DaveSumm

I think weirdly, Kendall lovingly exacerbating Roman’s wound was my favourite scene from the finale. That’s the sort of messed up dynamics I show up for.

The thing I always think of with The Wire is how it lasted exactly as long as it should: it had a perfect five season plan, told that story, ended. Regardless of what you think of each season, those are the aspects of Baltimore it sought to portray. Sopranos is fantastic, but it basically existed for a while, then ended. It’s entirely plausible it could’ve been one more or one fewer seasons. I’m not sure it had a grand arc to it, it didn’t have a set story it wanted to tell. Succession fits that Sopranos mould really. It at least had a concept (uh, succession) but even with that, it hinted at that story right from the pilot with Logan having his episode on the helicopter. And then it just seemed to enjoy existing in that Act 2, and I loved it. My favourite episodes, my favourite moments, will likely be just innocuous ones that didn’t really move the plot along. I enjoy the dynamic of the basic characters, and I’m not necessarily all that interested in who happened to fuck who in the end. They’re all leaving this eye wateringly wealthy, and actually, maybe it’s best for Ken’s mental health in the long run that he finds something else and can always hold to this notion that he would’ve been great, rather than butchering what he sees as his only path in life. So yea, I wasn’t really floored by the episode, or the season overall which didn’t seem to make up its mind what it was about. Kinda like a great song that doesn’t want the weight of expectation on closing out an album. The show didn’t want the burden of … ending itself? Possibly that makes no sense. Anyway.

I’m still into this, although the last two episodes have been much slower. And they’re basically the same plot, following on from a death at the end of the last episode, our protagonists investigate and Judicial looks shady. I’m glad they addressed the lack of lifts. Or at least acknowledged it anyway.

Nope, Michael too. Can’t move for oranges in that trilogy. You can see him drop it as he dies.

I also thought of Michael Corleone seeing Kendall in this episode. Felt like some ‘build up to assassinate the heads of the five families’. How well it pans out for him I’m not sure, but I could really picture a final scene of Kendall, old and alone, dying in a chair while eating an orange.

All episodes at once for Echo … an odd time to experiment with the release schedule. Maybe they need to make room for something else in December / January?

I’m into this now, although I was sceptical after the first episode. Some of the exposition was a bit clunky, and the cynic in me just saw a contrived mystery to stretch over the season. ‘Why are we in a silo’, the latest attempt at recapturing ‘what’s in the hatch?’. But each episode has improved on the last, and I was quite pleased we got more of a look up top when I was convinced that’d be the season 1 closer (and no doubt still will be, just in more detail). Thoughts that I’m not looking for confirmation of if you’ve read the books: it seemed like they intentionally had Holston look away from where his wife was when we saw his POV on the surface, to leave open the possibility that this is a manipulated image (obviously the colours are skewed, but I mean that the people didn’t die). But he then crawls up to her and jostles her ‘corpse’ as he rests on her, which I don’t really like the idea of them having technology that could do that so quickly and effectively. He also didn’t take his helmet off fast enough to rule out that they were just poisoning people. So I don’t really know what’s going on.

I’ve missed Matt’s reviews. I don’t really disagree with any of it, although I like it more. I’m very fortunate that it’s just my wife and I that play it, so sometimes we can do 2-3 games a week, thus making the campaign finishable in a non ridiculous amount of time. So we did just want more Frosthaven. I was hoping he’d go into slightly more detail on the outpost phase. Overall I do feel far more invested in Frosthaven (the town) than I ever did Gloomhaven (the city). But it’s painful sometimes, I should hate attacks because I care about FH, not because they’re a complete pain in the balls to deal with.

So, I never finished Breath of the Wild. I loved it, but I just don’t seem to have a window for video games in my life these days. Buuuut I used to adore flying around in Skyward Sword, so I’m thinking I’ll probably buy Tears of the Kingdom just for a handful of play sessions and then never finish it as well.

It’s been in development since before Gunn took over, so at the very least it’s been changed to wipe the continuity and turn it into the Gunniverse. I’m fascinated to know how you achieve that and provide a satisfying conclusion to the movie itself AND let the audience know that certain parts are carrying over (Peacemaker, fuck knows how Aquaman works) AND possibly bring Ezra as the Flash to a close? That’s quite a job. Y’all making me feel bad for seeing it, but I’m still gonna. I’m excited for DC now it has some direction, and I loved Keaton’s Batman as a kid.

Yup. I’m entirely guessing of course.

Starfleet on Seven: Hmm, she was Borg years ago, better not let her in straight away. On Jack, who voluntarily waltz into the Borg lair to be a conduit for the destruction of earth: FAST TRACK THIS MAN All seems a bit weird on Legacy, acting like they aren’t sure if it’s happening when they just very clearly teed it up. Surely Paramount / Kurtzman / whoever wouldn’t sign off on that ending if it wasn’t happening. Also, Stashwick: ECH? Also also: did Seven / the Titan actually achieve anything in this episode? I may have missed some line of dialogue, but they attempted to distract the fleet … surely failed, cos it’s a fleet for pete’s sake, and then Picard saved the day anyway?

Sorry but that post credit scene really spoilt it for me. In the same way Endgame didn’t have a post credit scene, this really needed the aerial shot of the poker table to be the concluding shot. It was so jarring to suddenly cut to “oh and one last thing, we’re shitting on our second season even harder than before k bye now”. But even the poker scene was just the same as TNG with worse writing. Nothing approaching the economic elegance of: ”I should have done this a long time ago.” ”You were always welcome.” Is this seriously going to be the premise of the spinoff? The exact same one as TNG, Q badgers a Picard? I guess I should be grateful that we’ll get a show about a Starfleet ship set in time period Discovery should always have been set in (said it many times, it’s what Trek and Wars don’t have and Marvel does; a present. Universes need a present.)

Also, re: Klingons. I think each explanation has left the door open that these aren’t ‘all’ Klingons; not all were affected by the augment virus, the Discovery ones were just some different tribes or whatever. So TOS we just happened to see augments all the time, DIS the full make up ones, then TNG style for the next century of whatever. It’s daft but it’s the situation we’ve been left with.

I assumed time travel, as holodecks don’t exist at this point. But it wouldn’t be the most egregious altering of canon NuTrek has done if they just decided they did. Or maybe it’s an old school TOS style “this planet we found is exactly the same as Earth circa whatever year this is airing”.

After looking like it might go away, there’s a lot of noise around Jonathan Majors again, management companies dropping him etc. It’d be a huge blow to lose him after a lacklustre Phase 4. I imagine there’s some furious edits of Loki S2 going on right now where he regenerates into the Second ‘Patrick Troughton’ Kang.

Well whatever we’re calling it, I think it should rule you out of a career in Starfleet.

Much like Star Wars at this point, I don’t think anyone is getting too excited about a Trek film until it’s filmed. I remain deeply ambivalent about ‘genocidal cannibal gets employed by Starfleet for some reason’, however good Yeoh may be.

Although now that I think about, on top of this, we have the Caped Crusader series that moved from HBO to Amazon. So that’s FIVE upcoming Batmans (Pattinson, Affleck, Keaton, Brave and the Bold, Caped Crusader). Which is … too many Batmans. I also didn’t know Matt Reeves was involved in Caped Crusader which seems odd.

Basically, this isn’t Season 3 of Picard, it’s Season 8 of TNG.

It’s hilarious that no one has even considered Jurati being involved in this, just because it’s so clear that this show couldn’t give a fuck what it did in the first two seasons. It’d be legitimately more surprising for Jurati to show up than it would for Ashley Judd to appear cos hey! Remember Lefler? She was in TNG! Member?! I asked before but didn’t the second season leave a space mcguffin dangling for this season? Have I missed a mention of that? Or was it the trans warp hub Jack went to?

Super late to the party, but FUCK did I misjudge The Batman. Pattinson? All looks a bit emo doesn’t it? Do we need more confusion to the DC line up? Except, he’s the best Batman and this is the best Batman film ever. Quite comfortably for me. The second he walked on and started the monologue, my misgivings just melted away and he became MY Batman. Then Gordon walks him into the crime scene, and I suddenly realised how much I’ve missed him actually there, helping the police, solving crimes. So, so impressed. I’m wary of trying to turn this into a universe too quickly, but if they can somehow keep the quality and tone over multiple spin-offs and sequels, that’s really exciting.

Don’t worry, I’m totally with you. I’m still so confused out how the fandom seemed to fall in line that this season is the second coming, I just see the same flaws that Picard always had (and Discovery) papered over with slightly more effort. It was really jarring to go from ‘literally the worst thing ever has happened, the Borg have assiLOOK IT’S THE F AND SHELBY MEMBER SHELBY’ … Ok, back to the plot … so Shelby’s dead… Zero interest in a Legacy series. It seems like Star Trek has no creativity anymore, just make a bad series and then make a spin off of whichever the most popular character is (Pike, Georgiou, Shaw).

Don’t really understand the need for a second spy. Gideon has a spy; he spoke to her at the beginning, that’s how he learnt of the efforts to retake Mandalore, so he set a trap and … that’s it. What more does he need to pull of what he did in this episode?

Every scene of this feels like a Playboy article, existing only to give the veneer that a respectable plot is happening between all the ship porn. Yea yea yea the D is cool. But this show has taken 29/30ths of its runtime through the most convoluted and tortured means just to get us there. The red door turned out to be nothing, it didn’t need to be red or a door or have vines, it was just some random imagery to act as the obligatory mystery for the season. And Jack’s plan has to rank up with the absolute dummest we’ve seen in Trek; I’m gonna visit the Borg (who famously assimilate on first sight) and kill the Borg Queen with this regular ass phaser. Cheers Jack. I guess he’ll turn the Borg good next week or some shit, and we’ll all pretend that didn’t already happen in Season 2.