What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from Decider: https://decider.com/2021/10/16/you-season-3-episode-9-recap/

You S3 Ep 9: Red Flag

By Tara Ariano 

Oct 16, 2021 at 7:00pm

I’m sure there are viewers out there who would dispute my characterizing You as a comedy — an extremely dark one, of course, but a comedy just the same — and to bolster my case as to genre, I would direct those viewers to the opening scene of “Red Flag” (You Season 3 Episode 9) in which Sherry and Cary remain so committed to their tools of healthy communication that they employ a colored flag system to protect honest disclosures…WHILE THEY ARE BOTH TRAPPED IN A CAGE. The absurdities in this, the season’s penultimate episode, only pile up from here!

In the aftermath of the failed fourgy, the Quinn-Goldbergs have split up the workload: Love volunteered to figure out what to do with the Conrads, leaving Joe to set the house aright. In the process, he disposes of all the sex toys, keeps the case of drugs, and then chances upon a zippered pouch containing a handgun. He evokes Chekhov’s famous principle while pondering what to do with it: either he keeps it and probably ends up shooting someone with it, or else he leaves it somewhere for someone else to use on him. For now, he takes it with him…

…to a liquor store, where Dante has directed him in fear that an unresponsive Marienne has gone there. She confirms Joe’s and Dante’s fears: the judge ruled against her. Worse yet, Ryan is moving to New Jersey for a new job in cable news, and bringing Juliette with him. Joe reveals, “I killed someone.” (Elaborating, he only mentions his very first murder, of his mother’s partner.) Marienne agrees with him that this event did not doom Joe for the rest of his life. They both also agree that their kids have given meaning to their struggles. When their faces are, once again, helplessly drawn toward each other, Marienne says she can’t cause any more damage, but Joe promises that she can’t: he’s ending his marriage…and even though this is the oldest line in the book (however much Joe thinks he means it in this moment, Love keeps finding ways to keep him from dumping her!), it gets Joe invited back to Marienne’s, where they finally have sex for real.

Meanwhile, Sherry’s strategy for getting out is to behave as though there is no cage between her and Love, raving about the pastries Love has passed through and reminding her about the letter of introduction she needs to write and deliver to the counselor at the Ashman School — she even offers to help Love write it! Love is thrown by Sherry’s very warm manner before meeting Theo in the alley. He tells her about the video of Joe punching the wall as well as the scope of Matthew’s surveillance. Theo’s leaving town, and he wants Love to come with him. He’ll take he “maybe” for now, and when he goes back to his car and sees a CC camera mounted outside the jeweler across the street pointed toward the alley, he assumes Matthew will see it eventually and flips it double birds.

While Love waits for Joe to see her “WE HAVE A PROBLEM” text, she returns to the cage and uses Sherry’s face to unlock her phone: she needs to post an update to explain Sherry’s silence to her followers. “You are so smart, Love, even under stress,” gasps Sherry. Love tells her to stop trying to be her friend, but Sherry insists they really are friends. She doesn’t even disagree when Love calls Madre Linda a pit of “narcissistic vipers”: narcissism is control, Sherry says. She crafts her influencer persona so that she can choose which flaws to expose. “Look where that got you,” Love snorts. Warming to the theme, Sherry muses that she’s been in a cage of her own making since she had kids — since she got married, even. Connecting on a human level works, for the moment: Love tells Sherry about Theo’s invitation, and about Matthew’s footage. Sherry has a great idea: Love should write a post on Sherry’s blog outing him!

After listening to Love’s message about Matthew’s videos, Joe assumes that Love has probable ly already killed him and the Conrads, but he’s about to absorb an even harder blow: talking with Joe has convinced Marienne that she needs to follow Juliette to New Jersey.


Joe’s going to need to prevent this from occurring by solving Marienne’s “impossible problem”: Ryan. There’s precedent of a sort, as we flash back to poor Nurse Fiona. Now she has a brace on her wrist and her boyfriend has no compunction about yelling at her in her office where the kids can hear. Little Joe sees Travis pause at the stop of the same staircase he didn’t push his own bully down, but when a memory of killing his mother’s boyfriend causes him to hesitate, Travis walks away and Joe misses his chance; soon after that, news comes that something bad has happened to Nurse Fiona. In the present, Joe once again comes across the gun he’d brought with him to Marienne’s. His internal monologue is resolved: “Ryan has to die.”

Joe gets home to good news: Love tells him about Sherry’s blog post, which has already sent a phalanx of “suits” from Matthew’s company to his house. “It must be said, Love is good at all of this,” Joe’s internal monologue grudgingly admits. When they’re hugging in relief, Love feels the gun in his waistband and, after getting over her shock, suggests they use it to deal with the Conrads: “We could make it look like a murder-suicide. Worked for us once before.” “Listen to her,” grumbles Joe’s internal monologue. “Our marriage cannot end soon enough.”

Next door, Theo has JUST put some of the most salient videos on a flash drive when Matthew’s main suit Jean (Marcia Cross!) orders him into his office. She invites him to show her what he thinks Joe or Love did, on the basis of which she…basically describes all the events surrounding Natalie’s death and its cover-up with impressive accuracy. Matthew knows how crazy his theory sounds, and Jean gently suggests that Natalie was “a beautiful, flawed person” who kept secrets from him, and then less gently reminds him that all this evidence of his illegal spying has got to go before the authorities come looking for it. Matthew very reluctantly complies.

Love’s last stop before driving the letter to Ashman is to collect trash from the cage. Now Sherry’s gambit is to get Love on her side by driving a wedge between Love and Joe: “Fuck him, letting you fix a marriage that never stood a chance in the first place!” Love cannot countenance this criticism of her beloved teammate, and shoves the gun into the pass-through compartment: one of them is going to shoot the other, and Love will release the survivor.

For all Joe’s complaints about Love’s “impulsiveness,” he is certainly not displaying much pragmatism when he stalks Ryan to the gym. He intends to kill Ryan with an overdose of Cary’s drugs (though he also has a knife), but Ryan gets the jump on him. They grapple, and Ryan goes over a parking lot railing to a small green space below.

When this fails to kill Ryan, Joe is forced to race down there and stab the shit out of him, walking away when the first couple of yoga students come out and can still see Ryan’s assailant up the block. All this talk of surveillance cameras and Joe doesn’t assume there’s one directly outside the door of this public establishment? …Okay!

Speaking of, Theo pulls up the Natalie playlist Matthew had been fixated on and notices something Matthew somehow hadn’t: the camera at the jeweler’s caught Joe putting something in the trunk of Natalie’s car and driving it out of the alley. Theo goes straight to the bakery — which is closed but with the front door unlocked? — looking for Love, including in the basement while, in a room Theo doesn’t enter, Sherry and Cary are arguing about whether the walls of the cage are bulletproof. Theo is about to leave when he hears a gunshot…

…because Cary has tried, and failed, to shoot the door open, and the ricochet has struck Sherry in the ear.



Joe and Chekhov did not predict this outcome! Sherry’s just seized the gun and turned it on Cary when Theo uses a stand mixer to break down the door. As they scream explanations and beg Theo to get them out, he refuses to believe Love has had any part in their imprisonment, but does focus on the matter at hand and go searching for a key…

…which he finds just in time for Love to return, scary calm, and tell him he has to leave town and never come back. He begs her to go with him, but with tears streaming perfectly down her cheeks, she says she can’t. Theo seems to realize through this conversation that the Conrads’ accusations are true and Love is involved, particularly when she asks him to return the key and claims she’s going to let them out as soon as he leaves. He’s barely taken one step toward the door when Love bludgeons him with a fire extinguisher. The blow sends him tumbling down the stairs, where he strikes his head and bleeds A LOT.

WHO WILL SURVIVE THE YOU SEASON 3 FINALE? And HOW?!!?!??!?!?

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/the-morning-show-recap-season-1-episode-9-play-the-queen.html

The Morning Show S1 Ep 9:
Play The Queen

By Maggie Fremont

How terrible can Mitch Kessler get? I’m very happy to be back in the present day after our excursion to the not so distant past, since here, at least, everyone is aware of his depravity. Well, everyone but him.

For someone who likes to tell people he’s reexamining his own actions so much, he’s certainly doing zero reexamining of his own actions. Mitch has yet to show any remorse or admit any wrongdoing. To him, he’s the victim here. When we arrive back at his curbside chat with Hannah, he actually tells her that, when he realized she “used” him to get a promotion, it “took [him] off guard.” He doesn’t blame her, of course, but he was still surprised she could do such a thing. Reader, do you not want to hurl your computer into the sea? He only gets worse, by the way.

Later, Hannah comes to see him — Hannah is in a bad way, folks, especially after she tells Claire she was the one who reported Claire and Yanko to HR and that admission goes very, very poorly — and tells him she’ll anonymously corroborate his story about Fred’s silencing her with a job promotion. Hannah, who looks terrified the entire time, is trying to be brave. If she’s going to “help” Mitch, at the very least she’s going to set him straight about what happened that night in Las Vegas. She thought he was mentoring her, that he believed in her. She wanted to leave. She admired him as a journalist. That everything happened so fast, and she froze. “Did you freeze or try to leave?,” Mitch asks, accusing Hannah of retconning that night now that she regrets it. When she tells him she was powerless in the situation, he screams at her — SCREAMS — that she is playing the victim. That everyone knows what it means when the lead anchor is hanging out with the assistant booker. That she can’t be mad that she allowed herself to get seduced. Meanwhile, that look of terror has never once left Hannah’s face. She flinches at Mitch’s touch. She is clearly so broken. Okay, so now are you looking for something to hurl into the abyss? “America’s dad” is an actual monster.

Mitch isn’t the only person whose top priority is self-preservation at all costs. Alex Levy is showing us just how low she’ll go to keep her career intact. After Bradley tells her about Mitch’s contacting her about the interview, which, surprising exactly zero people, is a conversation that goes very poorly, Alex yells at her co-anchor about loyalty, about how this is going to ruin her (“There is no us. There’s you interviewing him, and there’s me getting fucked”), and, just for good measure, about how Mitch is clearly using Bradley because she’s an easy mark. Shockingly, Bradley decides to leave Alex’s fortress in the Manhattan sky, and Alex is immediately on to figuring out how to stop this interview from ever happening.

Well, keeping in mind that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Alex turns to the one other person who does not want Mitch to go public about the culture of silence at UBA: Fred Mickland. Alex and Fred meet over lunch, which is hilarious because all of the bullshit coming out of their mouths makes me want to barf. Alex tells him about Mitch’s wanting to expose him and how they need to stop this and get rid of Bradley, because, well, gosh darn it, she just really cares about TMS. No one else but she and Fred seem to care about the integrity of this show! She apologizes for thinking Bradley was the answer to anything — she can admit when she’s wrong! Fred has some hilarious things to say as well. When he starts spinning a story about how he just knew there was something off and dirty about Mitch and he wishes he had trusted his gut feeling, I almost choked.

Alex and Fred are in agreement about getting rid of Bradley, but Fred informs her that, in light of the internal investigations that are about to come out, they’ll have to get rid of Chip, too. Admittedly, Alex doesn’t like agreeing to this, but in the end she still says yes to meeting with Fred’s top candidate to take over TMS. Turning on Chip? That’s real low, Alex.

Despite that hiccup, Alex begins to put her “Get rid of Bradley so she can’t expose my complicity in the TMS cover-up culture” tour in motion. She has Daniel come over to visit, in what must be the weirdest meeting of his life, to explain exactly how they’re going to phase Bradley out and make people fall in love with Alex and Daniel. He immediately calls his agent to put his move to YDA on hold since now his dreams of co-hosting TMS are coming true, which definitely seems like a call that will bite him in the ass. Sorry, Daniel, you’re for sure going to be collateral damage in this whole mess.

Alex then takes this tour to the man himself: Mitch Kessler. This scene, you guys! There are a lot of problems with The Morning Show, but the chemistry between Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell is not one of them! Alex is there to get Mitch to stop this interview. There’s no way it’ll happen, and it is time for him to crawl into a hole and stay there for a while. As if Mitch would agree to that. Things really start to heat up once Mitch calls Alex out on her continual denial of being complicit in what went down. “I may have fucked them, but you were cruel,” he tells her. True to form, Alex continues to deny that she has any culpability. Mitch refuses to back down, and, on top of it all, reminds her just how bad it’ll look if he takes the interview somewhere else and tells people TMS refused to take a look at itself. It’s then that Alex plays the only card she has left: She’ll be doing a lot of press about her impending divorce, and who’s to say she won’t start talking about a harrowing experience she had while on a remote with Mitch in which he got her drunk and she ended up in his bed, not remembering how it happened. “You wouldn’t dare,” he says. “Try me,” she spits back. Oooo, guys. This is getting good.

While Alex is trying to protect herself any way she can, Bradley takes the idea of interviewing Mitch on TMS to the person she definitely should have asked in the first place: Cory Ellison. Bradley goes on and on about how this will not only implicate Fred but force Mitch to admit wrongdoing and stuff about truth and journalism and whatever, but Cory doesn’t really need to hear it. “You had me at Fred Mickland,” he tells her. Never change, Cory!

The really hard sell is Chip. He’s understandably nervous about taking down the head of UBA on a UBA show, but as Cory reminds him, once he told Maggie Brenner about Fred’s complicity, there’s no turning back. The other thing that gives Chip pause is, predictably, how it will affect Alex. Cory has an argument against that, too: He knows for a fact that Alex is meeting with a replacement executive producer behind Chip’s back. Oh, you guys, when Chip calls Alex to see if she’ll come clean or not and she continues to lie to him, he is heartbroken. That “You know we’re always good” he gives her before hanging up the phone? It’s the saddest.

This Just In!

• Man, Maggie Brenner is cutthroat. Showing up in her leather jacket to tell Cory she knows that he’s planning a mutiny at UBA and that Fred gave her her big break so she’s definitely going to warn him? Daaaaaang. Don’t mess with Mags.

• Um, I guess we needed a scene where Bradley calls her brother so he can assure her that what she’s doing — fighting for the truth! — is just and good? Sure, it reveals that Bradley is the one who turned her father in for killing a kid while drunk driving, which I guess gives some layers to this character? I still maintain that Bradley should be 28 years old in order to make any sense. Remember when we first met her, and she was brash and confident and yelling at men about how exhausted she was? Where is that person?

• If you had told me at the start of this that Yanko — Yanko! — would be our precious angel, I would not have believed. Yet here we are, and Yanko is so excited that he can take Claire out on a real date. Of course, Claire is freaking out about her co-workers knowing they’re dating and even admits to Hannah that she is embarrassed to be seen with him (she also reams Hannah out for reporting them and betraying their friendship; it is harsh), so when she meets him for their date, she tearfully breaks things off. It’s too much for her. Poor Yanko — who brought her a single rose! — walks off into the NYC night, heartbroken.

• Nestor Carbonell saying, “Charcoal-grilled filet mignon is pretty exquisite,” forever and ever, amen.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from Alexus Renee: https://alexusrenee.com/hightown-season-2-episode-9-recap/

Hightown S2 Ep 9: Small Craft Warning

By Sir Anthony — 2 months ago

Previously on Hightown Season 2 Episode 8, Ray set in motion an operation to free Renee from Frankie’s clutches by giving Jackie intel about his next shipment. Frankie was paranoid and kidnapped the private jet pilot, took Charmaine on a drive in a secluded area, and just when she thought he would murder her… he shot the pilot and they buried his body. Jackie and Leslie’s sting operation to catch him at the airport was foiled.

Jackie tried to keep the op under wraps from Saintille but he already found out about it. He told him she thinks Daisy is dead and they planned to investigate. When Jackie got home, Frankie and his bodyguard were waiting at her doorsteps. They were interrupted by a neighbor but he vowed to return…

Warning… Spoilers below!

On Hightown Season 2 Episode 9, police searched the woods for Daisy’s body but Saintille wrapped the search efforts since they found nothing.

Another Shot

Ray texted Renee to meet. She was worried as Frankie has been acting strange lately but agreed to meet him. When she tried to leave, Frankie demanded her phone, threw it in the microwave, and fried it! They’re taking more precautions now. He informed her that Charmaine was already in New York receiving a double package and that she was shut out of the business. Also, the bodyguard, Chuleta, would escort her around.

She managed to ditch the guard and enter the store and chat with Ray. She told him they’re no longer using planes and the re-up is happening today. She was afraid Frankie will discover she ratted him out. Ray proposed they run away together. Chuleta came in and she avoided detection with Ray.

While Charmaine was in New York, she called Osito in prison. In a coded effort, she told him she was staying in NYC and not returning to the Cape after this next deal. Also, Frankie was a problem and she was cutting ties with him. Also reassured him that his prison supply would remain, and if she ever goes missing, he can find her in the Caribbean Islands. She met with her connect’s nephew (who liked her) was blindfolded and was driven to the location.

Ray visited Jackie asking for help busting Frankie and Charmaine. He was concerned that Renee was burned and wouldn’t have long to live. He pleaded for her help in raiding Frankie. She would have to inform Saintille first.

Saintille, Jackie, and Ray set up a sting operation on Hightown Season 2 Episode 9

They met with Saintille, who was pissed they got intel from Renee because Ray was back talking to her. He reassured them that the intel this time was good and they had to act fast. They figured Charmaine had to transport the shipment back via car or boat. Saintille was forced to set up the sting but put Ray in Jackie’s responsibility so nothing negative blows back on his department.
Let’s Take A Ride

Jackie approached Ed and apologized for telling him off and asked for his help with the operation. She got him on board but he was pissed Ray was coming along since he was responsible for getting her shot. They figured it was a small craft transporting the drugs and searched the cape.

Meanwhile, Saintille and Leslie bottlenecked the bridges in search of Charmaine. Ray spotted the ferry and figured Charmaine would ride it as a means to throw them off. They entered the ferry in search of her but came up empty.

Charmaine was on the bus which was being stopped by on the bridge. Saintille noticed from the distance that someone was exiting the bus and chased after. Charmaine ran but was trapped by police. Saintille talked her down but she tossed the bag into the water and they arrested her! They picked it up and informed Jackie. She then informed Ray but he was concerned about Renee and went to find her.

Frankie was waiting for Charmaine to get off the bus and, of course, she never showed. He saw agents and knew the pickup was a setup and bailed! He phoned Chuleta who informed a nervous Renee that they had to go on a ride…

Bodies Found

Saintille interrogated Charmaine, offering to look out for her if she cooperated giving up Frankie and her New York connect. She lawyered up and Saintille was pissed at her non-cooperation, laying any overdose death on her (including her sister!) Suddenly, Saintille got a call from the department of corrections and spoke with an informant.

Jackie stayed and chatted with a mute Charmaine. She revealed she was the cop her cousin Osito shot. She tried to get Charmaine to open up but it was futile.

Saintille visited Osito in the warden’s office with his attorney. He offered a vague statement with a vicinity and Osito would fill in a few blanks granted he receives a bail hearing. Osito provided, the address given was the location of the pilot’s grave and Frankie had murdered him. He also told him they will find more bodies there.

Ray broke into Frankie and Renee’s home in search of her to no avail. He freaked out and called Jackie and she told him they found a male and a female’s body in the woods. When Jackie arrived at the scene with Ray and learned the pilot and Daisy had been buried there! They needed more evidence to apprehend Frankie and suddenly found another body… it was Jorge!

They pondered the M.O. was different and he had been buried there weeks prior. Saintille order all surveillance footage into the location and called the judge for a warrant to arrest Frankie!

Frankie went to Renee’s mother’s home to snatch Frankie Jr., telling her they wouldn’t see each other for a while.

Chuleta marched Renee into the dark woods and ordered her inside the RV, telling her that Frankie said she would know what to do. She thought he was there to kill her but she was there to grab the go money Jorge had stashed.

Double Crossed

Chuleta took Renee to the strip club where Frankie and Junior were stationed. He informed her that they were leaving right now for the Dominican Republic. Suddenly, cars screeched outside, Frankie and Chuleta armed themselves to check it out.

Jackie, Leslie, and a swarm of cops raided the place! Frankie was tackled and cuffed, they grabbed the gun off him asking was that the murder weapon for Daisy and Jorge (in which it was for the latter!) Jackie confronted him that he could’ve dug his cousin a proper grave. Frankie was oblivious to what she was talking about…

Frankie had a smug look on his face as they perp-walked him out but that broke when Ray headed his way and spoke to him. Frankie was irate cursing Ray out! Ray returned the smug smirk. He was excited to see Renee was alive and Frankie could see they were hugging and kissing each other as he was hauled off to jail!

Stay tuned for the Season 2 finale, because the whole “Great White” operation is cracked open, but a few mysteries remain. Ray’s plan to get his job back has a complicated ending. Jackie goes from feeling like a hero after an important discovery to the zero who let something critical get away…

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from cnet: https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/the-book-of-boba-fett-episode-4-recap-a-rescue-a-breakout-and-some-revenge/

The Book of Boba Fett S1 Ep 4:
The Gathering Storm

The former bounty hunter battles an old nemesis in Chapter 4 of the Disney Plus Star Wars show.

Sean Keane
Jan. 25, 2022 6:00 a.m. PT

The fourth episode of The Book of Boba Fett landed on Disney Plus last Wednesday, as the ex-bounty hunter continues his career change to Tatooine crime boss in the seven-part live-action Star Wars show. This comes after the ruthless Pyke Syndicate was seemingly revealed as a real threat to Boba's power on the desert planet.

The Pykes even scared off the Twins, despite the Hutts' eagerness to seize the territory of their late cousin Jabba from Boba. This show is set around five years after Return of the Jedi and shortly after The Mandalorian season 2.

Preparing for war

The episode ends with Boba and Fennec persuading (with a little rancor threat) Mos Espa's crime families to stay neutral in the coming war with the Pykes. With that done, Fennec suggests Boba use his considerable reserve of credits to hire muscle to take on their enemies.

After she utters these words, we get a hint as to the identity of that muscle in the form of The Mandalorian's main theme. It sure implies that Boba will recruit our old pal Mando (aka Din Djarin). A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

The boys in Beskar armor became friendly after Boba and Fennec helped Mando take on the Empire during Boba's quest to retrieve his lost armor.

When we last saw Mando, he handed Grogu over to Jedi Luke Skywalker so the little guy could be trained to wield his Force powers. Mando also took possession of the Darksaber and inadvertently became the leader of the Mandalorians. This episode implies that he's still operating as a bounty hunter, but I guess we'll see.

He also hires towering Wookiee bounty hunter Black Krrsantan, so we'll get more of that arm-ripping viciousness in the coming episodes.

Much of the running time is taken up with another flashback, which reveals how Boba found the badly wounded Fennec after she was shot by sleazy bounty hunter Toro Calican – he happened to see the flash charge shots Mando and Toro fired to stop her from sniping them. Boba brings her to a mod-parlor populated by low-rent cyberpunk types (like the gang he recruited last episode), where her gut is fixed with droid parts.

The pair break into Jabba's palace (then ruled by Bib Fortuna and under heavy guard) to retrieve Boba's awesome Firespray-class ship, Slave I.

Slaughtering the sarlacc

Boba's memories of escaping the sarlacc are clearly hazy, since he uses his ship to hover over the pit and search for his lost armor – he doesn't remember the Jawas stealing it from him after he crawled out. It also seems like an imprecise way to search, since the sarlacc is all yucky teeth and organs.

Predictably, it awakens and tries to gobble up the whole ship. A quick-thinking Fennec drops a seismic charge and kills the beast. RIP sarlacc, you'll be missed.

This gives Boba the opportunity to climb down into the pit and search thoroughly for his armor, to no avail. All he gets for his troubles is a coating of acid, causing the injuries he's healing with his bacta sleeps in the present.

He also takes a minute to gun down the Nikto speeder goons that apparently slaughtered his Tusken friends, but Fennec doesn't believe they'd have been capable of taking out the tribe (it was probably the Pykes).

No more stupid bosses

We finally learn why Boba decided to switch from bounty hunting to crime lord – he reckons he can do a better job than the people he's worked for.

"I'm tired of our kind dying because of the idiocy of others," he says. "We're smarter than them. It's time we took our shot."

It makes sense, since his father, Jango, was killed by Mace Windu after his boss Count Dooku started a conflict with the Jedi in Attack of the Clones, and Boba fell into the sarlacc pit partially due to Jabba's sadistic showmanship in Return of the Jedi (but mostly because he failed to watch his back).

Observations, WTF questions and Easter eggs

"I am Boba Fett." He says this twice in the flashback, possibly reasserting his identity after living in the desert for years.

Boba's ship, Slave I, isn't named in this episode, and the name has largely been absent from merchandise since recent years. It comes as tech companies and society reconsider the casual use of terms like "slave" and "master."

His relationship with the bantha is quite heartwarming.

The black sous-chef droid working in the kitchen resembles EV-9D9, who assigned R2-D2 to Jabba's sail barge in Return of the Jedi.

In further droid trivia, the little one Boba chases around the kitchen is a LEP droid. These appeared several times in The Clone Wars, but this is our first time seeing one in live action.

Boba is "completely healed" of his injuries in this episode, so we probably won't see any more flashbacks in the remaining three episodes.

Krrsantan can't resist attacking the Trandoshans because the reptilian race traditionally hunts Wookiees, and he's had many run-ins with them in Marvel's Star Wars comics.

The tune Max Rebo and his band start to play after Krrsantan's rampage sounds excellent, I'd love to hear a full version.

Hawkeye S1 Ep 4: Partners, Am I Right?

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from ew.com: https://ew.com/tv/recaps/hawkeye-season-1-episode-4/

By Chancellor Agard

December 08, 2021 at 09:13 AM EST

After a week of speculation, the latest episode of Hawkeye, titled "Partners, Am I Right?" didn't reveal the identity of Maya's mysterious uncle, a.k.a. "the big guy." In other words, the installment didn't feature a certain actor from the Marvel-Netflix shows. But that doesn't mean the hour wasn't without its guests: Black Widow's Florence Pugh made her long-awaited appearance as Yelena in the final scene of the episode.

Actually, let's get it out of the way now and talk about her scene: While Kate infiltrated Maya's apartment looking for the Rolex from the Avengers Compound (more on that in a bit), Yelena sneak attacked Clint on a nearby roof, clearly following up on the tip Julia Louis-Dreyus' Valentina Allegra de Fontaine gave her at the end of Black Widow. Of course, Maya catches Kate snooping around her pad and it's not long before the two women join Yelena and Clint on the rooftop. (How Kate gets there, stalling while crossing a zip line, is admittedly hilarious.

Clint and Kate versus Yelena and Maya sounds good on paper, but the execution here leaves a little to be desired. Whereas last week's exciting car chase was set during the daytime, which made the sequence exponentially better, the four-way fight in today's episode takes place at night and you can only sort of tell what's going on the entire time. Not only that, but the decision to keep Yelena's identity secret for most of the brawl was a misstep. Clearly, the creative team sort of hoped Pugh revealing her face at the end before she escaped would be surprising, but it definitely wasn't for anyone who saw Black Widow's end credit scene or keeps up with casting news for the series. Seeing Pugh's face while fighting Clint from the beginning would've made the entire sequence more interesting.

But here's the thing, "Partner" wasn't just about this fight and Pugh's guest-appearance. Picking up where last week's episode left off, the hour does a good job of adding more layers to Kate and Clint's partnership/friendship/whatever Clint wants to call it. This was the episode where I realized I cared about this relationship because of what was being shown on-screen here and not just because of my affection for the comic book version of these characters.

"Partners" starts immediately where "Echoes" left off, with Jack holding Clint at sword point (with his own sword!) In truth, part of me expected Clint to recognize Jack as his childhood mentor, which is how the two characters are connected in the comics. Thankfully, that wasn't the case, and what ensues is far funnier. Short story shorter: It turns out Eleanor is also home, and she and Jack sit Clint and Kate down for a light-hearted and funny interrogation about what's going on. I really liked how directors Bert and Bertie used a sword to divide the two parties sitting at the table. And while Eleanor is impressed that an Avenger wants to work with her daughter, she's also worried about Kate's safety and asks Clint to keep her out of it. (Did Eleanor know Clint was a parent because she's good at recognizing one of her own, or has she been researching the bow-and-arrow-wielding hero for a nefarious reason?)


After the questioning ends, Clint leaves the apartment and immediately asks his wife Laura to research Sloan LTD. Laura calls back shortly after and informs him that Jack is the CEO is Sloan, which is a shell company laundering money for the Tracksuit Mafia; however, he's not the aforementioned big man. That's not the only piece of info we gain from their exchange though. Both the speed with which Laura acquired this information and her suspicion that all this drama with the Tracksuit Mafia is actually about the Rolex from the Avengers compound strongly suggests that Laura was once a field agent like Clint. The evidence for that theory increases when Clint tells Kate that the watch could burn the identity of someone close to him. I love that this show is fleshing out Laura's backstory, but I hope it does more than that and actually allows Laura to see some action.

Before Clint and Kate try to steal the watch from Maya, though, the duo celebrate Christmas together. Remembering that Clint was missing movie night with his kids, Kate shows up to her aunt's apartment — where we find Clint, the human Avenger, wrapped in frozen vegetables to heal his sore muscles — with DVDs and pizza. What transpires is yet another delightful sequence that fleshes out Kate and Clint's dynamic. I loved their banter about a boomerang arrow, which is a reference to the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye run, and Kate betting Clint that he couldn't split an arrow with another arrow, which is a reference to when the characters met for the first time in Young Avengers Presents #6.

However, their fun-filled night turns serious when Clint tells the story of how he met Natasha for the first time and, slightly more importantly, Kate realizes that Clint was Ronin. Jeremy Renner brings a lot of pathos to the entire scene. I liked how the writing, direction, and Renner's performance made you feel Clint's guilt for what he did as Ronin, but didn't get bogged down in it. There was very much a sense of, "Yes, that happened and it was bad, but now Clint just has to move on and do better from here." That also came through in Kate's reaction. Sure, she's shocked when she puts two and two together, but this doesn't suddenly ruin how she feels about her idol.

Anyway, this night of fun and revelations, combined with Clint meeting Elenaor, ends up backfiring on Kate. Clint has truly started to care for Kate. So after the aforementioned rooftop brawl ends, Clint pushes Kate away and tells her to scram because he's worried about her safety and doesn't want to see her get hurt like Natasha did. Of course, we have two episodes left and know she won't stay out of the action.

Notes:

A side-plot of the episode: Episode 2's LARP adventure wasn't a one-off. Clint tasks Kate with asking his new LARPer friends for help recovering all of his trick arrows, which the NYPD confiscated after the car chase. In exchange for their assistance, Kate promised to help the LARPers acquire material to build better costumes and, hopefully, design new suits for her and Clint.
I'm choosing to believe that the LARPer's bag being labeled "Bombshell" is a reference to NBC's Smash, which featured a musical about Marilyn Monroe called Bombshell.
Kate's fall off the roof mirroring Natasha's death in Endgame was a bit much for me, but it was still effective.
"Everybody dealt with the Blip in their own way. I continued doing what I was trained to do…Hurting people," another sign of Clint's self-loathing.

The Witcher S1 Ep 5: Bottle Appetites

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/the-witcher-recap-season-1-episode-5-bottle-appetites.html

The Witcher S1 Ep 5: Bottle Appetites

The Witcher Recap: I Dream of Djinn
By Scott Meslow


The first half of The Witcher’s first season has been all scope and sprawl, with three separate protagonists wandering the continent in three different timelines, having their own adventures without ever crossing paths. But there are only eight episodes in The Witcher’s first season, and at some point, this show was going to need to start tying all of these threads together.

Enter “Bottled Appetites,” a mostly stand-alone adventure that takes our two most dynamic protagonists — Geralt of Rivia and Yennefer of Vengerberg — and brings them together for the first (and presumably not the last) time.


It starts, like many of Geralt’s misadventures, with a chance encounter with Jaskier. Geralt is fishing for a djinn’s bottle at the bottom of a lake. The bottle would grant him three wishes, but Geralt only needs one: a cure for his recent sleeplessness. Jaskier arrives, comparing Geralt’s insistence on using a genie to cure his insomnia — instead of, you know, addressing whatever happened that made it so hard for Geralt to sleep in the first place — to putting “a salve on a tumor.”

When Geralt does dredge up the djinn’s bottle, things go haywire pretty quickly. He and Jaskier struggle over the bottle, the djinn gets loose and strangles Jaskier, and the bard ends up needing urgent magical medical treatment. Geralt tries Chireadan, a local elf who is known as a healer, but Jaskier’s injury requires the intervention of someone even more powerful — like, say, a certain purple-eyed sorceress.

When Geralt heads to the mayor’s house with the injured Jaskier in tow, he’s greeted by the mayor himself, naked and babbling about the mistress needing apple juice. Geralt works his way through the house and wanders through an elaborate orgy being performed, via mind control, for the enjoyment of the sorceress herself, Yennefer of Vengerberg.

We’ve spent a fair amount of time with both Geralt and Yennefer by now, so it’s interesting watching them size each other up without the same knowledge the audience is bringing to the table. Geralt is, understandably, both unnerved and intrigued by this sorceress who has engineered an elaborate orgy-by-mind-control for her own entertainment. Yennefer is, understandably, both troubled and fascinated by this taciturn witcher who is immune to the spells that affect everybody else. Both of them, understandably, think the other one is hot.

So if the rest of the episode is relatively light on plot, it’s heavy on sexual tension. Yennefer guides Geralt into a bathtub, because that’s the kind of thing that happens in The Witcher. There’s a bunch of argue-flirting as they size each other up and note each other’s scars, until Yennefer agrees to treat Jaskier’s injury in exchange for Geralt’s “company and conversation.”

Of course, we know Yennefer well enough by now to know that things won’t be so easy. She wants the djinn for herself, and she intends to cure Jaskier just so she can get him to use his last wish for her benefit. She gets rid of Geralt via a spell, delivered in a kiss, that makes him rampage around the town attacking all her enemies, which culminates in Geralt publicly spanking somebody until a local constable is able to wrangle him and toss him into a jail cell.

Geralt rushes back to find Yennefer doing her best to take control of the djinn, and reveals that he — not Jaskier — is actually the one with a wish left on his docket. When he asks Yennefer what she wants, she gives the only answer that would make sense with the arc we’ve seen her on: “I want everything.”

For now, at least, she doesn’t get it. Geralt uses his final wish — we don’t actually hear it, but my best guess is that he’s sending the djinn away — and everything returns to normal. The djinn escapes, and Geralt and Yennefer consummate another round of argue-flirting by having sex on the floor of the mayor’s ruined mansion. When it’s over, Geralt finally falls asleep. Who needs a djinn when you have what is sure to be a not-at-all-dysfunctional fling with a sorceress to rock you to sleep?

Stray arrows:

• Ciri watch, episode five: The Black Knight hires a Doppler — essentially a malevolent shape-shifter who can steal the appearance and the memories of anyone it chooses — and the Doppler takes the form of Mousesack, the kindly sorcerer who played such a big role in Ciri’s childhood. As Mousesack, the Doppler enters the Brokilon forest and convinces Ciri to abandon the dryads and come along with him. Uh-oh!

• The timeline remains kind of fuzzy here, but Jaskier does mention that he can’t recall if it’s been months or years since the last time he saw Geralt, so a decent chunk of time must have passed since the banquet in Cintra.

• Andrzej Sapkowski’s first two Witcher short-story collections get name-checked here. The first, Sword of Destiny, comes up in a speech Shan-Kayan gives to Ciri. The second, The Last Wish, is the crux of Geralt and Yennefer’s story in this one.

• It wasn’t until this episode, when we spent a little more time with him, that I realized where I’d previously seen Eamon Farren, the Black Knight: as the terrifyingly amoral Richard Horne in Twin Peaks: The Return.

• Lilac and gooseberries, Yennefer’s signature scent, will be familiar to anyone who played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

• Chireadan the elf healer turns out to be in love with Yennefer, but when he peeps through the window and sees Geralt and Yennefer having sex, he’s surprisingly cool with it.

• That’s Declan de Barra performing the original song “The Last Rose of Cintra” over the closing credits.

• If you’re going to buy the magic equivalent of Viagra, I suppose “kumquat” is as good a safe word as any.

The Tinder Swindler (2022)

from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/feb/18/the-tinder-swindler-simon-leviev-neflix-fame

The Tinder Swindler

Adrian Horton

Fri 18 Feb 2022 01.41 EST


When I first watched The Tinder Swindler last month, in anticipation for an interview with director Felicity Morris, I was, like many viewers, completely absorbed by the story.

Several women meet a man on Tinder who claims to be the billionaire heir to an Israeli diamond fortune, lavishes them with attention, flies to them on actual private jets, then swindles them for hundreds of thousands of dollars? I’m a single woman in my late 20s in New York: of course I ate it up. The documentary was also much, much better than it could have been; I appreciated that Morris didn’t have much interest in probing the psychology of its swindler, Simon Leviev. Instead, she foregrounded three women’s first-person accounts of getting conned – why they believed him, why they cared for him, what such manipulation and confusion does to someone – as well as the journalists at the Norwegian paper VG who unspooled his lies for an initial exposé in 2019.

Still, I figured that The Tinder Swindler would be a hit – it’s true crime meets scam meets Catch Me If You Can meets the perils of modern dating – and that made me nervous. I have come to associate “Netflix hit”, at least in the reality and documentary department, with a feeling of ominousness, portentous of something queasy, cringey, sad, or sinister. The scale of Netflix’s reach is such that almost anything that succeeds on the streaming platform invites exploitation; Netflix fame opens subjects who might not be prepared for international recognition up to intense levels of scrutiny and at this point in the life of the internet, there’s always a dark, seedy undercurrent to attention. Popularity attracts backlash, desperation and grifters.

Netflix fame has traditionally not aged well – think of 2020’s standout Tiger King, which spawned a virtual cottage industry of hustling for its dubious participants. Or another Netflix hit, the docuseries Cheer, whose participants – junior college cheerleaders in the small town of Corsicana, Texas – became overnight stars. I wrote in February 2020, at the peak of Cheer’s popularity, about the unsettling experience of watching its stars’ “character” arcs wrap on screen as their fame expanded, warped and monetized in real time off it. I loved the show’s first season, but the buzz around it, its brief ubiquity felt unstable, fragile. Then its breakout star, Jerry Harris, was charged with soliciting sex from minors and alleged to have abused his influence with younger athletes for sex. (I have not seen Cheer’s second season, which premiered earlier this year and addresses the fallout of fame and Harris’s arrest, in part because of this wariness.)

It was practically a given that someone would adapt The Tinder Swindler into a dramatic film. (Netflix is in early talks of doing so, though no formal plans have been announced.) It is also a given, if you have seen the documentary, that Simon Leviev would attempt to spin his new notoriety into some sort of financial gain. But I’m still impressed by the speed at which this attention curdled. Earlier this week, Leviev signed with Hollywood talent manager Gina Rodriguez, a self-described “D-list diva” who has turned the scandals of a truly impressive roster of unscrupulous figures into deals, further exposure, and cash. (An incomplete selection of her client list: Lindsay Lohan’s parents, Nadya Suleman, AKA “Octomom”, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, AKA the White House gatecrashers, “Teen Mom” Farrah Abraham, and several Real Housewives.)

Leviev also launched an account on Cameo, a platform through which people can buy personalized shoutouts from celebrities, charging $200 for personal use and $1,400 for businesses. “I’m Simon Leviev – if you want any blessing, anything birthday, whatever, shout out … I’m so excited to be here,” he says in his intro video; there’s a button to join his fan club “to unlock even more content”.

I don’t want to blow this out of proportion – just because Leviev signed with a talent manager and has expressed an interest in having a dating show doesn’t mean he’ll actually get a content deal. He’s already been banned from dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge. Upon the release of the film earlier this month, he posted an Instagram story to his account (heavily featured in the film and since deactivated, though it can be hard to know – there are now countless impersonations of @simon_leviev_official) that he would soon tell his version of events, but so far that’s nothing more than bluster. (Morris and her team were in contact with Leviev during filming – his voice notes are included – but he declined to sit for an interview.) His Cameo account has, as of this writing, just five reviews and 51 fans.

It is possible that Leviev will fade into obscurity with the tide of viral content. But it’s unlikely – grifters will grift, attention begets attention, and there’s so many ways to parlay 15 minutes of fame into a life of hustling content for deals, cash and fans. It is a bleak comment on which avenues attention greases that while Leviev has signed with a veteran manager and is hustling his fame for money, the three women featured in the film – Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjoholm and Ayleen Charlotte – have started a GoFundMe to help pay off their debts from Leviev’s cons and offer a legit alternative to several fake fundraisers. “We don’t want more people getting defrauded,” the three wrote in their info section. “All we want are our lives back.” As of this writing, the page has raised about $193,000 of their roughly $800,000 goal. Since the documentary, a study emerged that found Americans lost more than $1bn in 2021 alone to “romance scams”.

This is not to blame the film-makers for spawning Leviev’s demi-celebrity. Leviev was still at large when Morris began the project, and the three victims – first Fjellhøy and Sjoholm, then Charlotte – were justifiably trying to spread the word as far as possible to protect other women. The film is much more about the experience of being conned, both emotionally and financially, than about Leviev; lots of true crime series get hung up on the question of why someone hurts someone else, but The Tinder Swindler thankfully just accepts Leviev as a pathological narcissist and liar, no explanation needed.

It’s just that the swift churn of attention to profit, regardless of what said subject has done and who has paid for it, is fatiguing. None of this is surprising, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth noting. With Netflix true crime hits, if you’re enjoying it, if you’re interested, then there’s likely a cost – if not the dark toll of fame, then someone unsavory profiting from it.