Must Be Tuesday: Veronica Mars Reviews

We're finally entering the ZFT endgame, which ends up being a bit of a bust: Nina is shot, but she's fine. Everyone is looking for William Bell, who we now think is the ZFT leader. Walter yoinked by the Observer, mostly so he can reminisce on the """something""" he lost and check out the grave of ... Peter? ZFT is stopped and Olivia is off to meet Belly, who's taken up residence on a parallel earth. 

This week on Fringe we knock out the required mid-2000s animal rights episode, which is meh at best, but then we get back to the real shit: Olivia's messed up childhood! We meet with Nick Lane, who is like Olivia but less functional, which is saying something since Olivia spends a large portion of this episode convinced she's dream killing people. After that we move into a little ZFT and vampire action; also, Rachel's getting a divorce. 

This week on Fringe, we're going through another big chunk of season one. We reminisce a bit on the benefits of a weekly schedule vs. binging, and how a "see what sticks" mentality can lead to awesome, discussable benefits but also frustrating dead ends. Back in the Fringe universe, we get Fringe's first really great overarching plotty episode in Ability, which explores Olivia's past (and implied future!). We also get a bit more Observer content, and we say a not-so-fond farewell to JOHN SCOTT. Cheers!

Things get meta here on MBT's Fringe 4, as we discuss not knowing when to release Fringe and also guessing Lucifer might not be out until... February, gasp! Lol forever, what optimism. Anyway, back on Fringe, Peter's got some dull issues because his character hasn't been totally figured out yet and Olivia is still focused primarily on our pal JOHN SCOTT. He basically gave her a consciousness STD and she's infected with his memories, so we have some more tank fun. Happy days for Walter!

This week on the Fringe, we've electromagnetism, RF bursts,  heart parasite monsters, and Britta from Community. Additionally, we're still working through the mystery of JOHN SCOTT and he and Olivia's special merged consciousness bond. Was he good? Was he bad? Once you get past season one will you even remember him? Meanwhile, we finally get some real plot going as we meet David Robert Jones and his shady FBI-traitor crew. #LittleHill

We continue easing into Fringe this week, which is at this point just barely dipping its toe into the weird scifi universe it's destined to become. These episodes tread and re-tread ground: hey, did you know Walter used to be in a mental institution? Did you know Olivia had a thing with her former partner, John Scott (drink!)? Did you know Peter is... here I guess? Well anyway, the show is still fun and it's only going to get better, so there's that to look forward to!

So here at MBT we really thought Lucifer 5B would be out by now, & that our Fringe eps would drop after that. But, it's not to be since as far as we can tell Lucifer 5B may never release (jokes! ... unless?). Anyway, we're thrilled to be back on our bullshit discussing female-led shows. Fringe is the spiritual successor to the X-Files and, in many ways, a spiritual predecessor to shows like Lucifer. Come for Joshua Jackson, stay for crazy family dynamics, parallel universes & Olivia Dunham's gun. Cheers!

This week on the pod we're predicting the fate of each of the characters. We don't know any spoilers, so it's all speculation on our end. The big questions: how long is Ella going to have be the odd man out celestial info-wise? Can Maze finally progress? Are we being foreshadowed about Lucifer's potential mortality, or is it just a red herring? Will Linda give god therapy?? We discuss. 

All this talk about getting mojo, losing mojo, stealing mojo... how could we not make an Austin Powers reference? Anyway, powers and their meaning are the talk of the episodes here; misunderstandings abound and Chloe tragically assumes Lucifer knows what the f*ck he's talking about. Meanwhile, Amenadiel angsts about human baby Charlie, Ella's boning a murderer, Michael's causing chaos and Maze well, the plot needs her for things so there she is. Oh, and God has arrived. 

Would that I could attach gifs to this description section, so you will just have to imagine the gif of Holt in Brooklyn Nine-Nine yelling BOOOOONNNNNEEE??? Because that's where we're at! Finally! But before we can get there, we have to have the celestial himbo squad confusing poor Chloe about her ostensible "gift" status, Amenadiel pulling an explanation from his ass that Chloe is horny enough to go with, Chloe freaking out and Lucifer acting like a dumbass, so pretty much business as usual over at the LAPD. 

**LUCIFER 5B SPOILERS**: we briefly discuss the genre of an episode in 5B from 2:00 to 5:30. If you've watched the promo for 5B this will not spoil you.  This week we're discussing two episodes that are admittedly not our favorite of the season. Lucifer's back, but things are not as copacetic with his friends in LA as he might have hoped. After we trudge through some meta, Chloe lays down the facts. In the next ep, we travel back to 1946 and learn about Lilith and not much else. 

We are back and pumped to be talking about Lucifer's long-awaited S5! This week we've got our cocktails ready to discuss Chloe's bangs, celestial "genius", Maze's growth and kind of specifically none of the episode of the week stuff. The Mars plot was cool & all, but but there's so much more going on, especially with our new season villain: twin bro Michael. Although he's found out basically immediately (hurrah!), he does succeed in sowing the seeds of fear in the main cast, just in time for Lucifer's return. 

Well, we recorded this about three days before the promo dropped, so feel free to listen in on our guesses good and bad. Obviously, this episode contains NO SPOILERS, but does contain speculation about where season 5 might go, and what we hope to see out of our main characters. When will Lucifer escape hell? How is Chloe going to react? Will Dan and Ella finally find out the truth? Can Maze finally come into her own? One month to go before we officially find out. Cheers!

Hey guys! In May we had the pleasure of speaking with Sheri Elwood, a writer and executive producer for season 1-3 of Lucifer. We had cocktails and chatted about the show via zoom, from behind the scenes writers room action to what she hoped might one day make it into the show. If you like getting into the heads of the people that bring you TV, listen in! Big thanks to Sheri for digging in with us. Cheers!

Lucifer works on forgiving himself just in time for everything to fall apart: adorable baby Charlie is kidnapped, and hell has come to Earth. Everyone needs to work on their decision making and communication in these eps, but that's ok, the drama is pretty fun. We get a musical number (meh), a fight scene, and Lucifer going full devil. Hard to complain too much about a great season. Check us out next week for our interview with Sheri Elwood, followed by a season 5 predictions ep. Cheers!

On today's episodes, Lucifer breaks up with Eve and begins to define himself outside of his relationship with her or Chloe. After going to bat for humanity, Amenadiel is faced with his first experience with systemic racism and police brutality. During the course of this discussion, the movie Mary mentions is The Hate U Give and the case Alli discusses of the wrongfully imprisoned black teen is Kalief Browder. You can read more about him here or watch the Netflix documentary series telling his story (tw: prison abuse and suicide).

After Chloe puts her life on the line to save him, Lucifer realizes that he's maybe, not quite ready to be done with their partnership. This leads to an attempt to split his life in half: relishing in his devilish ways outside of work via partying with Eve and responsibility/maturity via his work with Chloe. Go back to therapy, Lucifer! You need it bud! Over with team angel baby, Linda assures Maze she's part of the family, while Amenadiel grows further from his. Up with Demon Auntie!

This week we're introduced to someone I like to think of as the anti-Cain: a side to a love triangle that doesn't suck. Welcome to the show, Eve! Chloe and Lucifer's relationship implodes after Chloe considers poisoning Lucifer, lies to him and remains generally freaked out by his devil-ness. Linda, Maze and Amenadiel have a wonderful B plot involving Linda's pregnancy. Ella and Dan are also there, but... are they though? Eve shows up just in time to encourage all of Lucifer's bad behaviors in the best way. Cheers!

After discussing what it means to be an admittedly imperfect & blithe podcast about a (supernatural) police procedural, we have decided to continue on with Lucifer. That being said, we will be discussing the implicit pro-police bias that a show like has a byproduct of its heroes being cops. Dissecting this bias is something we should have been doing before, & will be a feature of the show from here on out. We wanted to jump into this topic immediately, and as such postponed our Sheri Elwood interview. 

Hello listeners! We had planned on releasing our interview with Sheri Elwood this week, but circumstances in the United States being what they are, we did not feel it's the appropriate time for our general lighthearted discussion, when the focus should be on the protests and Black Lives Matter. Television is a reprieve, but there are times when we have to look at painful reality, and we feel this is one of them. We will reassess next week. Best, Alli and Mary.