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It's funny.  LOST was a huge success primarily because of the mysteries.  WHY IS THERE A POLAR BEAR?  WHO IS THIS FRENCH WOMAN?  WHO ARE THE OTHERS?  ARE THEY DEAD?  WHAT IS THE MONSTER?

And to me, all of that was cool.  I desperately wanted to know who the Others were.  I loved learning about Danielle and other castaways on the Island.  I wanted to know what made it special and whether the world was still out there.

But Lindelof was very clear from the beginning through the structure of the show that this was about people.  It's why he devotes 50% his airtime *every week* to these people.  And not just Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Locke - to each of the main characters.  He didn't just want random nameless people going through something extraordinary (like, for example, The Walking Dead).  He wanted you to know each one of these characters and how they got to be the people they are now.  That when Jack or Boone or even Nikki made a decision, you understood how those decisions were forged.

It was plot-heavy but it was extremely character heavy.  You got to learn mysteries about the people every week, even if the Island plot was Hurley building a golf course on the Island or finding a Dharma van.

So it's so strange to me that people could watch 3 years of flashbacks (the flashbacks stop then and expand into other forms of storytelling) and not think "huh, why are the mysteries so lame?" - if a teacher spends half the class talking about World War II, don't you think you should focus on World War II when you are studying for the test?

With The Leftovers, as I said in my previous response, Lindelof starts fresh.  People all over the world disappear.  But we don't spend time with the President of the United States (like in the Y: The Last Man adaptation or every disaster movie ever) or a scientist trying to figure out what happened.  We spend time with families in a small town that were affected in different ways.  There's no effort to explain what happened any more than explaining a hurricane.  In season two, Lindelof changes the theme song from a dour instrumental to a peppy folksy song called "Let the Mystery Be."

He's not going to explain it.  If that's why you're here, you're free to stay for as long as you want, but you need to love these characters and how they grow and change. 

(Slight spoiler but they do, on some level, dabble in explanations, but it's all dabbling).

I think Lindelof is great with characters and specifically three-dimensional characters that exist in a real world.  I think he's also great at coming up with cool stories.  I think his payoffs are sometimes not as great, but in my opinion, the characters can carry the lamest of explanations.  I'm sold.

I also think Carlton Cuse doesn't get enough credit or blame for LOST.  I think the work he's done after LOST has been hit or miss but mostly strong - I really liked Bates Motel, I thought the Strain was fun, Colony was pretty solid Sci-Fi, and Jack Ryan is...fine?  But I don't think anything he's done as been as solid as The Leftovers or Watchmen.  I can see that Lindelof might've been more about characters and Cuse might've been more about story.

I *love* LOST.  I know that people don't like the ending or whatever, but I think it's great.  I was a hardcore viewer from the very beginning (I read an article about it in the newspaper prior to its premiere) and loved it to the very end.  I watched the finale in a theatre and definitely got emotional at the ending.  I think it has the most well-rounded characters of any TV show ever, and it's my favorite show ever (not the best but my favorite).

Do all the mysteries get wrapped up, and do all the mysteries that get wrapped up feel earned?  Not necessarily.  But really the mysteries of the island stopped mattering to me once I fell in love with the characters.  Finding out what happened to Jack/Kate/Sawyer/etc was much more important to me than finding out why the Island was special.  Lindelof gets a lot of crap for the puzzle box stuff, but I love his work.  If it had all been a dream or the Island was in a snow globe or any of that, I would've been just as happy with the show.

So Trump is running in 2024.  I don't see how this isn't a good thing for Biden (or whoever runs in 2024).  If it's Biden vs Trump, I think people will vote for the same person they voted for in 2020.  I can't imagine anything in the last two years would indicate that people would've changed their votes.

But for Trump's side, he has to beat DeSantis first.  And I think that makes things so much harder.  Trump will either p*ss off a bunch of DeSantis voters (who I assume would stay home rather than vote for Biden) if he wins, or DeSantis beats him.  And if DeSantis beats him, I think there is no chance that all Trump's voters get in line.  I think you'd see record numbers of people write in Trump, or Trump would just keep running.

Because I think there's no chance Trump would accept that he lost a primary.  It'd be like 2020 except he'd just keep running afterwards.  I don't know how that would even work with the Republican Party - they obviously can't have two candidates.  I think the GOP's best bet is to tell DeSantis not to run, but that might make him want to run even more.

Either way, even with Biden being historically unpopular, I don't see how Trump running doesn't significantly help him.

I didn't need it, but I could see how others would.  And I was glad to get ten more episodes with Dexter.  It was a nice ride.

What I liked about the original character is that it was full circle for him.  Dexter starts the series as a loner who uses people to cover up the fact that he's a loner.  He doesn't like people, but he feels like he needs to have friends and a girlfriend to look normal.  To pass as a regular human.  He picks a woman with a violent sexual history because he knows she won't want to be intimate.  He doesn't want that either so he's good with that.

Over the course of the series, he learns to love, appreciates the friends he does have, becomes a father, and genuinely begins to enjoy the life that he thought was artificial. 

To end the series with Dexter isolated from everyone with no one and nothing is a great ending.  He would've loved that level of isolation at the beginning of the series.  Now he hates it.  It's a win (he doesn't go to jail or die) but also a huge loss.  I think it's poetic.

This new ending is poetic but in a different way.  Now Dexter has become complete.  He used to be an animal that works off his bare instincts.  Survive.  Get away with it.  Don't get caught.

In this ending, he allows himself to get caught.  He allows himself to die.  He makes a sacrifice for someone else.  I think it works - in a different way than the original ending - but it works.

This actually makes me think of Breaking Bad.  That's a show where I've decided to have a different headcanon than the actual series.  I like my version better haha

Is everything okay?

I'll be sad about Stargirl.  It has a fun cast and a good story.

I'm still hoping the Flash will devote some time to being a finale to the Arrowverse.  Or at least Earth One.

It's funny you say that - my mother said the same thing.  While I had a fever, exhaustion, and a little bit of stomach discomfort (wouldn't characterize it as nausea), my mom said she didn't feel anything.  Her cousin lost his sense of taste temporarily.

So she wondered if she got the wrong shot.  I told her that different people have different reactions and not to worry about it.  I don't know if that was the right answer, but she felt better.

I also feel better.  My arm is still a little sore but I feel like I'm on my way back.

Oh wow.  I can add it to the list.  Thank you!

I guess I missed this whole thread when it first came out, but Tembi Locke was the star of a TV show for a year of her life and it wasn't important enough to be mentioned in her memoir?  I'm kinda impressed.

I saw No Way Home and Dr Strange at midday screenings during the work week.  There were some people but with the ability to choose my own seats, I was able to avoid people and enjoy the experience.

Because of busyness in my life, I didn't see Thor in theaters.  I think I might try and see Black Adam in theaters but I don't know.  I would like to see Black Panther in theaters next month.

I've always had a sort of appreciation for the Halloween franchise having seen every one of the Michael Myers movies.  But I don't think it will make my theater-going cut.

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Is everyone eligible for the new variant-specific booster?  I think because of lack of information, I assumed it was only for high-risk and older people.  Is it available for everyone?

I didn't know that about Brown (very sad) or Chase (very funny).  But I'd love to see them both return.  While Chevy was a bit of a weird fit at times, he was certainly a great foil.  The times that the show let him be a straight-up villain (like in the dungeons and dragons episode) were great.  And one of my favorite scenes (Pierce at the broken ice cream machine) is just Chevy by himself.

I thought I read that everyone was on board except for Glover and Yvette Nicole Brown, both of who stepped away.  And Chevy, of course.

I'd still make the movie if they can't get Glover or Brown, but I'd hope they'd return in some capacity.  I know Glover is super busy, enough that he can't even appear on his own show all the time (Atlanta), but I'd like Troy to at least make an extended cameo.

Yeah, I know.  I said it's become clear in the last six years because there's been more uncovering of that (and cops being more open about their stance on that).  It's been a problem since policing began.

See, I don't know if that's true.  We always talk about how representation matters.  We need a black Spider-Man so that little black kids can look up to Miles Morales.  A black Ariel for little black girls to see themselves.  I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be the same for cops except that a black kid can grow up to be a cop and can't grow up to be a mermaid.  We know this stuff works - kids see Jurassic Park and want to be archaeologists.  Kids see the Martian and want to be engineers.  So I think the more Raymond Holts there are on TV, the more gay/black kids will want to grow up and be cops.

I don't think defunding the police is the answer, but I don't think Democrats (as a whole) think it's the answer either.  The police need to be reformed, and I think part of that reform is designed to ease some of their burdens.  The most effective argument I've heard/read is to take away the functions that police aren't equipped to handle.  If a mentally ill person is causing a non-violent scene, the police shouldn't show up.  Someone educated in handling that kind of situation should.  That frees up two officers (or more) to do something else that they're more qualified to handle.

And that doesn't even mean "defunding" the police - it just means funding differently.  Maybe it means funding police exactly the same and diverting other funds to handle social work or something like that.

I think certain police are overfunded when they have military equipment that they barely use.  I think certain police are absolutely underfunded and understaffed.  There should be a way for staff and resources to be diverted from departments that have too much to departments that don't have enough.  Maybe young officers in big cities could be paid to move to smaller, rural areas to work for a certain amount of time with the promise of advancement in their career when they've come back (which now just sounds like the plot of "Hot Fuzz" to me).

I don't think "the police" is the issue, but I do think individual officers are.  It's clear in the last 6 years that police are populated by a lot of far-right people that either are white supremacists or at least sympathize with them.  We need to clean up police departments and get people that truly want to protect and serve.  I think getting the right people is crucial.

But TF is right. People don't want to do the job anymore.  If you do the right thing, you still might be hated because of your peers.  It's a thankless job for some.  Every time there's a white cop shooting a black man in a mostly-black neighborhood, you see police *begging* more black people to apply.  Not only so that racist white guys don't have to patrol mostly-black neighborhoods but also because studies constantly show that peoples' attitudes change when they interact with people that are different.  More black officers will lead to less racist white officers.  But when you stress "all police are bad", no one wants to do the job.

It's part of the reason it would've made me uncomfortable if Brooklyn Nine-Nine had switched to a post office (and why I was a little uncomfortable about how many people left the force by the end of the show).  We need positive role models on TV so that people might look up to them.  Of course, I don't know if 20 years of Law and Order shows has led to an increase in recruitment so maybe that doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, I think the answer is more money to police (which, to be fair, is what Biden has said).  Higher salaries would bring in more people.  More money would pay for psychological training and testing.  And I think it could help create/establish programs where money is efficiently used across states so that the departments that need money get it.

I think this is true.  But at the same time, I think Sliders exists in the public consciousness.  For whatever reason, people (and I don't just mean sci-fi fans) remember the show.  It had enough of a following to get that Kickstart or Die video made.

I still think that if Jerry went out of his way to crusade for the show.  Essentially do all the work, agree to either put some of his own money up (for a chance at more if it's successful), star in and produce the show, maybe see if he and his wife can recruit some celebrity starpower to guest star or co-star in it...I don't see how that couldn't appear as a Peacock original series or something.  There's a lot of room on streaming for passion projects, and I don't even think Sliders needs to be a big-budget show.

But I also have no idea how this stuff works so it's very likely I'm wrong.

I'm starting to feel a little bit of optimism regarding this DOJ stuff.  It sounds like they have a pretty solid case, and it sounds like Trump's own legal defense is a disaster.  At least one of his lawyers might have to drop him as a client because she'll be a witness (or another defendant) in the case.  And from the looks of things, he's having issues finding anyone but extreme loyalists to even work with him.

The DOJ wins 95% of their cases.  They don't tend to bring these cases to trial unless they feel really good about winning.  From talking to a friend who's a defense attorney, he claims that it'll depend on how many MAGA people get on the jury.

That is, if it goes to trial.  Would Garland do it?  Would there actually be riots if he was indicted?  I don't see how it's possible that people would riot when Trump is charged with a crime but not riot when they truly believe an election was stolen? 

Or would the Justice Department be willing to do some sort of plea deal with Trump to avoid the whole circus and spare Trump any jail time?  I don't know.  I can see it being in the best interests of the country if Trump was willing to do some sort of public confession of his many crimes and frauds and scams.  If he officially declared that he lied about the election being stolen, that he colluded with the Russians, that he did have a quid pro quo in Ukraine, that he did incite his followers to storm the Capitol.  That everything he's been accused of is true.

But even then, I think a lot of people would think the Deep State was mind controlling him or that he was lying.  Or that he wouldn't walk it back on OAN the next day and dare them to come after him.

So prosecute him.  Get the national guard ready and send him to jail.  And then campaign on electing a Democrat to the White House so that the next Republican doesn't immediately pardon him.

Dang it, I knew that and still messed up.  Edited.

Yeah, I get it.  I just don't have faith that any of this will go against Trump.  From what I've read (and I'm as far from an expert as possible), the punishment for breaking this law is "up to 3 years in prison" or a fine.  I think the Clinton guy who broke this law most recently got a fine.

If this is all to fine Trump, I'm not sure it's worth it.

Now, all that being said, my limited understanding of this says that if they found something in open sight, even if it was unrelated to the warrant, it can be taken and used against Trump.  I wonder if they could find whatever Trump is using to blackmail certain members of Congress.  Could that be what gets him?

Or if they actually have proof that Trump wasn't just hoarding classified documents but also selling them.  That's the other thing that takes this from "maybe a fine" to jail time.

Interesting.,  I knew that the season was supposed to have 11 episodes so I was surprised last week to find that the season was ending with episode 10. 

The notion of canon is complicated to me.  I'm more open to the idea that non-screen items can be canon.  I think Star Wars is a good example.  I would think a character like Doctor Aphra would be canon, even though I don't think she's ever been referenced in any on-screen Star Wars.  But I think that the further you get from the Star Wars movies, the weaker the canon gets.

Movies
Live-Action TV
Animated TV
Comics/Books/Video Games

So Doctor Aphra's adventures are canon because they exist in this hierarchy.  However, just like Kanan's origin from his own comic was overridden by The Bad Batch (one level up), I think the Mandalorian could completely rewrite and overwrite anything from Doctor Aphra comics.  So it isn't that Doctor Aphra isn't canon.  It just isn't strong canon because it can be easily overwritten.  The same thing happened with Ahsoka and her novel, I believe.

So is Sympathy for the Devil canon?  Sure.  But if there's a season 4 of the Orville that wants to undo or rewrite any portion of that, it can.  And then it's not canon anymore.

And it sounds like HBO Max is getting dismantled.  I wonder what that means for Peacemaker (although Gunn says it's fine), Titans, Doom Patrol, Harley Quinn, and other DC shows on the site.

I hope they get a way to put a bow on the Arrowverse.  If it just kinda ends, I'd be a little sad.

I think the Orville is a modern version of Trek.  It's a society that is a lot like Roddenberry's vision - free of prejudice and fear and focused toward a better tomorrow.  But unlike the TNG crew, they're flawed and silly and human.

I think it's so much fun.  I do think Strange New Worlds is fantastic, but other than that, I think Orville is better than every other modern Trek show.  And I'm not terribly sure it's close.

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Just a couple episodes ago, the Union was aggressively trying to pursue an alliance with a species that didn't value men.  This week, they kicked out a species that didn't value women.  Is the Moclan's crime that they're actively destroying and hunting females?  I don't want to evoke a former member here, but are those two situations all that different?

I would say so.  If you look at the way he's acting, particularly in the trailers, people immediately noticed that he seemed, for lack of a better word, sinister.  People thought that maybe he was possessed by Mephisto or corrupted in some other way before the movie was released.

Maybe Strange feels like the spell is elementary and doesn't see any chance it causes any issues, but I feel like this is out of character.  Strange's movements always feel pretty deliberate.  He was a surgeon, after all.  So I feel like doing a spell that will alter reality without properly explaining it to Peter beforehand (where Peter would've been able to work through his questions about how it works).  And when the spell goes wrong, Strange doesn't take any responsibility for it.

You could argue that Strange feels bad for Peter, but there's probably a bunch of more reasonable spells that he could've done for Peter.  Strange is acting impulsive and lazy and then lashes out at Peter and his friends.

I think his characterization works better for "Sinister Strange" but I agree that it's hard to really explain many characteristics about Strange outside of what happened in his original movie.  In Ragnarok and the Avengers movies, there isn't much to his character besides "does magic" and "believes he's always right"

Spoilers from Multiverse of Madness and No Way Home

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I read an interesting note.  As you might know, MoM and NWH were supposed to come out in a different order.  Instead of No Way Home leading into MoM, it was going to be the other way around.  We'd learn about the multiverse first, and then Strange would help Peter.  America Chavez was originally supposed to appear in No Way Home, fresh off her Dr Strange appearance.

However, that's not the only planned difference.  Apparently, Multiverse of Madness was going to end of a different cliffhanger - our Dr Strange was going to be stranded and the "Sinister Strange" was going to be in the main MCU universe in his place.

And suddenly it all makes sense.

- Strange acting so out of character in No Way Home - well, he's an evil "double"
- The out of nowhere ending of Multiverse of Madness - it wasn't supposed to end there and would've had to be quickly rewritten.
- The Sinister Six - there's only five in No Way Home because Strange himself would've been the sixth.

It fixes so many errors and makes things so much more complete.  I liked the movies as is, but this would've been much better for both movies.  The only negative is that we wouldn't trust Strange from the beginning.  I wonder if that reveal could've been held for No Way Home.  Where we think Strange is the same guy, but we only find out after the spell was botched that it wasn't our Strange.

Of course, I don't know how you end MoM without the twist.  So maybe it's better to leave it as is.

Ha, I looked pretty hard.  I think you're right that they have a bar and a circle, but maybe it was a rights thing.  I wish they were able to be a bit more direct about it, but I can accept the subtext of it definitely being a Green Lantern ring that he was able to turn down.

It was just a vague reference to the color blue.  I'm sure they could go any direction they want, but I'm assuming it would be Cobalt Blue.

I was just coming to say that.  It's weird, but I guess the Diggle is an alternate Diggle.  I wondered why they didn't mention anything about the box/ring in his first appearance on Superman & Lois, but it makes sense.  It also makes things so much easier on the show for him to be the only superhero in town.  Just like with Stargirl, it just needs to be separate for them to tell the kinds of stories they want.  If Kara was around (or even Team Flash), then I don't know if the Ally situation is as scary.  It needs to be Clark and his limited friends on their own for it to work.

Superman & Lois has also just never felt like a part of the Arrowverse.  And the timeline doesn't work either.

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I think Flash's finale was...fine?  No spoilers, but I really don't think the "forces" storyline works.  And Thawne feels like less a big bad and more just a nuisance at this point.  I love Cavanaugh and that role, but I'm just tired of it.

The Flash has always had a villain problem.  I don't really have a solution, either.

Well, to be fair, I think there's some things you're not really thinking about.

1. I can't imagine that the Jedi are that famous outside of Coruscant.  Han Solo is well traveled and lived during the time of the Jedi during a time when he'd probably be pretty into that kind of stuff, and he's essentially never heard of them.  It's hard to tell if Luke has ever heard of them - he gets really excited when he hears "Rebellion" but doesn't bat an eye when Ben says "Jedi."  Ben has to explain who the Jedi were and what a lightsaber is.  There are Imperial officers on the Death Star that refer to the Force as an "ancient religion"

My guess is that the Jedi were really well known on Coruscant but worked essentially in secret everywhere else.  People might know the Jedi by name as some sort of galactic police force but think they're basically just new age cops who think they have magic powers.

So I'd be shocked if anyone on Tattooine knew who the Jedi were, and they certainly wouldn't know the names of specific Jedi.  We know about Obi-Wan's name and we follow his story, but I don't see how he'd be famous.

2. Tattooine is essentially the middle of nowhere, and it's a place Vader would never go.  As far as I'm aware, at least in Disney canon, he never goes back after Attack of the Clones.  He always sends someone else.  So Obi-Wan could work at the spaceport in Mos Eisley with a big sign saying "Obi-Wan Kenobi, Former Jedi" on it, and Vader would never find him.  Tattooine is a blind spot.

3. Kenobi could be a really common name.  And as ireactions said, the guy is a shell of his former self.  Even if the people of Tattooine knew who the Jedi were and even if they knew who Obi-Wan was, and even if they found out some how, some might not believe it.  It'd be like finding out that Michael Jordan lived down the street from you.  First off, you might not immediately consider that it's the same guy - plenty of guys are named Michael Jordan.  Second, if he weighed 250 pounds and rode around in a wheelchair, you might not think it was him even if you got a good look at his face.

SPOILERS

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The biggest continuity error I see is with Leia.  I wish that Leia didn't actually meet her hero.  I wish that, perhaps, they'd written in something about Obi-Wan being too fragile to meet Anakin's daughter....and maybe Kumail Nanjiani's character is used as a proxy.  Because just having seen A New Hope, there's no indication from Leia that she's ever met Obi-Wan.  And it's not even in a "Spock isn't allowed to talk about Michael Burnham so he doesn't" kind of way.  She doesn't mention him in a message that is specifically from her to him.  Mentioning his rescue of her wouldn't put either of them in any more danger - they're both already in the maximum amount of danger.

And when he dies, she's stoic.  Again, maybe this Leia just refusing to break her vow that she seems to make, but he's already dead. She seems to promise not to mention him just to keep him safe.  There's no reason for that.  And it would've probably helped Luke for Leia to mention that she knows him too - that he saved her life once.  That he was a great warrior.  She doesn't do any of that, and she's supposed to be very tied in with the Force and how to deal with people.

The dialogue between Obi-Wan and Vader is fine.  It doesn't need fixing, but I think you can interpret that Vader sees any fight between him and Obi-Wan where Vader loses as being Vader still learning.  "Yeah you beat me, but I was still the Learner.  Now I'm the Master" - I could see Vader losing to Obi-Wan on the Death Star, Obi-Wan escaping, and Vader saying the same thing to him when they meet again on Dagobah.  "Okay, last time I really was still a Learner, but I swear this time I'm the Master"

Is it a continuity error that Qui-Gon shows up as a Force Ghost?  Didn't Clone Wars imply that Qui-Gon couldn't materialize except as a voice?  Essentially that he'd only gotten part of the training done, and that Obi-Wan is the first one who could materialize.  I don't know if I buy that - there must be some sort of ability to materialize even if you didn't complete the training while alive - otherwise, I don't know why Anakin showed up at all.