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LCHorn

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  1. I think you are overstating Ishido’s power and understating Mariko’s. Ishido is one of the five regents and essentially mayor of Kyoto, but he’s not able to force project much beyond it and has a fief smaller than the other four regents (also, remember these aren’t the only daimyos, just the five the taiko selected). He can’t really do much without working through the other, wealthier regents and that’s why he has to isolate them in order to exert control. He’s also dependent on Lady Ochiba, who controls the samurai pledged directly to the taiko’s heir. Mariko is more like Lynda Bird Johnson Robb and if she was best friends with Caroline Kennedy as a kid. She’s got her own money, married into a distinguished family, and her father retains respect in some quarters. She’s also super savvy at playing the game within their carefully constructed social behaviors.
  2. My affection for JP France is right there around @Wulaw Horn's for Phil Maton. Hopefully he stays down there.
  3. I’ve read a couple of interviews with Kondo and Marks deconstructing the finale and I think this is an area where they didn’t quite calibrate the storytelling effectively, at least for me. I don’t really FEEL Blackthorne‘s transition and I think it’s because there was too little made of it in the intermediate episodes. We get the “becoming Japanese” part fine, but what was the mission again? I’m doing a rewatch now that my wife wants to watch it and they definitely hit that beat in the first couple of episodes but maybe it’s a little too subtle.
  4. Is that Framber coming out of the dugout to demand that you quit heckling Abreu?
  5. Eh, he‘s and old ball player, not a McKinsey guy. Of course he’s going to give cliched, boring answers to the press.
  6. I've only seen these two but both are great suggestions. Twilight Samurai is Sanada playing different song and probably an even better performance than Shogun. I agree, in fact a lot of the changes I noted in the series I thought were sensible and interesting. Another one was sidelining the courtesans and leaving out the arranged marriage between Blackthorne and Kiku. It's a little wish fulfillment for a male book reader but including it here would undermine the absence created by Mariko's sacrifice. All of the post finale reviews/interviews with the creators are asking about the possibility of a season 2 and the show runners have basically said "Anything is possible" but that they are out book to adapt. They are reading Tai-Pan, however, and that would also be worth a modern adaptation.
  7. I’ve already gotten far enough away from the book that the fx series encourages doubt on my interpretation of things, but I took away (from the book, mind you) that Toranaga saw Mariko and Anjin as subordinates but capable of understanding him and his plans, basically how he saw the world. Everyone else was held captive to tradition and custom. He’s not amused by Anjin, rather he appreciates his insight, his expertise as a navigator, and because he’s a foreigner (and not welcome anywhere in Japan), he’s basically the only person he can have a heart to heart with and not feel like it’s at risk of being used against him. Plus, he knows about Mariko’s affection for him and that’s confirmation of his judgment. The book doesn’t make him a heel; he’s the only one capable of imposing order in Japan and he’s willing to sacrifice his loyalists if it furthers that goal. In the book’s world he’s just holding Mariko back from dying so that her death can serve a greater purpose and she seems to understand this. I don’t recall a bargain with the Portuguese to burn the boat (I may just be misremembering it), rather, he burned it because Anjin’s friendship was important to him and it was the only way to keep him from leaving (in the subtle, Japanese elite way of navigating conflict).
  8. I’m not a documentary fan but watched this on Hulu the other day. It’s about Punky Brewster and a bunch of celebrity kid actors reminiscing on the rougher parts of growing up in the industry. One thing that comes through is they all appeared to really like Soleil Moon Frye in a sincere “we just loved hanging out with you” kind of way (who shot it and I guess could have easily shaped it that way).
  9. I’m presuming Sarkisian promised him a chance to earn it in the spring but with an understanding they’d need him at nickel if he didn’t win CB outright. That said, if those suggesting Brooks are right, perhaps that’s partially due to Brooks being told he’s going to lose some snaps to Barron. Either way, both would be looking at ‘24 as a contract year.
  10. I’m not a hat guy but I have to admit it’s pretty sharp.
  11. My guess is Jahdae Barron and it’s because he needs to start at corner to maximize his draft prospects.
  12. I could be wrong but I suspect Abreu is injured, anyway. Otherwise, whoever observed him coming off the spring (coaches/Brown/scouts) and didn't raise the red flag should be fired. Someone should rename a .100 batting average the Abreu line.
  13. Aside from just terrible, terrible luck, I think the main issues are: 1. We are still in the Abreu experimentation stage. Singleton was retained as a cheap back-up option (cheaper than Belt) with Cabbage as a candidate if his 2023 performance had carryover. They are trying to ready Loperfido, I.e., they have options and they are working though them. 2. Relying on Hunter Brown and JP France to be core members of the rotation hasn’t worked out. Brown looks like he’s on the failed starter track and and France is basically a sixth or seventh starter on a good team. I think #2 is more ripe for criticism and a total organizational break-down, i.e., they needed a veteran starter BEFORE Valdez and Javier showed poor health. The pitching coaches shouldn’t be shielded from blame on this, either, if they were communicating to the front office that they would be fine without adding a starter. Can you imagine how shitty our record would be without Blanco selling his soul to the devil?
  14. Nimona is good and I’m all for normalizing same gender relationships in children’s entertainment, but it’s almost as bad as Wish in how it plays like a checklist of “wokeness”.
  15. If I might rebut, if I was hiring a manager with no previous experience, and he was replacing a seasoned and somewhat independently minded employee, I’d want someone who made very plain he would work as part of a collaborative team and would follow best practices as set by the general manager’s office. I also would think that some messiness is just a by-product of it being April and wanting/needing to experiment. What’s unfortunate is that they are losing and that’s not giving them much cover. TL:DR It ain’t Joe, it’s Dana (or just the front office).
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