#pjo episode five

[mothmanavenue]

so did y’all watch episode 5

[mydairpercabeth]

annabeth giggling kicking her feet cheesing over percys dumb jokes ALREADY??? it’s a wrap

[mortalmab]

I haven’t seen anyone talk about how this episode looked like:

Percy slowly gaining faith in his godly parent.

Annabeth slowly losing faith in hers

[giacarem]

If you'll indulge me for a second, it's been a while since I read the books

But the TV show is heavily showing Annabeth realising how bad the gods truly are... possibly in an effort to make Luke much more sympathetic to her.

In the beginning of the show, she's very much on the side of the gods or at least, she's very much on the side of Athena always being right and wise and smart. Then we get not only Medusa's story that shows Athena's pride, but also the St Louis' Arch which shows Athena's pride is above any kind of love she has for her children.

I'm interested to see where they take this, whether Annabeth has a much harder time seeing Luke as the enemy (which is already evident in the books). I feel like they're setting up Annabeth potentially thinking about joining Luke.

But then, again, they're already painting Percy and Luke as such foils to each other. Percy also thinks the gods are bad and he wants to be nothing like them; he won't betray anyone, and we see Annabeth realise this in her speech to Hephaestus. So, when we get to the second season (hopefully we're getting the second season), Luke's betrayal of Thalia will hit even harder.

I wonder if Annabeth's character is going to become a really interesting mid-point between Luke and Percy; two people who don't care for the gods but where Luke has no problem betraying anyone or killing anyone in his way, Percy would literally rather die.

[theo-notts-doll]

well that was a rollercoaster and a half.

a completely predictable rolllercoaster, mind, but still a rollercoaster i'm going to need approximately 3-5 business days to recover from.

[itspercyintime]

So glad the secret is out about the traitor now because the Annabeth and Grover slander from people who didn't know was eating me alive

[trees-to-meet-you]

Btw I’m actually a little behind on the pjo series so I’m only on like. Episode 5. But I’m getting to the end of it and I just wanna say I love Annabeth so much I love her and I love Leah Sava Jeffries they’re both incredible

[queen-of-paradise]

yall im SOBBING percabeth is percabething!!!!!!!! aehshfhaaqwehfhaskjhfrgalkjadashfdlaksjalskhflshdlaskhfowiesf its PERCABETHING!!!!!

[river3000]

SEAWEED BRAIN

[lunarblazes]

i’m fully losing my mind over ep 5 of pjoshow. in tlt it’s like percy has a fucking death wish picking a fight with ares and his friends are like holding him back but in the show literally all three of them fucking hate this guy and either backtalk him or psychologically manipulate him. i love it so much guys

[stillabookworm-ifonlyinspirit]

excuse me this is the level, the degree, the AMOUNT of percy and annabeth in the fifth dam episode and they expect me to endure FIVE SEASONS OF THIS??

[itsybitsybatsyspider]

If im already losing my mind over the Percabeth writing and development and dynamic of one episode in the first season...

then i sure as hell am not ready to see five seasons worth is Percabeth

my heart simply wont take it. It'll combust by season 3.

[webanglikethat]

Annabeth reassuring Grover that Percy is alive makes me wonder if she did that when Thalia died. did she also believe everything could be alright? did she promise him she was alright? 🥹

[mo-mode]

Back on my Screenwriter soap box while watching PJO: They should have bought a bunch of oil diffusers.

(Edit: This post was made before someone pointed out to me that I missed a key line of dialogue, but my points and theories still stand for the same reasons backing up my original post so I’m not changing anything. The dialogue I missed lets us know that Hermes told Percy the lotus was being pumped into the air off-screen. It’s also implies (? I’m still on the fence about this one?) that Hermes told him what day it is, but I missed these during my first three watches because of how quick and vague it was. Which actually kind of supports my point on why visual indicators are so important. Without these, it’s easy to miss key information. And remember, it’s a kid’s show. ANYWAY my conclusions haven’t changed, and I still believe these edits would work better than the quick line of dialogue so just keep this in mind. Thanks.)

(I’m not being nit-picky. I swear. Just hear me out.) So the weirdest thing to me in episode six was how Percy just…learned everything so quickly without any visual indicators? Like they know time passed because it’s dark outside, but how did he know it was Thursday? They know they were affected by the lotus flowers, but how does he know it was pumped into the air? This irked me because even if he’s smart enough to figure some of this out himself (which he is) we as the audience should still be able to follow his thought process instead of learning after the fact.

What if there were oil diffusers?

So imagine the trio walks into the Lotus, figures out this is like the Odyssey, and decides not to eat anything. They waltz in super confident that they cracked the code, but they were wrong. How do we know? Because the moment they enter the crowd, we get an establishing shot of a lotus-branded oil diffuser letting out steam.

Immediately, we as the audience realize their mistake, making it just that more tantalizing to watch. As the episode continues, we realize they’re everywhere. There’s a diffuser in the plants, on the counter, between the game tables, always right out of the corner of our eyes. They just keep churning out lotus-scented oil into the air, which we can infer because we’re smart. (Remember that.)

Now when Percy realizes what’s going on, we know HOW they’re doing it and HOW Percy knows without being told!! Because they were there the whole time.

Onto Thursday.

Consider: A watch.

What if Hermes has the only watch in the casino until the trio walks in with their own?

Let’s give Annabeth one of those cheap, funky watches that gives the time, day, month, year, etc. Something you get from a kids toy catalogue. It’s waterproof, glows in the dark, has an alarm or whatever. I feel like Annabeth would have one of those. (And honestly, she might already. I forgot.) The most important feature for us, though, is the day. It clearly tells us the day of the week.

It’s pretty easy to establish that Annabeth has the watch. Just do it the same way they establish the date: Percabeth arguing over it in the truck. Annabeth shows him the watch. Establishing shot of the watch’s face. That’s it. No bells or whistles necessary. Then when they get to the casino, Annabeth checks it one more time (without an establishing shot, she just does it casually) and they walk in.

(It’s so easy. I promise.)

While Grover is walking around alone, he tries to check the time and realizes there’s no clocks. (Which ngl is super common in casinos already, but it’s creepy nonetheless.) Yada yada, he gets sucked in by Augustus and that’s how he gets got.

Meanwhile, Percy and Annabeth keep meaning to check the time, but every time they do, someone tries to hand them an appetizer or a drink, which makes them forget OR Annabeth’s hubris keeps her from checking. (Percy: Time check? Annabeth: Its only been five minutes. We’re fine. We need to focus.)

And that brings us to Hermes. After their chat, yada yada, Annabeth “leaves” and Hermes gets all cryptic, then he makes a BIG show of checking his watch, and THAT’S when Percy realizes something’s wrong because oh no they haven’t checked the time. So he finds Annabeth, they see it’s dark outside, they check her watch, and it’s Thursday.

“But we didn’t eat anything!” Annabeth says. Percy looks at the diffusers by the entrance. It dawns on him. “They’re pumping it into the air.”

That’s how you VISUALLY SHOW US THINGS instead of Percy just figuring everything out off-camera and telling us!!!!

Now, you may be thinking “Oh but do they have the budget for that??” Do you know how cheap these props are? Just bulk buy like six oil diffusers, slap a homemade sticker of a lotus flower on them, and keep moving them into every shot. And they’re quiet!! They wouldn’t interfere with the sound, the steam is visible enough to be caught on camera without messing with the lighting, they actually look really cool in some lighting, and they fit the atmosphere of a hotel/casino!! Then the watch is like $15, fits with Annabeth’s character, and totally matches her outfit.

It’s CHEAP! It’s EASY! It DOESN’T CUT INTO THE RUN TIME! It’s AESTHETICALLY PLEASING! ANNABETH GETS A SICK WATCH!! NO DOWNSIDES!!!!

The biggest problem with this show isn’t how accurate it is to the book or how much money they have or that they’re “Disney-fying” it. The problem is they are TELLING US things instead of SHOWING us. And not to beat a dead horse because everyone’s heard of “Show Don’t Tell” but like??? This is exactly why everyone is taught this over and over again in school?? Because people still do it anyway all the time???

There’s also something else I learned (or really just picked up) when I got my B.A. in Creative Writing: Good shows are predictable.

Whether it’s a case of the audience learning what’s going to happen before it happens or them watching the show again and realizing how obvious the answer was the whole time, audiences always want to feel smart. They want to interact with the material. If you don’t give them the opportunity to pick apart the mystery themselves by setting down clues, they’ll give up on interacting with the show and lose interest. That’s why you SHOW them things. There are several moments where this show is completely unpredictable, not because it’s complex but because it doesn’t let you predict it. That doesn’t make it bad—the comedy and character development is doing a great job of carrying the show’s weight so far. But it definitely doesn’t make the show good.

It’s like Rube Goldberg machines. Or dominoes! We don’t watch those crazy 1000+ domino videos so we can watch the last one fall. We watch it to see HOW they fall. Take one domino out, and it’s unsatisfactory. It doesn’t work anymore.

But some oil diffusers and a watch??? Little clues that make the realization that more visually appealing??? THAT’S SATISFYING

Anyway, these are just two things that could have been done, but weren’t. Most of the show is stellar. I think it just needs a little bit of editing here and there. I studied this for like years, and I needed to get this off my chest. That’s it.

Rick Riordan, if you ever see this, I am available for hire :) I would love to be a script doctor please please please please

[crisisreading]

One idea that’s been rattling around in my brain has been self-contained episodes of the Percy Jackson series that air in between regular seasons. Like, we get the five seasons that correspond to each book, but also we get “extra” episodes that will tide over the audience for a year and build the PJO universe. For OG fans, think of Rick’s spin-off books like the Demigod Files, Camp Half Blood Confidential, the Demigod Diaries, etc.!

We could see the events of these spin-off books come to life. How cool would it be to have a whole episode that is documentary style and revolves around interviews with different campers, like in the Demigod Files?

Or what if we could see the “Welcome to Camp Half Blood” orientation film that Nico mentions in Camp Half Blood Confidential?

This last one is a stretch, but what if the “special episode” that airs in the year in between SoM and TTC features Luke’s narration from the Demigod Diaries? We could see Luke’s backstory, him meeting Thalia, and the two of them meeting Annabeth right before we see the *drama* between these three play out on screen.

Since Rick timed these spin-off books in order for readers to have this background knowledge for the main books, it would make sense to continue this in some form for the series!

Please respond with your critiques, ideas, or what you would like to see!

[lizthefangirl]

public service announcement pjo episode five hits different on the second watch