Reviews

Season 2 starts with the Shultz family's pastor, fellow Christian John Pilgrim, on contract to kill a young girl, Amy Bendix. Pilgrim Progressed from a white supremacist Nazi with assassin training, to pastoral care, a family man, back to being an assassin. The name Pilgrim probably comes from the Christian book Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. To add to how contrived this season is, Frank just happens to be in the right place at the right time.

Due to trauma, Billy Russo is confused, doesn't know why his "friend" Frank is trying to kill him. Amy spent a short time borrowing the laptop at a computer store to figure out what Billy did to Frank. The news clips explain it all. Billy is depicted as tortured, desperately wanting to understand his past yet he, nor his psychologist or anyone can be bothered to spend 2 mins on Google, as Amy did, to look at the same news clips to figure it out. Poor Billy. Lame!

To make things worse, the writers go out of their way to depict the powerful and corrupt Schultz family as typical American Christians in surreal scenes as they talk at a pulpit after the pastor preached about miraculous healing depicting parishioners as "low IQ" and desperate as possible. To drive home the point, Amy mentions how the alt-right web sites support Schutz family's ambitions, tying Christianity ( again) to Nazi white-supremacists as if they are natural allies. Oh! must you bring the American polarizing culture war to an already bad start you propagandizing self-righteous know-it-alls!?

2 out of respect for the first season.

It feels like the writers didn't have time to proofread the screenplay. On many occasions I rolled my eyes at the holes.

** Deep Spoiler alert ** For example, Grace had already mentioned project Atlas to Harris. He calmly told her: "Don't say that word to anybody, ever." But when the Russian ambassador tells her Atlas is the reason for Russia were closing down all communication with the US government, Grace doesn't privately tell Harris the Russians know about Atlas, which would've been useful. And again, at a major meeting where they're discussing that Russia opened their nuclear missile silo's to be ready to fire when required. Grace's is shown undecided and torn but mute.

She already told Harris she knows about Atlas and she stepped on people's toes before but not about this?! Why the complete brain fart on the writers part not informing then US government that Russia is aware of Atlas?

Another example: Dr. Croft and Liam are pointing guns at each other, each ready to fire. Liam doesn't want to shoot his former professor but Croft is intent his current course of action. Croft moves his gun indicating he is in the process of pulling the trigger but then, Liam reacts, shoots Croft, but strangely, out of Crofts gun no bullet comes out. Did he have his safety on? No. It is quite obvious the writers never wrote action scene involving firearms or they have no idea how firearms work nor did they get ever educated about such scenes. Croft should have been able to shoot twice since he took first initiative pulling the trigger which is usually a hair trigger in such handguns. In conclusion, I often got the sense, the writers took more time developing the interrelationships and love interests surrounding the events than the actual substance of the character's responses to the events as professionals. In other words, a female perspective dominates the show making it more like a soap-opera or "chick flick" albeit a well conceived one to keep males nominally interested, though hollering insults at the screen during tense moments. I'm killing time watching this on Netflix during meals. I would never have purchased this show. Because of poor writing, especially screenplay, it felt low-budget from the beginning. I hope the writers read this comment and learn to write for next time.

With interviews and public documents, Ben Stein makes the case that scientists are consistently persecuted for giving Intelligent Design (ID) theory credibility. This problem is endemic in the USA.

Observers in other countries express astonishment, on record. Ironically, they have more scientific freedom of expression outside the U.S. Ideas are debated openly where it matters, at work and in academia.

Other commentators speak of falsehoods. See the proof online at a scientist's site www.richardsternberg.org , see link called Smithsonian controversy Personally, when I attempted to organize a debate in college, a professor responded with: "Let sleeping dogs lie. I would cause confusion". I found no faculty member willing to debate the ID proponent. I dare not say I shared ID views.

Links between Darwinism and eugenics, leading to the Nazi "final solution", are explored. I had previously found such evidence as well. No surprise there, but the video contains great footage of people explaining the reasoning behind the eugenics program, on site, in Germany.

ID is explained but not systematically, if you want to know more about it without getting bored, see the debate "Meyer v Ward" on Youtube, awesome! Meyer was interviewed on the DVD. Start at 8:00 min mark on part 1 to skip announcements and rules.