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It isn't a matter of it being worth his time.  The coronavirus affects his chances at re-election.  The lockdown hurts the economy, which is his number one talking point.  With a pandemic, he can't hold his rallies...which is one of 1) his favorite things to do but 2) his best way to stir up support and get people excited to vote.  Them there's the idea that his major followers either don't believe in the virus at all or don't believe it's that big of a deal. 

So even if Trump were a good president who wants what's best for people, it's counter to his entire re-election campaign to do anything about it.  I'll give him credit for going along with the lockdown on any level, but he's essentially hoping to just ride out the storm and pretend that if he acts like things are back to normal, they'll be back to normal.

Well I think you have to look at a couple things with Biden:

1. His campaign has been much more friendly with the Sanders campaign than Hillary's was.  I've said it before - Hillary should've run the primary by sucking up to Bernie.  She could've essentially said "I love Bernie, but the people are voting for me.  I have to listen to them" and she would've easily won.  Whether you want to say it was rigged or not, she had essentially won the primary without having a single vote cast.  She'd been working on it for 8 years.  It was in the bag.  Why she ever went dirty against Bernie was beyond me.  It cost her votes.  Bernie Bros may still be mad now and may hold it against Biden, but Bernie (and Yang) have been out in front of the campaign.  I think by November, the party will be more unified than it was in 2016.

2. I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that people see Biden as a hard reset.  Rewind the clock back to 2016.  Use the typical American theory that a popular president's VP will run after his term is over, and assume that Biden ran in 2016.  And just feel normal.  They can even pretend Obama is there while it's happening.  It really doesn't matter.  It also represents a hard stop because he's already said he was only going to be a one term president.  Get a female VP for the first time and then have an open race in 2024 (with the female VP being the leader in the clubhouse for that race).

So whether you see Biden as being too conservative or too old or too boring or too creepy or whatever, I think people will just see him as "Not Trump" when November rolls around.

I mean I just don't agree with this.  I'm no fan of Biden but he's got so many things in his favor.  Trump's base is nebulous at best because people assume there are 60 million Evangelicals that are loyal to him, but that's not true.  His "base" from 2016 was evangelicals, fiscal conservatives, and people that straight-up hated Clinton.  Two-thirds of that group is wavering at best.  The economy is floundering and will only be worse in November so the fiscal conservatives aren't going to rush out for four more years of that, and Biden's own right-leaning ways help with that.  And I don't think people hate Biden the way they hated Hillary.  The best they can come up with is that he's sleepy.

Then there's the math.  Biden has 183 electoral votes today locked up.  No question.  Done.  The west coast and Illinois and New England are blue, period.  You have your Minnesotas and your Nevadas and your Virginias and your Colorados that are probably blue.  It essentially gets him to Hillary's 232 without breaking a sweat.

Trump?  He has the heartland and Dixie, but those states barely add up to more than California alone.  Even Texas is borderline purple (and if he loses Texas, both he and the Republicans are done for a very long time).  Everyone laughs at Texas as a republican stronghold, but I live here and I don't know a single person who's going to vote for him.  The cities are overwhelmingly blue.  And the demographics are changing.  The farmland is overwhelmingly Trump, but steer don't vote.  I think Texas goes blue in 2024 or 2028.  And if it went blue in 2020, it wouldn't surprise me.

But let's say he gets Texas.  And let's say he gets Ohio, which could easily be a battleground state.  And let's say he gets Georgia (which could easily flip with all the activism happening there) and Iowa.  Even then, he's barely at 200.

It leaves Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Florida as your battleground states.  Trump won in 2016 because he won all those states.  He won North Carolina by 150,000.  Arizona by 100,000 votes.  Florida by 100,000.  Pennsylvania by 50,000.  Wisconsin by 20,000.

So he needs every one of those people that voted for him to vote for him again.  He might be able to lose one of those 5 and still win, but he probably needs a full sweep.  During a pandemic he made worse.  During a recession.  After four years of doing nothing he said he'd do.

I'm very much looking forward to the return of the Orville

I guess we'll see what happens.  I would think Candice Patton is the type who would say something if she felt he was racist or sexist.  I also think Jesse L. Martin as the paternal figure on the show could speak for him or Jessica Parker Kennedy or Danielle Panabaker or Danielle Nicolet or anyone on the show.  There's a lot of women and a lot of people of color on that show, and I hadn't heard a thing about it.  Unless he completely hid his sexism and racism, I think TF is right...it would've come out.  So I guess we'll see if it comes out now.

I hope Hartley can work again.  He lost this job but Gunn got his job back.  Even Mel Gibson made a comeback.  I don't think his career has to be over - especially if his change is real and his apology is genuine.  People love to tear celebrities down, but we also like a real comeback story.  He's young and I think he's at least CW talented.  If he wants to claw his way back, I think he can.

That's upsetting and disappointing about Hartley Sawyer.  I think he's a fun actor who thrived in the Arrowverse with a character that doesn't have much going for it.  I understand why they did what they did, with the Arrowverse working very hard to be inclusive.

That being said, the article lists tweets that go up to 2014.  I know he deactivated his twitter so it doesn't mean he's changed in six years, but what are the terms we're using to cancel people?  How do we decide who gets a second chance (like James Gunn) and who doesn't?  I'm assuming that this isn't politically based (no idea if he's a Republican), but it's hard to say if Sawyer is getting the Dean Cain treatment.

It does sound like he's sorry.  And I'll never understand why it was okay to hire him after these tweets happened and it's not okay now.  I assumed he made a tweet in the last couple of weeks, but to see that it was six years ago before he even joined the Flash is a tad troubling.  If he learned from it and has been good around his female and black costars, I'd think he'd have been treated differently.  But that's not my call.

I think the main problem is that the show is set up in a way where Kate has an emotional connection to everyone on the show.  She's Beth's sister.  Commander Kane's daughter.  Mary's step-sister.  Sophie's ex.  Luke's partner.  And that's the whole main cast.

A new character could certainly work with all these people, but you can't replicate those relationships.

I have a friend whose mother is a diehard MAGA person.  Evangelical.  Nationalist.  Boomer.  I've always thought she was a very sweet lady.  Her husband is even older and is a very sweet, gentle, quiet man.  It bothers me that she's been swept up in all this crap.

It bothers me more that I never would've figured she would.  Maybe she wasn't a very sweet lady.

I had a long conversation with my own mother.  She voted for Trump in 2016, but it never seemed like she voted for him because she liked Trump.  I think she was raised to vote Republican, and I think she's always had an issue with the Clintons.  She's not political at all so it's more of one of those people that hates them "just because."  She's regretted her Trump vote and has listened to increasingly less conservative talk radio (thank you, true crime podcasts!), and I'm about 95% of the way getting her to vote for Biden.

I think this is a story of two people.  My friend's mom won't change.  My friend is worried that if Trump loses, it will be the end of his family.  My mother has changed.  She might vote Democrat for the first time in her life (I had to explain to her that there were huge chunks of the 90s where she should've but that's a story for another day).

Too often, we focus too much on the people like my friend's mother.  They're, in a way, brainwashed.  That's not to say that she's a victim, but I don't think they're salvageable before 2020.  I think we need to try and remember the people like my mother.  The people that thought maybe Trump would work.  The people that thought it was time to hand the job to a non-politician.  The ones who like the idea of draining the swamp.  The ones who liked the idea of a Republican during a good economy.  The ones who just didn't like Hillary Clinton and have not liked her since 1992 for various contradictory reasons.

As I've said, he didn't win by that much.  He hasn't converted many to his side in four years.  He can't afford for too many people to be like my mom.

I really don't understand the support for Trump.  I understand the support for conservative politics, and I understand that he's the best bet for conservative judges and conservative-ish policies (although I'm not sure there's much conservative policy being generated during this administration - it's mostly the judges).  I understand that he says a lot of things that sound good to both conservatives and Christians (pro-life and 2nd amendment protection).  I understand that it makes the libs mad, and that makes conservatives feel good after Obama.

But 90% of that is obvious bullshit.  The reason there hasn't been any marquee conservative legislation is because Trump doesn't stand for anything.  The reason he talks about Christian values without displaying any of them is that he doesn't care.  At the end of the day, all he has is the blustering of a bully and hatred on his side.  He's abandoned any notion that he cares about anyone but white people, and he's focusing his campaign on white supremacy and trying to trick Christians.

I still don't think that all Trump supporters are evil, but I don't get following this guy.  He's not a leader, and he's not particularly good at pretending that he is.  And Republican leaders that supported him can stop whenever they want.  They don't have to openly condemn their own president, but they can stop with the positives.  Stop with open support.  Do not help elect.

Trump is doing too much damage to the Republican party, and he's not doing anywhere near enough good to recoup it.

I don't think Trump has nearly enough votes to get elected (and I'm in TEXAS), but even if he does, the Republican party is robbing Peter to pay Paul (a reference Trump wouldn't get) in a really dangerous way.  Because if they really pivot to a party for only white people, Democrats will dominate in a country of shifting demographics for decades.  They have a chance to say "we made a mistake, we sold our souls, but enough is enough" and pivot to a platform that stands for conservative politics but not white politics.  And, honestly, if they start now and really work at it, I think they could have things (mostly) cleaned up by the time the election happens.

But it won't matter.  They won't.  They feel like they're in too deep and have to see the bullshit all the way through.  Sad.

This is actually a really good question.  Movies aren't structured the same way as miniseries/TV shows.  I would think he'd have to structure it in a way where the "episodes" (if that's how it's done) have a beginning, middle and end.  As much as shows like to tout themselves as "10-hour movies" they have to have a certain structure.  Even when Kill Bill was broken into two volumes, each movie had to have a beginning, middle, and an end.

Will the Snyder cut do that?  They could possibly do a Bruce hour, a Diana hour, a Clark hour, and a finale.  With Bruce recruiting Barry and Arthur in the Bruce hour and the Cyborg stuff in the Diana hour.

Other than that, just release it as a 4-hour movie like they did with the Irishman.

If you're asking me, if recasting is the route, I hire the best person.  I watched Ashley Platz' audition tape, and she looks and sounds nothing like Ruby Rose.  But if she's the best Kate, go with it.  Long hair, short hair.  Tall, short.  To me, it doesn't matter.  Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo don't look anything alike, and they both played Bruce Banner in the same continuity.  If you want to say that Incredible Hulk is only partially continuity, then I'll counter with Terrance Howard and Don Cheadle.

In the interests of representation, it should be a lesbian actress.  And if they really want to go authentic, a Jewish lesbian.  But other than that, we're going to have to suspend our belief either way.

Hasn't this been confirmed?  There's an explosion in the trailer, and I thought I saw something about her stopping one bomb but missing the other.

I respect Snyder's vision.  I respect that he wants to create a realistic world where gods walked the earth.  They'd be controversial.  They'd be human.  They'd be fallible.   Superman would be frustrated and would miss a bomb going off.  Wonder Woman would save one group but miss another.  Batman would certainly kill people, either accidentally or on purpose.  If Superman fought another Kryptonian in a major city center, it would cause immense damage.

My only problem with Snyder's movies is that he doesn't give any of those things the proper weight.  Because I don't think he has any emotional tie to any of it.  I think he thinks its cool when two Kryptonians destroy a city, and I don't think he cares about the "people" in the buildings.  I think he thinks its cool when Batman uses Arkham-style violence to break spines, but I don't think he worries about the paralyzed "person" afterwards.  I'm putting "person" and "people" in quotes not because Snyder doesn't care about people, but I'm just not sure he's concerned with extras and faceless people in movies.  They don't have names, we don't see them for the most part so I don't think he cares.  Which I think is fair.

And honestly if he'd made an original property like The Boys, I think it would've been fine.  The problem is that he decided to twist *established* characters and didn't bother explaining anything.  He wanted cool shots and didn't want a scene where Alfred and Bruce talk about why he's changed so much.  He didn't want a scene where Superman actually rescues people.  He likes cool shots where Superman is dragging a tanker or slow-motion flying someone out of a burning building or floating above a flooded house.

I think BvS is *this close* to being a great movie.  I think the 5% that it's missing is 5% of the movie that Snyder didn't care about.  Its why I didn't have a huge uptick from watching the Ultimate version.  Yeah there's 40 minutes more but he didn't use any of those minutes to address what I think are huge problems.  And in my opinion, it's because he doesn't care.

I think that's fair.  No worries.

But when you feel better with it, the table read was really well done.  It was nice to see the cast interact with each other and crack up.  Pedro Pascal was very fun.

Um....so Ruby Rose quit Batwoman.

I've been mildly impressed on how the Arrowverse has been able to work to make their final episodes into season finales.  It's clear that there was going to be more in each season, and these are all going to make for interesting "next seasons".  For example, will the Flash be dealing with the new Mirror Master as a season-long villain?  Or will they wrap her story up quickly and move on to their next story?  Same could be said of Batwoman/Alice/War with Kane and Supergirl/Leviathon/Lex.

I guess it shows that most of these shows end on cliffhangers most of the time.  So in essence, it could've worked with any episode they ended on.  But it's interesting...the Walking Dead chose to delay their season finale until it could be completed.  I wonder if that was an option for Flash or Batwoman (it wasn't an option for Supergirl unless Melissa Benoist could work while pregnant).

I wish they'd get out of the TOS era.  If Picard doesn't want to do any Starfleet action, I'd rather have a companion piece on a Starfleet show that takes place during the Picard era.

Well that's the funny thing.  Han Solo talks about how he's been all around the galaxy and hasn't seen anything that would lead him to believe that the Force is real.  But the Jedi were *everywhere* 30 years earlier.  Even if he never saw a Jedi, there would be *tons* of living beings that would've been alive at the height of their power.

I wonder if the prequels should've gone in a different direction.  Maybe the Jedi officially ended in the Old Republic and the Sith/Jedi were fighting a secret war.  Obi-Wan worked in secret, and he finds Anakin.  The two of them fight for a couple decades, until Anakin is seduced by their rival faction.

Anyone see the miniseries "Devs"?  It was written and directed by Alex Garland, and I thought it was well done.  And since it plays around with the multiverse, I thought it was pretty cool.  Anyone else check it out?

I guess with the pandemic, there's less of a chance that people like Kat McNamara will get picked off by other shows, but the longer they don't lock her and the other actors up, the less of a chance this show happens.

The CW announced that the plan is for Supernatural to return with its final episodes in the Fall.  Since they still have to film two episodes, that's very much a question.  But, as I said in the DC shows post, that's about the only original programming planned for the CW in the fall.

Yeah, I agree.  I wonder if there's a certain pressure from the writers of the Flash to be the "headlining" series.  It's easy for the Flash to be the fun "junior" series when Arrow has dark and brooding taken care of.  These days, Legends has the fun taken care of.  Maybe the Flash feels the need to be dark and brooding like the show that just ended.

I think the writers are going about things the wrong way.  If I were them, I wouldn't have season-long villains.  Because, you're right, you sorta have to make Barry look weak or dumb whenever he can't defeat a single villain.  I don't think Bloodwork or Cicada were necessarily any stronger than Pied Pier or Weather Wizard or Captain Cold...villains that Barry was able to beat in one episode. 

I like the idea of mini-seasons, but I might even go further than that.  Maybe 2-4 episode "blocs" where villains show up, make life difficult for Barry, and after an episode or two, they defeat them.  And I would use the same "villain of the week" villains.

I also think the problem is that speed isn't fun anymore.  Barry sees the Flash as being his job - not being fun.  Speed is a means to save people, not a rush.  They had some fun when Cisco got powers, when Caitlin got powers, when Ralph got powers.  A new Wells every season isn't enough "newness" to have fun.

It's why I would've killed Barry.  Shake the show up.  It's essentially the same cast from season one with a wacky new sidekick and a wacky new Wells.  I think the show could stand to lose 2/3 of Cisco, Wells, and Caitlin.  It may be time to move on from Joe West.  Not because those character are old or stale, but they've done so much with those characters.  If they'd done TF's idea and killed Barry to replace him with Bart (also played by Gustin), then they could've played with a novice speedster on a team led by someone else (Ralph or Cisco or Frost).  Bart could have fun.  There'd be a new side for whoever the leader is.  There could be a new mentoring aspect.

The Flash needed a shakeup.  Still does.

An actress knows who I am!  I'm not even going to try and guess now!

I was thinking about Star Trek: Picard this morning, and I don't know if I understand something.

So what happened with Romulus again?

I'm assuming that, while the destruction of Romulus from 2009 is canon, the Countdown comic isn't.  In that, Data is captain of the Enterprise (right, ireactions?).  So all we really know is that Picard was there, the robot insurrection happened, and Picard was called back.  But the events of Picard don't really have anything to do with that, right?  The androids rebelled on their own?  The Romulans didn't have anything to do with that? 

Because I understand Picard's point, of course.  The Federation and Starfleet should've saved as many people as they could.  But at the same time, I don't understand how much the destruction of Mars would've impacted Starfleet.  Was this like Pearl Harbor?  Did Starfleet pull their ships back because they couldn't risk losing anything else?  How long after the Dominion War was Romulus?  How secure was the Federation at that point and how "healthy" was Starfleet?

I guess I'm trying to understand how "evil" the decision Starfleet made.  Did they make a selfish one (sorry, Romulans, you gotta deal with this on your own, we got our own problems now) or a difficult pragmatic one (I'm sorry this is happening, we did our best, but we can't risk anything else or we'll be in the same boat)?

But I realize that he gets tested all the time and would have great doctors to watch over him...but he could get it if he isn't taking the right precautions.  Boris Johnson is significantly younger and appears healthier (I've seen pictures of him on a bike and on a jog and that's more than I can say about Trump) and he ended up in the ICU.  He's in several of the high-risk categories (heart disease, age, potentially pre-diabetic). 

I'm not saying.  I'm just saying.

That's what been sorta frustrating about "Earth Prime" - it existed and obviously had deviations...but the deviations don't matter because everyone that matters (sorry Pied Piper) has had their memory of Earth 1 (or 36) corrected.

It would be fun to do a "Tales from Earth Prime" episode to show how things were different.  How did Kara and Flash meet?  It can't be the same way it was before.  I assume Superman would've been a part of every "crossover event" and probably a couple of other events. 

Supergirl is another big change.  Some of their storylines were done with the idea that they were on their own.  Did all her storylines happen on Earth Prime?  I mean, heck, is the Obsidian Platinum stuff happening in Central City or Gotham?  It doesn't seem to be happening if it is.

Well, I wonder if Trump is actually trying to appeal to his base here.  Even though Trump himself has been emphatic about this virus, a good deal of his base still thinks that the virus is a hoax.  Or just like the flu (again, Trump has repeatedly said it isn't).

So I wonder if Trump has to downplay his response to it so that he doesn't lose the people who think it's a hoax?  As I've said before, Trump can't lose a single 2016 vote if he has any chance of winning.  He has to try to figure out a way to save the economy (his only accomplishment) while also doing something to fight the virus while also not doing too much to fight the virus. 

I think it's why Trump doesn't wear a mask.  It's also certainly narcissism, but Pence doesn't have that level of narcissism and didn't wear a mask.  I'm guessing he did it to appeal to the people who think it's no big deal.

Well, I can think of another way to make it work - bring a plague into the Arrowverse.  Make it an event.  Someone, a minor villain maybe, comes in and spreads some sort of metahuman virus (so wearing a mask wouldn't help and where Kara/Barry could even get it at super speed).  Suddenly, the whole Arrowverse has it.  All the shows can be about how you can be a hero without touching someone.  How you can stay connected while apart.  Stuff like that.

But even then I don't think it'd work.

I cannot understand what women go through and all I can really do is empathize.  Whenever I try to put myself into the mind of a young woman who feels vulnerable and scared and powerless, I struggle with the idea that I'm either using hyperbole or not going far enough.  I can walk to my car in a dark parking lot with a reasonable amount of likelihood that I'll be okay.  It wouldn't even occur to me where to park for highest safety, who to walk out with, or who to smile at.  Whenever I think of the female experience, I tend to think about the societal benefits of being a woman - free drinks and meals, the ability to wildly change/improve appearance with ease, what I consider to be deeper connections with other people and themselves, etc.  The rough stuff either doesn't occur to me (bad) or is too scary to consider (bad).  Having a daughter helps, but when I think about her, it scares me way too much to even consider letting her out into the world (luckily she can't even crawl so I have some time to get over that).

All that being said to say that I want women to feel comfortable coming forward, and I want society and the authorities to take every account seriously and perhaps even operate on a "true until proven false".  The problem being - how do you prove a "he said, she said" item true or false?  Barring physical evidence, it comes down to a simple "what you believe".  People can give heart-wrenching accounts, but we know that there are people who can perfectly pretend to have certain reactions and plenty of real stories to capture. 

Tara Reade could easily be a scared woman who is finally facing her assaulter.  She could also be a Putin fanatic who is making up a story for Russian money to help Trump get elected.  Heck, both could be true.

What sucks is that women need to believe her because if she's lying, it hurts all women.  We can't weaponize sexual assault for political gain because it hurts all women and gives powerful men an escape clause to get away with it.

When I sat down to write a spinoff/sequel series to Earth 214 (which I never got passed a half-written pilot and a plan for season 1), one of the ideas I liked was the idea of putting "satellites" in the wormhole to communicate from world to world (with the idea being that wormholes are a river connecting two worlds but that there's a bigger "ocean" that connects them all).

Might be a dumb idea, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work in the continuity of Sliders to allow them to communicate with each other no matter where they are.