I had given up on the AV-Club, when I suspected the use of chat-gpt in some of the reviews (maybe paranoia). I came back because someone wrote on twitter that they’re getting the band back together. A good sign! This review is another. Seems like actual writing is back on the menu.

Seriously. I saw the link on twitter, and expected to be taken to the way-back-machine. I wasn’t aware AV-Club was still pusblishing this sort of thing by 2021.

Nah, it makes perfect sense for a person like Shiv to pick a partner she can feel superior to. Let’s not forget, she got her idea of love from Logan-needs-to-keep-kicking-whatever he loves-to see if it will come back. Did Logan pick any of his wifes for being strong and having a spine?

To be fair, the Kardashians  don’t exactly expect you to celebrate them for their genius. I was thinking more along the lines of Musk and Zuckerberg.

And if she turns out to be wrong, she’s still got her pay-out, so it’s definitely the lower risk option. With Kendall, she already_knows_ that he won’t listen to her; he might run the company into the ground and her stake will be worth nothing. Now she’s got the liquidity to reinvest into whatever seems more…

I mean they’re not idiots in the sense that they’re probably pretty average in terms of intelligence, but they are certainly not as smart as they think they are. Which again, is perfectly average. But they do hold an elevated place in society, they act as elite, and so being merely average at best will be viewed as…

Red herring! 

I’m as thrilled as anyone that we’re getting to see adult Van - she’s one of the most likable survivors, and has often been a voice of reason and compassion until now. She has so far been my probably least problematic fav in this show. But one thing that makes her a fav for me is definitely also her pragmatism, and…

honestly, I might hate a “it’s all just an experiment enigneered by an evil mastermind” -twist even more than a comparatively straightforward supernatural ending. (Still, at this point, hoping for “natural causes, poison, group dynamics, mass delusion”) . Like you, I don’t see a way to pull it off in a plausible…

I think the queens are a red herring. I don’t think it will matter who turns out to be the antler queen. Someone else proposed in a previous comment section that the girls might be taking turns; it might be a purely ritual role, maybe the antler queen is just the person to be sacrificed next.

Of course, actual leaders…

to be fair, he does put it away pretty quickly, because he’s actually living through this shit, and doesn’t seem to have the nerve for the fake version. It’s a deeply preposterous book. But certain parallels are undenieable. I hope the thematic relevance is just about moral quandaries, having to do some awful shit for…

Oh, absolutely, but at this point I’m actually more worried for Tai. Past-Van is getting a bit too cosy with Other-Tai for my taste, I see a potential love triangle with the split personalities ... or maybe not a love triangle exactly, but Van does seem a bit too keen on instrumentalizing Tai’s potentially supernatural…

Maybe. But is that how Misty took it? She definitely seemed disturbed, at first at least. Later back at home she also seemed a bit thrilled, but her first reaction was to bail. I mean I also got a certain implication of sexual tension, but the overriding implication is antagonism.

Really? I have a friend whose parents’ marriage hit a rough patch when she was quite young who developed a veritable anxiety disorder about it. This sort of thing is famously the stuff of therapy sessions. I’m also a teacher and I’ve had ample opportunity to observe how kids can be adversly affected by their parents’…

Nope, she’s still in high school, the Rutgers thing was a fib to pick up the older guy. At least as far as we (and the characters in the show) know at this point.

But maybe it’s forshadowing that there_is_ actually something wrong about her age? The actress is apparently closer to thirty than twenty, which doesn’t…

touché. it’s not a Gollum look though. There are different kinds of eery! 

these are both fairly conventionally attractive, from certain angles at certain ages arguably ethereally beautiful people, who are just styled oddly for their roles here, and actually look younger than they are in a somewhat uncanny way, which might cause a certain sensation of weirdness you might be reacting too. my…

I’m currently reading “Real life” by Brandon Taylor, which has a a biochem grad student suspecting a lab mate of sabotage. It’s not the main plot, but it’s a good source of tension! Enough with the wannabe novelists, other fields have interesting drama too. 

I don’t think Charlie successfully psyching him relies on his remorse. Katie beat him three times on the ring. Deep down he knows that she’s better than him. He tries to denie it, but Charlie calls him on it. He knows that her bullshit detector has been spot on every time so far, and now he has to face the fact that…

ugh, I kinda hate the plot of that opera