#television recap

[mylittleredgirl]

i miss twop so much, my favorite recapper (jacob clifton) could move me to tears with one sentence!

english language comedy actually peaked with jessica’s x-files recaps. she compared monica reyes's whale song imitation to "a possum being run through a fax machine" and i have not recovered to this DAY

vintage fans, please sound off with your favorite television without pity recappers <3

#pouring one out #twop #television without pity #fandom nostalgia #keckler's enterprise recaps also put some phrases into my permanent vocabulary #the blue lights of gratuitous nekkidity #archer's ''now we'll ALL have to go through decon'' from the seventh is actually so funny though

[watchriverdale]

tshirt that says i couldn’t even begin to explain the complexities of my feelings about bbc merlin

#gave my mom a blow by blow recap of 208 the sins of the father god i miss TELEVISION!!!!!!!

[pixiedane]

[Law & Order: Organized Crime] is at best a selection of flimsy overdramatic plots made up to showcase Christopher Meloni’s ability to EMOTE, but here’s the thing, he is the actual best person alive at EMOTING. Organized Crime has had seven (seven!) different showrunners in three years and only ever gets attention when Mariska Hargitay pops up to remind everyone it’s secretly late night SVU. It’s not a great show and it’s really not trying to be. It’s trying to be a show about messy emotions and messy emotional connections and Chris Meloni understands the assignment. He is fully committed. He elevates every stupid scene he’s in. He turns Elliot Stabler into a Shakespearean protagonist but never takes it too seriously. His timing and execution and EMOTION is pitch perfect and I love him.

[Read More]

#lets talk terrible television #law and order organized crime #law and order svu #chris meloni #mariska hargitay #elliot stabler #olivia benson #law and order #ncis sydney #chicago med #chicago pd #pixie recaps

[ub-sessed]

Is there a website that does entertaining episode recaps like Television without Pity used to?

#i can't watch tv anymore because of a vestibular disorder #and I'm trying to figure out what happens in the new seasons of ofmd and loki from gifsets #which i am grateful for but i also want a story #ofmd #loki #television without pity #episode recaps #recaps

[dualredundancy]

In this week's special episode David, John and Kyle are here to look back at entertainment in 2022. We also reveal the results for your favorite movies (2:05), returning TV shows (12:55), new TV shows (25:10), TV miniseries (34:40) and pop culture moments (42:50) from the past year.

#2022 recap #2022 review #best of 2022 #2022 in review #recap 2022 #review 2022 #movies 2022 #tv 2022 #television 2022 #tv shows 2022 #pop culture 2022 #2022 movies #2022 tv #2022 television #2022 tv shows #2022 pop culture #moon knight #better call saul #morbius #andor #the boys #barry #stranger things #top gun maverick #will smith chris rock #wordle #severance #the white lotus #everything everywhere all at once #house of the dragon

[antifataylorswift]

Favorite niche element of my vocabulary: TGTGT (n, initialism): totally gay, totally gratuitous touching

#pretty sure I picked this up from sapphic television recaps in the late 00s or early 10s #soooooooo useful. why does this have ~vibes~? it's the tgtgt girl

[riverdale-retread]

Riverdale S6 Ep 18  (#113) Biblical

So Riverdale, a formerly pretty, now busted up looking town where a series of unfortunate events have occurred without break, is so desensitized to disaster that they all just calmly invented silly explanation for signs of the apocalypse and went on with their days! 

Frogs ‘escaped the biology lab,” flies, lice!  Ew!  Ack!

The most unrealistic part of this for me, the true sign of the end times, was that they somehow got Cheryl Blossom washing lice out of her niece’s hair.  She looks like she wants to vomit and she roped the hapless Heather into it, but still she does it. With her own luxuriant mane down.  

There is a completely bonkers transition by the way.  The camera zooms in on the foaming lice killer on Juniper’s head which I was terrified was going to show me a big dead lice but then it did something worse - the lice killer shampoo TURNED INTO CAPPUCCINO that Veronica Lodge directly sipped from.  WHY?

And there is an answer, actually!  Veronica Lodge is about to get news and receive a request that is exactly as palatable as sipping poison foam flecked with dead lice:

Toni tells her that she and Fangs are getting married (siiiiiighhhhhh) 

AND

that she is not going to be bringing money and profit to Veronica by renting a champagne suite (Did the Five Seasons get run out of business? I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve heard about the hotel.) 

AND

that she is being asked to be a wedding planner. 

Veronica is the nicest of the OGs. She really is.  She is clearly a bit disheartened by this request, but she keeps the smile on and says only the most perfect, kind, appropriate things. 

We cut to Betty and Archie  in their nice cozy home.  

Betty looks very pretty despite a very loud stripey cardigan made of bath towels, and Archie has surreal brassy reddish orange hair that clashes with his very depressive blue flannel. 

Archie says he agreed to be a groomsman for Fangs as long as he doesn’t have to make any effort.  I’ll say this for Archie - he always says exactly how much of a limited person and unabashed asshole he really is.  It’s not his problem that everyone around him refuses to actually listen to him. 

Betty for her part is looking forward to a happy event to dress up for after her difficulties at SlaughterCon.  They kiss sweetly  and are nice to each other.  I agree with them that all of them “need something good to celebrate,” as Archie says.

But a fucking wedding between Toni and Fangs cannot POSSIBLY be a good thing. No.

Another fun shift as we burst through the wall of the Barchie residence to Jughead typing away on the typerwriter Betty got him back in the day.  The last word he types is ‘Boys.’  Jughead is in the Bunker with Tabitha.  Jughead ropes in all his girlfriends to be his beta readers (unless he’s writing about them directly, maybe) so Tabitha is standing there reading the pages hot off the presses.  Tabitha says she loves the La Llorona story he wrote. When asked how he’s suddenly so prolific after suffering long bouts of writer’s block, Jughead says that he’s been ‘riffing off’ of the voices he has been forced to contend with (from Percival’s violating his mind’s boundaries).  She is so gentle with Jughead, Tabitha is, so she asks him in the least pressured, most calm way whether he can consider coming out of the goddamn bunker and join normal life.  I find it distressing how the bunker behind Jughead looks more and more like his home with her - the bric-a-brac in the green shelf in the corner, the Jughead Jones candle fetish out in full force, his penchant for creating bulletin boards on the fridge.

Tabitha tries to draw Jughead out of the bunker for the (I’m sure it’s cursed) cursed Foni wedding but Jughead says that while writing (by riffing off the voices) does make them subside, he just isn’t ready to go back out into society.  Then he says he doesn’t want Tabitha to go alone to a wedding ,and she very gently says she just wants him to be OK.  I just love Tabitha so much, and really, after all his troubles, it’s so wonderful to me that Jughead has someone who looks out for him consistently.

In his magic shop, Percival is muttering magic spells (which subtitles are telling me is Latin), bringing on more plague events.  There’s a very convenient hole in the brick wall through which Kevin peers in on Percival, and watching him drop something in a bowl of water while muttering makes Kevin freak out quite a lot. 

Tabitha is on a tour of good cheer because the next sad person she visits is Veronica.  Unlike Toni, Tabitha picks up on the sadness that Veronica feels about her present situation in life, and what Veronica lays out highlights all the ways she’s the Jughead Girl Version.  Veronica is mopey because she had a brief but glorious “Dreams Comes True” time in NYC (her as a Wall St. hotshot, him as a hotshot new writer) which then went terribly wrong, replete with a toxic partner, which landed them back in Riverdale under much less fun and thriving circumstances.   For his part, Jughead really lucked out in terms of starting a relationship with Tabitha, but Veronica hasn’t had good luck in that area of her life.  

Which makes me circle back to Toni.  I agree with her that if I wanted something big done right one should go to Veronica Lodge, but she’s asking the woman who had to shoot her husband dead in self defense to plan her wedding.  It’s bizarrely cruel. 

Tabitha tells Veronica that her five year plan’s also gone to shit, leading to these two brilliant, beautiful, energetic young women having a moment of grief for their aspirations. It was a little bit too real.

Just as Veronica gets done saying she has a lot of love to give and wants to share her heart with someone, she gets an intercom message saying “There’s something wrong with the plumbing.”  So I think this must be of a piece with her drinking the lice shampoo cappuccino - her heart is plumbing, and her actual building plumbing is spewing blood. 

Everyone’s water is blood - Archie doing his dishes, Britta trying to get a gulp at the fountain, Toni and Fangs’ sink.  Kevin chooses this time to visit to make a big announcement: He will no longer be seeking custody of Baby Anthony!  So, while Kevin’s custody-stealing arc has come to a pretty OK resolution with his seeking forgiveness, I do find it a little dispiriting that he does it with these words: “You’re his mother, Toni” and also “You’re his REAL father, Fangs, not me.”  

This seems exceptionally retrograde for this nonsexual throuple family - a gay couple and their best girl friend and the ambiguous baby daddy / sperm donor / who cares about the paternity had a breakup and now we have a straight-looking couple with their bio baby who are getting straight married with the gay guy on the outs seeking forgiveness for disrupting their nuclear family peace.

Bisexuals in a straight coupling don’t stop being bisexual OBVIOUSLY but this is a weirdly conservative way for the show to drive these relationships.  The Foni relationship  looks straight and now Baby Anthony’s biological provenance is important. What the fuck.

Oh and also.

FANGS. STILL. HAS NOT. TOUCHED. BABY ANTHONY.

The extremely sad look that Fangs gives Kevin is a tiny nugget they threw my way, I guess. 

Archie is trying to mess around with his plumbing. While he’s down there Percival gives a call, demanding that Archie call off the strike.  The difference between American TV Villain Brit cadences (so very sing song and high pitched) and All American Hero speech (vocal fry, growly, low, curt, almost monotone) is a fun contrast.   Being ominously poetic at Archie Andrews might be fun to do but is ultimately useless, so after flapping his yap about God’s Lowliest Creatures and so forth, Percival is left with no choice but to tell Archie to watch the news which is so lame.  Archie Andrews’ density does come in very handy quite a lot of the time. 

Right on cue comes Alice Smith Cooper on the news, and she hilariously describes Sweetwater River as having turned ‘blood red.’  Uh, whether a fluid is actually blood or not is actually testable, you know?  But the apparently incompetent “scientists” of Riverdale, who are “at a loss to explain this stunning, apocalyptic development” are unable to test whether the fluid in the river is blood, and will only concede that it is red of a bloody hue.  It’s up to Alice Cooper to editorialize and put words into people’s mouths (“dare *I* say”) like the trash tabloidist she is at heart. 

It’s only after having his girlfriend’s mom tell him through the television that it’s APOCALYPSE NOW that Archie looks concerned and freaked out.  His eyebrows are black and his hair is a terrifyingly unnatural color.

Percival “insinuated that he was responsible” for the water going weird, is what Archie tells the assembled Riverdale Avengers (minus Jughead).  It surprises me that Archie uses words like ‘insinuated.’  I like that the Riverdale Avengers is this collection of very pretty, extremely strange women.  Cheryl (no explanation needed), Betty (ultraweird), Veronica (poisonous murderous party planner) and Tabitha who fits in like she grew up with these people.  Tabitha thinks Percival is boasting.  Cheryl concedes that powerful sorcerers exist but is not willing to give that crown to Percival just yet.  

Cheryl has been all about the low cut top with the push up bra these past episodes and I don’t know, do people get desensitized to such magnificence?  I find it so distracting. 

Anyway, Cheryl says that she is an awesome Devil’s Advocate, Veronica gives a very funny nod-nod of agreement. Cutting right to the chase, Cheryl suggests that they just kill Percival. She delivers this suggestion with a bright smile, and very responsibly offers to do the deed herself.  Tabitha looks not alarmed but rather skeptical, Veronica is stressed, Betty just looks at Cheryl like she’s told a bad joke, Archie puts a hand over his eyes.  Cheryl’s exasperated, sotto voce, “Oh my god” before she points out that they have all thought about it is both true and very amusing. I love Cheryl. 

Archie as the leader (?) kiboshes the murder plot by saying that in the fight between good and evil you cannot choose the ways of evil.  Cheryl rolls her eyes, and so did I. I don’t know about you, but using evil’s tools to dismantle evil looks really good to me in real life right now. Good keeps losing and maybe we need to get our hands dirty? 

Whatever. SO anyway, continuing on with the very bizarre retrograde values kick the show is on by forcing this marriage between Toni and Fangs, Archie says that the wedding should not be rescheduled (as per Veronica’s very sensible suggestion) because a wedding will remind everyone about what they’re fighting for, because a wedding is a symbol of a better tomorrow for our families.  Right.   But that’s so cursed, because this quickie shotgun wedding between the Serpent King and Queen was originally manipulated out of Fangs by Toni under false pretenses (she wanted to marry him to win the custody war), the need for which has now dissipated. 

Betty, who has just recently told Archie that getting married, being a mom, and living in a white picket type situation may not be for her, casts a very worried look at Archie as he delivers this speech about Family Values, essentially, being paramount to well being.  Oh dear.

Jughead in the bunker is visited by La Llorona complete with water drip and squish sound effects.  

The ventilation, plumbing and other issues with this bunker fascinate me all the time. Jug is burning candles in votive cups and bottles all night apparently, because I guess he’s scared of the dark while he sleeps? But doesn’t that do weird things to the air quality, to burn so very many candles like this in a closed space?  Also does he LOCK the bunker at night? 

Jughead narration says immediately after that he had “vivid nightmare.”  It’s not clear what time it is or how soon after that La Llorona visitation (or dream).  He asks “Can someone have snuck into the bunker and stolen it?” about the missing La Llorona manuscript.   Well I don’t know Jughead!  Can you lock the bunker??  The fact that he still makes these single hard-copy drafts of his works even after Jess made off with an entire (cringey, drug-induced) book length manuscript is amazing to me. Get it together, sis.

Meanwhile at the diner the striking workers are chafing at the bit, because having no income (supplemented by whatever per diem the union is able to provide and free meals at Pop’s) is not enough.  Tabitha (who has her own business) exhorts everyone to hang on ‘for the future.’  This is the key weakness shared by movements like this, I guess. The present is such a terrible burden, so the endurance necessary for something to be realized “for the future” cannot be sustained. 

At the FBI office, Betty asks Agent Lin to get her bibles and texts about apocalypses.  The response is highly weird, because Lin immediately assumes that Betty is asking for these things for her personal needs. (“I didn’t know you were such a religious person”). Is this how Riverdale thinks the FBI works, that Betty as the senior ranking (somehow?) agent can make Lin do her personal shopping? Betty explicitly explains that she needs it for a case.

Veronica and Tabitha are spending a lot of time together, which is soothing to me and grounding for the show which is doing a lot of audacious things (La Llorona wetly jumping universes from Vale to Dale; Biblical plague brought on by a black magic sorcerer, Toni and Fangs getting fucking married etc).  Veronica is not wearing her very questionable 1980s first lady type skirtsuit with big buttons, for which I am relieved.   I love her in polka dots. 

Veronica lays the stakes full out: 

Tabitha is fighting for Jughead. (WHICH NOBODY HAS EVER DONE BEFORE EVER, NOT ONCE NOT EVER, OMG THIS IS HUGE. ahem). (Betty would have fought for Jughead, in theory, but in actuality did not.)

Betty and Archie are fighting for each other. (Is this right, though?  I feel like Archie is fighting against Percival. Archie doesn’t seem like someone who fights FOR things. And Betty is along for the ride, but as always Betty is primarily grappling with the problem of herself.)

Toni and Fangs are fighting for Baby Anthony (So, Veronica the smart one knows that Toni and Fangs are not marrying for love. They’re marrying so they don’t lose their son or risk losing him to Kevin Keller, because Kevin is just that untrustworthy and unreliable. She knows what this is.)

Veronica doesn’t know what she’s fighting for, which is interesting. Most of her teen life she was either actually fighting with her dad or with her idea of her dad and how it affected her. Now he’s dead (at her hands) and she’s feeling adrift, rather than liberated. Tabitha is very tactful and doesn’t try to suggest things that Veronica can feel attached to.  Instead she invites Veronica to find out, for herself, her reason for staying in Riverdale.  

Except, uh oh, Veronica looks very called out. 

At Thornhill (does Heather just live here now?), Cheryl tells Heather that she agreed, at Toni’s request, to officiate the Toni/ Fangs nuptials.

I -

OK So.

The deliberate, unthinking violence that Toni seems to keep doing to her friends (Veronica first, now Cheryl) as she marries the baby daddy that she tricked into marrying her, who really wasn’t that into it, is awful.   Cheryl was fortunately wearing her version of Veronica’s 1980s political candidate wife skirtsuit (with the same round brass buttons), and it gives her the affect of a Jackie O post-assassination.

Fittingly, having this act of aggression inflicted on her while she doesn’t have the coldness that I have to just refuse to participate drives Cheryl into deciding to commit homicide as a present for Toni.

Cheryl is all Id.  She wants to kill Toni for this cruel, careless, self serving request, so she channels that and wants to give a marriage she disapproves of a charred corpse as a ‘gift.’ Nice.

Percival in the meantime lovingly puts together an altar of food, beautifully lit like a classical still life, before doing some Latin magic spell to do with making things putrid.  It rots the food on his tableau but it also rots all the food set out for the Toni/ Fangs wedding.  

This is when both My Five Year Plan Failed Tabby Tate and Nothing To Fight For Veronica Lodge both get pissed, but for very different reasons.  Tabitha, as a food purveyor, is very annoyed at the ruination of perfectly good, edible food.  Veronica, as a very uptight person who used to get a lot of her sense of self from doing and achieving things, is FURIOUS that the thing that she recently put a lot of energy into has been rendered for naught.  To fulfill her own ego needs, Veronica insists that the wedding and the rehearsal dinner must go on, in the face of Toni’s very reasonable conclusion that it should be put off.

Meanwhile, Jughead is typing away in his bunker when he get a supernatural delivery of burger, fries and a cup of coffee, which came along with some watery sounds that apparently he can’t hear.  He recognizes the scent.   Jughead apparently never got over his intense food insecurity, but the scene that happens  is extremely funny.   Jug sees the clearly NOT NATURAL  burger, but only says it’s weird, rather than,  I am losing my mind.  He says, I shouldn’t touch it, and then touches it.  He says, I definitely shouldn’t eat it, then takes the hugest possible bite out of the potentially poisonous burger. 

Cheryl in her blue suit and Heather in her Little House on the Prairie pajama dress have made a huge salt pentacle lined with red candles.   This is to project Cheryl’s power to burn Percival by burning his poppet.  The extremely childish way they recite the common language incantation is a big warning that this is not going to work, because in evil and magic Latin trumps everything.  They even wrote it into a little ditty.  The fire projection DOES hurt Percival for a bit, which was very fun to watch.   But he defeats it, as expected, with Latin.

Nana Rose is set on fire!  Cheryl comes in and screams her head off.

Cheryl is not at the rehearsal dinner.  

Veronica is not ok.  She ends up dissing Pop’s in favor of complimenting Toni (“she elevates everything to five stars” which means Pops isn’t, which, true, but still).  Tabitha is shown not to mind. 

Then she bursts into song. She sings a song to single girls at a wedding rehearsal dinner. Her eyes did dim watching Archie and Betty kiss just then, but this song has been preplanned. Britta is having a good time because the beautiful Ms Lodge comes to sit on her lap (uhh) but all the adults are increasingly scared at Veronica’s rendition and the pointed delivery of these already sharp lyrics.

I mean, Toni, you brought this on yourself. 

You asked Cheryl to officiate, and you forced Veronica to do this, which is only half a step better than asking KEVIN to be your wedding planner. I already didn’t like Fangs this season and now they’ve taken Toni away from me. The bastards!

Veronica takes a glass off the Barchie table, GLARES at them, and then smashes the full glass on the floor.  Betty checks to see nobody got stabbed by flying glass while Archie blanks out.  Veronica then yanks Fangs out of his chair to violently fling him against the bar, sits on him as the lights turn an evil red, before slamming his head down on the bar top. She hollers “dieeees” as this happens. 

She looks insane.  She starts shouting at people to rise. Rise! RISE!  And nobody does, because they’re too scared, so she points at individuals who have no choice but to comply

Some of the attendees at this thing just think she gave a rousing (if inexplicable) performance because you can hear some dude going Woah! Yeah!!! but Toni, Fangs, Archie Betty, even little Britta - people who all know Veronica when she’s well, are worried, scared, confused, concerned.

So - I am not the hugest fan of Broadway musicals (or West End musicals either, tbh) but I will say that Veronica doesn’t sound bad at all and doesn’t falter in what sounds like a big belting number that has lots of pitfalls for the vocalist. 

Afterwards, Veronica is sitting alone at the bar quaffing alcohol.  Betty is the only person brave enough to approach her at this juncture. Is this what hell looks like for Veronica?  To be weirdly (in)famous in a little town, too rich, too fancy, too successful, too beautiful to be approachable?  Betty says something that could be read either way - “That was quite the performance, V” and henceforth I am going to take after Veronica when interpreting statements of this kind. I will simply assume they are praise so that I can respond accordingly. 

Betty asks if Veronica has a date to the Foni wedding, knowing the answer is no, so that she can suggest that Veronica third wheel Barchie. 

I retract my question - this IS hell for Veronica.  I did like the mutual sarcasm of the two girls calling themselves ‘badass’ about their distinctly very lame adventures in being the two girldates of Archie Andrews all the way back as sophomores in high school.   This trip down memory lane appears to lead Veronica to conclude that what she’s fighting for is “her friends.”  But actually, Veronica just wanted to make this conversation end.  Betty did make the right gesture in asking her to talk, but said a series of useless things.  That’s kind of a cause for despair, isn’t it? When your female friends can’t come up with the salve for the wound.

Just then, Tabitha and Archie tell B&V about the summons to Thornhill. Cheryl says that HEATHER is rubbing a salve on Nana Rose’s burn wounds, which  - why is this?  Shouldn’t Cheryl be doing this? It’s HER grandmother. Or maybe this is my not-American credentials coming out.  The gang - Archie, Betty, Veronica, Cheryl and Tabitha (as Jughead proxy?) put all the pieces together:

Percival is a powerful sorcerer

He is bringing all the plagues

They must call off the strike and try for subterfuge of the Ghost Train rail construction instead.

Betty wishes they had someone on the inside. Veronica says Kevin might be coming around to the light, so Betty says she will speak to Kevin.  Is this wise?  Betty and Kevin’s relationship is really actually kind of terrible. 

Meanwhile, in the bunker, the magic burger is disagreeing violently with Jughead, who vomits, and then has to lie down. 

In the depressing forest greens of the Andrews house interior, Kevin is making a confession to Betty, who absolves him (“I went along with it like a fool” - “You weren’t the only one.”).  I see now why it had to be Betty that had this conversation with Kevin.  Betty, sensible and practical, has to be the one to bring the audience along to accept the magic /supernatural turn that this story is continuing to take.  Tabitha and Cheryl are already too involved in the magic, and Archie and Veronica do not have enough of a connection to Kevin.   Percival is officially confirmed as A Magic Man Who Performs Spells. Kevin is given the mission of trying to steal Percival’s book of spells.

At the relocated diner, Fangs is leading The Guys with his tits out to go play basketball. (He touches the basketball, and does not hold his son.  Yeah I am fixated on this. Maybe I have daddy issues.  What about it?)   Archie does forthrightly bring up the topic of calling off the strike to negotiate better working conditions terms with Percival.   

HE DOESN’T TELL THEM ABOUT THE FUCKING PLAGUES AND THE UPCOMING APOCALYPSE.  

When the very dim Fangs says, without the necessary information that would allow him to make an INFORMED decision, that he wants to do ‘what is right,’ Archie grins and says “Screw it” to unilaterally alter the plan.  

Betty has put up a Plague Board in her office.  Boils are next.  And right on cue, Percival starts ‘boiling’ little men figurines.  This is not what boils mean.  Archie runs over to Percival, and as he plays around with the chess pieces, Archie asks “What the HELL are you PLAYING at?”  Masterpieces.

Percival doesn’t care about the strike. He now just wants Archie’s submission.  “Work for me” often means slave labor in Riverdale.

Jughead is visited in the bunker by Cheryl looking fucking amazing in her Rivervale Midsommar get up. She says, “Sweet Forsythe, what ails you?” which is AN AMAZING LINE.  He still has his tummy ache.  Cheryl stabs him to make it all better.  Jughead wakes up , freaked out, only to discover that there’s an actual knife stabbed on his desk.  To someone (himself? us?), Jughead narration asks, “How much do you want to bet another one of my stories was stolen!”

Kevin has entered Percival’s lair to enact his mission.  He gets caught IMMEDIATELY.  Very cleverly, Kevin plays the sad low-self esteem man which disarms Percival.

Betty’s sifting through Bibles when she finds a really well done plate of the Whore of Babylon. Flashback to TBK calling Betty that, which she takes very seriously. 

From here we directly cut to Archie Jesus carrying the cross on Riverdale Golgotha.  The Jughead narration intones, AND LO IT CAME TO PASS, ON THE THIRD DAY WHILE ARCHIE ANDREWS WORKED THE RAILWAY TO SPARE HIS CREW ANY MORE SUFFERING,  

I just basically lost consciousness. 

I was so scared I was going to get struck by lightening.  Like that time I watched The Last Temptation of Christ scene where Christ walks off the cross led by an androgynous angel to Mary Magdalene’s house to fuck her while she asks if they’re gonna have babies. 

Fortunately, the scene is short and we move on to everyone else: Veronica is busily setting up the wedding, FONI are putting their wedding vows together, while a solar eclipse happens which Alice Cooper didn’t make any sort of announcement about.

Betty, as the voice of reason whose job it is to take us all along on this journey, sounds exceptionally beleaguered as she says something literally impossible: “And now SURPRISE ECLIPSES ARE HAPPENING IN RIVERDALE.”

This sounds like something someone who watches a TV show called Riverdale might write into a snarky episode summary, doesn’t it? 

Kevin is there to tell her that Percival is buying weapons. “Stockade for the Harlot of Babylon” is the one that really captures Betty’s attention.  So Betty goes charging to Percival.   She keeps speaking for the viewers (“I don’t understand it. I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND IT”) but charges ahead to say that she knows she’s the Whore of Babylon and Percival’s war is the only war (on the planet?) that she is “aware of, currently,” a phrase that sounds like it was put together by a legal team.  She offers  to put herself in the stockade in exchange for a stopping of the plagues.  Percival tells her what he really wants.

Cut to!

The Blossom residence which is massively done up in candles again (Cheryl and Jughead decorating soulmates). Turns out what Percival wants is Baby Anthony.  Earthquakes, Fire from the Sky, Pestilence, Hail and Death of the First Born are next.  

Heather has a huge reaction to the word “stockade.”  She knows what this is and Cheryl and Heather read the witchy gobbledygook at the group.  Two witches, a woman who travels through time, an FBI agent, a mob princess, a cult follower and a Fail Serpent Queen decide to invade Percival’s lair.  This is to me strongly reminiscent of True Blood, except nobody is a vampire. (Can Kevin be a vampire, please?).

While they’re doing this, Jughead is talking to a deep dark hole. “Who are you?” and “What are you?” and “What do you want from me?” and “Why are you stealing My Work?”

I really adore Jughead for the way he talks about His Work  all capitalized like that. 

The dark hole sends him a message in a bottle, that says, Keep Writing, type written.  He has a flashback (forward?) to Vale’s Jughead with his ships in a bottle that made Vale Tabitha finally break down and want to kill him. 

At his shop, Percival is cooing at a pestilent insect perched on his hand. Betty enters carrying a baby shaped thing in her hands.  She even dandles the baby, but it’s a big doll.  She is wearing a very interesting outfit for this - a lowcut red dress and purple blazer that doesn’t go with it at all.  She summons all the other ones who approached invisibly using Cheryl’s witchcraft that they all accepted and acted as though it totally worked.

Um. OK so - I know JKR is persona non grata to a lot of people so Harry Potter Reference TW  (Skip to after the second ***)

****

Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley showed MUCH MORE surprise at the functioning of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak and they went to Hogwarts, than the librarian, the former banker, the diner owner and the sheriff’s son do that Hold Your Breath and Think of Cheryl rendered them invisible to the local wizard sorcerer. 

****

Cheryl knocks Percival out with the blow-in-your-face powder that functions like whatever it is  Donna Sweett used on Betty back in the day.

Cut to Archie, shirtlessly building the railway, Surprise Eclipse or no.  He looks marvelous, all rippling muscles and sweaty skin in the red glow of doom.  Jughead is having a wonderful time continuing to use Ye Old Biblical Speeche that I haven’t ever seen in a Bible in our post Vatican II era. Or maybe this is how he actually feels any time he sees Archie without his shirt on - he wants to shout : AND LO!

Percival is captured which brings the sun back.  Or rather, the capture of  The Mad Monk is what does it.  This is what Jughead calls him because I guess Jughead doesn’t realize that Percival and Kevin have fucked. Or maybe he does that on purpose. Oh.  

Veronica in a very interesting checkboard green knit outfit, takes the time to taunt Percival, locked up on the very stockade that freaked out Heather so much, in the dungeon she’s rigged up for him in the basement of her establishment (Her vault).

We skip over to the Foni residence where the queers are reconciling.  Toni and Fangs tell Kevin that he’s invited to their wedding (which is very not straight, at all, nope) and Kevin excitedly asks of Moose can come too, to which Fangs says yes.  Fangs and Kevin and Moose have all fucked each other.  This could be so bohemian and out there, but I just hate it. 

The Toni/Fangs wedding cake IS A MONSTROSITY.

WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME IT WAS LIKE THIS?

It looks like a pile of rubber tyres wound through with rose petals on thorny vines topped by what looks like a big bloody turd but turns out to be an intertwined pair of a red and green snake forming a heart as the green snake kisses the red snake on its head.

You mean to tell me Veronica Lodge ordered this cake.  On purpose?  She’s secretly anti-Tangs, anti Foni. Veronica is on my side. I know she is. Because nobody but an anti-fan could order this cake. oH No.

The aesthetics of this wedding horrify me.  Cheryl has dusted off her red Serpent jacket to wear over what look like bedazzled matador pants.  Toni is wearing a wedding dress that doesn’t flatter her with weird lace cut outs at the sides, Fangs has YELLOW ROSES in his lapel while dressed for a funeral, wearing a terrible fail beard.

Fangs and Toni also got INITIATED into the Serpents. Did they get punched in the face too?  I thought they were BORN Serpents?  (Goes off into the distance to pitch my usual fit about how I wish they wouldn’t bring up Serpent lore if they’re going to fuck around with it this much).

The speech Fangs gives is mostly fine, except it’s terrible.  He says he loves her and their family, but he doesn’t say he’s in love with her.  He says it’s us against the world and Toni looks very neutral. Why are they going through with this?

Her speech is even worse.  "I love how unconventional, surprising and beautiful our relationship is.”  Then she lies. “You’re an amazing father.”  No he isn’t. He’s just the sperm donor and has acted like it all season.  She says, “You make Baby Anthony and I very very proud.”   She does not mention the word love once to speak about Fangs.  This is the most damning wedding speech of all time.   

I am very appeased by how the writers are making it very clear that Toni knows exactly why she’s getting married. She has realized that she needs to grab as much privilege for herself as she can in order to protect herself and her needs and heteronormativity is one of the few that are available to her.  Fangs being queer is helpful because she wouldn’t be able to breathe in a marriage of convenience with a completely straight man (that’s why she loves how ‘unconventional’ their relationship is). 

While this bullshit is going on upstairs, Percival hums Flight of the Valkyries to himself to summon the pestilential insects.

Fangs and Toni kiss and everyone is completely BEAMING for unknown reasons (like why is POP’s so happy about this? Or Principal Weatherbee??) but Kevin and Moose are merely being polite. They are correct. 

Kevin sings a song with Moose on keyboard at this wedding. Britta has a girlfriend!   They’re so excited to be dancing. Britta & girlfriend are the only people that are making me happy during this number.  That and the fact that Moose apparently plays keyboard. This makes me like Moose even more.

Percival has broken out of the vault with the help of insects.  The first place he goes to is Thornhill, where he murders Nana Rose.  She’s the eldest living first born child of Riverdale and he kills her.  As the Eldest Daughter I am deeply offended that they’re altering the plague to be First Born CHILDREN and not First born SONS as in the original. 

Listen.

LISTEN.

FIRST BORN DAUGHTERS HAVE IT HARD ENOUGH OK?  Even Yaweh understood this and gave us a pass that time.  Fuck you Percival!

Nana Rose RIP. Her last exhaled breath is red.

At the wedding, Veronica is very upset, watching Barchie dance.  Tabitha approaches to comfort her.  Veronica asks WHO IS ENDGAME. I’m shocked that she asks Archie And Me as an option for Endgame.  Veronica actually tried to make the Endgame with Archie happen, but she couldn’t stand it.  Why girl, WHY?

Tabitha knows! And is about to tell her!

But Archie dies. 

Then die all the First Borns.  Fangs (yay!). Toni (yay!).  Unknown Serpents 1.2.3.  Cheryl runs directly to Toni. 

At the Bunker, Jughead wakes up. I love Jughead wakes up scenes, he’s so great at these.  This is again a different variation from what he’s done before. This is being woken up after falling asleep expecting to be woken up by an unwelcome visitor.   Jughead has flashlight at the ready (for some reason he didn’t light all his usual candles!).

His unwelcome visitor is HIMSELF!  He shouts at himself to turn around. Other Jughead glares meanly at him, but our Jughead starts to expire, under the curious and not very concerned gaze of Other Jughead. 

At the cursed wedding where both Toni and Fangs are dead, Betty weeps over only Archie, and nobody went to Sunday school because they all forget that it was THE FIRSTBORN SONS that died, and shouldn’t have affected the women, but I suppose Percival hates women and he upgraded just for us. (I am taking this very personally.)

Everyone names their older sibling (Hermosa for Veronica, Jason for Cheryl) but nobody cares about Heather so she doesn’t say anything.  Kevin doesn’t say who his older sibling is and nobody asks about that either.  Or Moose.  And Baby Anthony is still alive somehow. 

The only person who gives a care about Jughead is Tabitha, who runs as fast as she can on super high heels and a tight dress.  Betty, Cheryl, and Kevin all simply absolutely utterly do not give a shit.  Wow. This is a truly lonely life that Jughead Jones lives. Goddamn. 

Heather mentions that they should call on Sabrina the necromancer.

#tw harry potter mention #riverdale is the most catholic show on television #jabitha #anti tangs #anti toni topaz #riverdale season 6 #riverdale opinion #Riverdale s6 #riverdale recap #riverdale episode recap

[unemployedinfabuland]

I finally gave my opinions on the latest season of Stranger Things. Right before my heart and mind are obliterated on Friday.

#stranger things #podcasting #television #netflix #stranger things theories #steve harrington #eddie munson #lucus sinclair #max mayfield #will byers #mike wheeler #nancy wheeler #robin buckley #ronance #steddie #jancy #lumax #byler #nancy x steve #recap #fangirl

[lonesomedotmp3]

I've decided that if your show has previews or recaps it's a good show. this is why all streaming service originals need to kill themselves

#REAL television has recaps. fuck you #.txt

[nicollekidman]

i LOVE reading tv recaps for whatever reason it’s some of my favorite writing 

#i love television so much id love to write recaps #the knick ones on vulture are v good

[fangirlsdilemma]

Game Of Thrones: House Of The Dragon Winner: Episode 8

The Velaryon boys win this week, and I get REALLY excited about the prophecy. Also, Gossip Girl comparisons. They were always coming...

Sorry this is late everyone! I was at New York Comic Con and so I was a little bit wiped out when it came to watching the episode, forget writing it up. But, we’re here now. The Winner While it’s going to lead to a lot of problems down the line, we have double winners! Set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, this epic series tells the story of House Targaryen. Jaecaerys and…

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#A Song of Ice And Fire #Alicent Hightower #Game of Thrones #George RR Martin #HBO #House Of The Dragon #Jacaerys Velaryon #Jon Snow #Lucerys Velaryon #Recaps #Television #The Prince That Was Promised #TV

[new-arcadia-recaps]

New Arcadia Recap: s01e01 "Pilot"

A shuttle arrives at a silent space station. It docks by itself, and a mechanical voice transfers control to the space station computer, Alpha Juliet. Four cryopods are unloaded and defrosted; as they come out, Alpha Juliet scans them and logs their permissions. Ophelia Singh (she/her) is second-in-command and navigation specialist. Echo Cardoza (she/they) is the communications specialist. Ves Park (he/they) is the engineering specialist. When they try to unload the last pod, there’s an issue—no vital signs. The cryopod failed, and Mission Commander Mitchell (he/him) is dead.

Ophelia wakes to Alpha Juliet providing her new credentials. “Mission Commander Singh, command of New Arcadia has been transferred to you.” She stumbles up out of the pod and over to Mitchell’s, hitting the buttons, trying to get it to wake up. Nothing happens; he’s dead. While she’s doing this, the other two wake up.  Alpha Juliet greets them all, introduces themselves as the station computer, and then reports: the station systems are only fourteen percent online.

“Which fourteen percent?” Ves asks. Not the right fourteen percent. Ophelia sends Ves to repair life support and Echo to bring communications online. She heads to the command center. What about Commander Mitchell? He’s already dead; the priority is to keep the rest of them alive. He remains in his cryo-coffin.

At the comms station, Echo starts initiation procedures. They linger over the damage to the ship—odd damage, like pieces of it have been deliberately ripped out. They slowly put it together, bringing it back online, reporting the damage to Ophelia. Ophelia asks them if something’s wrong, but they hesitate and say no: it’s all normal disrepair, nothing to worry about. Echo appears to be hiding something.

Repairing the life support system, Ves chats with Alpha Juliet. He asks if he can call them AJ. AJ agrees. Ves queries AJ about the station; AJ reports that they’ve always been the computer at the station, but Ves doesn’t think that’s right—AJ asks who would know, AJ or Ves? Well, AJ, but that’s not what Ves was told.

At the command center, Ophelia activates all the computers with her status as Commander. We flash back to before the mission. We see Ophelia and Mitchell in training together, complaining about working opposite shifts. Mitchell says he’ll leave Ophelia notes so that it’s like they’re working together. We watch a succession of post-it notes stuck to pillows—“you’ll do great”, “don’t forget to get your laundry”, etc. Then we get to Ophelia and Mitchell are performing final checks. They’re both nervous, but joking about it. As Ophelia gets in her cryopod, Mitchell sticks a post-it note in with her, tells her it will keep her company while he’s not there. Back in the present, Ophelia brings the computers fully online.

Ves asks AJ to access prior activation records. AJ tries, but can’t find them for a minute. Bad file organization...oh, there they are. Suddenly, the life support system starts crashing. Ves can’t figure out what is wrong. He realizes AJ’s attempted memory retrieval triggered the meltdown. Someone REALLY doesn’t want them to know what happened before.

Ophelia and Echo come running. Ves asks Ophelia’s permission to wipe the prior records. There’s some kind of virus in there, Ves thinks. They apologize to AJ—they’re kind of their memories. AJ says it’s fine. Ophelia hesitates, but Echo pushes hard for it; they need to stay alive now. Who cares about the past? Ophelia agrees. Ves wipes the records, and the life support system comes fully online.

Back in the landing bay, they regard Mitchell’s cryopod. They could launch him into space, an astronaut’s funeral, but Ophelia rejects that; his family will want the body. They end up moving it to a storage area and covering up his frozen face. Ophelia lingers at the pod.

While Ves and Echo go to the galley and AJ offers them a selection of rations for dinner, Ophelia goes back to her pod and retrieves Mitchell’s last post-it note. We don’t see what it says, but when she reads it, she sits down against the wall and starts to cry.

#new arcadia #new arcadia spoilers #new arcadia episode 1 spoilers #new arcadia s01e01 #television #chime in if I missed anything! first time writing a recap like this #also pls let me know if anyone else is watching I'm clearly already hella invested

[danielmays]

Maryland - The Reviews

#Maryland - The reviews for the the important @bbctwo film. @DanielMays9

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#2022 Television #BBC Two #Daniel Mays #Hayley Squires #Maryland #Reviews &amp; Recaps #Zawe Ashton

[dovebuffy92]

Spoilers Below

INTRODUCTION

In Julia Season One Episode Seven, ” Foie Gras,” directed by Jenee LaMarque, Julia Child’s (Sarah Lancashire) bubble is burst by Feminist icon Betty Friedan (Tracee Chimo Pallero) during a New York-based gala honoring The French Chef.

Julia takes her husband Paul Cushing Child (David Hyde Pierce), best friend Avis DeVoto (Bebe Neuwirth), and book editor Judith Jones (Fiona Glascott) to the public television New York gala. They go along with The French Chef’s director-producer Russ Morash (Fran Kranz), producer Alice Naman (Brittany Bradford), and WGBH President Hunter Fox (Robert Joy). Sadly, Paul develops low-grade flu during their trip, leaving him unable to go to lunch at a fabulous French restaurant with Julia. Thankfully he musters up the strength to attend the gala to support his wife.

Julia dines at the French restaurant with Judith and her boss, President of Alfred A. Knopf Inc Blanche Knopf (Judith Light). Judith spends the lunch trying to prove Julia’s value as a cookbook author to Blanche. However, Blanche finds Julia’s enthusiasm for food annoying. She is not impressed with Julia’s television career, but she sells the importance of the author finishing her second cookbook. The author doesn’t seem bothered by Blanche’s tense remarks but feels the sting of a sexist comment by the restaurant’s head chef Andre. Meanwhile, Avis uses Paul’s sickness as an excuse not to go on her first date since her husband died. Sparks fly during Alice’s blind date with a newly minted lawyer.

Judith confronts Blanche about why she was so rude to Julia. Blanche tells Judith off for wasting precious time editing Julia’s “frivolous” cookbooks instead of focusing on her legacy as an award-winning novel editor. Later they all meet up for the gala, where Julia delivers a beautiful speech about how The French Chef is a “travel program” that allows homemakers to explore new worlds through cooking. Julia hopes that her love for life infects her audience.

IS JULIA A CHEF?

Julia rides an emotional and intellectual rollercoaster throughout ” Foie Gras,” starting with her working lunch at a French restaurant. She revels in her delicious mouth-watering meal when the chef Andre comes over to their table. Andre warmly greets repeat customers Blanche and Judith. Julia compliments the chef’s cooking gushing that it’s as good as any meal she has had in Europe. Andre takes the compliment to heart. Julia doesn’t even have to introduce herself because he recognizes her from The French Chef. He loves the television show—Julia giggles in glee that people in the culinary world know her.

The two joke that because Andre was born in France that he is the real “French Chef.” Julia spreads laughter and happiness wherever she travels. Andre praises Julia telling her how many of his customers ask him to cook dishes from her program. He has even been able to move sweetbread because of The French Chef. Judith pointedly stares at Blanche, delighted that now there is proof of the importance of her friend’s show. Julia feels on top of the world with an incredible chef cheering her on.

Andre poisons the celebratory mood by asking her for a favor. He begs Julia to leave “the real cooking to the men.” Julia’s face falls as Andre argues that women don’t belong in restaurants, no matter their culinary education or accomplishments. Then, he walks away, leaving Julia in a state of shock. The table turns silent until Blanche dryly offers to pay the check.

FEMINIST OR OUTDATED HOUSEWIFE?

Julia Season One executive producers Daniel Goldfarb and Christopher Keyser have stated that one of the questions the series explores is if Julia Child represents feminism or traditional values of femininity. ” Foie Gras” delves into this during her explosive conversation with Betty Friedan.

The eighth episode, in many ways, argues that Julia is a feminist icon. While delivering the speech, Julia highlights all the incredible women she brought with her during her journey into stardom. The television personality invites her best friend Avis to the gala and publicly thanks her for her contribution to The French Chef even though she doesn’t officially work for WGBH. She acknowledges Judith for taking the time out of her busy schedule working with intellectual novelists like John Updike to edit Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Finally, Julia calls young producer Alice, a future television innovator. She fought for Alice to become an official producer on The French Chef when no one else was awarding the younger woman for all her hard work. Julia advocates for other women all the time.

Julia Child is essentially one of the creative producers of The French Chef. She designs the “menu” for each season, writes all the scrips, takes part in greenlighting editing, and essentially invented the idea of a cooking television show. Julia Child represents The French Chef because her personality and culinary skills are why it’s popular. Julia works hard on her television show while co-writing another cookbook and taking care of her husband. However, Betty Friedan makes excellent points about how the television personality has made it harder for women to succeed.

During a conversation about Betty’s new book, The Feminine Mystique, the feminist shares that she doesn’t think “Julia is a good example” to other women. Betty argues The French Chef traps wives in the kitchen because of the amount of work it takes to create these elaborate French dishes. The thirty-minute television show creates the illusion that these meals don’t take days to cook and hours to clean up.

Betty believes that Julia has made it so that homemakers now must cook dishes worthy of three Michelin stars for their husbands, making it challenging to complete their other domestic duties. These women don’t have the time to travel or even dream of pursuing a career. Betty’s comments bring to light issues that Julia has never considered. Julia leaves the ballroom feeling heartbroken, realizing for the first time that some people hate what she stands for.

LAST THOUGHTS

Does Julia’s perfect 1950’s housewife image make her a symbol of an archaic time? Or does the “French Chef” who heads her own television show make her an ideal example of a 1960s modern woman? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

#tv recap #julia child #sarah lancashire #tv blogger #Julia season 1 #HBO MAX #awards radar #betty friedan #the feminine mystique #feminism #ethics #cooking show #bio-pic #television show #Julia

[mikesfilmtalk]

Monsieur Spade: Languid Noir

*Some Spoilers* Monsieur Spade is very languid noir. Just when you thought it could not get any slower, it does. This somnambulistic pace does seem to work for the show. Spade (Owen) does have some very good lines in this one.”If you think I’m threatening you then whoever taught you English didn’t know a threat from a promise.” Splendid stuff. The story so far The six nuns are still dead, no…

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#Drama #Recap #review #Television

[whiskyblu]

Nevertheless, Ep 3: Woman Takes Brief Break from being an ethical non monogamist to enjoy a tv show

Sol continues to be the hottest one in the show, and she is so wasted on Ji wan, 

Ok so next episode, Jae-Eon picks up some girl at an airport. And NaBi is angsting bc she doesn’t hear from him all day. “Does he not like me or is he teasing me?”

So. Him just…you know…having shit to do. Isn’t an option?

Ok. noted. =.=

NaBi wanders off to get food, and runs into her boy working on his project. He doesn’t see her, he answers his phone, she follows him creepily and sees the other girl.. Cue angst. “She’s the one his heart belongs to.”

Because it can only be one. 

Now it’s JaeEon’s turn to see her leaving a convenience store and giving her number to another dude, another student. 

He’s sort of watching from a distance with the other girl. He neutrally mentions he knows them, and girl gets jealous. Turns out they had matching engraved zippos, but she lost hers.  Very much giving gf vibes. He talks about Na Bi and she’s all “you’re into her, it’s fate” and he's’ all “you’re my fate”

Convenience Store Guy acts more like she would expect from a dude pursuing her, and she seems comfortable, and considers him.

And he’s an absolute Cinnamon Roll, I love him. He brings her snacks and is just…nice.

Ope, now my boy’s being dumb. Walks in on Ol girl talking to Cinnamon Roll and gets jealous, and tries to like. Put lil man in his place, and gets put in his instead. She’s got a spine!

Sort of. She kind of…half ass calls him out on being a jealous dick. He doesn’t really admit to it.

Like,  she hasn’t heard from him for a couple days, and now he jumps in being possessive and trying to draw attention to him. That’s douchey and fucked up.

So she goes on a date with cinnamon roll and it’s adorable. Very sweet, direct, little chatterbox of a man

And now I’m mad again.

Nabi goes to a school festival to see Cinnamon Roll, and there’s another girl there. Apparently his HS Crush who rejected him reached out. So NaBi gets awkwardly rejected, Jae Eon sees the whole thing. Home girl goes home, and she’s laying in bed, appears to be coming down with a cold…and FuckBoy Jae Eon totally calls her like “hey can I come over?”  No apology, no acknowledgement he acted like a possessive asshole, just “i’m by your house, wanna hang out?”

I apparently completely missed this bit before. Ope.  This is also where he finds out she had deleted his number from her phone. This is important later.

 Her phone dies, so she goes to the convenience store to get medicine, when she gets home, there’s an ambulance at her house.

FuckBoy called a got damn ambulance cus he thought she’d passed out or something. Remember what I said before about losing their tiny minds over a papercut? Yeah.

In a cute way now tho.

So she sends him packing..and this mf comes back with a care package of meds and snacks for her, and I have feelings about this.

I’m super annoyed they didn’t address him being a possessive douche. Like, it’s one thing to make his interest known, and to be nonmono, but it’s absolutely not ok to act like dog at a fire hydrant when she’s around other dudes. 

So. Perfect was def too strong of a word.

…so she’s like “i don’t like this bag of stuff take it back” and he’s all like “i’m hungry” and she tells him to eat the food while hanging out together.

And this turns into him spending the night holding her hand, hunched over next to the bed, like a hospital scene, so he can earn her trust back.

He addresses his jealousy-doesn’t outright say he was a douche, but does admit to being jealous. She assumes that he liked seeing her get rejected. Which is reasonable, I think, because of how he called her basically immediately after, acting like they’d never argued. 

But that’s not what happened. He admitted to being jealous, and that it bothered him to find out that she’d deleted him from the phone. 

And this is why the fuckboy allegations are so confusing to me. Because he’s not treating her like a hook up, or a casual relationship. He’s treating her like a partner. Literally the only thing that is different between how he pursues her, and how any other dude would, is that there’s no assumption of monogamy. I would argue that the way he goes about it is questionable, but that’s mostly because the culture of enm in the US is of transparency and enthusiastic consent.

…and he is very much working to sell her on nonmonogamy. Thaaats why it makes my brain itch.

Jae Eon is solo nonmonogamous. He has partners, but non exclusively, he does not have a nesting partner, nor seem to want one, and he isn’t invested in the relationship escalator. He also does not have the language or a supportive enm community around him. So, he performs enm, and persuades people thru open practice, rather than naming it.

So, in episode two, there was an interaction that I ignored, because I found it uninteresting and maybe a little fatphobic. When they were all hanging out at the bar, there was a dude-one of the only fat people i’ve ever seen in a kdrama- who was doing the “ambiguously creepy” guy thing. If he was an american, he’d prob be wearing a fedora. Like he specifically asks NaBi to sit next to him, and when she does he gets all fixated on the fact that she’s single now, and asks her why she hasn’t taken her jacket off and…a few other just. Weird fucking things. At one point, NaBi, Jae Eon and Bit Na are outside having a smoke, and Fedora Dude comes out is being really obnoxious and pushy about finding out what Nabi and jae eon’s relationship is, and Jae Eon tells him “nah, we’re just friends.” Nabi walks away and Fauxdora starts the “she’s not pretty enough to be this stuck up” and Jae Eon puts him in his place and everyone gets on with their life.  

NaBi was bothered by Jae Eon not “claiming her” ig. For me tho, the way to handle Fedora Dudes is to straight tell them to get to fuck, it’s none of their business. And that seems like what Jae Eon did. In my mind, he was showing her the same respect he would any of his other friends/partners, in not “staking a claim” so to speak, and also shutting down the ass hat. 

So when he engaged in jealous twattery around Cinnamon Roll, it was extra surprising. Ofc, the reason is that Cinnamon Rolls was a threat, and Fedoradouche was not. Jae eon was shielding her from Fedoradouche, and competing with Cinnamon Roll. Valid. 

So on the one hand, the narrative is showing that NaBi is “special” (gags) by him being possessive of her in ways he isn’t possessive of others. He’s also…gently aggressive with her, after she finally consents to kissing him. He just…keeps pursuing. It’s a behavior that irritates tf out of me, ignoring soft nos, and pushing for a hard no. Then when he gets a hard no, in the form of her deleting his number, and sending him packing after the ambulance leaves, he still keeps pursuing her. 

So he essentially tells her that he’s going to keep being nice to her until he earns her trust and gives him a chance. Which…irl would stalkery and annoying af. But because we’re inside her head, and we know she’s completely obsessed with him, and also because of my own biases against monogamy, and my general annoyance that enm is not even discussed as an option, it gets a pass, both narratively, and in my head. 

And then they bang, because that’s exactly what they both need when she has a cold. Fuckin tv, man

#nevertheless #nevertheless Ep 3 #recap #rewatch #spoiler review #ethical non monogamy #polyamory #polyamorous reperesentation #nonmonogamy in television #kdrama #song kang #han so hee