quartermainefan

Did I see right?  After five years of looking for boats, Dany's fleet burned down?  I was doing stuff while watching.

To his credit, I give Bernie props for even hinting at criticism of Clinton and Obama.   Blind party loyalty leads to people going on TV insisting George Bush kept us safe.

Yeah, Bernie is sort of ruining his brand for me.   I like Bernie, I like his ethic way of talking with his hands, his common sense snarkiness at times, but it seems like he wants to take Hillary down with him and I am not sure what that will accomplish.  He did great for a 75 yr old socialist nobody ever heard of, and he has furthered the liberal agenda to degrees Elizabeth Warren never has.   Take your victory and try and pave the way for the next guy.   He's like the left wing Ron Paul, only Ron never got angry and failed to find a successor.  Bernie has to hope he sparked an interest in liberalism that will pay dividends down the road, not fight on out of spite.

Two.  The original was Dinah Drake Lance (wife of Larry Lance) who lived on earth 2 and fought crime in the 1940s.   She came out of retirement in the 60s and when her husband died she couldn't bear it and moved to earth 1 to start anew, where she fell in love with Oliver Queen.   As the years went by it made no sense that someone who fought in WW2 was still fighting crime in the 1980s, and would be in the 90s and beyond so about 30 years or so ago it was revealed Dinah actually had a daughter and she was also Black Canary somehow (I think she was in a coma or something).    Dinah was dying and they somehow put the mother's mind in the daughter's body, then they brainwashed her into not knowing any of this happened so she was young again in effect able to carry on as a character with no idea she was ever her own mother.  (sounds like something OLTL might have come up with)

Theoretically there is another, and that is because at various points when the comics get so poorly written they don't know what to do they just scream "DO OVER" and start again, meaning there was no Earth 2 and Black Canary was just a young contemporary heroine. 

I am really glad Bill stood up to them.   Hillary was afraid to stand up for common sense because to do so gets you branded a racist by that group, but Bill told it like it is.    If crack selling gangs shooting up the streets are not predators, then what the hell are they?    The mandatory jail sentences for people selling marijuana was ridiculous, but who really cares about crack dealers?   Did they care about anyone they peddled their crap to?    Naive 20 year olds trying to lecture Hillary about the 80s and 90s is ridiculous.   Back then the murder rate in NYC was 5x what it is now.   They decimated their own families and neighborhoods just fine with no help from Bill.    It's unreal we have reached such a ridiculous level of PC sensitivity that someone could say with a straight face "oh, you are against gun toting, crack selling murderers?   Well, that makes you a racist because a lot of them were black!"    It's just insane.

I thought it was lame.   It isn't the kind of cliffhanger that is fun in an Agatha Chrstie way, it is just withholding information and no analysis or thought is required.    The rest of the episode was on the dull side.   The first few seasons of TWD didn't do cliffhangers, it wasn't until Terminus they started.   The show didn't need them and this reminds me of The Killing:   a cliffhanger for no reason that will only manage to make people tune out.   Thanks to the Glenn fakeout earlier this year we have been trained to be cynical and decide who can't be killed.  That means the person who will be killed is not someone worth cliffhanging about and therefore not worrying about.   It would have been better to kill whoever now and let the audience agonize about it.    The identity of the victim will be met with indifference  and when it is revealed Eugene is gone there will be a collective cry of "boring!" from the audience.

Carol and Morgan...did they just meet superheroes or something?  So this is why Carol had to have an insane personality rewrite:  just to get she and Morgan to this place to meet Mr Perfect.    Look how the show totally botched up the moment when Morgan had to finally kill.  A whole year listening to his sermons and then not even a dramatic moment?

I refused to watch Supergirl after that dreadful promo but Flash made me tune in.  I watched 30 minutes and tuned out.   It is everything I knew it would be: Working Girl in a cape.   It is so such a sexist insult that the moment they get a female hero they have to make it something nauseating.  That cliche boss with the cupcakes, the way Kara wants Jimmy but needs the cruel boss who secretly has wisdom to guide her,   the way every enemy was female...this show is total crap worthy of the Black Widow mock-promo SNL did last year.  And Supergirl's costume is complete shlock.   Couldn't they at least get the yellow behind the S right?

The true source I believe is the republican party when they declared war on education and portrayed anyone with teeth and shoes as Northeast elitist snobs.   Then you get "Freedom Fries", a fast food for idiots if ever there was one, and then you get Sarah Palin, Joe The Plumber, Michelle Bachmann, that woman from Nevada, the one who thought she was a witch, the guy who felt rape victims couldn't get pregnant, and then you get to " 9 9 9 " and Carson.   Trump is just the next step. 

Still, I would vote for Trump and his nukes over Ted Cruz any day.   There is literally no politician I like less than I like Ted Cruz.  I would sooner take 12 George W Bushes and Dick Cheneys before I voted for Cruz.  At least Trump is from NY and there is a 50/50 chance he is faking this.   Cruz with that accent and that pausing...I hate the fact we are the same species.  I think the most nauseating thing he ever said was how when he came to America he immediately fell in love with country music...which just so happens to be republican music.   How convenient.   I don't know why nobody ever asks him why he renounced Canada.  Isn't Canada a fine country with fine people?   If he had the character he says he has why would he renounce it?   It's like a Hollywood actor changing their name to because they don't want to be jewish or something.

This was a dumb episode.  Everyone goes marching out trying to find more and more reasons to be separated.   And how many times can that one guy get the drop on these people?  Glenn is worried about Daryl being killed so once whatshername joins him, Glenn and Michonne decide to just go home?    I don't even know what is up with Rick and Morgan.   They go gallivanting  around in the middle of nowhere and then Rick decides his shift is over so he is going home, leaving Morgan to go searching alone for Carol--who they think may be bleeding.  They didn't even bother to check that barn.   Morgan is in the middle of nowhere, if he finds Carol injured what is he supposed to do with her?  Rick took the car.

Carol's writing grates.  Here she can't bear to kill anymore so she goes looking for situations where she has to kill.   What gets me is this hamfisted sledgehammer terrible writing where the show wants to make sure we see she has layers.   She always had layers and we didn't need to see tears to see it.   It's just dumbed down writing in the age of Lifetime where everyone needs to cry and narrate their every thought.   Fifty years ago Star Trek's most complex character was Mr Spock.   The show trusted the audience to see he had layers without weepy, tear filled monologues making sure the audience knew there was more to the character than just what he said.  Here, the show doesn't trust itself or the audience to see that Carol isn't one dimension so they give her some tears and an out of nowhere emotional crisis so they can hang a neon sign saying "DEPTH HERE---A LAYER IS BEING REVEALED".  It makes no sense and comes from nothing in the character's history, and only weakens her, not make her more interesting.

Surprised nobody is posting about this show.    Three episodes in and I have to say year two is better than year one.  Jon Bernthahl makes a far more compelling Punisher than Dolph Lundgren.  The fight sequence in the third episode must be seen. 

Tonight's was ok.  Denise going I think was a waste of a good character.   I can see why the show doesn't want to lose its regular cast, but killing non-stop all the new additions seems like squandering a lot of potential. Since Alexandria we saw--was his name Noah?--Deanna, and now Denise, and all could have been worthy additions to the cast.  Carol's story continues to be arbitrary nonsense.

But she was always more than one thing.   She didn't need this garbage writing to make her the character that every TV critic and seemingly half the audience to all agree is the best written character on the show just as she was.    At this rate, I half expect that guy with the deep voice to run the coming attractions like this:

"Next Time, on a Very Special Walking Dead..."

It came off physically and mentally awkward, to use a non-PC word "spazzy" more or less.   It sometimes takes just a moment, like Rubio with the water, or Jindal looking like a doof walking down the hallway to give the response, or Dukakis looking like Alfred E Newman in his stupid military helmet.    I think moments like that are pretty interesting because everyone sees it at once and the same conclusion gets reached all over. 

I knew and said all along Marco Rubio had zero shot.    He has had zero shot since he gulped water on TV.   Ted Cruz has zero shot.  Trump theoretically should have zero shot but I am not 100% sure of that in a matchup against Hillary.    Hopefully this is the end of Marco Rubio, and we never have to hear his pre-programmed nonsense again.

I will be glad when this storyline with Carol is over.  Carol was the best character on TV because she was strong, didn't doubt herself, and was so rational to the point she became this killing machine if need be.    That wasn't a weakness, that was her strength.   Now they are making it where she regrets her actions, and what is with the smoking?   Carol wouldn't smoke because there is benefit to smoking.   This whole thing is arbitrary and phony, just to give Carol some story where she can cry.   Not interested is existentialism in a character who would up til now come to the conclusion there is no upside to wallowing in self indulgent exploration.    She is too busy for this crap.

As for the guest characters this week, well again, I think they were just put there to show Carol a mirror of herself so she can see what she thinks is herself in this other woman and not like it.   I would have much preferred if they pit a Carol on top of her game against her opposite number on top of her's and show why Carol is queen.   I was at least relieved that even wailing and hyperventilating and whatever other BS they had her doing, that Carol at least had the idea to grab the cross to help get free.

I think Maggie might be toast.   They are showing her way too much lately after two years of barely showing her at all.   

I don't think they think that at all.   I assume they would much rather face Cruz or Rubio.   They see what Trump is doing, what Bernie did, they know there is blood in the water for the same old same old.  The only thing Hillary has to hope is that people outside of the republicans don't dislike her as much as they fear him. 

Every illegal win is a big deal.   Every newbie she beat, consigning that player to anonymity and no future in tennis is a big deal.   In baseball, every steroid enhanced strikeout that denied a no-name a home run that would establish a career worth millions is a big deal.   Every home run that sends a new pitcher to the minors because they lost..every drug induced result is a big deal, or should be.    You just know Maria, but do you know who it is her drugs beat and kept number 269 in the world or whatever? 

Well, society can pretend to believe her because she is pretty and everyone likes her, but who are we kidding?    She is yet another athlete caught with drugs.  Her heart condition excuse has me quite worried for her safety, but I imagine now that she has stopped the drug her heart will miraculously rebound never needing another dose.

This was a good episode with all the action and whatnot, but I despise what they are doing with Carol.   Now she is reflective, and now she has doubts, and now she smokes (and remember her own words, "that stuff will kill you").    The cigarettes and introspection are signs of weakness for the one who normally has no weakness.    This is Oprah territory she wandered into, and it isn't needed.   Second, who was that loser, nobody, extra she was with?   Where is Daryl?   She was right that Maggie the pregnant lady had no business being on a field assignment (since the baby is more important than anything) but the fact she couldn't say it was annoying.   Then there was her inexplicable attitude with crazy Morgan.   She knows he is trouble, so why doesn't she do something about it?  Just so she can have a touchy feely stare into the camera?   Who needs that [!@#$%^&*]?

The assault on the compound was cool, but Rick might have done a stake out first. 

Hillary thrives on having secrets, I can think of no other reason.   I think Ollie's mother from ARROW might have been partially inspired by her.   This scandal looks like some others: the Clintons will come away smiling and someone else will go to jail.   They can't help it, it is just in their DNA to have secrets and angles.   

Slesar was the best writer to ever write for soaps.   I love Agnes Nixon, but Slesar had the more complicated show and didn't slum around in typical soap silliness too much.

Mitt Romney is no giant, but compared to the current crew he looks like the second coming of Winston Churchill.   He actually speaks in complete sentences, doesn't scream, doesn't hurl grade school insults, and doesn't throw in Jesus every other word.    Even though he is as fake as can be--I wonder if he ever caught those varmints he was hunting--I would take him over this current crop.   He should get in the race to take even a single state away from Trump if possible.  I actually agree with him in that everyone should vote for Rubio in FL, then vote for Kasich in OH, and so on.   Cruz has it completely wrong:  this is not the time for everyone to get out, it is the time for everyone to get in.   Trump only has about 1/5 the delegates he needs, and every state counts.  If Romney could have gotten in in time to take Michigan or something, and everyone takes a state here or there, Trump won't cross the finish line.

The other thing Romney should do is declare he is running as a third party if Trump is the nominee and invite all the real republicans to vote for him.   It's a shame he has such disdain for Hillary, because that is weakening his "Trump must be stopped" message.

I'd vote for Trump over Cruz any day of the week.    In the rumored NY Times story is to be believed, Trump doesn't even believe half the things he says.    The KKK thing is I think him assuming southerners are racist and he wants votes.  I don't blame him for thinking the south is filled with KKK.    Cruz, Rubio...the moment a politician starts with the bible BS, they have anti-appeal to me.  

I loved Trump's press conference.   That ballroom with the Versaille walls and chandeliers, only Trump would hold a press conference there.   And his sidekick Christie looks so terrible standing next to Trump.   Trump actually made one really good point:   Hillary has been around Washington a long time, if the shrinking middle class was a problem why didn't she do something about it years ago?   Now of course she individually can't do anything about it but she is a charter member of the elite establishment that set policies these last 25 years. 

Cruz I truly despise.   His slow motion con man talk, that folksy insincere BS accent, the way he stresses words for dramatic effect...how his wife even married him I have no idea.

I give Romney some credit.  No one in the party was standing up to Trump and Romney has this weird status as a temporary leader of the party until someone else is nominated.  At least he is trying.  Paul Ryan is the highest ranking republican elected official in the country and his party is in crisis and he is nowhere to be found.  There was a senator who did say today he would vote for Hillary, so maybe that will give some other senators cover.   The republican party has to decide what it wants its future to be, and after almost 200 years it might be time to go the way of the whigs.