|
Isometric Bacon posted:With Margo finding out the death of Sergei, knowing what's waiting for her back in the Union, and revoking her diplomatic immunity, the Soviets just lost their control over her. I have no idea why she didn't just come clean about them murdering American citizens to Eli or anyone else for that matter. shed already worked out a plea deal where she can go to a minimum security facility where the burgers are plentiful and they have no lettuce
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 12:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 07:13 |
|
|
External Organs posted:Maybe the CIA killed Sergei For a hot second I thought this might be the case with Margo's first run into Irina in the hallway after learning the news, and the way she looks at Eli after he says 'Lets go back and have a chat' - but really there's no real motivation for that to make any sense.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 12:58
|
|
|
That was as dumb as I though it would be. I took notes on all the things I though were dumb. mysterious wrench in the ground (is that the one from the North Korean?) oh it's literally Chekhov's gun i don't think making someone's head explode is an effective method of extracting information ah i see the russian woman has shown up i'm sure this will go well for margo ah good confinement and more searches, sure that'll go down wonderfully i'm really not sure what the law is on mars like why do these people have the authority to do any of this? Chekhov's gun again! ah yes a power hungry goon has pocketed it instead of turning it in. he'll be shooting someone soon did aleida not take the keys out of her car when she went to reception? miles suddenly remembers he has a child (children?) and gives in immediately turning off monitors/computers is literally impossible. cannot be done. big brain ed could not foresee this are they technically defecting to north korea at this stage poor margo. lmao at aleida trying to comfort her is it a good idea to put the two prisoners together ah the ship has a death star port. of course it does did massey just not even question the incredibly dangerous thing she's doing? also how the gently caress is she moving about unwatched when she's clearly part of this ed is very emotionally manipulative. "you said you wanted to be an astronaut didn't you" gently caress you i'm still confused exactly how this works if the engines continue to burn won't the asteroid just go into space? i think they're actually slowing it down but it's not clear ed has decided mars is his home and he doesn't need earth (except for all the things he does need earth for) new science dude just dropped, look at those glasses margo with the heel turn, aleida support oh poo poo space RKO out of nowhere SPEED HACKING this space fight is dumb does nasa have the authority to "take someone into custody"? also what law did she break? oh THIS is how margo goes to not-guantanamo cool they're invading Mars!North Korean now not the consequences of our actions! they're going to shoot Ed aren't they lol this whole time kelly must be just chilling in a crater somewhere lmao they shot dani instead that is the more stupid outcome dani will not, in fact, be fine kelly's back! where the gently caress was she loving told you all margo's diplomatic immunity would get revoked somehow. did they really need THAT many police cars? i cannot believe we've had this entire season without a loving life on mars section my god at least korean dude got his wife and uh a whole bunch of new people?? dani lives! time skip time! 2012 we living on asteroids/moons now? kuznetsov who's that fella? I don't know where they're going next season. If they're doing asteroid mining I don't see how they make that an enticing season (lol). Kelly's whole thing this season has to have some sort of payoff if they're not crashing asteroids into the crater.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 13:30
|
|
|
All this song talk but the song I kept expecting to play in this episode is "Ooh Watcha Sayyy"
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 13:37
|
|
|
EvilHawk posted:That was as dumb as I though it would be. I took notes on all the things I though were dumb. First man on an asteroid! He's the guy that died in episode 1 when the capture went wrong. The one that was named by the news, not the "and one other guy" guy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 14:36
|
|
|
For the last two episodes I thought Sam was going to get killed, happy that at least survived, and unless prosecuted, she's going to get a fat Helios bonus. I really wanted Ed to get shot, that way he gets his dream of not going senile and depending on someone else, and never returning to earth. Lets see what dumb poo poo goes down in season 5 if it gets greenlit.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 14:39
|
|
|
Rappaport posted:The total blueballsing vis a vis character deaths was inane. I was certain one or both combatants next to the engines would go into the stream. We already had that in season 2! Also, what are the magic engines shooting out, plasma? They both at least got major radiation sickness I'd hope I especially like how everyone believed that Margo sent in the code magically standing feet away from a computer with her arms crossed.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 14:51
|
|
it is so stupid), and this just made it worse. I have absolutely no idea what his motivations were supposed to be, in pretty much any episode past like... Three? this season. Why did Ilya behave the way he did this episode? Who knows!
|
Kaboobi posted:Also absolutely nothing happened with the crater that may or may not have life or water or something in it. They just totally dropped it? I kind of feel that the way they're doing this show is breaking the typical setup/payoff cycle that tv watching goons have in their heads, which causes a lot of unnecessary pissing and making GBS threads because THEY DIDNT PLAY ALL THEIR CARDS THIS SEASON. Like, buddy, they have a plan for seven seasons. The plan obviously isn't as well put together as Babylon 5's plan was, but it's there. Like, they literally have a history of setting something up in one season and only bringing it out halfway through the next season. Sergei, Aleida, and the gun are all things that unnecessary time was ""wasted on"" during their debuting season but cropped up later in a mostly satisfying way. Hell, you could actually improve season 1 and make the plotting a lot tighter by cutting Aleida from it entirely.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 14:53
|
|
|
EvilHawk posted:That was as dumb as I though it would be. I took notes on all the things I though were dumb. im excited to report that according to user EvilHawk Guantanamo Bay was (ruffles paper) "dumb as hell"
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 14:58
|
|
|
TraderStav posted:I especially like how everyone believed that Margo sent in the code magically standing feet away from a computer with her arms crossed. I think the given explanation was that Margo wrote the code and Aleida just typed it in. That's why, you know, it's on a pad in the room. It's harder to slip something like that in when you're pair programming, but it's not impossible. She could easily explain it by going "I drafted two versions, one with the reboot code", and Aleida's explanation is "I was focused on typing what was on the page as fast as possible so it would actually have a chance of making it to the ship". But also I don't think anyone actually wants to bother investigating it further given the political boon of the head advisor of Roscosmos saying that she hosed everyones plans up, and the US finally getting to arrest her for her other laundry list of crimes. I don't get why these complaints are even complaints because it's literally just using your head to reason about the scenario. I might genuinely stop posting in this thread (to the delight of many a goon) because the sheer lack of ability in being able to parse what is going on on TV by a slew of goons in this thread has some absolutely depressing implications for modern society that I do not want to think about. alexandriao fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Jan 12, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 15:01
|
|
|
alexandriao posted:I kind of feel that the way they're doing this show is breaking the typical setup/payoff cycle that tv watching goons have in their heads, which causes a lot of unnecessary pissing and making GBS threads because THEY DIDNT PLAY ALL THEIR CARDS THIS SEASON. Like, buddy, they have a plan for seven seasons. The plan obviously isn't as well put together as Babylon 5's plan was, but it's there. Like, they literally have a history of setting something up in one season and only bringing it out halfway through the next season. Sergei, Aleida, and the gun are all things that unnecessary time was ""wasted on"" during their debuting season but cropped up later in a mostly satisfying way. Hell, you could actually improve season 1 and make the plotting a lot tighter by cutting Aleida from it entirely. The issue I have is that a lot of their "cards" are time-sensitive and just get thrown into the discard pile when they do another time-jump. This has been an annoyance of mine all the way through the series, it feels like their time-jumps aren't planned to coincide with the actual ending of the story, and so a lot of stuff gets left in the air or ignored forever. This goes all the way back to S1, where they built up all this tension between the Russians and Americans and then lol I guess nothing else happens for ten years. And honestly, even after seeing their plan, I don't think we needed to spend nearly as much time on Aleida in S1. You can introduce a character to bond with Margo without spending multiple episodes showing her family crossing the border.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 15:09
|
|
|
Phenotype posted:The issue I have is that a lot of their "cards" are time-sensitive and just get thrown into the discard pile when they do another time-jump. This has been an annoyance of mine all the way through the series, it feels like their time-jumps aren't planned to coincide with the actual ending of the story, and so a lot of stuff gets left in the air or ignored forever. This goes all the way back to S1, where they built up all this tension between the Russians and Americans and then lol I guess nothing else happens for ten years. But that's what I mean, most of their cards haven't actually been discarded, it's just a longer delay before they play them than you seem to expect. At least one goon here explicitly mentions the gun as a silly thing because it "comes out of nowhere", when it was literally just a card put aside in the season before. You really cannot have it both ways. They sowed tension between the Russians and Americans and then they uhhh, reaped on those tensions in Season 2 throughout the majority of the season?? I don't get how that isn't pretty evident in how S2 progresses. If the complaints were that it was sloppy, or a little bit off-kilter, I kind of get that, sure. But a lot of the complaints just seem to be from people who miss 90% of what happened this season or the season before, or who lack the ability to be able to think for at least half a second about why a scenario could possibly make sense, and I think I'm letting all of that get to me a little much because I pushed myself to read the prior threads, and I read this one in a big gulp too. Maybe that wasn't the best idea! And I'm sure if Aleida had been cut from Season 1 a lot of goons in here would be going "What the gently caress is this lady, how did she get to where is is so fast, why should we give a gently caress about her! This is silly and makes no sense!!!" alexandriao fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Jan 12, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 15:15
|
|
|
alexandriao posted:They sowed tension between the Russians and Americans and then they uhhh, reaped on those tensions in Season 2 throughout the majority of the season?? I don't get how that isn't pretty evident in how S2 progresses. Oh sure, and that's how they've planned things to work, but it means that anything that was specifically happening in the year 1970 just kinda died down uneventfully and we're left with decade-long stretches where nothing apparently happens. Phenotype posted:Welp, if this sort of thing is actively encouraged, then yeah lol I'm pretty aggravated after watching the first episode of S2. They built up all this intrigue about what the Russians were doing, that tense scene where Ed sees the Russian coming back up on their mining elevator, and oh poo poo the last shot of the cosmonaut was him looking suspicious at an empty Jamestown base, and now they're leaving Ellen all alone up there? And then boom, time skip, I guess none of that stuff mattered. Did they get a new writer's room or something? Felt like someone made a conscious effort to ditch all the plot seeds from the previous season. This is my post from the end of S1, and yeah, okay, they paid this off somewhat by showing the Russians had been spying on the base since then, but all those little cliffhangers I guess resolved uneventfully and they spent the next decade just hangin out without incident until it was time for the next season.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 15:38
|
|
|
The Chekov's gun was especially silly because the CIA guys also had guns when they were preparing to raid the NK module. You could have the exact same situation with some guys struggling over one of the space SMGs instead of devoting a cold open and several follow-up shots to the pistol. Margot's diplomatic immunity being revoked is what actually landed her in hot water, but surely there's no law against stealing an asteroid, I think Aleida might have been legally in the clear.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 15:39
|
|
|
Oh yeah, why did they revoke her immunity? I thought they'd be taking her back to the Soviet Union to be tortured, and I didn't think they'd want her in American hands after spending so much time with Roscosmos.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 15:40
|
|
|
alexandriao posted:I kind of feel that the way they're doing this show is breaking the typical setup/payoff cycle that tv watching goons have in their heads, which causes a lot of unnecessary pissing and making GBS threads because THEY DIDNT PLAY ALL THEIR CARDS THIS SEASON. Like, buddy, they have a plan for seven seasons. The plan obviously isn't as well put together as Babylon 5's plan was, but it's there. Like, they literally have a history of setting something up in one season and only bringing it out halfway through the next season. Sergei, Aleida, and the gun are all things that unnecessary time was ""wasted on"" during their debuting season but cropped up later in a mostly satisfying way. Hell, you could actually improve season 1 and make the plotting a lot tighter by cutting Aleida from it entirely. Lol @ thinking they have any plans outside of some VERY rough outlines for future seasons, it's probably like a couple of sentences of what they want to do, not some sort of intricate long term planning and that is very obvious from everything they have done so far. Noone can tell me that what we got in this recent seasons flows "naturally" from what we had in S1, it's just making poo poo up for each season. That's also why Kelly's subplot was left so vague and not further explored this season because they have no idea yet what it's gonna be outside of something they can use next season but there is literally no setup done this season and that's why the comparison with Babylon5 is ludicrous. As messy as B5's story had to be at times due to studio shenanigans, there still were plot and THEMATIC(!) throughlines, there was connective tissue between season 1 and everything in the later seasons. FAM on the other hand even uses the time jump between the seasons to LESSEN any existing connective tissue and yet is also not willing to actually move forward, ie. it doesn't want to radically change the cast between seasons so we kinda get the worst of both worlds. It's also ridiculous how afraid this season was of actual consequences for the characters. The biggest "fallout" we got was Margo who basically goes from Russian "imprisonment" to US "imprisonment" (let's be real, we can't even be sure that consequences will even stick or last). If you ramp up the stakes to this degree then the consequences need to be just as high but the finale let everything end with a whimper. PS: Can we also talk about the fact that Palmer was suddenly okay to just casually kill someone and he wasn't setup in any way to be that kind of guy, it's like he was only okay with trying to kill Massey because he knew the writers would make sure she doesn't die... (same is of course also true for Palmer not getting killed).
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 15:48
|
|
|
Rochallor posted:The Chekov's gun was especially silly because the CIA guys also had guns when they were preparing to raid the NK module. You could have the exact same situation with some guys struggling over one of the space SMGs instead of devoting a cold open and several follow-up shots to the pistol. The "guns" they were loading looked a lot like paintball/syringe guns... there was a weird bulge on the barrel and they were loading a strange looking cartridge into it. Phenotype posted:Oh yeah, why did they revoke her immunity? I thought they'd be taking her back to the Soviet Union to be tortured, and I didn't think they'd want her in American hands after spending so much time with Roscosmos. It was probably just easier and they wanted rid of her.Who cares which prison she goes to? It's not as if she's had access to anything exciting while she's been at Star City esperantinc posted:First man on an asteroid! He's the guy that died in episode 1 when the capture went wrong. The one that was named by the news, not the "and one other guy" guy. Oh that dude! I did mean to look it up after I watched it but forgot. alexandriao posted:im excited to report that according to user EvilHawk Guantanamo Bay was (ruffles paper) "dumb as hell" I uh didn't say that?
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 16:07
|
|
|
Load of shite. This show has basically gotten worse season by season and I now no longer give a poo poo after season 4. Doubt I'll be back for season 5.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 16:12
|
|
|
I think my favorite guy on the show now is the Korean dude. Maybe next season he'll get to be in charge of everything. Also, what the HELL is the political climate like in North Korea in this show anyway?
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 16:13
|
|
|
Presumably they're doing alright given that there's still a communist bloc of solidarity around. They'd be getting support from the USSR and also The Country Whose Name Must Never Be Mentioned In This Apple Product. If there wasn't a famine in the 90s that alone leaves NK a lot better off, and as a member of one of the space-faring nations they have to be included in a lot of decision-making. Maybe South Korea is still a dictatorship and it's the butt of all jokes in the FAM universe.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 16:47
|
|
|
The Chinese are all just offscreen, doing fine and feeling great, thank you!
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 16:53
|
|
|
I was waiting for Miles to have a conversation with Lee along the lines of "I can't really tell you North Koreans apart, so I just grabbed as many as I could"
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 17:21
|
|
|
"Goons not comprehending basic logic" isn't really the magic bullet this time around. In my humble opinion as a goon, of course. ( If someone is blundering in here before seeing the season finale, this wall of text is abound with spoilers )- "The gun was stupid" It sort of makes sense that Best Korea would send a single hand-gun in their magical Soyuz capsule with two boys inside, because inscrutable Juche authoritarianism or whatever. Fine. Let's even have a crazy engraving on it just to remind everyone that hey, this is the gun we've seen earlier! It didn't grow out of the Martian soil like a tuber! Dani and Kuz had an adventure with this gun! Great, that's still acceptable I guess, in a show where characters semi-routinely explain basic plot beats to the audience, starting with the logic of MAD (a genuinely great and hilarious scene). But the gun doesn't have a pay-off. It's a literal cliche! Ooh, Ed and Dani forcefully foreshadow their own demise, and there's a gun! The alphabet soup dudes don't even have (real big-boy) guns! What an exciting situation! Resolution? Dani goes home to hold her grandchild, puppies and rainbows  - "Margo is the Most Wanted Woman In America" OK, her plot with Sergei last season was cute, and Sergei got done dirty several times across seasons, I feel for the guy and that's a fine plot to keep up the Cold War tensions and paranoia, I guess. Then this season opens with Margo in her gilded Soviet cage, getting nabbed from the street pretty much randomly (unless we posit that the NKVD targeted her newspaper dude just for her, still OK 1984 logic I guess but I'm not sure this was intended) and then blithely subjected to torture when the various factions of the neo-Stalinist coup realize who she is. OK, I guess I can buy that, rebellions are chaotic situations and that one dude getting his brains blown over Margo's face was hilarious, fine. And it does make sense that the neo-Stalinists would put Roscosmos in the hands of lady-Berija, that's literally What Stalin Would Do. But why does Sergei have to blow his cover to tell Margo that lady-Berija was personally responsible for everything in their respective Cold War plots so far? The NKVD is scary because it has tentacles everywhere, Berija doesn't have to be a Disney villain, the horror is systematic! That is why stalinism was horrifying! But OK, Sergei was her pet project and for reasons not expounded upon lady-Berija is the one who is most qualified on paper to run Roscosmos in a paranoid Soviet state. Great. But the wrap-up to this plot-line is that lady-Berija falls on her own sword (Alanis Morissette eat your heart out, amirite?), Sergei gets the American Beauty curtains and Margo gets arrested by the FBI for space-crimes against the good ol' US of A, getting her out of her bind with the NKVD and making her adoption of Wernher's little maxim seem justified. This show has pulled deus ex machinas on us before, it certainly was plausible that Reagan heard a message from God thanks to Dani's antics in orbit in an earlier season so why not, let's do this too. But this ending is such a tidy "just-so" scenario that it invalidates a lot of the story-telling leading up to this point, and also suffers from dangling threads. I can accept that Sergei's US wife is a casualty of geopolitics, but it just seems to under-line the comedy of Sergei's plot, which again I'm not sure was the intended effect. As opposed to paving the way for Margo's theatrics and subsequent "redemption", but it felt like the confrontation in Leningrad was about Margo not needing redemption in the first place, and Aleida being personally hurt rather than for reasons political or moral. The arc was stupid.  - Milosh. Just everything about this guy. What was his story about this season? He is presented to us as a dim-wit fella with little moral scruples, trying to Do Right By His Family. OK. Then his plot arc across the latter half of the season goes against this, his weird success against the inter-planetary Russian mafia is inexplicable, and what the gently caress was his deal with the Free Mars Movement supposed to be? I could certainly buy that the "oh my gawrsh, I have literal blood on my hands" scene was the sole motivation for his actions through the season, at least that makes some kind of sense and shows planning from the writers!  Similarly I could buy that I just zoned out on some 10 minutes of exposition somewhere along the way that explains why Ilya went from giving Milosh the dirty eye after the Korean mob rebellion (another rant which I will skip) to being a happy co-conspirator in the Free Mars movement. I guess Ilya and Ed bonded over Ed threatening him? I dunno.- Nearly everything about the Free Mars Movement. Ed is more or less the only participant who has a coherent character arc leading up to this. He is an incredibly traumatized, pig-headed selfish son of a bitch who figuratively and near-literally burnt all his bridges to his past life on Earth, so of course Ed makes himself the main character of yet another season and stages a literal indentured servant rebellion when he gets professionally slighted. This makes perfect sense. This season we are introduced (as far as I can recall) to Big Love's childhood traumas, which is fairly flimsy but OK, Big Love wants to retire on Mars too, why do  Why did Milosh first allow himself to be subjected to various physical tortures with the Alphabet Soup Boys, only to buckle and then get pissed off about it afterwards? The latter part of that is relatable, I'd be upset too if some NKDV jackass punched my eardrum out, but why did Milosh cover for the rebellion in the first place? The billions Dev promised? If we accept that, OK, but why did he then manage to rabble-rouse the other folks into the end scene? To create the scene, sure, but as has been discussed in this thread over the season, the logistics of Happy Valley staging a rebellion are pretty non-sensical, and someone in that crew should've been skeptical enough to realize that. Hell, this was part of what made Ed's plot look silly, Pot Bear Grandpaw got some push-back from the folks initially since the Helios crew was there to make money, not a new homeland. But Ed pushed through by force of charisma. Nothing about the Free Mars movement makes a lick of sense if we stop to think about what is actually happening around the very emotional dramatic scenes. And speaking of, the heel turn of the NASA astronauts into a menacing police force searching the same cabins over and over again, and being lovely enough about it that the Alphabet Boys have to be called in anyway? Just  - Best Korea. Just everything about this. This episode in particular was hilarious because in the earlier season we established that Ed, Kuz and Dani had Adventures with one of the guys, and Ed even learnt Korean in the Korean War, underlining how loving old Ed is. Then the Adventures don't really play that big a part, and for some reason Milosh and Ilya con* the guy to move the plot along, but in this episode the Adventure Background is conveniently there again to move things forward. OK. Best Korea is spying on everyone, the bug the Free Mars Movement plants in Best Korea (with the NASA sticker still attached), all that international law talk which actually had a culmination point for a dramatic scene (which was pointless as discussed earlier), just... I mean there is no way to make any of this have even the tiniest lick of sense the Milosh and the Mob plot-line pretends to possess. (*turns out not really!) - The landing. If we take even a bit of the criticisms of this season aboard, the ending of the season was a big wet I mean yeah, Mars got a new moon and hey look, there's a new moon base even! Named after Kuz, remember him? Pepperidge Propulsion remembers. We got a free Mars, for motivations that largely didn't make much sense but OK, we got there, and as that one goon wrote a few days ago, the point of the story seems to be that Space Good, and every action ultimately works towards that, no matter how flimsy the human reasons presented moment-to-moment on screen are. I hope the race for the Jovian moons isn't quite as silly and ultimately revolving around nothing as this season was.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 17:46
|
|
|
Asteroid mining is super boring. This finale was the only really interesting episode of the season. Labor disputes, but in space, isn't really that compelling as an entire season. This would've been a two-episode arc on another sci-fi show.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 17:49
|
|
|
Rappaport posted:snip I'm going to snip and spoiler things because I don't want people to have to keep scrolling past walls of text. I think I agree with most of your points though. quote:Gun stuff The presence of the gun itself is... fine. I hope that the writers knew the obvious Chekhov's Gun comparison and were playing into it. My problem with it is that the story around it is just stupid. Dani had no reason to not only bury the gun, but leave a marker for it, last season. She either wants rid of it entirely and therefore should just bury it and nobody will ever find it again, or take it with her and store it on the base if she wants to have it for future use. There was next to no conflict left on that base at the time of the gun so what is she afraid of? Then the people finding it makes no sense, we know that the North Korean shuttle landing was nowhere near Happy Valley, Danny is (thankfully) gone, why is a random buggy just rolling by it and how can they spot the wrench sticking out the ground? The usage of the gun at the end is also just frustrating. It was clear in retrospect that the writers wanted Dani to be the focus, the leader of the base who found herself losing control and ultimately gets shot which makes everyone stop and come together. The problem is that if you sympathise with the Free Mars people (which the show seems to indicate we should), Dani is part of an oppressive regime who tries to put down strikes with force, routinely violates personal freedoms, and allows her thugs to torture the very people we're backing. Miles's realisation at the end is a "oh god what have I done" but we get nothing if that from the other side. Dani returns home a hero (apparently) suffering no consequences for the actions that have been leaked to the public. quote:Margo The more I think about it the more annoyed I am about Margo's direction this episode. She largely ended up where I thought she would all season, cut off by the Soviets and in an American prison cell. Half way through, however, I was hoping that she would instead escape to Brazil to form a new space agency (with hookers and blow!). I understand her pivot to Martian independence and freedom - her motivation throughout the show has been to further the goals of space exploration, regardless of the cost - but the actual act that ended her up in handcuffs makes no sense. She proposes a plan where she writes a code to overwrite the MacGuffin that is supposed to overwrite the MacGuffin that allows the Free Mars group to overcome the hitch in their plan. Fine whatever. Aleida says no, too many people are watching you that'll never work, I'll do it instead. Fine. Aleida proceeds to... write the code in front of the entire room while the clock is ticking and oh god isn't this tense! And then they send the code and it does what Margo wants and Free Mars happens. Margo takes the blame. Does nobody at all question how the gently caress Margo did this? She didn't touch a computer. Aleida was actively writing code. When is Margo supposed to have inserted the override? The writers wanted Margo to sacrifice herself to save Aleida but just never loving thought any of it through. If Margo is at trial for her code crimes (what the gently caress even is the crime there?) any lawyer worth their salt would just say "did anyone see this woman write the override? No? Okay good we can all go home."
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 18:21
|
|
|
I'm going to Complain About Physics When Massey is doing her spacewalk headed for the switch, she comments on how forceful the thrust of the ship is, that it's difficult to hold on. Good, fine, makes sense, establishes tension for the scene. Then when she yanks Palmer away and he flies backwards towards the engine plume, saved only by his tether, he is hanging by his tether at an angle instead of straight back opposite the direction of thrust. She throws him off at an angle, he should float that direction until he reaches the end of his tether, then he should get pulled directly behind the tether point. This could still be the same dramatic tension, where he almost ends up in the exhaust cone bust juuuust misses it before swinging further away to safety. Once again they break simple physics for tension & drama when the real physics offer the same dramatic opportunity.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 18:47
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:I'm going to Complain About Physics On the same complaint, wouldn't a spacewalker removing their hand from the ship immediately have the ship blast away from them? Since it's a burn, it's an acceleration and not constant velocity. Fake edit: Also, OSHA people are probably screaming that they are only using one tether. Why in god would you not have two, one that you keep in place while you attach the second one to, remove the first, and so forth.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 19:02
|
|
|
Yes, any second they are not holding on to or tethered to the ship, the ship will accelerate away from them. I think they were trying to show her just barely holding on with her foot at times. Also if you're headed out to do a sabotage spacewalk during a burn, maybe take two tethers for redundancy? In general they are way too cavalier about being untethered from ships in this show. Even as the scene started and she's making her way down there, commenting on how hard it is to hold on, I'm yelling to myself why aren't you moving your tether along with you this whole time??
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 19:12
|
|
|
Rochallor posted:The Chekov's gun was especially silly because the CIA guys also had guns when they were preparing to raid the NK module. You could have the exact same situation with some guys struggling over one of the space SMGs instead of devoting a cold open and several follow-up shots to the pistol. They went over the nature of those guns a few episodes back, they were made to be unpleasantly anti-personal, designed for safe use in space environments (so they won't breach windows like the AK-47s on the moon or bust up important components). Good reliability for what was a suicide pistol buried in freezing Martian sand for close to a decade, I must say.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 19:19
|
|
|
Wheeljack posted:They went over the nature of those guns a few episodes back, they were made to be unpleasantly anti-personal, designed for safe use in space environments (so they won't breach windows like the AK-47s on the moon or bust up important components). I thought for sure that the whole point of the pistol was to have them puncture a wall and have an environmental breach. Instead, they just breeched a lung.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 19:24
|
|
|
Rappaport posted:snip I think this gets at the core of the issues. The issue at the core isn't "understanding" the plot. It's that the plot is a bunch of just-so stories where the "just-so" is inconsistent throughout the season.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 19:52
|
|
|
Mister Bates posted:Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars trilogy is not perfect, but it is a pretty good portrayal of the problems of Mars colonization, and how truly long-term such a project would be even if it were possible. When the first 100 people are sent to Mars, one of them immediately starts talking about independence, and the idea is treated as flat-out impossible and the guy promoting it as a fringe weirdo. They don't even try for decades and decades, by which point there are millions of people on the planet, and the uprising is a one-sided massacre in which the colonial government just punctures the hab domes of all the rebellious cities and lets them asphyxiate..
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 20:28
|
|
|
TraderStav posted:I thought for sure that the whole point of the pistol was to have them puncture a wall and have an environmental breach. Yeah, this was another really bad anti-climax, I thought. The hidden pistol that's been in play since last season and we don't even get a sudden loss of atmosphere out of it? We barely got any space disaster at all out of this season! Even the giant explosion during the strike was wrapped up offscreen somehow. And just lol at all the poor souls in the thread who were like "they're gonna screw up and the asteroid is going to be on a collision course with earth" or "the asteroid is going to impact Kelly's crater and wipe out the life she discovered" or whatever. Nope, it's just gonna work out and the asteroid reaches orbit safely, you can have an improbable wrestling scene on top of the rocket I guess.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 20:43
|
|
|
Phenotype posted:Yeah, this was another really bad anti-climax, I thought. The hidden pistol that's been in play since last season and we don't even get a sudden loss of atmosphere out of it? We barely got any space disaster at all out of this season! Even the giant explosion during the strike was wrapped up offscreen somehow. And just lol at all the poor souls in the thread who were like "they're gonna screw up and the asteroid is going to be on a collision course with earth" or "the asteroid is going to impact Kelly's crater and wipe out the life she discovered" or whatever. Nope, it's just gonna work out and the asteroid reaches orbit safely, you can have an improbable wrestling scene on top of the rocket I guess. We did lose the panel that she removed
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 21:18
|
|
|
I liked the bit where the CIA spook got a wrench to the face.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 21:22
|
|
|
jackhunter64 posted:I liked the bit where the CIA spook got a wrench to the face. I also liked where the KGB guy got fuckin stomped.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 21:23
|
|
|
Yeah i'm not sure i'd call this episode a total dud as there were some great moments. And i was pulling for team asteroid pirates so im glad they ended up getting their way, with a hot assist from the top turnbuckle from the Margo/Aleida tag team champion squad. This show is a completely different genre than it was in s1, for sure, and it's a lot dumber, but i'm enjoying it just as much just in a different way.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 21:26
|
|
|
aBagorn posted:Yeah i'm not sure i'd call this episode a total dud as there were some great moments. And i was pulling for team asteroid pirates so im glad they ended up getting their way, with a hot assist from the top turnbuckle from the Margo/Aleida tag team champion squad. The term Asteroid Pirates makes them sound WAAAY more cooler than they actually are.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 21:45
|
|
|
I'd say the gun *did* actually come out of nowhere. Yeah it was introduced last season, and we were shown how it was buried etc., but then it never appeared again until, completely randomly, it just so happens to show up in the same episode where it was needed by the plot. Sure, it was shown in a flashback that it was actually discovered some time prior to the events in the episode, but I think that just underscores the bad writing. A better show would have had the gun being found earlier in the season, maybe even have it changing hands as a low-key background plot, until it finally ends up in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. That would've maybe even created some tension throughout the season!
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 21:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 07:13 |
|
|
joepinetree posted:I think this gets at the core of the issues. Even working backwards from wanting to end up at the final scene of the finale, the writing of the individual plot threads could've been much more compelling and consistent. That's the sad part, really. aBagorn posted:Yeah i'm not sure i'd call this episode a total dud as there were some great moments. And i was pulling for team asteroid pirates so im glad they ended up getting their way, with a hot assist from the top turnbuckle from the Margo/Aleida tag team champion squad. Outside Team Ballistic Buccaneers, who was left to root for? The Chrysler dude running NASA was a bumbling self-important buffoon, lady-Berija was lady-Berija, the Best Korean commander who got his was unpleasant. Margo and Aleida tagged in at the last minute, Alex was a part of Team Pirate because of course he was. The only antagonist to the pirates that was sympathetic was Dani, and her crowning moment was taking a stray bullet for Ed, because of course it was. If not trajectory-wise, at least shot-framing-wise  Team Black Sails also had Miles, and I still don't know whether I was supposed to like him or not, but I say Pot Bear Buccaneers get a pass regardless. If only their actions made any sense, too.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 22:20
|
|