The Walking Dead Season 6, Episode 3: Thank You

Holy Flarking Schnit! This may have been the most tense episode of The Walking Dead yet! I was exhausted by the time it was over! As much as I like the series, it's definitely not easy to watch.

Ever since Rick & Co. arrived at Alexandria, the show's been hewing pretty closely to the comic. They made a huge diversion this week though, as a major character died way before they were supposed to and in a completely different manner. Or did they? 

They've deviated like this before, of course. In the comic, the Governor beheaded Tyreese, and later Michonne had to put his still-living noggin out of its misery. On the show, the Governor did the same to Hershel. Lori, Shane and TV Andrea all had different fates on the show than they did in the comic.

But this divergence is different. This particular character's death wasn't due to happen for quite a while yet, and it famously came at the hands of a major villain that hasn't yet been introduced. If this character really is dead, it's a massive change, and makes me wonder if they'll even bother adding the villain and his storyline.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

The Plot:

This week we rewind a bit, joining Rick & Co. just after they've heard the horn blasting away in Alexandria. The vast walker heard has split up, but Rick is determined to salvage the operation. He tells Glenn and Michonne to get the Alexandrian redshirts back home, and to abandon anyone who slows them down. Rick heads for the RV alone to try and divert the walkers if possible.

Things immediately go from bad to worse. In classic horror movie fashion, Annie twists her ankle. The group is surrounded by walkers, while Scott is wounded in the leg. David is bitten in the shoulder, but insists on returning home to say goodbye to his wife. 

Glenn and Michonne decide to stop in a nearby town to rest and regroup. Unfortunately the town is quickly surrounded by walkers. The group hides inside an abandoned pet shop. Glenn volunteers to set fire to a feed store to lure the walkers away so they can escape. Nicholas offers to go with him, since he's supposedly familiar with the town. Glenn radios Rick and tells him the plan, and says, "Be careful, dumbass."

Meanwhile, Daryl, Abraham and Sasha are still luring the front half of the zombie herd away from town. Daryl hears shots from Alexandria and wants to help. Sasha advises him against leaving, but he does so anyway. He drives toward home (I guess), but eventually meets back up with Abraham and Sasha, in a puzzling subplot that went nowhere and existed solely to pad the run time.

Nicholas and Glenn find the feed store, but it's already been burned to the ground. Isn't that always the way? They try to find their way back to the pet shop, but Nicholas is visibly distressed and disoriented. He quickly gets them trapped in a dead end alley. As hordes of walkers file into the alley, Glenn and Nicholas climb on top of a dumpster. Nicholas looks at Glenn, tells him "Thank you" and shoots himself in the head. His lifeless body knocks Glenn off the dumpster and he's seemingly devoured by a huge crowd of walkers.

Rick is attacked by walkers and injures his hand while taking them out. He makes it back to the RV and tries to coordinate the operation by walkie-talkie. He contacts Daryl and Sasha, but Glenn and Tobin don't respond. Suddenly the RV is attacked by Wolves. The very group of five Wolves that Morgan let go last week. I told you that was a bad idea, and it would come back to bite someone in the ass!

Rick easily dispatches the Wolves. As he's looting their bodies, he finds a jar of baby food in one of their pockets and realizes they've come from Alexandria, and probably his home. He starts to head back, but naturally the RV's plot-specific ignition won't start. He's soon surrounded by the approaching walker horde.

Thoughts:

• The Walking Dead really loves symmetry. Over and over on the show, a character who's about to die will utter one of the very first lines they ever said.

Way back in the first episode, Morgan's son hit Rick in the head with a shovel, thinking he was a walker. When he came to, Morgan was standing over him. After getting no response from Rick, Morgan says, "Look, I ask, and you answer. That's common courtesy, right?" In the first episode of this season, Rick visits Morgan in the improvised jail and sees he's practicing his sweet bo staff skills. He asks where he learned it, and gets no response. Rick says, "I ask, you answer. It's common courtesy, right?"

Also in Season 1, TV Andrea had to put down her recently zombified sister Amy. Rick handed her a gun and told her the safety was off. She said, "I know how the safety works." Later in the Season 3 finale, TV Andrea was bitten by Milton, and asked Rick for a gun so she could shoot herself before she turned. Rick hands her the gun and she again says, "I know how the safety works."

At the end of the very first episode, Rick is surrounded by walkers and dives into an abandoned tank to escape. He hears Glenn's voice on his walkie-talkie, saying, "Hey you. Dumbass. Yeah, you in the tank. Cozy in there?" In this episode he tells Rick, "Be careful, Dumbass." Symmetry. Deadly symmetry.

• This episode is a treasure trove of horror movie cliches. Annie stumbles slightly and twists her ankle. Sturgess fires his gun in panic and hits Scott in the leg. David can't wait to get back to his wife, so of course he's immediately bitten. And of course we have the ever popular unreliable vehicle with the plot-specific ignition that only fails at the worst possible time.

• After being attacked by walkers, Rick nurses an injured left hand. At first I thought maybe he'd been bitten, so I rewound the scene to watch it again. Upon closer inspection, one of the walkers looked like it had a machete sticking out of its head. It appears that Rick cut himself on the machete while he was taking out the walker. So he wasn't bitten.

I think it's still going to be a problem for him though. The machete probably had walker gore all over it, and it sliced open Rick's hand. In the comic, Negan-- the villain who out-governored the Governor-- controlled an army that dipped arrows and bullets in walker gore before shooting them at victims, which guaranteed they'd become infected and die.

If the show goes the same way as the comic in this respect, Rick's got a big problem. It's no secret by now that Rick is missing his right hand in the comic. It was chopped off by the Governor, who tortured him for information. Is this how the show's going to introduce one-handed Rick? 

The series has always been vague and inconsistent about how the whole zombification thing works. In this universe everyone's already infected with the zombie virus, which is why anyone who dies for any reason turns shortly after. A bite or scratch from a walker simply becomes infected and kills you. That much we know. What isn't clear is why people sprayed with walker blood and guts don't appear to become infected and die. Getting walker blood in your system seems like it'd be just as bad as a bite, but what do I know?

Robert Kirkman, creator of the comic, admitted that he wrote the "Rick losing his hand" plot just to be shocking, and didn't fully think things through. He's said if he had it to do over again-- and he does, here-- he wouldn't have him lose his hand after all. 

So who knows where they're going with this? It would be a shocker if it happens on the show, but it would also be expensive. Will AMC want to pony up the dough to greenscreen Rick's hand out of virtually every scene from now on? And if they're not going down that road, then what was the point of him cutting his hand? Just to worry us?

• Glenn, Michonne and the others rest in a small town near Alexandria. I'm guessing the name of this place is Mazeville. The entire town apparently consists of nothing but dangerous dead end alleys.

• Michonne, Heath, Scott and David run down one of these dead end alleys. The only way out is over a tall metal fence. Everyone makes it over except for David, who's swarmed with walkers. 

So why does everyone just wring their hands and watch helplessly while David's eaten alive? Jesus, Michonne, stick your sword through the fence and into the poor guy's head to put him out of his misery. She did it to the other redshirt earlier in the episode, why not here?

• As I said earlier, the Wolves who attack Rick in the RV were the ones Morgan "reasoned with" last week, and sent on their merry way. I knew they'd return sooner or later to cause trouble, but I figured they'd come back for Morgan, not attack Rick.

• When Michonne, Heath and Scott make it back to Alexandria, we see a brief shot of them walking past what appear to be burned out buildings. I don't remember any buildings being on fire last week. Did the Wolves torch some houses before they left, while we weren't looking?

UPDATE: Looking at this scene again, that clearly wasn't Alexandria. They walked through an opening in a low brick wall and entered what appeared to be a burned-out village. Where that village might be, I have no idea. Somewhere between Alexandria and the quarry, I guess.

• And at last we come to Glenn and his untimely and shocking death. Glenn, who's been the heart and soul of the series ever since the second episode six years ago. Glenn, who was done in by his own humanity and mercy, as he tried to give Nicholas a second chance.

Glenn's sort of had a countdown timer around his neck for the past couple of years, as the character was killed off in the comic a while back. So despite the fact that I wish he hadn't died, it wasn't all that unexpected. 

He was murdered in the comic by the aforementioned Negan in such a famously shocking and brutal scene, that it's hard for me to believe that the show would alter the manner of his death. Glenn's demise defined Negan-- it got the comic readers to sit up and take him seriously. If Negan could kill the beloved Glenn and get away with it, then no one was safe. If the series ever gets around to the Negan storyline, he's going to be diminished if he doesn't have Glenn to kill.

Glenn's already been almost killed at least four times that I can think of (and probably more). In the Season 3 episode When The Dead Come Knocking, Merle tortured Glenn, then tied him to a chair and left him alone in a room with a hungry walker. In the Season 4 episode Inmates, after the prison is destroyed, Glenn wakes up on a slab of debris, just out of reach of a herd of walkers. In the Season 5 episode No Sanctuary, he's almost killed by a Termite brandishing a baseball bat (in a very Negan-like manner). Later in Conquer, he's at the bottom of a zombie pigpile and somehow escapes. As you can see, Glenn's no stranger to near-death experiences.

But what if he isn't really dead? Believe it or not, there's quite a bit of evidence to support this theory. First there's Glenn's aforementioned run-in with Negan, who hasn't even appeared on the show yet. Surely they wouldn't diverge that much from the comic, would they (On the other hand, doing so would definitely be more shocking for the fans who were expecting Glenn to die by Negan's hand, or bat, as the case may be).

More evidence: we see Nicholas' dead body knock Glenn off the dumpster. The next thing we see is Glenn seemingly torn apart by the zombie horde. But something about the scene seems... off. It's a very tight shot, so all we really see is Glenn's blood-splattered face as the walkers pull guts out from... somewhere. The guts look a little too high to be coming from Glenn himself. Unless his guts are right under his neck. 

What if they're really snacking on Nicholas' guts instead? Nicholas' body could have fallen on top of Glenn and the walkers are really eating him. That could buy Glenn a few seconds to either hide under the dumpster (assuming there's room) or to smear himself with gore and lie very still, becoming virtually invisible to the walkers.

Even more evidence: On AMCs companion show The Talking Dead, any time a major cast member dies, they're a guest on that night's show. Steven Yuen, who plays Glenn, did not appear. The Talking Dead also traditionally airs an "In Memorium" montage featuring shots of recently deceased characters. There was no such montage on the show.

Scott Gimple, the current showrunner, actually issued a statement about the episode, saying, "In some way we will see Glenn, some version of Glenn, or parts of Glenn again, either in flashback or in the current story, to help complete the story." Well, that was certainly vague without being informative, wasn't it?

There's also the fact that so far every major character death on the show has been witnessed by someone else. Glenn would be the first to ever die "alone." Make of that what you will.

There's also the matter that Steven Yuen has been spotted on-set with actors who've not yet appeared on the show. That would seem to indicate that he's not really gone.

I'm torn by this. I don't want the character to be dead, but giving Glenn such an implausible out and toying with the audience like this seems cheap and manipulative. It's beneath the show, and does a disservice to all the other characters who really DID die. Plus if he really is alive, it's just going to diminish his inevitable death at the hands of Negan, if and when it ever happens. I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks whether he's really gone or not.

We won't learn Glenn's fate next week though, as instead we're apparently getting Morgan's origin story, explaining how he became a Ninja Turtle.

This Week In Off-Putting Fast Food Sandwiches UPDATE!

This week in Off-Putting Fast Food Sandwiches, we travel to the Orient, where McDonald's China just launched a burger with an unappetizing and unappealing gray bun.

Called the Modern China Burger, the buns resemble two carved and sculpted slabs of granite. Mm-Mm-ouch! If you've ever driven past a quarry and thought, "Say, I wonder what it would taste like if I crammed a piece of ground beef between two rocks and tried to eat it," then this is the burger for you.

This comes on the heels of the KFC Rose Cheese Chicken Leg Roasted Burger, which features an equally unpalatable pale pink bun, which is also from China. Apparently sales at KFC China are in a slump, so they're convinced bizarrely-colored buns are the answer.

Earlier this year Burger King Japan got in on the act with their Aka Burger, which featured an eye-searing bun colored with tomato powder. Lord knows what they put in the cheese to color it red like that. Maybe it's best if we never know.

And last year they came out with their sinister-looking Kuro Burger, which reportedly got its dark and Stygian coloring from squid ink. Yum!

American Burger King's also got in on the act last month with its black-bunned Halloween Whopper. Don't worry, there's no squid ink here! The bun reportedly got its obsidian tint from A-1 Sauce.

Unfortunately the Halloween Whopper had the unexpected side effect of turning the consumer's poo an alarming shade of green. Let's see the boys down in Marketing try and spin that one! It's the meal that keeps on giving!

After witnessing this Bizarre Burger Arms Race, all I have to say is, "Can I just get a goddamned plain, normal-looking tan-colored bun?"

Doctor Who Season 9, Episode 6: The Woman Who Lived

Full disclosure: I didn't think much of this episode as I was watching it. After light-hearted comedy romp, I expected more of the same from the conclusion. I was especially looking forward to the return of Odin and the Mire.

Instead we got an episode that took a 180 degree turn into slow, moody and talky introspection that plodded dully across the screen. In fact I actually dozed off for a few seconds while watching! 

After all the pre-season buildup and hoopla over Maise Williams guest appearance, it all seemed like much ado about nothing.

But now that I've had a day to think about the episode, I'm slowly warming up to it. It does an excellent job of showing us just how miserable the prospect of immortality would be. Seeing your friends, loved ones and children wither and die while you remained unchanged would surely be a curse rather than a blessing.

Since the two halves of this story were such polar opposites, it might have been better if they they'd aired several episodes apart. Oddly enough, each half was written by a different person-- The Girl Who Died was written by Jaimie Mathieson and Steven Moffat, while The Woman Who Lived was written by Catherine Tregenna. That's never happened in modern Doctor Who before, and makes me wonder if the two episodes really weren't meant to be shown back to back.

Many fans were convinced that Maise Williams was going to become the Doctor's new companion. I'm puzzled as to how anyone could possibly think that. She's already got a job on a massively successful series. There's no way in hell she'd leave that gig, not even for Doctor Who. Plus there's no way her schedule would allow her to be on both shows.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:
The Doctor travels to 1651 London, looking for an amulet that's radiating dangerous energy. There he encounters a highwayman, who turns out to be Ashildr, the young Viking girl he saved in the previous episode. Turns out she's looking for the same amulet.

Due to the Doctor's meddling, Ashildr is now immortal, and is over 800 years old. She's become bored over the long centuries, and her new hobby is posing as the highway robber known as the Knightmare. 

Ashildr takes the Doctor back to her home, which is filled with hundreds of journals. It seems that even though her life is infinite, her human mind isn't, and she doesn't remember the things she's done. She also no longer goes by the name Ashildr, but calls herself Lady Me. 

Her immortality means constant loss. She's lost friend, lovers and even children, over and over again. All this tragedy has caused her to forget what it means to be human. She begs the Doctor to take her with him in his "ship," but he refuses, saying two immortals in the TARDIS wouldn't be a good idea. He's also not sure if he fully trusts her.

Lady Me has a backup plan. She's been keeping company with a lion-face alien called Leandro (!), who tells her that the amulet is his, and can open a portal back to his world. The catch: the amulet requires a death to make it work. Lady Me is nonplussed by this, and doesn't see a problem. She steals the amulet from fellow robber Sam Swift.

Lady Me is going to use the amulet on her aged and decrepit butler, but when she hears Swift has been captured in the nearby town, she decides to use it on him instead to open the portal. She ties up the Doctor and heads for town.

The Doctor frees himself and when he arrives in Tyburn, he sees Sam Swift literally using gallows humor to keep his neck out of the noose (so that's where that term came from!). As Swift stalls, Lady Me grows impatient and slaps the amulet on his chest. Swift is instantly killed, and the amulet, powered by his death, fires a beam of energy into the sky which opens a portal to Leandro's world.

Unfortunately spaceships begin firing though the portal, hitting innocents left and right. Lady Me has a change of heart, and realizes she does still care. She takes her spare immortality chip and places it on Swift's forehead. It brings him back to life, which shuts down the amulet's beam. This may or may not have made Sam Swift immortal as well.

Lady Me again asks the Doctor to take her with him, but he refuses. He says, "People like us, we go on too long. We forget what matters. The last thing we need is each other." He says immortals need to be around people who's lives are short, to remind them how precious every moment is.

Lady Me says she'll devote herself to looking out for the ones the Doctor leaves behind. The Doctor returns to the present, and picks up Clara. She shows him a selfie on her cell phone. In the background, the Doctor sees a very creepy looking Lady Me in the background, seemingly staring right at him.

Thoughts:• Lady Me seems to know way more about the Doctor than she should. She even knows he travels through time in some sort of "ship." The Doctor notices this as well. 

I thought they were going somewhere with this seemingly ominous sublot, but it's quickly dropped and never mentioned again.

• At the end of the previous episode, the Doctor filmed the Leader of the Mire being defeated by Ashildr and the Vikings. He then threatened the Leader, saying if he didn't leave immediately, he'd upload the video to the Galactic Hub, where everyone would see the Mire was defeated by group of primitive villagers. The Leader hisses, "This isn't over!" and retreats.

I expected we'd see the Mire again this week, but I guess not. Lady Me never mentions them in the episode, so I'm assuming they never returned at any point in the following 800 years. Looks like they took the Doctor at his word, and the Leader's "This isn't over!" was an empty threat.

• I was impressed (as well as a little disturbed) by the idea that Lady Me's human brain just wasn't big enough to contain all the memories of an 800 year life. I don't think I've ever seen that concept used in a sci-fi story before, but it makes perfect sense.

I also agree with the episode's sentiment, that immortality would be more curse than blessing. Sure, at first glance the prospect of living forever seems really appealing, but I just think that after a while it would be miserable. 

How would you support yourself for eternity? I have a job I love, but even so there are days when I still can barely force myself to get out of bed and drive to it. Imagine having to work forever. 

Think about how bored you'd be by popular culture. You'd get sick of seeing the same movie plots over and over, reading variations on the same books, hearing the same songs and jokes. 

And then there's outliving everyone you ever knew. I honestly don't think I'd want to live forever.

• The Doctor asks Lady Me why she didn't use the second immortality chip on a loved one, so she wouldn't have to endure the centuries alone. Good question, especially since she's constantly moaning that everyone she's ever loved has withered and died. 

Lady Me says she never used it because no one was ever good enough. It seems like a lame non-answer at first, but I can kind of understand how she feels. When you only have one of something valuable, you tend to jealously guard it, afraid that if you give it away you'll need it again someday. You'd always be terrified that someone better was just around the corner.

• What are the odds that an alien who looks like a Earth lion would be named Leandro? I'm betting his planet's name just happened to be Lionus, in the constellation of Leo.

I wasn't a fan of this whole Leandro/amulet/portal subplot. It seemed like it was literally tacked on to pad out the runtime and add a little sci-fi to an otherwise overly talky episode.

By the way, looking at Leandro, now we know what happened to Vincent from the Beauty And The Beast TV series.

• Lady Me explains her expertise with weapons by saying, "10,000 hours is all it takes to master any skill. Over 100,000 hours and you're the best there's ever been."

Wow, not only is she immortal, she can see into the future as well. She just quoted author Malcom Gladwell's "10,000 Hour Rule," from his 2008 book Outliers. Pretty impressive that someone living in 1651 can quote a book that won't be written for another 400 years!

• When the Doctor turns down Lady Me's request to take her with him, he says, "I traveled with another immortal once... Captain Jack Harkness. He'll get round to you eventually."

I believe this is the first mention of Captain Jack since Stephen Moffat took over the show. Despite the fact that fans have been clamoring for Jack's return, Moffat seems to have a definite grudge against the character-- most likely because the former regime created him.

• The Doctor namedrops the Terileptils, saying they were responsible for starting the Great Fire Of London in 1666. 

In the 1982 episode The Visitation, the Fifth Doctor actually had a run-in with Terileptils, who were planning to wipe out humanity with the Plague. The Doctor stopped them of course, but one of their weapons started the blaze.

• After Lady Me ties up the Doctor, he tells his captors, "Do I look like some feckless thief? I'm on your side. I'm an undercover constable from Scotland Yard. Do you have Scotland Yard yet?" When they appear unimpressed, he realizes he's a bit early for that reference. Scotland Yard was formed in 1829.

• Near the end of the episode there's a lingering shot of a pub sign called "The Swan With Two Necks." Believe it or not, there really was a pub by that name in 1600s London!

• The Doctor's thrice-damned sonic sunglasses return in this episode, despite being broken in half last week. I don't know why those things infuriate me so, but they do.

• Next week, the return of the Zygons (gotta amortize those expensive costumes!), along with Osgood!

More Inappropriate, Ill-Advised And Bizarre Halloween Costumes

Well, it's October again, so you know what that means— Homecoming games, raking leaves, and stores full of slutty Halloween costumes.

Oddly enough, this year I haven't seen any of those temporary Halloween stores that pop up in my city. Last year I passed three of 'em on the way home from work (all within a half mile radius), but this year, nada. I've always wondered if there's really that much money to be made by these stores. After all, how many Sexy Journeyman Electrician costumes can a person sell? I'd occasionally browse around one or two of these stores, but I never bought anything, ever. Maybe no one else did either. That's probably why they skipped my town this year.

This year the Halloween costume designers have gone all out in their search for innocent subject matter to co-opt and corrupt. No pop culture figure is off limits, no internet meme is too fleeting. Anything and everything MUST be turned into a costume, at all costs. Let's take a look at a few ridiculous examples, shall we?

Sometimes the name is odder than the costume itself. This one is called Sexy Tux And Ears. I'm having a hard time seeing a tux anywhere in this. A better name would be Unlicensed Sexy Mickey Mouse. Uncle Walt would be spinning in his grave right now if his body wasn't stored in a cryogenic chamber deep below Disney Land.

Obviously the Disney company had nothing to do with this. I'm betting the costume company couldn't afford to license it from them either, so they just made a vaguely Mickey Mouse-looking costume and gave it generic, noncommital name. So that's it? That's all it takes to get around copyright law? If so, I'm going to make my own Darth Vader costume and call it Terrifying Evil Space Dad.

Continuing the unlicensed Disney theme, this one's called Rocket Babe. I'll let you guess who it's supposed to be. "To double D-cups and beyond!"

Is... is that Jennifer Lawrence modeling this costume?

This one's called Deluxe Sequin Fairy costume, and it's actually not that bad. It's sexy but not slutty, and pretty darned close to the source material. I believe in fairies indeed!

It's always puzzling to me when a costume company tries to sex up something that was sexy to begin with. This one's called Toon Hottie, and is obviously a thinly disguised Jessica Rabbit. But her character was already as overtly sexy as possible. And they just made her even sexier! Inception! 

Just another case of the companies pumping out costumes without understanding the source material.

Here we have the men's Bubble Wrap costume. As near as I can tell, it's made from actual bubble wrap. Sweet, soothing, poppable bubble wrap. I'm guessing this is a one-use-only costume, because at the end of the night your fellow partygoers will have popped all your bubbles, rendering it useless.

Here's another costume with a puzzling name. This one's called Gansta Girl. 

Um... I think they used the wrong spelling of "gangster" here. This is a sexy version of the traditional pin-striped Hollywood movie gangster, the kind that carried a Tommy gun inside a violin case. It's not a hip-hop rap style ganSTA. Know your source material, people!

Designing and manufacturing costumes is expensive, so companies like to cut corners and save a few cents wherever they can. Here's a prime example of costume recycling. The costume on the left is the Deluxe Lion Tamer, while the one on the right is the Deluxe Ringleader. 

They're the same damned costume! They both contain the same top hat, boots and riding crop. The only difference is in the jacket and the cut of the hot pants.

By the way, I think they mean "Ringmaster," not "Ringleader." Doy.

This one is labeled the Nurse High costume. I... I don't even know what I'm looking at here. It's a sexy nurse uniform festooned with marijuana leaves, so... I guess she's a caregiver who helps her patients get high? Is that it? Is that the joke? Maybe you have to be high to understand it.

Look everyone, it's our old friend the Sexy Corn costume! It debuted last year, and I bet it'll be around for many more to come. In fact I bet there are warehouses full of these that the manufacturer can't even give away. Who the hell would want go to a party dressed as Sexy Corn? There's nothing sexy about corn. Nothing I tell you!

I have a feeling in a few years missionaries will spot impoverished villagers in Africa wearing these costumes as everyday clothing.

Here we have the Chris Pratt As Owen Grady costume from this summer's hit Jurassic World.

Thank the gods old and new that someone finally put out a costume of everyone's favorite raptor wrangler! Because no one would ever be able to throw together a costume consisting of a blue shirt, leather vest and brown pants by themselves!

OK, I'm generally not one to panic. I think most of our country's airport security measures are unnecessary, and the TSA searches are nothing more than theater vto give the public the illusion of safety. That said, this Airline Pilot costume seems like a very bad idea.

Yeee-HAW! It's the Boss Hog costume from the hit 1980s TV show, The Dukes Of Hazzard! 

I'm very confused by this costume. Not only does it come three decades too late, but I don't remember Boss Hogg being this morbidly obese. Sure, he was overweight, but nowhere near the "Can't Get Out Of Bed Under His Own Power And Requires The Fire Department To Remove The Side Of His House To Get Him Out And Transport Him To The Bariatric Unit" look seen here.

The costume says it comes with an internal hoop to give the wearer a rotund appearance. But then as you can see it's labeled a Plus Size costume. So I guess this means it's one size fits all? If you're under 600 pounds you use the hoop, and if you're over you leave it out and squeeze into the pants?

Lastly we have the awesome new Hashtag costume! My new least favorite catchphrase has now been captured in a costume! Hashtag hilarious!

Personally I'll be skipping this one and waiting for the Caps Lock costume SO I CAN SHOUT AT EVERYONE AT THE PARTY AND TELL THEM MY CAPS KEY IS STUCK!

Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3, Episode 4: Devils You Know

There's lots of conflict on this week's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., as Coulson clashes again with Price, Daisy clashes with Coulson, and Hunter and May finally confront Ward. We also learn some interesting details about Lash, and Simmons decides to spill her guts about what happened to her on the alien planet. Well, almost.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:

Lash invades the apartment of an Inhuman couple and kills them. S.H.I.E.L.D. investigates the murder, and runs into Rosalind Price and the ATCU. Coulson and Price decide to join forces and work together to find Lash, much to Daisy's concern. 

Meanwhile, May's frustrated with Hunter because his plan to invade HYDRA and kill Evil Ward isn't very well thought out. In fact it consists of little more than "Invade HYDRA and kill Evil Ward." 

Simmons meets with Andrew, the team psychiatrist and May's ex. Simmons assures Andrew that she's OK, but it's obvious she's not. Fitz discovers Simmons' notes and realizes she's trying to get back to the alien planet for reasons he can't fathom. 

Daisy finds out that the dead Inhuman couple received a cryptic email before they were murdered. She tracks down the sender, Dwight Frye of Maryland. Frye's an Inhuman as well, who can detect others of his kind. He reveals he's just a flunky who's working for Lash. 

S.H.I.E.L.D. and the ATCU take Frye in, but are attacked on the way by Lash. Daisy uses her quake powers to stop him, which overturns their van. Lash kills Frye, but leaves Daisy alive. In her groggy state, she thinks she sees Lash, who's also an Inhuman, transform back into human form.

Hunter's accepted into HYDRA's ranks and meets the head man, Evil Ward, who immediately recognizes him. A shootout erupts, and just as Hunter's about to be killed, May appears and saves him. They wipe out Evil Ward's men and seemingly have him on the ropes. Evil Ward then tells May he's got men tailing her Andrew, and tosses her a cell phone with a live feed for confirmation. He tells her if she doesn't stand down, his men will kill Andrew. Hunter says he's bluffing and comes out guns blazing. He manages to shoot Evil Ward in the shoulder, but he leaps out a window and escapes. 

The episode ends with Andrew seemingly lying in a pool of blood inside a burning drug store. And with Simmons saying she's ready to tell Fitz what happened on the alien planet.

Thoughts:

• Alisha, the Inhuman who can make multiple copies of herself, first appeared in last season's finale. Apparently she's now working for S.H.I.E.L.D. 

For the record there's a Marvel character called Multiple Man (aka Jamie Maddrox) who has the same powers as Alisha, and feels it when one of them dies.

• The couple that Lash kills in the apartment are named Shane and Lori Hanson. They don't appear to have any comic book counterparts. I guess every character or name isn't an in-joke or Easter egg.

• Fitz finds several of Lash's hairs at the murder scene and takes them in for examination. As Mockingbird analyzes them, they begin to deteriorate. I'm betting this happens because Lash can morph back into human form.

• Hunter chooses the alias "Ritchie" when he infiltrates HYDRA. Did he choose that nickname because he's a fan of Guy Ritchie, director of British gangster films like Snatch and Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels?

• Fans of the 1931 Dracula movie will recognize the name Dwight Frye, the actor who played Renfield. 

Here Frye is allergic to other Inhumans, and can detect their presence. So is he allergic to himself as well? 

In the comics, there are a couple of mutant detecting characters (something that Marvel sadly can't touch on TV or in movies). The Morlock Caliban can detect other mutants, while Rachael Summers (the future daughter of X-Men Cyclops and Phoenix) was a "hound" who could telepathically sense other mutants.

• Coulson may or may not have a laser in the finger of his prosthetic hand.

• Evil Ward's apparently rebuilding HYDRA in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s image, even insisting that his grunts address him as "Director." He also makes a joke about his right hand man Kebo not having Level 7 clearance. That's a reference to the very first episode.

• Evil Ward is nothing if not prepared. May appears out of nowhere to save Hunter, and within seconds, Evil Ward tells her he just happens to have three agents tailing Andrew and he'll be killed if she doesn't stand down. Thorough!

What are the odds that Evil Ward knew that this was the day May would infiltrate his secret HYDRA base? Or did he somehow know she and Hunter were coming for him?

• At the end of the episode things look pretty bad for Andrew, what with him lying in a pool of his own blood and all. But there were a few things about his "death scene" that stood out. First of all, we didn't actually see his body, which as we all know, means he ain't actually dead. That's Comic Book Writing 101.

Secondly, when Strucker Jr. ran out of the drugstore, he looked like he was spooked. Like he saw something... unexpected in there. Something happened in the drugstore that we didn't see.

Third, Daisy saw Beorn, er, I mean Lash morph into a human form. "HE COULD BE ANYONE!" Even a psychiatrist.

Fourthly, Lash had the chance to kill Daisy, and didn't. So I'm calling it now—  Andrew is secretly Lash. Think about it— Lash's MO seems to be killing Inhumans who "are weak," which I guess is supposed to strengthen the species. He knows Daisy is strong. And Andrew consistently rejects Inhumans for Daisy's Secret Defender team. Is he doing this because he thinks the candidates are all weak?

• In the tag scene, Fitz asks Simmons what's going on. She says, "It's time I told you the truth, Fitz, about everything. But first I'm going to wait a week before I tell the story." OK, I made up that last part.