#so anything of value a potential season 2 would have is already nixed

[driftbending]

i keep writing and rewriting my reaction to vincenzo because there are a lot but also i'm not certain i articulate everything i hated about the ending.

i will say that i knew no matter what that i wouldn't like the ending because murdering a character as punishment for their misdeeds is not something that appeals to me. i grew up watching kirikou et la sorcière, avatar: the last airbender, lilo and stitch, and (more recently) moana. all of these are stories that say "here is an evil character that we'll stop in a way that doesn't involve jail/murder," and the only exception i make for this is light yagami's death in death note and that's because ryuk killed him as a way to end their relationship, not as a punishment for his crimes. (and gothic lit is exempt bc they have to be resolved with murder.) so, whatever happened, regardless of how much violence the babel four did, none of their deaths would have held any emotional satisfaction for me. yet i prepared myself to be unimpressed by the finale since this is what the set up has always been: vincenzo will kill hanseok, and maybe myunghee, seunghyeok, and hanseo.

i knew this from the beginning. the narrative repeated it so often i got annoyed. there were so many close calls with vincenzo pulling a gun on hanseok that that got boring. by the time ep. 20 rolled around i was just fed up and wanted someone to die because this show had already failed me so many other times with their set ups that i wanted at least one good payoff.

lo and behold, they did end up killing the four characters i thought would die. hanseo died, and though he was my favorite character, and though i felt sad he didn't get any funeral scene or help while he was fending off his brother and that his death served as a sacrifice for vincenzo instead of literally anything else, i didn't cry or even get mad about it. he died and i felt free to stop caring about the rest of the story. yay me! i do understand the fans who hated that he was killed and that he should've survived bc abuse victims don't deserve the storyline hanseo got, but this is not a show i expected to actually care about victims. despite what it says, i knew i wouldn't get this for hanseo waaaaay back in ep 8 when they brought up the victims of that gay banker and just used it as a way for us to root against the banker. they didn't treat those victims with any respect at all and so i was already prepared for them to do it all over again. and they did and it sucks, but again for me i couldn’t get as angry as i normally would about this bc i always knew that the deaths from this show would never mean anything to me bc there was just so much of it it became meaningless.

another thing i knew that was going to let me down about this show is that it didn’t have a single “good” character for me to root for. mr. hong existed, but he was murdered early on. every other character on the show is too corrupt to be the ones i would want handling a reconstruction project for a more ethical world. yes, they made hanseo go through a redemption arc, but they didn’t let him stay did they? they focused so much on deconstruction they never cared about reconstruction. so when they got to the ending where vincenzo just leaves, chayoung and the tenants are thrown into a familiar cycle of court cases and defending their plaza from it being redeveloped, vincenzo just goes on to be a mafia boss again, and the guillotine file is back in the hands of the corrupt intelligence agency that created it on the orders of their president. the only thing that changed was babel group was destroyed bc their two ceos were murdered and the lawyers of their legal rep. were also murdered.

and yet, despite my expectations being so low they were basically non-existent, i was still disappointed. they didn't let chayoung do anything (which i knew would happen because i knew something about her characterization never felt fully fledged to me the way it did to fandom, so i wasn't surprised when they delegated her as a damsel-in-distress/love interest.), they killed myunghee the way we used to burn witches (which how fitting for a female character that is cunning and cruel), and the way they killed hanseok literally made me feel faint and nauseous (i wish this was an exaggeration; the second i saw the drill pointed at him i started feeling this way and i couldn't listen/watch his death scene because it was so brutal).

so, the ending satisfied nothing for me. if people who shipped the main characters were satisfied, whatever. i was never interested in them as a ship (i tend to ship vincenzo and chayoung with other characters), so the ending was even more disappointing bc it really held nothing that mattered to me.

i was also not a person that liked the way each character idolized vincenzo because i preferred his relationships with other characters to be filled with more tension* and the narrative just told me that the writers didn't, that vincenzo's word was what mattered, that the other character's conflicting needs were meant to be eclipsed by vincenzo's needs. so when the characters were all looking into the horizon hoping that vincenzo would some day come back (for what, i ask you?) i was just like :|

(*what do i mean by tension? i mean my favorite version of chayoung/vincenzo was the early eps when she hated him for being liked so much by her father that her flaws as a daughter were highlighted more and chayoung's own hesitancy with murder bumping up against vincenzo’s lack of hesitancy. mr. cho/vincenzo were most interesting when mr. cho wanted the guillotine file to use for his own purposes. the tenants/vincenzo were the most interesting when the tenants wanted to take the gold and vincenzo was trying to stop them. even hanseo/vincenzo was the most interesting when they had the "will you kill me? will you betray me?" tension as they worked together to get rid of hanseok. these dynamics added layers to the characters and reminded us they had their own motivations that were as equally important as vincenzo’s, but not enough of these tensions lasted past a few episodes and almost always would vincenzo's needs prevail with most of the other characters going along with his plans in the end.)

and this is all without mentioning how fandom sort of ruined a lot of the show for me, too. they took the characteristics that made the myunghee/hanseok dynamic one of my favorites and gave it to chayoung/vincenzo to the point where i was always left baffled and feeling like i was watching a different show. (a good point about the end for me is that i feel vindicated watching the scene where chayoung was basically like "i don't like your methods, vincenzo, but i needed to use them as the lesser of two evils to destroy hanseok," bc it did sort of reinforce for me my own reading of chayoung which was that she doesn't mind being corrupt and blackmailing people or scaring them into compliance, but that she was not going to get her hands covered in blood or dance over the corpses of her enemy. those traits belong to myunghee who accepts her role as a villain in a way that is as cool and collected as vincenzo. and lord, imagine what a show it would've been if the writers had made the kings chayoung/hanseok, the last ones that should ever be taken, while the queens were vincenzo/myunghee who would be the ones that would make all the moves, kill all their enemies pieces, and try to destroy one another first as the two most powerful players in the game? imagine if fandom had been able to read chayoung and myunghee accurately enough that i wouldn’t have to read post after post talking about how they needed to see myunghee brutally murdered/tortured by chayoung because they would understand chayoung’s character isn’t going to do that, posts which i hated seeing bc, as i said before, violence for violence’s sake means nothing to me? imagine if the writers cared enough about chayoung/myunghee to develop them more fully? sigh.)

i feel like i'm going nowhere with this and that i'm repeating myself a lot or not making much sense. but i'll end with this: i knew the last two episodes were going to be garbage when they all gathered at toto's restaurant post-fight in ep 19 and all they were talking about was vincenzo this and vincenzo that instead of worrying after the ones that were momentarily kidnapped/injured. like thanks show, for instead of pushing the narrative along we get a vincenzo fan club meeting and another round of "i never had anything to fight for until you came along" which is a convo we've had plenty of times before.

(footnote: i edited this on may 6, 2021 for clarity.)

[junker-town]

Ex-Patriots quarterbacks won Week 3 of the NFL preseason

Jacoby Brisssett and Jimmy Garoppolo are back in the spotlight.

Jacoby Brissett and Jimmy Garoppolo are cleared for takeoff. Plus Daniel Jones, Snacks, and the other Josh Allen.

Week 2 of the NFL preseason brought us Lamar Jackson doing extremely Lamar Jackson things, a 74-yard punt, and one miserable Cardinals’ performance in what promises to be a string of them.

Week 3, the closest we’re going to get to anything resembling regular-season football until September, saw stars like Tom Brady, Matt Ryan, and Ben Roethlisberger light up the skies for multiple drives. It was the backdrop for Andrew Luck’s stunning retirement at age 29. It gave us an honest-to-goodness 100-yard receiving day from JJ Arcega-Whiteside.

It also gave us one game on an 80-yard field where no one was quite sure what the rules were.

REMINDER: this is a touchdown because the NFL can't figure out how to effectively convert a CFL field to American football specifications pic.twitter.com/53t2cdwY60

— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) August 23, 2019

So ... yeah. The league’s latest international expedition leaned harder toward last year’s canceled Mexico City game than any of the contests that graced the British Isles the past decade. It also painted a stout portrait of just how far separated from actual NFL football August still is.

But while Week 3 wasn’t the typical showcase it once was for starters, it still presented some major opportunities for eager young players to show out and older veterans to cement their place on the depth chart. So who wore the NFL’s preseason dress rehearsal the best?

Not considered: Patrick Chung, who turned a potential robbery at his own house into a felony charge for himself

The Patriots’ veteran safety was indicted last Thursday after police officers reportedly arrived at his home to investigate a tripped burglar alarm and found cocaine inside the residence. He now faces a felony charge for drug possession and pleaded not guilty Aug. 26 — 13 days before New England kicks off its regular season with a primetime game against the Steelers. His next hearing won’t take place until November, however.

While the charges will likely result in an NFL suspension of at least four games under the league’s personal conduct policy, the potential loss of a starting safety may not hurt the Patriots’ in their 2019 title defense. Chung is a valued veteran in the secondary, but he’s also begun to age his way out of the team’s future plans. At 32 years old, he’s already hit the annual restructuring/extending phase of his career. Retirement may have been on the horizon even without a drug charge. There’s a chance his legal situation isn’t sorted out until after the season, leaving Chung the opportunity to retire before the league can pass down any discipline for 2020.

If he does miss significant time, New England is ready. The Patriots managed to hold the Rams — 2018’s No. 2 scoring offense — to just three points in a Super Bowl that Chung missed 80 percent of thanks to a broken arm. The club has been prepping for 2019 without him due to that injury and can add some more assignments to Duron Harmon’s homework pile. Chung’s indictment also increases the odds Obi Melifonwu, a 2017 second-round pick once cast aside by Jon Gruden, sticks with the Patriots in an effort to turn his otherworldly athleticism into game-changing defense in the secondary.

Now, onto this week’s actual winners:

7. Matt Nichols, who is still the best quarterback to play in Winnipeg this year

Nichols’ CFL team, the Blue Bombers, played host to Thursday’s Packers-Raiders game — a game in which Aaron Rodgers was set to make his Green Bay debut under head coach Matt LaFleur’s offense. Instead, the two-time MVP was left roaming the sidelines thanks to concerns about Investors Group Field. CFL goalposts, located in the middle of a 20-yard end zone in a 110-yard field, are toward the back of what would have been a traditional NFL end zone. This left a gaping mouth hungry for snapped ACLs:

Officials responded by shortening the field to 80 yards, making the end zone the space between the 10-yard line and the original goal line. Kickoffs were nixed entirely. Touchbacks came out to what was actually the 15, but looked like the 25 if you stared at the field numbers.

The Packers decided to sit Rodgers (and the rest of their offensive starters) and started Tim Boyle in his place. The Raiders countered with Mike Glennon. This may have permanently damaged American-Canadian relations moving forward.

Nichols, meanwhile, has put up a 71.3 percent completion rate, 8.1 yards per pass, and a 15:5 TD:INT ratio in nine CFL games this summer. All hail the quarterback king of Winnipeg.

6. Trace McSorley, who is giving off Taysom Hill vibes right now

McSorley’s path to Penn State was carved by James Franklin, who was one of the few college coaches who saw the 6’0 dual-threat passer as an NCAA quarterback and not a safety. He outperformed expectations en route to 77 career touchdown passes and a Big Ten championship with the Nittany Lions. That track record enticed Baltimore to add him to a roster that already featured Lamar Jackson and Robert Griffin III in the QB room.

The preseason has been the runway for a Swiss Army knife of a player. On Thursday he showed he’s capable of making NFL-caliber throws, even if he can’t yet make them consistently.

Doesn't get much prettier than that, Trace. @McSorley_IX #BALvsPHI pic.twitter.com/nmpWIhTAdX

— NFL (@NFL) August 23, 2019

In the first half of Week 3, McSorley completed 16 of 24 passes for 203 yards and two touchdowns while adding another trip to the end zone on the ground. His overall preseason performance is still lacking — he’s completed only 57 percent of his passes and has thrown two interceptions against a run of second- and third-string defenses — but there’s reason to believe he can stick around. McSorley runs a 4.5-second 40 and was one of the combine’s top performers at his position. That athleticism will give him the chance to make an impact across the Baltimore playbook.

Though he might not be in position to back up Jackson in 2019, the careers of similarly athletic-but-inaccurate college quarterbacks like Hill and Joe Webb suggest he can carve out a place in the league. Maybe he won’t be behind center each time he takes the field, but McSorley’s make-it-work talent should earn him a spot on an active roster this fall.

5. Trevor Davis, who excels on an 80-yard field

The trip to the great-ish white north was a boon for the Packers’ fourth-year wideout, who may have cemented a spot on the roster with a big performance against the Raiders. Davis, typically used as a returner in his pro career, had four catches on five targets for 66 yards in the first half alone Thursday night. He caught a beautiful corner end zone route for a touchdown, which hilariously wound up coming down on the 5-yard line due to the league’s inability to correctly plan for the Canada of it all:

ah yes, the classic corner end zone jump ball at the 5 yard line pic.twitter.com/D7vBCj9RqL

— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) August 23, 2019

Davis also had a 17-yard punt return, showcasing the versatility that should make him a useful addition to LaFleur’s aerial attack in 2019. All six of his offensive touches for the night — five receptions, one carry — resulted in first downs.

4. Josh Allen. No, the other Josh Allen

Pass rusher Josh Allen. The one your football nerd friend derisively calls “the good Josh Allen.”

For the record, I’m not down with that nickname until we get a couple more looks at quarterback Josh Allen in Buffalo, but I understand the sentiment. Allen went from a two-star high school recruit to an absolute wrecking ball at the University of Kentucky. He represented a major bargain when he slid to the Jaguars at the seventh overall pick. On Thursday he showed he can be the next man up in Jacksonville’s dominant defense.

#WeAreUK Josh Allen was a force in the 1st half #LaFamilia #DUUUVAL #jags #JAXvsMIA #NFL100 #NFLPreseason #NFL pic.twitter.com/hnjrzEPX3B

— Arizona sports fan (@GlendaleCards) August 23, 2019

Allen effectively set up camp in the Dolphins’ backfield, disrupting seemingly every play he was on the field in a 22-7 loss. The rookie looks he can absolutely be a dominant force alongside Calais Campbell and Yannick Ngakoue in the Jags’ pass rush. Though he doesn’t have a sack yet this preseason, he’s got three QB hits and three tackles for loss in roughly four quarters of play — and he’ll be even better when Jacksonville unleashes the full force of its defense in the regular season.

3. The Lions, who made their best defensive lineman happy ...

... while retaining him at a relative discount. Damon Harrison was one of the league’s top interior linemen last season, but he wasn’t paid like one. The former Giant — liberated for the low cost of a conditional fifth-round pick! — made 81 tackles, including career highs in both sacks (3.5) and tackles for loss (nine). Despite that, he was set to make only $7 million.

That led to an offseason holdout. While the burly pocket disruptor made it to training camp, working out an extension was high on general manager Bob Quinn’s priority list. On Thursday, the two sides came to an agreement on a one-year extension that brings $12 million in new guarantees for the man they call “Snacks.”

For Detroit, the extension represents about $5 million in extra cash over the next two years. While that’s a significant increase, it’s still an underpay for a player of Harrison’s caliber. By bumping his 2019 salary up, Harrison jumps from the league’s 16th-best paid DT to a tie for 13th. A scheduled $11 million salary in 2020 won’t even push him into the top 10 at his position.

That’s a major win for head coach Matt Patricia. His second year in Detroit is predicated on rebuilding the kind of defense that made him a rising star in New England. Signing players like Trey Flowers, Justin Coleman, and Mike Daniels can help him get there. Keeping a veteran leader and run-stuffer like Harrison at a reasonable price is a major piece of the puzzle, too.

2. Daniel Jones, who is still making Dave Gettleman look smart

Another week, another rock-solid performance from the maligned Giants rookie. Jones went 9 for 11 with an uber-efficient 141 yards as New York improved to 3-0 this preseason. He’s completed 83.3 percent of his passes this August and has upped his yards-per-attempt average to 12.3 — light years better than the 6.4 career average he carried at Duke. His 140.1 passer rating is the highest in the league this preseason.

That’s all very impressive, but Newsday’s Tom Rock summed up Jones’ unlikely preseason rise with a single image:

The media swarms the Giants’ star quarterback while another nearby player puts his shoes on. pic.twitter.com/BavFoglHFY

— Tom Rock (@TomRock_Newsday) August 23, 2019

Yes, it’s still the preseason ... but the Giants might have been right about Jones this whole time. This could be a banner year for the Cold Takes Exposed Twitter account.

1. Former Patriots backup quarterbacks, who will get the chance to do the damn thing this season

Jimmy Garoppolo is back on the field after suffering a torn ACL last fall. Jacoby Brissett has once again been promoted from understudy to lead with Andrew Luck’s abrupt retirement. Suddenly the two players who made starts for New England during Tom Brady’s 2016 Deflategate suspension are primed for starring roles in the 2019 regular season.

For Brissett, this will be a chance to prove his first go-round as Luck’s replacement was not an accurate reflection of who he can be as a quarterback. In 2017, the second-year pro was thrown into the fire for an Indianapolis team that had few weapons. His first start came just 15 days after he was traded by the Patriots, and he took up residence in the pocket behind an offensive line that allowed him to be sacked a league-high 52 times.

The Colts are a significantly better team now, two years after Brissett went 4-11 as a starter. He’s got better blocking, a strong running game to help suck opposing safeties closer to the line of scrimmage, and an upgraded receiving corps that, for the first time in a long time, isn’t just “T.Y. Hilton and a bunch of fourth wideout types.” With unrestricted free agency looming, a big performance in ‘19 could lead to a massive raise in 2020.

Garoppolo already got paid, but he’s still got nearly as many questions to answer. He’s had the opportunity to realistically earn starts in three of his five seasons as a pro, but suffered injury in two of them. Now he’s back to lead a rebuilt 49ers team to glory — if he can stay healthy.

The Niners QB proved more seaworthy in his second preseason game than his first. His 2019 debut saw him post a pristine 0.0 passer rating while completing just 1 of 6 passes against the Broncos. That brought about varying stages of concern that were quickly swept aside by a 14-of-20, 188-yard, one-touchdown game against the Chiefs in Week 3. If his offensive line can keep him upright and healthy — and clear space for the league’s deepest and most versatile tailback rotation — he can build on the furious 2017 finish that earned him a $137.5 million contract.

Also, Danny Etling led the Falcons in rushing this week. Pretty good!

2019 will be the year the Patriots learn whether they got a good deal for trading away their Tom Brady insurance policies. Of course, that will all be a moot point if the six-time Super Bowl winner continues to play at an MVP level until the heat death of the universe.