Yes, I was also confused as to how she’d get the kid by default with no drawn-out legal process. But I guess rapists get to keep their rape babies close in a lot of states, that’s just how it works. Depressing.

He’s either convinced Billy that Billy did it, or convinced Billy to take the rap for it since Billy doesn’t have a wife and kids. The whole “I need to hear you say the words” could just be coaching him at something they practiced.

I feel like every joke on that front page holds up?

*when they haven’t.

But it really wasn’t okay then either and there were people pointing that out, just not as many. But that’s just it, it’s not about avoiding telling jokes that won’t age well, it’s about recognizing it went they haven’t and not trying to double down.

But I also think the vast majority of people who get angry at these sorts of jokes from the past would accept someone saying “I can’t defend those jokes anymore, they’re not defensible” rather than going into a world tour self-flagellating mea culpa. I think the growth matters.

What is IMDB TV? Whyyyyy. Remember when you didn’t need 19 different streaming platforms to see most stuff? That was cool. 

I don’t want this show to end in some sort of bleak misery, and I get that it’s not realism and this episode in particular was pure fantasy (amazing that all those sample top designer wedding dresses came in the right size for each woman at the party, etc)... but. Elektra is all of a sudden the world’s most generous…

Another possibility, of course, is that there was an entirely different thing John asked Lori not to tell Mare. Maybe she did lie to Mare, and what he asked her not to tell to protect the family was actually not that family but her own nuclear family. John. Her son. Something like that.

Fair. It just definitely seemed like that wasn’t a conversation to take at face value either. Like what he told Lori was... something else entirely. 

Not quite sure why so much coverage of this show is referring to Billy/Erin as a “dalliance” or a “relationship” (including the show itself). Even Lori talked about it like it was illegal only because it was incest, but it was also rape.

I got the sense that maybe it was setting up Carrie deciding to take pills in the next episode after all, on the other hand it’s the series finale... so maybe it literally was just what it was. A tired, overworked mother trying to get her act together and struggling.

I also feel like John told Lori not to tell Mare it was Billy because he knew Lori would tell Mare it was Billy.

I agree. I didn’t realize the whole history of it and thought it was such a sparse cast and mostly-one-location because it was shot in 2020 (a bit of the Servant approach), and I’d even wondered if it had been adapted from a play due to all of that. I think it would’ve been much better that way. And frankly they…

Ugh. (I’m lucky enough to be on a street they don’t use for drag racing... yet. But it’s certainly still part of the general ambience.)

Your mention of drag racing just reminded me that we’re now at the beginning of the 4-straight-months-all-night-long fireworks season in Washington Heights again. Yay?

Couldn’t have been set in the late 90s. “There’s no 9 train now...”

I also preferred In the Heights to Hamilton (which I thought was... fine? when I saw it on Broadway but I actually liked quite a bit better filmed, which is very rare for me). ITH is honestly one of my favorite all-time Broadway musicals. I think maybe the only one I ever actually paid full price to go see a second…

Yes, the willing suspension of disbelief required for “oh they just happened to be ready for precisely his... improvised arrangement?” was a bit much. But I think we just have to accept that Pose is, on occasion, a full-blown musical complete with ostensibly-diegetic-but-actually-not-at-all songs. Except, you know,…

Yeah, I really can’t say I appreciated that ending at all. Actually catching him would’ve been more surprising. Not to say that the performances weren’t good, but I found it to be more of an eye-rolling headache.