Also, the slaves are children!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershey-nestle-mars-chocolate-child-labor-west-africa/

My favorite easter egg of the series so far: when Wade is doing market research, one of the products is cereal. And the cereal says, in tiny little letters at the top, that it was made by a company called “Happy Harry.” In real life, “Happy Harry” is the guy who made this:

Charlie Bucket is raised by good, loving parents (and grandparents). He doesn’t meet the effed-up adult until after he starts his journey.

This might be a terminology issue - I would define capitalism as something like “a political/economic system organized for the benefit of capital.” I would describe all four of the specific things you described as phenomena which can happen under capitalism (but don’t always) and can also happen under other…

Sure, nobody should fault Kondo for being a capitalist

I’m not trying to exculpate the Trump administration or Republicans as a whole here - they’re definitely bad actors who are deliberately being corrupt. But I also don’t think you can analyze their actions outside of the basic concept that they’re doing this because corporations like Disney want them to. Like yeah, the…

I don’t think it makes sense to draw a distinction here though? The Trump administration’s policy goals are set in large part by lobbying/direct campaign donations. (Disney has apparently only given Trump $12K for the 2020 cycle, but they’ve given the RNC ~$650K, and they’ve apparently spent $3.5 million on lobbying.)…

I would even say that “being gay” IS a reason to vote someone into office. In general terms, their experience of societal oppression ought to make them more empathetic and compassionate when formulating policy. And in specific terms, representation of LGBT people (or even just G) is its own specific good, and a gay…

Also, I really liked the exegesis of the Who lyrics (I hadn’t thought about it from that angle but the song totally fits) but here’s another thing to consider: that song is ultimately about forgiveness (it ends with “you are forgiven” repeated a bunch of times).  Is that a signpost to where the show is going?  Or an…

We get the mid-season’s one use of the f-bomb from Gina’s co-star, who appropriates the same line that she threw at BoJack to devastating effect following her strangulation. It doesn’t land with the same impact as prior deployments, but reminding us of its first use makes up for some of that.

He was literally named “Baxter”!

It’s really interesting to me, because on the one hand, self-forgiveness is super important in preventing future harm.  Bojack does bad things because he has a self-image of himself as a bad person; forgiving himself is a way to break that loop and avoid falling back into harmful old patterns.  But on the other hand,…

But also in that keeping your investment in the show is primarily dependent on your ability to forget that the lead has always been and always will be the man he is, and that the fact of it is the entire premise of the show.

He asked for a list of places where winter isn’t that bad. They named a lot of states you would expect, but conspicuously avoided naming New Mexico (which is mainly desert and is in-between Arizona and “parts of Texas”). So the whole time, you’re waiting for them to say “New Mexico” and get a really cringey reaction…

California lets people vote after they’ve completed their sentence (including parole or probation), which puts them about in the middle of the pack on that issue.  (People who are only convicted of misdemeanors can vote while incarcerated though, which is unusually good.)

Have you ever watched Mystery Incorporated?  That show also has Blue Falcon, as a riff on Frank Miller Batman (but Dyno-Mutt is still exactly the same).

I thought it still worked on that ground. After all, skepticism is about staying open to the possibility of your beliefs being disproven - if the most rational, empirically grounded explanation is “aliens” then you should go with that. Plus, I mean, there’s a talking dog, so some level of “weird thing that doesn’t…

Including a callback to queefburglar69 (he’s their leader) from one of the Wanda episodes!

I didn’t think the White Whale stuff was meant to be satire. I think it was more, “how do you even do satire under late stage capitalism.” The point of satire is to expose wrongdoing and to sting people into changing their bad behavior through public ridicule. But the hell of our current political system is that…

Which is a great little metaphorical encapsulation of the lesson she learned this episode - the skills she’s developed in other areas of her life are cross-applicable to raising Ruthie.  She’s not starting from scratch, which is a benefit here.