#this episode in particular has made me insane and also kind of set the precedent for the brothers

[denimshortsdean]

Dean "I'm not much of the praying type, but... I'm gonna pray for you" Winchester. And you have the audacity to tell me this man doesn't care? fuck you.

[nellie-elizabeth]

Elementary: Their Last Bow (7x13)

Oh my goodness what the heck I'm crying! That was so lovely!

Cons:

It sure would have been cool to get Natalie Dormer back as Jamie Moriarty, but I understand why they couldn't. A part of me wishes that a bit less of this episode had been focused on her, because it kind of set up expectations that she might make an appearance after all. Next to the looming specter of Jamie Moriarty, the random NSA guy just didn't pack much of a punch.

I absolutely loath the narrative device of showing a coffin and trying to fake out the audience as to who has died. They've done it on Arrow, they've done it on pretty much every procedural show I've ever watched... I'm sick of it. This one was particularly annoying because it dragged on for a while, with Sherlock and McNally talking about a nameless "she" who had died. Obviously we're supposed to think it's Joan, but it turns out it's Jamie Moriarty in the end. Sigh. This was obvious and they dragged it out way too long.

Pros:

But whatever! This episode was so soft and lovely! My favorite thing about Elementary for all of these years has been how down-to-earth it is. We don't need to have insane drama at the last minute. We need a quiet story about relationships and love. That is exactly what we were gifted here at the end, and I adored every second of it. I'm a little unsure where to even start, actually.

The idea of doing a flash-forward in a finale episode is always slightly risky, but in this case I think it worked really well. We want to know how these people's lives are going to continue. We want to see their futures play out for us, or at least a little section of them.

Bell becomes Captain! And gets married and has a kid! I'm proud of him, and I love that Joan tells him (and Gregson) that Sherlock is alive. I get that Sherlock wants to protect people, but Joan was right to put them out of their misery. Bell's reaction to seeing Sherlock is to punch him, and honestly... right on. I like that Bell is hurt, but that he's still ultimately Joan's biggest supporter, and you know that he and Sherlock can patch things up.

Gregson is retired now, and Paige has passed away. He spends time with his remaining family and seems to be enjoying his retirement. He gets one of the best lines in the episode, when he wonders why Sherlock is leaving again. After all, there's only one person in the world that Sherlock truly loves, and she's in New York. That is just such a gut-punch and I love that Gregson is there to offer that perspective. He also betrays Joan's trust by telling Sherlock about her cancer, but under the circumstances, I'm not mad at him for that.

And let's talk about the creme de la creme - the reason I watched this show for seven seasons. Sherlock and Joan's relationship. I've never seen a show pull off a relationship like this. I trusted and believed that they'd never go the romance route with them, but there was always that fear in the back of my mind that they'd pull a Mulder and Scully or follow the precedent of pretty much every similar show on the air. When you have a man and woman team up to solve crimes, they're supposed to fall in love at some point, apparently. But Joan and Sherlock... they do love each other. They are family in every way. But they're not in a romantic or sexual relationship. They never were, and they were never going to be. I love it! I'm so excited! Last season gave us this understated sendoff for the characters that worked beautifully as a final episode to celebrate their partnership. This season managed to give another understated sendoff, one that I liked perhaps even more, because Gregson and Bell also got a chance for beautiful final moments.

Joan goes through with adopting a child, which I was really pleased about. I always loved the potential of that plot thread, and while it was mostly dropped from the show, it comes back here in the perfect way. Her son, named Arthur (ostensibly as a tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle), is just the cutest little guy. And Sherlock is in awe of him. He's so complimentary and so honored to meet him, and keeping Arthur safe is a big part of the reason he stayed away from New York. It might not be a totally logical impulse - after all, if Sherlock has enemies, it wouldn't be difficult for those enemies to find out about his relationships in New York. Joan and Arthur might have been targets no matter what. But the instinct is also really sweet, and selfless. We learn that Sherlock relapsed during his time away, and he's especially afraid of being a part of Arthur's life if there's the risk he might not be able to stay sober. I bet Sherlock is an amazing caregiver to little Arthur. We don't know if he becomes something like a father to the child or not, but knowing that he's with Joan, that their partnership remains, and that Arthur gets to grow up with Sherlock Holmes in his life, is warming my heart to no end.

We now need to talk about The Scene. You know the one I'm talking about. Sherlock learns what's going on with Joan, learns that she has cancer. He comes to her, horrified at the thought that she was going to let him leave and go back to his work around the world, without even telling him about it. Joan gets upset too, saying that she plans on beating this thing, that she didn't want him to feel like he had to stay... and then Sherlock hugs her, and says of course he's staying. The acting in this scene from both of them was beautiful. Sherlock was getting so choked up. He was so scared for Joan, and so upset at the thought that she would have kept this from him. See how it feels, Sherlock? Yeesh. In any case, of course Sherlock will stay with her. We even get that affirmation in the final scene of the episode, when Sherlock says that nothing else matters as long as they're together.

I want to talk about my favorite little detail from that last scene, actually. Obviously Sherlock's last words on the show being about his partnership with Joan, and how much he values it, is pure excellence. But it's earlier, on the elevator, that I think their relationship is demonstrated at its finest. Joan asks what Sherlock thinks of her wig, they banter about that for a moment, and then Sherlock asks Joan if she has the note from her doctor declaring her "cancer free." When Joan says she doesn't have it, and that Bell isn't likely to need an actual doctor's note to give her the job back, Sherlock replies that it doesn't matter, he has a copy of it in his email inbox.

It's just that little thing, right there. Joan forwarding the results of her doctor's tests to Sherlock, and Sherlock keeping it. Over the years, I've always complimented this show on the way it sweats the details. The little things, the proof of domesticity and partnership, that pervades their relationship. I love that even in this final scene, that dynamic was what was at play. Simply beautiful.

For this finale, I give a score of:

9/10

For the show as a whole... gosh. You know, in so many ways this show is just a procedural, and while there have been plenty of similar shows over the years that I've enjoyed in various degrees, this particular genre of TV show is not really my thing. In fact, I don't think I'll ever start another show like this again, unless there's something truly exceptional about it. I could do without the bajillion case-of-the-week plots. I'm never all that intrigued by the murder mysteries, the gathering clues, the capturing of criminals. But the core of this show was something more beautiful than I know how to describe. Just the joy of having a truly platonic love story between a man and a woman, the pleasure of watching them build a life and a relationship together over so many years, made this show one of my favorites to watch each week. I have to mark it down for the fact that most of its run-time was eaten up by procedural cop stories, and that's just not what I watched it for. But the rest of it was so good that I can't exactly give this show a negative rating. Over-all, Elementary gets...

8/10

[kcwcommentary]

VLD6x07 – “Defender of All Universes”

6x07 – “Defender of All Universes”

This is a long one.

This episode starts where the previous one left off. The music even makes it feel like the episode is starting in the middle of a scene, rather than starting a new episode, which is odd. Keith tells Coran that he’s “got incoming” and we see, I think, the hover bike/craft that the show’s used a couple of times functioning here like a standard transport pod. That’s a use that hasn’t been established before and feels forced to me. The clone’s body is aboard, and the bike/craft would have to be operating on autopilot, what with Keith in the Black Lion. Honestly, this feels like an add-on to the episode to explain how the upcoming fight can happen and Keith not have to worry about having the unconscious clone’s body with him in the Black Lion, like they realized after a lot of the episode was formalized and then tacked an extra two shots on to cover themselves.

Voltron and Sincline are still fighting. After the shoulder cannon proves too slow, Voltron forms sword, and Sincline counters with two swords. “Now we will see how Alfor’s legacy stands against the new Altean defender,” Lotor says. I actually really like this line. It’s well performed, and it continues some of Lotor’s new argument from last episode that he’s done more to try to preserve the Altean culture than Allura (and in some ways, he’s not wrong about that). I wish the validity of his work in trying to keep the Altean species from going extinct wasn’t lost in the show focusing so hard on the quintessence harvesting from the colony. Yes, there is something gross about his harvesting that quintessence, but because this is the end of Lotor’s story, and to justify this conflict the show focuses on this particular reprehensible thing he’s done (without fully explaining why he did it), the good that comes from him preserving the Alteans is ignored. Because the show wanted to get to the action fight scenes, Allura went almost instantly to yelling at Lotor over harvesting quintessence that she hasn’t had any reaction to knowing that there are a bunch of Alteans still alive in this universe, that she is not alone. That is a huge realization for her to have, and it feels like the show has totally skipped it.

I am quickly tired of seeing Lotor animated to have a maniacal smile on his face. That direction choice is so disrespectful of his character. It feels like the show is trying to say we can interpret him as villainous by way of insanity, and the equation of mental illness with villains being dangerous is both antiquated storytelling and an offensive trope. It’s also reductive characterization that severs the combat from the motivation. The external, physical fight should be a symbol of the internal, psychological argument between the protagonist and the antagonist. But by making Lotor the villain by way of insanity, the show deprives the fight of its necessary weight.

After an earlier moment of Voltron, from a distance, not being able to hit Sincline with the shoulder cannon specifically because it’s too slow and Sincline is too fast, Keith orders Hunk to again attack with the shoulder cannon. The blast is even animated really slowly (ships have been animated to physically move faster than the blaster beam is moving in this shot), and Sincline is just floating there not moving. Granted, Sincline sort of kind of teleports away right before the blast would hit, but even still. Why Keith suddenly thought the shoulder cannon would be effective when he had already deemed it to be ineffective, I don’t know. Nothing has changed in the combat to allow for a differentiation of circumstances to make the cannon now be effective.

Sincline pops out of a tear in space and slam into Voltron.

Coran puts the clone in a healing pod. It’s a super short scene, and it has no dialog. It’s a weird edit because there is no narrative transition that makes having this scene occur now have any meaning. Sometimes a show might cut to a different location for a slower scene in the midst of a larger action scene, and that’s almost always to manage the action’s tension, but this doesn’t do that because this scene is really short. It’s almost instantly cut back to the action scene. I wonder if this too, like the earlier two shots of the hover bike/craft, was added at a notably later stage of development for the episode.

Voltron and Sincline continue to fight, Sincline teleporting through tears in space. Allura says that Sincline is “entering the quintessence field at will.” The show gives some characters a couple moments to display a lack of intelligence. Hunk responds, “Didn’t we blow up the gate?” The gate that was managing the exact same rift from 10,000 years ago, thus the gate was not creating the hole but supposed to manage access to it? “How is he entering without it?” Pidge asks. Because Sincline is made out of the “comet,” and that “comet” tore a hole in space all on its own. This doesn’t seem like it should be information/conclusions that they are baffled by at this point. Allura says that she gave Sincline the ability with her alchemy. Not really, but okay. Does this mean that we’re supposed to think that Allura created functional capacity and did not know she was doing it? Though if she did, that wouldn’t exactly be unheard of since Alfor apparently gave Voltron a ton of functionality that he never designed it to have, but that is a criticism I have about the show’s lore of the creation of Voltron. The idea that someone can accidentally create functionality in a system is ridiculous, but I guess at least there’s precedent.

Lotor references a “new Altean Empire,” which is an interesting choice of words that I really wish had a greater exploration within this moment. We’ve seen an Altean Empire before, one created by alternate-reality-Allura in 3x04 “Hole in the Sky.” This gets to something that I wish the show had spent more time on than it does: The setting of this story canonically has alternate realities, and we barely see any of them. The show doesn’t use the differentiation of comparison that alternate reality stories allow in order to explore the show’s main characters. Right now, because of Empress Allura in “Hole in the Sky,” our main character Allura could be hit by the realization that what she sees in Lotor that she considers evil right now is very much what she herself is capable of because of having seen that alternate reality.

Lotor enters back into the quintessence field. The Paladins start talking about how they need to go into the quintessence field and use the quintessence there to power their fight against Sincline. Since Lotor’s argument was that they need the power of the rift’s quintessence, and the Paladins fully rejected Lotor, it makes them hypocritical to now say that they need the power of the quintessence from the rift.

In response to the question of can Voltron access the rift, Allura says, “My father did it once before.” No, he did not. The show is forgetting the details of its own history. Alfor did not tear a hole through space, creating a portal into the rift. Alfor, as seen in 3x07 “The Legend Begins,” widened an existing tear in space that was created by the raw, unprocessed “comet.”

Everyone is “focus[ing their] energy,” which is nothing more than them clichédly sitting around with their eyes closed. There is a split-screen of half of Allura’s face and half of Voltron’s face, and their eyes glow. It’s very reminiscent of a similar split-screen with Shiro and the Black Lion back in season one. This split-screen moment with Allura and Voltron, because it’s so similar to Shiro and Black, unintentionally makes me think about how the show has now entered the next and final phase of taking Black away from Shiro, and it’s aggravating. Also, I can’t help but to think that this moment between Allura and Voltron would have worked so much better if she wasn’t a leg. If she were in the Black Lion, if she were the head of Voltron, it would have so much greater significance.

A point of light distant in space sparks, why, I have no idea. This does not match what Sincline was doing, which occurred locally, directly around it. Allura orders Voltron to form sword, which is how Alfor widened the rift in “The Legend Begins,” but again, that was an already existing rift. Allura/Voltron just created a rift by doing nothing but looking off into space, and the rift opened a significant distance from them. And the sword Voltron forms is the blazing sword, which is normally formed with an accompanying emotional beat showing the Paladins making it with their bayards, but not here. They zoom the distance to the hole in space and stab it with the sword. Everything glows.

They open their eyes to see themselves in the endless light of the rift, though now there is some dark bits of dust or cloud to help give visual texture to the environment. Pidge and Hunk ooo and aah over the energy of the quintessence. Keith says, “It’s more than that; can you hear your Lions talking to you? Voltron is capable of more than we’ve ever imagined.” Since the Paladins are supposed to be bonded to their Lions, they don’t need this quintessence in order to hear their Lions. They really are proving Zarkon’s, Honerva’s, and Lotor’s point about the rift. For all the previous rejection the show has had the protagonists make about sourcing the quintessence in the rift, they sure are fine with it now. I can’t help but be bothered by their hypocrisy.

Voltron and Sincline continue to fight. The music during this moment is some of my absolute favorite music from this show.

The Paladins screaming as they fight is kind of disturbing, which I suppose is the point. Pidge yells, “See if you can dodge this,” and has the Green Lion detach its head and shoot off at Sincline. Since when can the Lions separate their heads from their bodies? Is this functionality ever seen again in this show because I don’t remember it whatsoever? Pidge is in the head, right? So, does that make the left arm of Voltron unable to function? It seems like it would be a dangerous thing for her to go off on her own and abandon the rest of the team like this. Lance yells, “Come and get some,” and blasts Sincline with energy from the sword.

Allura, gritting her teeth and breathing heavily, is angry, and she hears how the other Paladins are speaking angrily too. She then realizes that the quintessence is causing them to behave this way, and she says, “We have to get out of here.” I really wish the show had an explanation for this, but it doesn’t: Why does this quintessence cause people to react this way but the quintessence Allura uses all the time to power the Castle Ship, to revitalize the Balmera, to perform alchemy, to restore Lance’s health in 6x01 “Omega Shield,” none of that causes this aggressive behavior. The quintessence of each Paladin is what bonds them to their respective Lion, but it doesn’t cause them to turn hyper aggressive like this. If quintessence is life energy, then how does it cause a person to behave like this? Quintessence is just miscellaneously whatever the show wants it to be at any given time, even if different instances of quintessence contradict one another. And, as I’ve complained about before, if quintessence is life energy, where is it coming from in this rift? The only things that are shown to live in the rift are the weird blob creatures. What are they? What makes them so special beyond being, like quintessence itself, a nebulous whatever that the show writes them to be in any given moment?

Allura says, “This is exactly what happened to Zarkon. Exposure to all this quintessence turned him into a monster.” No, he was a monster before. He was always a horrible person. As I’ve said before, I do not accept the show’s attempt to absolve Zarkon and Honerva of their behavior by blaming it on an external influence, especially when we’ve seen what kind of people they were before they were poisoned by quintessence.

Lotor takes off his helmet, and the show has him become even more ridiculously maniacal. This is not an interesting antagonist! This is uninteresting 80s cliché villainy. And it’s a total disservice to how interesting Lotor’s character has been throughout most of his time in the show.

Hunk asks, “How do we stop this,” and Allura responds, “We give Lotor all the power he wants.” That’s another cliché. It also means the battle continues here in the rift, which they just finished saying that they cannot stay in because they were all becoming uncontrollably angry. Now, their uncontrollable anger is gone because the plot has moved on. They’re apparently not affected by the quintessence like they were just a few seconds earlier for no actual reason. It’s frustrating that the show will have a development like that – their recognition that they are being negatively affected by the quintessence – and act like it’s a big development only to immediately ignore it as the scene moves on to the next stage of the action sequence. Allura earlier said, “We have to get out of here,” but now they don’t. Rather than having Voltron work to leave the rift, the narrative just has them return to fighting.

So, Allura closes her eyes and the V-like shape on Voltron’s chest glows. Voltron blasts Sincline from its chest, with the ring of a wormhole circling the blast. Lotor continues to be depicted as ridiculously maniacal, and every time they have him scream, it offends me that they did this with his character. He tries to get Sincline to Voltron to attack, and just as he gets there, everything turns bright white. Afterward, Sincline is adrift.

Keith says, “Let’s grab Lotor and get out of here.” Pidge responds, “No, we can’t. We have to leave now” with a vocal quality that makes me think of every arrogant moment Pidge has ever had. The idea that they had to leave was introduced earlier, but then ignored, now it’s back again. It’s all just storytelling by whatever is convenient from moment to moment, not anything based on logic. Allura affirms Keith’s position, but Hunk concurs with Pidge. For some reason, Voltron is now in danger of being destroyed by all the quintessence, I guess. Whatever.

It’s so weird to see Allura act like she cares about Lotor here when she’s already declared him to be a “monster.” Voltron flies out of the rift, leaving Lotor inside. Outside, Allura says, “If we had stayed in the quintessence field, we would have kept fighting until we destroyed ourselves.” What additional fighting could they have done? Her comment sounds like one that would have been made if, the instant she first says they have to leave when they were all super angry, they then immediately left. But how would they have destroyed themselves by continuing to fight when they totally won the fight against Sincline/Lotor?

Coran reports that “all of Lotor’s jumping in and out of the quintessence field has created multiple growing rifts in the fabric of time and space.” Why? The previous rifts – the one in 3x04 “Hole in the Sky” and the one on Daibazaal from 3x07 “The Legend Begins” all the way up until now – have not continued to expand. The one in “Hole in the Sky” actually closed all on its own. The one on Daibazaal remained as it was for 10,000 years. This sudden threat of expanding rifts is totally inconsistent with how this show has portrayed these entrances into the rift before. This is more of the show just doing whatever at any given moment without care about keeping its lore consistent. This doesn’t feel like a threat because the show hasn’t built it up as one. This being a threat is a negation of what the show has previously depicted and established about how this all works.

Pidge says, “Unless we do something fast, those tears will continue to expand until all existence as we know it has been destroyed.” That is not how these tears have ever behaved before.

“Scanning the rift for any strand refabrication possibilities,” Pidge says. What is “strand refabrication?” Meaningless words. Hunk adds, “I’m running a few different models now to see if there’s any chance it could close on its own.” One, if the show was consistent with how these rifts have been depicted in the past, yes, it should either close on its own or stay as is for ten millennia. Two, the ability to construct a computer model to conduct any of this “running a few different models” that Hunk speaks of would take time to set up, but the show just has it be instantaneous.

Allura was apparently taught on Oriande how to tear open rifts, but not to close them. “I just don’t possess that level of alchemic knowledge,” she says.

Pidge says that the only thing that could close the rift is “a source of gravity more powerful than a supermassive black hole.” Small black holes are differentiated from supermassive black holes solely by their mass, not by their gravity. Once you get past the event horizon of any blackhole, regardless of size, it’s all the same gravity. That’s kind of the point. A black hole is gravity that has reached a level that causes the center to mathematically become a singularity, a point of infinite density. Also, there is nothing conceptually that can be more gravity than literally so much gravity that everything becomes a singularity, becomes infinity. This show just can’t help itself but to get science fundamentally wrong.

Coran says the teludav will work because it “creates a brief flash of infinite mass.” Uh, why? It would require a huge amount of energy to create just a tiny amount of mass, so if they have access to the infinite energy that would be necessary to create “infinite mass,” then just use the energy. Also, if they have the infinite energy needed to create infinite mass, then they had all the energy they needed to give to Lotor for him to use to stop the Galra Empire from taking quintessence from living creatures.

Coran’s proposal will result in the destruction of the Castle. Hunk refers to it as their “home,” and that makes me wish we had gotten more moments of regular life aboard the Castle Ship to help it feel more like a home. For me, there has always been a kind of sterility to the interior of the Castle.

Coran speaks about the Castle, indicating how it is for him a connection to his grandfather and how it is “the last piece of the real Altea.” This is where the emotion for this moment is strongest. While the others have lived on the Castle for this series, this is the last bit of the past that Allura and Coran have of their destroyed world. Once again, Allura and Coran have to give up a part of their lives. Allura orders Coran to set things up and for everyone else to load everything they can into the Lions.

The music of the evacuation montage is really good. Krolia takes care of the clone’s healing pod. Pidge gets as much from her room as she can carry and a couple of floating fluff creatures from 2x01 “Across the Universe,” which I didn’t even remember they had because they’re a total non-entity in this show. Allura gets the mice and a small holographic display of her parents, which makes me whish this show had given us as much of her mother as it has of her father. It feels really patriarchal for Allura to have this big relationship with her father but none with her mother. Lance deals with Kaltenecker. Hunk loads up some boxes that I imagine are food, since it’s Hunk. Romelle is riding with Allura.

Coran says, “Goodbye, old friend,” to the Castle. The show almost exclusively gives humor to Coran, so this is a big difference for the performance of the character. The voice actor makes Coran’s voice sound really sad in this line, and it’s truly making me tear up as I watch it.

Everyone leaves the Castle as it enters into the giant light at the center of a swirling cloud. Even though Lotor created multiple tears, I guess they’ve expanded such that they’re all just one really big tear now.

The music continues to be amazing.

Coran stands beside Allura in her Lion.

The animation sequence of the various rooms we’ve seen of the Castle over the past six seasons is emotional.

Light explodes then shrinks then explodes again then shrinks again.

The rift is gone. Left behind though is a small crystal. Hunk says, “It’s a diamond. The pressure crushed the Castle of Lions into this little diamond.” Why “diamond?” A diamond is made out of carbon, which I doubt the Castle was made out of. Also, we today have the ability to synthesize diamonds, so it’s not exactly a difficult thing to do. Something as fantastically huge as this explosion creating a diamond is not awe-inducing. Also, how did this Castle-turned-diamond survive when it entered the rift? This is all totally contrived. Also, just in case anyone was curious, despite what a lot of people think, diamonds are not actually rare. We only think they are due to successful marketing campaigns and a really small number of suppliers controlling almost all of the diamond mines here on Earth. Those suppliers use artificial scarcity to affect the market-price for diamonds, which is commonly misinterpreted as high prices resulting from rarity. But no, diamonds are not rare.

“Well, we saved all realities everywhere,” Lance says. Say what now? This episode did not establish that the rift from this reality into the quintessence field threatened all realities. The tear in space being between this reality and the quintessence field would have nothing to do with other realities because they’re fully closed off from our reality. There are no tears in the space of the other realities into the quintessence field. So, if this reality can be safely sealed off from the quintessence field, then the other realities would remain safely sealed off from the quintessence field even if the tear between this reality and the field caused this reality to be consumed by the field. This is more of the show just making stuff up without thinking through what they’re actually saying.

Keith says they need to find somewhere to land so they can help Shiro. The Lions fly off toward a galaxy. Since this battle took place at Daibazaal, when did they leave the galaxy that Daibazaal was in in order to now be flying toward a galaxy?

The music again is wonderful.

Keith says, “This body’s barely living, but Shiro’s spirit is alive. It’s inside the Black Lion.” And here the show infuriates me by not wrestling with the reality that our heroes are taking the body of someone and giving it to another person. If all life has quintessence, then so too does this clone. It is unique. It is not empty. The clone has had his own, unique experiences that no one else has ever had. He is a person. And our supposed heroes only see him as a thing they can use.

It is my understanding that once confronted with this criticism, Joaquim Dos Santos and/or Lauren Montgomery tried to say that the spirits of the clone and Shiro combine here. Of course, the show does not depict that. Had the show shown that, maybe this wouldn’t feel so cruel. Just because the EPs made an extratextual proclamation doesn’t mean that it’s in the text. Keith’s specific phrasing – that the body is “barely living, but Shiro’s spirit is alive” – makes it such that their actions here are killing the clone so that Shiro can have his body. Keith is totally dismissive of the clone, “barely living” is still living. And the body has the chance to recover if they hadn’t taken it out of the healing pod.

Lance starts crying because he realizes now that Shiro’s spirit tried to talk to him in 5x03 “Postmortem.”

Allura walks over to the Black Lion, does the hand-touch-and-glow thing, taking Shiro’s spirit from Black. She walks over to the clone’s body, touches his head, and puts Shiro’s spirit in the clone’s body. This means that Shiro’s spirit was temporarily in Allura’s body. There is never any exploration of the significance of that, and there really, really should have been. That’s a huge deal. It would have been a story that could have allowed Allura and Shiro to have grown a lot closer as friends. They could have come to understand one another in a way that no one else ever could. But because Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery hated Shiro so much, hereafter, Shiro is more and more sidelined in the story. They didn’t want to explore Shiro’s character anymore, and they only brought him back because they had to.

Shiro’s hair turns all white (quintessence makes your hair white?). He opens his eyes and sits up but then slumps against Keith. The Lions all roar. I love the voice acting of Shiro saying to Keith, “You found me.” There’s an ache in his voice. Shiro looks at Keith the whole time as he closes his eyes. Their relationship is one of the best things in this show, whether you want to term it friendship or surrogate brothers (I would say potential romantic, but I don’t think the EPs and writers ever even remotely considered romantic to be a possibility between these two characters; I think they were oblivious to any potential romantic undertones the show has for Shiro and Keith). That is why it’s infuriating that in the last two seasons of the show, Shiro and Keith barely ever talk to each other. This relationship that is fundamentally important to both of them is mostly ignored for the rest of the show.

The characters now start wondering what they are going to do next. Out of nowhere, Pidge says that Coran gave Sam Holt a copy of the plans of the Castle of Lions. The show visually composes a group shot of Coran, Hunk, Lance, Pidge, Allura, and Keith looking toward the camera, the camera pulling back away from them. Shiro is not included in this shot, nor is he visible in the reverse shot that includes Krolia and Romelle. I can’t help but feel like this is purposefully cutting Shiro out of the composition. His laying on the ground doesn’t matter: the camera could have tilted at an angle as it pulled away to have included him. The composition of the shot reveals a directorial decision that suggests a lack of inclusion of Shiro in the group.

The music the episode ends with is again excellent.

Thus, season six ends. It has been a frustrating season, a frustrating past four seasons. The specifics and implications of everything that has happened with Lotor and Shiro over how this middle third of the show is concluded are in so many ways hurtful. This show makes me ache for the storytelling to have been better than it is in a way that no other show has made me feel.  

[eighthcircuit]

Okinawa, Japan

In August earlier this year, I was able to travel to Okinawa, Japan by way of The Okinawa Memories Initiative, a project organized by Alan Christy, a professor at U.C. Santa Cruz, my alma mater. Alan, who organized and oversaw the project (formerly called The Gail Project; it also included a larger student research component) co-led much of the tour with Atzuki Hiyoshi (Japanese name order), a local tour guide.

Alan, who I’ve described to friends and family as “the world’s biggest Okinawa nerd,” and Hiyoshi, who lives in Okinawa, together were able to provide deep insight into a fascinating island culture influenced alike (through trade, militarism and colonialism) by Taiwan, China, Japan, America and its native Ryukyuans.

Anthony Bourdain released a fantastic Parts Unknown episode that was my introduction to Okinawa, which I would highly recommend as either your own primer on Okinawa, or if any of what I’ve written below piques your interest, a continuation of the subject. That said, here are some things I saw and did in Okinawa that I think were particularly cool, fun and interesting.

Habushu

This is habushu, which I have tried to succinctly describe to others as “Okinawan snake liquor.” Describing it beyond that requires a minor dive into a few different facets of Okinawan culture.

The “liquor” used to make habushu is called awamori, which is a type of shochu. If you’re unfamiliar, shochu is a spirit made from rice. Compared to sake, which is a rice wine, shochu is closer in strength to vodka. Awamori is local to Okinawa, and from what I can gather, is unique in that it’s distilled from a specific strain of rice. My own assessment is that it differs from a more typical shochu in its stronger bite. It tastes a bit more “raw” than a standard shochu, which in my experience feels pretty clean, again, almost like vodka. Vodka-like this is not.

Habushu also contains a number of spices, and a species of snake called the Habu, which is indigenous to Okinawa. Frequently, outdoor locations on our trip would prominently display “Beware of Habu” signs. The Habu can mate for periods of up to 26 hours, so of course, plenty of men presumably wanted to drink the snake so they could fuck like the snake. It also looks kind of badass, which is great for enticing yen out of suckers like me.

The habushu I tried in this photo was from a vendor in the sprawling and winding kokusai dori, a covered shopping arcade with a considerable footprint in Okinawa’s capital city, Naha. The shopkeeper ladled the mini-shot I’m holding out of one of the two jars pictured. I believe I paid 800 yen, which is almost 8 dollars, for that little bit of magical snake drink.

While I was expecting something that tasted somewhere on the spectrum of middling-to-bad—which I was sure existed more for the novelty than taste—I was pleasantly surprised. It pretty much had the bite of regular awamori, times 10 or so. It tasted just about as “manly” as it looks.

Habushu is one of many Okinawan specialties (some others: Okinawan donuts, black pigs, koregusu hot sauce… there’s a bunch). You can buy a drink in most convenience stores, produced by Nanto Brewery called a Habu High Ball, a canned version of a drink you’ll find on many Okinawan restaurant menus. It’s exactly what it sounds like.

Tofuyo

This was one course of a pretty neat meal at a restaurant called Suitenro, which specializes in the cuisine that traditionally used to be served in Ryukyuan royal courts, castles and palaces. At the top is goya chanpuru, which is possibly the dish most emblematic of Okinawa. It consists of goya, or bitter melon, and a scramble of tofu, eggs and other vegetables and possibly meats.

Chanpuru is a word taken from the indigenous Okinawan language meaning “mixed,” or maybe more loosely, “some of this, some of that.” This is secondhand information, but I remember reading that this notion of “this and that” is both the defining idea of this staunchly Okinawan dish, as well as emblematic of Okinawa as a whole.

Of particular note, though, is the small bowl in the bottom center, a fermented tofu called “tofuyo.” Okinawa already has a distinct style of more regular tofu called “shima-dofu,” which is processed differently than in the rest of Japan. It has something to do with water; Google can tell you more (you will also commonly run into another style of Okinawan peanut tofu called “jimami tofu”).

Tofuyo is shima-dofu fermented in awamori and red koji, which is a common ingredient used to ferment all sorts of things in Japanese cuisine.

What makes this tofu special though is its totally fucking insane flavor. An individual little cube of tofuyo is served with its own utensil, which looks like a flattened toothpick (as you can see in my photo), because its flavor is so strong, people can generally only take small amounts at a time.

I would describe its flavor as equal parts strong cheese—like, think a roquefort—and booze. The awamori makes up a significant part of its flavor. I’ve been an adventurous eater for most of my life, and this was truly one of the gnarlier flavors I’ve encountered.

Goat Sashimi

This is goat sashimi. Yep—raw goat meat. How I even ended up trying something so unusual involves a little bit of a story.

After Naha, our trip stopped briefly in Nago, a city known for its beach-adjacent hotels (including a massive beach resort in which Bill Clinton famously stayed during the 2000 G8 summit, during which time Clinton and Vladimir Putin both wore kariyushi shirts—Okinawa’s version of the Hawaiian shirt—in turn giving the shirt style a major boost in popularity, to the point that they’re now a typical “business casual” look on the island).

Hiyoshi, the local tour guide I mentioned, invited me to accompany him to meet with an inn owner couple he knew in town. During tour guide gigs, Hiyoshi would sometimes have to stay in their cheaper inn, while his tour group lodged in a nicer hotel (I’m happy to report on our trip, Hiyoshi stayed in the same hotel we did). So, after a few years of that, he got to know the owners pretty well.

The night we arrived in Nago was the first night of Obon, a Buddhist holiday during which families gather and honor the spirits of their ancestors. A couple times during our evening with the inn owners, friends of theirs dropped by and left small gifts.

One of these guests, who ended up staying for the rest of the evening, Hiyoshi excitedly informed me in English was the mayor of Nago! I later found out his mayorship held considerable political significance.

During the time of our trip, Okinawa’s governor had recently passed away from pancreatic cancer, and a new election was imminent. Toguchi Taketoyo, the mayor, had been elected just six months prior, in February, on a pro-American military base campaign. Very briefly, for those unaware, since World War 2, the American military has maintained a significant presence in Okinawa for its strategic value both in America’s alliance with Japan, and as a deterrent to potential Chinese and North Korean aggression.

The rationale behind anti-American military base sentiment is pretty obvious. Foreign soldiers and foreign military equipment being given real estate on an already small island isn’t great! However, a candidate like Toguchi (who won by a slim margin) is still able to rally considerable support from those who benefit from the American military presence, be it through an increase in business, or simply getting along well with the American soldiers they know. Some people with low-paying jobs will also seek out work on military bases that pay higher than what they might otherwise find in the struggling Okinawan economy.

It’s a complex issue—one easily much more complex than I’m qualified to tackle, let alone in the condensed amount of space that I’m giving it. I would be inclined to agree with the anti-base side, but as an outsider, I don’t think it’s my place to take a strong stance one way or another.

All of this to say, Toguchi was great company. I don’t want to malign the man who showed me a great time, even if I may stand somewhat on the other side of the political divide in which he’s played a role.

By the way… during the time of our trip, Alan explained that the pro-base candidate in the governor’s race had been chosen and was actively campaigning, while an anti-base candidate had yet to be chosen. This lack of readiness, plus the precedent set by Toguchi’s election seemed to indicate that the pro-base candidate was very likely to win the governorship. But yet…! In October of this year, anti-base candidate Danny Tamaki was elected governor of Okinawa.

Right. This all began with goat sashimi.

I’ll admit that the exact reasons a plate of goat sashimi were put in front of me aren’t entirely clear to me, either due to the information being relayed secondhand to me through Hiyoshi’s translations, or because after I heard “raw goat meat” I got too excited to pay attention to the particulars. It happens.

I believe that the inn owners, or someone close to them, owned and raised this goat, and had it slaughtered for Obon. This was fresh goat meat from what I’m pretty sure was their own goat! It wasn’t something they ate routinely, but to celebrate Obon, they brought the goat out, both raw, and in a stew (which included chunks of meat from throughout the goat, regular meat and organs alike; this was delightful).

Raw goat meat, which a few online sources have informed me is unique to Okinawa and not otherwise found in Japan at large, is served with grated ginger, and a mixture of soy sauce and vinegar. The vinegar is meant to mask its smell. Either the vinegar did its job, or the it wasn’t a huge deal in the first place, because it smelled fine to me.

It tasted… alright! Unlike the habushu, the novelty outweighed the flavor a little bit. The pieces with the kinda bizarre-looking green bit attached to them were pretty chewy. Otherwise it had what I can only describe as a standard meat flavor.

I am, of course, grateful to Hiyoshi and the inn owners for their hospitality, and giving me the chance to try something for what very likely will be the only time in my life!

Squirrel and Grapes

These stickers for the very specific pairing of squirrels and grapes were available as part of a children’s sticker-collecting activity, I believe, at Shuri Castle, which was traditionally where the king of the Ryukyu Kingdom resided in days past, and is now a major tourist attraction.

Here’s the deal: royal Ryukyu art at the time prominently featured a specific handful of animals, including the tiger, which is not indigenous to Okinawa or Japan. The Okinawans knew about tigers through trade with China, so Okinawans were pretty much painting Chinese paintings of tigers when they would depict them in their own works of art.

Same with squirrels! They also were only found in China, so the ancient Ryukyuans were really painting what they thought squirrels looked like. While tigers were probably renowned for their vigor, ferociousness, and manly man attitude, what Okinawans knew about squirrels is that they bred like rabbits. Except, well, squirrels.

They were paired with grapes because, to the Ryukyuans, grapes were the fertility fruit, because, of course, there’s a lot of them in one bunch. Lots of squirrels and lots of grapes.

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

This faded poster for Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge was featured prominently on the actual, real-life Hacksaw Ridge.

*BONUS* Black Egg

As a little bonus, here’s a black egg! Before Okinawa, I spent a few days in Hakone, a town known for its hot springs, located near Tokyo.

The eggs become black after being boiled in natural sulfuric pools in the mountains just outside of town, and can be purchased at a gift shop the top of the mountain with the springs used to make them.

According to local legend, eating one of these eggs has extended my life by seven years, and will do the same per egg, per person.

You’re able to eat them at little stations within the gift shop that include a place to deposit the shells, and some salt you can add for flavor. By most estimations, they just taste like a typical hard-boiled egg. The back of the pamphlet pictured behind the egg includes eight different graphs: four comparing and contrasting the whites between a standard egg and the black egg, and four doing the same with the yolk.

According to this impressive collection of data, the white of the egg does, in fact, taste the same, but it’s the the yolk that stands out with its more umami-rich flavor. I’m not gonna dispute the numbers!

*BONUS 2* Three Cats

There are cats everywhere in Okinawa, and as a major cat lover, I could not have been more delighted by this. There were even multiple cat-themed souvenir shops in Naha. As another bonus, here’s a photo I took of three stray cats in a local park full of them!

[theconservativebrief]

In an era of sloppy and forgettable action flicks on the one hand and overly serious “gritty” franchises on the other, the Mission: Impossible movies strike a pleasing balance between memorable action sequences and smaller-scale character intrigue. They’re whatever the opposite of “self-important” is.

And of course, like all of the other movies in the series, a new Mission: Impossible entry brings another opportunity to see what kind of insane stunts Tom Cruise, age 56, will put himself through for our viewing pleasure.

The sixth installment, Mission: Impossible — Fallout, brings all that to the table once again, and it just may be the best blockbuster of the summer. Suitably goofy, with the requisite masks and high-stakes stunts that mark the series, Fallout also pins its story on a lightly considered version of the always-relevant trolley problem: Is it better to save one person from destruction at the cost of many other lives, or to choose to destroy one person to save the lives of the many?

The gang’s all here Paramount Pictures

Let me be clear: Even though it does put a spin on one of pop culture’s favorite philosophical questions — The Good Place had an entire episode titled “The Trolley Problem” — Fallout is not a “brainy” blockbuster. It does not really have anything to say about, for instance, human nature, or geopolitics, or much of anything else.

That’s a shame in some respects. For instance, the movie raises but then almost immediately drops an intriguing thread about a terrorist targeting all of the world’s major religions.

But in truth, in all but the steadiest hands, too much heady stuff tends to gum up the works in films that are mainly meant to showcase cool stunts and improbable plot twists, which this film has in spades.

The plot, which is pleasantly murky, moves along at a good clip. Super-agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF buddies Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) are on the trail of a terrorist going by the name of John Lark, who is purportedly working with a group of 12 people called “The Apostles” to blow up the world. Lark is pursuing some nuclear material to finish the bombs, and Ethan is sent to stop him.

Henry Cavill and Angela Bassett are here, too! Paramount Pictures

In this, he’s being overseen by Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin), who made a lateral move into the IMF, and working in concert with a CIA agent named August Walker (Henry Cavill), in a mission directed by Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett). Fallout also brings back some familiar faces: terrorist/former IMF agent Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), who’s been languishing in custody since Ethan put him away in Rogue Nation, and British agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who’s got a complicated mission of her own.

The plot twists loopily for a great deal of the film’s nearly two-and-a-half-hour runtime until it settles into its final trajectory, but that’s part of the fun. Christopher McQuarrie, who directed and co-wrote Rogue Nation, returns as solo writer and director on Fallout; he’s nailed the series’ impish, ambitious voice and also injected it with a bit of heart. There are several fun action set pieces that don’t disappoint, and the final sequence, which takes place over the Kashmir mountains, is a bit of a heart-stopper. (It’s probably worth the cost of an IMAX ticket for that scene alone.)

Aside from the pyrotechnics and high-speed, high-elevation chases, Fallout does contain an interesting kernel of moral inquiry, and it’s worth noting. It comes back to the trolley problem.

Early on it becomes clear that for those within Ethan’s world of high-stakes, world-saving spy games, there are two fundamentally different ways to approach their jobs. For some, it’s better for an operative, an asset, or even just a bystander to lose his or her life if it means that a large number of people’s lives may be saved. It is, put simply, a numbers game.

For others, though — including Ethan — the idea of sacrificing the life of someone you love, like a dear friend and colleague, is unthinkable, even if it may mean handing over the means of destruction to a foe.

Sure, why not. Paramount Pictures

Your outlook may also dictate how you do your job. Agent Walker, for instance, wouldn’t blink an eye at the idea of having to kill a dozen police officers to make off with a potentially dangerous terrorist in their custody. His reputation precedes him, and he’s known for his gun-happy tactics. Ethan, on the other hand, is a little more improvisational, and is forever trying to find ways around killing anyone, even if it means executing a somewhat preposterous and possibly slapdash plan to do so.

Ethan’s way happens to make for thrilling cinema, but it also unearths a hole that shows up in a lot of action movies. Fallout features a badass, brilliant action hero who also never kills anyone without looking them straight in the eye first and visibly weighing the moral choice before him.

These decisions happen several times in the film — sometimes with clear enemies, sometimes in situations that are much blurrier — and aren’t always resolved; sometimes another person ends up stepping in and doing the killing on Ethan’s behalf. Still, it’s an interesting contrast with, say, Skyscraper, in which the obviously morally upright family man at its center seems not to even pause for thought about taking lives.

That just makes for a more interesting character. Ethan Hunt is, all told, dull from a character standpoint; he pines for his lost love, and he doesn’t really follow rules very well. But highlighting this added dimension to his character helps round him out a little.

The moral dilemmas round out Fallout’s worldview as well. In several conversations and statements, a point of view emerges: Actually, there may not be a “right” answer to the trolley problem. Keeping the world safe may actually require people with both perspectives to cooperate together. Someone who has to keep the big picture in mind may need to be able to disconnect from individuals a bit to keep an eye on the big-scale repercussions. But it’s just as important for operatives on the ground to act according to heart, gut, and conscience, instead of abstract, machine-like reasoning.

Inevitably, dramatic tension arises from that conflict — and that makes for a better movie. In addition to the crazy stunts and convoluted plot machinations, what makes the Mission: Impossible movies work in general, and Fallout in particular, is that they let their characters be characters, driven by a number of complex factors, even when they’re chasing an enemy or trying to get out of a scrape. I don’t know how much longer this franchise will last — surely Cruise has to slow down eventually — but as long as there are Mission: Impossible movies like this, we’ll be guaranteed a good time at the movies.

Mission: Impossible — Fallout opens in theaters on July 27.

Original Source -> Mission: Impossible — Fallout is the most entertaining blockbuster of the summer

via The Conservative Brief