JasonX

ASM #441 is the first part of the MUCH HATED "FINAL CHAPTER", which had Howard Mackie take a HUGE shit on Tom DeFalco's subplot about Peter and MJ's baby still being alive, featured Green Goblin finally getting his comeuppence off-panel inbetween the events of Parts 3 and 4, and brought us the pathetic running gag that is "The Genetically Altered Actress" retcon that Mackie used to resurrect Aunt May and to erase her from ever knowing Spidey's secret ID... Needless to say, Final Chapter (along with the "Gathering of the Five, which occurred the month before "The Final Chapter") along with the first two years of the reboot are pretty much the Spidey franchise hitting rock bottom and are so reviled and hated that it singlehandedly redeemed the Clone Saga in the eyes of Marvel fans by the sheer fact that as bad and as intelligence insulting as the Clone Saga was, compared that the GOT5/TFC/Reboot run, the Clone Saga was fucking Shakespear in comparision....

Spectacular Spidey, Amazing Spidey, and Marvel Knights Spidey are all part of the regular Marvel Universe and feature the same old Spidey. Sadly, unlike in the older days, the books are pretty much self-contained so you rarely get any crossovers or referrences to the goings on in the other Spidey books. Ultimate Spidey on the other hand takes place in the "Ultimate Marvel" universe and has noting to do with the other Spidey books...

That was in 1998, two years after the clone saga and one year prior to the reboot (which BTW is hated even more than the Clone Saga, to such an extent that many comic fans consider the first two and a half years of the reboot to be more damaging to the Spiderman franchise than the Clone Saga)...

"From the darkest corners of the moon, an evil threat to the planet Earth is about to be unleased. An innocent teenager, under the thrall of an evil witch and charged with an unholy emerald power will reign terror upon Earth and the five teens charged with the task of defending humanity against the forces of evil." Green With Evil: The Green Ranger Saga. A Five-Part Series Starting This Friday at The Smart Marks.com

Heroes Reborn continuity. In regular Marvel continuity, Richards was Doom's roommate. I think Banner was at one point a roommate of Walter Langowski aka Sasquatch of Alpha Flight. Someone needs to ask Trabold at 411 about it actually... Doom wasn't Reed's roommate in the regular Marvel Universe cannon, Ben "The Thing" Grimm was Reed's roommate. There was a story in Fantastic Four #400 about this where Reed and Doom first met at college. The two contemplait becoming roommates but ultimately decide not to because of the notion that they would end up hating each other's guts if they lived together for a prolong period of time.

Robert Smegle has gone on the record of saying not to expect any sort of DVD compilation for his TV Funhouse SNL shorts do to the problems getting the music rights cleared.

Actually "Born" was a glorified vanity project for Garth Ennis, who's been wanting to do a war comic about Vietnam for quite some time but could never get DC to greenlight him doing a Vietnam-themed story as part of his ongoing "War Stories" series for the company.

The 1990s version is a lot more dark and depressing and that the Lundgren (who dyed his blond hair black for the part) makes Punisher much much much more of a dark and tragic figure. The 1990 version also tells of the whole origin of the Punisher right off the bat and doesn't spend no-where near as much time on it than the 2004 version did. The plot for the 1990 version is also based upon an original story while the 2004 film's plot is loosely based upon the Garth Ennis written Punisher mini-series....

Actually the best way to handle this would be to start from scratch again and have Steph show up with a deux de machina plot twist to explain how she has any sort of power in the WWE and have her propose to HHH that they remarry so that they can reinstate their control over the WWE. Acknowledge their previous marriage and divorce (perhaps even retconning the fact that Steph and Jericho slept together when she was managing him, which was why HHH went ahead with the divorce and give a logical storyline reason for HHH hating Jericho and using his marriage to make life hell for CJ) and move on from there. The problem with this those is that if they did this angle, they would have to basically move HHH and Evo to SD because it would totally screw up the status quo on Raw which has shown to be doing good with Bischoff as the head guy in charge. Plus SD needs SOMETHING to bring viewers back to the show and I'm sure that the notion of Steph/HHH/Evo versus Eddy Guerrerro would be a good storyline that could revive the dying SD brand...

Big complaint though that I have towards these types of compilations: Instead of doing "The Best Of" why the fuck not go balls out and do a DEFINATE collection of ALL of "insert cast member's name here"'s sketches? Especially given how season box sets are never going to happen.....

Speculation: I seriously think Ingrid is a plant, an actress hired to pretend to be Jane Doe for the show in order to create even more tension with the actors by being one step shy of exposing the game. And it would make sense especially given how much speculation was made during JS 1 that Matt was going to be revealed to be in on the plot as well...

You know what I miss? The REAL Cactus Jack, not the toned down castrated "Cactus" that's runs around in the WWE. Also, no matter how much the WWE works with Orton, he'll never truly be over unless he gets a fucking personality and develops some god-damn depth to his character.

Nice idea but two problems: 1. Tavon was written out of the series during the finale, as Vic stated that Tavon had quit the team inbetween episode 314 and 315. 2. At the end of the season finale, Acaveda relayed a message from the Chief to Claudette about how she had lost her promotion and that he had picked another person to replace Acaveda. That being said, I offer the following alternative set-up: The Strike Team is disbanded, Claudette is in the doghouse, and Dutch is still trying to get Vic for his involment in the Money Train heist. In order to keep Dutch occupied and to keep Ronnie and Lem around as a favor to Vic, Acaveda uses his pull to create a sex crimes investigation group (similar to L&O's SVU) with Dutch leading it. As part of the squad, Ronnie and Lem are working together and are the only members of the ST who are on speaking terms, especially after Ronnie befriends Dutch and starts defending him to Vic, who is furious that Ronnie would take Dutch's side over Vic's. Claudette meanwhile is paired with Shane, who has officially severed all ties with Vic and become even more of a lose cannon (do to the fact that his wife Mara has miscarried and blames Shane for her miscarriage), to such an extent that Acaveda has been ordered to stick the two together in hopes that they do something that will give the Chief the excuse to fire both of them. Vic meanwhile is working with Dani (who's magically been promoted to Detective status inbetween seasons) and mentoring her. Sadly their relationship is convoluted do to the fact that Dani has started sleeping with Vic again despite having feelings for Dutch. Meanwhile Vic is ultra-bitter at Dutch for getting hs sex-cirmes investigation group greenlighted in the wake of the ST being disbanded. The status quo stays that way for a while (around 4-5 episodes) until a full-fledged gang war breaks out in Farmington, which leads to the reformation of the ST with Vic in charge. However Ronnie and Lem refuse to rejoin the team, so Vic is forced to rebuild it from scratch with Dani, Claudette (who is convinced by Acaveda to join so as to keep Vic in check) and Shane, who by this point in the series has made up with Vic after Mara leaves him. Meanwhile Dutch and Dani finally have sex, behind Vic's back. Keep this going for several more episodes until the last couple of episodes of the season, when Vic's team and Dutch's team both are forced to work together to catch a drug-dealer/rapist. During this team-up, Dani let's it slip that she had sex with Dutch to Vic, which leads to Dutch and Vic to finally have it out and fight. I'd also toss in Claudette trying to reform Shane and bring him into the straight and narrow path of good and Shane being torn between Vic and Claudette.

The teasing would have worked better if they had Dutch respond back with an equally nasty diss aimed at Vic. At least that way, we'd have something new be tossed into the Vic and Dutch hate each other storyline, with Dutch pulling out his own vile insults to counter Vic's bullying that freaks Vic out. The notion that Dutch can freak out Vic even more than Vic can make Dutch feel like a loser would be a great addition to their interaction and make for some good verbal sparing between the two actors... Well Kenny Johnson has stated he'll be back for season four so unless season four starts immeadiately following the end of season three, there is a good chance that Lem's problems with the ST might be ironed out off-camera....

They actually had a updated version of Legend of Zelda 1 in the works in 2000, which would have been released alongside the two Oracle Zelda GBC games but shelved it do to problems with getting everything to fit in the GBC screen.

In 1992, George Bush Senior started badmouthing the Simpsons in the media as being an example of how America was going to hell. In particular, he made an infamous comment about how American "needed more Waltons and less Simpsons on television". Which led to a life-long hatred for TPTB in charge of the Simpsons for Bush, culminating in them doing an episode where Bart and Homer torment Bush for 30 minutes...

Cool picture there of the guys from Firefly. Is that picture from the DVD set?

Kraven's still dead but Marvel has made a point though to introduce various bastard children of Kraven who looks JUT LIKE his dad and having them go around and calling themselves Kraven and such.

I disagree. They should get rid of her ASAP because of the fact that it's kind of annoying to have to see the ST running around with their heads cut off in fear of one woman getting them busted. By all accounts, Kenny Johnson is going to be back for season four so I would assume that either he ends up being convinced to stay on the team or he ends up floating around and possibly ending up as Dutch's partner if they actually pull the trigger of splitting him off from Claudette. From the preview for the finale, it seems like they are going to continue to ultra-slow burn the election storyline. As for Claudette, I'm assuming that she'll burn her bridges with the drug addict lawyer subplot only to have some sort of ace up her sleave to keep her from being targetted for retaliation, so as to keep her storyline up in the air. My guess is that the writers will have Dutch finally stand up to and get the better of Vic during their confrontation, which will reset their rivalry come next season. Which is good given how that was an interesting aspect during season one, in the way that Dutch and Vic absolutely hated each other with a burning passion.

It looked like he burned just about all of the money. There was a shot right before they came into the room where you saw a pile of empty trunks in the corner of the room. Needless to say I was suprised that they successfully had Vic con Tavon into thinking he had done harm to Mara, let alone had Lem actually go through with the con-job. But then again it did help the main direction of the story, with Lem reaching his breaking point and having his nervous breakdown. Though I have to wonder how many people would catch the bit of fourth wall breaking on the part of Kenny Johnson in regards to his comment about how the Strike Team are his only family and how he didn't want to see any of them go to jail... That being said, next week's episode looks to be a good one: Vic confronting Dutch about his investigation of Vic, Claudette getting called out on her superiority complex, and hopefully Vic getting fed up with Shane and shooting him....

Watching the second episode with it in mind that Lem and Ronnie weren't involved in Terry's death makes some stuff that you wouldn't notice the first time around stand out. Such as Vic's "Dear God, Lem's going to tear me limb from limb if he finds out I killed Terry" reaction when Lem breaks a car window with his bare hand out of anger over Terry's death and the "What the Fuck Is Going On Between Those Two" look Ronnie gives Vic and Shane when Vic tells Shane in an ominous sounding tone to tell the IAD investigators "The Truth" about what happened to Terry....

Correct. Which is also why Vic freaked out when Lem brought up Terry's death a couple of episodes back, since he knows that if Lem and Ronnie found out about it that they would turn against Vic and Shane in a heartbeat.

http://thesmartmarks.com/artman/publish/article_1464.shtml My new and controversial article discussing the third season of 24 and how it has caused the series to jump the proverbial shark with it's casual killing off of key characters and shoddy scripting and abandonment of plots left and right. Thoughts comments loose change?

I agree that this episode was definately a filler-episode. But next week's episode previous seems to finally have things explode at long last, with Lem having his long awaited nervous breakdown and turning against the Strike Team.... 1. The mantle of "dead man walking" once again falls upon Lem after the preview for next week's episode. At best Lem is head for one major nervous breakdown that will probably end with him leaving the Strike Team and the police and at worst Vic is going to kill Lem and do it in a manner to send a message to Shane, Ronnie, and Tavon of what happens when you attempt to betray him. That being said, I possibly can see them pulling off an eleventh hour twist and have Lem destroying the money actually save the team from being arrested for their part in the heist BUT I can also see the writers needing to prove a point with the storyline (IE that greed will destroy everything, even close friends like the ST) by having Lem still end up dead by Vic's hands only for Vic to find out post murder that Lem's actions saved the team and that he ended up being killed by his ingrate friends after saving their asses when he could have let them keep the money and rot in jail when they get caught with it. 2. The writers definately are moving towards Vic reconciling with his estranged wife. That's most likely the reason why we have these ultra-annoying subplots involving the dog handler lady, since the writers are trying to create a situation where Vic is going to end up getting proverbally screwed over and ends up crawling back to Corrine with his tail tucked inbetween his legs. 3. The subplot of sending Matthew to the home for autistic kids who can't be cured seems to be the natural progression for the character, who seems to exist to provide the show with a "Greek Tragedy-esque Figure Who Suffers For the Sins of the Villainous Main Character" sort of character. 4. That being said, I wouldn't also put it past the writers to have them have Corrine ship Matthew to the home for Austistic Child just as Vic arrives home to tell Corrine that he's quit the force, is ready to be a full-time dad, and wanting to reconcile. 5. And speaking of teases, the writers continue to give hints of Ronnie possibly playing the entire Strike Team as pawns in some sort of Machievellian Chess game. Given how the writers have already established Ronnie as a computer whiz, he could have easily have gotten disabled the security cameras being used to spy upon the Irish guy in order to escalate removing him from the picture in order to quell suspicions about the Strike Team/bring the Armenian Mob down upon the city so as to further create a schism in the ST. 6. I'm also suprised that the writers didn't reinsert Mara into the picture by having her discover the body and make things even more complicated and convoluted for the ST. 7. While it's nice to see Dutch once again butting heads with the Strike Team, I was extremely disappointed that they fell back on the boring "Vic doesn't respect Dutch as a detective" cliche instead of building upon the interaction between Dutch and Vic for the last couple of seasons and have Vic scared shitless that Dutch will discover their involvement in the heist. 8. As for Julien, my guess is that it's been dropped for this season now that he was able to actually have sex with his wife. That being said, there isn't that much they can do this season save for having his wife reveal that she's pregnant given the fact that the show has a huge number of plotlines to resolve in the remaining two episodes...

Salazar gave him a pill to take care of the symptoms for the time being. Who knows, he will probably still have the addiction and may get it taken care of. But once they gave him the magic pills the entire plot went away without any mention of it again. Pretty lazy writing, especially after they made a huge ass deal about how Keifer purposely did H not to fit in but because he was fucked up inside enough that he had to have the H to kill his angst and function. I would assume no major damage considering he kept on the rest of the day. You can call it a cop out of the storyline, but I don't think you can call it aborted So why did they tease the notion of him not having full mental capacities at CTU? Well when she got killed I would imagine that would end the romance. We should know by now Jack isn't going to mope around for days about his plight when there is shit going down. You would think it would get passing mention especially given how she essentially saved Chase's life as well as the fact that maybe Claudia's fling with Jack is why he was breaking up with Kate at the start of the season How was this dumped? She ended up killing the guy. Only after they jetisoned the entire plot point down the drain after spending two episodes establishing it. IF they wanted her to just kill him, why not skip that entire thing all together and go straight to the nagging to death? Who cares? Why would they bring this up when it is three years after their ordeal. How stupid would it be if the gave a random dialogue about a failed relationship of Jack's? It would explain a lot of stuff (such as Jack's drug addiction). Plus we never really knew why he dumped her or how the dumping might be connected to the fact that he was banging Claudia on the side (which would have given some more depth to the Claudia subplot, with Jack being torn between helping her and not wanting to have anything to do with her because of how his fling with her helped ruin his relationship with Kate. Plus Kate was a pretty popular character in seaons two, so it would make sense to make passing referrence to her. I kind of remember Kim being a little pissed. But it was never fully explored or expanded upon. It was like the writers wanted to create a wacky CTU-themed subplot and instantly created the baby, which went away as soon as they got bored with the plot of Chloe having to play "hide the baby". Um, I think the matter he is up for treason should close this one for you. Yeah but the writers don't acknowledge it after making it such a big thing in the first couple of episodes. A throwaway joke between Tony and Michelle about would be nice if only to give closure to the plot How was this aborted? Michelle made them the offer and they left it at that, we didn't need anymore. Hell, the storyline was probably just to make Chapelle look more sympathetic so people cared about his death. It would have been quite the slow down if we are in the middle of chasing down Saunders, then 2 episodes later we jump back to the hotel just to see people take the pills. Law of depravity in film. You promise gore and death, you deliver it. The fact that they made a huge point of suicide pills being provided and suddenly drop the entire plotline for the sake of Michelle as hostage cheats the audience of a major element to the whole virus storyline, of whether or not people would do it. But the writers ended up being lazy hacks who totally dropped the hotel plot as soon as they established Michelle wasn't infected except for when they decided to bring everyone back to the hotel in order to do the cliche of Saunders giving up his plan to keep Bauer from infecting his daughter and even then the situation at the hotel was never fully expanded upon as to what happened. The medical crew was setting up quarantine zones to look for the people. IIRC, they were able to find the people who came in contact with the man who escaped. But either way the show focuses on CTU, not the medical crew. More hack writing. Why tease the virus getting out of control and then pussy out? People watch 24 for death destruction and violence. So why not make the last episodes of season 3 end with LA being turned into a plague-consumed death-zone?