The season starts with the supposed rescue team arriving on the island but the extra members beyond the soldiers are not quite what everyone expected. Later in the season, you see a press conference where everyone has to lie.
Episodes That I Liked
The three biggest episodes of the season for me were Eggtown (E04) with a huge twist at the end, Ji Yeon (E07) dealing with Sun’s pregnancy drama, and There’s No Place Like Home Pt 3 (E14) when the island undergoes some magic. Another seven episodes were pretty great dealing with a potential rescue (E02, E03, E12, and E13) and visits from the past.
Episodes That Were Watchable
There were four episodes that I rated merely 3/5, mostly dealing with Ben’s world or Jack and John (E01, 05, 06, and 10).
Episodes That I Didn’t Like
Actually, I liked all the EPs of the season.
List of Episodes from Season 4
S04E01
The Beginning of the End
Nobody likes it when Daddy and Daddy fight
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S04E02
Confirmed Dead
Rescuing Oceanic 815 survivors is not their primary mission
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S04E03
The Economist
Load up one helicopter
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S04E04
Eggtown
Interesting but ho hum episode until the last two words
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
S04E05
The Constant
Everyone needs a constant to keep them grounded in time
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S04E06
The Other Woman
Ah, that explains Ben’s obsession with Juliet
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S04E07
Ji Yeon
Sun’s pregnancy is not without drama
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
S04E08
Meet Kevin Johnson
Hey, Mike, what have you been up to?
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S04E09
The Shape of Things to Come
I’m pretty sure the goons aren’t bluffing about his daughter
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S04E10
Something Nice Back Home
The future is much brighter without an appendix
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S04E11
Cabin Fever
Guys? Cabin! But I don’t think that’s the secondary protocol
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S04E12
There’s No Place Like Home Pt 1
Press conferences can be tricky when you have to lie
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S04E13
There’s No Place Like Home Pt 2
One raft, with a bit of waiting
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S04E14
There’s No Place Like Home Pt 3
Okay, keep your eyes on the island… one, two, three, abracadabra
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
The Bottom Line
A solid season, despite a bit too much internal angst in places.
Over the last few years, I have been increasingly active in a few active fora online. In particular, multiple ones related to amateur astronomy and a couple related to WordPress. My participation is generally two-fold — I both learn from others and help newbies with their questions. I’ve also been active in the past in groups related to my son’s health issues, although those are often more sharing of experiences than directly helping anyone.
One thing that I am particularly good at is framing information in a way that a newbie can understand it, orient themselves to the topic, and then proceed with a rudimentary schema for processing various types of other information coming their way.
Yet what I am often struck by, and amazed at, is the completely useless advice provided by well-meaning people in the fora. I don’t mean that the information is wrong, although that happens too. I mean people who ask a question, and then when someone responds, the response is of the form “Do x.”
At first blush, that sounds helpful, doesn’t it? They asked what they should do, and somebody answered. Except they didn’t ask any questions to understand the context for the question. They didn’t say to the newbie, “Wait, what are you trying to do first? What are you looking for?”.
In astronomy circles, there is a very common opening salvo by newbies. “Hi, I’m new to the group but I’ve always been interested in astronomy. I have read a bunch of stuff online, but I’m just more confused. I want to buy a scope, and I don’t know which ones are good for newbies. Please advise.”
And invariably, within about 3 replies, someone says, “Buy a Dobsonian” and someone else says “buy binoculars”. Is that wrong advice? Maybe not.
But it’s about the equivalent of someone asking what tool to use to take apart a workbench, and someone saying a saw, another saying a screwdriver, and another saying a hammer. Are they wrong? Not really. But until we know the context of how that workbench was initially assembled, what it’s made of, and what the person intends to do with the materials afterwards, the answers are at best incomplete. As a result, they’re useless.
For astronomy, for example, telling someone to buy a Dobsonian design is about the same as telling someone to buy a sedan when looking for a car. It’s an all-round good choice, good value, a solid utility vehicle. On the other hand, if the person was looking to haul equipment around their farm, not the best of choices. Yet people will tell someone to buy a Dob without ever asking a single question about what the person is looking for, are they comfortable learning to navigate the sky manually, are they looking to get into astrophotography at some point, etc. Equally, binos are a frequent “all-round” suggestion EXCEPT it assumes that the person is able to stand still (i.e., no wobbles, no physical mobility issues) and their eyes work well in conjunction with each other and don’t have any aggressive astigmatisms or wear bifocals. If either of those is not true — i.e. for kids who can’t hold heavy binos still or seniors with different eyesight profiles — then binos might be a terrible suggestion. They are also less useful for certain types of objects (moon, planets) which are quite often VERY popular starter targets. In addition, they require manual navigation of the sky too, which might not be what the person prefers.
In WordPress, people frequently say “Get Elementor” which is a page designer. It is advertised as easy to learn, easy to use, and there is common wisdom out there to regularly say “it’s free and has lots of power”. I have been using WP for close to 10 years, and when I tried Elementor? I found it completely confusing. Plus it mucked with a bunch of my existing setup. It was an overly complicated and terrible design for a newbie who doesn’t even know what WP does or a theme is for, let alone plugins, but the common advice is to start with full page design to start?
I don’t know what it is, whether it is group think, or the dangers of underestimating stupidity in large groups, but frequently I will see people chiming in and leading the person down roads they are likely to follow, get confused, get frustrated, and end their trip before it even begins.
Equally in astronomy, there are certain types of setups that are better for astrophotography than others. While you can do visual and AP with them, they’re often not as versatile or as simple for visual. Different tools for different projects, so to speak. Yet there are people who say “Buy this equatorial mount” which is good for AP more than visual and is priced at 5x the budget the person said they had, or add this gadget, buy this upgrade, get this accessory. It is very popular for some people to randomly suggest upgrades to gear when it is someone else’s money.
Most days it’s merely puzzling. Some days it’s maddening. I’ve sometimes come to a discussion late, 40 people have already taken the person down ten different rabbitholes, I ask two simple Qs, and it turns out NONE of what the guy already went through applies to his situation. But nobody asked what the problem was, they just started throwing out generic solutions.
I feel at times it’s like the old issue of someone typing “FIRST!” when commenting on a post. Stupid and pointless. But then I feel more angry later…because in a couple of cases, the answers were SO wrong, that the person felt like they had NO choice but to give up the hobby. Because they had a budget for astronomy, for example, of $200, and some moron told them they needed to spend at least $1500 or it wasn’t even worth it to get started.
I confess that more and more, this kind of misleading “advice” just pisses me off. The person has no way of knowing the advisor is well-meaning but stupid. I’ve seen it with people trying to understand French training, HR prep for exams and interviews, or writing fiction too.
Maybe I’m cranky, but I feel like if you don’t have something actually useful to contribute, then don’t bother saying anything at all. 🙂 Others are more of the “you get what you pay for” variety. Either way, I am starting to believe in the “superficiality of the crowd” more than in their wisdom.
I didn’t know much about Firefly Lane until I saw that it had premiered. When I looked it up, and saw that it was a buddy premise, I thought, “Sure, why not give it a try?”. And with two women instead of two men, I really wanted to like it.
Katherine Heigl plays the co-lead, Tully, and for a lot of people that would be a giant plus. They loved her in Grey’s Anatomy or State of Affairs. Me? I remember her from Under Siege 2 and I thought she was decent enough there, but well, she was in the background. I didn’t watch GA and I gave SoA only one episode before bailing. I find almost all of her characters come across as almost superficial, particularly when she’s trying to be deep for a moment. I don’t “get” her, and I don’t want to I suppose.
Sarah Chalke is the other co-lead, Kate, and I didn’t watch her in Cougar Town with Courtney Cox or on Scrubs. I do remember her as Stella from How I Met Your Mother and vaguely as Becky from Roseanne. And she’s decent enough, just the character is rather bland. Yet I don’t mean just in comparison to Tully, I mean bland all the way around.
But you know the real problem? I kept seeing the two of them with all the flashbacks, and I thought, “Who cares what happened?” Because “modern day” Kate and Tully are a mess. There’s no giant success for the two of them to want me to know the origin story for them. I saw them meet, I’m pretty much done. I don’t care what happened in between and I don’t care what happens in present-day. Not to mention that relatively speaking, they seem like the same characters then and now. They started as wild child and home-body, so not much of a growth arc to present-day.
Kate’s daughter seems interesting, albeit a cliché teenager. But I don’t care enough about her to watch either.
I also can’t help feeling that someone watched Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in Grace and Frankie and said, “Give me that. But make them 40 instead of over-60.”
It’s Netflix, so the business model is different than normal. I’d normally say “cancellation” without reservation but it is getting buzz. Lots of women are interested to watch in the same demographic. And maybe the other 9 EPs are worth the buzz. But I’m going to pass. And I still think it should be cancelled.
I am an idiot, apparently. I thought I knew the history of Arsène Lupin. He is, after all, a famous character in France literature.
Now, in my light defence, I have read Edgar Allan Poe’s short-story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, which is considered by many to be the first modern detective story. The main character in the story? C. Auguste Dupin. Not Arsène Lupin. Oops.
So when I saw that Netflix had a new series starting called Lupin, and it had some reference to the stories, I was expecting him to be a detective. Nope, Arsène Lupin is a gentleman burglar, a master of misdirection and disguise. He can be anybody. Anyone. Any time.
In the opening, you meet a young man who is in debt to a loan shark. He’s working as a janitor at the Louvre. His ex-wife thinks he’s broke. What nobody knows? He’s Arsène Lupin.
A spoiler alert though is needed here. Because I can’t review the story without reviewing his disguise. It’s true he has an ex-wife, a son, and owes money to a loan shark. It’s even true he’s working as a janitor. But it’s all a con so he can get the loan shark to rob the Louvre. He has the perfect plan. It just doesn’t happen to be the plan he told the loan shark and his crew. They double-cross him, but he had already double-crossed them. He steals the necklace, and walks out the loading dock door with it. One young detective is on to him, but is it enough?
The larger spoiler is that the necklace has a history. The main character, who is not really Arsène Lupin but actually Assane Diop, knew the wealthy family that used to own it, as his father was their chauffeur. When the necklace went missing, the father was arrested and charged, and overcome with shame, he apparently killed himself in his jail cell rather than let his son see him in prison. So the theft is apparent revenge for his father’s death.
I loved the show and I loved the main actor, Omar Sy (Jurassic World). He played at least 3 different characters, so to speak, in the show, shifting from one to the other with ease. He was a bit off with his performance as a tech billionaire, a little too casual and cavalier about the necklace being stolen, but otherwise excellent. I can’t wait to see where the show goes.
Netflix’s business model is different than most, but I’m still going to predict renewal. Despite the dubbing, I think people will show up to watch it.
My blog is often my creative outlet, a way of making sense of the world. Taking an issue, wrestling with the details, framing it a certain way, putting a personal stamp on it. It is also stress relief. I talk through some of the things that are bothering me, a monologue with myself that I share publicly. Sometimes they provoke reactions, likes on FB or a comment or two. Many times they don’t. While I would love to have thousands of people hanging on my every written word, I write most of the time for me. A diary of sorts. Maybe a legacy that my son will some day read, wondering, “What did Dad think about that?”.
Yet because I write for me, sometimes as potentially the only one who will read the post, I also cannot hide in sophistry or metaphor. I believe strongly in as much transparency in relationships as they can handle, sometimes more than is comfortable, and that transparency has to apply to my relationship with myself. But even though it is sometimes hard, I know that my writing is good for me. An outlet of release.
Which is why I am posting something when I really don’t feel like posting or doing anything. I want to curl up in a ball and shut out the world. If it wasn’t for COVID, I’d probably want to go somewhere for a week, turn off my phone, and just shut down. To simply “be”, find my centre, and let my body and mind recharge. A form of CTRL-ALT-DELETE for my internal software and external hardware.
Except life doesn’t work like that, of course. You can’t run away from problems, and if they’re mental noise, they end up going anywhere you go too. I’ve often wondered if I’d be better off having an interest in alcohol occasionally. Something to just overwhelm the brain and shut it off for awhile. I tend to mute it through distraction instead, binge-watching something or a project. But I’m having trouble filtering the noise right now.
A good portion of it is COVID, of course. I feel like I want to go to a mall and just walk around. No shopping, no interactions with anyone, just go and walk around. Do something somewhat normal. I won’t, we are still a high-risk household, after all.
Some of it is the winter. I do tend to get squirrelly in February, although I’m barely noticing other than having to clear snow off the car. I barely even know it is winter or anything outside of the pod.
But my issues with my leg are getting to me. I can wrap my head around the compression socks, maybe not well, maybe not right away, but it’s noise. I did my fitting today for some custom socks, yay, and it’s not a big deal in the long run. Same shit, different day. Whatever.
I was able to wrap my head around the trips to wound care, constant wrapping, the extra hassles with showering, etc. Mostly because I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. My leg was improving, the wound was healing, the compression was helping.
And then last week blew that to hell in a handbasket.
My wound started to get angry and red again, I had multiple appointments by phone with my doctor to go back on the antibiotic horse pills for another 14d. I also had multiple “rush” appointments with the wound care people after I had to rip the compression off on Saturday and again today because the wound was starting to hurt like the Dickens. I think the bandage is somehow slipping under the compression over time, and it is “pulling” at the wound. My nurse thinks it is because I’m not keeping my legs elevated during the day, which while working at a desk for 8h isn’t a great combo.
So where does that leave me? Basically with a wound that is almost back to square one and the likelihood that my next stop is going to be an ER sometime. Who the f*** knows what they’ll actually do for me if I go, since I’m already receiving wound care and antibiotics. I suppose IV antibiotics is a possibility.
Yet when I look at that list, you know what I see?
Whining.
It’s not that serious in the end. There are people out there with real serious health problems and I’m not talking about simply COVID. I’m talking about chronic pain conditions. Things they deal with and live with, and I can’t help but wonder.
If I’m this much of a basket case with a simple leg wound, what will I be like when I get to a point with REAL problems to live with?
That is what is frying my mental bacon. The weakness, the face of the future, my comfort and ability to handle mental stress and emotional turmoil but which seems to fail me completely when dealing with physical discomfort.
With a slightly serious segue, it is made me think about the MAID legislation that is going through. Medical Assistance In Dying. And it makes me wonder. Is that me in the future? Am I going to be THAT guy? The one who is in some discomfort, isn’t dying anytime soon, is relatively mentally competent (or at least as I ever was) but simply cannot endure the day to day that is misery?
I already live in fear of mental decline. For someone who has always lived in his mind, has always used his mind to separate himself apart from others in school or work, who defines himself by his mind, the thought of that mind not being “there” to continue to define myself is relatively terrifying. If my fear of snakes was put in comparison with fear of dementia, snakes would be about a 2 compared to a 12 for dementia. Even while knowing that ironically, I won’t know if it does decline.
Anyway.
On the other hand, I’m not in distress, I’m not in crisis. It’s a setback, I’ll bounce back. I’ll write, I’ll do Lego, I’ll do some stuff on my website design. But first I’m going to take a mental health day on Wednesday, as I didn’t feel like I’d really accomplish anything at work anyway.
Oh, and I’ll take out the garbage and recycling. I’ve already cleared snow twice today (Tuesday) so I’m hoping I won’t need to do that on Wednesday too, if I can help it. More coming on Thursday. Yay.
At least I was outside for awhile, right?
In the meantime, I blog late at night, throwing my words out into the abyss. A week ago I reached 1500 posts, and I didn’t even notice. I probably need to celebrate that milestone somehow, just not sure what it is yet.
