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Well, that's because we've stopped seeing each other as people with different political beliefs.  If you're a Republican, you see liberals as whiny, weak, East/West coast snobs who look down on hard-working people.  If you're a Democrat, you see conservatives as naive, prejudiced hillbillies who hate everything that isn't Fox News.

Voting for Trump doesn't mean that you agree with everything he does or everything he stands for.  There are countless issues, and everyone weighs those issues differently before they make their choice.  If your number one issue is (EXAMPLE) and your candidate is still advocating your side of (EXAMPLE) , then you'll support that candidate no matter what else they do.  You could be a fiscal conservative and a social liberal and you could vote for either party depending on a million factors in your own life and how they rank at any particular time.

So you can like what Trump has done with the economy and still support gay marriage.  Or protect children from bullies.  Or a hundred different things that Trump might not support.  It's not as black and white as people want it to be.  It wasn't 20 years ago when Roseanne first aired, and it isn't now.

I didn't turn it off.  The plane landed and I stopped caring

If it were good, I'd probably have pursued the ending.  But there wasn't enough good to outweigh the bad.

So is the DC Animated stuff trying to aim to a more mature audience?

How tall are you, Grizzlor?

Note: I haven't watched the finale.  So I don't know what was wrapped up and what wasn't, but I assume based on what I've scanned that it's a mess.

All that being said....I don't like reboots.  Whatever the property, I like the idea that the previous continuity exists in one way or another.  I prefer a "Next Generation" format when it comes to follow-ups because you're building on a foundation, even if that foundation is weak or full of holes.

I'm completely cool with ireactions' idea for a second series, but I'd make it a second series.  Whatever the conspiracy between Mulder/Scully/CSM/etc ends up being, it's over.  It's done.  And assuming it being done doesn't end the world, I think it's done.

So Summer Glau's character shows up at the FBI, and she stumbles upon the record of Fox Mulder.  She has her own ties to the supernatural, and she's interested in the fact that these files show that werewolves and vampires and aliens are potentially real.  And whether Fox is dead and whether Scully is in England, it really doesn't have to matter.  There can be a new, fresh conspiracy with no ties to the original....whether or not the original conspiracy made any sense.

That way, the universe continues to grow.  Maybe we see the ripples from some of Mulder's work, even though Mulder may or may not appear.  X-Files fans can get their new adventures with new characters and new villains....while also knowing that nothing that ever happened previously has been erased.

I haven't seen the finale, but I watched the penultimate episode (catching up from missing everything the week of my Honeymoon).  Alan Sepinwall says that it would've made a great finale, and I agree.  It definitely feels like the end of the Mulder and Scully adventures.  I don't know if it plays into the final My Struggle, but I could've easily seen that be the end.

One question I have - Duchovny seems really wooden this year.  I can't tell if he doesn't care or if he's just gotten bad at acting, but it just seems like he's reading his lines.  There doesn't seem to be much emotion behind them.  A lot of people claimed he was checked out last season, but this one seems just as bad (or worse).  Has anyone else thought that?  I think Gillian has been great, but Duchovny seems really out of it.  I know he's a good actor because I've seen it before.

Well, here's my $0.02 as someone who doesn't like guns and doesn't own one.  Guns might not have value to you, but they clearly have value to millions of people who don't want to kill others.  And while it's easy to dismiss that as someone who doesn't like guns, I think it's important for the debate to take that into account.

So what might some of those reasons be, and what would be a safe and effective way to appease both parties.

"I like to hunt with guns"

This is a big thing for people.  Hunting can be a time-honored tradition with families, and guns are essential to the process.  People will fight hard for tradition and family and memories, and so I think there needs to be a hunting exemption. 

My idea - either you "rent" your guns from a specific office where you keep it (near a hunting ground) and you aren't allowed to take it off the ground.  If you only want the gun when you're hunting, this makes sense (just like how you rent bowling shoes or a paintball gun or ice skates).

"Guns are fun to shoot"

This is something that people have a problem with, but it can be a hobby like anything else.  It's a skill you can learn, and there's adrenaline that you get from shooting. 

My idea - create special gun ranges where people can go and shoot guns for free.  Everything is subsidized by the government - the guns themselves, ammo, targets, and most importantly, security.  And assuming that the security is strong enough, I'd be okay letting people shoot basically whatever guns they want.  This is where I'd want background checks to be run, but if people want to shoot and it can be safe, I don't see any reason why they can't be allowed to shoot.

"I need a gun for protection"

This is the trickiest one.  I saw an online debate where people were arguing in favor of AR-15s because they were better for protection.  That the gun makes it more likely that you'd only hurt an intruder.  I don't know nearly enough about guns to know if that's true, and honestly, it doesn't matter to me.

What's interesting...and it's something that I don't see much....is why people are so scared.  Home invasion seems to be a very-real threat that people are concerned about, and it's not something that seems to be addressed.  So I wonder...are home invasions more prevalent in the US than other countries?  If not, how do foreigners make their families feel safe?  If so, what do other countries do to keep home invasions down?

And I honestly don't have an idea here.  You could stiffen the punishment for a home invasion to hopefully keep the numbers down.  Maybe that might help people feel safe.  Maybe subsidize other forms of home security so that people don't think guns are their only option.  Additional police presence?  Subsidize something like tazers or a non-lethal form of home protection?

And that's the thing.  I think most people just don't feel safe.  And not from the government....from each other.  And when the government talks about taking away people's guns, I think most people aren't worried about the government taking over - I think it's just that they're going to feel less safe.  That the police won't get there in time.  That their spouse or children could be killed because they don't have the tools to defend them.

Now I know it might seem silly to say an assault rifle is necessary for security, but some people feel that way.  Take away their gun, and they feel like their child is in danger.  And I think until both sides understand where the other side is coming from, we're just not going to get any better on this issue.

I don't think that's true.  I watch a lot of sports, and if I want analysis, I could look at millions of fans' opinions....or I could seek out an expert that either played the game or has studied it for a very long time.  I usually choose the latter.

While I do find it silly that reviewers are forced to take a movie like Dumb and Dumber and somehow put it on the same scale as The Shawshank Redemption....I think critics have a lot that they can offer.  I would just like to see movies judged on their individual merit - Dumb and Dumber can be a 9/10 if it's a movie that tried to be a dumb comedy and succeeded in making me laugh.  A movie that's more serious and classical can be a 4/10 for failing, even if it's a movie that's "better" than Dumb and Dumber.

Because, yes, moviegoers can be more selective.  So critics shouldn't say "go see the Shape of Water because it's a better movie than Super Troopers 2" because some people don't want to make that decision.

Instead, it should be "if you've chosen to go see this movie, here's how it performed."

I felt like the episode was 100% a case of ireactions' theory on the X-Files.  This was just a writer/writers being given the X-Files sandbox and being allowed to do whatever they want with it.  This episode took place at some point in the future where technology is more advanced than it is now, and this is one of their stories.

I loved it.

I don't only think it was one of the best episodes of X-Files I've seen in a while.  I legitimately think it was one of my favorite episodes of any TV show that I've seen recently.  It was far-fetched (AI team up to kill the guy that won't tip his robot chef), but it was thrilling and engrossing and a whole lot of fun.  It could've easily been an episode of Black Mirror, but the fact that it was Mulder and Scully made it that much better.  It's these two legends of TV, brought back into the modern time, and now they have to deal with this Black Mirror scenario.

So many things were effective.  I thought, for the first part, that Mulder and Scully wouldn't speak the whole episode.  That only the AI would speak.  The silent movie effect was still powerful.  And the cold, alien, lifeless setting of the rest of the episode made the final scene in the full-of-life diner so much livelier. 

I'm not kidding.  I absolutely loved it.

What I think is funny is there are people who will make fun of "thoughts and prayers" and then post some hashtag like #BanAssaultRifles to Facebook.  They're making fun of the worthless gesture and then making a worthless gesture themselves.

I don't like guns.  If there were a vote, I'd happily vote to ban gun sales or guns or whatever.  But at the same time, I also see the problem as being way bigger than most people think.  I think there are a lot of angry people, and I think there'd still be mass shootings if all guns magically disappeared.  We should be working on guns, but we also need to work on ourselves.

But what's funny is that people on the left talk about the NRA as being this big juggernaut, and it isn't.  The only weapon the NRA has is the same weapon that everyone on the other side has.  The big difference is that the NRA.....has much smaller numbers than the anti-gun people. 

NRA voters are single-issue voters.  They only vote on gun-related things.  If they were another organization, they'd be considered a bastion of American democracy.  They're active.  They vote.  They rally.  They contact their government.  They do everything that American citizens are supposed to do.

The anti-gun chunk of society has all the tools they need to run the NRA into the ground.  If they actually got up and called their congressmen and women, if they actually went out and voted, if they actually rallied, then they'd be fine.  Some do.  There are gonna be huge rallies regarding the stuff in Florida.  But the NRA does it *every day*.  The anti-gun people can't match the NRA's intensity, and that's why the NRA wins.

I don't know if I agree with that.  Steve is a boring character, but he's boring in a lot of the same way (comic) Superman is boring.  He does the right thing.  He thinks with his conscience.  And he's willing to fight if someone disagrees with him.

That's sorta what I'm talking about in my review.  I was surprised at how much character stuff there was.  I think they missed the mark on some stuff, but you get a pretty good idea about the depth of his friendship with Bucky.  You get a pretty decent idea of what makes this guy tick and what makes him angry.  When you look at the Captain America trilogy, there's actually a decent foundation for those movies.  First Avenger is the worst of the three (in my opinion), but it's almost a Batman Begins situation.  Dark Knight is a better movie, but there's no Dark Knight if Batman Begins didn't do heavy lifting.

I was impressed.  Not blown away.  But impressed.

I haven't seen Black Panther yet.  I hope to see it soon.

***************

I've recently been watching the MCU films with my fiancee.  She's not into comic books or superheroes, and as I've said many times on this board, I think the MCU is very accessible to people who don't typically like comic books.  We finally got up to Captain America: the First Avenger, and I was surprised by it.  I hadn't seen it since it came out, and I'd resigned it to the pile of "worst MCU movies".  Whenever it's brought up here, it's regularly mentioned as a movie that worked only as a preview to Avengers and not able to stand on its own.

Watching it again....I really disagree.

It's not a movie without its flaws.  My fiancee certainly wasn't wowed by it or the character of Captain America, but I think it works on a lot of levels.  Steve is a very compelling protagonist that you're rooting for from the first frame he's in.  You believe in his friendship with Bucky (which will become more important in later movies), and the world that's built feels real and genuine. 

Does the movie set up the Avengers?  Sort of?  The Tesseract is both the McGuffin here and in the Avengers, and the ending certainly sets up the idea that Captain America is in the modern times, but I didn't get the impression that those two things were really enough to de-rail the movie.  The emotional thrust of the film is still Steve and his friends, and that's pretty resolved before any of the future stuff even happens.  Even then, Steve isn't wowed by the future or the potential of joining a team of superheroes...he's sad about Peggy.

There's stuff I didn't like.  I don't understand why Steve was so easily turned into a caricature.  He starts the movie so desperate to join the war effort that he's willing to commit perjury to try again and again.  Even if the Senator was a great salesman, Steve wasn't interested in helping domestically - he wanted to lay his life on the line.  If General Tommy Lee Jones didn't want him, I'd figure he'd simply enlist with his new body - there didn't seem to be anything stopping him.

I also didn't understand why General Tommy Lee Jones didn't want Steve.  Sure, he'd be disappointed that the super-soldier program only produced one guy....but it produced one guy.  Why not use him?  Or even *see if he's worth using* before just dumping him.  Steve literally changes the course of the war all by himself.  Even if he was just a great soldier, I thought it was crazy to turn him into a song and dance man, and I don't see what that really did for his arc.

And I get that Steve is now a top specimen, but the movie actually shows him running into a window because he's not used to being so big/strong/fast.  This wasn't a Neo situation and skills were downloaded into him.  He's the same scrawny kid in a small body.  I don't understand how he can, all of the sudden, fight.  And ride a motorcycle.  And shoot guns.  And fly planes.  He had the training at the base, but he was shown to be pretty below average.  He's small, but if he's beaten up as much as he is, he clearly can't fight either (and those are two different things I'm talking about).  He shouldn't have any of those skills.

SQ21 Edit - Skip the song and dance stuff.  Everyone involved immediately understands that Steve is a very powerful weapon.  But 1) he can't fight and 2) he's too important to be risked on anything but the most important missions.  He's sent to train (willingly) and gets trained by the best.  Meanwhile, different parts of the war effort keep asking to use him, but it's always rejected - not important enough.  When the POWs held by Red Skull are mentioned, it's declined.  And that's when Steve decides to take matters into his own hands, and the movie can continue from there.

All in all, it's not a great movie.  But while I went in thinking it's one of the worst Phase 1 movies, I think it's actually better than everything but the first Iron Man.  That's not saying much because Phase One is the weakest one, but I found myself really enjoying it.

Well, was Trek really an ensemble?  We had episodes for Troi or Kim or whatever, but the shows almost always focused on the captain and one or two crew members.

Alan Sepinwall speculated that maybe we'll get a big name (if Jason Issacs and Michelle Yeoh count as big names) captain for each season.  Not necessarily meaning that the captains will end up dead - maybe the ship changes continue - we've never followed one crewmember on multiple ships before - that could be interesting, actually.

But there's actually a decently fresh slate, and it all sorta ties into the idea that this was supposed to be an anthology show.  It'd actually be nice if the ship *wasn't* called the Discovery so it could actually just be about....discovery.  I think they're pretty committed at this point, but I'd be pretty interested in this cast with a new premise. 

I still sorta wish the Discovery had flung itself 400 years in the future.  Maybe they'd trick Starfleet and the rest of the Alpha Quadrant into thinking the spore drive was too dangerous, and that's why no one uses it.  Then they arrive safely in the future, and it's fair game again.  The crew would both be obsolete (a little like Scotty in Relics) and cutting edge at the same time.

Can we just assume, sorta like the Sliders theory, that every episode of the show is hypothetically a different Mulder and Scully from a different parallel universe?

Ha, possibly. I just worry they've written themselves into a corner.  I'll look forward to seeing how they pull it off.

Which sucks, by the way.  I actually really like the idea of Starfleet "softening" their look as they move toward a more exploratory-based mission.

I like the show.  I really do.  In fact, if Discovery was a Orville-type show taking place out of continuity, I think I'd legitimately love it.  The problem is that the show wants me to believe that it's taking place during a period of Trek history that is VERY known to people.  And they keep showing us stuff that is unknown or doesn't fit or was needlessly changed.  We've had the "they should've set this in a different time period" conversation enough that we don't need to re-hash it.

But damn.  It's Trek but it's not.  It's good but it could be great.  It wants to belong but doesn't really.

The people in charge say it'll all make sense.  I don't really believe them, but I'm going to try not to care anymore.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/41171 … black-suit

It's hard to say if this was cut from Snyder's vision or Whedon's, but it's still cool to see the black suit in live action.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/41166 … solo-movie

Just the concept of this movie confuses me so much.

Well, that's the thing.  There are tons of cool characters that could've been brought back if they really wanted (going back to Jo and Ellen).  And yet Rowena comes back time and again.  A super-powerful witch is a cool anti-hero, but couldn't they just introduce someone new?

Well, another way they could do it would be for Oliver to get thrown in prison for vigilantism (not able to connect him to any murders as the Green Arrow, since "The Arrow" did more murdering than GA), and then for the city to vote to legalize vigilantism.  Or for James to threaten the city to the point where the city/government has to officially pardon Oliver to save them.

It wouldn't really work if both of them were unmasked, but maybe he gets thrown in a secret prison so the general public doesn't know his identity? (He probably couldn't be mayor in this case)

If I were in charge, Oliver would've gone to prison and Barry would've revealed his identity to the world.  It's the most-interesting way to deal with the two characters.  The more-powerful guy has to worry about being vulnerable (since people know who he is and who Iris is).  For example, would Barry get to keep his job at CCPD?  Would Joe?  Would Iris have to go into hiding?  There's a ton that could be done with it.

With Oliver, I don't know if they could follow the plot of SuperMax, but it'd be interesting if he was in prison and resigned to it like Barry was.  The problem is....where do you go with it?  Oliver couldn't have his case overturned - he did murder people.  Would he escape Supermax and just be a fugitive?  Would he have to fake his death....again?

Spoilers for this week's Discovery:

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So we got to the end of the Terran arc.  I thought it was pretty good, but then they came to the end.....and I thought they were going to make everything right.  There were a couple of lines of dialogue that seemed like they'd be solving the puzzle.

1. They talk about the Terrans destroying the network.  I thought...."okay, here's how they fix the spore problem.  The Terrans destroy the network for everyone, across all universes, and then no one can ever use it.  People could try and recreate it, but it'll never work again.  That's why we never hear of it again."

But, nope.  They save it.  And the spore network....controls all life in the multiverse?  I'm sure they mentioned something about it in a previous episode, but I started getting visions of midichlorians.

2. (summarized) "We're back in the Alpha Quadrant in our universe, but we missed the time by a little bit" - I thought "YES! This is when they move this to the future.  Maybe they end up in the 25th century and we can take this beyond the TNG era into a new place.  We can have this ship out of time, and maybe the fact that the Discovery vanished without a trace convinces the Alpha Quadrant species to come together and agree not to research the spores or something."

But nope.  They're a few months in the future and they're sticking with the Klingon War stuff.  I understand that it's the crux of the show (and, specifically, Michael's character).  But if they're gonna play with time travel, why not move the show into the future if they can?

It was still a great episode, but I was hoping it'd take this thing in a new direction.

Oh and BTW, I'm also a little tired of the Trump jabs.  If Fox is so pissed off about Trump, why doesn't he spend his time trying to investigate him?  He's already free, apparently, to do whatever he wants.

I get that Hollywood doesn't love Trump and wants to pat themselves on the back for speaking out to millions of people, but it really dates the show.  He's going to be out of office before we know it, and these little comments are going to look so petty one day.

I really enjoyed this episode.  I thought it was a ton of fun....particularly when Reggie was re-edited into the opening credits and clips from the show.  I thought the actor that played Reggie had great comedic timing and played the part perfectly.

The scene with They and Mulder was played with this fun, surreal quality, and I think the whole Mandela/Mengele Effect was played wonderfully.  It's strange that the best two episodes of the revival (IMO) have been, basically, straight-up comedies, but it's really worked for them when they've gone for it.

It is weird.  If the chaos behind the scenes of the Han Solo movie had been for a DC movie, I think it'd be out of control.  But since it's Star Wars, it seems like the bad news is tempered a bit.

Does Disney pay off people to give them better press?  It wouldn't surprise me.  But I think the most likely case is that people want to hear about chaos at DC.  I think the public persona is that those movies are failures and the Marvel movies are successes.  So people will click to read a story about "behind the scenes problems at DC" or "will Affleck leave?  who will replace him?"  Right now, superhero films are the height of clickbait, and I think these sites are just playing to the crowd.

If DC films were more beloved and Marvel films more chaotic, I think it'd be swapped....Disney or no.

Well that's the thing.  In a city where a guy can have a meta power that turns him into a nuclear bomb, is Iris really *ever* safe?

I wonder how The Last Jedi would've been received if these changes were made:

- Rose and Finn sneak onto Snoke's ship.  Evil BB8 does not notice them.

- The throne room sequence from Rey's entrance to the death of the imperial guards is the same

- The rebels escape is the same

- When Kylo asks Rey to go with him, we don't see her answer.  It cuts away with Kylo holding his hand out and her looking at him.

- Rose and Finn work on the tracking computer.  They look back and DJ is gone.

- Hux enters the throne room to find Snoke and the imperial guards dead.  No one else is there.  No sign of Kylo or Rey.  Hux assumes command just as the final Resistance ship runs out of fuel. 

- Rose finishes her work and Finn radios to Poe to jump to light speed.  No one answers.  They look out a nearby window to see the ship explode.  As far as they know, the Resistance was just ended.

- Movie ends with the Resistance (the whole group that escaped) on the same red planet.  Their escape worked.  Hux never finds out that they got away.  Finn and Rose are stuck on the big destroyer, thinking they're alone now.  Kylo and Rey are gone.  Hux is in command of the First Order but also thinks the war is over.  Luke's story is still incomplete.

Ways I think it works:

1. It's a shorter movie.  The extra scenes on Ahch-To don't happen.

2. There's less failure (but still enough for the theme to work).  Finn and Rose accomplish their goals - it's just too late to save the ship (and Holdo, I guess).  The Resistance makes a full escape - their plan works perfectly.  Perhaps Rey got through to Kylo.

3. Luke is still an option to use for Episode IX (especially since Leia essentially says goodbye in this movie).

4. The galaxy is in a really interesting place.  The First Order is led by an incompetent fool who thinks the war is over.  The Resistance is small but not too small.  Help could still be coming.  And completely outside of the First Order/Resistance fight is Kylo and Rey, who have disappeared from the playing board.  Are they going to find the Knights of Ren?  Are they on the good side?  Or the bad side?  What will Finn and Rose do now, especially since Finn thinks all his friends are dead?

5. It leaves a lot of mysteries alive (which people seem to love).

What do we think?

Psych is one of the shows I completely missed when it was on.  I've never seen more than 5 minutes of it.  Seems like something I'd like, but I've never seen it.

Anyone watched Black Mirror Season 4 yet?

I really liked it.  I found this year's stories to be less dark, especially the endings.  Even when there are episodes where people do really horrible things (episodes 1 and 3, for example), justice is served by the end.

Slight spoilers for the final episode - I'm really hoping that it takes place in some weird continuity and isn't actually an attempted to tie the whole series together.  To me, Black Mirror functions the best when they're showing us a different world each week.  I don't want it to be one universe and I don't want it to be our world.  Just close enough to scare us but just far enough away that we can steer away

In my continuing "casual X-Files fan" mode of watching this show, I was confused - I thought Mulder and Scully were actively a couple.  Weren't they living together and snuggling on the couch last episode?

(I just read irreactions' "This" review so maybe that was a simulation or an individual's vision of Mulder and Scully?)