Stranger Things Season 2 Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister Recap

 

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In The Lost Sister, El continues her journey of self discovery with a trip to Chicago to find her psychic sister, 008/Kali. The sisters lost each other when Brenner separated them after Terry’s aborted rescue attempt. The episode is a stand alone featuring El’s storyline by itself.

We watch El learn about herself and face decisions about what kind of person she wants to be. She’s been physically lost since she left the lab, and a lost soul for her entire life. Kali is the same. They help each other begin to be found in ways that could only happen with each other.

As the episode begins, El is still wearing the blindfold and psychically communicating with her mother. She’s been there since the end of episode 5, so you would think she’d have gotten more than the repeating story of how Terry lost her mind, but she hasn’t.

El describes the visions to Becky over lunch, focussing on the other little girl behind the door with the rainbow. Becky suggests that El look through Terry’s files of missing children that she thought might be like El. El finds an article about Kali with a photo. El puts the blindfold back on and sits in front of the staticky TV, but she can’t find Kali.

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The Defenders Season 1 Episode 5: Take Shelter Recap

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This episode is all about the Defenders vs the Hand, as the Defenders begin to define themselves as a team, while the Hand lets infighting and old grudges continue to drive them apart. The visual style of the show changes to reflect this.

In the beginning of the episode, the Defenders signature colors of green, yellow, blue and red fuse into soft mixed colors, like peach, chartreuse, gold and lavender. They gradually give way to industrial grays made of metal and concrete, and the cold whites associated with Alexandra, as the Hand becomes more prominent in the episode.

Elektra also shifts through being surrounded by Alexandra’s white and wearing Matt’s red, to wearing her own color, black, with just a hint of Matt’s red, and placing herself in Matt’s apartment. Interestingly, Matt’s apartment has art and other prominent accents in Jessica’s blue. A hint for the long-term future?

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 3 Episode 2: To Josh, With Love Recap

This week, Rebecca continues her revenge campaign, doubling down on the darkness and recruiting Nathaniel to add in the Machiavellian twist that she can never quite muster. Tim from the office also gets some devastating news about his wife’s electric toothbrush, and Josh tries communicating directly with God because reading textbooks for 4-6 years wasn’t part of his plan to become a priest.

And we have our new theme song, You Do/You Don’t Want to Be Crazy sung by a girl band made up of four Rebeccas! We have Carrie Underwood Rebecca, Taylor Swift Rebecca, Eminem Rebecca, and KD Lang Rebecca. The theme song and the episode are full of references to Taylor Swift’s song and video Look What You Made Me Do.

There’s also emphasis on the theme that Rebecca tries to be whoever she needs to be to get what she wants, or whatever she thinks other people want, instead of who she actually is. She probably has no idea who she actually is, beyond the parts of herself that she hates.

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Riverdale Season 2 Episode 2: Chapter Fifteen- Nighthawks Recap

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The Jingle Jangle comes to Riverdale this week, the serial killer’s pattern becomes more baffling, the Scooby gang keeps themselves busy, and so do their parents.

Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe has been renamed Death Diner by Riverdale residents with a sense of humor. With or without a sense of humor, no one is visiting the Shoppe since the shooting.

Betty decides to spearhead a campaign to save Pop’s. She’s enlists V and Kevin at school. Juggie is there for some reason, even though he attends school across town. Probably can’t stay away from his girl. 😂

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 3 Episode 1: Josh’s Ex-Girlfriend Wants Revenge Recap

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Rebecca’s back, or well, theoretically she’s back. Right now, the ensemble has put on their Renaissance Faire costumes to pretend they’re the gossipy small town in Beauty and the Beast and wonder what happened to her and how she’ll recover from her latest disaster. Rebecca hasn’t been seen since Josh drove past the wedding venue and straight to the seminary. Bex will be so sad that she missed getting to play Belle!!

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Riverdale Season 2 Episode 1: Chapter Fourteen- A Kiss Before Dying Recap

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Who Shot JR Ewing Fred Andrews?

What are the odds that I’m the only one here who’s old enough to remember the summer of 1980, and the frenzy surrounding the potential murder of the star/villain of Dallas that we loved to hate? Never mind, let’s not go there.

Riverdale has successfully created its own frenzy with season 2’s premiere doubling season 1’s ratings. Either y’all can’t stand to see Luke Perry die, or those Netflix numbers were amazing over the summer.

But, not to worry, Archie turned superhero and got Fred to the one outdated hospital in Riverdale. Everyone in town stopped by to support the Andrews men. Fred continued the Dallas meme with some dreams that may or may not turn out to be reality. Veronica’s dad came home and borrowed the Godfather’s moves. Cheryl established that she’s now the Godmother of the Blossom clan. And this season’s big mystery for Bughead to make out over got off to a promising, if bloody, start.

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HULU’s The Handmaid’s Tale Season 1 Analysis and Commentary

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They Should Never Have Given Us Uniforms If They Didn’t Want Us to Be an Army.

After watching the 2017 Emmy Awards, Metamaiden and I finally got around to our long-planned rewatch of HULU’s The Handmaid’s Tale. We watched it when it aired weekly in the spring, along with everyone else, and loved it. I didn’t write weekly recaps because I know the book, having read it in the 80s, and I haven’t figured out how to write about ongoing series based on a book that I already know.

So, after binge rewatching the entire season, we present to you the compromise post: our typical season ending discussion.

 

Review

I’m not going to bother with much of a review. This series has won 8 Primetime Emmy Awards, and every one of the winners for Handmaid’s Tale deserved it. There could have been multiple winners in the various outstanding actress categories. The acting, cinematography, production design, and direction all deserve the many accolades they’ve received.

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Role Models for Girls: The Good, the Evil, and the Frozen

 

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Or, Why Do Little Girls have to Choose Between Being Good and Being Powerful?

I was never much for Disney princesses growing up. None of them ever spoke to me. I was more into characters like Simba from Lion King. I suppose, for whatever reason, I was more concerned with the personality and journey of the character than their gender. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine, Ariel…none of them did anything for me. I don’t even remember thinking they were particularly pretty. I liked Megara from Hercules a little, but I was more about Pegasus, Hercules, and Hades in that movie. The complex characters with clear goals and inner journeys were always the ones who appealed to me. (And animals. Being an animal makes a big difference to me.)

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More on GYNX the Play

 

 

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A homeless teen lesbian, a prostituted girl, an underground
abortionist, and a child porn survivor are recruited into
a rapist castration plot by a mysterious woman named
Gynx. Men go into hiding, and their operation makes global
headlines. But when Gynx’s true motives are revealed,
the group is forced to question whether
they are truly on the side of justice.

We had notes that we didn’t have room for in our review of GYNX by Alicen Grey, so, in the spirit of an “outtakes” post, here are some more thoughts on the play:

In some ways, the play reminds me of Disgraced, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play by Ayad Akhtar about the dehumanization of Muslim men in America. Disgraced showed us that stereotyping and racism can lead to the exact dangers that the dominant culture is afraid of. Its characters were realistic people, but they were also stereotypes and symbols. GYNX uses the same method with its characters and story.

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GYNX the Play the Review

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Last week, Metamaiden and I traveled to Denver to see the new Disney musical adaptation of the animated movie Frozen. It was, shall we say, a less than completely positive experience. But, I’ve written thousands of words about that already. In my last post about it, I wrote that I was going to support a feminist off-Broadway play to offset my inadvertent support of what Disney had done to Frozen. GYNX is that play.

Alicen Grey, playwright and producer of GYNX, saw my post, and offered us a recording of their opening night performance. So, Metamaiden and I sat down in Albuquerque on the afternoon of Sunday, 8/27/17, and watched this radical feminist theatre revelation while the final performance of its current run was happening in NYC. It was playing at the Hudson Guild Theater as part of the 2017 NY Summerfest. GYNX is also a Semi-Finalist in the MultiStages 2017 New Works Contest, and it’s not hard to see why.

GYNX was everything I hoped it would be, and more. I felt like Alicen had lived my life, and was seeking my revenge. The play is powerful, haunting and cathartic all at once. It’s impossible to be unaffected by it. It ends with a question that you’ll think about for a long time, if you aren’t already thinking about it.

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