#the chosen tv series reaction post

[antiquelaceartist]

The Chosen fandom in hearing Season 5 release date

[antiquelaceartist]

Me when I saw this beans and prepping materials that compliment the mess is coming

Will The Chosen get into whether any of the disciples experienced survivors' guilt due to what happened to Judas? Did they say, "Why me, Lord? How come I was able to avoid making the mistakes Judas made?" Or did they experience survivors' pride and say, "Thank you, Lord, that I am not Judas!"?

AND IF PETER HAS ANOTHER BREAKDOWN AND THINKS HE DESERVES THE SAME END AS JUDAS WHAT THEN??????? WHAT IF I CURL UP AND SOB?????

i fully believe that'll happen. John will probably have a bit of that pride (i'm sure we'll get some tension post-Crucifixion/Resurrection with John being the only Apostle to remain at the foot of the cross, and being entrusted with the care of Mother Mary), but can you imagine the pain of Thomas being the doubter (especially with what's happened to Ramah), and being fully ready to be rejected by Jesus after doubting his return.

i swear, seasons 5-7 are going to make me emotionally distraught

[loupsgarou]

s4e1 streaming this Sunday

[thenightling]

The Mayfair Witches episode 8

I finally watched the season Finale of the Mayfair Witches.

As much as I loved what they were doing with the Talamasca, turning them into a semi-sinister supernatural variation of The men in Black is where they lost me.  Since when does The Talamasca erase people’s memories?!

Why doesn’t AMC just give them Neurolizers and complete the MiB theme?   Odd that a society so secretive that it would erase memories carries around business cards with their logo and phone number AND have giant sacks of salt with their logo on it.   You can’t be a secret society and a brand name at the same time. Make up your mind.    

I wonder if the SPR / ASPR is mildly insulted by this portrayal since The Talamasca is based on them.

Though I read The Witching Hour (back when I was fourteen and I’m forty-one now) I was still surprised at the reveal that Cortland orchestrated Deirdre’s death and was who really impregnated Deirdre to begin with.  I thought the show was going to leave out the incest but I suppose in the post-Game of Thrones world TV has gotten less squeamish about such things.

The 1960s supernatural-themed Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows had incest but it was subtle and you had to pay attention to notice it.  Such as with Laura Collins (the Phoenix) and when another Collins was being pressured to marry his cousin.   I know that the child IS Lasher but Sip seemed a little too eager to want to want to hand over a baby to be poked and prodded by The Talamasca for the rest of his life, especially when he was just starting to see the sinister side of The Talamasca.  Though The Witching Hour novel and existence of the speed-maturing Taltos existed since the 90s, was anyone else getting a Twilight Breaking Dawn feel from this?  Including from Ciprian’s reaction to the baby?

Rowan’s chosen punishment for Cortland was harsh.  I know he did many terrible things and was a manipulator and rapist-by-deception and hired someone to murder his own niece but the idea of being frozen in stone forever and still able to see and hear is pretty damn horrific.  I’ve seen it in horror films before like in the Wishmaster franchise and TV shows like Warehouse 13 and Angel and it’s still horrific.     

Honestly, every character was kind of unlikable in that last episode.  Sip was clever with how he handled the situation with The Talamsca.  HIs sister was an idiot. Paraphrasing:  “Hello, powerful, illuminati-like secret society I am not supposed to know about, Is my brother there?” But what Sip wanted to do with the baby (even knowing it’s Lasher) is kind of terrible.  I hope he had a scheme up his sleeve outside of “Hand the baby over to be vivisected.”   It was also kind of cute seeing baby Lasher try to teethe on the Mayfair necklace.

The only character who didn’t say or do something terrible was Josephine.  Go, Josephine, you go take over the Mayfair family. You’re the only sane one there.  By the way, I want her actress (Jen Richards) to play Wanda in The Sandman Netflix series. She’d make a perfect Wanda.

The show is addictive but some of the characters have lost likability and I hope Cortland doesn’t really stay stuck as a statue forever. He’s fun. 

[culttvblog]

Denis Shaw Season Introduction: The Prisoner - Checkmate

With fear and trembling I start a series of posts which are by way of an experiment for both me and this blog. Over the past decade of blogging I have never really focussed much on the actors in these shows, in fact it bugs me like nothing else if an actor is one of the 'familiar faces' of 1960s TV and I can't work out where I've seen them or remember their name. Generally speaking I consider it to be one of the weaknesses of TV of this era, and means that it looks as if the world of TV was a very small village at best.

However this experiment I'm starting is to try to turn this on its head and see what happens if I focus on one of these 'familiar faces' instead of blanking them out, and blog a series of posts about their roles. This is really very strange, new ground for me indeed.

My first victim is Denis Shaw (1921 to 1971) who will be familiar to anyone reading this blog for playing a series of villains. One of the reasons I've picked him as my first is that his career exactly coincided with the peak junking era so I'm not sure how much of his actual television work (I suspect more film survives) I may be able to obtain and this may end up being a very short experiment indeed.

The other reason is that my interest was first aroused by the Free for All podcast about The Prisoner which contrasted his jolly persona as the shopkeeper with his real life personality where he sounds very much like the sort of person who could start a fight on his own in a room. I have read pages saying that he had the name of the rudest man in London, owed money to everyone he knew, was banned from so many bars in Soho that he had difficulty getting a drink, and of course there are all the allegations that he was an actual gangster and started fights in real life. Definitely a colourful character.

Born Douglas Shaw in 1921, according to IMDB his acting career began in 1938 in the films The Case of the Frightened Lady and General John Regan. He was a wireless operator in a Sherman tank on D-Day. Biographical information is rather lacking and tends to focus on the things I've already said, but he seems to have fitted in a huge number of roles given that he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 49. He will be familiar to every reader of this blog for playing relatively minor roles, usually as quite sinister characters.

He appears in two episodes of The Prisoner, Arrival and Checkmate, and the played the jolly shopkeeper who we all love. A clear contrast to his usual roles and to his real-life persona!

I have chosen Checkmate over Arrival because he has a slightly more involved role than in Arrival. He appears twice. The first is during the experiment to see which Villagers are prisoners and which are guards, in which ihis reaction to Number 6's demand to see his accounts clearly indicates that the shopkeeper is a prisoner rather than a guardian. Later, when Number 6 starts the revolt, the shopkeeper has the role of tying up Number 2's hands.

It's an interesting use of his character, because up to now he has seemed very much the face of the Village, handing out the inadequate maps and saying all the right things. Any consequences for this revolt are not made explicit however in Hammer into Anvil the shopkeeper is instead played by Victor Woolf who can obviously be relied on to ring up Number 2 and tell him what Number 6 is listening to. I have not seen any rumours online of real-world reasons for why Shaw didn't play the shopkeeper again in Hammer into Anvil, but I can definitely see the meeting of his personality with the notoriously temperamental Patrick McGoohan resulting in fireworks, so it could well have been that.

And that's it. That's his role. I have not expatiated at length about the episode (which is why I've used it as a sort of introduction) because you all know it and I've posted at length about it frequently. Going forwardI expect that I will talk more about the episode as well as Shaw's role simply because his tendency to have small roles will necessitate doing this to make what I have to say into a blog post.

Coming next: further posts about TV episodes in which Denis Shaw appears, probably his more accustomed rather sinister roles.

This blog is mirrored at

culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)

Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog

[antiquelaceartist]

I was on my Japan vacation when I watch this and I got a shock blanket and screamed when I see this

My face during that beginning scene😳

[jayessentialsblog]

Political leaders oppose Nigerians like bandits, according to Ezekwesili

Oby Ezekwesili, the former minister of education, criticised all of the political office holders in President Bola Tinubu's administration, branding them as "bandits" who are only interested in embezzling public funds for their own benefit. During a Tuesday night Channels TV program, Ezekwesili made these comments, criticising President Tinubu's recent purchase of a N150 billion luxury plane. She contended that Tinubu's acts show insensitivity to Nigeria's pervasive economic suffering, saying, “It seems that the political class, including the executive branch, the presidency, and the National Assembly, have chosen to exploit and deceive the Nigerian people. The current priorities of the government—such as purchasing an extravagant aircraft for the president, constructing a N20 billion residence for the Vice President, and acquiring luxurious vehicles—are completely out of touch with the severe poverty and hunger affecting the population.” The former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi has urged President Tinubu to reveal the precise cost and age of the new presidential plane. In the midst of the nation's severe economic hardships, Obi made his demand in a series of posts on his X account in reaction to the public criticism over the recent plane purchase. In addition, he asked for details regarding the number, age, and sale reasons of the former presidential jets as well as information on how they are being disposed of. Read the full article

[antiquelaceartist]

When Jesus said that he is the law of Moses to a mad group of teachers of the law

[lookingforhappy]

disclaimer: i found this in my drafts like a year after writing it, i've jazzed it up a bit so it reads a bit better.. hopefully?

i'm guessing from this commenter's url that they don't want to be interacted with/drawn attention to, & it has been months since i got this comment so i won't include their url for their privacy's sake

i'm sorry but i'm gonna be really annoying and disagree with this statement.

if this was an irl situation, then i would 100% agree with this sentiment. seeing a person for 6 seconds doesn't mean you know anything about them, and unless you're literally watching them murder someone or commit some other horrid crime or otherwise harass someone then you shouldn't judge them either.

however.

this is fiction. and every single aspect of a shot or scene is meant to elicit a reaction, opinion or thought from the viewer. when english teachers say "the door was red because they were angry/passionate" this is exactly the irl application of that lesson. that scene was only 4 seconds to us, but to the creators? they cast that actress, they chose the set decoration, the outfit, the action and reaction of the character. every aspect of that scene was chosen. on purpose. we're not looking at a glimpse of a real person in a real setting by chance, this is choreographed specifically for us to draw conclusions. this is our first (and likely only) impression of five's mother. and what impression did that leave the majority of viewers with?

link to post

to clarify, this isn't a dig at @feralnumberfive or anyone who had this reaction, and there were quite a few:

i think this is exactly what the creators wanted people to take away from this scene. and thats why i hate it, because this was intended. and its lazy, boring and detracts from five's character rather than adds to it.

but lets backtrack a bit. what exactly is this scene trying to tell its audience? there's two answers to this:

on the surface it's meant to communicate that five's mother, Efa, died in the same manner as the other mothers - a violent, psychically inflicted brain hemorrhage.

but the subtext of this scene, the implication, is that Efa passed down her "butcher genes" or "serial killer genes". this is what bothers me. and i know it's meant to be humourous. it's a gag. it's poking fun at five having the most brutal, gorey fight scenes in the whole series. but it doesn't work in the context of five's arc in either tv show or comic series.

see, i think this is a subtle reference to the comics plot of five having serial killer genes spliced into his own. (one of the tags screencapped above says excatly this). but that is five's only redeeming quality in the comics, because he hates that dna and what it made him into. he resents himself. it's not treated like a joke because to five and damn near everyone around him, it isn't funny.

even in the show itself, its not funny. five has explicitly expressed a hatred of killing, and what the commission forced him to do (the other nod to the dna plot of the comics).

the implication is that nature wins over nurture. that Five has always had butchery in his genes, and he was always destined to be violent and to enjoy that violence because of who his mother is/was.

but what's worse is that it means The Handler was right. Five was always a killer, its in his genes. his mother was a butcher. this is where he was always going to end up.

when the handler originally said this, we didn't have the context of five's mother being a butcher. five's dna/inherited genes was a blank slate. the audience was meant to hope that five would prove her wrong. in fact, that was integral to his character throughout s1 & 2. he was constantly trying to prove that one statement wrong. he did his best not to kill anyone while also protecting his family, he tries the diplomatic route every single time.

and now, that one 6 second scene has twisted the narrative and implied that Five was always destined to be good at killing, to take pride in it.

and this isn't an isolated incident. the other mothers have subtext to them as well.

luthers mother is a business woman, drawing a connection to luther's role as the leader.

diegos mother is seen cooking at home, drawing a connection to diego's close relationship with his homely, adoptive mother grace.

allisons mother is a teacher, drawing a connection to her status as a mother herself, and also to the role that speech plays in allisons life.

klaus' mother is amish, drawing a connection to klaus' eccentricity and possibly to his cult.

(insert this whole reblog for fives mom)

bens mother is a schoolgirl, which draws a connection to his naivety and his youthful hope and optimism.

viktor's mother is a young swimmer, drawing a connection to his ambition to be a part of the umbrellas.

those clips are meant to mean something. its not random, its chosen.

and, side note, i hate how five's mother isn't even chopping up meat. she's just pureeing it randomly with a cartoonishly large knife that she should never be swinging from the height or angle. all while she's covered in blood? just c'mon man.

... i just think there were different ways to do this. for one, spend more time on this plot point, make the mothers a whole arc or season. fives mother could stay a butcher if we got to see more of her. give her something else to define her character (is she family orientated or a lone wolf? what are her hobbies? who are her friends?) so that she isn't simply known as a butcher. so that the connection between mother and son isn't immediately blood and gore and cutting flesh. maybe even explore how five could move past his violent past by having him draw this conclusion and then discover through his mother that there is more to him than that.

TL;DR

Five's birth mother being a butcher implies that it's in Five's nature, his DNA, to be a killer. thereby proving The Handler correct: he was always a killer.

i feel like having five's mom be a butcher is such a misunderstanding of five and what his character means.

it implies that the violent, brutal actions he commits are in some way genetic/inherited, rather than cultivated after nearly five/six decades of desperate survival and manipulation. it implies that five was always going to become violent, that he had no chance at being soft or innocent because of his genetics.

and that, to me, takes away so much of the tragedy of his situation.

five doesn't want to be a killer, but he had to become one to have a chance at saving his family. he had to accept the handler's deal because if he didn't, if he refused to kill, he would be stuck in the apocalypse with no one but a mannequin to talk to and no clean water or stable food source or general quality of life.

five's brutality and willingness to kill was man-made and cultivated by the commission. sure, his already there traits helped to propel him towards this outcome, but it wasn't his first or even second choice.

depicting his mother as a butcher by itself is a betrayal of this character. but to also depict her as someone who loves this job, who has won awards for it, who takes pleasure from driving a knife through a slab of meat over and over again?

the implications of five having always enjoyed inflicting pain or of having that base instinct his entire life strips his character of agency, and makes his choice to sacrifice some of his humanity void. he didn't choose to become a killer for any higher purpose or sacrifice, but because he was always going to be that killer, because he enjoyed it.

[antiquelaceartist]

When we got the teaser of the passion season coming on Monday

[antiquelaceartist]

Jesus said he love his fam no matter what

[antiquelaceartist]

Us seeing the sweetness with Judas and Jesus whole knowing what happen despite being 2000 plus years old

[antiquelaceartist]

Dallas in seeing the reaction from The Chosen fandom on Season 5 release date

[antiquelaceartist]

Chosen fans when they saw the last supper picture and know what’s happening from there

[antiquelaceartist]

When Joanna and Claudia gave a girly chat over the drama from the dinner

[antiquelaceartist]

Us when herodias use the dance to kill John the Baptist