#or 2. grif tries to convince the others not to turn Locus in by making a powerpoint + one of the slides was supposed to be him smiling

[harbingersecho]

"... we'll photoshop it."

[callie-the-snarky-geek-blog]

RvB16 Episode 9 Review: Walk and Talk

(Old Blog Repost)

Sorry that this is going up later than normal guys. Had to clean all day and I can barely feel any part of my body. But like Hell am I NOT talking about this episode cause… gosh I need to talk about this episode. So I’m not even going to bother with an intro, lets just get right into it!

Overview

Carolina and Wash have arrived at… I guess some studio. Yeah, Dylan sent them to Jax so I guess they’re in Vancouver since Jax mentioned having a soundstage there. Also turns out Private George is still around and he escorts them to Jax, who is causing the producer Kohan (which may be a reference to Koen Wooten, RT’s 3D producer) to have a nervous breakdown. Jax proceeds to give the Freelancers a look around the soundstage which is a replica of the Blues and Reds underwater base. Speaking of which, whatever happened to that base? We never saw it blow up or anything, so is it under UNSC investigation and Jax can’t use it because of that?

The tour eventually leads to Jax showing the Freelancers�� the room where they got armor locked. Yeah, because showing people where they got tortured is a great idea. Wash however doesn’t quite recall it. We do find out that he’s aware that parts of his memory are fuzzy, at least the memories involving Season 15. But he starts to recall the armor lock and Locus rescuing him and Carolina, so he thinks that this could be good for his memory! Haha, sure buddy… yeah I get the feeling that something’s gonna go wrong eventually.

Anyways, I guess Dylan told Jax that the Freelancers were coming, but not why as he asks why they’re there. Carolina explains about needing to find the Reds and Blues… and as it turns out Sarg and Simmons are still with Jax! In fact, Sarge is in the room! Yeah it looks like Jax decided to throw Sarge a bone and let him be a walk-on by playing one of the frozen Freelancers. Which seeing Sarge in a different armor is… weird, but at least it’s still red! Carolina thinks that this means that everything about time travel was wrong and she can be relieved, but haha nope! Sarge confirms that Simmons currently has the time gun and they did indeed go through time! But they weren’t lost guys! They only had to ask for directions once or twice! Just to make that clear!

Speaking of lost in time, we cut back to Grif who is currently heading for England along with Huggins, who is just singing to herself. Grif gets annoyed and tries to make a new rule for her to not do that, making Huggins gripe that he acts like Atlus. Essentially realizing that he can’t keep up his own ‘no talking’ taboo, he asks if Atlus was who attacked them in Episode 2. Silly, she told you her name… though I guess watching the innocent pizza shop get blown up would make him forget. That was Kalirama, who we learn is Atlus’ wife and is scary. I cans ee that union working out great! Huggins then reminds Grif that he didn’t want to know about the God stuff, which he clarifies that he doesn’t…

And cut to that night where he’s asking about what the Gods are. Yep, I knew he wouldn’t last. Huggins says they’re God-Gods, which Grif pretty much represents most people I’ve seen and calls it bullshit. While Huggins can’t speak for humans, she explains that her own kind were given religion, language, etc when the Cosmic Powers came to be and assumes that it worked that they likely did the same for humanity. Something that Grif doesn’t buy whatsoever, saying that he made him. I guess that means Grif at some point decided that the reason why we’re here isn’t due to some kind of cosmic coincidence. Well he has had 16 seasons to think about it. Anyways, Hugigns tries to argue this which causes her to go into a Southern accent. This actually makes Grif laugh, although he does try to cover it up.

So yeah, we get more Grif and Huggins bonding and I’ll go more in depth over their interactions in the review portion, but I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT! So we get some talk about stuff like Die Hard and destiny (who is someone Hugigns actually knows) before the two finally make it to the English Channel. Grif claims he can’t swim and I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not, but apparently his armor can… let him just walk across the bottom of the sea. Ugh… is that a thing in actual Halo? Also I’m pretty sure that he’d still have to swim to the bottom to walk across it, so yeah he was 100% being sarcastic and probably just didn’t want to put in the effort of swimming for it. Anyways as they continue on, Huggins tries to get Grif to have an epiphany on the whole ‘complain about adventure every time it happens’ thing by convincing him that it’s better to focus on resolving it as fast as possible. Aka, actually work to resolve his problems instead of using pre-emptive laziness and whining over it. Grif doesn’t seem to like that idea… but he’s having a bit of a gas problem so…  we’ll see if he takes the advice when out of the water.

Back in present day, Sarge and Jax have taken Carolina and Wash to Simmons, who shows them the time gun. Carolina is very skeptical about this, but Simmons remembers that he proved it before. What do I mean? Well he opens up a portal and it shows past!Simmons from a few weeks ago. Yeah, current!Simmons knew that he talked to his past self because… well he met his future self in the past. Past!Simmons is with past!Sarge in Troy where they are trying to recruit Achilles for their makeshift Red Army. Currently past!Sarge is trying to poses as Zeus, which goes about as well as you’d expect. Current!Sarge explains that ultimately the recruitment failed, so he just stabbed Achilles in the foot. Advice Past!Sarge takes, does so, and the portal closes. So we can blame Sarge for Achilles dying? GDI SARGE!

So to say that Wash and Carolina have a hard time accepting this would be putting it lightly. But Jax certainly believes their case! So yeah the John he hired was John Wayne, his new AD is George Washington, and Alexander the Great… yeah he’s died since Episode 5. RIP. Turns out his immune system couldn’t handle the modern common cold. So this leads us to why Carolina and Wash are there, Dylan said that Jax was an expert on the subject. Simmons tries to warn them against going into it since if you recall, last we saw Simmons he called bullshit to it all since it went beyond science. I guess he decided to avoid religion though. However Jax explains that while regular science may not be able to explain it, science fiction can.

So there have been a lot of questions about how time travel works in this series, so Jax explains paradoxes to us. In most films that deal with this kind of topic, we normally get one of three different forms of a paradox. Those forms are:

A Closed Loop: In this paradox, everything that one does is essentially pre-determined. For example, when Sarge went to Broken Ridge and caused his men’s deaths that he time traveled to prevent. Or when in the past, Tucker shooting Flowers and cockblocking himself. These are examples of events that they’ve seen/remembered in the past, but it was caused by their future selves so it is the most logical theory. There is a downside though, but we will go into that later.

Multiverse/Alternate Reality: In this paradox, any change you make does change things. But what it actually does is create a different universe. So your timeline still exists, but you also created a new one. Jax deems that this theory means that you are essentially ignoring the paradox to being with, so he deems this one unlikely.

Flexible Timeline: This is when you make a change in time that affects your existence or something else important that can change time. But instead of everything changing, there is a buffer period that gives you time to fix everything. The problem however is that there is no explication for how this buffer period exists, so Jax also deems it unlikely.

Therefore, we are left with a closed loop. As I said, everything you do is what you were meant to do and history plays out as it is meant to. But as Jax explains, this comes with some free will issues. You see, since everything that is meant to happen happens, it means that you can’t actually control it. Lets use Church’s efforts in Season 3 as an example. Yeah I know it’s not 100% clear if he DID time travel, but it’s the best we got. Church tried to prevent things, like Flowers dying or getting himself killed by Sheila. But his efforts ultimately led to those things happening. He caused Flowers to have an aspirin overdose and die and his efforts with Sheila caused him to get blown up to begin with. Despite Church having tried to stop those things, he instead caused them. He had no free will over his efforts as they were already pre-determined. Kind of like if it was pre-ordained by the Gods. HMM…

Since most everyone is very skeptical about this, Jax decides to run a test. He asks Sarge to decide whether he’s going to use the time gun to appear inside a closet int he meeting room when the meeting is over. Of course Sarge says he will, which he’s not supposed to do but moving on! So lets just say that Sarge decides not to use the gun when the meeting ends to appear in the closet. They are going to open the door right now. If they open it and find future!Sarge behind it, it means that free will doesn’t exist as it goes against what Sarge has intended. If the closet is empty, it’s because Sarge didn’t go back as he himself decided and therefore free will is fine. I… probably am understanding this wrong, so take that explanation with a grain of salt.

Now the question is, who is going to open the door. Everyone opts out except Simmons, who decides fuck with it and to go for it. He hesitates at first, but eventually he opens it. And what do they find behind it? Why none other than Caoose and Lopez of course! FINALLY!!!

Review

DEAR GOD WHERE DO I BEGIN?!

Okay since time travel stuff is going to give me a headache, lets do Grif and Huggins first. And as I said above, I LOVE IT! So first we do get a little exposition from these scenes. For example, Huggins explaining that the Gods to her kind are God-Gods, but Grif believing that they’re alien somethings isn’t exactly said to be wrong. It’s not much, but it does help leave open to what the Cosmic Powers really are and we can assume that Huggins’ species of light beings are probably aliens that look like… well, lens flares. Going off Huggins dialogue despite being a rookie on the field, she’s been around beings like Atlus for awhile and even has family members. So likely Huggins’ kind are just devout followers of the Cosmic Powers who work for them on tasks like spying and being messengers, but aren’t God-like themselves.

These scenes were just… so frekain’ good. Like you can tell that at first, Grif is trying to not warm up to Huggins or get into any of the Gods stuff as he said he wouldn’t. But as last season demonstrated, he really can’t handle having no kind of one-on-one intention and starts to warm up to the little lens flare. He even tries to sell to her that Die Hard was his life story (side note: seriously Geoff, what was that voice when quoting the one line? WHAT WAS THAT VOICE YOU DORK?!) cause Grif is a dork. It was sweet of Huggins to go along with it and find it funny until getting excited and quoting lines herself. Like it was funny and cute and I freakin’ LOVED it. Like when Grif starts to laugh at Huggins’ southern accent before trying to stop himself was just… OMG Grif you softie.

It was also nice to have Grif let out about how he feels about the frequent getting dragged into adventures stuff. We all know that he’s stick of it and he’s gone into it before, like to Dylan last season and to a lesser degree Simmons when explaining his plan of pre-emptive laziness. But he’s never actually had someone try to work with him to get him through it, like Huggins did here. Like Huggins is just so positive but insightful and seems like the kind of positive reinforcement that Grif currently needs. And her advice isn’t wrong either. Shit happens and trying to avoid it or complain about it isn’t going to make it go away. You have to work through it, no matter how much you don’t want to. That’s life: frustrating but ultimately you take what it throws at you. It seems that this is the lesson that Grif is going to have to learn, and maybe now he’ll start to. I mean him taking the trek to England on foot and so far taking it incredibly well with no complaints so far is a good sign.

Alright, back to the present day stuff. So we do see that Wash on some level knows that he has memory issues. If I were to guess, he knows that his memory of the Blues and Reds stuff is fuzzy, but not everything else. He pretty much thinks that it’s not as big of an issue than it really is and that he’s closer to being better than he is. Speaking from experience here, that’s pretty normal honestly. Still, eh does seem to be doing okay and takes the time travel stuff exactly as I expected him to: complete and utterly exasperated like Carolina is. It was also nice to see Jax, Sarge, and Simmons be relived that he’s okay, even if he got annoyed with them asking about if his neck was okay. Past!Simmons being outright ecstatic to see him up and okay made me smile.

So this is the first time in four episodes that we’ve seen Sarge and Simmons again. They seem to be doing well. Sarge got a walk-on role that he seems satisfied with and while Simmons has still given up on trying to figure out how time travel works, he doesn’t seem to find science bullshit anymore. Heck, eh seems a lot more relaxed in this episode. Of course, going back to the whole ‘corruption’ thing, I don’t know if they’re still at risk or not since by now they’ve been back in the present for a few weeks. And then Caboose and Lopez are FINALLY back after six straight episodes of being missing, but who knows that the Hell they’ve been up to… but I’m calling it now, they’re why pizza doesn’t exist. I am calling it right now because it would explain why we haven’t seen them this long! But yeah Caboose seems normal, but we’ll have to wait and see.

So now lets talk time travel. Dear God… so it’s good that Joe seemed to realize that people were going to be confused and decided to explain paradoxes. I figured that it was the closed loop type, but I know a lot were confused. But now we have the question of free will in play. As I hinted u above, trying to figure this out is going to give me a headache. Plus even if not this season, we’ll likely go down the ‘you don’t pre-detemrine our fates, we do!’ type thing later n this arc. Which I’m fine with, it just always hurts to think about is all. Still yeah, we finally talk about the time travel stuff and it really helped give some distinction on what we’re dealing with exactly. But going of the whole ‘pre-ordienced by God’ part… I think that Chrovous planned on this. Remember the move it goes on, the more the chains weaken and he gets free as the others become shisno.

So we are now going into Episode 10, aka the Big Twist Episode. Maybe Joe will go against that, but still… so one of two things are likely gonna happen. We’re either going to stick with present day, find out what Caboose and Lopez have been up to, and it ends with some kind of major shake-up happening. Or we’re going to sick to the Sixth Century, Grif and Huggins make it to England, and shit breaks loose. Or even a combo of the two. Either way, if Joe sticks to the ‘Episode 10 = Big Twist’ trend, then next week is going to be insane. And with how this one went, it is very possible for something to happen. So now, we wait.

Final Thoughts

This season continues to be great. We got a lot of humor, some good exposition, Grif and Huggins bonding was fantastic, and FINALLY everyone is back in the plot. Something tells me that things are going to be kicking into overdrive soon, and I cannot be both more excited and more terrified for what awaits us. But this episode was absolutely great and the more light-hearted feel was very much needed after last week. Very much enjoyed it!

[callie-the-snarky-geek-blog]

RvB16 Episode 2 Review: Incendiary Incidents

(Old Blog Repost)

Last time, not a lot happened other than going out for food, Donut unlocking his true potential as a contortionist, and alien Norse Gods are a thing that exist. Nothing that unusual for this show. We got the setup, so what’ll they do with it now as the pizza quest continues? Lets find out!

Overview

To the shock of no one, Grif crashed the ship. He rushes everyone through the insults and sidenote to Kai’s… so does she actually have regular contact with their mom? Makes me really wonder about where Grif stands with his family. Anyways, good news is the pizza place isn’t far off! They just have to go through some ominous woods! Grif however opts to go through the less than ominous woods which would take longer, but isn’t… well, ominous. This gets Simmons attention. Enough that, as they make their way through, he pulls Grif aside to find out what his deal is. My shipping heart is happy to see Simmons noticing that something’s not right with his not-boyfriend and getting to the bottom of it… please tell me I didn’t accidentally write an innuendo,

So you knwo that ‘new science’ Grif mentioned last episode? Well here’s that new science: laziness… sort of! So when stuck on the moon (I THINK he called it Iris? So… after Michael and Lindsay’s daughter/Geoff’s goddaughter? AWW!), Grif found a book that Jax left behind about story structure. He found out about ‘incendiary incidents’, which are incidents that jumpstart a plot essentially I tried to look it up to see if that’s an actual term… and all I got was a bunch of fire safety websites. But I’ll take Joe’s word for it and say it’s an actual term. So Grif cutting off Jensen before, crashing the ship deliberately as it turns out due to a message from Locus, and avoiding the ominous woods is to avoid getting into an incident that would jumpstart a plot, and therefore lead them into another adventure. IDK if this is clever fourth wall breaking but… wow. WOW. Even Simmons gets chocked up about how much effort Grif put into doing nothing. It’s counterproductive when you think about it, but still!

Unfortunately for Grif, he IS in a webshow with plot structure and the powers to be aren’t going to let them get out of it that easy. Caboose discovered a glowing lake. And a figure emerges form it. Now the episode summary describes a thought to be deceased team member returning. Oh my Gd, that… that’s crazy! It could anyone! But why?! Tex? Flowers? Shelia? Church? Alpha Church? Yellow Church?! The guy who got killed during one of those 360 videos?! The possibilities are endless! It could be anyone! Who knows what kind of shocking twist it cou.. it’s Donut. Who we all knew was alive. Yeah… well I’ll give them this, it had me hyped for the episode.

So Donut… Jesus Christ. No, seriously, Donut is now Jesus. He walked ont he water for crying out loud! Donut says that he had been taken through time and that they have to go into the past to stop a great danger… and absolutely no one buys it. Now to be fair, Simmons makes a good point later. They already went through a time travel story and it turns out it was just a simulation. So them being skeptical about this happening again, especially since only Caboose saw the body horror last episode and I imagine that he forgot by now, is pretty understandable. But yeah no one buys it and Grif feels relieved about avoiding the story bomb… until Simmons points out that refusing the call is an actual story trope. See Grif? There’s no escaping!

So the Reds and Blues make it to ton and… yeah, it’s been totaled. After talking to Jeremy Dooley… I-I mean a cop… no, I’m 90% sure that was Jeremy. Anyways! After that, Donut tries to convince them of time travel again, and this time has actual proof. He has this new gun which he uses to open a portal to a few days earlier. How did he get this? Well to put it simply, after he got hit by Loco’s machine he got sent back in time and his body got wrecked, but God found him and fixed him. IDK if he means the Christian God or one of these alien Gods, but they’ve picked the Reds and Blues to be his time traveling warriors and has sent back four more guns for them to use to go back in time with. The portals can also only fit two grown humans at once.

Unfortunately, things go downhill quickly. So you guys remember the four armed guy from the trailer? Well the sky goes dark and he appears… oh sorry, typed that wrong. I mean that SHE appears. Yes everyone, we have a legit female villain at last!! I couldn’t get her name, but part of it sounded like Callie… which is my name… UGH… anyways! Yeah, she starts causing chaos and destruction. Donut uses a bubble shield, telling the others to use the portal guns and get away. They comply with everyone pairing off: Cabbose and Lopez, Tucker and Sister, Grif and Doc, and Sarge and Simmons. Donut remains behind, though I assume that he’ll follow them later. Huggins, who has been following the group, chases after Grif and Doc by going through their portal. We follow Sarge and Simmons as they land in… what looks like ancient Egypt. Could be wrong, but we’ll have to wait and find out cause that’s the end of the episode!

Review

Well all of that escalated quickly!

So… gonna talk about Grif first! Cause yes, he’s getting a character arc! I mean I guess it could have ended here since his plan failed, but since Huggins went after him and Doc we could get something on that front. Anyways, so I was right and Grif is actively trying to keep them out of getting into adventures. To the point that he’s putting effort into maintaining laziness… that’s the kind of logic I expect form this show. It wasn’t how I expected it, but I expected it. It’s also good to see that he does still have some hangups from the moon. He seems a lot more… what’s the word? High-strung than normal? He’s also still talking in pretty large bursts compared to normal. I don’t know if that’s just me reading into it too much, but it seems like Joe is trying to show that Grif still has hangups from his self-exile. Which hey, if it means more Grif focus, I am not complaining!

The episode is more about plot than the last one. Last week was the setup, and now the payoff is here. So first, Donut. He was written SO WELL. One of the issues last season was that Donut was pretty much a background prop and they even forgot to put him in scenes. Joe must have realized that this was a problem cause he’s already fixing it BIG TIME. Donut’s had shit happen man! He comes off as slightly mroe serious and competent in a sense that he actually knows the gravity of the situation. But he still feels and acts like Donut, which is good! It shows that he CAN be useful and competent, but without sacrificing his personality. Heck he only spouted out one innuendo and it was just to prove that it was really him. I am digging this new direction!

So turns out that the four armed guy si a terrifying alien goddess of death… I dig it! So someone pointed out that this character is similar to Hela from Thor: Ragnarok. SO it REALLY seems like Joe is basing the villain off Norse mythology… or just the Marvel Cinematic Universe verisons of them. Either way is fine. So I’m not sure if… Kali-Ra I think is her name? Anyways it doesn’t seem like she’s with the same group as Huggins cause I imagine that she would have reacted. I also don’t think that this chick is the main villain since DOnut referred to a ‘devil man’, but still she is terrifying and badass and I LOVE it. We finally got a female main villain guys! Joe is the hero we’ve waited for! Yay! Also Sarge asking he rot marry him, Of course he’d want to marry a violent death goddess… I’ll totes ship this!

Alright, time travel! SO ever since Joe mentioned it in that post a while ago, I’ve… been skeptical. Time travel in pretty much every show tends to be confusing and create tons of plot holes. It even happened in RvB before with Season 3 before Burnie retconned it as a simulation. Didn’t save my head from imploding, but still that’s a fair excuse. Hopefully Joe has a VERY good idea on what he’s doing with this, but I’ve been warming up to the idea since then. It’ll be fun to see the guys in different time periods at least! Form how it looks, Sarge and Simmons may go tomb raiding it it really is Ancient Egypt. I mean Sarge vs mummies, there is no way that cannot be epic!

So the gang is being split up, and the pairs are interesting! Sarge and Simmons sin’t that much of a surprise and tbf it’s been a long time since they had some one-on-one time. Simmons has also grown out of being a kissass quite a bit, so it’ll be interesting to see how that goes. Caboose and Lopez are together… so I’ just going to assume that in every animated RT production, Burnie is just meant to be stuck with/get annoyed with Joel in one way or another. Cause that is the impression I’m getting. Tucker and Sister are together, so I imagine flirting… okay I’m good with that! Hopefully Sister gets some focus to herself that isn’t just Tucker trying to hit on her, but still I’m good with this!

And finally Grif and Doc… that one is gonna be interesting. Grif in particular seems very grudgey against Doc for the betrayal and we just saw Doc save Grif form getting crushed by tackling him into the portal. Which props to Doc for that BTW. Still with that and since they’re 100 on an adventure now, Grif’s not gonna be a happy camper. Also if O’Malley gets active and starts going into Grif’s past issues like in S13, I… imagine that’ll be rough for our favorite orange boy. Also Huggins chased after them, so I assume that they’ll be discovering her soon. Which if she pals up with them…t hat could be really cute tbh! I am all for Grif and Doc shenanigans with a a ball of light! But yeah, this could lead to a LOT of things and I’m very interested in seeing how this plays out.

Final Thoughts

It was great! Admittedly this is a lot mroe bizarre than RvB has been in a while but it’s also RvB where Grif still being alive after getting hit by a tank and having Simmons organs thrown into him improperly isn’t ever questioned. Alien Norse Gods? Ia m all for it! Donut being Jesus? Awesome! More setup for Grf having a character arc? HELL YEAH MAN. It was a well done episode, progressing the plot without wasting any time, gives us a glimpse at how dangerous our villains our, gives us a badass female villain, and sets up everything for the episodes ot come. There’s definitely a feeling of epicness compared to last time, so it looks lie Joe is taking the armature gloves off and giving us one Hell of a story. I am very excited to see where it leads!