A ;pt pf these diaries are going to be brief, as the busiest parts of my year are always the first two-ish weeks of a semester, and the last two. Not really for the Summer, but more for Fall and Spring, so I’ll be consuming even less content to even write about in the first place.
TV Shows Watched: the Umbrella Academy: S4E6 (Netflix) with audio description, Tales Of The TMNT: S1E8 and S1E9 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, and UnPrisoned (S2E6? (Hulu) with audio description
Podcasts (All Through Apple Podcasts with speed modifications): Choice Words With Samantha Bee (Gun Control), The Big Picture (Sing Sing), Post Reports (Breakdancing at the Olympics)
YouTube: Sadly, non.
Movies: Again… none.
So, The umbrella Academy is fully behind me. Not complaining about the show this time, just a shoutout to the work that IDC, Liz Gutman, and Amanda Bhutan did all season long. Amanda’s voice was a balanced choice, since this show defies genre definition. yes, it has action, yes it has horror elements, but it often is far too silly to throw a darker toned voice onto it. I think matching that comedic tone more than any other blended tone was the right move, and Amanda kept it feeling light. The actual description did well with the violence, the ripping out of intestines, the sores all over Ben, whatever the hell Jennifer was turning into, and their final form. We didn’t need complicated definition and individuality of every single Five, because that scene lasted only about 2 minutes, and he only interacted with maybe 2 or 3 versions of himself long enough to gain the exposition needed. Any qualms people may have comes from the fact that the show itself has really shitty writers.
Beyond my initial complaint about Sloan, you have the fact that Allison has a completely different set of powers, and never “rumors” anyone, and doesn’t even seem to care or reference the power change. Lyla literally gains Five’s ability out of nowhere. Just because the plot demanded it. Earlier, they got T-Boned by the station wagon while everyone was inside, and conveniently no one could be conscious enough to use their powers to stop Jennifer from being taken, yet at the top of the next episode, everyone is perfectly fine, and the van is drivable. In fact, the van is drivable all the way up until they need it to finally conveniently break down in the finale outside of the abandoned department store. Wasn’t much of a T-Bone.
They are not from this world, yet Lyla has a family? From where? All our main characters came from another timeline,so how does Lyla have a family? Think of all the other characters that aren’t in this timeline. And lastly, and this is a huge spoiler, but the ending makes no sense. Five realizes that the only way to stop this from happening, as it turns out they are the problem and always mess things up in every timeline and the world ends, is for “the Cleanse” to take them so that they never existed in the original timeline. Therefore, The umbrella Academy never happened, because no special babies were born. Except, that doesn’t work. They are missing an original member of the team, and I have a feeling that if given more episodes, any decent writer would hav had them needing to travel back to a specific point so they could include THEIR Ben in all of this, so that way ALL of the original members are wiped from existence.
Since Lyla’s family survives, thanks to the subway, and is shown, we see that variants can survive in the Prime timeline at the end. the problem is Ben is a variant. This is not their Ben, and this isn’t even the correct Ben for even the world they are in, if that ever existed after the events of Season 3. A variant Ben can’t substitute for real Ben, because what they are saying is that by erasing themselves, all these alternate timelines never needed to happen. So, no Sparrows. So, if done correctly, in sort of a weird paradoxical effect, that Ben wouldn’t exist (neither would Sloan).
but I hear you. “It was about absorbing all the marigold”. Right? Wrong. As we saw in the flashback, Klaus did not take his shot, and instead threw it over his shoulder hitting someone passing by. That is some free range marigold running around. In fact, i half expected some random dude with super powers to show up, or them at least deal with what happened to Joe Schmoe. But, if we are to assume then that Bennifer needed to consume all the marigold, they would need to consume that missing marigold as well.
this is what you get when the writers really aren’t that great, and they find out they have 4 less episodes than they originally planned for. You get plot holes, and the audience is asked to turn their brains off far more than they should. But, if we want to accept the finale with the cameos of all the people alive who the Umbrella Academy killed, then there are other questions that go unanswered. But, for a show that changed Allison’s powers, and gave Lyla a power randomly at the end just so she could have a dramatic moment of blinking away, we shouldn’t expect these writers to be the kind who could handle a truncated final season. this was truly one of the worst final seasons I’ve ever seen, Sloan or no Sloan, she couldn’t save this from the writers.
