Author: Metacrone

Lifelong film, television and theater enthusiast. Choose love.

The 100 Season 4 Episode 6: We Will Rise Recap

~ Metacrone

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Almost exactly a year after Lincoln’s death, the Arkadians become an angry mob again, and someone ends up on their knees, waiting to be executed. This time, Octavia is the one holding the gun, and she’s forced to confront her dependence on violence and killing as a coping mechanism. Almost exactly a year after Lexa’s death, a stray arrow seems to kill the hope of creating more night bloods. It’s another disappointment in the long line of disappoints suffered while trying to find a way to survive the radiation.

It’s starting to rain as the Ark is burning. Jaha watches as the rain dampens the fire, and Arkadians start to salvage what they can. Jasper notes that it’s not Black Rain. This prompts Jaha to give us the show’s definition of Black Rain, because we are undoubtedly going to see it before long. Jaha says:

“When it comes it’ll be colorless. [Jasper: How will we know?] Pain. Chaos. Death.”

Jasper gives Jaha another of his patented nihilistic speeches and wanders off. Jaha hasn’t given up hope yet. I prefer Jaha to Jasper at this point, and that frightens me. Jaha looks down at the seal from the doomsday cult with the bomb shelter that wasn’t sealed. Jaha, I’m glad you’re still thinking about alternatives. Shouldn’t they be considering building bomb shelters, or looking for deep caves? Virginia is riddled with cave systems.

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Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 Episode 14: Moonshot Recap

~ Metacrone

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This week, we go to the moon with Ray and the Reverse Flash! We lose another member of the Justice Society of America. And Rip figures out what the rest of us have known for a long time: Sara Lance is a much better captain than he is. I spent most of season 1 yelling at Sara and Snart to stage a mutiny. Also, a duet by Victor Garber and Dominic Purcell, which is the kind of thing that makes this show must see TV.

We start with original Rip dropping Henry Heywood/Commander Steel off in Manhattan in 1965, where he will be responsible for protecting the last piece of the Spear of Destiny. Moments later, new Rip, Nate, Amaya and Sara arrive to find them and retrieve the Spear fragment. We all know it won’t be that simple, though, or there won’t be an episode.

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The OA Season 1 Episode 8: Invisible Self Recap

~ Metacrone

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This episode brings us to the end of season 1 and the end of the story of Prairie’s captivity. It’s full of endings, and possibly beginnings. We’re left with an ambiguous ending to the episode, after everything Prairie has told us has been questioned, reminding us that her mental health has been in question since Nancy and Abel adopted her. It’s left up to the viewer to decide how much to believe is real, and how much is fantasy, delusion or coincidence.

This episode picks up exactly where episode six left off, with Sheriff Markham walking in on Hap engrossed in listening to the rings of Saturn, while sitting in front of the captive monitors. Hap immediately confesses, but offers to use the captives to heal the Sheriff’s wife, Evelyn, who is dying from ALS. The sheriff appears unmoved as he cuffs Hap, and protests that he doesn’t make deals. Hap quotes his late mentor, Leon, saying that they both know there is no good or evil, only what a man can stand. Sheriff Markham says nothing as he drives Hap away in his patrol car without checking on the hostages. The next scene shows him carrying Evelyn to the car. He’s given in.

The captives get excited when the sheriff brings Hap downstairs at gunpoint, but only Homer and Prairie are taken out of their cages, then forced upstairs. Hap leads them to a bedroom, where he shows them Evelyn lying twisted on the bed, and tells them that he is going to lock them in the bedroom until they heal her. He and the sheriff will be watching through the monitor. He leaves Prairie and Homer alone with Evelyn.

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The OA Season 1 Episode 7: Empire of Light Recap

~ Metacrone

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This is a difficult episode. Buck’s front door slamming shut was indeed a bad omen. We spend the episode entirely in the present day, as those characters are faced with increasing emotional challenges. Prairie starts moving back out into the world and confronting people’s image of her as a victim. She’s forced to face the pain she’s caused her adoptive parents, and the trauma they caused her as a child. Her story starts to come full circle.

Abel and Nancy are woken up in the middle of the night by Prairie screaming and crying. He goes in to check on her and finds that she’s had one of her premonitory nightmares. He sits with her as she recovers. Prairie asks Abel if he’s mad at her for running away. She tells him that she thought he’d understand her note, and that she’d be back in a few days. He looks surprised, then tells her that he forgot about the note.

Prairie tells Elias, her therapist, about her dreams. He asks where the latest dream took place. She describes a place with high ceilings, lots of glass, and metal clanking, like silverware. He suggests that the dreams may be her mind putting together small clues from her environment rather than true premonitions. The dreams occur at important junctures in her life. This could mean that another juncture is coming.

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The OA Season 1 Episode 6: Forking Paths Recap

~ Metacrone

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Hap is spiraling out of control, as the captives’ bond grows. He’s forgotten the original premise of his experiments, and become obsessed with Khatoun’s movements. He’s as driven to find the last movements as the captives, and to understand what the movements lead to. His obsession leads him to start making mistakes.

Buck is trying to sneak out to the regular meeting at the empty house, but his parents are still downstairs. He practices the movements until he can slip out unnoticed. On his bike ride to the house, he sees flares lighting the remains of a crash on the side of the road. The others wait for him before they start, even though he’s a little late.

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The OA Season 1 Episode 5: Paradise Recap

~ Metacrone

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What is Paradise? It’s subjective, in the end. Growing up in one of the snowiest cities in the country, with a depressed, Rust Belt economy, paradise always sounded like a warm tropical island to me. But warm tropical islands have depressed economies and natural disasters of their own, making the people who live there want to find a different sort of paradise just as much. This episode looks at the expectations we have for escape, for each other, for paradise, for whatever we think should be perfect in our lives.

Hap is in a bar in Cuba to listen to a woman who plays flamenco guitar. After the performance, he approaches her on the patio. They chat, and he steers the conversation toward his study. She is an NDE survivor, and only took up the guitar after her experience. Hap makes her his usual offer, and includes helping her escape from Cuba. But she’s not as young or desperate as his other subjects. She rejects him, even though she wants to get off the island. He looks shocked, like it’s the first time this has ever happened. She dances away with a much younger man.

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Riverdale Season 1 Chapter Seven: A Lonely Place Recap

~ Metacrone

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This week we are in a Wes Craven movie, among other things. I really wanted Jughead’s new home to mean that he’s Harry Potter, but Wes Craven has a movie called The People Under the Stairs, so that interpretation has to win out. For now. Not giving up completely on the idea of the Blossoms as the anti-Weasleys.

Jughead starts his voiceover musing on what makes a place feel like home. Warmth, familiarity, love, safety, acceptance, an idealized version of the American Dream? While he’s speaking, we see him sitting in a “typical” mid 20th century American kitchen with the Coopers, Jason Blossom, and Veronica. Jughead looks disturbed every time he notices something new in the scenario. Everyone else is blissfully happy. The room looks like something out of a Wes Anderson movie. Hal hands Jughead the utensils to carve the turkey that’s on the table. Jughead looks over to see his dad alone in a dark, messy living room watching TV. The knife disappears and Archie comes over to ask why Jughead stabbed him in the back. Sure enough, that’s where the knife is.

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Nashville Season 5 Episode 11: Fire and Rain Recap

~ Metacrone

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The cast continues to mourn Rayna in this episode. Zach channels his emotions into his concerns for Highway 65, and goes overboard. Maddie has another moment of fame. Scarlett drops a bombshell.

Scarlett is still staying with Deacon and the girls, taking care of them in their grief. The girls are still too wiped out to go to school. Bucky finds a tour for The Exes to open on, but they need to start in two weeks. Scarlett’s not sure she’ll be ready to leave Deacon and the girls on their own by then.

At a Highway 65 business meeting, Zach brings up the release of Rayna’s last album. Deacon doesn’t think it should ever be released, since it’s unfinished. Zach feels that the fans and Rayna would want it released.

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The OA Season 1 Episode 4: Away Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

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Sorry for the long delay with finishing this series! Hopefully I’ll be able to zip through the rest of the episodes now that we’re through with sweeps and other shows are taking breaks instead of ramping up. There are only five left in season one, including this one, so my plan is to have them done within the next two weeks, at most. Then we wait for season two, now that we know that a season two is coming.

This episode is a big one. We finally get to see Hap’s experiments, Prairie gets her sight back, we see the beginning of the escape plan form, we see the origin of the name OA, and both of Prairie’s teams begin to grow closer. This feels like a major turning point in the season.

Prairie wakes up on some sort of rocky, mossy plain, with a wide open sky and mountains in the distance. She realizes she’s dead again. There’s an old, red shed nearby. She enters it, and is in Khatoun’s star field. She tells Khatoun that she can see now. Khatoun tells Prairie that she always could, and beckons her over. They debate whether this was Prairie’s true time to die or not. Prairie doesn’t want to abandon the other captives. Khatoun says that as things stand now, the prisoners will never escape. They will all die in Hap’s basement, despite their determination to escape.

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iPhones And the High Cost of Healthcare

~ Metacrone

This week, Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz made a statement on CNN defending the new Trumpcare bill. He said:

“Well we’re getting rid of the individual mandate. We’re getting rid of those things that people said they don’t want. And you know what? Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice. And so, maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest it in their own health care. They’ve got to make those decisions for themselves.”

Hmmm, Chaffetz doesn’t seem to have paid for his own health care in a while. The cost of an iPhone would pay for six weeks of metamaiden’s insulin. Even with insurance, if we skipped the iPhone, the amount we’d save would only cover the copay for about six months of insulin. That doesn’t include the supplies that it takes to run the pump that delivers the insulin into her blood stream, or the test strips and needles for her blood glucose meter. She also uses a continuous glucose monitor. She happens to have a lifelong chronic illness which costs thousands of dollars a year to treat. Her Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease, not something caused by lifestyle choices. She was diagnosed at ten years old and is currently an honor student in college. Is Chaffetz going to stand there and tell me that she doesn’t deserve decent health care? We, her parents, have always had good insurance and enough money to afford her care, but we have nightmares worrying about what will happen when she goes off our insurance in a few years. No unpaid internships for her, no gaps in insurance, no self-employment, no working for a small business with crappy or no insurance. Not if the Republicans get their way. They say they are keeping some parts of Obamacare care, but they also still have to make compromises to convince the more conservative members of Congress to vote for their version.

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