Search options (Page 6 of 35)

I've been wondering to myself where Allison goes from here. Is there any chance of redemption, not of her public image as much as her soul or personal life. On Leah Remini's Scientology series we see people like Mike Rinder, who also did some very bad things while under the thrall of that cult. Now he is trying to make amends. So is there any amends for Allison?

The thing is, while Mike (and others) was guilty of some misdeeds, he was also very much a victim. Beaten and broken, mentally and physically, until he was forced to be compliant. He makes no excuses for what he did, but he was still a victim.

Allison appears (from what we know) to be much less of a victim. We have no reports suggesting that she was beaten or tortured into submission. In fact, reports suggest that a lot of the physical violence was her idea. So this would seem to make her more of a David Miscavige figure than a Mike Rinder figure. Miscavige took all of the worst parts of L. Ron Hubbard's personality and his cult, and took it to even deeper levels of evil, which is saying a lot, because Hubbard was pretty evil.

So, is there any path to redemption for Allison? Say she gets mental help, deprogramming, and treatment for whatever the hell is wrong with her head, can she become something better?

As a Christian, I want to believe that she can. I believe in redemption. But realistically, I'm not sure that I see it happening. She's shown no sign of humanity since this all began. And as for her willingness to turn on her master... I don't know. Some reports say that she's willing to go to prison to save him. Maybe her actual arrest scared her. Maybe not.

Allison is out on five million dollars bail, to her parents' custody. She is not allowed to contact anyone related to the cult. I assume that includes her wife, but who knows

Both she and her parents put up their homes and their retirements for this. I would not have made that deal if I were her parents.

If found guilty, Allison faces fifteen years to life.

Sam Jones III must feel such relief, since he's no longer the disappointing member of the Smallville family.

Maybe it's because the Thinker is a super evil genius, playing 7-D chess, and yet I still have no idea what his plan actually is. It seems like the writers are making it up as they go along, making it hard to sell the idea of the Thinker planning it all ahead.

I think the other bus meta was in the pipeline when Devoe took the place, so he is dead too. They just undersold that part.

Unless there was another one that I forgot about.

So, is Adam gay now? Because his wife might have something to say about that.

I mean... I'm not confusing Chloe with Allison really, but it would be hard to watch Chloe without thinking about Allison right now. And a lot of the things that made Chloe so appealing (her charm, her wit, her smile) are probably a lot of the things that Allison used to draw in her victims.

I sincerely hope that I will be able to forget that Allison is a real person at some point, and think of Chloe as some sort of computer generated character, but I'm not there yet.

Similarly, I used to enjoy watching 7th Heaven from time to time, because it was a silly, stupid, thoughtless fluff show. I haven't really had any desire to return to that series since Stephen Collin's whole situation erupted.

Bill Cosby... same. Don't get me wrong, I have a loooooooooot of questions about that case, but my ability to watch the Cosby Show and see him as the all-American father that everyone wished they'd had is long gone.

A lot of this stuff is probably because these are still "current" cases and none of this dust has settled at all. I know all about Hollywood history and how horrible some of those people were back in the day, and I can probably still watch a lot of their old movies.

Aw, hell. I just read that some of the charges against her involve trafficking children. Does this bitch ever stop getting worse? What the hell?! How have we never heard stories of her being this evil before this story broke? Was she just really good at hiding it?! Was she somehow brainwashed into being evil? I never stop being disgusted by this horrible woman.

And yes, I know that calling a women a "bitch" is triggering for some. Sorry for that, but the shoe definitely fits in this case and there are no words nasty enough for this monster.

Still... no need to bring Ann Coulter into this. She can stay way, way over there. Far away from Smallville.
(I don't know enough about Tomi to care about her one way or the other)

I think that's all. The show ran for ten years and had a ton of guest stars, so I'm sure that there are other stories out there, but those are the big ones. It's weird for me to group Young's death in with the others. He was bipolar and that resulted in a serious depression, causing him to kill himself. The others were (presumably) decisions made with a clear mind.

In other news, my brain has created it's official Chloe Sullivan exit story. I may never actually write it, but at least I now have a story that builds off of Smallville history and does what needs to be done. Maybe I'll write up some of those ideas later... After I finish that Supergirl script that I've been chipping away at here and there for a couple of years now.

That is sad. Smallville has always been a fun show to go back and rewatch when I absolutely do not want to think about what I'm watching. Now the show is hard to go back to, and it is a huge smack in the face to all of the many people who put ten years into making that show. Many of them were great at their job.

Hopefully we will be able to watch the show again someday. And maybe they can cast a new Chloe in the Arrowverse or on Krypton, and repair the damage to the character. Maybe young Bruce Wayne can meet Chloe on Gotham.

And the thing about pineapple on pizza is how the tanginess of the pineapple brings out the sweetness of the tomato sauce! That interaction is golden!

Okay, what else can we maybe agree on? Because if there's nothing else, it's a miracle that we get along as well as we do.

And there she goes. Allison has been arrested.

https://pagesix.com/2018/04/20/smallvil … lave-cult/

I don't see how anyone can be involved in anything with the word "slave" in it, without any question marks popping up. Most cults at least try to cover things up with more appealing terms.

Was she normal one day, and a total wack job the next? I have so many questions about this, and her role in it!

I swear, I should become a psychologist who specializes in cults. They fascinate me, while still appalling me.

I don't know. If I went into the movie expecting a lot of the Guardians (whose movies I do enjoy) and wound up with little of them, and mostly Thor (whose movies suck), I might feel like I'd been the victim of a bait and switch.

I say all of this as someone who is a rather passive viewer of the franchise as a whole, and who wouldn't consider himself a fan of the overall universe. For me, each new movie kinda has to earn my interest, because they have no points saved up. So I may not be the target audience for this movie.

Beth Schwartz has been named as the showrunner for Arrow's 7th season.  Wendy Mericle is gone and Marc Guggenheim will remain as a consultant.

Not sure what to think yet. The show desperately needs someone new running things, so this could be good. I just hope that the show can get back to it's hard-hitting roots. The show should be the dark, gritty series in the Arrowverse, but it hasn't been that in a while. I know Schwartz has been working on the show for a long time, but her other credits include Hart of Dixie, and Brothers and Sisters, so we'll see how this turns out.

I have my reservation for... Whenever it hits Redbox, or maybe a streaming service.

I don't think that it can live up to the hype. Everyone has a favorite character, and most people will probably feel like their favorite didn't get enough screen time. The cast is too big, so real character work won't happen. So it comes down to plot. We'll see how that goes.

Everyone complains when a DC movie comes out and has a CG villain. Then they praise Marvel movies for their CG villains. The thing is agree about is that you really can't get a great performance from them. Unless they're on a mindless rampage, like Doomsday or parademons, it's hard to sell them as a real villain. That will be another hurdle for Infinity War. Especially since Thanos looks pretty unfinished in the commercials.

The movie will make a trillion dollars and he widely praised, I'm sure. But it has a lot of challenges to face down, even for an MCU movie. Civil War was too bloated and the plot suffered. This is much bigger.

It really doesn't matter though. The movie could suck hard and Disney will still make a bunch of money. They probably don't care at this point. The MCU is a perpetual motion device.

Yeah, and you'd think that God would have noticed too.

I know that each showrunner has had their own style and arc for the show, and like comic books, undoing deaths sometimes open up stories... But I'm not sure how many of these were necessary this year. Did we need Ketch and Rowena back? Did we even need Lucifer back on the show to this degree? And unless Gabriel is super, super important, bringing him back could be a huge mistake.

I feel like they're trying to go backwards too much, rather than move on to new arcs.

It could work, I guess. They could even monetize it by releasing novelizations before they release the show itself (for the shows that are filmed well in advance).

I think we just need to shut down the internet. It was a nice experiment, but ultimately failed.

The writers once said that they'd never kill Thea. I hope they stick to it. I wonder if Willa will appear every now and then. It might depend on whatever her next project is. I think they could pull off the marriage thing, if Roy had a good reason for coming back. Maybe they could have him going off to see her from time to time, while returning to help Oliver take down the evil former sidekicks.

Yeah, I'm not sure what to make of this. It seems to undo the point of point of bringing him in for Thea's send-off.

I think that's been a weak point for this season overall. They tried to go really light early on, which didn't work. As a result, I have a hard time taking the villain this year seriously.

I agree with that, I guess. The Iris stuff could work, but they just jumped to this point without explaining how it happened. If they wanted to explain that the team put her in charge after Barry was taken into the Speed Force because Caitlin was gone, Joe had a ton of work with the PD, and Cisco and Harry were too busy trying to figure out a way to get Barry back to spend their days monitoring radio chatter, it could have been interesting. Iris could have gotten the job because she had lost her place in the world. Then they could have turned it into a less sad story when she did really well at it, and wound up being this amazing partner to Barry when he came back.

Still, the "We are the Flash" stuff is crap. Imagine if Wonder Woman married a dude, and he decided that he owned a part of that glory. I don't think it'd go over very well. Iris is a great character, but she isn't Barry. She's not a speedster. She's not the Flash. She is Iris-friggin-West!

I do get what you're saying about the Oliver/Diggle fight, and I 100% agree that all of these fights could be resolved with a conversation, and this sort of thing is a huge peeve of mine in movies and TV (when the characters don't tell each other something that could resolve the entire plot, just because the plot can't be resolved yet). I just think that the Oliver/Diggle fight could have been brought to a really interesting, emotionally honest place, while still hitting that "low blow" mark that they were going for. More than that, it would have been a valid argument to make. It would have been Oliver talking about the death of someone that he had known (and loved) since he was a kid. It would have been someone who was part of the team, whose back they were supposed to have. It would have been someone that not only did Oliver care about, but Diggle cared about (to some degree). It would have been something that Diggle already expressed remorse over, and thought that the team had moved on from, but it's the sort of thing that would kinda/sorta always been there, as part of the makeup of the team.

As I was watching it, I just couldn't help but think that the moment that made me cringe could have so easily made me gasp.

Nobody doubts that Trump loves to BS. However, the media does lie about him all the time, and they fail to report much of what he does, creating a narrative that doesn't represent the full picture. They did the same with Obama, but the other way around.

A lot of people believe that Trump is guilty of Russian collusion. That isn't based on any facts or evidence. In fact, as we've learned, most of those people have no idea what he supposedly did. The reason they believe it is because the press presented it as fact. They create narrative after narrative, causing people to feel like things are totally out of control and we're all doomed, when that's not really the case. As a President, Trump isn't the best ever, but he is nowhere near warranting the level of fear, hatred and disturbing displays of insanity that people feel toward him. That's all narrative.

Similarly, the comments that I'm seeing more and more often about guns and the NRA are ridiculous to anyone who has any knowledge of these subjects at all. Yet people believe them, because the media has created the narrative. They don't present the facts that would lead to more rational debate, because the blind fear is what moves their agenda along.

We have examples of the liberal press actively helping liberal candidates, feeding them debate questions, reading their talking points, taking part in a secret internet group where they discuss how to frame stories to benefit their candidates.

If the people who are outraged by Sinclaire were really outraged by the facts at play here, they would have been crying foul ling ago. But they didn't. Because they only mind it when it appears that the other team is guilty and the outrage could help their own side.

This swooning and fetching of the smelling salts is laughably disingenuous. Especially when you consider that the only reason why Trump is President is because the media liberals thought it'd be funny to push him during the primaries, just to goof on conservatives.

But... Reports in the mainstream media are fake all the time. The media routinely generates outrage, fear and division by manipulating the information that they give viewers. They outright lie quite often, or sometimes allow the audience to believe a lie by not providing the facts in their stories. The fact is, you can't trust the information that you get on a regular news report because of what they choose to leave out.

I don't see how it scandalous to say this when half of the time people are complaining about fake news, it's the Democrats doing the complaining about Faux News.

And it's a little dramatic to say that these people were "forced" to do anything. They're anchors, reading a script. That's pretty much the job description.

Woohoo! The show will go on forever. They need more human characters. Old Castiel will be weird.

Forgot to reply about Adam. As far as we know, yeah is still in the cage. The cage we saw was more like a sub-cage, I think. Why haven't they freed Adam? I have no bloody clue. His soul is probably mush by now though. Unless Good plucked him out at some point.

William had a nightmare and blew them up by mistake.

Maybe Mulder and Scully are an X-File. They're just gone, and we see their file on Skinner's desk, along with many more, as ye recruits new agents.

Man... They should bring back The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Watching these Chris Carter episodes is like a lesson in how not to stretch out a story. Not enough story to tell, so they just drive, and yell at each other without letting anyone finish a sentence, and act as though this is way more intense than it actually is.

I didn't hate how the characters wound up. Darlene and David were always the broody artst types, and that's hard to make a living at. I know this from experience
Becky was always kinda flakey, so it doesn't surprise me that she never started her own business or anything like that.
Jackie being a life coach is just funny.

I don't think we know much about DJ, but he seemed to be doing okay. And Jerry is probably making a solid living on a fishing boat up in Alaska.

And it makes sense that most of the family would be liberal, though I think that DJ would be a good choice for another conservative. Maybe one who didn't vote for Trump.

And I agree on all of the stuff about not cutting everyone who doesn't agree with you out of your life. I found it really disturbing when some celebrities were telling people to abandon any family members who didn't vote for Hillary. That's just wrong.

Exactly (though, to be nitpicky... Trump was pro-gay marriage before Hillary was). I think most of America gets that, but there are some coastal liberals who don't. I had an east-coast family member over once, and she acted as though she legitimately didn't think that we got, like, *the news*, in Texas.

There are groups that benefit from keeping people scared and angry. Most people aren't eeeeevil, but if they can make enough people believe that the other guy is out to get them, it keeps those groups alive. If the fear and anger ends, they lose their jobs. This is why people should never trust anyone who wants them to avoid discussion and debate. I saw a quote somewhere online where someone said that if you're not willing to hear the best argument against your belief, you can't really know what you believe (or something along those lines), and that's true.

I wish less people would take the time to sit down and really learn the other side of the debate. Like, to the point where you could argue the other side in a debate if you had to. Nobody should fear understanding the other side. And a lot of the people that I see avoiding those conversations seem to fear what they don't know about their own side more than they fear the other guy.

It shouldn't matter, unless the writers are going out of their way to bash you, or jam politics where it doesn't belong. I obviously get annoyed when stupid political jabs are made for no reason, but I don't boycott shows or movies just because of a liberal slant. I think that if conservatives did that, there would be nothing left to watch. Aside from Roseanne, who are the conservatives on TV? Schmidt on New Girl? Are there any others?

And when Christian conservatives are depicted, it's usually as some weird culty figure that dresses like a 1950's sitcom character, while spewing a ton of hatred at people, because they're written by people who have never actually met a conservative.

I was reading a review of Roseanne, and the person reviewing it dinged the show because they couldn't believe that Roseanne not only voted for Trump, but because she expressed no remorse for her decision. They dinged the second episode because they couldn't see how a Trump supporter would possibly stand up for their "gender fluid" grandkid who had to face bullies at school. (and I put the term "gender fluid" in quotes because the reviewer used this label for a character who clearly identified as a boy, not because of any personal views that I have about this transgender issue)

It's insane and it's stupid. I watch a lot of TV, which means that I'm fed a steady diet of liberal ideals and being told how evil I am. The thing is, for a lot of those characters, it makes perfect sense for them to be liberal, so I don't care. Some characters are in no way liberal, but the writers will not call them conservative because it would probably make them sick to do so.

What I liked about Roseanne this week was that the show made fun of everyone. Whereas most comedy has skewed away from actually telling jokes and more toward tearfully preaching to the audience about the evils of conservatism, the show actually told jokes, and they were funny. Hell, I laughed out loud at a Jackie line, despite the fact that she was wearing a pussy hat and a "Nasty Woman" shirt the whole time.

The show was having a real discussion about the grandson who wears girl's clothes, and what that decision will mean for him. It was making gay jokes about Darlene (who isn't gay, but who is played by a lesbian actress). Comedy is funny when its honest, and these discussions were more honest than pretty much anything else I've seen from the teary-eyes dramas over the past decade.

Over the years, I've gone through phases of enjoying Roseanne's show, and thinking that it was disgusting and annoying. I don't know why, but sometimes I'm in the mood and sometimes I'm not. I did make an effort to rewatch some old episodes on Amazon Prime before the revival started, and I can see why people connected to it. TV characters are usually portrayed as upper middle-class families who never wear the same outfits twice, and who walk around with Starbucks cups in their hand as though they have their own personal barista following them around all day. A large, large chunk of the population can't relate to them at all. Roseanne depicted a family who struggled for money, who had to decide between buying shoes for one person or a dress for another, or who had to work two jobs and barely ever saw their spouse. A lot of America relates to those struggles, and a lot of those people voted for Trump.

It seems like every interviewer who sits down with Roseanne to discuss the new show wants her to answer for her Trump-supporting sins. Whereas they will accept a Trump joke from most celebrities, and act as though it is some deep political insight, they want Roseanne to explain foreign relations, healthcare, and union crap.

The media clearly has a bias. Entertainment is made for liberals 99.9% of the time, because the writers live in bubbles where everyone thinks like they do, and they genuinely believe that "most of America" thinks that way. I've long said that writers should have to live wherever their shows are set/filmed, because they way they do it is unrealistic. I have friends who are liberal. I have friends who aren't Christian. In the real world, most people know different types of people, and it's fine. It's just in television and movies that we're expected to follow the liberal propaganda while being told that conservatives are evil at every turn. And Roseanne's numbers prove that this needs to change. Hollywood needs to get out of its bubble and recognize not just the large American audience that they've been ignoring, but the large audience around the world that share similar beliefs.

So I probably could have summed all of that up by simply saying, no. It should not matter, but sometimes it does.

It's never good when you're on a plane and still turn off the movie. I will probably skip this one.

I'm interested in Gotham by Gaslight though.