sleepingatthetwilight

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Nobody follows this blog but if you do, you can find me on dreamwidth and twitter and ao3 as this site continues its slow descent into unusability.

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I assumed all the episodes have already been written before filming begins. So, the rest of the season is still unwritten? How does the writing process work on Riverdale?

Oh no! We don’t have time to write them all ahead of time. It takes almost as much time to write the episodes as it does to shoot them, which is to say: almost a year. We start writing several months before we start shooting, which is several months before we start airing, but the conveyor belt of deadlines for a network TV show is intense. We have to keep writing episodes in LA so that Vancouver production can shoot what we write in time for post production to edit it, color it, compose music for it, and sound mix it. Then Marketing makes promos to for it, and the legal team makes sure everything in it clears and is ok to show on TV. There are probably a lot of other people involved that I’m not super aware of who need to see it to do their jobs before finally, it airs on TV.

As an example of a timeline: Episode 306 just aired. 307 is probably done because it airs next week. I would imagine 308 is done, too, or at least close to it. 309-312 are in various stages of post-production. 312 is still filming for one more day, but the editor starts editing as soon as the dailies begin coming in from set. 313 started filming yesterday. 314 is being prepped (meaning all the departments are preparing the locations and cast and props and costumes and equipment etc. we’ll need for it) The writers are writing 315. Beyond that, we have an outline in place for the season, so we know where we’re headed for 316-322, but it’s not written in stone and there’s a lot to figure out still.

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What if during the finale Eleanor had been like “THIS is the bad place” and Michael just stared at her completely baffled just like “shit Eleanor I know everything’s not going great but I’m doing my best???”

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Okay, I’m getting security on the phone right now. You sure you want to do that? Because I can go on live TV right now and say that your boss ordered a kill on my client.

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I’m so pleased that I decided to finally watch The Good Place and went in unspoiled on the major plot points because I just finished Season 1, and it was amazing.

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How are you gonna do an 80s episode and nobody has crimped hair. Cowards.

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I'm finally caught up on Younger!

Wow. What a great show. I am so glad I let myself be talked into watching it. Will have more to say later when time allows.

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How to get away with murder”It was the worst day of my life”

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HTGAWM 5.05

I have to say I just love the way this show is structured. The flash-forwards revealing the coming disaster small pieces at a time, and putting those together week by week, is one of the most fun parts of the show for me.

And I enjoy when the show employs this kind of nonlinear episode as well--giving us a mini-flash-forward to the end of the episode, giving us a deliberate misdirect before revealing the outcome. It’s fun sorting out the timeline, separating misdirects from clues. If there is one thing this show is great at, it’s building and maintaining tension, and even when the situations are outrageous, I enjoy them.

Other thoughts!

Connor continues to fall apart. Really, he’s been crumbling since the end of season 3. I will not be at all surprised if his facial injuries in the flash forward turn out to be from him straight up picking a fight with someone.

I’ve been all over the map on how much I like Bonnie as a person but I’ve always liked her as a character. I especially like her this season. I love that in the midst of what is obviously a resurgence of her trauma, she is able to get up and go seek answers from Nate. She deserves that much and it’s good to see her exercising agency even when she’s in a very bad place.

I was really blinking about Michaela and Asher, going, Did they get back together offscreen?? until we found out what they were really up to. Like I said, I kind of enjoy the misdirection, especially since I don’t always catch them.

Do Frank and Ron... know each other? 

And then... that flash-forward. Oh, Asher. You are making great decisions, I see.

Theory-wise, I’m still holding fast to Gabriel being Laurel’s half-brother. I think he is deliberately trying to get close to her, but not for romantic reasons, and I think any appearance of teasing that ship is a misdirect.

Based on what we have seen in the flash-forwards so far, I think Oliver will be revealed alive just before the midseason finale. Most likely candidates for the blood in the snow, based on Annalise’s devastation, I would say are Tegan or Nate. I suspect we are going to see continued relationship development between Annalise and Tegan leading up to the midseason.

But I see another possibility--that the person in the snow isn’t dead at all, just suffering from a serious bloody nose--and that it’s Connor. Based on Connor’s consistently poor mental state lately, I can imagine him saying or doing something to provoke someone, maybe even Bonnie, to take a swing at him at his own wedding. Especially if that something was being irresponsible with Christopher. If she’d gotten angry enough to punch Connor in the face, Bonnie might not want to make things worse by telling Laurel and Michaela what had happened. But that’s just one possibility. I always like to consider ways in which things might not be as they seem.

Until next week!

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I am officially Interested enough in The Good Place to have saviored it for spoilers until I have a chance to watch it.

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Stranger Things Meme → (2/8) scenes

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This Week on Riverdale

Betty and Jughead have sex on what should be an active crime scene.

Archie spends three weeks in solitary confinement.

Veronica opens a “speakeasy” that serves Shirley Temples.

And offers valet parking, despite being under a diner and totally a secret.

Nobody knows how to pronounce “bonne.”

The Juvie warden runs a fighting ring.

The Ghoulies run a protection racket. 

The Riverdale PD has apparently been completely corrupted in the less than a year since Keller stepped down as Sheriff.

Alice can't get enough Serpent.

Ethel disses Betty and kisses Jughead.

The Farm is literally just called “The Farm” like it’s not short for “Evernever Farms” or something that would make sense, it’s just called “The Farm.”

Jingle Jangle returns.

Everyone in Riverdale works for Hiram Lodge except for eight scrappy teenagers.

Ethel lights hundreds of candles in a poorly-ventilated underground bunker.

Jughead decides that taking a 50/50 shot at drinking lethal poison in a bunker in the woods, not only risking death but giving Ethel and her overlord ample time to dispose of his body and cover up his disappearance, is a better shot than just grabbing the manual from Ethel and making a break for it.

We got to see the very talented Skeet Ulrich do his damnedest to deliver lines like “That game... is pure evil!” without sounding completely goofy.

Josie delivers a ravishing rendition of “Anything Goes” (I’m not snarking on this one, I did genuinely enjoy her performance).

Archie’s going to fucking Shawshank his way out of juvie.

Riverdale, why are you like this.

I don’t even know what can be said about this show anymore. There were multiple points during this episode when I burst out into shrieking laughter at what I think were supposed to be dramatic moments, though at this point I’m honestly not sure Riverdale hasn’t been a comedy all along just waiting for us to realize it.

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Oliver Hampton being adorable in 5.04

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You didn’t drag your ass down here to be wallpaper. Get out of your head and in your body.

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“This is not my decision. It’s all you. You’re allowed to feel nothing. All right? Forget all of this and just… just… be where you are. Or we… we can find him. All right? I’ll be here either way. Whatever you want, I’m here. Okay? I’m here.”

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That’s exactly what bugged me about the juvie subplot. It’s so silly. I’m not saying juvenile detention is a picnic but like, if the Serpents make a habit of stabbing Ghoulies in the yard to prove themselves, none of them would still be in juvie. They’d be in prison. They put people in solitary confinement for that shit.

Like okay, shuttling aside all of the weird gargoyle king and farm shit WHICH ARE OBVIOUSLY CONNECTED and ALSO IF THEY ARE CONNECTED AND IF THEY’RE ALSO CONNECTED TO SOME SECRET BETWEEN EVERY MAJOR CHARACTER’S PARENTS WHEN THEY WERE KIDS THEN HOW DOES ALICE NOT SEE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE FARM AND … just nevermind, honestly, just shuttle alllll of that aside.

None of the stuff in the juvie storyline makes any sense whatsoever. A highschooler cannot start up a chapter of the innocence project just because her mom the mayor says so. They all get to … keep … their own shoes?!?! They believe a fake ID for someone who is obviously on their to-watch list in a very bad wig and costume?!?! The warden has, what, a secret fight club - do they - do they fight kids from other juvie’s??? They have a riot squad come and beat up a buncha (mostly WHITE) kids for absolutely no reason?? Also - wouldn’t Archie being a fairly old teenager who supposedly committed a pretty violent murder be put in a regular prison? That happens most of the time, yea? Come to think of it, wouldn’t most of the gangbangers in there have been sent to regular prison if their crimes were violent? Like, there are a stupid lot of teenagers in prison these days which I am 100% against, but like, that’s reality. 

And I get that musical numbers are supposed to be heightened reality and not be realistic, but that was … that was so … I can’t even begin to take it apart. But also somehow Veronica had time to go run and talk to her dad but make it back just in time to finish her part of the song? 

Plus, those boys would have stayed at that fence through the whole dance number and not run off to play their game lmao. 

Also I just - you know what. No. I’m done. I can’t anymore. Why DO I watch this show??? 

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Gabriel Maddox: My Theory

There’s no reason to assume Frank’s investigation has anything to do with Nate’s, and therefore we shouldn’t assume Gabriel is Bonnie’s son. We shouldn’t assume he is Annalise’s either, though both of these are the clear misdirects the show is giving us--meaning we should probably look elsewhere.

Who has Gabriel himself shown the most interest in? At first glance, it appears to be Annalise. He gets into her class through sheer confidence and skill, and he makes a point of telling her that he came to Middleton because of her. 

But Gabriel has also taken a particular interest in Laurel. He makes a point of telling her he grew up in a single parent home to gain her sympathies. He asks about her mother’s mental illness, and raises it as another point of commonality between them. Laurel assumes that what he knows about her comes from eavesdropping on her not-very-subtle conversations with her friends. But what if it’s more than that?

The season opens with Laurel receiving a surprise gift in the mail from her mother, who has been in the wind since the end of last season. This is there to remind us that while we may not be seeing Sandrine directly, she is very much still in play.

The only person suspicious of Gabriel is Frank. Because Frank has worked for Annalise, our first assumption is that Frank’s suspicions relate to Annalise, or if not her, Bonnie. But who does Frank care about more than anyone in the world?

Laurel.

Who is Frank really worried about Gabriel hurting? Laurel.

And if Frank was quietly investigating the disappearance of Laurel’s mother, he might have learned some things about her in the process. Such as another child, by another father.

Gabriel is Sandrine’s son. Gabriel is Laurel’s half-brother.

The question remaining is who Frank’s been talking to on the phone.