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reality42
Reviews
Orphan Black: Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2013)
great until the last few moments of stupendous idiocy
Overall this series is great, and this episode was great. However: the last few moments contained something that was so incredibly idiotic that it spoiled that episode for me, and I almost gave up on the series. I did continue to watch, and fortunately although its played up as the big twist at the end of this episode and season: its mostly not really paid attention to in the next season and overall I could ignore it. I'm willing to suspend disbelief, and take for granted that writer's aren't always the most well informed on many topics and tune out their mistakes, but this was a bit much.
I watched this when it initially aired and just rewatched it in 2022: and discovered that even though the series gets better, this plot point was just so stupid I wanted to comment in case anyone else turned here to see if they were alone in their reaction.
In the real world: in Canada, the US, and other civilized countries: slavery was outlawed long ago and no one can own another human, as most adults with basic education and an IQ above room temperature grasp. Yet at the end of this episode they find a claim hidden in their DNA that its patented and act as if that seriously means that some entity owns them. That is incredibly absurd and I find it stunning that no one involved with this production grasped that. These characters portrayed as having normal intelligence were written as if they were so utterly uneducated or unintelligent enough to take that seriously.
Its odd that the people who created this could have been so indoctrinated with anti-corporate propaganda that they take this idea seriously: and yet this show was created by a corporation and these people are all involved in a business endeavor. Yet they apparently were somehow so blinded by anti-corporate dogma that it didn't register to them that people can't be owned.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Part 33 (2019)
Pathetically irrational cops...
I usually don't bother commenting on subpar episodes of shows, but this episode was pathetic enough to comment on. Given the facts as stated in the episode: the episode consists of pathetically irrational cops mindlessly supporting a confessed murderer who chose to kill her husband rather than peacefully leaving a bad marriage. Usually they at least make some effort to portray both side of an argument, but this time they took way too seriously the idea that women should be allowed to kill their husbands without ever bothering to find peaceful alternatives.
There was no claim there was ever any physical abuse, merely a bad marriage where he verbally insulted her and she chose not to leave, but to instead kill him. Using their logic, any woman should be able to get away with killing her husband just by claiming "but I had to!" with no evidence or logic to support it and she should be mindlessly believed and not punished.
There is no evidence she couldn't have merely left him, merely claimed fear of doing so with absolutely no evidence to indicate he would have caused any problems if she did so. There was a statement that none of their friends saw problems in the marriage, and she told no one, so basically they were taking her unsubstantiated word that her killing her husband was justified. Any woman could similarly make unsubstantiated claims, regardless of the truth. So if people actually reasoned the way these cops did, it would allow any woman to get away with killing their wife.
They had the woman claiming that she never told her husband that she didn't want sex. Yet she claims because she didn't want sex after they were married, that means she was raped ever since they married. The implication is that that somehow in the 6 years they were married he was supposed to have magically read her mind to know that she didn't want sex without her bothering to say so. For all we know if she'd bothered to say something, he'd have left her alone, and perhaps the marriage would have ended. The inability of a woman to act like an adult shouldn't give them license to kill someone instead since they find it easier to kill than to engage in an adult conversation and say "no".
The mere fact that the cop husband had a gun he didn't lock in a gun safe was supposed to magically make the case he was evil, even though many people concerned about self defense choose to not lock up their guns, especially those trained to use them. Its entirely possible in such a situation that the gun was merely for self defense and was never meant to be an implied threat against the wife.
Salvation (2017)
Season 2 jumped shark with new staff
The prior review discovered what I was curious about: the staff changed for Season 2 after an interesting season 1 and the show has gone downhill. All along there has been the usual need to suspend disbelief regarding errors in technical and legal topics, but its gotten worse when the characters that previously exhibited intelligence are now portrayed as doing obviously stupid things: like covering up what was an act of self defense as if it had been something wrong). Then they seem to be confused over the simple idea that if a president loses their powers by being mistakenly declared dead and the VP taking over, then obviously that power transfer wasn't constitutionally binding since it was done based on a mistake and is null and void. In reality, unlike at least someone on the writing staff apparently, the Supreme Court isn't comprised of complete idiots. (Admittedly there is the possibility some were coerced to avoid the obvious, but the show only suggests a staffer was and not the justices).
The City and the City (2018)
Idiotic idea, but interesting story
The story itself is somewhat interesting, but its hard to "suspend disbelief" when the implication is that the people in these cities are idiots. In the real world if there were what seems to look like 1 city to the outside, split into 2 cities in separate countries that share a border and don't wish open immigration, it would be be far cheaper and more convenient for citizens to build a wall. Its doubtful there is any credible scenario that could explain how the claimed situation evolved in the first place if you assume these are humans rather than aliens who don't share the same human nature we do. I watched this to see if some interesting twist would make their approach more credible, but it never arose.
btw, this comment doesn't indicate anything about politics in the real world. I favor as much open immigration as possible, and a wall dividing a dense city is vastly different than an extremely long one along a sparsely populated border between countries.