ghm3

This year I downsized my tree, I had a really nice 7ft one last year but the storage box was enormous so I returned it. This year I have a tiny 4ft tree that I put on an ottoman that has a flippable hard surface top. Anyway, my nerd tree is now fully operational:

Oh shit @Luke is stuck in a loop^^^^

So did some magnificent bastard play The Rains of Castamere? 

Oh and Alan went full-on Nazi collaborator when he changed the stereo volume when Willis came by. 

Was anyone else super creeped out from that early scene when Camille walks to the dining room and everyone turns and looks at her? Esp. a sickly Amma with that flower crown thing, that shot looked straight out of a horror movie. 

gguenot said:

ghm3 said:

Yeah but he actually was an aggressive attacker, just in the name of protection. Combining it with the compassion/morality attributes would have been much more in-line with what we saw him do because he couldn't effectively be protective if he completely lacked aggression, and he certainly wouldn't just open fire unprovoked. Without no aggression he would've just maybe tried to untie the hostages, and perhaps return fire if they attacked, but his self-preservation was zeroed out too so, so only if they attacked the hostages instead of him...

Man. I wasn’t in the camp of “listening to the pod will take away from discovering things for myself of getting overwhelmed with speculation” but I might be in a camp of “not wanting to go to the forums because of how negative and nitpicky it’s becoming”. I mean shit, we’re disecting the level of aggression (something you basically have to pause the screen to figure out) and what it would mean in terms of how a robot would respond. I see no lesser quality of story telling compared to the first season. Dolores acts the same exact way as S1, but we’re now criticizing the writing or ERW’s acting ability? Part of me feels like the (justifiable) hatefest from The Walking Dead has beld over into other shows. 

Yeah look I totally get it, as I said earlier in the thread I don't want to bum out anyone and make them enjoy it less. And I want to be clear that in spite of my hundreds of words of nerd bitching I in no way hate the show or anything, they are minor gripes, and when they add up I enough I guess I'll bitch about it, but I absolutely very much enjoy the show. This may be the weakest episode of the series for me so far, but I'm still miles away from hate-watching it never mind quitting it. I quibbled about things in season one as well.

When I quit TWD I never piled on the hatefest, I just abandoned the show/threads. Actually I remember defending TWD several times even when the hate was in full force, maybe it's me being a contrarian by nature, it's seldom I can resist playing devil's advocate.

There's many things that others criticize that I just don't understand/have any issues with. In the instacast A.ron criticized the tiger CGI. Because of this I even went back and re-watched the tiger parts, and I just don't get it. The tiger CGI is perfectly fine to me. Of course it's not cutting-edge, but are you expecting a Marvel/Pixar levels of high-end server farm-rendered tiger for a TV show? I mean sure it'd be cool if they had the budget to further improve the CGI for the Blu-ray release since they obviously have more time, but that's the type of thing I hear criticized all the time and I just don't have a problem with it, especially because it's always clearly just a budget and time constraint, not a result of lazy/inconsistent writing or production.

I like how you're all pretending this isn't your favorite scene:

When I heard this story was by the same person that wrote Gone Girl I was really worried about the ending to this really sucking too, but even though I called this way back in episode 2 (just Amma being the killer not the full scenario) it was still mostly a really well-done satisfying ending. 

But I can't think of any reasonable explanation for them placing Natalie's body in the alley, and I don't find the idea of all three of those girls being in on it with such perfect secrecy being feasible at all, but whatevs.

I also completely disagree with everyone that's been saying this show could have still had a satisfying ending without answering the murder plot, this finale would have greatly suffered if it didn't.

telephoneofmadness said:

JaimieT said:

• In observing Camille's family more, I think Camille has always been the scapegoat daughter. Her younger sister was the golden child, just as Amma is now. (Here's a good write-up of the scapegoat v. golden child in a narcissist's home.) The thing about the golden child in psychology... they aren't perfect, they face their own hardships. They receive abuse, just a different kind. But from what I've researched, they naturally take after their parent a lot more (which is why the parent attaches to them so strongly). Having a scapegoat helps unite a dysfunctional family. Amma threw Camille under the bus at the end of the episode, playing along with their mother's scapegoating of Camille, and Camille responded childishly to that, getting annoyed as though it was personal... which is totally understandable. I don't mean that in a judgy way. I just mean I don't think it was personal. Amma is young and she has to act this way in order to survive. Disagreeing with her mother would be a hell she's had no experience with, and silently disagreeing with her mother is too risky. Better to express agreement and move on. I don't see this as disordered behavior; I see it as a victim trying to survive. I do think she's a burgeoning narcissist, but I don't think the dark side has consumed her yet.

If Camille's sister had a chronic illness, I can totally see why she was Camille's mother's "golden child", because one of my dark triad family members is like an illness-seeking missile. She loves to latch onto people who have serious/terminal illnesses because:

• The targets are grateful for the help and/or too weak to challenge her dominating behavior.
• It allows her to play the martyr/saint and be told what a wonderful help she is being.
• She gets to steal attention from the target's visitors.
• She gets to remind everyone how irrelevant their problems are compared to poor so-and-so.
• I think she actually enjoys watching them suffer.
  

I'll have to re-listen to the podcast to get the names of these characters. I'm too scared to look them up on the internet because spoilers.

Have you seen Mommy Dead and Dearest on HBO? That doc will turn your stomach.

So these are the seemingly relevant character names:

Adora - Camille's mother
Alan - Adora's husband
Amma - Camille's half sister (daughter??)
Jackie - Camille's image-obsessed alcoholic (as if that narrows anything down) friend
Willis - out of town detective
Ann - first victim 
Natalie - second victim
Frank - Camille's boss/ guy that digs up dino DNA for Jurassic Park

There's plenty of great '70s tracks but one of my favorites has always been Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper



And I've listened to this one like 100 times thanks to GTA San Andreas:

I just finished it, I have a few issues with it here and there and there was one whole C plot that I didn't like but overall I enjoyed it very much. It's really well cast and John Krasinksi and Wendell Pierce are particularly good together, there's a line that Greer says to Jack in the last episode or two that made me laugh out loud.

Overall I'd describe it as a more intelligent 24 compared to traditional Clancy fare, but it's still pretty true to the spirit of the series.