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I agree that he was brought in with a desire and a "need" to be in the Avengers, but I think the end result of his arc (ending with Far From Home) was to show that he'd grown passed that.  That he's become his own hero who can handle things on his own.  I think he was humbled a bit by the events of Infinity War and Endgame, especially to the point where he was physically overwhelmed by Thanos' army, even with the "instant kill" mode on.

Enough has changed that, by Far From Home, he doesn't even want to respond when Nick Fury wants him.  I don't think he's done being Spider-Man because he's still patrolling the neighborhood up until his trip to Europe, but he's not interested in fighting another Avengers-level threat.  His confidence is back up by the end of the movie, and I think he's grown beyond a need to be in the Avengers.  I kinda see him like any of the other main Avengers - ready to accept the call if they need him but happy to be his own hero in the mean time.

So on the Spider-Man side, I think the solution is easy.  Peter's never going to get another call from the Avengers, and he's never going to be in a position where he thinks he needs help (like with the rest of the MCU heroes on their solo adventures).  The biggest hole to fill in his life is the fact that he's good friends with Happy Hogan and funded almost entirely by Stark.  I think there's a couple ways to fix this without outright saying it - I think they could simply write into the narrative something like:

NED - What do you mean you can't afford your rent?  Aren't you best friends with a billionaire?
PETER - I can't call him for everything.  I just want to make it on my own.

It's also possible to just swap out the money that Peter gets from being friends with Tony to money he gets from being friends with Harry or Norman Osborn.  Maybe Norman fills the mentor role of Tony, and they could walk around it without saying it (which is easily enough to do - just hire the Netflix Marvel series.  They were experts in dancing around continuity).

On the MCU side, I think it's even easier.  No one was really "friends" with Peter except for Tony.  There's absolutely no reason for Dr. Strange to need Peter's help, and I don't even know if Dr. Strange would consider asking for it.  There's a huge age gap between Peter and the rest of the Avengers, and I don't think any of them would reach out to him for help.  I don't think anyone dislikes Peter and they're happy to fight alongside him, but he's a kid.  Tony had no problem including Peter, but even that had a limit for him.  The rest wouldn't consider putting Peter in extra harm.

If they really want to stick it to Sony, they could say something like:

WAR MACHINE - We need all hands on deck.
SAM/CAP - What about the kid?
WAR MACHINE - Let him be a kid.  We need the rest of the hands on deck, though.

Spider-Man allegedly out of the MCU.  Sony and Disney couldn't come to a deal.

First off, it's a bummer for the fans.  Tom Holland is great as Spider-Man, and I think his appearances have been amazing.  Two pretty great solo films and three other appearances.

Second, I understand that it's a business.  Sony wanted to keep the original deal (Disney gets 5%), and Disney wanted more.  Disney did all the work and wanted more of the profit.  Sony wanted to maintain the money role in their biggest property and didn't want to hand over about half their lunch money to the biggest kid on the block.  I understand.

Third, narratively, it's kinda in a clean place to make a break.  Far From Home essentially ends the Tony/Peter storyline that had been built since Peter first showed up in Civil War.  He's too young to be "friends" with any of the other Avengers, and without Tony, there's not as much of a reason for him to tag along.  The villain most connected to Stark is Mysterio and he's dead.  Even if he's not, his main problem is with Peter now, not Tony.  You could bring back Vulture without any connections to Stark or the Chitauri.

Of course, assuming Holland's contract isn't somehow connected to Marvel Studios (I don't think it is), it simply means that they'll move Holland over to the Venom universe.  They'll probably keep the "Peter is enemy #1" storyline from his movies and intersect him with the Carnage storyline from Venom.  They'll have a team-up movie and then do solo movies at Sony, I imagine.

It sucks, but I think it's probably the best for both studios.

I don't know what their plan is for Kingdom Come Superman, but if they had him be an older Superman, they could probably have him be an older Superman who's appropriately aged and "widened"

Maybe as he ages, his Kryptonian metabolism slows down.  Maybe Clark's more of a cerebral hero and less of a "fly/run off to save everyone" kind of person.  You could even have him gain weight as the result of some sort of mental manipulation.  They had a heavy Thor in "Endgame" and a fatter/clumsier older Spider-Man in "Into the Spiderverse"  Maybe they could find a way to make that work.

If I were writing it, I'd make it work for Welling like Welling made it work for Rosenbaum in the series finale.  If Tom doesn't want to work out or look 25, that's fine.  We'll write around it.  Even if that means making his role a cameo or filming him in darkness or whatever.  But if they're going to do Crisis on Infinite Earths, I think Welling needs to be involved.  And while it'd be great to have him involved as (insert character), I think he needs to be Clark Kent.

My memory of this is a struggle, but I don't remember a single scene set in Wayne Manor that isn't in that same room.  I think sometimes they'd film in the other direction so *everything* wouldn't be in front of the fireplace, but that might've been their best shot at that.  I also remember a Court of Owls boardroom (?) set and a Cobblepot mansion, and they might've just redressed the Wayne set.

I think the Ivy character is the most bizarre one of the series, and it had the oddest sense of course-correction when the rest of the show just went crazy in a more natural way.  I haven't read any behind the scenes things, but my guess is that someone on the show (or, more likely, someone at FOX) wanted a "sexy" character and that required Ivy to be aged up.  Maybe they didn't go far enough the first time and decided to course-correct?

The craziest thing is that I remember the pre-pilot advertising making a big deal about Ivy.  She's in the Pilot in a major capacity.  But for much of the first season, Ivy is nowhere to be seen.  Even when she's aged up, she's never a regular.  Even when they finally got a sexy, adult Ivy, they never really used her outside of an episode here or there.

Why they used the name Ivy?  My thought is that the plan was probably to do a slower burn with her character, and since they probably planned on multiple seasons before she actually turned into Poison Ivy, they wanted "non-comics" fans to know who she was going to become.  Everyone knows Bruce and Gordon.  Edward always told riddles at the beginning so it was obvious who he was.  Oswald is called Penguin from the beginning.  My guess is it was a shorthand since there wasn't much of a way to tell the audience who she'd be.

It was weird because she was the only one recast.  Every other character was played by the same actor.  The time-jump wasn't huge, and there's ways to make a 19-year-old actress look 24.  I thought the new actress was fine, but it was a bit silly to me to take away the role from Camren Bicondova.  Especially since she had gained quite the fanbase.

The way they used him was kinda bizarre too.  He's filmed mostly in shadow, and the only good look you get at him is sorta awkward CGI.  I thought there'd be more of him, but he's essentially used as a cameo. It was cool to see him in costume, but it's very Smallville in the way they finally use him.

I haven't considered it, really.  I thought Sean Pertwee was great as Alfred, and I think I'd watch a show where he was the lead.  Like with Krypton, I don't think watching a show about a superhero's father or grandfather to be all that interesting.  Building up to a few easter eggs doesn't really excite me.

If they did a Gotham spin-off with the Gotham actors (and bring back Camren Bicondova), I'd watch that for sure.

Probably.  I was thinking maybe I'd read Gotham comics, but I probably would've said the same thing about the Smallville season 11 comics and I didn't read those.  Are they available on TPB?

I don't think I remember a single mythology-legacy cameo.  I don't think they had a single "prominent" actor show up in any sort of cameo.  The show made its own legacy, which is something I respected about it.  It was balls-to-the-walls crazy most weeks, but it owned it.  I don't think it ever betrayed itself, even when it decided to fully embrace fully wacky concepts.  Despite struggling with ratings, it never went for stunt casting.  I respect that now that I think about it.

I talked about this a bit with Ivy.  I think they wanted someone to be a bit of a sexpot, and that's why they aged Ivy.  Both times they did it, they made little jokes about how Ivy was now older than Bruce and Selina.  Ivy relished going to nightclubs and being an adult, and she definitely starts to manipulate men with her sexuality almost immediately.

But I guess the "sexy" characters were also filled with Gordon's various love interests.  Barbara Keane and Dr. Lee Thompkins went through various "sexy" stages, and there were characters like Sofia Falcone that also filled that role. 

Catwoman had a thing with Bruce, and she'd occasionally hang out in Barbara's nightclub.  And as she got older, she'd wear sexier outfits and dresses to the various Gotham fancy parties.  But I feel like they generally let her be a kid and even an older teenager without exploiting her as a sex symbol of any kind.

I don't like that they kept teasing it.  If they were going to do it, they needed to do it.  They kept saying that he wasn't the Joker, but Jerome Valeska kept being more and more the Joker.  To be fair to them, it was his twin brother Jeremiah that ended up *actually* becoming the Joker.

I thought Cameron Monaghan was wonderful in the role, and I think he did the best he could.  I think my biggest issue was that I thought the Joker should've been off-limits.  I didn't want a teenage Joker fighting a teenage Batman.  I wanted Batman and Joker to rise from the insanity of Gotham...not be born at the same time as everything else.

There was actually a really great scene where Jerome Valeska died for the first time, and he'd done this big wild display on Gotham-wide television.  And when he died, they showed a variety of random Gothamites acting like Jerome.  And I think the idea was that Jerome had sewn a seed into the soul of Gotham that would eventually lead to the Joker.  That the Joker was out there somewhere and we'd never know where he was.  I thought that was a great idea, and it made the whole Jerome story (at that time) feel like a great idea.

But like Sylar before him, Jerome and then Jeremiah kept coming back.  They'd die and be resurrected.  Or die and it's a fake out.  I kinda got tired of that.

They embraced him in the finale, and I thought it was pretty good.

100%.  They did a bunch of Batman storylines  (the Court of Owls, No Man's Land, etc) and I think Bruce came in contact with just about every Batman villain that's ever been.  By season 3, it's essentially a Batman show without Batman.  By the end, it was a Batman show with Batman but he's just not in the suit.  By the finale, it was a Batman show with Batman in the suit but he's in the shadows.

I think the difference between Smallville and Gotham is that Gotham crammed Smallville's first 7 seasons into the first season and then played around with Smallville seasons 8-10 the rest of the series.  In other words, they realized they were a comic book show way earlier than Smallvilled did and fully embraced that for most of the run.

There were times when the show meandered, and I struggled at times with how fast or slow the show was moving.  But at the end of the day, Gotham was a lot of fun.  It was inconsistent, and I think I always wanted more from it than I was ever going to realistically get from a show with the budget it received....but I thought it was a fun little look into a world before Batman.

I very-much agree with this.  Essentially the *only* comic books I buy are TBPs.  There was a brief period about 5-10 years ago where I subscribed to Batman comics, but I didn't love it as much as I thought I would.

TBPs show a full story so I know I have (most) of the full story.  I can read it at my leisure and it's usually easier to put up on a bookshelf than a dozen floppy 20-page issues.

The Marc Scott Zicree stuff is fascinating to read.  One because I wasn't sure who you were talking about (outside of knowing the name) and second because I knew *exactly* who you were talking about because I've been watching his commentary on Discovery and the Orville on YouTube a lot, recently.  I'll be fascinated to listen to his commentaries.

He seems like a really nice, genuine person who really enjoys science fiction and writing good stories when he's on YouTube.  It could be partially an act (he uses essentially every video as a way to sell his show Space Command - literally), but I couldn't say for sure.

(Still spoilers)

Yeah, I enjoyed Season 6, and I think the writers did just about as well as they could considering the abuse they took from the movie department.  If the people who made Endgame can be trusted to know the secrets, then the people who made Agents of Shield should've been allowed to as well.

They made fun little references to Thanos in season 5 and whatever chaos they could imagine happening in New York, and I think it was fine.  With *literally nothing* to work off from Endgame, I think they did as much as they could with what they had to work with (nothing).  They wrote a fun story that was isolated to parts of space that haven't been dealt with and mostly isolated parts of Earth.  You're right - the people they interact with either wouldn't be in a position to constantly talk about the Snap/Blip or they're in enough danger that it isn't the focus.

The one mistake they made is to have another apocalypse-level event at the end of their season.  The season 6 finale primarily takes place in the Lighthouse and in some random jungle (I'm sure they said where - let's say South America).  Even if the Avengers knew about it, they wouldn't be able to get there in time.  So I think it was contained.

But with spaceships and colonization and invasion, it doesn't really fit.  It's nice for the team to have stakes and the Chronicom invasion certainly provides stakes.  But when they specifically say that they want to wipe out SHIELD as their primary enemy even though it seems to be common knowledge that Thanos is going to Earth.  So either he already decimated the planet or someone defeated him.  Plus, they know what Fitz and Gemma know (that there is a group of super-powered beings that protect the Earth).

I think the only mistake they made was not keeping the threats covert.  There's no reason for the Avengers to be involved in HIVE or HYDRA.  There's no reason for them to know about the Shrike or Izel.  These are SHIELD-level problems that can be written off as SHIELD's problem.

When the Earth is literally in danger, it's harder to write off the Avengers stuff.  For the most part, they did as great as they could.  It was only at the end that I started worrying about it.

Ha, don't let anything ever stop you from calling me out on anything   It's what makes this fun.

I like Batman a lot.  I think he was the gateway drug to my love of superheroes, and I just think that there's something poetic about a guy in a bat costume trying to keep up with a group of literal gods.  Batman's best superpower is unlimited wealth, and while it's sometimes significantly overblown, his true superpower is just his incredible brain.  I think there's something sorta beautiful about a guy who had some tragedy and decided to do everything in his power to stop it.

I also think there's room for different versions of the character.  I think it's sorta great that David Mamouz played Batman because I don't think there's necessarily any reason for Bruce to be 6'3 and ripped.  There's something kinda cool to the idea that he's sorta short and average build and could still kick ass.  I think my main gripe is that sticking with Mamouz sorta ruined my longstanding prediction (from season one) that they'd replace him with another actor when it was time for him to be Batman.  I was sorta right, but I'm glad they didn't do it.

As far as Affleck, I think he did as good a job as anyone could've.  My main problem with Batfleck were 1) (pre-BvS) that I wanted Superman to face a Batman in his prime and didn't want to hamstring Batman even more when he's already significantly outmatched and 2) (post BvS) didn't think that the movie gave enough explanation for why Batman was acting the way he was acting.  He can be an older version and work and he can be a grittier/darker version and work, but I felt like they needed to explain why he was acting the way he was acting.

Yeah, I get that.  My point is that the Arrowverse seems to imply that the TV shows are connected but that the movies aren't.  So having someone from Gotham show up might make sense - having someone from the Dark Knight universe might not.  And when you're talking about Superman on TV, yes Dean Cain would have him beat, but I think for the Arrowverse, Tom Welling makes so much sense.

Routh might make more sense in the end because you're going back to the beginning of the modern superhero genre (through Reeve).  But this just feels like something they wrote for Welling and he turned down.

EDIT:

Then there's this:

https://www.superherohype.com/comics/46 … -character

It's odd because I'm not sure exactly where they can go with this.  If you're talking about a cameo for the fans, I suppose anything would work, but what makes the most sense?  Obviously Welling would be the big one, finally getting him in costume.  The next would be Michael Rosenbaum's Lex, but as the article states, he's already debunked that (but has been known to have tricky negotiations).  Then what?  Would Kristen Kruek's Lana make sense?  Erica Durance's Lois?  Alison Mack is, for sure, out.  Justin Hartley *kinda* made a cameo, but he'd probably be one of the harder ones to get.  Aaron Ashmore's Jimmy? 

Then it starts to get more obscure?  Michael McKean as Perry White?  Annette O'Toole as Martha?  Big characters but maybe not relevant unless you're telling a "everyone in the Smallville universe is dead."

I'm assuming they're pushing for Welling or Rosenbaum.  Hartley would be cool but would almost certainly be a one-day shoot.  It'd be cool to see anyone from Smallville, but I wonder if the majority of that cast has simply moved on.

Am I a bad person for wanting Natasha/Black Widow to stay dead after her solo movie?  I just would like her sacrifice in Endgame to mean something, and I like the idea that, for the most part, deaths in the MCU have stuck.  And I think they're probably going to try and resurrect the Vision in WandaVision (with potentially effects rolling into Dr. Strange 2 and beyond) so it'd be weird if they kept undoing the Phase 3 deaths.

(Because you know Tony's coming back in one form or another).

This is very true.  There's a channel that plays all five Trek series on certain nights (every night?) that I flip passed sometimes.  And I'll be honest, I'm more likely to stop when it's a Voyager or TNG episode than a DS9 one.  While the quality of the DS9 episode is almost certainly going to be higher, their storylines are much more complex.  And if I'm literally watching a random episode, I have to remember a handful of things to really enjoy what's going on?  Who's controlling the station?  Is this where Dukat is pretending to be Bajoran?  What's happening with the Dominion? 

With Voyager or TNG, it's just watching an hour of sci-fi fun.  And if I'm literally just looking for something to watch, I don't want to have to bring up Memory Alpha to remember exactly what's going on on DS9

Ugh, here I go again.

I don't think Seven was a terrible character or poorly written.  I also think that Jeri, while she might've been hired for, ahem, other reasons, is a very solid actress.  I've seen her in a number of things and don't think this is a Danielle Panabaker situation.

The problem with Seven wasn't so much that she was poorly written.  It was that the show, itself, wasn't very well written, and essentially every season that she was on was *very* Seven-heavy.

I think she's actually a pretty great character, following the great Trek tradition of trying to understand what it is to be human.  That archetype (previously used with Data and Spock) was probably supposed to be used on the Doctor (another character I really like), but obviously, they decided to go another way with that.  Seven is an interesting character because instead of searching for her humanity, she often runs from it.  I think she feels that her Borg side protects her, and she's afraid of her frail, human side.

If Seven was poorly written, it was because she ended up being the main character on a show that's supposed to be an ensemble.  She was Michael Burnham before Michael Burnham, and she was overexposed by writers that, for the most part, didn't know what they were doing.  But I think she's one of the best ideas for a character in Trek history.  And even considering the Voyager writing staff, I think she's one of the most interesting characters in Trek.

The Erica Thomas Stuff:

PREFACE - I think the "send her back" stuff is abhorrent, and I don't think any human should ever tell any other human to go back where they came from.  It's important to make all immigrants, especially minorities, feel welcome and American. 

(I shouldn't have to have this preface but I felt it necessary).

If he told her to go back to where she came from or her original country, then roast him.  We don't have room in our society for that, and if you want to say that in public, you get whatever blowback comes at you.  My problem is with two aspects of the story:

1. She's walked back enough of her statement that it might be possible that it wasn't racial at all.  It may just be an asshole who wanted to make a scene at a grocery store.  I'm almost more mad at him for yelling at her because she's pregnant than yelling at her because she's black.  If he didn't say "go back to your country" or "go back to where you came from" then I don't think that's okay either.  You can't yell fire in a crowded room for a reason.

2. Finding the truth these days is exceptionally hard.  When you have to throw out 90% of all publications because they're clearly biased one way or another (#IStandWithErica or #HateHoax), it's hard to find your center.  There are so many different versions of the story out there.  Does he not identify as being white?  Does that matter?  Is he actually an Anti-Trumper and a hardcore Democrat?  Does that matter?  Would he use Trumpy language if he hates Trump?  Does that matter?

There are real, vile, horrible racist things being done and said.  We don't need to make anything up or even give the impression that stuff is being made up.  It's way too volatile.

I did have some thoughts about the Azure Gate Bridge when I saw the Golden Gate Bridge.  I thought briefly of apes and terminators and Magneto when we went over the bridge itself.  I did visit the Presidio but don't remember it from As Time Goes By.

I also thought about the Pilot, amongst other things, when I was in Golden Gate Park.

I've watched the first six episodes of Titans, and I really liked it.  I was impressed at how real the world felt, even with aliens and demons and everything.  I feel like this show could take place in the Snyderverse - it has the violence and "maturity" that I feel like Snyder was going for...but with the depth and layers that were needed to explain why Batman was acting so differently than we were accustomed.

I know a bit how this season ends, but I feel like they're doing a good job of weaving Dick's story in.  Sending Jason Todd to keep Dick up to date on Batman's activities was good - I feel like they could've done the same for Alfred on the episode where he was referenced.

I do feel like Dick should have more friends in the superhero world.  I know Wonder Girl shows up at some point, but I feel like they're making Dick an outsider more than he probably would be realistically.

Well, mermaids have roots in a lot of places.  Mesopotamia, Europe, Africa, Asia.  I don't know which ones predates the others, but the idea of "half human, half fish and lives underwater" is about as original as "flood that covered the earth" or "son of god" - which exists in just about every civilization ever. 

The weird part of the Little Mermaid part is that it's based on a Dutch story (so you'd think lighter skin) but the story takes place in the Caribbean (so you'd think darker skin)

Of course, mermaids aren't real so it doesn't matter.  They don't have exposure to the Sun so the biological reason for skin color in humans is irrelevant.

I really do miss when Agents of Shield would show the aftermath of the MCU movies.  I know it was an abusive relationship, but that part about it I really liked.

I'll play Informant for a brief second and show outrage for yet another redhead being race-swapped to a black person.

I honestly don't care who plays Ariel because I'll never see that movie, but it is strange that this seems to be a legitimate trend that I know bothered Informant.  Why is it always redhead to black seemingly?

Legion is a really fun show to watch, even when I don't know what's going on or remember any of the characters' names

Apparently Matthew Vaughn wanted to do First Class, then Apocalypse, then Days of Future Past.  He wanted the First Class people to get their own movie as a team (after coming together in First Class) before doing Days of Future Past.  Fox apparently heard the plan and demanded they flip DoFP and Apocalypse to take advantage of the money grab to get the old cast and the new cast. 

And, honestly, that makes more sense from a story perspective.  If you end the series with Days of Future Past, the future sequence with Wolverine could've been the end.  Everything worked out and sorta tied together.  Instead, they tried to do more with the younger versions even though they'd already established that they'd saved the future.  It's hard to fear for Scott and Jean and Charles and Hank in Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix when we saw them okay in the future.

On the Weekly Planet podcast, one of the hosts likes to talk about how the X-Men films' continuity is as simple as "do you remember the last movie?  That's good enough" - if you ever try and remember passed the previous movie, the continuity sorta falls apart.

It's just crazy that the X-Men films were fine, broke their continuity with prequels, and then had a movie to fix the continuity....before trashing it all over again.

I don't know what the legacy of the X-Men films is.  The three movies I like the most (X2, First Class, and Logan) don't feel like they exist in the same universe despite the fact that they all have a lot of the same characters, mostly played by the same people (Wolverine is in all three).  It's a series that technically has two finales (Logan and Days of Future Past) but doesn't end either place.

Well, I'm certainly not an expert.  If impeachment hinders a Democratic push for the White House against Trump or even Pence, it doesn't make sense.  I just have read a lot on it and loved John Oliver's analysis.

I think I trust Pelosi more than some.  I don't buy the "I'm waiting so that we can send him to jail" argument because I think you can have that cake and eat it too.

There's no way that's true.

The prosecution bungled a bunch of things, and a ton of coincidental items happened to overlap at one specific time that made things easy on the defense.....but I don't think the defense actually convinced anyone of anything.  And that's why I picked that specific example - the defense simply created a narrative that played into the minds of people who already thought he was guilty.  That the LAPD wants to take down black men (powerful or not) and are willing to use their power to make that happen.

If you watch the fantastic documentary OJ: Made in America, the jury essentially admits that they ruled the way they did because they wanted revenge for Rodney King.  None of them watched the trial and were convinced that he was innocent.  And depending on how far you meant by "after" the trial, almost everyone is convinced now that he did do it...outside of the supercharged political climate that the trial took place in (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the … edirect=on)

And that's what you would have in an impeachment trial.  Two sides that already are locked in on their opinion and two sides arguing a case to their own side.  Is it foolhardy to try?  I don't think so because I think we owe it to the system itself to say "he did bad things, and people stood up to him."  Just like I think it would've been insulting to Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman to not bring to trial the one guy who could've done the murders, even if they knew what we know now.  Not necessarily because it's the wily thing to do but because it's the right thing to do.

Again, you don't even have to call a vote.  Just present the evidence and get it out there as much as possible.  It only takes a few hundred votes to take way Trump's win in 2016.  Yeah, nominating someone not historically unpopular with 20+ years of political baggage will probably get you there....but shouldn't they use every weapon in their arsenal?

I don't follow anyone political on Twitter, but I occasionally dip my toe into political waters to see what people are thinking.  My newest political curiosity is how active liberal Twitter people are handling this particular conundrum: if Trump is awful and needs to be impeached and the Democratic Party is the beacon of all goodness, how are people handling the idea that the Democratic Party is seemingly refusing to impeach Trump?

When Trump was elected, I wasn't as upset as everyone else.  I thought this because I didn't think Trump was all that popular with mainstream Republicans (I was quite wrong there) and I thought Democrats would lead the charge against Trump on Day One, and they'd boot him from office whenever he had a misstep.

I was also wrong there.  While Democrats obviously despise Trump and all that he stands for, the anger seems to be isolated to interviews on Rachel Maddow and on Twitter.  There's a lot of talk and very little action.  It actually reminds me of the "thoughts and prayers" that Republicans do whenever there is a mass shooting.  For all Trump's done and for all the evidence they have, we get the Democratic version of "thoughts and prayers"

Stepping back, I get it.  Is it worth it to impeach Trump when there's a really good chance that Senate Republicans won't pass it?  You'd need more than a handful of Republicans to step over the aisle, and while I thought it was possible in 2016, I don't think it's possible now.  I can see why Pelosi and Democrats don't want to give him the OJ-like ability to claim himself innocent when everyone knows he's not.

So when I look, I get this confusion from liberals on Twitter.  It's this "IMPEACH TRUMP NOW!" followed by a "Pelosi knows what she's doing."  Or "PELOSI SHOULD EITHER IMPEACH HIM OR RESIGN" followed by someone attacking that person for not getting in line.  Like Bernie and Hillary, we're coming up on a Civil War inside the Democratic Party where people are either starting to turn on Pelosi (in some cases, calling her complicit to Trump's crimes) or holding the line because that's what Pelosi is doing.

And I'm baffled by it all, honestly.  Yes, Trump is the leader of the Republican party.  And since he's popular (enough) with the base and since it's good for them to have a Republican in the White House, I understand why most Republicans can't just openly turn on him.  But I also assume they'd all be happier with Pence both in the White House and on the ticket.  He's a more traditional conservative (although arguably worse than Trump on certain issues in every definition of that word for everyone concerned), and I think certain parts of the Republican base would be happier to vote for him than Trump.

For Democrats....I don't know what.  I see where Pelosi is coming from, but her inaction almost makes me believe in the idea that Democrats and Republicans are just our labels and everyone in Congress is essentially on the same side.  That they're all happy with the status quo but that they have to rabble on Twitter to make certain people feel better.

Because, yeah, the Senate probably won't kick him out (even though it makes sense for them to).  And even if they did, he probably wouldn't leave peacefully.  And that's a huge problem in itself.  But I think what Pelosi thinks they have to lose isn't really what they have to lose.

If the Senate refuses to boot him, Trump will be able to say he was not guilty - Well, he's saying that now.  And he'd say it even if he was found guilty.  That's not going to change.

If the Senate refuses to boot him, it might affect the election - In certain years, maybe.  This year?  I think most people have a rock-hard opinion of Trump and that an impeachment result (either way) will not persuade their vote in 2020.  Certain people will vote for Trump in 2020 no matter what.  Certain people will vote for his opponent (no matter who that is) no matter what.  People have decided if he's guilty or innocent, and the Senate vote won't have any impact on what they think.  I think even most independents (myself included) have already made up their minds on him.  So who's still unsure?  Wouldn't bringing up all the evidence and showing it convince more people than a strictly-political vote convince people?  Even if you get a few hundred votes to flip in the right place or convince a few hundred people who sat out in 2016 to vote....that's enough to win.

The only thing I can think of is that Pelosi is 100% convinced that someone will beat him in 2020.  That she'd rather face Trump than Pence.  And she might be right.  The map overwhelmingly helps Democrats over Republicans, and it took a historically unpopular candidate in Clinton to lose.  And even then, she barely lost and still overwhelmingly won the popular vote.  I think essentially anyone in the field can beat him, and it might not even be that hard.

If that's the case, maybe you just wait and beat him.  But I read an idea online that the House should go through the impeachment process and then never throw it to the Senate.  Go through the whole evidence procedure but never call for a vote.  So you'd give the American public all the information without ever giving Trump a chance to exonerate himself.  I mean he'll consider this an exoneration and his fans would too....but they're going to anyway.

I think it's an interesting strategy.

It's interesting.  For the most part, every show has to sell you on plot first.  Great characters usually only develop out of some sort of interesting plot.

To me, the best show ever (not my favorite) is HBO's the Wire.  It's a show that I've recommended dozens of times, but it's also a show that I always mention "starts slow but stick with it."  A lot of people say to give it 4 episodes before you quit on it, essentially demanding that people fight through almost *half* the first season before they're allowed to decide if they like it or not.  That show is almost exclusively about characters - there's certainly a lot of plot, but the plot for that show is decidedly disconnected for the most part.  When I sell the show to people, I sell the realism and the characters.

My favorite show is LOST.  LOST is an interesting case study because it's a show that always had a fight between plot and characters.  People that were there for plot hated the show.  People that were there for characters loved it.  But almost everyone that watched the show watched because of the plot.  I can distinctly remember looking at a newspaper ad for LOST - it was Jurassic Park meets Castaway - two things that intrigued me at the time.  None of the advertisements said "don't worry about the plot!  You'll love the characters!" and I'm not sure I would've watched if they did.

I also distinctly remember ads for Sliders.  And, again, I was sold on plot.  Four people land on a world run by the Russian!  A world dying of disease!  A world about to be destroyed by an asteroid!  But it wasn't anything about characters.

I think the problem with Sliders in this respect is that shows in that time were about plot.  You might have a show with great characters, but it was usually incidental.  Mulder and Scully are great characters, but I think the X-Files cared more about plot than characterization because they needed a plot to draw people in.

Today, I think you can sell a show on characters.  I think Better Call Saul is a show that draws people in on characters and not plot.  People know the plot of Better Call Saul, but they want to see Jimmy/Saul.

I think most people come to a show for the plot and stay for the characters.  I think that's the case for Sliders.  I think the unique thing about Sliders is that the plot is so compelling and so infinite and so untapped that people might've come for the plot, stayed for the characters, and then stayed for the plot as the characters fell one by one.

Muwhahah, nice

That really is interesting.  I feel like that's an American way of thinking - that whatever we did was the right thing.  That we've perfected a sort of way of living and that anything different is inherently flawed.

One interesting one is the Earth that Smarter Quinn talks about in the Pilot.  The utopia Earth.  Someone, somewhere, told me that they believed that the Earth that Smarter Quinn is talking about is, in fact, the Luck of the Draw world.  I prefer to think that it isn't, just to maintain the hope that the world Smarter Quinn talked about was a real utopia and not a result of a Lottery.  But if it was, it's a bit of a dark notion.  Utopia exists but there's always a price.

It renders a lot of long term storylines moot but characterization remains.  The main characters still grow and change even if the setting changes.  It would be like a show that's about a journey.  Sam and Dean go to a new place each week with very few recurring characters, but the brothers still grew and evolved.  Preacher is essentially about a road trip, and it's setting/background characters change each season.  Even something like Star Trek has the crew going to a new planet each time (looking more at Discovery than any of the older shows since it's more serialized).

I do think that a modern re-telling wouldn't necessarily need to be one world per episode.  I think it might be interesting to stay on a world for 2-5 episode stretches and then move on.  For example, if they were to do a 12-episode season and visit four worlds per season.  I think it would allow for more drama and less deus ex machina to get the sliders out of a jam each week.

It's weird.  The Monitor showed up on Arrow first, and he had the biggest "cameo" on that.  Then he showed up on Supergirl and Legends, while also sorta being a part of the Flash finale (as the crisis moved up to 2019).

But what are we to make of his appearances on Supergirl and Legends?  On Supergirl, he release's J'onn's (evil?) brother from some sort of imprisonment.  Then he rescued (?) the dead (?) Lex Luthor to end the season.  On Legends, he showed up, did nothing, and was used mostly for comic relief as he was seen eating popcorn.

I don't know what they're setting up with him.  He seemed like a good guy fighting an impossible fight on the Arrow finale (after being a sometimes good / sometimes bad character in the crossover).  On Supergirl, he seemed like a bad guy (working with / helping two supervillains).  On Legends, he did nothing.

It's cool that they're going to have a storyline potentially bleed through all five shows next season, and it's going to potentially be a cool sendoff to Arrow and a big step in the Arrowverse.  But I found the Monitor cameos to be much more confusing than the "WOW" tease that I think we were supposed to be left with.

I've enjoyed the episodes, and I feel like the TV writers have decided to simply return the movie division's favor and ignore the movies.  I feel like they've been the little brother for long enough, and they just want to do their own thing.  No more connections, no more mentions.  If a snap happened, it doesn't matter.  If there's an Iron Man and a Captain America and a Thor and Avengers, it doesn't matter.  Just like it didn't matter that the Avengers brought every hero of all time (including Howard the Duck) to fight Thanos, and there wasn't Quake or Inhumans or anyone else that could've helped.

And I think that's fine.  Daredevil supposedly exists in that universe even though it never felt like it.  It's sad because I think it could've been cool to introduce people on the show and have them bleed into the movies and vice versa.  While they were never going to get Chris Evans, it was cool that they got Jaimie Alexander.  It was cool that there was a plotline on AoS to explain how the Helicarrier got there in Age of Ultron.  It was cool that they had to react to Captain America: Winter Soldier and clean up after Thor: The Dark World.

But when the movies didn't seem like they cared, it's fine that the show decided the same.  Just do what the Netflix shows did - carve out your own little place and don't worry about anything else.