Search options (Page 16 of 59)

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.

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

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

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

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.

**********

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

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

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.

I don't think so.  Ever since we  had our conversation a million years ago about alternate media, I've actually jumped in a bit to this stuff.  I'm reading Star Wars comics, which are canon and fill in blanks.  And while I think there's definitely a hierarchy of canon, I don't love retreading area that was covered in the comics or the TV shows, even if it's for a movie / Disney+ show.  I was a little sad when they redid Kanan's backstory in the Bad Batch and invalidated some of the Kanan comics (even though I haven't read them).

I think the Obi-Wan/Maul fight is perfect.  If there's a season 2 of Obi-Wan, and they wanted to recreate some of that in live action, I think it would be cool.  But I'd want to recreate it exactly.  And I'd probably only want it used in flashbacks (or maybe flashforwards, I guess), not to be the primary arc.  I think it would work great for Obi-Wan, and I wouldn't be angry if they did it.
Again, there's a hierarchy and Obi-Wan trumps Rebels. But it's been done.  I'd let Rebels have it.

Okay now I'm curious.  Are you saying they made changes to the plot or just that the novelization doesn't capture the spirit of the movie?

Spoilers for Episode 18 of the Flash

*
*
*
*
*
*

So what are they doing with Diggle?  I've generally been an Arrowverse apologist, but the Diggle storyline is really bothering me.

As we all know, they've dropped hints that Diggle might actually be John Stewart, the famous Green Lantern.  From his family name to people asking him about his ring, there were seeds planted for a while that Diggle had a greater destiny.  Then, in the Arrow finale, Diggle finds a glowing green...something.  And it felt like a good end to the character.  Whether they're allowed to use Green Lantern on the CW or not, they pretty much said it.

Then Diggle came back - he was essentially the crossover for this year with all the covid restrictions.  He bounced around from show to show with his little box...and nothing really happened.  He had headaches and claimed to have turned down some sort of great opportunity, and now he wants another shot.  It all still pointed to a Green Lantern ring, and they're just delaying until they get some sort of permission.

Then Diggle shows up again, unexpectedly, talking to Thawne.  And Thawne helps him open the box with promises of cosmic adventures.  And...

...it's something else entirely?  And now that arc is over?  And now Diggle can teach young people about justice in his own non-Green Lantern spinoff?  What is this?

I get that David Ramsey is going to be in some spinoff, and the Green Lantern thing can't be hanging over him forever.  But it's pretty annoying to be teased with something for *years* for it to be written off like this.  Don't want to make him a Green Lantern?  Can't make him a green Lantern?

Fine, whatever.  But why not just have him reject it for good, on screen, with the same reasoning.  I don't want to leave my family to be an intergalactic cop.  Refer him to someone else - bring back Rene or Cisco or Wally.  Let them do it.  Make it vague if you have to, but don't just swap out the story.  Finish it.  Otherwise, what's the point?

I wrote up a post about Kamala Khan, but it wouldn't post.  In case, it doesn't again, I'll give an abridged version.

Kamala Khan is an important character, but I struggled a bit with parts of her 2014 series.  I understand that a large portion of Marvel readers are probably Islamophobic on some level, and they might be less willing to accept Kamala.  And to work around that, they have people vouch for her that those readers would respect.

However, what the 2014 series ends up doing is repeating the same thing over and over again: Kamala meets a fan favorite (Wolverine, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, etc).  They work together, Kamala saves the day, and the hero remarks that they've been keeping an eye on her and she's going to be great.

The problem is that, when Kamala meets Wolverine, she hasn't been doing it very long.  And she's only done a couple low-profile missions as Ms Marvel.  I doubt Wolverine heard anything.  It makes more sense for SHIELD to know, and the comic versions of Phil Coulson and Gemma Simmons both claim to be fans of hers.  Or for Carol Danvers to hear about her since she's wearing her old costume.  But it's a bit odd for Carol to take a couple of hours to do a side mission with Kamala.

I get why they did it.  I think it's probably good that they did it.  But as someone who already accepted Kamala, I just found it annoying and somewhat unrealistic to have that reinforced over and over again.

Yeah I don't mind a darker tone.  I'm just not sure it works for Jean-Luc Picard.  His story was always hopeful and bright.  And I think you can do dark with the lens of someone like that, but I'd prefer to see something different with him.  That's why I think it might be fun to do little sequels to TNG episodes.

Because Picard made a lot of tough calls, but the show tells us that it was the right call.  But what does the right call look like 30 years later?  If you save a kid from a burning building, it's the right call.  But what if that kid ends up becoming a tyrant?  Was it still the right call?  If you stop a genocide, but then that race ends up building a terrible weapon...were you right to save them?

To be fair, this is essentially the same idea I'd do for a Sliders: the Next Generation.  I'd have Quinn leading a group of younger sliders, and they'd occasionally end up on worlds they'd visited before.  How did Last Days world change with the introduction of the Bomb?  How did Weaker Sex world change now that the Men's Rights movement got a kick in the butt?  How did Eggheads world change now that....Quinn isn't there anymore?

That wouldn't be the primary driving force of the show, but in an E214 sequel show, I was going to do something like that.  My fun twist was going to be that one of the new sliders was going to get swapped out for his double (in my plan, he was autistic and could create wormholes organically).  So instead of trying to find their way home, they'd still be able to slide where they want, but they'd be looking for their lost friend.

I like Picard.  I like Seven.  I like Q.  I really actually like most of the cast of Picard, both in Season One and Season Two.  I don't understand why it is what it is, though.  I get that they're kinda working through some of the sins of the past - his connection with the Borg and the Romulans and Q.  But I wonder if it would've been better as a non-serialized sequel to TNG.  Where maybe Picard and Riker go around the galaxy fixing mistakes they made.  Picard is close to death and, while everyone keeps talking about how great his life was, he's haunted by some of the things that didn't go right.  Or the way he'd planned.  Or ended up going south anyway.

You'd need a real TNG fan to work on this (certainly not me) but pick a handful of TNG episodes where Picard makes a difficult choice or gets overruled or things don't go the way he wants...and write sequels to those episodes.  Maybe two aliens were at war, and things have gotten worse.  Maybe he helped save a leader who's become a tyrant.  I don't remember enough minor episodes of TNG that I could come up with any real examples.

But that's kinda what I'd like to see out of Picard.  Small stories that are sequels to small stories.  What does it mean to make these life or death decisions for decades and then have to live with them?

******

But I totally understand not being able to start Strange New Worlds until you've finished what came before it.

That actually makes a ton of sense.

I loved the episode and was willing to forgive the super awkward ending to season 2 because of it.

I've also loved Strange New Worlds, which feels like both a throwback and a remake of TOS.  It think it's wonderfully done, wonderfully acted, and a lot of fun.  I will even forgive another TOS-era show when I feel like Trek should always be moving forward and never backwards. 

Strange New Worlds is the best of the new Trek, and I think the Orville is just as good.  In fact, I think they do a lot of the same things about as well.

I think you're onto something here.  What if same-sex couples are the minority but the group in power?  And what if heterosexual couples have to give their children up for adoption upon request.  Essentially that the society views same-sex couples as being better parents/providers, and that hetero couples are some sort of genetic backdoor to keep the species alive?  Something biologically necessary but shameful and filthy?

You could also add a layer of socioeconomic metaphor and have hetero couples only be lower class people who are "forced" to be breeders to stay afloat? They get paid enough to survive (again, for the good of society), but it essentially marks them as untouchables in society.

I think I saw that it's on Amazon Prime?  I'll have to check that out.  I'll get it done, especially as many of the shows I'm currently watching are about to be over/on hiatus.

Hey, that will do!

That would be absolutely great.  I'm in.  Make it happen.

The problem is that the Democratic Party is a combination of three loosely-bound groups of people that don't really have all that much in common.  Someone in the Democratic Party needs to somehow both fully support things like Defund the Police (to keep progressives that like that) while also downplay it for people that are more in the middle who wouldn't support it.  They have to downplay Critical Race Theory as some kind of movement, but also not completely write off the ideas that are in it. 

How do you limit the "woke" stuff without alienating the people who are only here for the woke stuff?

The Republicans succeed because they don't have a platform.  They don't stand for anything of any substance.  They can just pick and choose the minor items from the left that most people think are too much and attack them. And when they get in power, they don't do a ton.

I think Discovery seasons 3 and 4 were a huge improvement on the first two seasons.  It's what they should've done in the first place.  New technology?  They're in the future!  Aliens have been redesigned?  They're in the future!  Things look slick and futuristic?  They're in the future!

It feels like a clean slate, much like TNG was to TOS.  And I think that's a great thing.  There's no canon to navigate, and they can chart their own path.

The only thing I haven't liked is the almost complete abandonment of Trek-style one-off episodes.  I typically love serialized television telling a story.  It would be fairly annoying when LOST would take a week off to tell a little one-off story and not advance it's primary story.  But I think Trek needs stuff like that.  It's great that they're using more modern storytelling, but come on, give us a planet in danger or two civilizations that need Federation support.  Especially after (SPOILER) at the end of season 3.  And even though (SPOILER) sets that up just as well in season 4, I think they could easily tell a collection of standalone episodes that tell a larger story about (SPOILER).

Picard is doing the same thing.  I want to see some new adventures with Starfleet.  All my favorite TNG/DS9/VOY characters are out there having adventures.  And now, instead of more fun reunions, we're getting a time travel story?  Hopefully Picard season 3 has more fun in that sandbox.

Also apparently Strange New Worlds is going to be more standalone adventures.  But I'm so bored of that era...