Anonymous wrote:Thoughts about this weeks episode:

- Alex is definitely in the wrong (IMO) regarding her relationship with Paul, but I actually sort of love how Aniston and the show are playing her arrogance/cluelessness about it. I find it entirely believable that someone at Alex's level would truly believe she could have a relationship with the billionaire buying her network and that everyone should just trust that she is objective. It makes Alex an interesting, if less likable, character, which I appreciate.

- The wheels are coming off Paul Marks, btw. Whatever is going on with his rocket launch and the drinking and the money problems... I like that we've seen him as ultra-controlled and powerful until this point and now we get to see him in over his head and acting impulsively.

- Mia's boyfriend coming back without a word was messed up. Their relationship is very dysfunctional and I'm pretty over it.

- The whole plot line with Laura getting suspicious about Bradley and Cory, then Audra telling her to search the hacked data for evidence of a relationship, and that leading Laura to single-handedly uncovering the Hal/J6 coverup because she's just perfectly positioned to know what she was looking at, was sort of genius. That was actually some pretty good plotting work by the show and I LOVE the idea of Laura being the person in possession of that info -- she loves Bradley, she's very ambitious, but she also takes journalistic integrity more seriously than pretty much anyone on the show. I really don't know what she's going to do which is great.

- Speaking of Bradley, I really don't get what the point was of dragging her out to that theater in Brooklyn only for Kate to stand her up. Something about that whole situation isn't adding up, I hope it gets explained.

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Anonymous wrote:I’m not loving the big time leaps. In one episode it’s pre vaccines, masks everywhere, and then like 2 episodes later Dobbs is leaked (June 2022).

Time is moving on but the characters aren’t evolving in any way and still seem to be stuck in dynamics from a year earlier…. it’s like they want to keep the characters the same but they want the news cycle to jump so they can cover different things but it just doesn’t feel organic to me.

That episode pre-vaccines was a flashback episode. All the episodes this season except that one have taken place in the same few months in 2022. That was a flashback to show us what happened between Bradley & Laura, Mia & her BF, and then some back story on Cory and Stella and UBA during the height of the pandemic and J6.

Ah ok then makes sense. I’m used to binging shows and I’m watching this one weekly as it comes out and it’s really throwing me. If they do any more seasons I’m going to wait until I can watch a bunch of episodes at once.

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Anonymous wrote:I’m not loving the big time leaps. In one episode it’s pre vaccines, masks everywhere, and then like 2 episodes later Dobbs is leaked (June 2022).

Time is moving on but the characters aren’t evolving in any way and still seem to be stuck in dynamics from a year earlier…. it’s like they want to keep the characters the same but they want the news cycle to jump so they can cover different things but it just doesn’t feel organic to me.

That episode pre-vaccines was a flashback episode. All the episodes this season except that one have taken place in the same few months in 2022. That was a flashback to show us what happened between Bradley & Laura, Mia & her BF, and then some back story on Cory and Stella and UBA during the height of the pandemic and J6.

Anonymous wrote:I’m not loving the big time leaps. In one episode it’s pre vaccines, masks everywhere, and then like 2 episodes later Dobbs is leaked (June 2022).

Time is moving on but the characters aren’t evolving in any way and still seem to be stuck in dynamics from a year earlier…. it’s like they want to keep the characters the same but they want the news cycle to jump so they can cover different things but it just doesn’t feel organic to me.

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Anonymous wrote:Just got caught up on the episodes.
I can’t believe they hired someone to choreograph the sex scenes. How many of us lay on our partners back like Alex did with Paul? Not realistic.
How many of us sit in the couch the way Paul and Alex did? Not realistic but poetic. Usually you spoon or lay facing each other. Also, since the paps already pictured them there, wouldn’t you have your blinds closed?

We’ve already seen the promo where Laura blows up at Bradley. BUT, Laura can only guess at what she did. I don’t think Laura has seen the unedited film.

And why is Stella so protective of Cory? Just weird.

I love Jen and will watch her in anything, but there is a reason we have never seen her in a sex scene until this show… It was really terrible. So awkward.

Anonymous wrote:Just got caught up on the episodes.
I can’t believe they hired someone to choreograph the sex scenes. How many of us lay on our partners back like Alex did with Paul? Not realistic.
How many of us sit in the couch the way Paul and Alex did? Not realistic but poetic. Usually you spoon or lay facing each other. Also, since the paps already pictured them there, wouldn’t you have your blinds closed?

We’ve already seen the promo where Laura blows up at Bradley. BUT, Laura can only guess at what she did. I don’t think Laura has seen the unedited film.

And why is Stella so protective of Cory? Just weird.

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Anonymous wrote:This week's episode was bizarre. The Evening News anchor just doesn't show up because the exec wants her to have dinner with his mother? Where they went to get her help, but when she offers her help her turns her down? Jennifer Aniston's character kisses her new boss in an open office? Seemed completely nonsensical this week.

Yeah, a little out there. But I enjoyed having some backstory on the show's most complicated character.

Can someone do a good psychoanalysis of Cory's mom, and her effects on Cory? This storyline was awful and sad, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from it (except for sympathy for Cory).

I love to psychoanalyze fictional characters, thank you so much for asking.

I think Cory's mom is completely enmeshed with him, and that as a single mom to one son, she used him as a replacement partner. He's her emotional support and has learned to validate and appease her to keep her happy, so that he could in turn get the validation and support he needed as a child. But a child should not need to take care of their parent's emotional needs in order to get validation and support -- a child should get those things from their caregivers no matter what. So this dynamic tuned Cory into a classic co-dependent people pleaser. That behavior has no doubt served him well in his career, where he has ingratiated himself with a lot of different people with enormous egos (from deep pockets like Paul Marks and Cybil, to celebrity talent like Alex, Laura, and Bradley) by knowing how to massage their egos in the right way at the right time. But it has come at a cost, as by always looking to please and serve others, he struggles to develop truly mutual relationships with anyone.

Even his attraction to Bradley is concerning because while on the surface it seems healthy for him to be interested in someone so fiercely independent, it's apparent after meeting his mom that a major part of his attraction is that Bradley is fiercely independent in the same way his mom is, and that even Bradley's rejections and efforts to distance from him have likely repeated patterns with his mom that have been going on since childhood. He probably needs years of therapy to untangle his enmeshment with his mother and learn what it looks like to have a relationship where the other person's needs are not always paramount, and where serving those needs doesn't require sacrifice and flagellation on his part.

As for Cory's mom herself, it's harder to assess with only a handful of scenes, but there's definitely a high level of narcissism at play, specifically a vulnerable narcissism where she is use to eliciting sympathy from Cory (and maybe others) in order to get what she wants. We also know so little about her background, what happened to Cory's dad, her upbringing, etc., so just much more difficult to assess. But the enmeshment and narcissism are the main components to her character from what we've seen.

I will need you to recap every episode of every show I like from now on, thank you

If there is genuine interest in this, I think I might need to look into a newsletter because this is pretty much my dream job.

Anonymous wrote:Chips reaction to Alex and Paul Marks kissing in the office- he clearly knew something was up at the interview, and his girlfriend knew too, and knew that he knew. Why is he so shocked to catch them?