron react with visible dismay and wilson turns his head. chase’s face stays impassive. a few lines later, cameron and foreman brainstorm ways to keep adler in hospital; a court order, and claiming the illness made her incompetent. chase, again, stays silent. part of it is ostensibly because he’s about to have his big moment, but it’s nevertheless pretty clear that he isn’t surprised, and doesn’t need wilson’s explanation as to why house won’t treat adler. and, well, of course he isn’t; he’s been there the longest! it’s great.)

THEY LIGHT UP LIKE SHOTGUN PELLETS

chase finally gets his time to shine!!! and we’re only 36 minutes in!

i don’t have much to say about chase’s x ray epiphany (the most important part—that if there’s a worm in adler’s brain, there’s probably one in her thigh—is house’s own revelation, and also intended to parallel adler and house even more closely) other than 1) it’s about damn time, 2) it’s the start of a long pattern of chase popping up at the end of an episode, having quietly stewed the whole time, to put the pieces of the puzzle together (he technically does this as early as 1x14 control; he’s the one who bothers to look for the ipecac!). well, that and the whole ‘worms light up under x rays’ thing honestly sounds like something he picked up from his dad, who would have been very familiar with using the ‘old fashioned’ method. still, i feel a bit bad for having mercilessly dunked on him, so i thought he could do with the special section. i do actually like chase, i just, uh, don’t get much to work with in this episode.

BUT YOU ARE DAMAGED, AREN’T YOU?

welcome to a scene that has been misinterpreted 7 million times before i made this recap post, and will likely be misinterpreted another 7 million times: why did house hire cameron?

one of the best, most underrated parts of this scene is the beginning. house walks into his office, sees cameron waiting at his desk—and sighs. when cameron starts her ‘why did you hire me’ interrogation, he doesn’t seem surprised, or even ask where’s coming from. hiring foreman for his juvie record was the most ostentatious example of house’s particular hiring process…and he didn’t expect it to stay secret, or for cameron (at the very least) to not ask questions. house knows this is coming. and i just think that’s neat! there’s also some excellent accidental foreshadowing for cameron’s s6 departure when house tells her ‘the only thing that matters is what you think’. because, yeah, in the end cameron’s impression of house (who he is, what he is, the effect he has on others) is what makes and breaks her time on the show. i also think this is a line that, if he were capable of embarrassment around the whole cameron crush situation, would make house stare at the ceiling late at night because she absolutely kept this in mind while she was pursuing him. house you can’t just say stuff like this in front of the stubbornest woman alive!!!!!

anyway. why did house hire cameron? his immediate answer that it’s because she is ‘very pretty’ often gets taken at face value, even with his later explanation. sure, on a superficial it’s because cameron is nice to look at—but it’s more because of what that beauty represents. in cameron’s own words, she worked very hard to get where she is. becoming a doctor was an active choice for her in a way it wasn’t for chase, or even foreman (who is more naturally book smart than she is). house correctly guesses that she is damaged (although not precisely how), but it isn’t even necessarily about the damage itself, in my opinion—although that does make her more intriguing—and more that it gives cameron a level of drive and determination that the boys, even foreman, lack. cameron is a bleeding heart, but she’s also driven more by defiance than she’s given credit for. that’s the core of Why Cameron, and it isn’t too dissimilar to Why Thirteen in s4. but, uh, that’s not as catchy as saying it’s because she’s pretty.

NOT STRICTLY RELATED TO WHY CAMERON WAS HIRED BUT STILL RELEVANT TO THIS SCENE: obsessed with house’s transparent ragebait when he asks cameron if it would REALLY offend her to know she was hired for one natural gift and not another. even the delivery of this line is so smug. Lol. shoutout to the absolute nothingburger of ‘i hired chase because his dad made a phone call’ that, to this day, remains a source of constant fandom speculation as to what exactly happened there (notably cameron does not visibly react to this at all, so chase’s nepo baby status has never been something he has attempted to hide Lmao). very funny that house doesn’t attempt to give cameron the same nuance he did foreman as to why he hired him (foreman, at least, gets a ‘i needed someone with street smarts’, which implies that it was less strictly about the juvie record and more about foreman being able to offer an alternate worldview that cameron and chase, and even house, couldn’t) and instead just sticks to the ‘lol i wanted a criminal’ answer. cameron leaves this scene because her pager beeps to go pick up adler’s kindergarten class because her and chase have been scheming off-screen, something she has managed to fit in around lurking in house’s office god knows how long, which is just sort of funny to me for silly meta ‘these doctors don’t do ANYTHING’ reasons. also i really like the way house and cameron circle each other and move around the office space in this scene; cards on the table that i’m not a hameron shipper, but there’s a lovely sense of intimacy there that makes me nod my head in approval.

I NEVER LIE

oh my god we’re finally at the end of the episode. who cheered!!

there’s a lovely bit of circularity here in the final scene; the episode starts with house and wilson, and ends with house and wilson. in that respect, it makes the s8 finale feel that much more inevitable. ‘i never lie’, house claims—to wilson’s laughter—but it doesn’t really feel like a full joke. it’s kind of reminiscent of adler twisting the story about her boyfriend into one about making friends at the start of the episode; that story was technically true, but twisted beyond recognition. for all that house is manipulative and facetious and a coward, he can also be surprisingly earnest when it counts; towards stacy, towards cuddy, towards thirteen, towards wilson especially. i think there is a little part of house that want to believes it when he says he never lies. but that, in itself, is a lie…so it’s kind of a paradox, huh.

anyway uh. 7000 words later, that is the pilot DONE! alexa play you can’t always get what you want.

[z3phyr23]

Just went back and rewatched the outsiders movie, and I realized how good the musical is at humanizing the characters. Like, don’t get me wrong, the movie is FANTASTIC. It’s a classic for a reason. But the characters pale in comparison to their musical counterparts. It just feels a little empty. A little unfinished.

We don’t really get to know the characters before we jump into the action. The drive in happens way earlier in the movie than in the musical. And the movie skips over the scene where Pony gets clocked for being at the movie house. Which, that scene does a lot to characterize Pony, and his brothers, and their relationship. It kinda felt like there were pieces missing.

The parts that really bugged me were at the end. There didn’t seem to be as much of a reconciliation arc between pony and Darry. (Though the hug in the hospital was lovely, and I wish we got something like that in the musical).

The part that really got me was the at the end, pony didn’t seem to be that upset about Johnny and Dally? Like it just seemed like he couldn’t figure out what to write, then found Johnnys letter, and figured it out. It didn’t seem as much that he needed the letter as a moment of closure.

I like how upset he is in the musical. It makes him real. It establishes him as someone who cares deeply for people. And it establishes his brothers as people who care deeply for him, and that want the best for him.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the movie. It’s a great movie and does a wonderful job adapting this story. However, I do think the musical excels at certain points. This could just be because the musical is longer, so it has more time with the characters, but who knows.

It’s not at all that the movie is bad, it’s just that the musical does this one thing a little better. The movie is great, it just feels a little unfinished in comparison to the musical in certain aspects.

Edit: apparently I watched the theatrical cut, not the full cut. I’m gonna go back later and watch the full cut and reevaluate!

Thanks to @dallasgallant and @hintons for pointing this out!! <3

[ladyknight1512]

911 Lone Star rewatch: 1x01 "Pilot"

It's Thursday night. Let's go.

I call this the Burrito of Destiny.

I don’t remember the first time I watched Lone Star. I had binged 9-1-1 the previous month and loved it, so I didn’t want to watch Lone Star because I loved the OG characters so much that I wasn’t ready to move on. Little did I know how quickly those positions would be reversed. Anyway, I finally gave in but I don’t remember when or why. I do remember that I knew TK was gay, but I don’t know how I knew that because I wasn’t engaging with the fandom yet. When we meet TK and he tells Owen that he’s going to propose to Alex, I assumed that Alex would be a woman and that TK’s journey would be one of accepting his sexuality and his true self. Obviously that was not the case, but I love thinking about the assumptions I made, which I suppose must have been based on years of TV-watching experience, and finding that I was so wrong.

I also love that Owen seems to have a knack for reading the people in TK’s life, and the way this comes back again and again. We see him do it first in regards to Alex, and it’s reasonable to assume that he just doesn’t like this person because he thinks they’re not good enough for TK. We find out soon enough that Owen’s instinct was right. But then we see this again in Season 5 in regard to Enzo, and we assume there that his feelings are probably rooted in jealousy, but he ends up being right again. That symmetry is pleasing to me.

I really do love Firefighter TK. There’s just something a bit cockier about him.

I’m always blown away by how flashy that ring is. Like, there are enough diamonds on that thing that you could probably see it from space. We don’t see much of Alex, and a lot of the opinions that I’ve seen about him (and what TK was like with him) are just speculation that doesn’t really have evidence to back it up, but I always wonder if that ring is something that TK knew (/thought) Alex would like and wear, or if he bought it because that’s what he thinks people do when they’re going to propose.

I’ve just noticed that the glass on Owen’s desk during his meeting goes from half-full to completely full before he drinks any of it. Later in the scene it’s completely full again. I know that’s how it goes with filming, but it’s funny to notice. Love that Owen was always a smoothie guy, though.

The way that Owen has dedicated his life to New York City and it’s people, but TK is the one thing he loves more than that. It gets me every time.

MAKE IT BURNNNNNN, THE WHOLE WAY DOWN!

The building-the-crew montage is always great. The way the music and lyrics hit at such perfect moments? The snippets of conversation between Owen and TK that intersperse the interview? The way it ends with Judd walking in on “You’re one of my kind”? Rarely have I seen such a satisfying example of a montage.

I remember thinking that Judd was going to be the character that I didn’t like, or at least didn’t care about. Based on stereotypes and assumptions on my part, of course. Wow, did that change. I love Judd with my whole heart. If not for TK and Carlos, he would be my favourite character on this show.

“This is my house!” ß Yes, sir, it is! And I appreciate that this is a message that gets repeated throughout the show.

I’m always shocked when Michelle appears. I think I dislike her so much that my brain always blocks out her existence until it comes time to rewatch Season 1.

HEY, CARLOS!!!! 😊

“I’m not an Uber.” The Carlos sass is strong from the get-go.

I do like that we see even in the pilot that TK has medical training. Obviously a lot of what happens later in the show was unplanned and came out of nowhere, but some things that happen do at least have groundwork laid beforehand.

I’m still so glad we didn’t have to sit through the inevitable romance that was very clearly planned for Owen and Michelle.

Judd and Grace ♥️ I get the feeling that they were initially trying to age Sierra up through Grace’s wardrobe, because I feel like she appears older in these first few episodes than she does later on in the show, and certainly older than Sierra was.

The first time Carlos meets his father-in-law, more or less. And then TK is right behind them as Carlos leads them to the car. Which I love, because I’ve always been fascinated by the way completely ordinary and non-descript things can later mean more because of the way things change. There are a bunch of examples in my own life of this happening, and I enjoy looking for moments like that in shows.

OK, but… how did that baby end up in that tree? Even with the car rolling… did the roof momentarily fly off to allow the car seat to escape? Like, I know this show rarely makes sense and we should just not think about it too hard, but sometimes you do have to wonder.

The look on Carlos’s face while Paul is doing his thing gives the impression that he’s never seen firefighters like these before, and he doesn’t even know the half of it yet.

HEAD PLOP

I really don’t want to make this whole rewatch just about Tarlos, because I love so much about this show. But it has to be said: every time Carlos approaches TK in the bar, I get this massive grin and I get all giggly and my stomach flutters. They really might be my favourite TV couple of all time. And I’ve loved a lot of TV couples. None like them, though.

It’s so important to me that Judd is the one who calls Owen out, right from the very beginning.

I really didn’t intend for this to be a live-react write-up, but that’s what this one turned into. I do want to do something for every episode, though, so I guess we’ll see if they all end up like this or if some of them are more summaries of overall thoughts and feelings. So to summarise: I love this pilot. I love it for the show but also for pilots in general. It’s just a really solid episode and probably one of my favourites from the whole show, but I always forget how much I love it until I watch it again. It packs in so much but also isn’t doing too much at the same time.

I said at the beginning of this that I put off starting Lone Star because I thought I wasn’t ready to move on from OG. That’s funny now for so many reasons but I remember that I knew I was going to love this show as soon as I’d finished this episode. I just didn’t know then how much.

[nanaluvsyouu]

Apna bana le - fluff

Whatever you did, no matter how serious or silly Woonhak always supported you.

It didn't matter what you did, Woonhak was always a few steps away, looking at you admiring your every action.

You could be doing the most mundane task, such as wiping your swear and woonhak would be staring at you with a smile plastered over his face.

He was your best friend, someone who was always there in the background, but whenever your life got tough and you needed someone to rely on, he always gave you his shoulder to lay your head on and his chest to cry into.

-

You would sometimes catch Woonhak talking to your mother who would always pinch his cheeks as she gave him a smile you had never witnessed.

It took him a lot of courage to confess to you about his feelings. You had told him you weren't ready for a relationship, but you wanted to make it official with him.

-

Months went by as nothing happened. Woonhak was still your best friend, but he had become more affectionate and loving towards you. Your mother at some point told you off for having a boyfriend, to which you had to reassure her that he was your best friend and that's all.

You both still had your monthly bollywood movie session at your house.

This time you had decided to watch jab we met. He sighed when you put the movie on, rolling his eyes as he complained about being tired of rewatching it. You gave him a pinch on his arm, earining a wince from him as he soothed that arm with his hand.

"You're a meanie poo poo." He complained glaring at you

You couldn't believe his childishness.

Twenty minutes into the movie Woonhak started to shuffle in his seat as he kept looking at the clock. You paused the movie as you faced him.

"Hakkie, if you need the toilet, just go." He turned red as he looked at you.

"I don't need the toilet." He murmured looking back at the clock.

You looked at the clock as well, trying to see what exactly he was looking at.

"Are you trying to calculate the time it will take for the movie to finish?" You asked as you slightly frowned at him. "We don't need to finish the movie if you don't want to watch it you know."

Woonhak panicked as he took the remote from you, stopping you from switching the TV off.

He sighed as he blushed, taking something from his pocket. You looked at him with curiousity, trying to peek at what he was hiding behind him.

"What are you hiding from me? OMG is it a positive pregnancy test!?" You exclaimed, widening your eyes as you covered your mouth with your hands looking at him with surprise as he stared at you with a bored expression, he lightly pushed your forehead with his fingers and he finally took the item out of his pocket.

It was a simple, matte black box. He handed it to you as his ahnds shook slightly. You held his hand trying to calm him down as you took the box opening it to see a pair of golden jhumke.

You stared at Woonhak as he gave you a shy smile, your eyes wide in surprise and confusion.

"What is this?" You asked as you took one jhunka out, observing the beautiful design on it.

"It's just something for you. We're too young for promise rings and stuff, but, I want you to have something that represents my promise to you that I will make you mine." He said as he looked away from you, staring at his hands, his ears turning red.

You tried to say something, but all you could do was smile at the boy in front of you and the amount of innocence he was filled with. Woonhak was not someone who let the things he liked get away, but still, you didn't know how much he liked you.

"Wait, Hakkie, is this real gold?" You asked as you looked at the item in your hand, feeling its weight.

"I- yeah."

"Woonhak where did you even get the money from? This is too much, I can't accept it," you said as you put the jhumka back into the matte box, handing it too woonhak. "I appreciate your sentiments, but this is way too much." You sighed as you looked at him, trying to make sure you didn't upset him.

"Meri Jaan, it's okay," he comforted as he handed the box back to you, your cheeks felt hot hearing the him calling you meri jaan. His voice saying it sounded like a wedding venue and you in a red lengha. You mentally slapped yourself for getting ahead of yourself from a mere petname. "It's from your mum's old jhumke."

Your face was riddled with confusion not understanding what Woonhak was trying to say.

"I asked your mum for an idea on what to give you and she recommended getting her old Jhumke remoddled for you in a design you'd like, so yeah, that's where I got the gold and money from, your mum."

You smiled as you remembered your mum smiling and pinching his cheeks, you could only assume that was the time Woonhak had asked your mum about the idea.

"Why did you keep looking at the clock?"

"I wanted to make sure your parents wouldn't come back from the dawat and barge in on me giving you the gift."

You looked at Woonhak who was now red as ever and looked like he was about to burst into tears.

"This is too much right? Oh gosh, Sungho hyung was right, I should've just gotten you flowers or something." He whined as he plopped on the floor, laying on his stomach and lightly hitting his head on the floor.

You shook your head, smiling at him as you crouched down next to him, putting your head underneath his forehead to keep him from hitting himself against the floor. "This was the best gift ever, thank you so much." Woonhak stopped trying to hurt himself as he turned his body around, his back on the ground and his face looking at you crouched next to him.

"Your parents were here all along and they're recording us right now, this is so humiliating please tell them to leave." He groaned as he hid his face in his hands. You frowned as you turned to face the door to see your parents trying to sneakily (and failing) trying to record you.

"Mama, Papa, what are you guys doing?" You asked, raising your voice slightly in annoyance.

"Just recording for your wedding day." Your mum replied moving her phone away.

"How long have you been here?"

"Well..."

"Come on guys, that's invasion of privacy, no wonder Woonhak was so anxious." You sighed as you pat his head. "Please go away, I want to talk to him in private, without it being recorded, and don't worry I have enough material for our future wedding." You said as you turned to face Woonhak once again.

"Don't worry about it hakkie, they're just being silly." You said as you stroked his hair.

He finally took his hands off his face as he stared at you with an exaggerated pout on his face. "Do you actually have enough footage for our wedding?" He asked batting his eyelashes at you.

You blushed as you pushed him slightly standing up. "Shut it you silly man. Don't act as if you've never planned our wedding."

"I've even decided on the names for our kids if you wanted any."

You blushed as you sat on the sofa, woonhak following, and taking both jhumke out of the box. When you looked at the inside of the jhunke you realised your and woonhak's initials were carved in there.

"So...apna bana le?"

[brainrotcharacters]

"I walked away. They called after me and I walked away. I always do."

[seasicksilver]

bring back this duo RWBY and my life is yours!!!!!!

[what-is-canon]

THT S6 prediction under the cut

Josh Charles is playing Commander Judd and Serena marries him thinking she’s going to make a difference in Gilead but she ends up being the first wife he bluebeards…

Keeps the general audience happy because “yay Serena is finally dead” and there’s also the poetic justice of her finally being hoisted by her own petard (thinking she can reform Gilead and that she’s above it all when the country is an absolute cesspool and she never stood a chance)

[cinnabar-circus]

2023 | 99

[only-lonely-www]

So basically ATLA brain rot has hit me like a truck

[tenderjock]

"This is kind of a curve ball for me." - Angel, BtVS s07e22 "Chosen" | inspired by this post

BtVS s03e08 "Lovers Walk" / Build, Now, a Monument by Matthew Olzmann / Separation by Edvard Munch / BtVS s07e22 "Chosen" / Four Poems for Robin by Gary Snyder

[magicaldragons]

the promise.

deva knew exactly what he was doing when he made that promise to Varadha.

Only for you, when you call me, I'll come back.

That promise, even though it was made for Varadha, was Deva's selfish desire to tie Varadha to him – to make sure Varadha wouldn't be able to leave him within the past.

Deva knew that Varadha was the realistic one of the both of them, the kind of person to put his head down, understand a situation, and accept the constraints he had to live within.

Even as a child, Deva understood so well that, if he didn't leave a life line for Varadha to hold onto, Varadha would force himself to accept their separation, and wouldn't strive for more, especially with how self-sacrificing Varadha was.

Deva's mother asked Deva to forget Khansaar – asked him to let go of everything associated with the place – and Deva knew that the situation they were in would require Varadha to forget Deva's existence too, for Deva's sake and his own.

Deva offering Varadha that promise was his only way of saying, 'I won't let you forget me.' and it worked.

The seed Deva planted within Varadha functioned exactly as Deva knew it would, and it definitely tempted Varadha countless times to call for Deva. It kept the idea of Deva being a part of Varadha's future alive in Varadha's mind.

Of course, Deva didn't count on Varadha holding himself back for twenty-five years, but it's why Deva was so confident Varadha would definitely call for him at some point.

[nikolas-ghostbusters-fixation]

Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is how everyone thought Egon had gone insane. What Happened that made them think that. They've fought a gigantic Stay Puft Marshmellow Man TWICE (counting the 2009 video game because iirc it's canon? Correct me if I'm wrong), fought an interdimensional god, fought a blood thirsty ruler that killed thousands and was hated by all that was trapped in a painting (and managed to get in to beat him by making THE STATUE OF LIBERTY start walking down the street with slime that reacted purely based on vibes), found an underground abandoned transit system full of the moodslime, had a bathtub try to eat Dana and her baby, fought a giant murderous black widow lady, fought the fisherman ghost who turned an entire hotel floor into the bottom of a ocean, and that's not even mentioning them getting trapped on an island that randomly raised up from underwater that had been abandoned for decades created by Ivor Shandor who worshipped Gozer. So what did he do or say that made everyone else think he'd gone insane?? All I can think is maybe he was acting strange / eratic before, but he's always been like that to some degree.

I don't know. It's something that I've been thinking about. The correct answer is 'it's not that deep and they needed a reason that the others weren't together anymore and weren't aware of Egons death or know what was going on,' but also. What Was He Saying that prompted everyone, including Ray, to think he lost his mind when he'd been right almost every time before that.

I'm genuinely so curious as to what he was up to before this. What was he doing. What insane idea was working on prior to this or was he even working on anything at all??

Also want to clarify this post isn't negative 😭 I really love the newer movies and their lore / the newer storyline / characters, I just like thinking about small stupid things like this. Gives me something to think about / speculate about / figure out an answer to.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Rewatching 97 because I just need to get on with it but GAWDDD at this point I'm literally not watching all the rogueneto scenes IT'S SO UNCOOL 💀💀💀💀 ERIK WOULD NOT DO THAT WTF DISNEY

its just really funny in regards to 97 specifically because they never even interact in 92 (or if they do its incredibly sparring) so it's just the most out of nowhere thing possible. like oh we're doing this now ok

[beeduoo]

originnssssss who remembers origins i Loved origins

[asgardian--angels]

things I wish I could relive for the first time again:

that magical window where you finish a new piece of media, having watched/read it all by yourself with no fandom contact whatsoever, and you are just so happy about it, and full of interesting theories and takeaways, and just in love with it as a gorgeous piece of art.

because I swear to god as soon as you join the fandom for anything, you're bombarded with how you're supposed to view characters and their arcs, how you're supposed to morally and ethically judge the plot and the ways it apparently failed to present the right message, and if you don't you'll either be shunned for not sharing the popular headcanons or you'll be harassed for not criticizing the source material enough.

like how is it that the fans of a piece of media are also the ones being the most negative about it? If I like a show or a movie or a book, well, I liked it. That's kind of the point. I'm actually not here to tear it apart and talk about how it didn't live up to standards other people had! I enjoyed it for what it was, and forcing myself to find negative things to say about it doesn't actually bring me more enjoyment of it or reap any benefit to me. Fandom's a double-edged sword; you want to join a community to share your love for a piece of art, and the price you pay for a modicum of joy is a mountain of negativity. that's one main reason that I never engage with fandom until I'm completely done with a show, because if I was plugged into all of that commentary and discourse during the process, I'd be completely colored by how I'm expected to interpret everything this piece of art is presenting to me without being able to even form my own opinions.

[lyxchen]

I think. We can all maybe. Take a few steps back for a few days. And then maybe it'll seem better <3