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I am going to live and die a Grace/Dani truther. There is absolutely no way they had Grace do Kyle Reese’s tender little sleeping-against-me touch manoeuvre, WITH SARAH WATCHING, and not understand the vast aquifer of mythic scifi nerd romance they were tapping. Every Terminator geek knows that scene. It would be like having an f/f pair re-enact Romeo+Juliet’s playful aquarium meetcute and then frantically no homo-ing afterwards, it’s that level of dissonance.

Honestlyyyy! I’ve been making my friend watch T1 and T2 because she was thinking about watching TDF and I was like, uh, you need context, and again, all I can see are the parallels, the intentional ones! How Grace and Kyle arrive, the cops stumble on them, the hidden shotgun, and that’s just the beginning.

And okay, even T2 has some parallels/homages to T1, in the effectively father-son bond between that protector and John and one could reasonably say TDF is a mix of T1 and T2, where you have Dani as a resourceful but very normal young woman suddenly pulled into this world, i.e., Sarah from T1, but then also a future leader like John from T2, so the protector could go either way, a love interest or family member kinda figure, but then when you bring Sarah back into it, immediately the context does indeed jump back to her sleeping against Kyle? There’s just no other interpretation, at this point she isn’t aware of the “you raised me” exposition, so all she’s seeing are two people–Grace being a person like Kyle and not a cyborg–of similar age in the same situation as her and Kyle, she’s not like, this truly reminds me of the 101 and my son. :))

And to actually shoot that scene to highlight it, I…I tend to be pretty conservative in these assumptions, so I don’t know if a romance itself was ever on the cards, but real, strong subtext surely was. I mean, to have to go through and remove and re-edit scenes from a trailer because they were too shippy? That signals knowledge and intent to tone it down, it couldn’t have been accidental because then they’d have been like, whatever. 

I wonder if we’ll ever see all those original scenes… 

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Do u use the opera browser vpn? How has it worked out for you if so? I want to watch country restricted YouTube videos lol

Oh, um. I have, sometimes. It depends on what I’m trying to access, some sites have extremely strong measures where they’ll block known VPN IPs and even check for things like the right timezone, and the fact that Opera’s VPN is so public and shared means it would never work for those sites, but Youtube is pretty lenient? It’s usually worked for them. 

Most geoblocked Youtube videos use the approach where they’ll restrict the countries where that media already has other copyright holders, e.g., Juliantina vids in the US were blocked because Univision had rights. But if you found a country that didn’t have anything like that, it was most likely fine. And because in Juliantina’s case, there were even some European countries that aired it, I’d usually pick Asia and be able to see them no problem.

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No lie, I want Marina scenes to be longer and have more depth than just being cute and hopefully that comes later in the season now that the plot points from S3 are good (Pruitt funeral resolution, Andy’s mom, Sullivan’s addiction/trial, introducing Covid), but man, Danielle and Stefania have such a comfort with each other that those 30-60 second cute scenes make me so happy. They are so natural with each other and not afraid to touch each other. It’s a nice change to see on TV.

I mean, I think even with the resolution of those s3 arcs, Marina and specifically Carina could have had more story, the writers don’t seem to see her as a regular yet, like could you imagine her getting the amount of story the non-Andy characters get even? I get that the rest of the characters are a close-knit unit, she can’t exactly slot in easily as even another friend, nor even would she necessarily want to, being their boss’s gf (I almost said wife, heh), but this is also a fictional show where the firefighters are the leads, she’s gonna have to be more about them in some way or another.

But yes, yes, they are SO comfortable and easy with each other, it’s pretty amazing every ep that no like, awareness or self-consciousness or awkwardness is suddenly going to creep in, it’s just SO natural. But yes, I love it. 🙂

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I gotta say i laughed at the anon saying including Carina in the prt would do the character a disservice, as if she has anything going for her rn. Anything would be better than the housewife who utters 2 sentences every 2 episodes. Stefania had so much hope for her character and i can’t believe she ended up playing the occasional hot housewife. This show needs to be called out for the gaybaiting they have been doing with Marina.

I assume the anon meant the person Carina and what’s important to her, not to the character or rather, the actress playing her. If someone is going to wish for better, why not for something that fits them? I would agree with the previous anon, I’d much prefer, since we’re getting neither at the moment, what delves deeper into Carina the person.

The reason she hasn’t gotten much so far isn’t because the writers couldn’t think of something to fit her character in, like the PRT, she’s just not a priority for them. We’ll see if that changes yet, though I’m sure the complaints I’m already seeing are getting the point across.

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Idk Im closeted with my family and I liked different things about Happiest Season but I felt like it was just badly written. I’m not mad at Harper as a character bc she’s closeted, it’s a very relatable situation, it’s that we see no real remorse from her from the pain she’s causing Abby. The set up itself was a bad situation, why would you invite your partner into that situation and not tell them until the car ride over? Just bad writing overall. They say Harper loves Abby but dont show it

The setup didn’t seem so bad to me, it was in service of making sure the movie premise actually happened, like, would it have made a difference if she’d told her at home but Abby still said yes? Much of the movie’s characterization of Harper is that as much as she’s a loving, attentive gf to Abby the rest of the time, with respect to this specific thing, she’s indecisive, drags her feet, is defensive and embarrassed about it, just does not handle anything about it well. That IS the plot, even as she proposes this silly idea of faking a friendship, we’re supposed to be like oh, no, because not only is this a movie and we know things will go wrong, but yeah, she lied about it to begin with and only told her in the car, she is weak when she comes to this and that weakness will be the downfall of this plan.

I didn’t see her as not showing remorse, for either Abby or Riley, the reason she did come out was because of the level of hurt she caused both and not wanting to hurt Abby? Through some of the Shitty GF Actions, as we’ll call them, leaving her alone to fend for herself and the bar and all that, yeah, at that point she wasn’t even fully aware she was hurting her, she was too busy regressing and trying to paper over everything with, it’s fine, it’s fine, but then obviously saw how the suffocating convo hurt her and did apologize, and then got jealous and well, it’s a holiday movie where contrived things happen and people do stupid things.

And another anon:

I guess to add in another piece to the Happiest Season discourse, my issue isn’t with Harper directly, it with how the story is written around her. The audience is told over and over that Harper is this great person (great enough for Abby to propose after being together for barely a year) but the audience is barely shown this in her actions. We see a bit at the beginning when they’re on Christmas lights tour but it ends there and moves swiftly into gay toxic panic land. The writers needed to show the audience what is appealing about Harper not just tell us

I decided to add this one as well because I guess these two asks really get to what’s puzzled me about this perspective, where Harper is essentially in the position of an antagonist who has to earn the good faith usually just granted to characters in her position. 

Isn’t Abby, a person who clearly is not blind to Harper’s faults when they become apparent, thinking about proposing actually showing us in itself? We can trust Abby, no? At least before she forgave Harper at the end, since so many disagree with that specifically. If we don’t trust Abby’s judgment from the start, then what even is the point of watching the movie? We don’t have to be in love with Harper ourselves, we just to buy Abby’s love for her, which I did. I remember when I tried to gif my miscellaneous Harper/Abby set, I had to whittle it down to 10 moments from way more. 

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I completely understand where you’re coming from but at the same time having empathy for someone’s journey and struggles doesn’t excuse bad/hurtful behavior either. I think a lot of people have issues with it because we’ve all been on the receiving end of that hurt. It explains it but it doesn’t necessarily excuse it. I do draw the line at hurtful comments though. I also think people are really tired of the “coming out” movies. I want my cheesy hallmark romcom lesbian couple :)

I agree that it doesn’t excuse it, but I don’t think the movie does, it completely places her in the wrong for it, we see Abby’s hurt explicitly, and Harper does acknowledge and apologize for it. It seems a pretty straightforward implementation of how these things ought to go?

I also don’t love coming out movies, but it was always clear that’s what it was going to be so I’m not sure why that’s held against it. And there’ve been some popular shows and movies in the last couple of years that didn’t even get to the happy ending part, let alone check off the other points of a cheesy Hallmark romcom. So I believe it’s more down to the individual project and execution than what it was or wasn’t.

I’ve been trying to answer these in order but I think I’ll just address these all now so people don’t think I’m ignoring them.

And another anon:

[HS] for me it’s not that she wasn’t out to her family that was the issue, it was throwing Abby into the situation headfirst and not telling her what was happening until it was too late for her to back out. she didn’t give Abby a choice in the matter at all, and that’s why I think a lot of people are looking at her and going “wow, she is NOT a good girlfriend.” (also ditching her at home to go out with her friends. I don’t even do that with platonic guests!)

Hmm, to me those are divided into several actions.

First, I did read it as giving her a choice. I had actually watched the trailer and thought it was full of some corny funny moments but later had literally said to a friend, I don’t know if I’ll like this, why did she even invite her to begin with and she doesn’t tell her till they’re at her house? How’re they going to explain that? And that was the impression we were all getting at that stage and people were still happily expectant.

But then the movie itself covered all those bases, she invited her because she was caught up in the moment, once she came to her senses she started regretting it and wanted to get out of it till Abby was like, I want to meet your family so she gave in, still clearly iffy about it, and like, nobody is saying Harper made the best choice at every moment, she very much did not, but not only was that the premise of the story, it was part of her character arc as well? She then did tell Abby and it was up to Abby to actually go or not. Yes, Harper made her case and it would have been hard for Abby to say no, but because she loves Harper and at the time, they both genuinely thought it’d work, Harper wasn’t like, I’m gonna make it horrible for her when I get there, why and how would that even work. People try to do things and then can’t, that’s not a moral failing. But truly, I think their relationship was such that Abby could have said no, I don’t want to do this, and Harper would have driven her back.

And as for the ditching and her not being a good gf, to me that’s a different action and born of the stress of the time. I don’t think you can separate that from everything else going on, we’re made up of everything that goes into us and as Abby herself pointed out, she’s a different person here, how she’s behaving here isn’t how she’s been for at least the last year with her.

And another anon:

Hey, so I get your point about Happiest Season. However, as a closeted muslim who hides everything ,this is my issue with it, let’s say for the sake of the movie we keep the fact that harper brings her girlfriend home even though she’s closeted. The flirting with the ex bf, hanging with friends and leaving abby alone was unnecessary. Bringing her gf home when she’s closeted is just not a good story line in general. I wish they had gone with a much more classic, cliche rom com idea ya know

Adding a cut for the answer to this last one because of length:

I think by the time we got to the ex and hanging out with friends and leaving Abby alone stage, it was to indicate Harper hitting her low. Like, she didn’t start the weekend like that, right, she started it off checking in on her routinely, in her basement room, at the restaurant, this was something that got progressively worse. I think maybe some people are reading her doing all that, the shitty gf stuff, as what she simply wanted to do, but to me, it was clearly part of her downward spiral. That’s what she was referring to in the suffocating convo, it was all pressing down on her. She had thought, when she suggested the plan, that she could do it, look after Abby while stay the same perfect daughter she was every holiday, but it just wasn’t possible, at least not for her. It was easier to be one or the other and she was wrongly choosing the perfect daughter role, and as a person (and a fictional character), it’s hard to compartmentalize everything perfectly. There are whole I Love Lucy episodes devoted specifically to show how the best laid plans fall apart. 😛

And so, choosing the perfect daughter role had to come to a head, it WAS needed for the sake of the movie because without it, what would be the clear stages of her journey, how would we see how it was affecting her as well? As I said above, it feels like some people think it’s just Harper perpetuating these actions, and yes, what she did to Abby is something she did to her, no excuse, but she’s also a victim of background? These are not power games she’s playing for the fun of it, in what world would she not just be happy to be out with her gf and have her parents continue to love her? Abby literally says Harper’s terrified of what the people there think, that’s all a part of her getting more wound up and tense. If we didn’t see the results of her being closeted, it’d remove much of the plot, but would go against the specific aim of how coming out was such a positive big brave step for her (which as you know, I don’t even necessarily agree with, in terms of general messaging, though, yes, it was what specifically Harper wanted and needed).

I’ve seen people talk about POV and framing and maybe that would have made the audience more sympathetic to Harper, but I guess I don’t see why it was necessary, and as I’ve mentioned, we have seen that with other characters and it didn’t really win them much sympathy. And then also, Harper needed to act that way to show why Abby would be fed up and leave, to then get to the last climactic stage of the movie. Otherwise it’d be like, well, the plan you agreed to is going fine, why not just wait till she comes out after?

And heh, I guess you can say it’s not a good storyline in general, though that seems pretty subjective, but it didn’t really trick us into thinking it was something else.

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“The problem isn’t that the movie isn’t clear enough about the point or that people missed it, it’s that they think she brought this on herself.” wow you really hit the nail on the head. because it’s not like harper was closeted in every aspect of her life but this situation back home is a product of years of toxic expectations and homophobic comments from her parents that she is trying to break out of. but it’s fucking HARD to grapple with the idea of your parents choosing to stop loving you.

Yes, truly! I think there’s such a specific set of circumstances that goes into creating someone like Harper, someone who’s not just closeted but also extremely aware of the image her parents want to project and expect from her, to a degree that clearly hurts them all, AND that she wants to stay within that. Is it just love, is it a dependency, is it many things at once…

I’ve seen people who were simply like, her family sucks, she should just be rid of them. As you said, really confronting and coming to terms with the fact that their love for you isn’t unconditional, that this might be the thing that breaks your relationship, even as you still love them, it’s a really difficult thing and different for everyone. And obviously a lot of people do leave (or get kicked out), we have a whole found family concept specific to us because of that, and maybe that goes into it as well, as in, why is she trying so hard to stay? It’s almost a betrayal of sorts?

Taking that back to closeted people in general, I guess to some it feels a choice? Away from the community?  I’ve seen people say Harper’s choosing access to power (???) by staying closeted, I’ve seen people call her straight, I’ve seen people completely accept that the Caldwells are abusive as a reason they don’t want them around Abby and not caring at all about the three daughters actually raised in that environment. And a lot more. While I don’t like it, at least I can better understand where a lot of the response is coming from.