We just absolutely need to put a stop to using CGI likenesses of actors who are dead or mentally unwell. ngl, seeing Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher in Rogue One amazed me at the time, but fuck off with exploiting Bruce Willis’s likeness like some kind of ghoulish sockpuppet while he’s suffering from advanced dementia or whatever. You should need to get informed consent to use a CGI likeness of an actor unless it’s a re-enactment of a historical figure or whatever I get that there are grey areas here.
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(Industry) Yeah I don’t get it either.
As it stands, Adler basically said “you sucked for the last four quarters so I’m sending you upstairs to an RM role.” This is basically Eric being like actually how about you put me in charge of everyone and call the team something different? There was discussion that Eric made some kind of secret arrangement with Blum but the show hasn’t really done a good job of hinting at that and if its true it should just be an explicit reveal.”
Also I dont get the thing with Daria and Blum, was she lying in saying they already had a relationship with him?”
The discussions between Bloom and Eric go back to earlier in the season. They were talking to each other at the hunting trip and they both declined to talk to Harper about it when asked.
The ending could be bad writing, or it could be as simple as Eric and Jesse talked and Jesse accepted an offer from Eric to put his trades through Pierpoint through Eric. After that, Harper’s (always tenuous) value to Eric’s team is zero. Eric pushes her out with the application stuff so she can’t fight back. He can’t push her out with the insider trading stuff because that blows back on Jesse, his new favorite client.
Daria wasn’t lying. Jesse was making trades with Goldman all season, it was part of the plot and previously discussed.
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What is Eric’s value to Jesse though and why would Jesse manipulate Harper like that? I feel like just leaving the possibility that all this is going on in the deep background via easter eggs is not good story telling since we are missing info about the characters motovations. It’s not like anyone is being super attentive and following that arc, it’s just plot twisty for the sake of surprise.
I did somehow miss that the “yankees” references were meant to mean that Daria works at Goldman, for some reason I thought it was another fictitious bank.
Re: Eric’s value to Jesse - the entire point of Jesse’s character (indeed the central “theme” of the show if we’re going to give them that much credit) is that unfettered capitalism reduces human interactions into their most shallow, transactional deals. Jesse’s character is the epitome of this, every person he interacts with is simply a counterparty to him. And after the “trade” is done, there is no relationship anymore. People that live like this will burn bridges constantly. Eric’s value to Jesse at the end of the season is that Jesse’s “relationship” with Harper is over, so he needs someone else to transact with.
You make a good point that this is perhaps shallow character development. But in a way this is what gives the show a little bit of heft behind the soap opera stuff. Capitalism has rewarded these people handsomely - they are kids that make orders of magnitude more money than other 20-somethings, but what have they really won in the capitalist game? They are drug addicts, sex addicts, workaholics, their relationships are horrible empty sexual transactions, with no empathy, no compassion, no loyalty. Their lives have no purpose beyond winning the next trade.
Obviously this is not a “great” show in the stratosphere of a Succession, but it’s not totally vapid either. Certainly a ton of disbelief has to be suspended, but I think the show has a point to some extent. I read it as simply an exaggerated soap opera version of real banking. That means that the plot twists come too fast and furious to always make sense but I can live with that.
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Industry
Eric goes to Adler and says “Harper doesn’t have Bloom, she’s worthless. But she’s got you by the balls over this tolerance-of-sexual-assault situation. I have an ace in the hole to get rid of her, but in exchange you put me back on the floor.”
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yea I do it in small doses but I like the flashbacks to his teens and childhood, explains a lot of where his pathology came from without making him overly sympathetic - he had a troubled home life but wasnt really subjected to the severe abuse that lots of serial killers were at a young age
I’m ep 3-ish
Just watched the newest HotD.
I didn’t have a problem with seeing stuff in the dark scenes, guess my TV settings are too bright. Pretty good episode, now we’re starting to get into the meat of the story I think.
Industry
. Okay I see how Eric can blackmail himself into keeping his job, but not convinced that coincidentally discovering after 3 years of working there that Harper’s diploma is faked and firing her for cause the day after she makes a sexual assault cover up allegation is a good plan for the company
That’s true, especially given the stone-cold lock of the year that Eric, if not the whole firm, has known since Day 1.
I would just like to say that I am sorry I suck at both watching tv and spoiler tags
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I fixed them for you. If you have paragraph breaks in the spoiler, the tags have to go on their own lines with the spoiled text between them
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Finally watched BCS S6E1. It’s been so long have no idea WTF is going on.
Also, the pacing remains so slow that it seems impossible everything gets tied up by the end of the season. The series still feels miles away from a conclusion at this point.
I am muy jealous
Watched the first 2 ep’s of Interview with the Vampire. Seems like it’s going to be the second time I’ve been pleasantly surprised by an adaptation of that book. The changes work well, too. (Not a spoiler since you find out in the first 2 minutes, but blurring anyway) I really like the framing of it as a second interview after the reporter has become old and jaded.
jennifer coolidge is officially the star of the show. it’s got 5 bags written all over it
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Really enjoying “Little Demon”
Surprisingly good reflection on issues like parenting and body dysmorphia
Rings of Power
I’m leaning strongly towards Halbrand being Sauron, right now, because they resolved something about the timeline that bothered me. My first real suspicions came when he wanted to know if Adar, who said he killed Sauron, recognized him. If I were writing the show, that’s the direction I would go in.
book spoilers
In the books, a disguised Sauron forges the One Ring the fights a great war against the elves and dwarves before Numenor sends a great host that causes him to surrender and be brought to Numenor. After the downfall of Numenor, he is unable to take on a fair form. So, he has to get to the elves before he loses the ability to appear as something different.
The elven smiths are tricked into forging the rings of power out of the belief that the rings will allow them to slow the decay of the mortal world. It seems obvious that the show explanation will be that the rings can slow down whatever is harming the elves, allowing them to stay in Middle-Earth.
The question for me was how Halbrand was going to go from the Southlands to Lindon in a way that made sense. The show just provided the explanation that Galadriel needs to take him there because he has wounds that can only be healed by elf medicine. Maybe those wounds are faked. So he goes to Lindon, gets the lesser rings made, goes back to Mordor to forge the One Ring, and eventual faces a massive army from Numenor.
With one more episode to come, a reveal that a recovering Halbrand is Sauron seems like an appropriate place to end the season. I don’t think it would be good to drag out the question of where Sauron is for multiple seasons. You have to give viewers the answer to at least one big question to avoid pissing off your audience.
The show is rumored to have five seasons. I would end the next four seasons on Sauron forging the One Ring, the capture of Sauron, the destruction of Numenor, and the Siege of Barad-Dur ending the War of the Last Alliance.
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Five seasons? Yeesh, I like the Rings show, but they could tighten up the storytelling a wee bit.
If you want to hear some mega-nerd discussion of the Rings show, Ringheads is worth a listen.