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Is it just me or did all these season-long plotlines -- Men of Letters, Lucifer's spawn, Mary's detachment -- just get resolved in a very rushed, anti-climactic way? There was no build-up, no rising action. A lot of troubling, random events followed by the hunters storming the Men of Letters installation and blowing it up. Tremendously rushed, anti-climactic deaths for two characters, one of whom didn't even appear onscreen. And before there was any time to absorb that, the nephilim is born and we only glimpse it before the season ends. This didn't feel like a season finale.

Comey will testify publicly to the Senate, so those questions will be asked.

I have also been watching WEINER, a documentary about another crazy politician who lacked any impulse control and blew up his own life. Twice.

http://www.watchonline.red/weiner-2016-watch-online/

Retail Link: https://www.amazon.com/Weiner-Anthony/dp/B01IURTFIC

I sometimes wonder what the difference is between being restrained and being withholding? That said, the story absolutely demanded that Harry return to Earth 2; there was no compelling reason for him to stay on Earth 1 once Zoom was defeated.

**

ARROW has had a good season as Stephen Amell was apparently successful in convincing the producers to give up on magical resurrections and telekinetic villains and return to street-level storytelling.

There's been some awkward hiccups here and there, obviously -- the Black Siren tease was misguided, Evelyn turning her back on Oliver for being a murderer and signing up with the cop-killing, innocent slaughtering Prometheus remains incomprehensible, Wild Dog giving up his daughter because he spilled soup was bizarre, Thea's absences have been oddly random -- but on the whole, it's been a really great season of moral quandaries, psychological exploration, experimental storytelling (an entire episode of Oliver being tortured! A bottle episode in the bunker! New recruits!) and a very good return to form.

Tom Cavanagh is on contract for Season 4 and so is Candice Patton, and both were announced as being part of Season 4. But no fan of SLIDERS should take it for granted, of course, that actors will remain.

I was very happy to see Harry back this week. As enjoyable as HR is and as much as Cavanagh clearly appreciates playing something new, Cavanagh has always been best as the father figure of the series, as Professor Arturo, and turning him into Mallory this year left the show a bit unbalanced.

It looks like TF was not quite right about HR being Abra Kadabra, although there's still one episode left.

**

ARROW was good. I was surprised to see Deathstroke back and played by Manu Bennett. For the past few months, Bennett had declared that he was not returning to ARROW, that announcements by the producers were vastly overstating his involvement, that it hadn't been him in INVASION and it wouldn't be him in the ARROW Season 5 finale and that he had been greatly displeased with his last episode and that the ARROW producers were reusing previously recorded dialogue and a stunt double to have Deathstroke appear. So it was nice to see him at the end and realize Bennett had been trying not to spoil a surprise.

AGENTS OF SHIELD continues to impress. Mallory Jansen, who plays Agnes/Aida/Madame Hydra, is terrifying and chameleonic in these multiple roles and quite possibly the best villain of the series since Maveth. It's fascinating how Jansen can illicit sympathy while being completely contemptible. I hope they can find some way to keep her around next year even if her character doesn't remain.

Something weird happened today. My Moto G4 started showing ghost images. The status bar and the text messaging app were burned into the screen with phantom images of the keyboard, notification icons and time embedded the background over top of any app. But the burnt in image was from half an hour previous. I restarted the phone twice and it wouldn't go away. And so, as I am wont to do with many things that irk me, I froze it out -- which is to say I put the somewhat hot phone in the freezer and the ghost image was gone a half-hour later.

I think there's a weird glitch where high heat when the phone's under load and at maximum brightness causes images to briefly be retained in the display. I'm going to limit myself to 70 per cent brightness from now on, which is still pretty bright. And at least the 'burn in' isn't permanent like it'd be on a Samsung.

I've always found Informant to be a truly peculiar character and this thread frequently emphasizes that. I used to wonder if Informant simply sides with whoever he perceives to be a figure of power, hence his uniform siding with the police and whoever held the gun in any instance of black men being brutalized and murdered.

However, the Republicans had been on the losing side for the last eight years and he supported them right to the point of declaring the barely literate Sarah Palin  to be a delightfully intelligent woman, so I wonder if it's simply that he backs ideology and anyone who claims to support his views is above serious reproach even if one is an exposed fraud or a self-admitted sexual harasser and a predator of the poor.

The Republicans' party lines generally reflect his ideology that, among many other things, health care is an individual responsibility and not a right to be delivered by government. Except that's not what the Republicans are presenting either; in a post-Obamacare America, the populace views health care as a right, so the AHCA is being presented as a massive improvement in service as opposed to what it's actually been designed to do -- put the burden of health care back on the individual.

Then we get into Informant's unintelligible, inexplicable mental contortions where Donald Trump may have called his executive order a Muslim ban and confessed to sexual assault, but neither qualifies as either because Trump's words, quotes and actions shouldn't define his character and presidency in any way -- and oh, here is a heartwarming story about how Informant stood up for the rights of that half-assed doctor who was unjustly punished for letting a baby go blind.

Honestly, trying to figure Informant out is like trying to understand God; I only ever seem to drive myself crazy doing it and I'm not going to try anymore. I won't let it stop me from buying his books.

Sometimes, Comey was on my side and sometimes he was on the other side, but I always respected him as the last honest man in a world of liars, a man who was no one's lackey or loyalist and answered only to his own conscience -- a conscience that was, however, often marred by a rapturous overconfidence in his own self-righteousness rather than a solemn assessment of the situation. In a time of potential peace, I saw him as a dangerous figure; in the fascist nightmare that America's become, I saw him as one of the few remaining checks and balances on a corrupt and compromised administration.

Basically, I saw him the way Dean sees Crowley on SUPERNATURAL.

I'm sorry to hear this. :-(

I find it best not to ask these questions too much, and one of the worst things about the middle seasons of ARROW was how Queen Consolidated's earnings was played as this huge deal, except when Oliver lost his company and money, he didn't seem to have any trouble finding a place to live or constantly buying gadgets and supplies.

With regards to THE FLASH, there's the unspoken sense that Eobard Thawne's future knowledge and genius and assuming the Harrison Wells identity would have meant that STAR Labs continues to generate revenue through patents. That said, THE FLASH is a show that often does not withstand the scrutiny of real world considerations. You might ask;

• How did the Pipeline villains use the bathroom?

• Why was STAR Labs continuing to rent a massive facility for a staff of three people and one coma patient?

• Why does nobody besides Barry Allen work in the crime lab and why did no one make use of the lab in Barry's year-long coma?

• Why is Barry even allowed to work as a forensic scientist when, having recovered from a coma, he would have to pass a battery of psych and physical tests or risk his evidence being dismissed as unreliable in court?

• Why does Barry lack a department head or supervisor at the police station?

• Why did Barry never seem to go home in Season 1? Where was he sleeping?

The answer to all of the above, of course, is that THE FLASH is a fantasy adventure series.

The only concrete piece of info I have about this upcoming story arc -- it involves aliens having infiltrated the Trump administration.

Chris Carter isn't really involved in the comics. For the comic book SEASON 10, Carter consulted on the first five issues. Writer Joe Harris wanted the villain of SEASON 10 to be a teenaged William with telekinetic and psychic powers, taking control of the Colonists and Rebels with a new faction called the Believers. But Carter vetoed this, saying he wanted William saved for THE X-FILES III if it ever happened.

Carter also provided some guidance so that Harris could steer clear of any plots that would contradict a future feature film finale. But we got a TV series instead, Carter had a different vision for THE X-FILES on TV and the comics became part of an alternate universe that wrapped up (somewhat abruptly) before the comics shifted to the Revival universe (with the same writer). While Carter's name is on the covers and he has an Executive Producer credit and he reads the comic scripts, he's not driving it creatively.

Anyway. Joe Harris and I are of very similar mindsets politically and creatively -- his X-FILES comics are essentially the X-FILES version of SLIDERS REBORN (obsessive love letters to the legacy and history of an unfinished TV show), right to the point of using the same title in our stories where icons of 90s sci-fi TV take on Donald Trump.

So, keeping with that, I imagine a situation where Mulder's old friend, Senator Matheson, recruits Mulder and Scully to investigate potential sleeper agents in the White House administration. It's revealed that the sleepers are actually the fire aliens introduced in THE X-FILES #1 (2017) that have been taking over human hosts for some unknown endgame, and Mulder and Scully find themselves forced to protect Trump and his staff from an enemy only they can fight, wrestling with the conflicts between their beliefs and their duty.

Continuing with the conceit that Harris and I think the same, I'd never have the sliders -- or Mulder and Scully -- defeat Donald Trump. In fact, I think it would be critical that Quinn, Mulder and Scully end completely beaten but score some sort of symbolic, moral victory.

Joe Harris, who writes the X-FILES comics, recently revealed in a podcast that his next story arc will be Mulder and Scully taking on the Trump administration in a storyline entitled "Resistance." The synchronicity is hilarious.

The Christmas Special of 2016 also had Mulder remarking grimly on how he often had dreams of a "debunked, disavowed, disallowed alien invasion plot that never came to pass," a delightfully wry line of dialogue commenting on the massive retcon of "My Struggle."

Ward was severely abused by his parents and older brother, and the latter forced Ward to beat up the youngest of the brothers, Thomas, and leave Thomas to nearly drown in a well. Ward was later sent to a brutal boarding school after he began openly defying his parents. One night, Ward escaped the school and attempted to burn down his family home with his parents and older brother inside, enraged at their treatment of him and Thomas.

The parents and brother escaped and Ward was arrested and tried as an adult until Garrett (Bill Paxton) broke him out. He then left the teenaged Ward alone in the wilderness with no supplies or equipment for six months and Ward nearly froze and starved until he taught himself to hunt and build shelter. Garrett refined Ward's survival skills and emotional detachment while inducing Ward's loyalty to Garrett by Garrett being the person who gave Ward his freedom and the only one who saw his value, and Garrett joined HYDRA and had Ward do the same, not because they subscribed to HYDRA but because Garrett sought revenge on SHIELD and Ward was obedient to Garrett.

After Garrett is killed and Ward's treachery is revealed, he initially insists that he's still part of Coulson's team and loyal to Daisy, offering them intel and insisting he'd never have harmed the team. But his injuring Fitz and murdering Victoria Hand proves unforgivable and Coulson decides to hand Ward over to Ward's abusive older brother, now a senator, in exchange for cooperation and access. Enraged, Ward escapes custody, kidnaps his brother and forces him to confess his abuse, at which point Ward ties his brother and parents up in their house and burns it down, this time succeeding in murdering his family.

Then Ward joins HYDRA as a sting to aid Daisy in finding her missing father, declaring his loyalty to her and Coulson's team again, but Daisy shoots Ward the first chance she gets and Ward realizes he has no hope. Ward falls in with a disavowed SHIELD agent, Kara, and inducts the traumatized former agent into his soldier and falls in love with her, only to accidentally kill her when setting a trap for SHIELD.

Blaming SHIELD, Ward reforms HYDRA and goes into open warfare, murdering Coulson's new girlfriend. Coulson begins a thorough analysis on Ward and determines that all of Ward's actions are a sick attempt to justify his past and blame others for his actions while claiming he alone acted correctly -- and Coulson locates Ward's younger brother, Thomas, who calls Ward and declares him a monster, saying Ward had no need to murder their parents and brother, that they could have moved on from their abuse, but Ward uses it as an excuse to act out his bloodlust and sadism. Ward's emotional breakdown allows Coulson to trace his location and kill him.

So... what it comes down to is that Ward was defined by his loyalties. Garrett encouraged Ward's anger and bitterness towards his family and, by extension, anyone in his way. Hand apparently encouraged Ward to leave his past behind. Ward's loyalty, in the Framework timeline, saw him build a new life and find new purpose whereas in the real world, he never cast away his demons.

While I understand the view that some characters run their course, surely a television show should be designed to carry on with its core cast indefinitely. And surely writers working on a TV show should be able to keep their cast and characters a going concern because if they can't, why are they working in TV in the first place? That's the format of serial fiction whether it's a five to ten season show or a comic book that's run since 1962. That's the job.

I never hear Spider-Man and Batman writers saying there aren't any stories left to tell with their leads and if they did, are Spidey and Batman the problem? Or is it the writers?

A TV writer saying they can't come up with new stories for a TV character is like a truck driver complaining they hate long drives.

There was a time when I thought like you did -- that Sylar was a played out character that the writers were burdened with, that the character was a serious problem -- but now I think that's total BS. At the end of the day, the character is a fictional construct and all the choices and consideration and planning is being carried out not by a character, but by the writers. Which leads me to my position that the problem was not the character as much as the choices made by the writers controlling him. Volume 1 established Sylar as a serial killer. Volume 2 was a replay of his Season 1 arc except he had no powers which stretched out his story while contributing nothing new.

Volume 3 toyed with the idea of making Sylar a hero, then abruptly abandoned it and reverted back to the Volume 1 playbook. Volume 4 actually found a new angle: Sylar joined the government task force to hunt evolved humans, and you can tell that it's the Volume for which Volume 1 writer Bryan Fuller returned. Volume 4 created a Sylar who was the devil in Nathan's persona, then created an amnesiac Sylar, then reverted back to the Volume 1 playbook, then took away his ability to kill and have him live out decades in a dreamworld in which he changed... but we didn't get any further development and Tim Kring's interviews indicated he would have made Sylar villainous again in Volume 5 had he returned.

So, the problem isn't the character; it's that despite raising numerous avenues of development, the writers reverted back to the original template over and over again.

I don't see that problem with Grant Ward; he was killed off in Season 3 and the actor stayed on playing a different character who'd possessed Ward's body. Frameward, as Reddit seems to have dubbed him, is another new angle: this is the same character with the same sense of loyalty, except in this reality, his loyalty was to Victoria Hand and then the Skye/Daisy, so Frameward was never twisted into a detached killer constantly engaging in sick and bloody efforts to justify murder after murder after murder. This is something new, something they can continue develop, and AGENTS OF SHIELD has shown that it's willing to reinvent its playbook every season has reinvented itself three times alone this season.

It's funny, though, to see a fan of SLIDERS protesting a show being able to retain its cast. ;-)

AGENTS OF SHIELD continues to impress with a story that shouldn't work. The Framework is a simulated dreamworld, so why should what happens in a dreamworld matter in the slightest? But the AGENTS OF HYDRA arc has found all sorts of ways to make it immersive, first through the disorientation of Daisy waking up as an agent of HYDRA and Simmons having to dig out of her own grave to find herself in a hellish dystopia. Then there's the history of this simulated reality where the regrets each character had cost them the strength, honour and compassion they would have otherwise had to defeat HYDRA.

There's also the sense that the Framework reality is not a simulation even if AIDA and Radcliffe may have programmed it, first indicated by Fitz being a sadistic monstrosity whose memories cannot be unlocked, then by the Grant Ward revealed as a hero with his alternate history being that Victoria Hand was his SHIELD recruiter instead of John Garrett -- these potentialities are not a video game but a genuine path not taken that, while having only simulative form in the Framework, may gain reality in our world through Project Looking Glass.

Despite the fact that the Framework isn't real, there's been such beautiful poignancy and horror. There's Fitz's increased depravity as his love for his father and AIDA are used to transform him into a psychopath. There's Grant Ward apologizing for what his counterpart may have done and Daisy realizing that the self-justifying villain who deluded himself that he was a hero could've actually been one had Garrett never gotten to him. There's Coulson seeming more natural as a schoolteacher than a secret agent before embracing his secret agent identity. There's the grief of Mace's sacrifice in a world that isn't real.

It's beautiful.

Hmmm, yes.

I'll leave it up to SlidersCast to post it -- honestly, it doesn't matter. What's really important is that Jim take good care of himself and regain his health, and if in the course of long term chronic illness, a plug is forgotten or a voicemail is lost, well, it's hardly life or death.

JJ Abrams says she didn't train and that he doesn't consider her to be a Jedi in THE FORCE AWAKENS, but she clearly remains Force sensitive. I don't think Anakin ever trained to become a Force ghost, but he appears at the end of RETURN OF THE JEDI, so there's some wiggle room, but Lucas deciding in the prequels that not all Jedi bodies fade into the Force does allow an explanation for Leia's ghost to be a no-show in EPISODE IX. The truth is that the prequels are not a particularly helpful source of information as their information is regularly at odds with the original trilogy from details (all Jedi inexplicably dress in Tatooine desert outfits) to large strokes (the arcane religious order of the Jedi served as leading political figures in the Republic?). There's no squaring those circles.

I do think there's a certain courage in refusing to make Episode IX by pretending that Carrie Fisher isn't dead, accepting that reality and trying to work with it?

The CG Tarkin and Leia in Rogue One were necessary for telling the story of the Death Star and leading into A New Hope, but if not for that narrative purpose, they probably wouldn't have done it.

I don't really know how to describe AGENTS OF SHIELD, and every time I try, I ramble endlessly. I think the best way I have to explain the show is that it has constantly reinvented itself with each season and with Season 4, they did the annual reinvention early, in the middle of the season, wrapping up the Ghost Rider arc and shifting into the artificial intelligence war.

Season 1 was the children's version of a spy show and the series only seemed to find its footing when SHIELD was destroyed and the agents were made fugitives and outsiders which is a more Marvel-approach than having them as agents of the establishment. Season 2 were the agents trying to do their jobs when it wasn't their job anymore and it set up the Inhuman arc of Season 3 which did a really neat job of finally creating Inhumans to truly represent the best Marvel characters as misfits and freaks.

With Season 2, there was a cinematic, crisp, fast-paced approach to the show with tight editing and a snappy sense of rhythm. The series also pushed the actors to their limits with Clark Gregg, Chloe Bennett, Elizabeth Henstridge and Iain De Caestecker playing characters who were increasingly strained and maddened and pushed to their limits. And Brett Dalton as Grant Ward found deeper and more disturbing layers of horror and twisted monstrosity in a character who initially seemed incredibly bland and flat. The Ghost Rider arc was very fulfilling and exiting. The AI war has really grabbed me with the nightmarish Framework environment.

But I honestly can't point to any coherent throughline or central purpose to the series beyond being an exciting, PG-13 espionage series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It isn't a film noir adventure like DAREDEVIL; it's not a detective drama like JESSICA JONES; it's not a street-level exercise in atmosphere like LUKE CAGE; it's not a goofy space comedy like GUARDIANS and it's not a charming character piece like ANT MAN. It was a supernatural procedural thriller in the Ghost  Rider arc and it's currently a techno-action spy adventure. Who knows what it'll be next week?

Looks like they're taking the Slider_Quinn21 approach.

Just watched ROGUE ONE and I think it may have played better for people with a reverent, all-consuming love for STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE. For me, it was a lot of careful and precise callbacks and references to a film I like well enough and respect for its role in history, but I guess I'm not *that* huge a STAR WARS fan. Even stuff like the way the ROGUE ONE ending leads directly into A NEW HOPE didn't give me the same sense of myth and awe as, say, the STAR TREK novel where Kirk in the 24th century says he needs to compare notes with Sisko on time travel someday.

I think the problem is probably that to me, an attempt to pastiche the 1977 film and to understandably do so without Luke, Han and Leia just didn't really connect for me; I'm more into characters than the era or even the cinematic style which, while groundbreaking in 1977, is pretty standard today.

I think that the LEGENDS showrunners are good -- they both ran CHUCK well -- but on LEGENDS, they don't seem to have been given the authority to fully manage the show. Articles suggest that the executive producers of ARROW and FLASH are doing the same job on LEGENDS except where they are fully developing and reviewing scripts for ARROW and FLASH, they are much more removed from LEGENDS scripting process while still needing to revise and approve each script, and possibly not giving LEGENDS their full attention.

With SUPERGIRL, the lead showrunner is clearly Ali Adler with the ARROW/FLASH producers overseeing but not managing. With LEGENDS -- it's like the show doesn't have a full time story editor and it really shows.

I don't understand the IRON FIST series at all. Why did Marvel TV commission a series about a martial artist character but fill the series with corporate intrigue and boardroom debates instead of martial arts action?

Why did Marvel TV hire an actor with no fighting skills and no time to learn how to fake it to play a master martial artist in this show?

Why did Marvel TV greenlight a show about Iron Fist when the Iron Fist superpower is barely present and Danny Rand never wears the Iron Fist costume?

Why did Marvel TV want to do an Iron Fist TV show about the character's origin story where the mystical city in which the story takes place -- K'un Lun -- is never shown onscreen and where the magic dragon -- which each applicant must fight to become the Iron Fist -- never appears in person?

Why is Harold Meachum the final villain of the first season when Harold has been established as weaker than the Hand ninjas and subservient to villains that Iron Fist has already defeated and dispatched?

If Marvel TV felt uncomfortable with the martial arts, the costume, the mystical city from which the martial arts came, the superpower and the origin behind the superpower, why are they doing this show at all?

IRON FIST is a series that doesn't seem to have any concrete goals and it keeps sabotaging itself throughout its run.

It's almost as though somebody decided years previous that Netflix would have a DEFENDERS series featuring Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist who'd first appear in their individual shows, but the Iron Fist show was thrown together at the last second to justify the character appearing in DEFENDERS without any sense of what IRON FIST would be and no commitment or interest in the aspects of Iron Fist that are present in the comics.

Katie Cassidy is a good actress, but I think the #NoLaurelNoArrow crowd would prefer the real Laurel back and Black Siren would just remind them of what they've lost. I still miss Harry even though the actor never left.

Just to weird people out, I say they should hire Katherine Ryan to play Black Siren as well and they should alternate between shots.

Wouldn't it be better to start with something small like a weather station, be sure of all the safety concerns, then graduate to a small facility akin to Skylab and then work up in gradual steps to doing an apartment complex... ?

Informant not knowing what a homecoming dance is only deepens my grief for him and his genetic inability to have fun. Stay strong, buddy. We'll get through this.

**

I sure hope Claire shows up soon! I only got around to watching LUKE CAGE now. Honestly, while Luke Cage is one of my favourite Avengers (he plays the straightman to the insanity of Tony Stark and Thor), I'm not really into stories about street gangs. But once I got past that, I really enjoyed this series -- and I've decided that Claire is my favourite MCU character.

I want to take this moment to express my utmost sympathy for Informant's medical situation (the man can't have fun!) and to propose a Kickstarter where half the proceeds will go to further research on Informant's genetic disorder and the other half will go to paying for Informant and Slider_Quinn21 to go to that movie theatre where they serve you dinner. We should convince them to record their entire conversation for sharing on this forum.

As for Oliver's big revelation -- I think there is some truth to it, but it is not as simple or straightforward as Prometheus would have Oliver think. Very simply: killing is a highly enjoyable and pleasurable activity -- which is to say that killing in combat triggers adrenaline and serotonin in the brain and creates euphoria. Some war veterans have described a certain peaceful serenity in combat situations as they become acclimatized to violence while others find it traumatizing and disturbing; I think Oliver is more on the former end of that scale than the latter.

So, saying Oliver likes killing is the equivalent of saying I like sugar; desiring it doesn't mean acting on it and Oliver has gone many years without killing people with no psychological withdrawal for it. He's not the Punisher, who is actually addicted to killing.