#that he could write the shitty fucking bug retcon. we could have had it all (hal raising helen in a mainline gl comic) but NOOOOOOOOO

[rillette]

Sometimes I think the Guardians are so full of shit because how dare they try to fit people into specific emotional categories. Then I realise that we do it all the time bc we call so and so person "sad" or "angry" or "happy" "all the time" and suddenly I lessen the Shit Grade of the Guardians.

Currently it's at a 9.5/10.

As much as I love to shit on the guardians, that's not actually how the various lantern corps works! Keep in mind that I haven't read the War of Light and Blackest Night events, so all my knowledge of the other corps comes from wikias.

The Guardians of the Universe harnessed the power of the green light that fuels the central battery on Oa. They have the power to give out Green Lantern rings, but only green lantern rings. They aren't responsible for any of the other lantern corps. Green Lanterns are chosen because they have the ability to overcome great fear. They're also supposed to be honest.

As for the other lantern corps, the Indigo Tribe members in particular aren't chosen because they have great compassion, they're chosen because they lack it. They're a group of villains forced to constantly feel the emotions of every living thing in the universe in attempt to "rehabilitate" them. (The Guardians have nothing to do with this.) As much as i love to hate on Geoff for sucking shit, this does in fact go hard. And the Sinestro Corps members are chosen because they have the ability to inspire great fear in others.

So yeah! The Guardians suck for a wide and ever growing variety of reasons but this reason in particular is not one of them i hate to say it. i would still put them at a solid 10/10 on the shit scale tho

[lassieposting]

Hi i havent read the books post-resurrection so im kinda lost on why you dont like phase 2 val? She was easily one of my favourite characters ever, she was flawed (and the books took time to acknowledge them) and relatable and still really admirable (intelligent, brave, loyal) and i really liked her and really appreciated that she wasn’t perfect unlike every other young adult heroines. What went wrong😢😢😢😢

Okay I'm gonna put this under a cut because I very strongly dislike phase 2 val and I know it bugs people who don't feel the same, so. Dead dove dont eat

Okay so first off, phase 1 val and phase 2 val are completely different people. literally. phase 1 val was based on an ex-friend of lardo's who used to apparently be involved pretty heavily in like, editing the books and "she'd react like this" or "val wouldn't say that", and that val she was one of my favourite fictional characters from when book one came out to the release of resurrection. phase 2 val is based on his whiny little girlfriend who likes to start shit with 14yos on twitter, and you can absolutely tell she is no longer the same person. so the long story short of "what went wrong" is "the original irl val's friendship with dirty laundry ended for whatever reason and he decided to retcon her entire personality to suit his gf"

Phase 2 Val, in my opinion:

Weak, like won't even fight back when she gets jumped bc boo fucking hoo she's so awful, bitch get up already, nobody signed up for ur pity party

Whiny. So fucking whiny. All the time. And she's the POV character so it's inescapable.

"Pacifist" but in a really pathetic virtue-signalling kind of way like "Oh, I've done such terrible thiiiiiiiiiiings I'm so awfulllllllllllll look how good I'm trying to be nowwwwwwww pay attention to meeeeeeee" kind of way, it was both boring and a massive eye roll. It's a book about magic and asskicking. Kick some ass. We're here for escapism not "realistic" whining. Yes, irl she'd be a mess. As an author it's his job to strike a balance between the "realism" he wants to portray and making his readers so depressed and done with his heroine that they quit reading, and in my case, he absolutely failed.

Everything must be about her at all times. Skug is having personal problems? Fuck him, they're about her now. Everything is about how it affects her, and her feelings, and be damned to the person actually having the problem. Fucks phase 2 val cain gives about anyone except herself: 0

Bitter and jaded. Which yeah I get why but it's like jesus christ what do we get out of reading about this? It's not even good bitter and jaded where it makes you empathise or admire her strength in adversity or whatever, she's just become a really nasty person with no redeeming features that I could see. Which? Landy outright said she's based on his gf? If your boyfriend is gonna drag ur entire personality through the dirt like that and write "you" as just a collection of incredibly negative traits...yikes.

Really ungrateful about the awesome life she leads? Which bugs me bc I fucking hate mundanity and knowing that all there is to life is fucking working and bad mental health. I would kill to live her life. All she does is moan about it. Like? Quit then. Fuck off back to being a mortal if it's that bad and live the shitty life you wanted to get away from in the first place. That way we'd get no more books, and quite honestly, thank fuck for that. But anyway, she needs to pick one, stick with it, and stop complaining about whatever she chose.

The girl wallows in self pity. And if someone else isn't indulging her enough, she'll wallow harder and louder and more obviously. Yawn.

Her POV is now so depressing to read that Resurrection literally tanked my mental health. I'm not kidding. I fell off the self-harm wagon, the suicidal thoughts came back, reading her dissociating would make me dissociate, I just did not cope whatsoever. Being in her head was just like being in my head during my worst points, and I hate myself, so naturally, I hate her too. Like I get why some people like phase two val. I get that her depression is "realistic" and that trauma does just make some people completely dislikeable and self-pitying, and if people want to read about that, then...sure. you do you, my dudes. But I live that reality, I am that person whose trauma made her a dysfunctional, isolated bitch, and I hate, passionately, having it infest the media I consume to escape.

Essentially if I wanted to engage with a bitter, spiteful, depressed piece of shit in her 20s who pushes everyone away and sucks at everything, I'd live my gd life. Yall see me tryna engage with my real life? Hell nah I'm on tumblr dot com burying my head up the ass of whatever fandom will force my brain to produce some s e r o t o n i n and that is what I need this series for

Also? The dynamic she had with skug in phase one? "Until the end"? "You save me, I save you, that's how we work"? Forget that, it doesn't exist anymore. I stopped reading after Midnight, because she was written like he was a coworker she could barely tolerate. They went from "Lardo confirms on twitter that they talked on the phone a bunch while she was in america and he'd always ask her to come home" to "she comes home and proceeds to blank him for five months while she sits in her fuckin multimillionaire's mansion feeling sorry for herself". Their friendship completely disintegrated, they were totally separated for most of the book, she's written as not giving a single shit about him. She treated him like dirt, and their dynamic basically felt like it was becoming "Local Man With History Of Gravitating Towards Abusive Women Makes Same Terrible Choices For Fifth Time" and? that was the point of no return to me. he supports her unconditionally, no matter what he's going through at the time, he's walked on broken bones to try and get to her when she was in danger, she can tell him anything and he'd never use it against her. I did not, for one second in phase two, believe she felt the same about him. tbh it felt like she could - and wanted to - drop him at the first opportunity and not even feel bad about it, and that's not the dynamic that made me so emotionally attached to phase one. i signed up for "until the end", not whatever bullshit phase two has going on.

Apparently she's "less depressed" now and their relationship is "better" in the books published since midnight, which! might well be true. but I haven't read them and don't intend to, and she's gone from one of my favourite fictional characters ever (which! was impressive! because i almost never bond with the female lead - i normally get attached exclusively to the character i crush on, which would be skug here. val was the first female lead i actually cared about since xena! so im deeply salty about losing her!) to a character i? honestly prefer to pretend doesn't exist. i live in war era dead men/generals crackship land because that way, i don't have to acknowledge her or the fuckin character assassination phase 2 pulled on her.

so yeah, no hate towards phase one val at all. phase one val was awesome and flawed and gave me something to aspire to despite my shitty mental health and trauma, and if she'd kept her original personality she might still have been those things. but the original "real life" val is no longer involved (and doesn't talk to landy at all anymore, apparently), and the val based on landy's insufferable gf? i cannot get behind her at all ever, four for skug and none for phase two val cain bye

(tldr; you're not missing anything by quitting after spx)

[panharmonium]

next round of in-progress naruto thoughts under the cut

[i actually haven’t progressed that far from where i was last time, honestly, but i could feel myself getting to a stage where i had some things i needed to write up.]

fyi, this one is a little more gripe-y than usual - still enjoying myself, but there are some things in the current arc that are bugging me.

[spoiler policy disclaimer first, as always: I am watching naruto for the first time and have only gotten to the point where naruto and bee break out of the island barrier and leave to join the war.  i am trying to avoid spoilers, so please don’t interact with this (tags included, because the notifications now show them to me automatically) with any spoilery commentary, including even general things like “oh i love this show but it gets less good after X point” or “X season is better than Y season” or any general assessments of quality/likability/etc re: future seasons.  Thank you! <3 ]

anyway, to go ahead with my grousing -

there are a couple things about this current arc that have me feeling "ehhh.”

1) too many dead people

i’ve personally always been lukewarm on the “revive/reanimate dead characters for the Confrontation Value” trope, which is probably due to me having been a comics fan for so long (i was pretty deep into DC-land during Blackest Night, and that’s not even the first/last time this sort of thing has been done there, so).  i’m not saying it CAN’T be done in an interesting way, but most of the time my experience with it has been that it’s kind of cheap/redundant storytelling.  it usually doesn’t add much to an emotional arc, for me, and when it retreads an emotional arc that did have a strong conclusion, i feel like all it does is weaken the original story.  

so like - places where i feel like shippuden does this well are with minato and kushina.  i found both of those scenes with naruto to be powerful moments that added something new to the story/to naruto’s development.  (but they’re not even part of the whole reanimation jutsu plotline, which is what i’m mostly feeling “eh” on, so it’s not even the greatest example.)

a place where i’m kind of in the middle is with asuma.  on the one hand, i really don’t think that this needed to happen, because the original story arc with him was SO strong.  however, they did kind of redeem themselves in a way by focusing the redux on choji instead of shikamaru, so at least they were still saying/exploring something something new.

places where i’m still pretty dubious are pretty much...everyone else.  i’m just not sure...well, i don’t know.  i can’t really say definitively how i feel about it until i get to the end of the arc and see how it ends, but at the current moment, i’m just not sure what we get out of seeing people like zabuza+haku, lady chio, itachi, nagato, etc....ALL of those stories had such powerful endings; it just makes me leery of these “resurrections” invalidating everything we saw previously/weakening the impact of what came before.

2) mixed messaging

this is my bigger gripe, and it’s something i’ve kind of had floating on the edges of my mind for a long time, but this season especially is highlighting it.

the one thing that is guaranteed to make me frustrated about this show (besides its obvious disinterest in female characters) is when it starts to lean super hard into the “Naruto Is The Only One Who Can Do It!” for every single task that needs to be completed.  and i know this is a stupid thing to complain about when the show is literally titled “Naruto,” but the reason it gets frustrating is because the initial message of this show was never “one super special person must do everything on their own and save everyone else.”  the original message of this show was teamwork.  

the very first lesson kakashi teaches the kids (and the foundation upon which the rest of the story has been built) is “you are stronger together.”  if you had all come at me together, you might have been able to take [the bells]!  he specifically criticizes naruto for working alone: “naruto - you do EVERYTHING on your own.  EVERYTHING.”  and that’s understood to be the Wrong Thing; it’s the reason naruto ends up tied to the stump.  but in the last few seasons especially (though there have definitely been previous moments where this has shown up before) the ONLY thing we keep hearing is how naruto has to accomplish everything by himself.  

it didn’t bother me in the Pain arc; i actually thought that confrontation was appropriate and necessary for naruto’s development.  but ever since then, it’s escalated to a point where now it’s like - “naruto is the only one who can fight sasuke!  naruto is the only one who can defeat madara!  naruto is the only one who can stop the war!  naruto is the only one who can erase everybody’s hatred!”  

and that’s the point at which i start to get frustrated, because my mind is like “okay, and the other characters are going to be doing...what, exactly?”

again, maybe it’s stupid to complain about that when the show is literally titled “Naruto.”  but i don’t think so.  title notwithstanding, this story at its heart was, in the beginning, an ensemble show with four main characters, whereas nowadays, the messaging is that only one of those characters can actually accomplish anything.  so i get kind of resentful, when i’m told that the other members of the team can’t do anything but step back and hold naruto up, because the essential message of this story has ALWAYS been “teamwork is more important than anything.  you are NEVER stronger by yourself.  we ALL have something to contribute.”

right now, the other characters feel like they’ve just been shunted off to do busywork.  none of them have grown or changed at all since the end of season 10 (and even the end of season 10 was starting to slide into the “only naruto can do anything about sasuke in the end blah blah” - yes it’s a huge pet peeve of mine but it is what it is; whatever; moving on).  we haven’t even SEEN sasuke since the end of season 10.  there’s been no consideration given to how kakashi is handling being drafted into a second war and being put in charge of 20,000 lives (and his clash with zabuza was just a vehicle for all the characters to reflect once again on how great naruto is).  there’s been virtually ZERO attention given to how sakura is handling things, minus that one scene where she’s looking at gory pictures from the previous great ninja war.  everybody is just marking time, punching a bunch of identical white zetsus until naruto can come solve the problem and wow everyone with his new abilities.

part of my annoyance might just be due to the fact that the timeline is so wonky due to filler arcs - it feels like ages have passed for me, but in-universe it really hasn’t been all that long.  but i also think there are legitimate reasons for me to be frustrated, when the show introduces things and then just unceremoniously drops them without any indicator of when they might be picked up again.  like - the uchiha genocide reveal was (i thought) a Huge Fucking Deal that should have Major Repercussions - but it’s just kind of.....disappeared as an issue???  and yamato - he’s been CAPTURED!!!!!!  but the show has not shown a single character reacting to this, or even being informed that it happened, and i think that’s shitty, actually.  yamato isn’t a minor character.  he’s been naruto’s personal guardian since season 2.  he has done SO MUCH for the kids, and he is kakashi’s friend, and i think it is shitty to have him get captured by the same people who experimented on him as a child and then not spend a second or two making it clear that other characters CARE about this.  

anyway.  this is just something that’s been creeping up on me as time goes on, and the last few episodes of “Naruto is the Savior of the Entire World” talk just made it feel more immediate, i guess.  plus the new intro (which i know may not be reliable; sometimes they show things that never happen) had a shot of naruto fighting itachi, and i think that tipped me over the edge, lmao, because you know what?  enough!!!!!  naruto can’t be the one who gets to do EVERYTHING!  some stories are not about him!  there are other characters who have relationships that are not about naruto.  there are places where other characters should be able to accomplish things naruto can’t do.  the other main characters should be allowed to complete their personal arcs, separate from (not just secondary to) naruto’s journey.

like - just - this is how i feel: this show started out as a story about a group of four people, and the root theme was “teamwork is everything.”  i don’t like how the show has slowly started to mutate into a story about naruto’s “solitary” quest to save sasuke, when we have seen MANY TIMES that: 

a) sakura was the first of the kids who even knew that something was wrong with sasuke, while naruto remained utterly oblivious all the way through shonen jump (and partway into shippuden, tbh)

b) kakashi in the past has connected with sasuke in ways that NEITHER of the two kids have been able to achieve

i just don’t like it.  i don’t like how S10 had sakura say the line “naruto...you were the first one to ever see the darkness in sasuke...” when she’s reflecting on their fight on top of the hospital, because that is a LIE.  it’s a blatant retcon.  of the kids, sakura was the one who knew from the very beginning that something was wrong with sasuke.  she was the one who was with him when he had that semi-dissociative episode during the bells test.  she was the one who was with him during all the curse mark stuff in the forest of death.  she was the one who knew something was off when he challenged naruto to a fight - naruto was just psyched that sasuke wanted to “spar” with him!  and SHE was the one who suspected that sasuke might do something as drastic as leave the village - naruto explicitly told her not to worry; that sasuke was totally fine; he would never ever do something like that!

like - the show already barely gives sakura anything for herself; now they try to take this away from her, too?  and give it to naruto?  to hammer in a kind of connection between naruto and sasuke that demonstrably did not exist??  (i’m not saying that naruto and sasuke don’t have their own important relationship!  but it is just provably untrue that naruto was the person who understood sasuke best.  shonen jump goes out of its way to demonstrate how clueless naruto is about what sasuke is really like and what he’s going through.  naruto is SHOCKED that sasuke would go to orochimaru.  he doesn’t realize that their fight on top of the hospital is anything more than their usual rivalry business.  when sasuke pops out of the coffin behind kimimaro, naruto waves and starts laughing, because he thinks sasuke is still on their side and is going to run right home!  and even in shippuden, when naruto hears that orochimaru is dead, he gets all excited and goes “so sasuke must be on his way back to the leaf village!!! :D”  like.  he just doesn’t get it.)

and i won’t really get into kakashi’s side of things here, because i would end up writing too much, but suffice to say that i am just...wary of the way it feels like recent parts of the show are trying to minimize or...push aside the real, textually-documented connections that kakashi and sakura had with sasuke in favor of “Only Naruto Can Help!”  it frustrates me.  kakashi made inroads with sasuke that neither of the kids ever achieved.  sasuke talks to kakashi in a more honest way than he ever does with either of his peers, even when he’s out of his head with rage.  and i would prefer to see this show taking the angle that all three of sasuke’s team members are going to be indispensable for saving him.  

you know.  like teamwork.

[koganphrancis]

Last night’s Shameless was so bad, Cameron had to tweet this deleted shit to try to provide some context.

Here’s his caption: “Many notable scenes are cut each season, but I was really disappointed to see this beautiful bit of writing by Dominique Morriseau go. Hope we’ll get to see it in DVD extras.”

So once again I’ll deal with this stupid shit before I deal with the episode’s stupid shit.  I for one am grateful this bit didn’t make it into the show.  I’ll start with the obvious-it’s more dismissal/retconning of Mickey and not only what he did actually do for Ian, but also of what he meant TO Ian.  Fans over on Twitter are saying what Ian said was technically true-that Mickey didn’t tell him he was amazing or could be something.  To me that’s splitting hairs-if Ian was too dense to see that Mickey thought the world of Ian, that he thought Ian could do anything he wanted to, that’s on Ian.  Mickey, more importantly, never BLOCKED Ian from doing anything he wanted to do.  Ian had a better source of support than most people ever get, and the show keeps insisting that it didn’t happen.

The next thing that bugs the hell out of me in that speech is that IAN DIDN’T DO ANY OF THAT FOR MICKEY EITHER.  So, even if he one hundred percent believes what he’s saying, he’s also saying that he knows that was wrong, so where was he when Mickey needed someone telling him he didn’t need to be a thug/drug dealer/pimp?  

And beyond that-why didn’t Ian ever visit Mickey in prison then?  If he’s aware that having someone believe in you makes all the difference?  AND WHY ISN’T IAN THERE FOR YEVGENY?  So, sorry, Cam, this “beautiful bit of writing” sucked.  

I will say that cutting the scene made what happened between Ian and the girl and Ian and Terror completely pointless and meaningless, but, hey!  That’s Shameless for you!  

Now for the episode itself-read more if you dare...

It was so shitty I’m really not going to waste time on most of it.  A few bullet points:

Ian’s done mourning (at least this week he was.  Since every week everyone is acting completely different from the week before, maybe mourning for Monica will be a thing for him again?).

Ian still has his job despite running out before his shift last week.  I’m not surprised, but they don’t even address it?

Fiona says utilities are included in the rent she’s charging-um, really?  I don’t know anything about the housing situation in Chicago, but in Massachusetts utilities aren’t included because of the cost of heating in winter/cooling in summer-and even if Fiona doesn’t pay for whatever is heating those apartments, since electricity is included in the fixed rent wouldn’t people just buy a shit ton of plug-in heaters and let her carry the expense?  

The cock mug was back-but Debbie drank out of it, not Ian.

Ian took “a” med-guess they found he only needs one drug to keep all his symptoms in check?  

Lip dreamed about tits (sorry you had to direct that scene, Regina King-you deserve better), but not one of his dream girls looked anything like Snore, LOL.  Snore was only in the background at the diner for one scene-no lines.  She’s the new Liam.  I don’t get why they brought her back this season when they obviously cottoned onto the fact that she’s not that good an actress.  Lip winds up banging the kickass chick at  the bike shop, but they’ve telegraphed that she’s going to be a Sex Addicts Anonymous participant and Lip’s sponsor will probably wind up having to lecture him at some point.  Yawn.  Youens wasn’t mentioned at all in this episode-maybe they’re done with him too?  Lip bringing that one meeting to his house took care of that?

The stuff with Kev’s family was reminiscent of Frank’s time at the commune with the yurts and did anyone need more of that?  Also, I’m sorry if I was supposed to get indignant on Kev’s behalf that the Kentucky folk abandoned him to go into foster care-Kev has a son with Vee’s mother that he has nothing to do with either, so maybe put that rock away while you’re in that glass house?  

Frank being a turn on to any woman is something they’ve done to death and it’s more unrealistic each time.  

Fiona had some big cathartic thing happen from Sean popping up-not really though.  There was the typical trope of her spewing all her shit before Sean could say why he was there, so all she did was look like a jackass assuming he was back to win her fair hand all over again when he was actually there to make amends and tell her he’s married.  She said a bunch of stuff about never being able to trust him that Terror should’ve said in 7X12 in a final farewell to the series scene.  Fiona went on and on about how Sean ripped her world apart and he was the love of her life and all this shit that the show never showed.  It was such crap and do they really think we’re invested in any of it?  Had they shown her suffering/missing him after the wedding fell through, maybe, but they didn’t and it’s too late to convince us now.  (BTW Sean’s wife was young and pretty-of course she was.)  

The other Fiona thing for the week is that Nessa is her fucking toady at the apartment building-in constant touch with Fi and acting as her right hand when she’s not there...doesn’t she have a job as an accountant for an airline?  Isn’t that a pretty much 9-5 job?

Liam’s still in school, but Carl’s not in school?  What?  Also, Carl’s storyline is as boring as it is unbelievable and again I can’t believe that they expect us to be invested in it.  The veteran he’s going to help out-had no lines.  

Now the Ian stuff.  First off, anyone can just wander in the EMT bay where they keep the open, unlocked trucks.  The chick Ian helped in a previous episode turns up saying how he said if she needed help, she could go to him.  Then the cut scene should’ve happened, but all we got was Ian tucking her in on the couch and walking up the stairs, pausing to look back at her.  The scene was...weird.  The girl looks a bit like a poor man’s Peyton List-same moon face, just take Pey’s make up and hair extensions off and she could’ve played the role-and that just took me out of the story-we’re supposed to feel a bit anxious about Ian being involved with a teen here, so how ‘bout irl?  

Anyway, next time we see Ian, he’s waking up in his tiny bed with the girl laying there with him.  Damn Ian must be a sound sleeper if he didn’t notice someone crowding in there with him-remember, he’s only taking one med now, so I’m not buying that it knocks him out unless it was a Benadryl.  Ian’s only in boxers (so at least my prediction of never seeing him shirtless again didn’t come true-but who wants to see him topless with a teenage girl?), and he wakes the girl up and climbs over her and pulls some pants on.  She gets out of his bed in just her undies and a tight tank top and says it was creepy downstairs so she came up to sleep with him.  

So, in this week’s “there’s been no character development” highlight-here we have Ian acting as clueless as he was with Mandy in Season 1, when 15 year old Ian couldn’t find a way to let a girl know he’s gay/not interested in them/that it’s wrong for them to be all over him.  Let’s reset Ian to zero-forget all his life experience AND make him so dumb as a 22 year old that he doesn’t realize he needs to tell teen girls NOT to get into bed with him.  Nope, he just picks up her phone off his bed and puts his number in there so she can call him “the next time she needs a place to crash”.  

Lip sees the chick come out of Ian’s room-doesn’t even say anything about the age of consent or whatever.  

The girl must see herself out, because next we have Lip and Ian coming into the kitchen where Fiona has been sitting up all night smoking Lip’s pack of Camels.  Ian misses a perfect opportunity to tell Fi she’s lucky Sean’s married to someone else-he would’ve set a match to her life otherwise.  Ian’s wearing a tank top by now and he has a farmers tan and it made me sad.  

Next time we see Ian, Terror pops up in the truck bay at work.  He gives Ian shit about the teen girl, Ian says he was just trying to help, they try to argue but their lack of chemistry smothers that too.  Even though for once Ian sort of sticks up for himself and says, “Would you mind easing up a bit” (on the lecturing), it was just lame.  Terror says Ian can’t let kids from the shelter sleep with him, Ian says, “I’m gay,” (so, Terror didn’t know?) and that there was nothing sexual about it and he was just trying to help, but Terror says she’s an incest victim and these kids don’t know when something’s sexual or not (or something-I didn’t bother jotting it down).  For once Terror has a point, except he ruins it by making it all about HIM, as always.  He says it’s bullshit that Ian was trying to help (um, no it’s not?  He really was?) and that Ian’s trying to weasel his way back into Terror’s life, but then, instead of telling Ian that they’re never going to get back together, he just says, “do not use these kids to do it.”  UGH!  NOOOO!  That was as much as saying, “We’re going to get back together, but not for this reason.”  FUCK NO!!!!  DEVIL!!!!  Ian at least gives him a fuck you look to end the scene, but...

the next time we see Ian, he’s walking home in his bright red sneakers and Terror pulls up next to him in his shitty little Terror-mobile.  He gets out of the car and commends Ian for Teenie wanting to get into a junior firefighters’ program (which makes zero sense without Cam’s tweet).  Ian says something like did he do  something right or whatever, and asshole Terror says, “You’re not out of the doghouse-yet.”  NOOOOOO!  Not “yet”!  Fuck you, Terror, just walk away from this!  He’ll fuck you over and you know it!  You’re never going to keep him interested in you-no one knows why he’s ever been involved with you to begin with!!!!  Ian perks up like the kicked puppy he is with these assholes and says, “What can I do to make it right?”  Terror says he can help him find housing for the kids.  WHAT?  HOW?  Terror has contacts and ways of making that happen and he can’t do it-WTF is Ian supposed to do?  What a lame, obvious plot point to keep them “together”.  It’s such horseshit!!!  Anyway, Ian says, “OK, I can do that,” and fucking Terror says, “Thank you.”  I’m now predicting that Geneva the teen dies in the episode after next and Ian cries down at the docks and Terror follows him there to tell him it isn’t his fault, he tried, and then they’ll fuck and I’ll puke.  

The final scene is the family (and Nessa?) all gathered in the living room, and all it did was highlight what a pale shadow the show is of its former self.  They’ve lost whatever spark they used to have.  

A final thought: Terror’s eyebrows are really taking over his entire face.  In the scene in the EMT barn, they were all I could see.  They just sit there like big furry caterpillars and make his face even less expressive as an actor.