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Kabuki Shipoopi
Jun 22, 2007

If I fall, you don't get the head, right? If you lose the head, you're fucked!

He did undo 5/9 though

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Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Kabuki Shipoopi posted:

He did undo 5/9 though

Yeah but as the conversation Darlene had with the prostitute illustrates, he hasn't undone the consequences of 5/9.

Ehud
Sep 19, 2003

football.

Foreal though - who noticed glitching video during Angela's scene at Price's place and who did not?

I definitely saw it and that's why I thought they were about to reveal some serious sci-fi stuff.

bring back old gbs
Feb 28, 2007

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN
Well you'd have to explain what you actually saw. Was it video noise and some sound effects and some jump cuts over the entire picture, or was it focused only on Angela. Did she glow? Was she instantly popping around the frame like the girl from the ring? Was her face morphing like one of those bitmashed gifs?

what are you even talking about? genuinely curious what people are describing here. I didn't see it.

bring back old gbs fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Dec 15, 2017

UZR IS BULLSHIT
Jan 25, 2004
I saw someone mention something about Irving glitching too. But I didn't see any glitching this episode.

It would be hilarious if Esmail made two different edits of this episode.

Foppish Yet Dashing
Jun 29, 2004

-horsepussy begins now
-horsepussy begins now
-horsepussy begins now
-horsepussy begins now
-horsepussy begins now
-horsepussy begins now
I think it’s highly possible that some folks just got some hastily encoded rips that had actual hiccups in them and are mistaking them for intentional Easter eggs.

Edit: even if you watched live on cable, that poo poo can gently caress up too.

Kuroyama
Sep 15, 2012
no fucking Anime in GiP

Foppish Yet Dashing posted:

I think it’s highly possible that some folks just got some hastily encoded rips that had actual hiccups in them and are mistaking them for intentional Easter eggs.

Edit: even if you watched live on cable, that poo poo can gently caress up too.

I watch this on Amazon, and I can't tell if it was just issues with buffering or intentional stuttering put into the episode. It's like an unintentional reinforcement of the "what's real and what's fake" themes the show has going for it.

Fried Watermelon
Dec 29, 2008


Foppish Yet Dashing posted:

I think it’s highly possible that some folks just got some hastily encoded rips that had actual hiccups in them and are mistaking them for intentional Easter eggs.

Edit: even if you watched live on cable, that poo poo can gently caress up too.

When I was watching American Gods and the main character was getting beat up by the computer/internet god lackeys my stream started to stutter and freeze and the sound cut in and out. I thought it was a really cool and clever effect but it turns out my internet was just failing.

I was hoping for more reveals on what the equipment in the Congo was for but I guess we need something for season 4. I'm still leaning into the paranormal/esoteric areas because it's fun to theorize about. Also it all seems too convenient that Elliot is THE super hacker that no one else can solve the problems, even Whiterose's second in command comments on this.

I'm half expecting season 4 to open with Jack from LOST yelling "We have to go back!" while Elliot's watching TV with Vera just so Sam Esmail can gently caress with us time travel believers.

Blind Rasputin
Nov 25, 2002

Farewell, good Hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world.

I slowed down the glitches in my video processor and reversed them and it was just an image of Marty McFly shaking.

Wake_N_Bake
Dec 5, 2003

I love to argue by using all caps. I feel it helps keep people from noticing that I have little or nothing to add to any given conversation. I also
Genuinely laughing at the idiots who think there’s actual time travel in this show.

Goofballs
Jun 2, 2011



Wake_N_Bake posted:

Genuinely laughing at the idiots who think there’s actual time travel in this show.

I'm relieved there isn't. It will be real painful if Price is wrong about Whiterose just being an insane rear end in a top hat with a cult.

How much power whiterose is pretty confusing though. At times it seems like she has the full resources of China behind her and then she can't get poo poo through customs to the country she just annexed.

Samizdata
May 14, 2007

Ehud posted:

Foreal though - who noticed glitching video during Angela's scene at Price's place and who did not?

I definitely saw it and that's why I thought they were about to reveal some serious sci-fi stuff.

I didn't see a thing.

ashpanash
Apr 9, 2008

I can see when you are lying.

Wake_N_Bake posted:

Genuinely laughing at the idiots who think there’s actual time travel in this show.

They’re not idiots (the show goes out of its way to imply it, after all), but I think they’re wrong. The show has been about mental illness. Why wouldn’t we assume that the people in control are just as crazy and, at times, delusional, as everyone else?

Wake_N_Bake
Dec 5, 2003

I love to argue by using all caps. I feel it helps keep people from noticing that I have little or nothing to add to any given conversation. I also

ashpanash posted:

They’re not idiots (the show goes out of its way to imply it, after all), but I think they’re wrong. The show has been about mental illness. Why wouldn’t we assume that the people in control are just as crazy and, at times, delusional, as everyone else?

Agreed. Plus this show has gone out of its way to be grounded in “reality” (as much as it can with an unreliable narrator), and a giant time travel/alternate reality/sci fi twist at the end would seriously undermine the narrative they’ve painstakingly constructed. Revisiting/fixing the past is a huge theme, one we see play out in various ways, but not literally.

bring back old gbs
Feb 28, 2007

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN
Whiterose's guy said something before shooting himself, what did he say?

90s Shoes
Jan 30, 2014
"take care of her" iirc

Krime
Jul 30, 2003

Somebody has to do the scoring around here.
I watched on DirecTV. I did not delete the episode so I will try to go back and capture the "glitching" I saw so everyone can see.

Blind Rasputin
Nov 25, 2002

Farewell, good Hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world.

bring back old gbs posted:

Whiterose's guy said something before shooting himself, what did he say?

Actually it was a mandarin phrase referring to the Chinese calendar. My family speaks mandarin and appreciated this. In the show it would’ve been the year of the snake, and the phrase would refer to the snake eating its own tail. Or the end becoming the beginning. Or the past becoming the present.

Time travel theories are real folks.

UZR IS BULLSHIT
Jan 25, 2004

Wake_N_Bake posted:

Agreed. Plus this show has gone out of its way to be grounded in “reality” (as much as it can with an unreliable narrator), and a giant time travel/alternate reality/sci fi twist at the end would seriously undermine the narrative they’ve painstakingly constructed. Revisiting/fixing the past is a huge theme, one we see play out in various ways, but not literally.

The show is already science fiction, it's not grounded in reality at all. It's just made with a high degree of verisimilitude. Literal time travel/quantum leaping would fit right in with everything else that goes on in the show, thematically.

PhazonLink
Jul 17, 2010

Blind Rasputin posted:

Actually it was a mandarin phrase referring to the Chinese calendar. My family speaks mandarin and appreciated this. In the show it would’ve been the year of the snake, and the phrase would refer to the snake eating its own tail. Or the end becoming the beginning. Or the past becoming the present.

Time travel theories are real folks.

Or White Rose is trying to create a giant philosopher stone and the particle accelerator is the transmutation circle.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
genuinely laughing at the people who are getting smug about how certain they are that there won't be alternate reality hacking/time travel

wonder if we'll get backstory on Leon ever or if he'll just continue to be the chillest hitman

you wanna talk about bad at watching TV? dude i know thought Irving was Joey Bada$$ in heavy makeup. :psyduck:

edit: not Joey Bada$$, the other guy, the guy handing out CDs in season 1

Wake_N_Bake
Dec 5, 2003

I love to argue by using all caps. I feel it helps keep people from noticing that I have little or nothing to add to any given conversation. I also

UZR IS BULLSHIT posted:

The show is already science fiction, it's not grounded in reality at all. It's just made with a high degree of verisimilitude.

I’m going to disagree, because none of the tech shown has been futuristic, nor anything that doesn’t currently exist. They’ve done the opposite, and shown every technical detail left for scrutiny.

My point was that “Bam! Quantum Leap” would feel like a cop out. I think the time stuff is just thematic, as we draw parallels between White Rose and Elliot, seeing their... viewpoints are influencing those around them. A giant gently caress you sci-fi twist at the end would disappoint me.

Edit- to wit, Angela. *She* wants to believe in rolling back time, and said as much. The fact that we see her trying to convince herself by playing the DVR in reverse shows that while we want the past to be undone, it can’t be. If she knew it would, she wouldn’t have lost her mind. Everyone wants to roll back the past, but while you can undo your actions (5/9), you can’t undo the consequences. See Darlene having that exact conversation with the hooker post-credits.

While time travel/whatever fits logically (I guess) it undermines the real themes that they’re going for.

Wake_N_Bake fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Dec 16, 2017

DaveKap
Feb 5, 2006

Pickle: Inspected.



Gluten Freeman posted:

The ability to wind back time and undo mistakes is the core theme of this season. Angela wants to bring her mum back, but she can't. She kills thousands of people in service of this goal, and ultimately realises she was used. Elliott wants to undo 5/9, but he can't. He finds he can decrypt the data at great cost in life, but ultimately the damage caused to society is far too deep to be fixed like that.

The time travel references aren't red herrings, they're an essential thematic element.
You can call it a thematic element, to be sure, but it's still executed in such a way that it heavily implies a character in the show has the ability to control time and reality. It's worth keeping in mind that the whole Bearenstain/Bearenstein and Shazaam bits were placed in the show to co-opt Elliot's own inability to understand his reality (Mr. Robot, sister, jail, jumping out window) to force the theme of alternate realities... and yet the same "time-controlling" character gives a monologue about alternate realities directly to a main character.

What I'm trying to get at here is that yes, these are themes, but because of this seemingly-omniscient antagonist's abilities, the execution of the themes become hints at something greater, something beyond the understandable. Without any explanation as to why those hints exist (outside of the fact they are both themes to a TV show and produced to encourage Internet speculation, two things the character within the show has zero intent to do,) they are red herrings from the mind of a crazy person.

Lest we forget that people within this show are somehow consistently, powerfully convinced of something that Whiterose herself is consistently, powerfully convinced of. In an age and era where magic was still magic, it's easy to explain how this kind of convincing occurs. In an age where magic is just a trick and technology is the new magic, the fact we still don't know what Whiterose showed Angela, let alone her lover to killed himself, is telling. We will either never find out (Lost,) get a lovely answer (it's just hypnosis!) or something outside of our boundaries of understanding is involved. If it's the elusive fourth option, a good answer that isn't supernatural, I'm extremely interested in finding out what it is.

Wake_N_Bake posted:

While time travel/whatever fits logically (I guess) it undermines the real themes that they’re going for.
Boom. This. I believe the executions of the intended themes are undermining what the show is trying to do. if and only if those executions are indeed the red herrings I see them as (actually that part didn't matter.) That's what I see as the problem here.

Oh yeah also as a huge fan of Tyrell in S1 I'm real sad how little of him we get in S2 and S3 (as much fun as his solo episode was) so I hope S4 goes all out with him going back to American Psycho.

DaveKap fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Dec 16, 2017

cochise
Sep 11, 2011


precision posted:

edit: not Joey Bada$$, the other guy, the guy handing out CDs in season 1

Cisco? His brains got exposed to air courtesy of the Dark Army at the end of season 2. He's dead as gently caress. The FBI confirmed that earlier this season.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Blind Rasputin posted:

Also, why in ththe first place was Elliot “losing it with a bat.” I mean, did something more serious happen between him and his dad prior? Or did he mentally crack at a young age and start seeing two of them, then didn’t trust his real father when he came home.

He probably had like a panic attack or a seizure or something. Elliot was not totally on the level even before his accident. He's always been a bit off in the head. The accident just made it way, way worse.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Orange Devil posted:

Yeah but as the conversation Darlene had with the prostitute illustrates, he hasn't undone the consequences of 5/9.

People saying Elliot "undid" 5/9 is really dumb to me. What? He brought back the data... but that was just ONE PART of what happened. He didn't magically reverse time like White Rose is claiming. Its not even remotely the same thing.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Blind Rasputin posted:

Time travel theories are real folks.

How on earth would that possibly prove anything? He's shooting himself because he believes he's coming back. We already knew that. Him saying a cool Chinese phrase doesn't prove he IS definitely coming back, it just again states that he believes he will. Which we already knew. Nothing changes. Its still very very likely he's just dead forever because he's a brainwashed fanatic that Whiterose used and discarded.

You can love someone and still kill them. People are crazy. Whiterose is definitely crazy.

Mameluke
Aug 2, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
And not to be a total pedant, but Elliot didn't even undo the hack himself. He sent the encryption info to Ecorp which does leave a little narrative point of failure.

Chef Boyardeez Nuts
Sep 9, 2011

The more you kick against the pricks, the more you suffer.
The economy is still turbofucked, but at least my house payment is back!

JitteryComa
Nov 6, 2012

Zaphod42 posted:

How on earth would that possibly prove anything? He's shooting himself because he believes he's coming back. We already knew that. Him saying a cool Chinese phrase doesn't prove he IS definitely coming back, it just again states that he believes he will. Which we already knew. Nothing changes. Its still very very likely he's just dead forever because he's a brainwashed fanatic that Whiterose used and discarded.

You can love someone and still kill them. People are crazy. Whiterose is definitely crazy.

It's like people have forgotten that cults are a thing.

Krime
Jul 30, 2003

Somebody has to do the scoring around here.
My wife deleted the recording while I was at work.

:[

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

Krime posted:

My wife deleted the recording while I was at work.

:[

I hate to break it to you, but that's the least bad thing about the timeline you jumped into.

apatheticman
May 13, 2003

Wedge Regret
Tyrell is the CTO of Ecorp now whose to say he doesnt do poo poo with the email.

All Elliot did was send the key....

counterfeitsaint
Feb 26, 2010

I'm a girl, and you're
gnomes, and it's like
what? Yikes.
I wonder if the next season will revolve around the fact that undoing the hack after all this time is just gonna make poo poo way worse. You've got all the catastrophic damage to the world economy from the past several months, and on top of that all the world debt is suddenly now back.

Or maybe it will suddenly just be a mix of Sliders and time travel poo poo. Because that would be super cool and totally inline with the tone of the show so far. :rolleyes:

Kabuki Shipoopi
Jun 22, 2007

If I fall, you don't get the head, right? If you lose the head, you're fucked!

People take every word said literally, and that is what "bad at watching TV" is referring to.

Maybe White Rose wants to predict the future with a quantum computer thus "controlling time", maybe White Rose has a plan so elaborate and precise, nobody else could possibly understand her machinations.

But let's talk time travel and why it wouldn't make sense in this show. There are a few types of time travel. BTTF/Bill and Ted rules where there is one timeline that can be altered, and Continuum/12 Monkeys multiple timelines.

If it's one timeline, everything is predetermined. If that's the case in this show, everything done is totally pointless because it can be altered, has been altered, will be altered to suit White Rose. Everything is according to plan because it has already happened the way it should because time travel will be invented, and utilized precisely the way White Rose intends. Just like the scene where Bill and Ted remind themselves to leave keys somewhere and place a garbage can trap. That is basically a total gently caress you to the characters actions and free will and makes for a really lovely ending. Lost.

If it's multiple timelines, things still don't matter because there are infinite versions of everyone. Say you go back in time and take Plato's Symposium back to Plato before he wrote it. Who then wrote that book? Plato did, from a different timeline that continues to exist. You (the time traveler) see two Plato's, to us, you just disappear forever. Our timeline goes on forever without you, while you alter the one you went to. It changes nothing for us because you are just gone. We continue on without you.

Now remember, the timeline you went to would seem altered to us if you told us about it, but to you, it would be business as usual. Your time is just as it should be because you exist outside of timelines like Doctor Who. You wouldn't be able to predict events because time would be altered the moment you arrive in the new timeline. Different timeline, different history, different versions of existing things. Infinite possibilities.

So that means if there is one timeline, everything is invalidated and makes events a "it was all a dream" level of pointless. Or there are multiple timelines and if everyone dies in one, then nobody dies in another and that is equally boring and lovely in a story.

Or even worse, it's a paradoxical timeline explanation Esmail just invents, thus undoing his own meticulously crafted and realistic story. Which is still a gently caress you to us.

I would think with how good this show is, Esmail understands this and wouldn't do this to us.

mrbotus
Apr 7, 2009

Patron of the Pants
Speaking of mandarin Chinese, everyone in this show is terrible at speaking it. It's really the only thing that pulls me out of the show. Not all the fretting about whether or not there's time travel but the slow clumsy rhythm of speaking the overly careful pronunciation and the obvious direct translation from an English script into chinese.

Sio
Jan 20, 2007

better red than dead

Kabuki Shipoopi posted:

People take every word said literally, and that is what "bad at watching TV" is referring to.

No, refusing to accept White Rose's motivation after it has has been thoroughly hinted at over the seasons and explicitly spelled out this season is being bad at watching TV.

She may be insane, or she may be pursuing a pipe dream, but she is absolutely trying to alter the timeline in some concrete manner, and as the most powerful character in the show, Esmail is asking the audience to consider the concept as a serious possibility whether it ever actually happens or not.

The season literally starts with a scene met the establish the theoretical underpinnings of this! Whether you buy it or not, the show is making a clear effort.

Sio fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Dec 16, 2017

counterfeitsaint
Feb 26, 2010

I'm a girl, and you're
gnomes, and it's like
what? Yikes.
I don't think anyone is questioning that Whiterose either truly believes she can alter time, or that she's actively lying and tricking people into thinking she can altering time. But in either case it's unlikely that she really can alter time.

nickmeister posted:

Speaking of mandarin Chinese, everyone in this show is terrible at speaking it. It's really the only thing that pulls me out of the show. Not all the fretting about whether or not there's time travel but the slow clumsy rhythm of speaking the overly careful pronunciation and the obvious direct translation from an English script into chinese.

I recently did a rewatch. I don't speak a word of Mandarin, but even I noticed the delivery was really bad in some scenes.

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep

Varam posted:

No, refusing to accept White Rose's motivation after it has has been thoroughly hinted at over the seasons and explicitly spelled out this season is being bad at watching TV.

She may be insane, or she may be pursuing a pipe dream, but she is absolutely trying to alter the timeline in some concrete manner, and as the most powerful character in the show, Esmail is asking the audience to consider the concept as a serious possibility whether it ever actually happens or not.

The season literally starts with a scene met the establish the theoretical underpinnings of this! Whether you buy it or not, the show is making a clear effort.

Yes. At this point, denying that Whiterose plan is something about time travel (or alternate realities or something like it) is really dumb. Maybe it is impossible, like Pryce said, but sure is her endgame and something she (and not only she) believes.

And like someone above said: this show is already sci-fi, its always been. We dont live in a world where a single corporation owns everything and there's a hacker mafia controlling China from behind the curtains. Its also about mental illness and a very realistic portrayal of hacker stuff, but it is sci-fi. I have no problem with it, and Im not getting any Lost vibes at all: this has been slowly and consistently introduced from the start

Anyways, amazing finale. This season was amazing, even if its started kinda slow. Still one of the best things in TV, by far. Too bad we going to have to wait so much to have more of it

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Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

ashpanash posted:

They’re not idiots (the show goes out of its way to imply it, after all), but I think they’re wrong. The show has been about mental illness. Why wouldn’t we assume that the people in control are just as crazy and, at times, delusional, as everyone else?

A million times this. People really want to believe that mental struggles and insecurities and delusions and all that are the type of thing the downtrodden deal with. Elliot and his crew are the perfect representations of characters who fit this idea. Even if they are brilliant they are crippled and kept low in some ways by their issues and struggles.

Meanwhile it's comforting to think that those with the real power in society are firmly in control. Not in the last place of their own faculties and their own insecurities. Their policies and ambitions surely must have some greater purpose or design, and it can't just be pettiness or intensely personal, right?

An abused wife in the slums can go back to her wife-beater husband because of daddy issues. That's a narrative we'll accept. A president can't possibly be ruining a country and threatening nuclear war because of daddy issues. A billionaire CEO isn't seen as ruinously dysfunctional when his main motivator is insecurity about never being good enough.

If next season deals with the top 0,01% I hope Esmail lays it on thick to show how in this world of ours you can't be both a sane, well-adjusted and moral human being and a billionaire at the same time. Something is loving wrong with you if you just keep accumulating and accumulating long past the point where you have more than more than enough. And just really think for a moment about what is going on inside of people who want power for powers sake.

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