The Original - Westworld S1 E1

Westworld, which took the world by storm, is according to the initial press release sent out by HBO is "a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin, exploring a world in which every human appetite, no matter how noble or depraved, can be indulged."   The ten episode series was inspired by the 1973 feature film, written and directed by Michael Crichton.  It is written and produced by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, with Nolan directing it.   It's an visual experience not to be missed. 

But I Wanna Esplode! Helix 1x03 274

Previously on Helix! An unknown mutation zombie disease, going with most of the zombie/slash/outbreak tropes so far, including the one where anyone who says "People have to know what's going on up here" dies. So that's cheerful!

No jaunty music when we come back from the very brief previouslies, and mostly they're brief because the first two episodes were fairly concise and general to establishing setting, tone, and characters. Very minimalist, to go with the first couple of shots of water dripping from the tap. Very serene, in a way, water dripping is often used to indicate serenity, except it also serves to contrast Julia's experience a moment ago which was anything but. Julia's unconscious on the floor, as it turns out, or semi-conscious when Alan gets to her. She claims she passed out while taking a shower for standard decontamination procedures, and from her behavior it's hard to say whether or not she consciously is putting it out of her mind, unconsciously blocking it because it was traumatic, or lying through her teeth because it was traumatic and she doesn't want to think about the possibility of having been exposed to the black goo of doom. We do get very rapid cut flashbacks,  but that could still be subconscious mind. In any case, Alan will walk her back to her quarters because it's not safe to be out there alone. He's not wrong, either.

The Librarians S01E02 ...And the Sword in the Stone

There will not be finishing off the Librarian with your henchthugs; there will be an Eve Baird slamming heads together until they drop. Literally! Giving rise to look, if you want something done right, fucking do it yourself. Isn't that ON the Evil Overlord list? If not it should be, and lord knows Lamia should be plotting what she'll do if Dulacque shows signs of weakness. I am just saying. This is only sensible. Jake and Ezekiel pelt on up to stare in horror, Eve is all LOOK YOU MORON I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR MAGICAL WOUND I WILL TREAT THE SYMPTOMS. Which at least gets Flynn to move his ass over to another artifact that'll delay death. Good! We like delaying death, especially when the entire Library looks like it's about to Do Something Bad. Besides get raided. So, yes, the magical healing oil of Bathsheba, which I'll let you look up the stories about her, but suffice it to say I totally would believe in that kind of an artifact. One of the more obviously named artifacts so we can all gloss over it and move onto the important part, which is hey guys, we don't need to find Cassandra, she kinda betrayed us. Okay, um, what about the still-oozing wound? Charlene will help! Honey, Charlene's busy trying to help save the Library itself, she wasn't counting on you getting stabbed by Cal, this is why you have a Guardian. Moron. Corridor of Doors! Deep in the Library! Go, all of you. Yes? Yes.

So Very Alive And Full Of Goo Helix 1x02 Vector

Day 2 of zombie outbreak hell starts with interviews with the people locked in the room with Vector!Peter. Apparently he held them down and vomited black bile into their mouths. Ew. And worse than that, there are three more who ran after the attack. Peter's behavior suggests that the goal may not necessarily be something conscious (things are of course happening that we'll find out about later) but a drive by the virus to spread itself in this case by bodily fluid contact, and again I say Ew. Buuuut I'm also getting ahead of myself.

So Very Alive And Full Of Goo Helix 1x02 Vector

Day 2 of zombie outbreak hell starts with interviews with the people locked in the room with Vector!Peter. Apparently he held them down and vomited black bile into their mouths. Ew. And worse than that, there are three more who ran after the attack. Peter's behavior suggests that the goal may not necessarily be something conscious (things are of course happening that we'll find out about later) but a drive by the virus to spread itself in this case by bodily fluid contact, and again I say Ew. Buuuut I'm also getting ahead of myself.

The Librarians S1E01 ...And The Crown of King Arthur

We open in Berlin, to much swearing, because oh FUCK YOU GUYS that's the same fucking alley between sound stages you used in fucking Leverage for the SAME FUCKING CITY. If you're having crossover problems now, join the club and pull up a comfy chair, 'cause we're gonna be here awhile. (Worse, I'm pretty sure I know the exact area of Portland that is, because it looks awfully similar to Grimm's sound stages.) Rather than a librarian in the shape of Noah Wyle (yes, I've seen the movies, there will be references, I recommend watching them for the sheer camp value if nothing else, though you don't need it for the backstory here), we have anxious law enforcement raid music! And a group of people in full raid gear with a blonde woman leading the way. Hi, Eve! I'll just say here that absolutely the only reason she doesn't have a helmet on is because the camera needs to identify her somehow, and while some people miiiight be able to look at body type and the way she moves and say, oh, that's a woman and the rest of them are men and she's taking point so she's the leader, that's not something you generally bank on in the first thirty seconds of your pilot. I deeply appreciate that that IS the only way to ID Eve, too. Well, that and the fact that all her team has assault weapons and she's got a handgun. But again: this is not actually a procedural law enforcement show, and given the audience likely to be watching Librarians you don't want to rely on everyone's knowledge of the visual tropes. Which is interesting, because the entire directing style is very deliberately similar to typical procedural while Eve's the only main character onscreen. Apparently they have a WMD in the giant warehouse! Oh what great fun. And all of Col. Baird's men, with the exception of the guy I'm pretty sure is the new guy, are utterly loyal to her and do not need more than the basic verbal commands. And she has utter faith in them, given that she knows exactly how long it should take the other guys to get into position out of her line of sight. Like. This is such delightful competence porn.

No GIR That's Bad Helix - 1x01 Pilot

So, we open with whiteness, because that's not an overarching motif or anything, the whiteness that swallows everything. It's two days before The Event. And then we have some zombie horror staple, people in clean suits walking down a corridor while a computer says very loudly over the very loud machine humming, Contamination! Contamination! Yes, we get it, computer, we get it, shut up. This is why all alarms of this type should come with an Okay-We-All-Know-Noise-Off switch. This is intercut with flashes of Peter all black-bloodied up, I'm having fond memories of X-Files and the oil slick of doom. Different corridor! The flashbacks become more clear, Peter was running, dragged into this room, and now we have something that's going to become a staple of Helix as we know it, the juxtaposition of jaunty pleasant music and horror. We have a horrific scene playing out mute before our eyes, but when I say mute I mean very little sound is coming from the scene itself especially when compared to the machine humming and the loudass Glados knockoff a second or three ago, but rather the sounds are coming from the jaunty fun soundtrack playing over the background. I've got a pair of brand new roller-skates, do you know the way to San Jose, etc. Though only one of those will become a set of arc words. Well, I'm unnerved, as no doubt they meant me to be, how about you?

Age of State of the Blog

Those of you following me on Twitter may have noticed a recent downtick in activity, especially of the sort that talks about blogging at all. Some of you may have noticed the broken arm and the subsequent WOW I AM HIGH ON VICODIN tweets.

(We're not talking about how much of February I may not remember clearly.)

So! I know we promised to start posting eps around this point for Helix and Librarians, and Kitty is just about ready with her first two eps (I believe she's just got to pull screencaps), but I am... behind. Very, very behind. On the plus side, I have a plan of attack and expect to be able to post ONE ep around March 25th; on the minus side, I actually do have a bunch of stuff I'm trying to catch up with all at once. But I can type and think clearly now, which is a nice change from basically all of February, and I should hopefully be at a point where I can work down a few minutes of an ep most days, more on the weekends.


The story, for those who want it, is that I slipped on ice that'd gotten snowed on while I was in for my fiddle lesson the beginning of February, and while I managed not to land ON the fiddle case (and indeed it wasn't even out of tune), I broke my arm. In two places. And had THE WORST urgent care experience of my LIFE, up to and including failure to take X-rays of my wrist that would have told them about the bone chip. Because I am me and have epic skills, I did this just exactly enough to require Vicodin, a sling, and perpetual ice, and not enough that I needed a cast or surgery. I know. I was impressed too. I'm coming up on six weeks out from it, though, and I've been improving pretty damn rapidly. Those of you who've been around awhile know that this means I'm going to inevitably push, but I will try not to fall flat on my face when it comes to blogging. Or, you know. Fall on my wrist. Again.

The State of the Blog Awakens

As promised, the state of the blog post-Haven, post-holidays, and post-sleeping like we're teaching ourselves to hibernate.

What we're never doing again: That. We are never, ever working to weekly deadline again. It was fun while it lasted, but we're frankly not getting any younger, and we're rapidly becoming the sort of stodgy 30-somethings who want our weekends back for housework. And TV marathons. And sleep. Shut up. Besides, we want to try to bring you better quality analysis, including a lot of the technical aspects that we know we let drop in recent posts in an effort to ensure everything got out on time.

What we'll be replacing live +24-blogging with: Anna is going to start up with The Librarians s1 & s2; Kitty will tackle Helix which has a limited run of two seasons. We'll aim to alternate weeks starting the middle to end of March, after we build up some backlog, so that we have time to continue writing at a reasonably leisurely pace.

The other great thing about this is that we're going to post during any currently-running show's hiatus, which will allow us to evaluate each ep in light of the larger whole of each season. With the move toward a significantly more serialized form of storytelling on TV, this is honestly the best way to continue giving you recaplyses without second-guessing every single week's developments. Sometimes this is fun! A lot of the time it leads to disappointment.

As a result, we're also considering branching out some: we've had at least one request for Jessica Jones, which will have to wait for us to finish watching before we make a decision yea or nay. (Hopefully this week/end!) There's a couple other shows we might do, but frankly we think you'll have plenty to keep you busy reading from now until the next time our lineup changes.

Be Unbroken Haven S5E25 Now

Previously, on Haven. CroaShat was a manipulative asshole of a would-be father, Vince decided to go be a barnvatar because that seemed more useful than grieving Dave and probably killing himself, Laverne became the police station in the noirest episode ever to noir, Duke got pwned in the black-eyed horror of Croatoan, Dwight got his daughter back and is not sure how this is a trap. CroaShatDaddy continues to be abusive but reveals that he can use the Troubles however he damn wants, including to save baby Mara's life, and Duke is blaming Nathan (and Audrey) for his becoming a killer. I… cannot say he's entirely wrong there.

We return to Audrey having gone back to the station, presumably having walked? It's night, she's making her bed on the camp cot in the chief's office, and Nathan is being adorable with his snacks. Aww, she still loves Baby Ruths! Alas, that is granola but he is happy to see her! Ahem. Laverne's apparently decided to dispense only the healthy stuff, or as healthy as you can get out of a vending machine. Oh Laverne. Per Nathan's nudging, Audrey updates him on how much of a world of shit they're in, which is to say: lots! Several worlds' worth. (Say that five times fast.) He's not making threats, he's just promising to make people his idea of happy, which is clearly warped, she's not wrong that that's in a lot of ways more scary than an outright threat. An outright threat has recognizable boundaries on it, not necessarily limitations but it presents a defined scope. A complete stranger coming in and imposing his ideas of happiness on everyone else? That's a lot of unknowns to deal with. And of course he desperately wants his daughter back. I find it interesting that Nathan makes the point (and Audrey doesn't argue) that she's not Croatoan's daughter, whereas they were pretty quick to allow as how she was Charlotte's daughter. Partly that's a pacing issue, but partly I think that's also an indication of how thoroughly they're rejecting Croatoan and all his works. As it were. In the meantime, we revisit for the umpteenth iteration that they need to fix the aether core and that no they don't have any brilliant solutions, nor has Vince come up with anything now that he has access to the databases in the controller crystal. Blah blah Duke, blah blah holing up and Dwight's keeping Vince away from Duke, etc etc etc exposition. Though I do find Nathan's unshakeable faith that they're going to get Duke back awfully adorable and heartrending in light of what happens. But adorable.

Will The Circle? Haven S5E26 Forever

We'll just skip the forever long previouslies and get right to it. Audrey's come back to the station and she's giving Stan instructions about getting the town to stay away from the cloud. Stan's in street clothes! Awwww. And he tosses out a gas leak cover story joke, because that's gonna work so well when a few weeks ago you explained all about the Troubles and whatnot. Although I admit in my vague headcanon for post-series, "gas leak" has totally become an in-joke with the entire town. Audrey is not really having with this levity, telling him to go spend time with his nonexistent family. He says he doesn't have one now, which could be, given he's been awfully stereotypical bachelor cop for the series, the PD's been disbanded and that was his family, or could be a variety of awful things happened to whatever family he had, or could be he moved in from outside Haven and now he's cut off and doesn't expect to ever see them again. That was horribly depressing. Stan deserves all the good things for putting up with this shit for so long, why you so fucking mean, writers. Audrey would like to spend time with her remaining family, except Nathan is not so much with the here.

Simon Says Haven S2E12 Sins of the Fathers

Previously: Audrey found the original Lucy Ripley, who has not gone to the barn and had her memories erased! And… Simon Crocker was looking for AudSarLu when she was Lucy. Oh GOODIE. We will be reminded yet again of how Duke is at the center of everything going on in Haven, and lost Evi as a result. And oh look, part of that involves the Crocker boxes, now with the big version, hi Dwight you're like a big version, and killing AudSarLu. Gee. I wonder what the Rev's plans were for Duke! Let's find out on a moonlit night in Haven. We open with the Trouble, not the town's tarnished trio, which just means the Trouble's going to be inherent to them all as we learn what it is and how it works. Some Dude is asleep when Some Other Dude appears and wakes him insisting he go save a woman named Sheila who's in danger from a guy with a gun! This cannot possibly end badly! First Dude looks like he's about to tell the other guy that he's dead or something, oh yay just what we need. Yes, the guy with a gun is going to be you, honey. Arlo is meanwhile across the street with Sheila telling her to be quiet and careful and he'll keep her safe until Bill gets here. Of course you will. Vindictive ghostly bastard. This translates to mock-strangling her and Bill shooting her through the ghost. As you do. Evidently this was, as one might expect, payback for sleeping with Sheila, who was Arlo's wife. I assume he was hoping for a murder-suicide but will take one out of two.

Next morning, Duke and his truck are headed downtown at the same time as Audrey and… that looks like still a rental? Audrey when are you going to give in and buy a used cheap car. She's headed for the Herald, Duke is headed for her, it looks like after the ulp-ing at the end of last ep they haven't talked since and now things have an extra helping of Awkward. Duke's going to confront this head-on! Honey. Audrey's off to confront other people head-on, she's not upset with you, go hold her flower while she kicks the Teagues' ass. I would pay such good money for that alt-version of this scene. Alas, no, he's determined to explain that he is REALLY not going to kill her, he doesn't take assassination requests from dead as well as deadbeat dads. Audrey please stop being quite so emotionally repressed, you're going to sprain something. She does realize after the bad joke that she needs to take him a little more seriously than that, but the words "I believe you" would help here. A lot. And not leave Duke sighing at the heavens while Audrey storms into the Herald.

In the Blood Haven S2E11 Business as Usual

Previously! Lucy Ripley, Audrey belonging to Haven, Nathan courting Audrey, Duke and the tattoo and his complete lack of answers. Evi working with the Rev and then dying! The Rev being in the middle of all of this. And then dying too! Well, I'm glad about one of those things.

Wings of a Dove Haven S5E24 The Widening Gyre

Wings of a Dove Haven S5E24 The Widening Gyre

Any ep title they can play on-the-nose with we can do better? Ahem. (For those of you who've noticed, Cash covered this one.) (A: Though my FIRST thought was Lonesome Dove, because even MORE on the nose.) Look, anytime anyone invokes Yeats' Second Coming for TV we are going to at minimum tease and possibly mock. Do you know how many times that poem has been overused? There's an entire TV Tropes page about it. (Suffer with us!) However, if we start in earnest now we'll never stop, so: previously, on Haven! Dave took out Croatoan's ability to wipe memories and erase time, and died in the doing, breaking Vince. Dwight is cracking at the edges to the tune of Not Losing Anyone Else, Audrey flails at the barn and acquires a Howard, however briefly due to Duke fucking with the aether core and going full evil. Whether that's possession or his choice is still severely questionable! Enjoy trying to figure it out! Fuck knows we're not sure.

To Serve Man Haven S2E10 Who What Where Wendigo?

Previouslies tell us that Dwight is a bullet magnet, the poor bastard. Dwight just so you know, you can't actually protect people if you're dead or in hospital recovering from bullet wounds and/or cracked ribs. (Kevlar only goes so far.) I tease about the urges under his Trouble because of one part sympathy and two parts ow. Evi was working for the Rev! She swears it was because she wanted to help Duke find out about his past and/or protect him from the Rev, which shows a staggering degree of naivete considering her usual line of work. Also a significant attachment to Duke despite how they clash on a regular basis. And she also severely overestimates her importance to the Rev and his men, getting herself shot and killed when she assumes she's not expendable. Oh honey. You were definitely not used to people playing games this rough. Hell, Duke's not, not entirely, though he's more so than Evi was, as witness his swallowing back grief and rage to pretend like he's going to be a good little follower and find out his answers. Anyone who knows Duke, knows that revenge is probably worth more to him than answers, and that he'll take both if he can get both, but I'd say it's clear the Rev is playing all the odds. We have a last shot from last ep of the Rev versus Dwight-Audrey-Nathan, which is an interesting cluster and certainly not at all representative of Dwight standing in for Vince.

The ep proper opens with… none of Our Heroes! So we have a Trouble that's not what it seems and they're flinging us data as well as red herrings. Yay! Instead, a newscast over the radio, a trucker flossing in his rearview mirror while we hear about a brutal murder of a dental hygienist, really you guys? And oh look they've decided it's a serial killer with so far seven bodies that they know about. They even have a description! I suspect this is because the murders all happened in different jurisdictions and looked like crimes of passion; these are the kinds of things where you file all the forensics and then hope for a break in the detective footwork. Our trucker is halfway posited as the killer as he goes about his business, since he also leers and ogles all over the girl working the gas station who comes out on break. But no! Then a guy fitting the description right down to the rose tattoo walks out and is bashed into by some teenaged boy, who spills his coffee, apologizes, and runs faster. Our trucker seems to think he can go be a big damn hero with the handgun he keeps in the truck for protection. Dude. You don't even keep the fucking thing in the glovebox? It's just hanging out there? Your safety precautions suck and you should feel bad. GET YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER OH MY GOD. Well, at least we KNOW he's supposed to be a moron. Rounding the corner brings a whole lot of animal-tearing-something-to-shreds noises from the shed out back, and then we get monster-shaky-cam footage as the trucker gets shoved hard out the door by whatever was making those noises. DUN DUN DUNN.

For The Reckless Ones Haven S5E23 Blind Spot

Previously on Haven: I miss William. How the fuck did that happen. Is this some magical Colin Ferguson shit? 'cause it kinda seems like it. Croatoan is going to kill and eat everyone, William sez, but then he disappears off into the void and possibly for home because he's… tired of murder? Sleepy kitten done thinking of nothing but murder all day? At any rate, Nathan came back with the crystal, Dave went into his mind palace to try and defeat Croatoan and succeeded in (we think and hope) getting rid of the timey-wimey bullshit memory wiping (DONNA NOBLE FOREVER FUCK YOU ahem oops did that slip out? That was my outside voice, wasn't it.), and also died, wrecking Vince. Croatoan is now out of Dave's body but whether or not he's genuinely lost this ability AND why he's still hanging out being a creepyass mist rather than taking a form asap we do not (yet) know. Suspect lots of things! Don't know. Also Dave used his internal IMing system to inform Vince and Dwight that Croatoan's coming for Audrey. I am sure that's not the only thing he's dropped by for.

Toxic Masculinity S2E09 Lockdown

Previously on Haven! Nathan's getting ousted by the Rev, Audrey's getting courted by Chris Brody, and Duke's getting manipulated by Evi. So at least someone's getting made happier by the machinations in everyone's life!

I Must Live While Others Die Haven S5E22 A Matter Of Time

Everyone stop for awhile to groan over the double pun in the ep title with us, while we go over the previouslies. Yes? Yes. Previously, Hayley or Hayley's Trouble are the key to saving Haven by way of making a thinny whee. Vince was a complete fucking idiot who thought the best plan was to discuss plans for saving Dave from Croatoan IN FRONT OF HIM WHEN HE KNEW DAVE WAS POSSESSED. I'm pretty sure that one never got fully erased from his memory, is what I'm saying, and even if it did, the body on the floor should be a big fucking clue. Nathan coming back from the void is crucial, which will be fun since William's there too and Hayley refuses to use her power for the purposes of eventually getting rid of it. Kid. Have you seriously never read Harry Potter? Splinching is a thing. You don't want that thing.

Nathan does not want this boulder or this void air or whatever in the void is making him sick, but there's a lot of shit Nathan doesn't want and bulls his way through despite that. Because Nathan. Also I question the wisdom of sending in the guy who can't feel things to a place that's that toxic to humans. While it may lengthen the time he can stand being in there, if there's any kind of nerve irritation/pain that goes along with it, it means that he doesn't notice how bad it is until, say, shortness of breath and blurry vision come into play. William shall taunt him a second time! Free me and I'll help you, yadda yadda, nobody believes you, William. Though he's not wrong about Nathan doing poorly. William babbling about all the terrible things Mara's going to do is definitely like provocation! A lot of provocation, since Nathan starts shouting about how Mara's not coming back and ALSO no seriously NOT COMING BACK SHE'S DEAD YOU MORON. DECEASED. KICKED THE BUCKET. SHE IS AN EX-MARA. Ahem. I will allow as how this is enough passion and Nathan is fucked up enough that it definitely registers as true. Or Nathan believing it's true hard enough that he's got some kind of alternate proof, even if William looks utterly stricken by that idea. He's not wrong, either, there's not really anything he knows of that could do that. That's in Haven. So now they have new and interesting information to exchange and negotiate from. Such as negotiation can happen when the only thing William was living for (as far as he's ever said) is now gone.

Make It A Double Haven S2E08 Friend or Faux

Previouslies! Duke and Evi. Duke and his dad and the deathbed promise he made! Evi and working for the Rev. For as little as she's in this ep, there's actually nothing else in the previouslies except catching us up on that. And then instead of opening on the Gull like we might expect, we open on a panover of residential Haven, cutting down to Random House after a bit. No, we're not suddenly getting to see where Nathan lives. Or the Teagues. Instead, we have Some Guy We've Never Met. He must be either Troubled or about to die of a Trouble, then! Or both. Both is… good? That is a lot of house for one man, too, I must say.

It's even a lot of house for two men, which it turns out to be after we get a focus on our unsub that marks him as careful, precise, neat, even fussy. Sleeps in a full set of pajamas, needs everything on his dresser to be just-so, wears pocket squares. Wealthy and fussy. Now we have two! Two unsubs. I wonder who the hell they used for a double in these scenes, since this was before Orphan Black's transparency in filming made it more common for people to credit their doubles, stunt or otherwise. (Also before we were paying such close attention to the technicalities of filming, so it's possible we just missed it.) (Oh hey, the IMDb page says Jim Swansburg against Cristian de la Fuente. Well done both of them! For an ep that's relatively filler, they make it stand out.) The double, by contrast, is in boxers and nothing else, is cheerful and peppy and casual. Our first unsub looks resigned and horrified to see him and goes about getting ready for his day like he's a prisoner in his own home. When he comes out, Unsub #2 has made breakfast in the form of an enormous pile of pancakes and an even more enormous mess. I freely admit I'd be pissed if someone made that much of a mess of my kitchen, too.

Cold Bitter Mist Haven S5E21 Close To Home

Previously! Duke talked to Walter and we hid behind the couch. Also we get a flashback to the girl with the explodes everything she touches Trouble. Oh honey. Walter gave Duke visions of a seriously post-apocalyptic Haven in which Croatoan won, let us not go there, 'tis a silly place. Nathan ran back in time, figured out the Coulton family has a Trouble that'll let them open thinnies if they have a magic ring, and left Duke a note with the creepyass kid from 1983. Who turned into a creepyass adult. Who points him to Hayley, not that creepyass adult knows it. Hi Hayley!

NATHAN'S HOUSE NATHAN'S HOUSE HI NATHAN'S HOUSE. AWWW it's a tiny yellow house how cute! The house number is 247. I'm going to throw something at someone now. He and Audrey are having a relatively quiet start to their morning, she appears to have mostly moved in with him though by what point I'm not sure. Also I suspect this means that his house is well away from Trouble Alley, or anywhere else that might be a serious problem. He's bringing her coffee! They're doing one of the things we do, actually, which is grumble at the insufficient data and chew on it some more until they realize that they really don't have enough. Interrupted by Audrey being adorable at Nathan and warning him about the hot coffee and him being cute back and oh god stoppit both of you. This might be the most stereotypically couple-y we've ever seen them, she gets to check him out half-naked in the morning, there's coffee, they're talking about their plans for the day, and it's promptly turned into a semi-argument about yes this is awesome! You should stay with me and not go into the void so it can keep being awesome, Nathan. Yeah that's not going to happen, Audrey. There's some really sweet bantering about how tired they are of saving the world, and the thing is, it's believable! They should be! But it's also how they work, and what they know, and there's a definite undercurrent of that running through the banter too. What the fuck would they do without crises on a near-constant basis? WHO KNOWS. Not them, that's for sure. Speaking of which, he has to go get the controller crystal in the void when Duke comes back and yes that's a when and not an if, Audrey, I know you're hurt and feeling betrayed, but one of the things he needs is a fucking vacation from the crazy.