If craven merchandising + social consciousness is the formula then give me Power Wheels: Hands on a Hardbody. Tap into every kid’s first lesson in class war.

the whole season I kept thinking yes, a professional high-end chef and a young ER doctor — two professions renowned for their stable hours, leisure time and mental health — what a perfect romantic match!

I get it. All I’m saying is it seems like negative media fascination and the cultural moment has primed the ignorant to see not a spectrum of gender but, at best, a reaffirmed traditional gender regime where a person is still one, the other, or on the way to becoming one or the other. Like I said, I could be wrong.

DISCLAIMER: Transfolk know whether they are a man or a woman, and what kind of man or woman they are (butch, macho, femme, sensitive, girly, non-binary, etc.)

My main complaint since mid-season:

A newly-elected state senator disappears after a horrific car accident, leaving her wife in the hospital in critical condition and abandoning her young son, all to visit a former lover and reunite with survivors from a mysterious past, where 2 people die—one a police officer—and 2 other recent murders are apparently…

forget teeth — it’s visibly silly that Young Nat has somehow continued to bleach her hair as it’s grown out! Needed at least one half n half roots & bleach scene before a frontier haircut

Um:

Stoppard, eh? Must be a play-within-a-play involved. Only question is if it’s supposed to be a reference to existential re-interpretation a la Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, or to recursive criticism a la The Real Inspector Hound.

I don’t think Halbrand is Sauron either, but if were I a betting man, I’d go big on him as an eventual recipient of a ring for mortal men doomed to die.

I’m excited for this. But if they’re all still catering I hope it’s not a super depressing sad-comedy now

My point was that it’s plot per episode as much as episodes per season. Season 2 had room to breathe: it was just the cops, streets and the docks. That space allowed for character moments that other seasons couldn’t afford because myriad other plots needed to be served. Just my two cents.

Here’s the thing about about Season 2 and why it’s an outlier. Beyond the fact that it feels like an attempt to whiten up the show, it’s the only season after the first that’s somewhat standalone. Its themes resonate throughout the rest of the series, but the dock characters are essentially one and done. The bottle…

It’s not good for the show developmentally and it’s not good optics for the stars. But given the state of film, and film comedy especially, it’s sadly savvy to use the stability to lure them to stay. Especially if the show’s willing to work around short series tv projects. 

Between this movie and Blade Runner 2049, I’m guessing the Fallout TV series isn’t set in New Vegas.

One wonders whether a more humane, slower and less successful “discovery” might have given the Indigenous population enough exposure to European diseases to allow for recovery and immunities to spread. The reputations of so much of the later horrors skate by on the lesser numbers and the ability to blame nature for a…

This is slightly off-topic, but I need to share the one moment in my life where I genuinely felt like I was in a sitcom.

There’s all sorts of ego and power and other disgusting, wilfully vile reasons but I suspect there’s also this underlying pathetic sense that they really haven’t accepted they’re not 17 anymore.

With remote viewing parties becoming a viable social activity, I often wonder why MST3K hasn’t licensed some sort of customizable silhouette filter. Be your own bot!

Bless the Harts was decent and had good moments, but it probably never got over the surface-level appearance that it was making fun of good ol’ god-fearing, blue collar red staters. The writing was on the wall once it became clear they’d been ordered to drastically scale back or eliminate the Jesus stuff.