damn, i knew going in this ep was famous for being 20 minutes of one shot, but when the camera ended on the billboard and the screen went to black, i thought "wait, what? so this episode does have a cut??? it's only been a few minutes" and then i glanced at the timeline and was in awe that 20 minutes had passed.
bruhhh this show has gone so downhill, season 1 asked real questions about the way technology is shaping society and season 5 is just like "what if facebook made you text while driving wouldn't that be fucked up"
wow. just bad. one of the most soulless things i've ever seen. like every character and every line of dialogue was as generic and uninspired as possible. there's no personality. there's nothing special about any of it. it's like it was written by an AI, it has no humanity. if i were to pick any tv episode to show an alien to demonstrate what "art" is i'd pick whatever the opposite of this is.
am i forgetting something or is this the first time starlight has killed an innocent person? i expected that to be a bigger moment, or for her to grapple with it more, but she didn't really? she acted like she was a hardened person who was so used to it now. maybe i'm forgetting stuff.
maybe this is a dumb complaint but i'm sort of getting tired of everything in this show being resolved with blackmail, especially when blackmail has proven to be sort of ineffective. I mean Vought's biggest secret was released and it apparently wasn't even a major hit. I think the plane video would probably be more destructive but idk, just feels like they always spin the PR of stuff.
i'll be honest my absolute least favourite thing in the show so far is maeve telling elena she doesn't want homelander to find out about her, then just talking to her on the phone about their relationship right in the vought boardroom. just really dumb and i hate contrived writing choices like that where the characters do dumb things just to lead to drama. unless maeve was lying about that as the reason, idk.
also did they kill shapeshifter because otherwise viewers would constantly be guessing that maybe someone is fake? i spent half the episode worrying that billy's wife was shapeshifter which probably took away from the impact of the scenes. it's kinda better for him to be dead otherwise viewers are probably always speculating. it's too strong of a power.
is it really that easy to blackmail a-train? i mean there won't ever be full proof and the company's already helping cover it up, it just doesn't feel like it'd stick, not enough to really hurt him. he's got way more leverage on her.
the writing felt a bit more on-the-nose than usual this ep. like stormfront's deal is she just monologues about what her character is. i think it's sort of interesting that someone is perceiving starlight as being a suck-up and saying "you don't have to be that way" but its also sort of... not true? starlight was threatened and berated for going off-script, and the other heroes were abusive towards her. is that just not happening to stormfront...? has homelander not threatened her yet for mocking him...? so i'm not quite buying the whole "see, you could be carefree like me" thing just yet.
lol, this show has so many moments designed just to shock the viewer with how outrageous they are - but i think this episode had the most yet. it's almost enough to bother me but the moments are just barely "earned" enough that they don't take me out of it, and feel impactful.
as a sidenote, i am sort of disappointed in maeve's arc. i feel she was really underused in season 1 and it seems that will continue her. i feel we could spend a bit more time with her, especially with her being the only other woman in the seven and we should understand her mindset a bit more, it's like she started an arc of maybe wanting to be a good guy but then it kind of went nowhere.
why would ezekiel even do the gay stuff in his normal body anyway...? can't he shift into anyone? seems dangerous, and like anyone could've easily tried to blackmail him before.
edit: ohhhhhh whoops i thought ezekiel was the body-changer. i thought when he got stretchy it was because he could do anything with his body. nvvvvmm.
wow that plane scene was absolutely brutal! i said my worry with watching this show is that there'd be a lot of bad things happening because of bad people who don't get punished for it and it'd be hard to watch. i think they probably will get their come-uppance in the end but oof, until then...! i'm not sure quite when i developed enough of a conscience to feel bad about watching bad things happen in a TV show, i used to be totally desensitized... but yeah, i dunno, wow.
i guess i'm invested though because i was super nervous during the whole date scene, i don't want him to mess things up! i hope they eventually tell each other the truth and work together... plz no contrived relationship drama because "you lied to me!" and etc.
was less invested in this than the first episode. finding it hard to care when it's the villains on screen - they're just all evil so it's like, okay, whatever. there's nothing to relate to. i thought maybe there's something else going on with homelander? like maybe his motive isn't just pure greed like the rest...? but idk. but the whole thing in the basement was very tense!
my prediction is butcher has a superpower but he's hiding it...? like some sort of "i have to restrain myself from using it or else i'll become like them" type thing. my guess comes entirely from the fact that all the superheroes have these larger-than-life personalities and a really dazzling supermodel-ish look, and he's the same way. (unlike hughie for example who is clearly cast to be a really plain guy in comparison)
i'm still sort of unsure why starlight was chosen by them. like, isn't there some lower level than "the seven" they could've put her in? they really put her in there expecting her to follow all their rules but never really explained them to her, and are shocked when she doesn't get it...? maybe there's a reason for this.
i was not expecting much from this (i just assume i won't like anything popular and that it'd just be a bunch of non-stop action scenes with no relatable plot) so i was very pleasantly surprised. this was gripping right from the start and the scene between the two PoV characters was quite touching. my only issue was that i felt the writing sometimes got a bit too on-the-nose and forced like with how much of a jerk the water hero was all of a sudden, like damn, he doesn't even wait 2 minutes? felt like the writers just needed to get the point across asap there. but it's a pilot and besides that it didn't feel too unnatural how the characters moved the plot along.
i'm also curious what exactly their plan is with recruiting starlight, it seems they want every hero on the seven to be a corrupt asshole, did they choose her because they thought they could break her, or are they just so cynical that they assumed her naiveté was an act and just assumed she must be a fraud like them...?
my only concern with watching this is it seems it is a show about really horrible people who mostly do not get punished for being horrible. but there's reason to feel some hope that the good guys will eventually win... hopefully...
the worst part was the way christinia and william just straightforwardly monologued to explain their entire story arc over the situation. it's such bad writing. they couldn't find a way to organically explain it. william's thing didn't even need to explained, it was obvious what had happened to him. they don't trust their own viewers so they spell everything out and have zero subtext.
meh. i genuinely think the writers have no idea what they're doing. there's a lot of "big moments" but i have no emotional attachment to them at this point. how do all the hosts feel about hale telling them to transcend? we haven't gotten nearly enough insight into how the hosts view this world, hell we don't even have a single host character to relate to in that aspect besides maybe william. everything happens because bernard magically saw it happen in his supersim. there's no explanation for why the world can't be saved, we just know it can't. we were wondering what was going on with christina, knowing this show would give some kind of twist, and there it is, she's "not real"... uh... okay? was i supposed to drop my jaw in awe? so what's the explanation for the people she interacted with earlier? why was hale visiting her? i guess that's a remaining mystery for the finale. i really don't care anymore...
glad the show is back to being good
some lazy writing tropes though, could see it coming a million miles away that jay would conveniently slip on one of the things we happened to see in the flashback. also obvious that caleb's escape was planned and watched, but i liked it thematically since hale being so insistent on finding some key she missed when it's actually just "the human spirit" is nice. C's hatred of maeve was a bit contrived and she got over it reeeeal fast at the end.
First good episode in a long time
oh, that's funny. during the first few episodes, i was thinking, delores' roommate and caleb's wife are such boring exposition characters, they only exist to tell you stuff about their lives (delores is lonely, caleb has PTSD from war, etc), but caleb's daughter is cool. i literally thought to myself "i hope season 5 does a time jump so we can meet the older version of her". hahahaha!
i just finished catching up on 3 and a half seasons of this show because people said season 4 episode 4 was good and worth getting to. i'm pretty underwhelmed. most of this episode was just the standard stuff the show has been doing for a while now. meaningless action, convoluted plotlines, mysteries for the sake of mysteries, bernard just going around doing whatever just for the sake of still being included in the plot while dangling a thread of "he has some totally important purpose, we swear".
the last 10 minutes were kinda cool but i dunno this show last me during season 3 and i don't care enough for this twist to really land. i barely even understood why maeve and caleb were there. they hunted down that politician, his wife told them to go to the opera, they went, it was an entry to chicago world, but also where they were doing experiments and trying to trap him with flies, then they got back into chicago world and they... yeah i dunno, i wasn't really following tbh. so it's like. whatever.
i'll keep watching now because i'm in it for the long haul, this is an interesting plot development but it's not really new territory for the show. only now its humans totally controlled by robot overlord instead of the other way around. (and hell, that was already season 3's plot - it's just it's because of flies now and not a fate-controlling supercomputer)
Meh.
I was really working on powering through the last few seasons to catch up, but episode 7 just killed my motivation to continue because of how bad it was. I was hoping the finale would maybe salvage things, make the season worth it, and it didn't. It was mostly just meaningless action with more incomprehensible character motivations and things happening just for the sake of drama.
There were a few poignant-ish moments towards the end but also just so much more forced writing where character's explicitly state their motivations. I feel bad for Aaron Paul, it's a good character concept but he can't save it, no amount of "You ruined my life! So I hate you! Aaaarrrgh!" will move me at this point.
Why was Bernard in this season? Did he ever do anything...? Why Was William in this season...? What's the point of any of this...? What are Delores motivations? So she actually was good all along...? Why? What changed her mind? I don't get any of it.
ugh. god, i was really trying to like this season but i'm at the end of my rope, this is such trash.
it's always sad when a show has to resort to an infodump to explain it's plot.
there was no natural reason for caleb's past to be explained here - we just happen to meet a robot who monologues the entire thing to the characters for no reason. just no reason for this robot to go on and on like that.
caleb raging at the robot at the end is absolutely cringe. "viewer, do you get it? do you GET how mad caleb is?! do you get the themes? how humans can be reprogrammed?". aaron paul can't even save this writing.
there's still absolutely nothing coherent about delores' motives. does she want to save the humans or kill them?
maeve is an absolute waste of a character at this point. it's such a shame they brought her back only to also have her motives make no sense. they forced the issue by having charlotte kill hector but it was just a lazy plot device to justify why maeve would go along with serac's blackmail.
i feel sort of the same way that maeve and the snake girl felt about the samurai guy - that he was brought back but he's not the same and it's a mockery to the real him. that's how i feel about maeve. she was a great character for 2 seasons, the star of the show, but then they brought her back because they felt they needed to, and they've just come up with whatever writing they can to justify it, slotting her into whatever role they need for their manufactured drama. that's how i feel about every character they've brought back. it honestly would have been better if they just left the dead characters behind and fully embraced this season being a new direction. why is clementine back? she died. they turned her into a living weapon and then she died. it was a fine ending. it's like they just bring everyone back for fanservice, like "oh, you missed this character?! well, our writing team got together and figured out some justification for why they could come back". hell, william's story was basically over too. we fully understood him and his life and his motivations and it came to an end. but he's gotta come back so they just retread it.
what even was the point of the whole mystery with caleb? at least with most of the past mysteries in the show they had a purpose - their resolution played into the plot, gave you something to think about it, etc. this just feels like "so when we introduce this guy, we're gonna give him a mystery, just for the sake of it, and then 7 episodes later we'll reveal it all and it'll be totally mindblowing". yeah it's kinda surprising that his history was a lie and he killed his dead friend himself but i mean. i just don't care? i'm not invested enough for this payoff to matter to me. again, quite unfortunate because aaron paul is a good actor and i like the concept of the character but the writing is just so bad.
i liked episode 6 but 5 and 7 have just been awful. i pray the finale is good. but i've heard season 4 is better so just gotta push through it, maybe...?
this is the first episode that i think was just genuinely bad. not just boring, but actively bad.
first off, serac kind of sucks. he's just not interesting at all. he also spells out his motives so much that he doesn't even have any air of mystery going for him. i think they're trying to do some sort of "morally grey" thing since he seems honest about wanting to save humanity, but he's such a sleezy douchebag that it cancels out any potential nuance.
the juxtaposition of the calm serac flashback monologues mixed with the high speed action chase was weird. i don't know what they were going for but it just didn't work and killed the vibe of both.
dolores revealing everyone's profile to them was strangely anticlimactic. that should be a really big moment. but i feel the concept of rehoboam wasn't really explored enough and we didn't do enough worldbuilding to really get to know how it affects people's lives. it's like if the hosts were all set free in episode 5 before we had even met them or explored all their lives. and she does this from a subway train of all places? not exactly a climactic location. then it's like "oh she just freed the whole world" and it doesn't feel earned.
beyond that, i'm very unclear on her motives. does she want to destroy humanity, or save them? there's sort of a lack of nuance in her views here - she seems to realize that some humans were also used as tools because she connects with caleb - now it seems she actually realizes they're all being used. maybe this is intended and we're not meant to know her motives, but it feels more like the writers didn't know, since she's been pretty clear up until now about wanting to destroy all humans, and she came up with this plan before the season even started, so i doubt caleb has changed her mind.
the genre concept was super underwhelming. it changed the music and added a couple of effects. they said the last one would be the best one but i didn't even get what it was. they could've done more with this.
i have absolutely no clue what bernard is doing or what he wants. he feels unnecessary. why did he just leave the dude to do what he wanted? why is delores keeping him alive anyway? i assume the show does have an explanation but i'm really holding my breath here to see if it makes sense or if it'll just be an excuse to keep him around.
and oh my god, they are spelling out their themes so much now they are just beating you over the head with it. i already got, on the subway, that dolores giving them their info to "free" them was like when she gave the hosts their freedom. it was blatant, the metaphor. but then it cuts to bernard literally saying "she's setting them off their loops". like, my god. trust your viewers, at least a little bit.
i really don't like serac, and not in a "love to hate" villain way, i just want him off my screen, he annoys me.
this season is... interesting. i appreciate the show was willing to move ahead and change dynamics completely. but i honestly can't say i really care. i felt the season 2 finale was a good ending and this new plot is too different. that combined with feeling that maeve is only here because the writers felt they had to keep her in the show. dunno. waiting, hoping this goes somewhere. i feel dolores' desire to wipe out the humans was more interesting conceptually, seeing it play out just feels kinda like generic futuristic sci-fi spy vs spy plot.
not bad but i'm starting to feel less convinced that the writers had an actual plan for the rest of the show. it kind of feels like season 2 was the end for all characters and arcs, including maeve, but now its like "well she's the fan favourite we couldn't just have her story end with dying after helping her daughter reach paradise, we have to keep including her". luckily i still like maeve and this was a fun episode and a nice closure to sizemore (better than his sort of rushed/unnecessary death in the finale).
that was... interesting. i can't really say it was "good" or that i particularly enjoyed it but it was aesthetically beautiful and i'm curious on where it's going. i liked season 2 so i'm in for the ride at this point.
surprisingly boring? coming back to this after not watching for a few years. i expected season 2 to start with a bang and introduce some brand new dynamics for the season. but instead it just sort of... did more of the same stuff we've already seen? and it was just the most obvious stuff that would happen in the follow-up of the finale.
maeve goes back inside and sneaks around with the help of a technician. done that already. man in black is off alone getting into fights and searching for maze while talking to cryptic NPCs. done that already. hosts have realized they have consciousness and they wanna hurt humans - like, yeah, that's what happened in the finale, i got that already.
wonder where it goes.
very disappointing. i feel like this show just doesn't know how to resolve its plotlines after it puts characters in danger. that was such a cheap solution - we are really meant to believe they can get everyone to turn their votes just from saying their theory once, with no one even looking at any proof, from the guy who just admitted he was on drugs???? we have zero insight into how these partners think or why they voted against jessica before. it's all very bad writing, sad because the setup is otherwise very good.
and the cheap romance hooks are also getting annoying. donna returning was also completely unearned, i mean there were basically no consequences for her and it was super easy to get her back? jessica barely seemed to care.
oh god, it's so painful in this show always watching the characters make the same mistakes over and over...
usually women going back to men that they clearly know better than to go back to
oof... just when i was thinking that maybe this show was going to have some sort of sentimental, nice, happy ending... it's painful watching everything get fucked up for noah again, when he's actually being decent now. i'll hold out hope, maybe...
at least helen is finally back to her senses, a bit. standing up for herself.
this was... interesting. it's such a weird vibe. really bold choice to include this story. a bit forced the way she conveniently meets this dude who just knows her entire family history lol. i don't blame her for being suicidal and trying to self-harm with the state of the world and the weird oxygen garden...
it almost feels good to have someone "know" allison didn't kill herself, but also it's... too late to matter. just weird.
oooof. i can't believe helen did that to priya. hopefully this was the start of her waking up...
interesting. i hadn't thought about where noah's arc would go. season 4 was nice because everyone had just become so much more mature. it was the best version of noah we'd seen yet. now looks like he's realizing that mature is boring. and he's losing controller over everything - helen, janelle, even his own image. i wonder if he will finally learn to accept that it's okay to just be normal. he'll throw a few tantrums first i guess.
oh i love it when a show hits its final season and decided to just stop taking itself so seriously
this is going to be my favourite season isn't it?
helen watching as a movie recreates her break up scene. lol.
and then they were just like "what if we have a subplot take place 30 years in a technologically advanced but climate devastated world"
like, WHAT. who thought the show would go this direction? lol. love it.
and helen in dgaf mode is great
