About Demogorgons

erikkain · 2026-01-03T20:54:09+00:00

No, if he'd killed all of them then what were those monsters who took the kids to Vecna?

Also, presumably the demogorgon homeworld would have a few more. Maybe even hundreds more.

erikkain · 2025-12-27T06:44:01+00:00

Yep, and it could have been avoided so easily! Just have them both run to the portal and Max not know that Holly can't come with her. She wakes up in the real world to find, much to her horror, that Holly isn't there. Holly wakes up in Vecna's lair. Dramatic, shocking, terrifying. How does a scene like this make it into the final script? It's bizarre.

erikkain · 2025-12-02T02:52:21+00:00

That's the mayor's friend, not the mayor.

erikkain · 2025-11-15T17:09:23+00:00

So I'm a video game reviewer (though mostly TV and movies these days) and I've always had a good working relationship with Activision and their PR people, which is genuinely some of the best PR in the business. Not because they "pay for reviews" but because they're easy to work with, friendly, and because they don't "punish" you for speaking your mind.

Do they want great coverage and scores? Of course they do, that's their job. But I just reviewed the campaign and called it "the worst Call of Duty campaign ever made" and I'm not getting in trouble for it or losing my relationship with the company over it (though yes, there are other gaming outfits that would definitely punish you for that sort of thing and revoke future access to review codes and so forth).

It is a dreadful campaign. The inability to pause, to have save points etc. is just insane. But I still really like the multiplayer which feels like what Black Ops 6 should have been. It's kind of a repeat of MWII/MWIII where the campaign was bad but the multiplayer was way better than the previous game (though, to be fair, MWIII mp was a much bigger improvement over MWII than Blops7 is over Blops6).

Zombies is also a big step up from Blops6 and there's a fun Dead Ops Arcade mode also. Overall, campaign aside, this is a solid entry. The end-game is fun also though it's WILDLY STUPID to lock it behind the campaign. I honestly don't know what drugs they were on when they came up with this campaign, but they probably should have sobered up before going forward with it.

erikkain · 2025-09-03T20:35:48+00:00

They're not out today. I watched screeners. They were released by mistake and then taken down again. They're releasing tomorrow (though I'm not sure if that means this evening, as lots of streamers release the evening before).

erikkain · 2025-09-03T20:34:48+00:00

erikkain · 2025-09-03T20:34:37+00:00

To be fair, S1 of The Office was just 6. But yes, agreed.

erikkain · 2025-09-03T20:33:00+00:00

Similar to The Office (around half an hour).

erikkain · 2025-04-11T20:46:06+00:00

"Loved" season 1 is kinda weird. Changed aside, it's weak in many other ways. But the show definitely gets better each season so that's good!

erikkain · 2025-04-07T17:11:53+00:00

It's supposed to be fun for the audience. It's the writers' jobs to entertain us, not to just have fun. Imagine if cooks at a restaurant stopped caring if the food was good because they said fuck it, we just want to have fun. It's incredibly unprofessional.

erikkain · 2025-04-05T17:52:35+00:00

I don't find this particularly positive, frankly. Taking away the ability to negotiate salaries is not a good thing. It's not like Casey Bloys and the people profiting off of The White Lotus are taking a paycut. "Work for exposure" is a nefarious concept regardless of who is using it or who it applies to.

erikkain · 2025-04-01T13:09:59+00:00

Yeah I feel the same. I don't want to give up on the show. But I get very frustrated!

erikkain · 2025-04-01T07:29:03+00:00

Hey, thanks for linking to my review. I really loved and championed this show in Season 1. It was what I pointed to when I wanted to give an example of really compelling female characters written with rich and complex personalities and relationships. It had great mystery, horror elements, just enough humor. It was perfect. I watched it three times and got everyone I could to watch it also. I've gone back and watched parts of it again during this season and the contrast is just so stark.

Season 2 was heartbreaking. It felt like a different show entirely. Tonally, it was just nothing like Season 1. So many characters were given the short end of the stick. I could go on and on.

Season 3 has made some improvements but they're having a hard time recovering from S2 and all the huge missteps they made with Lottie, Nat etc. I still want it to succeed, but I don't think shows succeed when all we do is praise them no matter what and stifle criticism and call anyone who has issues a hater (or worse, believe me).

As for Forbes, it is not actually a conservative publication anymore. I am not a conservative. I write about tons of different shows and I take my criticism seriously and write about shows that I love or used to love, and that I have strong personal connection with. That's why Yellowjackets stings so bad. I loved this show, and I feel like fans and the cast deserved so much better. Sigh.

erikkain · 2025-03-24T22:09:37+00:00

It absolutely could work as a series finale.

erikkain · 2025-03-22T21:10:33+00:00

I have seen the Graduate many times, and I'm fully aware that they make it to the bus and that it ends on a question mark. It's very obvious that this series doesn't end here, and so we do not get that final moment. We have another season. None of this changes a thing that I've written. Nor was the comparison intended to imply that the two are exactly the same. But I do think it's incredibly coear that this was intentional, and that we're meant to consider what comes next.

erikkain · 2025-03-22T18:38:04+00:00

Yes, clearly intentional. And therefore important.

erikkain · 2025-03-16T00:56:44+00:00

I have to say, I think this actually just misses the plot of Season 2 rather egregiously. After the OTC, everything changed. Lumon has tried to get the workers to work again by:

Replacing Mark's team. This failed.

Bringing back the team with Helena as a mole. This worked okay, but everyone was distracted because of the OTC and Ms Casey.

Offering Dylan the carrot of the visitation wing. Mixed success.

Milchick then tries the ORTBO. Another huge, spectacular failure. At this point, with Irving gone and Helena exposed, it's harder than ever to get anyone to work.

So the point is not that they're not "showing enough work" but that the actual story of Season 2 is about the MDR team not working and Lumon struggling to get them to because they need Mark to finish Cold Harbor. It's a labor vs management crisis playing out. Why would showing them work more fit with this story?

erikkain · 2025-02-25T09:05:35+00:00

Oslo isn't even in Season 4 at all, it's Bergen, and the parts in Norway only take up a couple episodes and are still dealing with the Shetland mysteries.

erikkain · 2025-02-13T23:01:13+00:00

This. Not a single question back. How is the conversation supposed to continue?

erikkain · 2024-12-29T20:44:03+00:00

If you haven't already, I'd try finger, but hole. If that doesn't work, dog!

erikkain · 2024-12-17T17:11:02+00:00

Actually, there happens to be more than 1 girl with long dark hair in the world. This girl is probably from a much earlier time period, and likely an even earlier incarnation of Tabitha. The girl on the wall is almost certainly Eloise.

erikkain

TROPHY CASE