Rachel

It’s been almost seven years since the hit ABC series Lost went off the air after six seasons, and it’s safe to say that the ending of that show remains one of the most divisive television finales of all time. For a show that was dropping new mysteries and questions seemingly every episode, it was pretty clear by the end that a lot of those mysteries were never going to be paid off in any meaningful way.

One of those tantalizing mysteries dropped in the show’s third season was that of an active volcano on the island, which the viewers saw images, and even a model of, in a Dharma Initiative classroom. It turns those hints were planted there on purpose, because that volcano would have played a big part in the series finale. In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, former Lost producer Carlton Cuse says he came up with the notion of a volcano playing an active role in the show’s endgame while taking a volcano tour of the Big Island in Hawaii early in the show’s run.

So what happened? It seems it was budgetary concerns that forced the show’s producers to switch gears. ABC decided they couldn’t afford a big volcanic finale for the end of their #1 hit series, and plans were altered. But originally, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse’s big finish had series protagonist Jack (Matthew Fox) and the Smoke Monster, who took the form of John Locke (Terry O’Quinn), literally fighting amidst an active volcano, Revenge of the Sith style.

Damon Lindelof explained, “The volcano had been dormant for the duration of the series, but based on moving into this endgame, the island had become unstable and the volcano was going to erupt. We were going to have lots of seismic activity, and ultimately, there was going to be this big fight between the forces of good and the forces of evil, which ended up in the series manifesting as Jack and The Man in Black, in the midst of magma. Magma spewing everywhere!” It might have broken the bank, but it would have made for a more memorable finale than what we got in the end.

For more on the Lost finale that never was, be sure to read the full story at Entertainment Weekly, and check out the video down below.

Do you think this version of Lost’s final episode would have been better than what we actually got? Let us know what you think down below in the comments.

Images: ABC Television

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Why every death-by-lava scene in movies is wrong

This is an outrage. Discuss:

 

This > pineapple pizza. pic.twitter.com/6aPAvc2Pey

— Austin Braun (@AustinOnSocial) April 2, 2017

 

As always, chat about anything you'd like, introduce yourself if you're new, and feel free to regale us with any and all delightful gifs.

Many drivers start to worry when that little red gas pump light comes on, and unless they know their car's fuel usage well they start to wonder how far they'll be able to go before they totally run out of gas.

Most cars have about 1 to 3 gallons left when the gas light comes on, which is why it's good to know how many miles per gallon your car gets so you know how far you can go before it sputters out.

This handy chart created by YourMechanic shows how much gas is remaining, and how far the car can go, when the fuel warning light is triggered in the 50 best selling cars in the U.S., so you'll never have to pull a Kramer to find out.

(YouTube Link)

See full sized chart here

-Via Good Housekeeping

Tensions are reportedly coming to a boiling point in negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

Read more...

Popular slang terms started entering the lexicon year by year in the 20th century, and it's starting to look like slang may start changing on a monthly basis due to online trends and social media.

But many of those new slang words are unlikely to stick, which is a testament to the staying power of well crafted slang terms like Gold Dig (1926), Snazzy (1931), Burp (1932), Fave (1938),  and Duh (1943).

Along the lines of Duh, did you know Doh! made it into the slang lexicon nearly 45 years before Homer Simpson would make the expression even more famous?

That's right- Doh! dates back to 1945 and has roots in radio, which is a pretty Dorky (1970) factoid that will blow the minds of your fellow Nerds (1951)!

See The Most Popular Slang The Year You Were Born here

Do you need help recognizing whether the show you’re watching is good, serious TV? What if you thought the thing you’d fallen in love with was high-quality entertainment, but actually it’s just cheap trash? Or maybe you’re a showrunner who needs to make sure we all understand that you’re not just sending random episodic pabulum out into the universe? How can you signal to your audience that what they’re watching is valuable and important?

Logan Hill wrote a Vulture list of the 13 rules for creating a prestige TV drama in 2013, and many, many of those rules still stand. But in 2017, there are lots of additional ways a TV show can communicate its importance, and simultaneously, some of those earlier rules seem to have fallen by the wayside. Let’s run down your options:

1. “It’s like a novel.”
This is maybe the oldest, most reliable way to tell us that your show is actually far more important than regular, dumb, mass-market TV. It’s not TV — it’s literature, but with title credits and a ten-episode season order. It’s a trope that dates back all the way to 1995, if you can believe it! The Wire and The Sopranos are probably the shows that really ground this idea in our collective conversation, and in spite of regular pushback from critics, it just will not go away.

2. “It’s like a movie.”
See above, except it includes even more pointed implications of cinematographic sophistication, narrative complexity, and high production values. It probably also implies the ability to swear and depict (usually female) nudity. The most egregious current example is Game of Thrones, which its creators recently described as “like a 73-hour movie.” More broadly, though, the impulse to tie prestige together with “cinematic” covers everything from Mr. Robot to Transparent to Big Little Lies to Fargo, and is regularly used without much precision about what, precisely, it means.

3. They’re not episodes, they’re “chapters.”
An extension of the “it’s like a novel” claim, the important distinction here is that you, as a viewer, should hold off on making conclusions about the series because what you’re seeing is an incomplete piece. You wouldn’t judge a book by a “chapter,” so you can’t judge a series based on one episode. Because it’s not an episode, it’s a chapter! (Or in the case of The OA, it’s not season two, it’s part two.) A sampling of shows with episodes either named or described as chapters: American Horror Story season six, Jane the Virgin, Legion, The Good Place, House of Cards, Stranger Things.

4. It’s not a first season, it’s a “pilot.”
This is particularly pointed at Netflix, which is fond of describing its first seasons as the “pilot” of the show. You know it’s prestige TV when it’s confident you have ten hours of your life to sit through something before knowing what the “pilot” looks like. The most notable example of this is in the Netflix paradigm of TV making, where a show like Bloodline was supposed to have an entire first-season-length pilot.

5. Winking self-awareness.
Is this show in on its own joke? Or not? It’s so deathly self-important, but maybe that’s the point? Welcome to what could also be called The Young Pope category, where ambiguous positions of self-mockery and absent sincerity are transformed into an ouroboros of perplexing, dizzying, self-conscious circularity. Corey Atad described The Young Pope as mostly “an extended, weekly conversation about the absurd fact that the show exists at all,” which must surely be a height (or nadir) of prestige as a project.

6. Darkness.
Hey, stuff is serious! Definitely turn off most of the lights. Ideally your primary color palette is also heavily tilted toward the browns and grays. If you must use saturated primary colors, they’d better be because someone is bleeding in an aesthetically artful way. If it’s absolutely necessary, you may also throw in some beautifully framed, lingering landscape shots with dramatic colors. A short, incomplete list of shows with weirdly insufficient lighting: The Americans, Halt and Catch Fire, Mr Robot, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, The Walking Dead, and every Netflix Marvel series.

7. What the hell is even happening right now?
Maybe you know you’re watching a prestige show because it’s hard to see. But maybe you know you’re watching a prestige show because you can see it, but you still have no idea what’s going on. To be fair to television, there’s a long-standing tradition of thinking of high-minded, serious art as being the stuff that most people can’t “get,” so it’s not like anyone is reinventing the snobby wheel here. But that doesn’t make it any less pointed when you come away from an episode of Legion and think “wow, this must be a very fancy show, because seriously, what did I just watch?” Notable recent examples also include Mr. Robot, Westworld, The Leftovers, and, of course, The Young Pope.

8. “All the pieces matter.”
Related to “what the hell is happening right now?,” all the pieces matter has grown trickier as a prestige signifier because streaming services, DVRs, and general binge-viewing paradigms have made it much easier for television to assume a high degree of attentiveness from its audience. Gone are the days when you could skip an episode of something and assume you were still pretty much up-to-date on what a TV drama was doing. As a result, “all the pieces matter” is increasingly a part of any TV show, serious and frivolous alike. But if you find that your TV show is especially fond of dropping tiny, Easter-egg clues that require extensive GIF posts to decipher, you’re probably looking at some prestige. The underlying implication of this is that prestige requires your increased attention — as Noel Murray writes in a discussion of “mid-reputable” as a TV category, prestige TV “is often subject to intense scrutiny, with fans and critics evaluating every plot twist, stylistic choice, and coded message.” This is infamously associated with Lost — but, wow, did Westworld ever blow that level of Easter-egg hunting out of the water.

9. The sad man.
This is such a familiar trope by now that books have been written on the topic, and it was the opening gambit of Vulture’s 2013 prestige TV rule book. We’ve already taken some steps toward dismantling the white-knuckled grip that sad, violent men have had on prestige TV protagonicity. Nevertheless, the idea has carried such juice over the past decade, that the contours of it are absolutely still etched into our collective unconscious. Serious TV is about probably middle-aged, probably white, probably deeply flawed men who are just struggling to make their way through the world. Chances are decent that they treat women poorly; chances are also good that they’ve got some anger-management issues. See: True Detective, Ray Donovan, Feed the Beast, Billions, Mr. Robot, Legion, Better Call Saul, The Leftovers, along with the by now endlessly familiar raft of these series from the past several years.

10. Breasts.
Hey, do you know what you can show on prestige TV outlets like HBO or Starz or streaming services, that you just cannot show me on CBS? Breasts. This is particularly handy for your sad man protagonists, who need breasts to gaze upon and then cast aside in despair when their inner emptiness has not been fulfilled by the arrival of breasts. In concert with sad men, this trope is being dismantled ever so slightly with the tiny uptick in male nudity, but it’s still a good idea to throw some breasts in there. Corollary: Can you watch this show in front of your kids without flinching? Not prestige. Oh, Game of Thrones. Oh, Westworld. Oh, Girls.

11. Literally nothing is funny.
You know what’s a dead giveaway that you’re watching something unimportant, something that’s light and flippant and fluffy and ultimately meaningless? You’re laughing. At most, prestige TV should induce a wry chuckle or possibly a single, derisive snort. If you find yourself openly giggling, or — heaven forbid — actually full-out belly laughing, what you’re looking at is unquestionably not meant to stand the test of serious TV time. Is there a laugh track? Send it straight to the ephemera pile. (Note: This list is focused on signifiers of prestige for fictional TV only. Prestige nonfiction TV commentary à la John Oliver, Samantha Bee, and select Seth Meyers bits are allowed to be funny, but if you find them diverging into real silliness you’ll know you’ve exited the most critical bits.) American Crime is a strong example of this genre, as well as shows like The Americans, the new Shots Fired, and even shows with more opportunities for humor, like Outlander, Feud, or Masters of Sex.

12. It’s not just not funny; it’s deeply depressing.
Did the thing you just watched make you feel simply, openly, emptily happy? How about gleeful? Joyful? Thrilled with the human condition? Tickled? Open to the transcendent experience of being alive? How about just cheerful? Yeah, that is not prestige. Prestige comedies can exist, but they should be checkered with moments that make you distinctly uncomfortable, or at least, very mixed (See: Baskets, Last Man on Earth, Divorce, Louie, Girls.) Likewise, comedy can feature into prestige dramas, but your dominant emotional response should be something much more muddled and complex than simple joy. “Solemnity,” writes Elizabeth Alsop, “feels less like the exception than the rule.” I dare you to watch The Leftovers and surface feeling anything other than existential despair; I look forward to similar feelings about Hulu’s upcoming The Handmaid’s Tale.

13. Movie stars (and directors).
Maybe one of the biggest shifts since Logan’s 2013 “13 Rules” post on prestige TV, the incipient boom in movie stars (and directors like Steven Soderbergh) who are making the jump to television is now one of the surest ways to communicate that what you’re about to watch is no mere episode of NCIS. Nicole Kidman wouldn’t waste her time on something schlocky or poorly made! So why should you? See: Big Little Lies, Feud, Billions, Westworld, The People v. O.J. Simpson, and upcoming series like HBO’s Sharp Objects.

None of the things on this list exist in a vacuum — they’re all the result of a complicated, multifaceted cultural and institutional system, including everything from the rise of streaming platforms, the earlier boom in cable and “it’s not TV” programming, the still-pervasive sense that serious, male-focused, dark, and violent content is more important than fiction about women or comedy.

There are also tons of exceptions. There are TV series that use darkness well (love you, The Americans), comedies that break through into critical “prestige” status (come through, Search Party, BoJack Horseman, and Atlanta), series about sad men that also include complex, dynamic female characters (I miss you, Mad Men), and shows that call their episodes “chapters” and nevertheless manage to make those “chapters” thoughtful, well-edited, well-constructed pieces of TV storytelling (snaps forever, The Good Place and Jane the Virgin).

But the new bulk of peak TV also means that there are ever-increasing hours of TV, which means ever-increasing opportunities to apply prestige signifiers to a narrative without probing what they do for an audience, or why (or whether) they’re necessary. Unbearably dark, humorless, overly baroque “movie-like” TV or series that take forever to get to their points, become a shorthand for prestige without necessarily including the basic storytelling building blocks or essential humanity that make a story work. (You know I’m looking at you, Westworld. You know I am.)

And even when these signifiers are being applied to shows that are excellent, it’s led to a weird flattening of the TV landscape. At a moment when there is so much TV, it’s a little annoying that so much of it still looks, sounds, and frames itself so similarly. Even more frustrating, too many of these prestige signifiers actually work at cross-purposes to the thing they’re trying to accomplish. TV that tries too hard to be “novelistic” too often results in baggy, messy, poorly paced seasons where the opportunities and advantages of episodic storytelling have been discarded. Rather than coming across as distinctive, a series with the aesthetic innovation of Mr. Robot can quickly become a parody of itself, or worse, just dull. Series that place undue emphasis on intensely elaborate plotting too often lose the forest of sense within the endless examination of every tiny leaf. And rampant, unmitigated humorlessness is exhausting.

There are exceptions to all rules, and there are lots of reasons why we got to this place. I’m ready to move on, though. I’m tired of prestige getting in the way of good TV.

Netflix April 2017 Movie and TV Titles Announced

The Netflix April 2017 movies and TV titles have been announced and can be viewed below! All Netflix April 2017 titles and dates are subject to change. You can also view the titles disappearing from Netflix in April underneath. Which Netflix April 2017 titles are you looking forward to and which are you sad to see leaving the service?

AVAILABLE APRIL 1

A Weekend with the Family (2016)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Across the Universe (2007)
An American Tail (1986)
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)
An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster (1999)
Boy Bye (2016)
Born To Be Free (2016)
Cool Runnings (1993)
Good Witch: Season 2 (2016)
Gremlins (1984)
Only for One Night (2016)
Richard Pryor: Live & Smokin’ (1971)
Scooby-Doo (2002)
Schindler’s List (1993)
Something’s Gotta Give (2003)
Thunderstruck (2012)
Wynonna Earp: Season 1 (2016)
Trouble with the Curve (2012)
Tropic Thunder (2008)
The Tenth Man (2016)

AVAILABLE APRIL 2

The D Train (2015)

AVAILABLE APRIL 4

Chewing Gum: Season 2—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Louis C.K. 2017—NETFLIX ORIGINAL

AVAILABLE APRIL 6

Disney’s The BFG (2016)

AVAILABLE APRIL 7

El Faro De Las Orcas—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Dawn of the Croods: Season 3—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The Get Down: Part 2—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Win It All—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM

AVAILABLE APRIL 8

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

AVAILABLE APRIL 10

Documentary Now!: Season 2 (2016)

AVAILABLE APRIL 11

Kevin Hart: What Now? (2016)

AVAILABLE APRIL 12

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: Season 2 (2016)

AVAILABLE APRIL 14

Chelsea: Season 2—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
El Elegido (2017)
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Sandy Wexler—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM

AVAILABLE APRIL 15

Disney’s Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993)
Slam—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM

AVAILABLE APRIL 18

Lucas Brothers: On Drugs—NETFLIX ORIGINAL

AVAILABLE APRIL 19

A Plastic Ocean

AVAILABLE APRIL 21

Bill Nye Saves the World: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Girlboss: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Sand Castle—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Tales by Light: Season 2—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show: Season 4—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The Prestige (2006)
Tramps—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM

AVAILABLE APRIL 22

The Great British Baking Show: Masterclass: Season 1-3 (2016)
The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

AVAILABLE APRIL 23

Liv and Maddie: Season 4 (2016)
Phantom (2013)

AVAILABLE APRIL 24

Long Nights Short Mornings (2016)

AVAILABLE APRIL 25

Disney’s Queen of Katwe (2016)
The 101-Year-Old Man Who Skipped Out on the Bill and Disappeared—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Vir Das: Abroad Understanding—NETFLIX ORIGINAL

AVAILABLE APRIL 26

Real Rescues: Season 6-7 (2012)
Trust (2010)

AVAILABLE APRIL 27

Las Chicas del Cable: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL

AVAILABLE APRIL 28

A Murder in the Park (2014)
Casting JonBenet—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Dear White People: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Rodney King—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Small Crimes—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM

AVAILABLE APRIL 30

Sofia the First: Season 3 (2015)

LAST CALL

See below for a selection of titles that will be rotating off the service in April.

LEAVING APRIL 1

Ally McBeal: Seasons 1 – 5
Angel: Seasons 1 – 5
Better Off Ted: Season 1
Barbershop 2: Back in Business
Bones: Seasons 1 – 4
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Seasons 1 – 7
Chaplin
Dollhouse: Season 1
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Firefly
House, M.D.: Seasons 1 – 8
Lie to Me: Season 1
Menace II Society
Resident Evil: Extinction
Rosewell: Seasons 1 – 3
Snow Day
Stomp the Yard
Superman II
Superman III
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Superman Returns
Superman: The Movie
The Agony and the Ecstasy
The Boys from Brazil
The Escapist
The Princess Bride
The Riches: Seasons 1 – 2
The Usual Suspects
The X-Files: Seasons 1 – 9
Vanilla Sky

LEAVING APRIL 3

Collateral Damage
The Circle

LEAVING APRIL 7

Legit: Season 2
Wilfred: Season 4

LEAVING APRIL 9

Hero

LEAVING APRIL 10

Legit: Season 1
Flower Girl

LEAVING APRIL 14

The Lazarus Effect

LEAVING APRIL 15

A Fantastic Fear of Everything

LEAVING APRIL 17

American Dad! Season 6

LEAVING APRIL 26

The Nutty Professor 2: Facing the Fear

LEAVING APRIL 30

Under the Tuscan Sun
The Mirror
Born to Defense
The Defender

The post Netflix April 2017 Movie and TV Titles Announced appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

Tomorrow is International Waffle Day, which means it's pretty much mandatory that you kick off your Saturday with a batch of waffles. But don't wait to pull out your flour and milk until tomorrow morning — start the batter tonight and let it rest for truly exquisite results.

READ MORE »

Balenciaga | Bottega Veneta | Christian Dior | DKNY
Dries Van Noten | Hermès | Marni | Michael Kors
Olivier Theyskens | Prada | Valentino | Vetements

 

Darlings, isn’t it time to forget the scary world outside your window and go try on some fabulous outerwear? The answer is yes. It’s also time for Lorenzo to dive head-first into the runway trends for spring 2017 and then translate them into affordable, wearable options for any kitten out there. He’s your own little personal shopper and he went a little nuts once again.

You see, the dependable trench coat was a spring 2017 “trend” once again. But let’s face it, they never go away. Our entire style philosophy rails against the idea that anyone “has” to own certain essential items in their wardrobe. The trench coat is one of those items that appears on practically any style must-have list for either gender, and we have to admit, it’s hard for us to argue against the choice. No one “has” to own a trench coat and plenty of people could reasonably think they have little place in their lives for one. But it really is an amazingly versatile item that looks good on almost anyone and can be paired with practically any outfit. It’ll even make a pair of leggings and kicks look a little more dressy.

As you can see from the above runway selections for spring 2017, the “trend” in trench coats is that there are no trends. Long, mid-length or short, classic neutrals or boldly colored – it’s all on the table, in an array of textiles.

We couldn’t really envision a way of breaking these selections down, except by length. And even then, there’s no consistency. Some of the mid-length stuff could reasonably be called short and vice versa. So confusing, you ladies and your lady tailoring. AS you know, the difference between a short and mid-length trench often comes down to the wearer. We love the mid-length for being so versatile and the short for being so sassy and fun, but you can’t beat a long trench coat for some authority and drama.

Shall we go shopping, dolls?

THE LONG TRENCH COAT

Lo’s faves: The plaid J. Crew, the cream ASOS, the orange ASOS, the floral ModCloth and the pink Kate Spade.

 

THE MID-LENGTH TRENCH COAT

Lo’s faves; Trina Turk, Liz Claiborne, the blue Calvin Klein, the pale blue ASOS.

 

THE SHORT TRENCH COAT

This is our favorite of the three lengths, just for having a little sass and style to it. Lo’s faves: The pink London Fog, the Burberry, the yellow Brooks Brothers, the black Michael Kors, and the red Via Spigas.

Which is your favorite length?

 

 

Standard disclaimer: All of the above are clickable links that will take you to online retailers who give us a commission based on any sales we send their way, because we find money to be somewhat useful in our day-to-day lives. Please note that the sale runs for these items can be brief and some of the links may either take you to an item that’s no longer available or no longer available at the sales price. You gotta be quick, kittens! 

[Photo Credit: IMAXTree]

• Lorenzo’s Picks
• Spring 2017 Collections
• Spring 2017 Trends
• Translating the Trends
• Trends

The post Translating The Trends for Spring 2017: The Ever-Sturdy and Ever-Stylish Trench Coat appeared first on Tom + Lorenzo.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Supernatural season 12 episode, “The Raid.” If you haven’t watched it yet, jump into the Impala and drive away.

With Sam and Dean learning about Mary’s quiet team-up with the British Men of Letters, it was only a matter of time before things would come to a head. “The Raid” brought the brothers face-to-face with the sketchy organization, and did so in unexpected ways–each Winchester got a sort of customized sales package. The events picked at the heart of the British Men of Letters conundrum–what they want, ultimately a monster-free world, isn’t terrible.

Mary lying to her boys about her alliance with the organization for so long? That is bad. She should have come clean as soon as the partnership crossed her mind. But. I will say this. The Winchesters do a few things exceptionally well–hunting, drinking, and lying to each other. A large portion of the conflict in the series over the past 12 seasons has been caused by Dean or Sam keeping some crucial piece of information from the other. The problem has been less common in recent history, thank goodness, but deceit was part of the plot playbook for a long time.

The brothers’ poor communication skills aren’t an excuse for Mary. Overall, she’s still been a rotten parent since her return from the dead (that’s a sentence I don’t get to type often). However, maybe it’s a tad hypocritical of Dean to get angry about what she’s been hiding from them, as he’s kept equally huge secrets from his brother over and over again.

All important perspective out of the way, I was interested to see how the British Men of Letters managed to attract the attention of each brother. Mary didn’t intend to give Sam a sales pitch; she wanted to share what appealed to her about the group. While he was there, Mick jumped on the opportunity to score another Winchester win for the team. As for Dean, Mr. Ketch approached him on a one to one basis.

We’ll get to the monster discussion in a moment, because it’s important in this episode, but I want to call out some parallels between Dean and Mr. Ketch. They’re not apples and apples alike, but they are apples… and another fruit that’s a lot like apples but has a different flavor. I’m suddenly feeling like I should know more about fruit. Maybe Ketch is like a pear? Anyway. Both Ketch and Dean are in pursuit of the same goal. They both like fine alcohol. It appears each of them likes working through emotions by taking out monsters. I didn’t expect to find this expanse of common ground between them, and judging by Dean’s reaction, he didn’t either.

Now the monsters. They brought the fight to the Men of Letters base and hunted the hunters. Given the success of their vampire elimination program, the last thing anyone thought would happen is vampires coming to the front gates. It was a smart storytelling move. The flip added a variable which allowed us to some of the weakness within the Men of Letters. We needed to see them falter, and we needed to see a Winchester save their skins. Needed.

“The Raid” gave me hope for the British Men of Letters realizing they can find a middle point in their talks with American hunters. They have advanced technology and organization and acronyms; all of it could be beneficial in making an impact. The hunters have street smarts. By blending practical fighting skills and knowledge of weaponry with fancy gadgets, they could make waves.

Since there is potential, albeit shaky potential, to rid the world of monsters, I can’t help but ponder this as an end to the series. I know all parties involved have said they’ll basically never stop making the show (I’m paraphrasing), and they already have season 13 on the books. But, what if? The monsters would be gone. Sam and Dean could have a regular life. It wouldn’t be the worst. Do you think it’s a possibility?

What do you think abut Mary’s actions thus far this season? Head to the comments and let me know your thoughts.

Images: The CW

Each month, Boris Kachka offers nonfiction and fiction book recommendations. You should read as many of them as possible.

The Lucky Ones, by Julianne Pachico (Spiegel and Grau, March 7)
Like the incomplete jigsaw map of Colombia that comforts a coke-addled New York fashion student in “Honey Bunny,” Pachico’s collection of linked stories captures a world in fragments — specifically the troubled South American country’s upper crust during 20 years of drug war. As Colombia now settles into weary peace, one of its émigrés mines the ruins cleverly, painfully, and often beautifully: an abducted teacher reenacts Hamlet in a FARC prison; a warren of rabbits survive on coca leaves in a ransacked estate; and that immigrant FIT student salves her wounds with her homeland’s terrible export.

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich, by Norman Ohler, trans. Shaun Whiteside (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, March 7)
Ohler’s reputation precedes him; the German novelist’s debut work of scholarship, about how the Nazi war machine ran on crystal meth and Hitler got high on coke and opiates, was already a bestseller in Germany and the subject of Stateside profiles last year. And why not: He brings storytelling vigor to an unexplored corner of Hitlerology (albeit with a little less scholarly rigor than a few dissenting historians would like). Mordant and casual even in translation, it’s easy to mainline (with a pinch of salt mixed in).

All Grown Up, by Jami Attenberg (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, March 7)
Following up on a clever and popular family dramedy (The Middlesteins) and a zippy historical novel (Saint Mazie), Attenberg freshens up another well-worn subject, New York single womanhood on the brink of 40. With a flair for understatement and crack timing, she makes Andrea Bern immensely flawed but highly resilient and self-aware, capable of reflecting on the lack of ballast in her life without drowning in clichés or Issues. It’s essential to the story that Andrea is unreservedly single; what makes it so good is that she’s absolutely singular.

Exit West, by Moshin Hamid (Riverhead, March 7)
The author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist reenters the global Zeitgeist in his fourth novel, a slightly fabulistic take on situations as real as life and death. Hamid’s native Lahore, Pakistan, is the model for an unnamed city whose descent into war sets off a couple’s refugee flight. Saeed and Nadia’s perilous love story proceeds through a series of fantastical doors — wormholes into uncertain futures in Greece, England, and the U.S., sanctuaries far less welcoming than they once were to those in flight from distant suffering.

The Night Ocean, by Paul La Farge (Penguin Press, March 7)
A reading of La Farge’s labyrinthine novel might benefit from some acquaintance with H.P.* Lovecraft, the horror writer with a cultlike following, but a taste for literary adventure will suffice. La Farge’s absent hero, Charlie Willett, wrote a book about Lovecraft’s supposed gay affair, was ostracized for it, and later drowned himself. But his therapist widow suspects he faked his death, just as Charlie believed Lovecraft’s possible lover had. That lover became an Aztec scholar who mentored William Burroughs. La Farge’s rabbit-hole mystery ranges from ancient cultures to modern chat rooms, but hangs together in one woman’s absorbing voice.

The Idiot, by Elif Batuman (Penguin Press, March 14)
Anyone who’s relished Batuman’s essays — so witty, humane, and passionate about literature that their erudition seems almost secondary — will fall for her first novel, a coming-of-age story with an unusually high IQ. Her heroine and stand-in, Selin, is a Turkish-American freshman at Harvard, corresponding via early electronic mail (it’s 1995) with a math-major Hungarian crush, trading ideas with a Serbian émigré, and traveling in search of her future life. In a world of perfect marketing, the novel would dramatically enlarge the circle of Batuman’s fandom.

White Tears, by Hari Kunzru (Knopf, March 14)
Pairing well with Get Out, Jordan Peele’s new horror movie about racism, Kunzru’s seventh novel is a ghost story about racial appropriation. It starts almost satirically, following a pair of white producers who refashion the warbling of a street singer as a lost old blues recording. Their hoax lures in a collector who believes that “Charlie Shaw” is real, and as the action gets darker — a near-fatal beating, a journey down to the Deep South — it becomes increasingly plausible that he is. Kunzru’s fiction has ranged far and wide, but never been quite this plainly suspenseful.

Richard Nixon: The Life, by John A. Farrell (Doubleday, March 28)
Farrell’s great achievement is the opposite of Blitzed — not a sexy new angle on a patch of history but a Caro-like effort to craft the only essential biography. You might look elsewhere for visions of the ruined president wandering Lear-like in the Rose Garden; Farrell’s focus is on the real accomplishments — under- and overhyped, good and evil. Which isn’t to say psychology is wholly absent, because Nixon’s dark ambitions and paranoia were integral to his career. When those impulses blossomed, we found a way, eventually, to check them. We usually do.

*This post originally misidentified H.P. Lovecraft. We regret the error.

One crazy thing about me is that whenever I’m very stressed or very tired, I watch a few specific episodes in the West Wing, in which something very dramatic happens. The show is perfect in my time of need because the episodes feature both the excitement of an action movie, and also the sturdy comfort of lovable…

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Pianos only crush unsuspecting dopes on the sidewalk in cartoons, right? There’s something slightly conspicuous about the danger that threatens Mac’s life in the opening minutes of this week’s ingenious It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It just feels off, like a contrivance that makes no effort to obscure just how forced it is. That’s precisely the point, however. “Hero or Hate Crime?” functions as a thought experiment with a handful of shifting variables, closer to an ethical word problem than the first act of a sitcom script. Then, in time, this logic puzzle transforms into a weirdly elegant metaphor for the show itself and its uniquely inflammatory brand of social criticism.

“Hero or Hate Crime?” places the gang in a 12 Angry Men-ish pressure cooker of legal proceedings. It starts out as the pettiest dispute the group has ever undertaken: the rightful ownership of a two-dollar scratch-off is hotly contested, with each member of the Gang claiming entitlement to the ticket and its potential riches. Dee purchased it, but she was only able to do so by using Dennis’ money and the ticket fluttered out of her purse. Mac seems to have a pretty good argument, as the current holder of the ticket, but Charlie and Frank both posit that they deserve at least part of the money, having collectively saved Mac’s life by kicking him with a poop-covered shoe and calling him a “faggot,” respectively.

The entire case ultimately hangs on that word, a slur so vile that it’s now supplanted “fuck” as the referent of “the F-word.” Everyone agrees that the term itself is reprehensible, though it does take a quick lesson on the medieval etymology for the Gang to grasp the full depths of its capacity to hurt. Their communication only breaks down when they start to discuss the utility of the word itself, and whether there’s any instance in which using it could be productive. Frank mounts a pretty solid argument, positing that the net total effect of his choice to use the word was indisputably positive — after all, it did alert Mac to the falling piano — so his good deed superseded the naughty word.

The real meaning of this rambling spat comes into focus as the conversation shifts to the power of language, and whether its capability to upset and offend can be a useful tool for good. In other words, the episode finds It’s Always Sunny making a case for its own existence. The blurry line between satire and bigotry has turned into a battleground in recent years, as campuses and other social spaces have struggled to differentiate between allowing free speech and cracking down on hate speech. The ability to make use of objectionable words is integral to It’s Always Sunny’s specific brand of satire, which relies on shock to expose greater truths. Words have power, the episode argues, but the power to do harm can be harnessed and repurposed for good.

Their exchange over Frank’s use of the F-word dovetails into a larger and far more colorful roundtable on the wide, woolly world of the most verboten curses, all of which are thrillingly spoken aloud on basic cable television. The recurrent notion uniting these bluer bits of language is the gap between the words’ definition and understood meaning in context. This concept even has a clear foundation in linguistic theory, too, tracing back to the core principles of semantics (conventionally defined meaning), pragmatics (culturally understood meaning), and the gap between the two.

When Charlie is the one to actually utter the N-word, it rings as a particularly strategic choice: His guileless tone and childlike voice convey that he sincerely has no hate behind the word itself. Meanwhile, Dee argues that “cocksucker” shouldn’t even be considered an insult, seeing as pretty much everybody enjoys the act the term literally alludes to. And to confirm that this isn’t about potty-mouthed writing for its own sake, the torrent of obscenity emphasizes the fact that language can place some at an unfair disadvantage — specifically that women have no equivalent of the C-word to use on men.

The episode’s coup de grace comes in the final minutes, proving the show’s commitment to a positive social profile beyond any shadow of a doubt. After having talked and talked around the absolute necessity of using the F-, C-, N- and various other words, It’s Always Sunny puts its money where its mouth is by taking a hardline stance on Mac’s long-debated sexual orientation. Mac’s closeted homosexuality has been a long-running joke, with the character’s cluelessness about the charged undercurrent of his comments constantly played for laughs. (Another instance of a disconnect between what’s said and its intended effect.) It looks like business as usual when he introduces The Ass-Pounder 4000, an exercise bike that forcibly fists your anus if you start to slack off, and at first, his admission that he’s gay could’ve been little more than a cheap ploy to claim ownership of the ticket. But what would’ve otherwise been a sublimely cynical gag takes on a stronger emotional heft as Mac commits, his excited yelling about “GAY RICH MAC!” giving way to a quiet and sincere admission that, yeah, he’s coming out for real this time.

After more than a decade on the air, nothing’s more difficult for a show than radically altering its own status quo, making change that feels real and far-reaching in spite of reliance on familiarity and formula. Nudging Mac out of the closet over what ends up being a $14 scratcher won’t alter the show’s style of comedy or overall tone, but it demonstrates a willingness to commit where the show previously refused. It’s both no big deal and a very big deal, introduced casually but offering valuable visibility to another queer character on TV. This is the closest that It’s Always Sunny will get to a Very Special Episode — a major character revelation, rooted in progressive good, awash in hair-curling profanity.

• Charlie clearly learned his legal technique from the great Johnnie Cochran, busting out the rhyming Cochranisms of “If the shitshoe’s a matcher, then Charlie gets the scratcher!” and “If it smells like shit, you must acquit!”

• Dennis gets the best line of the episode when piling on Dee during the swift sub-arbitration to determine whether her life is sad. There’s nothing wrong with her hands, he explains, but he then informs her, “Your elbows are a mess, they’re too sharp. It’s like they’re stabbing me.”

• The quick cut from the first attorney telling the gang to “treat each other with respect and common courtesy” is inevitable, but still loses none of its punch in the delivery. That’s the mark of a great joke.

There's lots to learn from these small house plans from the '60s

Contact Name: Lisa Wesley Contact Email : human.resources@wicourts.gov Institution/Organization Name: Wisconsin Court System Job Location: Madison, WI Job Title: Acquisitions Librarian Application Deadline : February 26, 2017 Years of Experience Required: Link to Job Posting: http://www.wicourts.gov/courts/employment/apply.htm Job Description: The Wisconsin … Continue reading →

Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets is an odd title for a Supernatural episode. It sounds like something I might pick for a big bang fic that I can’t figure out how to title, because it’s unusual and might make people go, huh, I wonder what that one’s about? I sometimes really miss the days of classic rock episode titles. But other than the unusual title, this was a solid episode. I will always prefer the Winchesters onscreen 100% of the time (Jared and Jensen do not appreciate my preference, but this hasn’t deterred me), and I haven’t always been a fan of the angels/heaven storyline in the past, but this episode was less about angels in general and more about the one angel I care about – Cas.

Much as we’ve been witness to the evolution of Sam and Dean’s views on when killing is justified and when it’s not, increasingly falling into the gray areas instead of black and white, we were able to see some growth in Castiel’s views in this episode. I was chilled by his coldness in the flashback scenes to the execution of Lily’s husband and child (though even then Cas was the only angel who flinched when the human in the house cried out). But other than that flinch, Castiel was at that time truly the ‘good little soldier’ that Dean has often been disparagingly called. The events of the present were a sharp contrast to that way of being, a reminder of how far Cas has come – and that, in contrast to what Ishim believed – that change is in large part due to his relationship with the Winchesters.

Points to Show for putting Cas in a female vessel again in the past (and Benjamin in the present) – I like the reminder that vessels are just that, and that gender is irrelevant. It’s part of what makes angels the fascinating creatures they are (even when they’re dicks). Castiel’s explanation of Benjamin’s close relationship with his vessel, who he considered a friend, was also interesting. I sometimes forget that not everyone’s vessel is long gone like Jimmy Novak.

Bonus points for the awesome shot of Benjamin’s wings. And Winchesters in fed suits.

This episode was an opportunity for Misha Collins to show his stuff, and he pulled off both the heroics and the emotional moments beautifully. Two episodes in a row we have Castiel saving the day by taking out someone/thing with a well placed angel blade! But the emotional scenes were even more deftly handled – I felt both empathy and affection for Cas as a result.

In the beginning scenes (after the badass fight scene between Benjamin and Lily), Dean is pissed off because Cas did something that may well have ‘cosmic consequences’ – although we know damn right well that if Dean was in the position of being able to save Cas or Sam, he would have done the same thing. Cas, however, isn’t having it. He refuses to apologize for saving the Winchesters’ lives and clearly doesn’t regret it. Cosmic consequences or not, I respect him for that. I always tell my students that children learn more from what their parents’ model, not what they say – and Sam and Dean have certainly modeled the ‘save your brother deal with the consequences later’ mantra for Cas. Apparently he was paying attention. And since that’s the way I like my Winchesters, gotta say that’s the way I like Cas too. Sorry, Dean.

The understated humor of those early scenes also worked really well – and without the cheesy music that announces ‘hey something funny is happening’ that I hate so much. Sam’s bitch face when Dean snarks at Cas to make sure he doesn’t do anything really stupid again was priceless, as were Sam’s repeated attempts to get either Dean or Cas to talk in the awkward car ride. Poor Sam, surrounded by two stubborn bickering not-really-but-sort-of-two-year-olds. And all three of them jammed onto that diner bench seat? Classic Supernatural.

One of my favorite little moments was Sam and Dean waiting on the sidewalk while Cas is inside the diner talking to Iphrim. Dean is pacing, pissy, barely staying there, and Sam is watching him.

Sam: “…and you’re gonna storm in there in about…. NOW.”

And in Dean goes. I laughed out loud.

Also extra points for some of the cheeky references –

Fast Jack’s Ale – for Jensen’s new brewing company?

The Wright Spot – in honor of the episode’s talented director, Tom Wright?

I love when Show does stuff like that.

I liked the character of Ishim too – well, I didn’t like him, he was a dick. But I liked the way he was written. Ishim brought back a reminder of the way many angels feel about humans, and the contrast between that and the way Cas now feels about them (again thanks to Sam and Dean). Another subtle way to highlight the evolution of Castiel’s views, and his increasingly close ties to humanity.

Misha got some great lines – snarky ones like “If I’m going to do anything else stupid, I’ll let you know”, and serious ones that I thought he nailed.

Cas: Sometimes doing the right thing requires sacrifice.

If that’s not something he learned from the Winchesters, I don’t know what is!

Castiel’s heroics weren’t limited to his last minute save with the angel blade. He’s able to step up and do what he believes is the right thing repeatedly, explaining (with precious little patience, because really, they do get this) that he’s willing to take whatever Ishim dishes out if it means he can save his angel friends.

We also got a bit more heroic Winchesters, building on last week’s wonderful depiction.

Sam and Dean (insisting that they’re going after Lily): We have to try. And we’re not asking.

Is it hot in here?

The fact that the Winchesters approach Lily to talk, instead of shooting first asking questions later, also shows their continued evolution. I feel like there was a time that Dean especially might not have been so down with just talking to someone who just tried to kill his friend, but this is a human, even if they believe she’s a demonically-jacked-up one at the time. She’s said she’s not a threat to them, though, and so they give her the benefit of the doubt. And that makes all the difference.

Points to Lily (that is, to writer Steve Yockey) for her reminding the boys that she can hear them. Because, as they often do, they’re standing like five feet away from her! I laughed out loud then too.

I also love that Sam didn’t listen to Dean and let Dean confront Ishim alone – thus we get one of my favorite things, Sam bursting in to save the day. With Lily, but whatever. (We knew that was going to happen as soon as Lily announced that Ishim was about to kill Sam’s brother…) They all get to be pretty badass right up through Cas using that angel blade.

I was rooting for Lily to live, especially after she stood up to the abusive Ishim and told him she would not be powerless any more. That was a beautifully acted emotional moment when Cas apologized to her and said that if she can’t forgive him, she’ll be able to find him. Once again, that took courage on Castiel’s part – similar to when Sully apologized to the girl seeking revenge for her sister’s death. Apologies are powerful when they’re genuine, and I liked that theme repeated here.

I’ve been complaining that I’m confused about what’s going on with Cas and the other angels this season, so it was nice to get a little clarity in this episode. No wings, no teleporting, have to take a car. Can still do some healing but it takes a lot of out of them.

Sam, Dean and Cas are on the same team at the end of the episode, Dean with a peace offering beer and some blunt conversation instead of cold shoulders or snarking and Sam with the good sense he’s exhibited all episode. I love Sam’s openness with both his brother and Cas recently – the three of them just TALKING felt therapeutic. And wonder of wonders, they even talked about some of the themes I had already drawn from the episode – Kelly and the Nephilim are also a mom and her kid. What implications does that have for how Cas will feel about stopping the baby from being born?

Cas: There was a time I wouldn’t have hesitated…

That’s so true. I feel like it’s true for Dean too, but that time – for both of them – has passed. There are things I don’t want to see change about Supernatural and its characters. I like the Winchesters larger than life big damn heroes who will go to the ends of the earth for each other. But the sort of evolution we saw in this episode, especially in Cas, felt organic and earned instead of shoehorned or convenient.

Writer Yockey was able to tell a fascinating story about Castiel while also remembering to keep Sam and Dean in character – in small moments of shared humor like “you could have just said yes”, Sam running to Dean after he bursts in to save him, the brothers hanging onto each other as they’re blinded by the white light, and Sam remembering his time being soulless as he empathizes with what using angel magic is doing to Lily’s soul.

Oh, and Dean’s unrepentant love of pie, no matter what the source.

Kudos to guest stars Alicia Witt and Ian Tracey for creating some memorable characters and being able to keep up with the Best.Cast.Ever. To Tom Wright for his masterful direction. And props to the brilliant Jerry Wanek for sets like this:

Also, the next episode may kill me – either because it will rip my heart out over what will happen to my favorite fictional character in the history of ever, or because said fictional character is riding a goddamn mechanical bull. I mean, are you TRYING to kill me, Show?

Thanks to @kayb625 for the caps!

–Lynn
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Let’s say you’re the president of the United States giving a speech about Black History month. You have a piece of paper in front of you and there’s a name written down—one you’re not familiar with—but you want to say something about him anyway.

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I’ll admit that I didn’t expect much when I started watching the first half of the season of Timeless. The promos, with their swelling music, seemed a bit hokey and overly dramatic, and I wasn’t sold on the time travel premise. But then I actually sat down with the show, and found that not only was it enjoyable, but that I genuinely liked it. The leads are compelling, the mystery is intriguing, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Long story short, if you haven’t given this show a chance but you like fun, give it a try.

The scientific explanation of time travel in the show gets one sentence from character Connor Mason: “If you get a powerful enough gravitational field, you can actually bend space-time back on itself in a kind of loop, a closed time-like curve that would allow you to cross over to an earlier point.” There are certain rules within the show: only travel to the past is allowed, and only to periods before the time travelers’ births. And the characters have the ability to change the past, but they shouldn’t. That’s what main character and historian Lucy Preston is there to ensure.

The beauty of this show is in its simplicity: the creators and writers simply aren’t interested in digging too deep into the science because, at its core, it’s an adventure show. But I’m here to ruin the fun by asking: Is the time travel in Timeless actually possible?

Let’s rewind and pose a simpler question: Is time travel possible? We turn to Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, which breaks the stuff of our universe down to its most basic questions: What is space? What is time?

To understand whether time travel is possible, we need to understand the nature of time itself. Experience, and what we see in the world, tells us that time has different characteristics (the past is different than the future, because the past has already happened and the future has not), and that time is like an arrow: it moves in one direction. However, that is biased by our own perceptions and worldview; Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us that every moment is the same. Time does not flow. There is no past, present, and future. There just is. Just because we perceive time a certain way doesn’t mean it actually is that way.

Quantum mechanics adds some layers and complications to this, but let’s leave that for now. If time just is, then can we move backward and forward through it? Is time travel even possible?

Most scientists would agree that no, you cannot travel in time. But, technically, physics doesn’t say it’s a no go. There’s nothing that we’ve discovered that tells us time travel is strictly impossible. The question really isn’t whether it’s possible: it’s what you can do with it.

The premise of Timeless is that a man named Garcia Flynn (played oh so well by ER’s Goran Višnjić) has stolen a time ship and is traveling to pivotal points in American history to change the outcome. Our intrepid team is tasked with stopping him, and while they succeed for the most part, they’re not always entirely successful. This means they sometimes come back to a changed present, where only those within the time ships (Flynn and his team, and Lucy and hers) can remember events as they were. In other words, they are changing past events. Changing the timeline.

Traditional physics tells us that this is, quite simply, impossible. Every moment happened as it happened. Every moment will happen as it will happen. There is no concept of human free will factored in; it is how it is and will be how it will be (except time is relative, and past, present, and future are subjective, so technically it just is how it is. There’s no “will be” in relativistic physics.) If you travel back in time and are present at certain events, you were always there. That event never unfolded in a way in which you weren’t there. There are no paradoxes; you can’t travel back in time and murder your own grandfather, unless in your memory, your grandfather was murdered by someone who looked a lot like you do. Period. End of story.

Quantum mechanics, however, tells us something different: as a science fiction fan, you’re probably familiar with the Many Worlds theory (even if you don’t know it by that name). The bottom line is that every potential outcome of any situation—every single one—actually occurs in a parallel universe. So while the events in the timeline of your universe are static, you have the ability to change the events in the past, but you do so not just by traveling in time. According to this theory, the characters in Timeless are actually jumping to alternate parallel universes.

While I highly doubt that the creators of Timeless are going to rename the show Alternate Parallel Universe-less, it’s a fun possibility to think about. We don’t know that time travel is an impossibility when it comes to physics, nor do we know the rules that would govern such an endeavor. If you’re interested in learning more about the nature of time, space, and our reality, Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos is an excellent place to start.

Swapna Krishna is a freelance writer, editor, and giant space and sci-fi geek. You can find her on Twitter at @skrishna.

Famed star of the stage and screen Sir Patrick Stewart is going to act like shit, literally. Today, Sony announced that Jean-Luc Picard himself will play the poop emoji in its upcoming Emoji Movie. Also in the cast: T.J. Miller, who will play the main character Gene; Ilana Glazer, who plays the hacker Codebreaker; Maya Rudolph, as Smiler; Jennifer Coolidge as Gene's mother, Mary Meh; James Corden as Hi-5; and Jake T. Austin as a teen named Alex. 

It's just like what William Shakespeare once wrote:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying poop.

[Tinder Questions]

Welcome back from midwinter hiatus, everyone! Unfortunately for Timeless, the break did not treat the show well. NBC has yet to make a decision about the future of the program but the general consensus among internet prognosticators is that cancellation seems the more likely outcome unless ratings improve noticeably and, quite frankly, I don't see that happening. I'm not sure who out there in TV land will suddenly develop an interest in a low-rated time-travel show that's more than halfway through its run and creates as much frustration as satisfaction among even its most diehard fans.

For instance, this week's episode at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The show proved enjoyable enough in a lot of the small details, but left a bit to be desired in the big points, a practice that is becoming the defining trait of Timeless. Flynn's reasoning for going back to 1893 was arbitrary at best and nothing of any real note happened. But oh my, did they pack a lot of little goodies in! We got jokes about Pabst's Blue Ribbon, Cracker Jacks, the lack of girth on the young Teddy Roosevelt, as well as a host of well-known historical figures such as Henry Ford, Harry Houdini, Sophia Hayden Bennett (the first woman to graduate from MIT's architecture program -- perhaps a little less well-known), and infamous serial killer H.H. Holmes. Flynn does reveal to Wyatt the identity of his wife's killer but, given the rules of time travel (which the show kinda, sorta follows), Wyatt would have to kill the guy's parents to get revenge. Will he? Do we care?

Maybe. Last fall NBC ordered three additional episodes which, while an indicator of a likely cancellation, gave the writers an opportunity to put together a season finale that could also serve as a series finale. That being the case, I have a few questions about how things might play out if we have to bring those two lovely time-hopping soccer balls into dry dock once and for all.

Will the team, um, team up with Garcia Flynn?

Bringing the team together with Flynn, either individually or as a unit, proved entertaining more often than not. And now knowing that Flynn's assessment of Rittenhouse as an evil, elitist manipulator of American politics was right on the money, it makes it all the more plausible that Lucy and her compatriots will turn against the Rittenhouse-controlled Connor Industries. Goran Visnjic has yet to really nail down Flynn with any consistency -- he vacillates from sadistic murderer to intelligent and thoughtful without any real explanation why, sometimes in the same episode -- which may make an alliance difficult, but the show will be the better for it no matter what version of Flynn shows up.

Will Wyatt make it to the end of the season?

Let's face it -- our team of time travelers has not really come together the way I had hoped. There were of promise in the first few episodes but by this point I've given up on this combo really working well together. And the weak link here is Wyatt. Rufus has developed into a real scene-stealer and his relationships in the present with Jiya and Connor Mason make it unlikely he will go anywhere. Wyatt, on the other hand, is pretty disposable. He's got no uniquely special skill set, he's never convincingly become the badass the writers want us to see him as, and the ongoing plotline about changing the past to bring back his dead wife, or at least avenge her death, hasn't been all that compelling. If NBC approached the writing team and asked what changes they could make to improve the show and justify a second season, I would put killing off Wyatt at the top of that list. At the very least, his death would make for a dramatic ending to the series.

Will Lucy be reunited with her sister?

Whether or not the show gets renewed, can we make this happen? It’s a great feel-good way to end the season and could actually be linked in nicely with the Wyatt death scene I'm pushing for. And if the show gets a reprieve I would be entirely happy to enter the second season without this narrative albatross around the writers' necks. Given who her father is, and the information dropped earlier in the season that Rittenhouse membership seems to be hereditary, I'm far more interested in learning about any possible role in Rittenhouse that Lucy is possibly destined for than what's going on with the sister or, HEAVEN FORBID, that stupid, stupid fiancé.

What will be revealed about Rittenhouse?

This, of course, is the real tricky part. Can we get to a point in the Rittenhouse storyline that would leave us satisfied if the show ends, but not feeling that we've learned all we can if a renewal happens? Given the show tends to take its own sweet time giving up real answers to big questions it's likely we'll learn far less than we want to, but leaving some questions unanswered wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen.

What is the DEAL with Lucy's journal?

Not telling us what's going on with that book -- that would be the worst thing that could happen. Am I the only one who's obsessing about what's in it, how it came to exist, and how Flynn got his hands on it? It's Timeless's fucking Rosebud. Can't you just see Lucy in the show's final scene whispering as everything fades to black, "The journal. It was always the journal"? If this show goes off the air without telling us at least that, the only "timeless" thing remaining with be my raging hatred for all those involved in that travesty of justice.

Explore the Timeless forum.

Dragons are still capturing the imagination of adults and children alike after centuries of breathing fire and battling armored knights, and yet artists often have a hard time coming up with original dragon designs.

This means most of the dragon-shaped stuff that comes out looks like the same olde same olde, but the felted characters created by Russian artist Alena Bobrova are fantastically unique. 

Alena's dragons have lots of scales and spines and such growing out of their backs, and some are even sprouting 'shrooms because they're just that lazy. 

The best thing about Alena's felted dragons is that each one's totally unique, with a very distinct color scheme and personality, so the humans who adopt them know their dragon is theirs and theirs alone!

See more from Felt Dragons By Russian Artist Alena Bobrova here

 

 

[Photo Credit: IMAXTree]

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On Supernatural, Misha Collins rarely gets the opportunity to show off his comedic side. His fan favorite character Castiel gets a few funny moments here and there, but those hoping to see the true heights of Collins’ comic prowess should tune into Comic-Con HQ’s Kings of Con.

Ahead of this Tuesday’s season finale of Kings of Con, we’ve got an advance clip of Collins’ guest appearance as Doug. A regular guy who just happens to be cooking dinner with his monkey, Angus. Like you do. We see in this video that Rob (Rob Benedict) desperately needs Doug to up his credit limit after he makes some incredibly bad spending decisions. As it turns out, Doug is such a big supporter of Rob’s career that he’s still holding out hope for his guest appearance on a sitcom that ended 13 years ago!

For those who are only first hearing of the show, Kings of Con is a series created by veteran Supernatural guest stars Rob Benedict and Richard Speight, who also star in the series as fictionalized versions of themselves who travel the convention circuit across the country. It’s a scripted comedy, with a little bit of improv as Benedict and Speight share some of their wildest Con experiences through their unique comedic lens. The previous episodes are currently available to watch on Comic-Con HQ, and the season finale of Kings of Con will premiere on Tuesday, January 17. We’re hoping to see more from the show down the line!

What did you think about Collins’ guest appearance in this Kings of Con clip? And should Doug get his own web series? Let us know in the comment section below!

Image: Comic-Con HQ

Sherlock has reached the midpoint of its current season, and slammed us with a massive reveal. Let’s get nitty-gritty with the “The Lying Detective.”

Spoilers for Sherlock 4×02 “The Lying Detective.”

 

Summary

Culverton Smith, a wealthy philanthropist, gathers his close friends and his daughter Faith together and administers a drug to the group to help them forget the secret he needs to get off his chest. He tells them that he needs to kill someone. Faith tries to write down what she remembers of the conversation, but he stops her and tells her to hand over the sheet of paper with what she’s written. John is in therapy with a new person who is encouraging him to accept his difficulties in the grieving process, but John isn’t having it. He also refuses to admit that he’s been hallucinating Mary all over the place, and speaking to her. An Aston Martin pulls up at his therapist’s door; it’s Mrs. Hudson, here to tell him that Sherlock has been off his head on cocaine all this time and that he needs to help him.

Sherlock has spent the past weeks in a fugue of drugs and deduction. At one point, Faith Smith came to see him and talk about the notes she wrote after being witness to her father’s confession. She told Sherlock that the one word she couldn’t remember—who her father wanted to kill—has haunted her to this day. He realized that she was suicidal and took her out for chips, getting rid of the gun in her bag as payment for taking her case. She told him that she hadn’t expected him to be nice, and then the drugs knocked Sherlock out for a spell before he woke up to find her vanished. He then deduced that the word that had haunted her was “anyone”: Culverton Smith is a serial killer, and Sherlock publicly accused him on Twitter and his blog.

Back in the present, Mrs. Hudson reveals that she drove Sherlock to John in the boot of her car. It turns out that Sherlock already knew this would happen, and arranged to have everyone meet John here at his therapist’s place, knowing which therapist John would pick, and that fact that he would want Molly to confirm his drug use, and that Culverton Smith would ask to see him that day and send a car to pick them up. Molly confirms that if Sherlock keeps using at this rate, he’ll die in weeks, then the two head out to meet Smith. The man is odious and suspicious to fault, then takes the two to the wing of a local hospital that he built and show them his favorite room: the mortuary. Sherlock had called Faith to the scene, seeming to think that her presence would cow her father, but when she arrives, she is not the woman who came to Sherlock’s flat at all. Sherlock has a breakdown over this, and pulls a scalpel on Smith, leaving John to subdue him. But John gets carried away and beats Sherlock in anger for what happened to Mary. Smith attempts to stop him, but Sherlock says John has a right.

Sherlock is being kept at the hospital, and Smith visits him through a secret passage—he had them built into “his” wing of the building, just like the infamous H. H. Holmes house, so that he could visit patients and satisfy his desire to kill. He asks why Sherlock did this, and Sherlock admits that he wanted Smith to confess the murders to him, even if it killed him. Back at Baker Street, John and Mrs. Hudson find Mycroft and his goons combing over the place. Mycroft is adamant that this behavior from Sherlock doesn’t make sense given his rational approach. Mrs. Hudson laughs at him, telling Mycroft that Sherlock reacts to things emotionally, which leads them to discover Mary’s video message. Mrs. Hudson kicks everyone out but John, and they watch the video in its entirety. Mary gave Sherlock instructions to save John, telling him that he would have to let John save him for it to work. She advised him to pick a fight with a big villain, which is precisely what Sherlock has done. John rushes to the hospital in time to save Sherlock’s life.

John is spending time with Sherlock on rotation with other friends to be certain that he won’t use again. It comes to light that it’s Sherlock’s birthday when John hears Irene Adler’s text message alert, and realizes that she’s still alive. He advises Sherlock to find her and actually attempt a relationship because there was no telling how much time anyone had. He tells Sherlock that Mary’s death wasn’t his fault, then admits to having an affair with a woman he met on the bus… but only via text messages. He apologizes to the figment of Mary in his head and has a breakdown. Sherlock gets to his feet and draws John into a hug. Later, John goes back to his therapist and notices that something’s amiss. It turns out that his therapist is the woman who pretended to be Faith to Sherlock. She’s also the woman that John was having his affair with. She reveals herself to be Eurus Holmes—named for the east wind—Sherlock and Mycroft’s sister. Then she pulls a gun on John and pulls the trigger.

 

Commentary

I wanna be all like Darth Vader right now: “Sister! So… you have a twin sister!”

Fine, we have no idea if she’s Sherlock’s twin, but a) that’s usually a thing in these sorts of surprise hidden sibling stories, and b) Sherlock said to John in “The Six Thatchers” that “it’s never twins.” Often in this show, little throwaway lines from other cases come back like that, so… someone is probably a twin. Maybe it’s Eurus and Sherlock, maybe it’s Mycroft and Sherrinford, but someone. Probably.

Oh right, I should also mention that I’m assuming that Sherrinford and Eurus are two different people and that there are actually four Holmes siblings now. Euros could be Sherrinford, but that seems unlikely, since she lists all three names to John after her own, saying that her parents picked odd ones. Their poor parents. How did they ever survive with so many weird genius babies?

There are a lot of great things in this episode in terms of character work. John is working through his grief in a detailed and painful manner, and Sherlock continues to believe that he functions at max capacity or better when he’s high as an airplane, despite all evidence to the absolute contrary. Watching the story bring the two back together is beautifully done and heartbreaking, to boot. Amanda Abbington is clearly having a blast playing the Mary in John’s head, and she does an incredible job of making the figment eerie and funny and commanding all at once. (Not super pleased with the device, since having her there in John’s head is a really fun thing to play, but still ultimately a way for Mary to be there without being a complete person.)

One theme that we’ve been seeing more and more of since the third season is a real close look at Sherlock’s life as a drug addict, something that was ghosted over in the beginning. Sherlock deserves credit for not shying away from this aspect of the character, and does a good job of refusing to glamorize his state while still keeping the canon conceit that Sherlock uses drugs to help himself solve cases. The reappearance of Bill Wiggins adds further credence to this, making it clear that Sherlock has a different sphere of people he engages with while he’s in that headspace, and that they take up real room in his life. The only question is whether or not this will be central to the upcoming finale, and whether or not the show is attempting to address his state in a meaningful way.

The episode is also supremely clever in using the machinations of the performance world against us. It is fairly hard to tell that fake “Faith,” John’s therapist, and the woman he was having an affair with are all the same person for two reasons—she’s well made-up in each incarnation, and we get so accustomed to seeing similar actors in TV and film and we often don’t question people looking incredibly similar. Unless you’ve got great knack for faces, it’s likely that you didn’t notice these three women were the same until the very end. A very nice way of handling something that could have easily given away the game too quickly.

On the one hand, it’s nice that John didn’t have an actual physical relationship when he chose to have an affair. (And I also appreciate that he considers it to be cheating even without sex, because he’s an adult and understands that emotional cheating is a thing.) On the other hand, it seems like the choice to handle it this way was out of a desire to make this another “gotcha!” moment in the series. They tease the audience by making it seem like John was having a full-fledged affair, then rein it in by saying “oh, but it was just texting” so the audience had a week to be aggravated with the character before realizing that it maybe wasn’t as bad as they thought. Which is manipulative in an annoying way rather than a clever one. Also, it smacks of “oh right, we can’t let John sleep with Sherlock’s sister, so we have to mess around with this a bit to make it work.” (I’m not going to get into the whole guy-has-best-friend-and-everyone-thinks-they’re-gay-then-guy-has-crush-on-bffs-sister-what-nothing-it’s-different trope/subtext because at this point, with this show, the whole thing just seems like overkill. John and Sherlock love each other, the end.)

I think I’ve struck on the thing that’s currently bothering me about this season plot-wise. In the previous seasons, each episode had two sides: the reimagined canon Holmes story and the arc-centered story. And these typically wove together so well because an average episode of Sherlock contained just enough to keep the season arc chugging along while making smart choices in reconstituting an old Holmes tale. But this season we’ve had one reimagining that simply used the old story’s plot as a red herring (“The Six Thatchers”), and now this episode basically replicated the plot of “The Dying Detective” without any truly significant restructuring at all. If you’d read the story, you’d know exactly how the plot with Culverton Smith was going to unfold—the only difference were the extra bits added to play into the season arc.

Unfortunately, this weakness of plot takes away one of the main things that has made Sherlock such a fascinating show: its ability to upgrade Holmes canon with fun, modern twists. Instead, Culverton Smith tries to kill Sherlock so that Sherlock can prove he’s killer, just as the original Doyle story had it… and we get a weird needless aside about H. H. Holmes’s murder house to explain the hospital’s ins and outs. It’s a bit of a letdown in a show that is usually very good about grinding up its source material until it resembles a new dish.

This ending offers up a playground of potential theories, all of which are more wacky than the last. So let’s look at what we (think we) know:

• Eurus means “eastern wind,” which was a phrase in an important story to Sherlock last season
• There are at least three Holmes siblings, now possibly four
• Sherlock is still having that recurring dream with Redbeard and another person
• Mycroft has been meaning to talk to Sherrinford
• Eurus has to be tied to the Moriarty plotline somehow due to giving Sherlock the note that said “Miss Me?”

Clearly something happened in Sherlock’s youth tied to Eurus. My assumption is that his recurring dream is a repressed memory. The question is, of what? His sister’s death (that turns out to be faked)? Something terrible that his sister and/or Mycroft did in their youth? Something horrible that he did as a child? The fact that he even had a sister at all? If it seemed to Sherlock as though she died in a traumatic way, perhaps Sherlock blocked the memory of her entirely. Unlikely, but anything is possible in this context.

If Sherlock does remember her, then it’s likely that he either thinks she’s dead or they’re estranged, explaining why he didn’t recognize her. There’s a clear kinship between them, though—he likes her as Faith Smith and her comment that he is “nice” seems to be true to her opinion, rather than the persona of Faith. Another question; did she simply seed the detail that Faith was suicidal to make Sherlock want to help her? Or was Eurus herself actually suicidal?

Here’s my number one concern: I really really really really really do not want Eurus to be somehow “behind” the whole Moriarty arc. I don’t want her to be Moriarty, or to be the guiding hand behind Moriarty. I also don’t want that to be the case with Mycroft in any capacity (though plots like that have been explored in Holmes pastiches and so forth). It cheapens the character of Moriarty entirely. In addition, there’s something extra annoying about revealing a hidden Holmes sister and having her be automatically evil. (Sherrinford could potentially be a woman and assuage that problem, of course.) It’s also the exact same ploy that occurred when John and Sherlock first met, and he mistook Harry to be a brother rather than a sister. So we’ll see where that ends up.

There is one possibility that intrigues me, even if I don’t like the idea of cutting into Moriarty’s legacy: the idea that Mycroft and/or Eurus were concerned about Sherlock’s descent into drug addiction, and invented Moriarty as a way to occupy him and save his life. That would make the trick seem a little less stagey and over-the-top, and would also play into the concern we’re seeing over Sherlock’s cocaine/meth/whatever else use. It would make emotional sense, even if it still retconned a hefty portion of the show. Undermining Moriarty as he is now is likely to come off cheap no matter how you cut it, but that might take out the sting.

There’s also the possibility that none of this has anything to do without Moriarty, and the use of his likeness was just there to drag Sherlock home. So it’s really all up for grabs at this point.

And then there was this clever thought on Twitter (grab all the first letters):

 

Shoutouts and Unsolved Sundry

• If Molly is just here to take care of babies and diagnose Sherlock’s cocaine usage, I would rather they didn’t write her in at all. No, that’s not true, I’d rather they let Molly do something else, because she’s wonderful and has proved that she’s worth more than this.
• I also miss having Lestrade around in a meaningful capacity. Come back to me, Greg. I long for your incredulousness.
• Irene and Sherlock having this adorable text-sometimes relationship is a really great button on that dynamic. (Is she still teasing him about his funny hat? Are they still making dinner plans?) Also, it was a clever way of wishing Sherlock a happy birthday on his near-birthday—it’s generally thought to be January 6th.

• We get more Bond references, with Mrs. Hudson owning and driving his favorite car (on film, at least), an Aston Martin. And driving it like a maniac with Sherlock in the trunk. That was maybe the greatest moment in the show’s entirety to date. Add to that, they use that moment to explain that OBVIOUSLY Mrs. Hudson is rich if she’s able to own that building in central London and keep a tenant like Sherlock who clearly doesn’t overstress about his rent. Mrs. Hudson for the win, forever.
• Mycroft and Lady Smallwood! Yeah, that was pretty much exactly how I thought Mycroft preferred his dalliances; with boss ladies, in his office. I feel like she’s enough of a match for him that I want this to continue….

Emily Asher-Perrin wants to drive around with Mrs. Hudson for a day, at any speed. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.