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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Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 Episode 13: Land of the Lost Recap

~ Metacrone

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This week we finally get original flavor Rip back, or as close to it as he’s ever going to be. This show has found its rhythm in season 2 and is currently the best in the Berlantiverse at doing what it sets out to do. It’s become such a joy to watch, and on top of that we get Sara Lance fighting Sara Lance! I could’ve watched another 10 minutes of Sara on Sara hand-to-hand.

Sara and Jax are trying to find out the location of Nate’s grandfather and the last piece of the Spear of Destiny using the medallion, interfaced with Gideon. Things aren’t going well. Nate rushes in, all rude and impatient with Gideon. Gideon doesn’t appreciate the slight. Best not to insult the AI who runs the ship you live in, buddy.

Evil Rip is still in the brig, and calling for Gideon. She tries to ignore him, since she’s not supposed to talk to the bad man, but finally relents to tell him she’s supposed to ignore him. He uses three code words on her: “Spaniel, broad, bicycle.” She tries to refuse the order, but Rip repeats it. The brig door opens, and every other door on the ship slams shut. The team realizes what Rip is doing.

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Supergirl Season 2 Episode 15: Exodus Recap

~ Metacrone

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This week, Alex is continues to be hung up on her father’s betrayal, and takes matters into her own hands. The episode’s parallels with our current political situation are obvious, but the show is confused in its own sense of right and wrong.

A seemingly average family is traveling through the rural countryside, with the parents embarrassingly singing along to Bruno Mars, when they are pulled over by a police officer. He doesn’t ask to see the driver’s license or registration, which should be their first clue that something is off. Instead, he tells them they have a broken taillight, which he’ll help them fix with special reflective tape. The dad gets out of the car and a scary black van suddenly pulls up. The whole family is cuffed and dragged into the van. They’ve all revealed themselves as aliens while they were being captured. Beware police officers who don’t follow procedure.

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Santa Clarita Diet Season 1 Episode 10: Baka, Bile and Baseball Bats

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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As we start our last episode of the season, everyone is putting up a good front, but covering up a deep well of anxiety. There is some hope that Dr Cora Wolf will come through with a cure. Eric has put together a background reel to introduce us to the doctor.

Dr Wolf is a genius who was a prodigy. She was working for the CDC when she came across her first zombie case. The subject had murdered and eaten his entire family, and partially eaten two hikers. Her research led her to believe the condition was caused by an unknown virus, but the rest of the staff at the CDC didn’t believe her. She was ridiculed and fired. Dr Wolf started her own biotech company to search for a cure.

Sheila is still worried about what will happen if she ends up randomly murdering people and Joel needs to put her down. She wants to play a game where he tells her how he’d kill her, sort of like f*ck, marry, kill. Joel knows that, no matter what, this isn’t going to go well for him. He tells her he’d bash her head in with a baseball bat, like they do in zombie movies. Sheila is appalled. Just like Joel feared, wrong answer. Sheila wants him to make it special, maybe even romantic. He should kiss her, then put a silk pillow over her face, and shoot her with a pearl-handled revolver. It’s a nice picture for an assisted suicide, but I don’t know if it would work with a feral zombie. Maybe Joel could just bedazzle the bat.

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Santa Clarita Diet Season 1 Episode 9: The Book! Recap

~ Metacrone

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Things are getting a bit more intense this episode, as Joel and Sheila feel like Sheila’s time may be running out. Sheila and Abby spend the day doing mother-daughter stuff, like playing Raffi for a porn-loving biker, and Joel and Eric have a father-son day at the paranormal convention.

Joel interrupts Sheila as she’s packaging up delicious bags of Dan for her daily meals to tell her that he’s heard from Anton, the guy who claims to have the Serbian zombie cure book. Anton will be at the paranormal convention in Oxnard today, and is willing to meet them there.

But first, Sheila needs Joel to pop her eye back in more tightly. It’s been wandering around in the socket since it started jumping the night before. Joel girds his loins, and pops it in. We all need to accept the changes in our partners’ bodies as we age, even post-mortem.

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Santa Clarita Diet Season 1 Episode 8: How Much Vomit? Recap

~ Metacrone

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Sheila is obsessed with her little toe, and trying to reattach it. Unfortunately, she’s not very handy. The glue gun gets glue everywhere (who hasn’t had that happen?), she’s not much of a seamstress, and the toe splits like dry wood when she tries to nail it back on. We’ve all been there. A little part of something has broken off, and it seems like it should be simple to fix, but ends up a disaster. Usually the answer is duct tape.

She gives up and goes back to bed. Joel is awake and hopeful, but losing a toe is bit of a turn off for Sheila. Not that she tells Joel about her toe. She convinces him that they need to make brownies for Lisa instead.

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