Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jun 11, 2022 14:54:47 GMT -5
I wanted to find what you all were saying about this show in the other thread but it turns out searching for posts with the word "evil" in them is not particularly fruitful, and there are enough of us who watch the show that I feel like this thread is worthwhile!
Anyway, I've finished season 2 and this show is spectacularly bad at follow-through but it is still enjoyable from episode to episode, which is what matters on an X-Files clone. Very excited for season 3 which will maybe be a little more coherent?
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jun 11, 2022 15:16:07 GMT -5
I wanted to find what you all were saying about this show in the other thread but it turns out searching for posts with the word "evil" in them is not particularly fruitful, and there are enough of us who watch the show that I feel like this thread is worthwhile!
Anyway, I've finished season 2 and this show is spectacularly bad at follow-through but it is still enjoyable from episode to episode, which is what matters on an X-Files clone. Very excited for season 3 which will maybe be a little more coherent?
I'm not really expecting "coherent," but as long as it continues to deliver on "entertainingly batshit," I'm cool with it. If they ever start revealing that all the apparently dropped threads actually add up to something, though, I'll be genuinely impressed.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jun 12, 2022 14:47:47 GMT -5
First episode wasn't bad, though a little soft on plot (I was surprised when it ended; the plot felt much less "solved" than they usually do). Leland getting owned by the kids was fun. I'm assuming that was the succubus the whole time and Kristen isn't trying to gaslight David, though who the hell knows on this show.
I won't be upset if Wallace Shawn shows up again at some point; his story really could use some resolution.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jun 12, 2022 20:22:23 GMT -5
This show is so silly and I love it.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jun 15, 2022 2:13:10 GMT -5
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Rainbow Rosa
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Posts: 3,604
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jun 15, 2022 14:47:20 GMT -5
First episode was pretty good. - Cool new opening titles - not sure if this'll be a regular thing now or if it was just a "let's get cinematic for the start of the season" thing. - Wallace Shawn was a pleasant surprise, but an even more pleasant surprise was Ruthie Ann Miles, all better now!! - Was Leland's Not-Club-Penguin game really the endgame of the whole "daffodil" thing? After the Cheryl plot I was worried there was some sinister Manchurian Candidate crap going on. - Andy is not long for this world. Poor, poor Andy. - "Kristen has a forked tongue" would land a lot better if these scenes weren't color graded towards complete darkness, just sayin' - Every character has a distinct and delightful mode of being mean to Leland and I kind of love it. - No "next time on" bumpers? (I'll admit I skipped those.) Next week's episode is called "The Demon of Memes" though which sounds extremely good.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jun 19, 2022 9:27:41 GMT -5
Second episode was interesting, though both episodes now have sort of let the A-Plot peter out in the end. Granted, the B-plot was a little more interesting, but the A-plot needed an ending better that Kristen describing what they ended up doing. It felt like at least one scene was missing; I kept expecting some twist (like that that was the succubus, not actually Kristen) and the A-plot coming back. This was also the first episode I can recall that didn't really have any supernatural explanation even hinted at in the A or B plots, just in the magic bleeding toilet runner.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jun 20, 2022 15:51:37 GMT -5
I kind of love the show's gleeful ineptness with technology. (Which I assume is deliberate, on account of The Good Wife's fairly sophisticated-for-network-TV understanding of internet law.) Everytime Michael Emerson says "doomscrolling" or "deepfake" with the cadence of a five-year-old who just learned a new swear word it sends me. That and when the show splices in random rapidfire PowerPointing of relevant imagery, which has a similar vibe. They really do a great job channeling the paranoid nonsensical mode of over-50 Internet consumption. So I guess I am generously going to say that this episode's half-baked take on Slenderman mythos sort of works as a pastiche of any number of hysterical news stories about how YOUR CHILDREN ARE DOING THE DEVIOUS LICKS!!!, and ignore that this whole top-down thing isn't really how internet mythmaking works and that even if it was this could be definitely be more compelling in the same way "E is for Elevator" managed to make a viral horror thing genuinely scary.
I'll withhold judgment on the The Dave Vinci Code B-plot for now, which I guess has a nice parallel with whatever Cheryl's up to and is maybe going to give us a way to tie up some loose ends from the earlier seasons?
So Andy is definitely definitely definitely going to ""fall off a cliff"" in Nepal, which means he is probably not going to ""fall off a cliff"" in Nepal - maybe Eddie will use the opportunity to load him up with de-aging brainwash fluid or something? I dunno. I'm always bemused when white couples on TV are like "no, we couldn't possibly send our four children to public school." LOL.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jun 20, 2022 16:24:57 GMT -5
What is even the point of Andy? He adds nothing to the show except for a reason for Kristen and David not to fuck.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jun 20, 2022 17:14:33 GMT -5
What is even the point of Andy? He adds nothing to the show except for a reason for Kristen and David not to fuck. Well, if you're just going to answer your own question... But he's there so we can make pools on when and how he's finally going to die.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jun 20, 2022 21:46:05 GMT -5
What is even the point of Andy? He adds nothing to the show except for a reason for Kristen and David not to fuck. Well, if you're just going to answer your own question... But he's there so we can make pools on when and how he's finally going to die. I must be the only person who actually likes the milquetoast husband on shows like this.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jun 28, 2022 21:04:06 GMT -5
I actually laughed out loud at the daughters' reaction to Kristen's "NEVER lie to mom" rule being "what if we have Jews in the basement? Or immigrants, because of Trump?" I think this show is astonishingly adept at walking a razor's edge with this sort of thing, by having this sort of comment happen in obvious bad faith (see also, Leland pressuring David re: the Catholic Church and race during last season) so it reads as funny rather than preachy or stupid. Which is probably why this Sheryl B-plot with cryptocurrency and generational warfare in corporate America reads as funny rather than really stupid.
Bit of a negligible A-plot; other episodes this season have given me the impression that the writers are checking the show's subreddit (e.g. turning all the girls talking over each other into a plot point) but this is the first episode that seems first and foremost responding to fan demands. So the sex demon thing is mostly an excuse to have an episode about Sister Andrea, which, like, fine, Andrea Martin's always great, but I don't think she's nearly as compelling a character as the show seems to think she is (to say nothing of the fandom whose love of her always confused me, she's fun but not really a deep character). Ben's sister by contrast returns by fan demand and I'm glad she has, because she rocks and gives Aasif Mandvi something to do other than occasional snarking.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jul 3, 2022 18:52:32 GMT -5
OH MY GOD, WE ACTUALLY GOT CLOSURE ON AN OLD DROPPED PLOTLINE.
(I think)
Also, the episode was fun, for the most part; the highway stuff was all appropriately creepy, the demon/angel face-off was appropriately vague; Kristen is apparently bipolar now, and the furtherance of the Entity plot - with an actual explanation for the chart and sigils - was surprising but satisfying.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jul 10, 2022 17:47:48 GMT -5
So is Andy dead already or only about to die?
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ABz B👹anaz
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Post by ABz B👹anaz on Jul 14, 2022 16:06:10 GMT -5
So is Andy dead already or only about to die? The latter, I assume. And I really liked Ben explicitly stating my main issue with the show as an audience member, with the whole "We investigate something, learn nothing, and move on to the next case!" line.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jul 14, 2022 17:20:26 GMT -5
It's pretty obvious from this episode (and I'm sure someone on Reddit has confirmed this) that the video of Andy on that Zoom call is pre-recorded and being played back. I think he's dead (or worse) and the footage is a deepfake? But it could be a really funny fakeout, like, he just waltzes home and absolutely nothing weird happened.
This is also a great example of the way the show uses race to further plots - you think the plot is going to be about racism in the church, and it kind of is, but that's also an in to David's internal question of "if my visions are shaped by my experiences then are they *really* divinely received?" Really smart writing there. The "you're losing" speech is also great writing, or it would be if it wasn't so thoroughly spoiled by every promo for this season. Kurt Fuller is being underutilized this season - I think this is a consequence of the show having a 10 episode run rather than a 13 one. Maybe even that's too few - the Kings are creatures of the 22-episode network TV season, and I think he'd play really great as a supporting character who has time to have his arc play out in monster-of-the-week episode C-plots.
Kristen's incongruous sexy leather sofa getups continue to vex me, lol.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jul 14, 2022 17:45:02 GMT -5
It's pretty obvious from this episode (and I'm sure someone on Reddit has confirmed this) that the video of Andy on that Zoom call is pre-recorded and being played back. I think he's dead (or worse) and the footage is a deepfake? But it could be a really funny fakeout, like, he just waltzes home and absolutely nothing weird happened. This is also a great example of the way the show uses race to further plots - you think the plot is going to be about racism in the church, and it kind of is, but that's also an in to David's internal question of "if my visions are shaped by my experiences then are they *really* divinely received?" Really smart writing there. The "you're losing" speech is also great writing, or it would be if it wasn't so thoroughly spoiled by every promo for this season. Kurt Fuller is being underutilized this season - I think this is a consequence of the show having a 10 episode run rather than a 13 one. Maybe even that's too few - the Kings are creatures of the 22-episode network TV season, and I think he'd play really great as a supporting character who has time to have his arc play out in monster-of-the-week episode C-plots. Kristen's incongruous sexy leather sofa getups continue to vex me, lol. Yeah, that was really annoying. We knew exactly how that was going to turn out as soon as we saw her.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jul 17, 2022 12:48:48 GMT -5
OMG I love the Bouchard girls going HAM on Leland. Also what the fuck has happened to Sheryl that she's willing to pull this shit on her own daughter?
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jul 17, 2022 16:05:58 GMT -5
OMG I love the Bouchard girls going HAM on Leland. Also what the fuck has happened to Sheryl that she's willing to pull this shit on her own daughter? Sheryl so far seems to have a completely different personality every season. I can't tell if that's on purpose or not. That said, I can kind of fit this part of it into assuming that she's always hated Andy and thinks Kristen would be happier with someone else. I can't really explain most of the rest of what she's done this season, though. I am starting to wonder if Sheryl is gradually replacing Leland as the big bad of the show, though.
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ABz B👹anaz
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Post by ABz B👹anaz on Jul 18, 2022 9:30:32 GMT -5
OMG I love the Bouchard girls going HAM on Leland. Also what the fuck has happened to Sheryl that she's willing to pull this shit on her own daughter? Sheryl so far seems to have a completely different personality every season. I can't tell if that's on purpose or not. That said, I can kind of fit this part of it into assuming that she's always hated Andy and thinks Kristen would be happier with someone else. I can't really explain most of the rest of what she's done this season, though. I am starting to wonder if Sheryl is gradually replacing Leland as the big bad of the show, though. Yeah, it definitely seems like Sheryl is getting pulled further into the whole demonic megacorporation. The Andy thing is ...well, not "acceptable" but character-appropriate since it's clear they both hate each other. But she's okay with Leland fucking with her granddaughters apparently too, which...eurgh.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jul 18, 2022 9:46:56 GMT -5
Sheryl so far seems to have a completely different personality every season. I can't tell if that's on purpose or not. That said, I can kind of fit this part of it into assuming that she's always hated Andy and thinks Kristen would be happier with someone else. I can't really explain most of the rest of what she's done this season, though. I am starting to wonder if Sheryl is gradually replacing Leland as the big bad of the show, though. Yeah, it definitely seems like Sheryl is getting pulled further into the whole demonic megacorporation. The Andy thing is ...well, not "acceptable" but character-appropriate since it's clear they both hate each other. But she's okay with Leland fucking with her granddaughters apparently too, which...eurgh. The whole thing with the girls, especially the game part of it, seems to have been planned on such a Skeletor level of competence that either Sheryl is actively sabotaging it or didn't do anything because it was obviously going to fail. Though it's possible that she didn't know about it, I guess. Granted, Leland's Andy impersonation seems to have been planned about as carefully.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jul 20, 2022 12:53:21 GMT -5
This was the best episode of the season so far, and the one that's convinced me that there *is* a plan on this show - I was worried initially that the reduced episode run would make this season feel kind of rushed, but we've crossed the halfway point and now everything seems to be, in hindsight, perfectly placed for maximum effect. The Andy plot, for instance: LMAO!! Perfect comedic timing here: episode 4, he's zooming in with the kids, there's looming danger but he's presumably alive. Episode 5, he's zooming with Kristen, wait, something's fishy here - is he already dead? Episode 6, he's zooming with Kristen but it's really REALLY obvious something's wrong here... here's the punchline, he's dead and Leland is using a soundboard! Except DOUBLE punchline, he's not actually dead, he's paralyzed in Sheryl's apartment!! Perfect plotting.
Re: Sheryl, it's a bit hard to say what her deal is. Not that hard - she broke bad but it was only her relative powerlessness as a divorcee wine grandma that prevented her from killing people, and Leland's talent in season 1 was finding these people and giving them power (see also mass shooting incel kid). The difficulty here is gauging how much agency she herself has had in this transformation, having been just a little brainwashed (figuratively by Leland's cult and possibly literally depending on what was in that goop), and whether she's actively trying to undermine Leland, which there's some evidence she is here (see her not-so-subtly guiding Andy through Leland's interrogation). She's a good metonym for the show itself - I'm willing to forgive her incoherence as a character on account her being so fun and so vividly acted, but I'm still holding out hope that she's genuinely good and not just campy fun. But campy fun is good in its own way, you know.
Really fun ostensible A-plot too - I think a lot of people are mad that the answer is always clout chasing this season but the show couldn't do the X-Files "was it supernatural or scientifically grounded!?!?" thing in season 3 without straining credulity, so them eyerolling when the A-plots are perpetually Scooby-Doo is probably the best storytelling decision they could have made.
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ABz B👹anaz
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Post by ABz B👹anaz on Jul 20, 2022 13:04:24 GMT -5
This was the best episode of the season so far, and the one that's convinced me that there *is* a plan on this show - I was worried initially that the reduced episode run would make this season feel kind of rushed, but we've crossed the halfway point and now everything seems to be, in hindsight, perfectly placed for maximum effect. The Andy plot, for instance: LMAO!! Perfect comedic timing here: episode 4, he's zooming in with the kids, there's looming danger but he's presumably alive. Episode 5, he's zooming with Kristen, wait, something's fishy here - is he already dead? Episode 6, he's zooming with Kristen but it's really REALLY obvious something's wrong here... here's the punchline, he's dead and Leland is using a soundboard! Except DOUBLE punchline, he's not actually dead, he's paralyzed in Sheryl's apartment!! Perfect plotting. Re: Sheryl, it's a bit hard to say what her deal is. Not that hard - she broke bad but it was only her relative powerlessness as a divorcee wine grandma that prevented her from killing people, and Leland's talent in season 1 was finding these people and giving them power (see also mass shooting incel kid). The difficulty here is gauging how much agency she herself has had in this transformation, having been just a little brainwashed (figuratively by Leland's cult and possibly literally depending on what was in that goop), and whether she's actively trying to undermine Leland, which there's some evidence she is here (see her not-so-subtly guiding Andy through Leland's interrogation). She's a good metonym for the show itself - I'm willing to forgive her incoherence as a character on account her being so fun and so vividly acted, but I'm still holding out hope that she's genuinely good and not just campy fun. But campy fun is good in its own way, you know. Really fun ostensible A-plot too - I think a lot of people are mad that the answer is always clout chasing this season but the show couldn't do the X-Files "was it supernatural or scientifically grounded!?!?" thing in season 3 without straining credulity, so them eyerolling when the A-plots are perpetually Scooby-Doo is probably the best storytelling decision they could have made. Oh yeah, that was one really fucking annoying thing they haven't explained yet, what the fuck ACTUALLY happened to Sheryl last season? So they've got SOME of these people permanently paralyzed but alive with goop in jars, and then they did something similar to Sheryl too, but it's different? Like there's tan goop and blue goop in jars on different shelves in that closet?
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jul 24, 2022 11:58:39 GMT -5
If you watch on the app, at the beginning it tells you "skip intro and you will be haunted".
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jul 24, 2022 12:41:16 GMT -5
P.S.: My favorite thing about this show is when they have an obvious stand-in for whatever tech company they're mocking this week and someone has a line of exposition about "the dangerously addictive algorithm-driven Chinese-owned short-video app TipTop" and then someone else chimes in "oh sort of like TikTok" just in case you didn't get it.
I mean, lots of shows do that (I actually watched most of the rebooted OG Law & Order because I hate myself) but when Evil does it I'm laughing with the writers, not at them.
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ABz B👹anaz
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Post by ABz B👹anaz on Jul 24, 2022 12:58:19 GMT -5
If you watch on the app, at the beginning it tells you "skip intro and you will be haunted". It did that on the site for me only on the last episode, The Demon of Algorithms! I laughed and did not skip the intro.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jul 28, 2022 13:00:12 GMT -5
"Oh, Kurt Fuller, you're on this show, right. Uh, Michael Emerson doesn't have much to do this season, why don't we give you two some scenes together?"
Granted, said scenes were funny! But still. The case of the week felt conspicuously weak as a frame for this episode's events, I feel like. Also, who's Ben getting his dating advice from, Xander Harris?
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ABz B👹anaz
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Post by ABz B👹anaz on Jul 28, 2022 13:11:57 GMT -5
"Oh, Kurt Fuller, you're on this show, right. Uh, Michael Emerson doesn't have much to do this season, why don't we give you two some scenes together?" Granted, said scenes were funny! But still. The case of the week felt conspicuously weak as a frame for this episode's events, I feel like. Also, who's Ben getting his dating advice from, Xander Harris? This episode repeated the frequent problem I have with this show, which is what did the cult actually have to do with that one guy getting possessed? Were they two separate, unrelated coincidental events? "Oh, this guy left the bullshit cult and then got possessed immediately afterward?" Or is the cult deprogrammer responsible? WHO KNOWS? Let's move on to next week's thing! I am amused by Ben's complete lack of concern at the end. "Yeah, they did dumb cult stuff, but I'm okay!"
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jul 28, 2022 13:23:26 GMT -5
"Oh, Kurt Fuller, you're on this show, right. Uh, Michael Emerson doesn't have much to do this season, why don't we give you two some scenes together?" Granted, said scenes were funny! But still. The case of the week felt conspicuously weak as a frame for this episode's events, I feel like. Also, who's Ben getting his dating advice from, Xander Harris? This episode repeated the frequent problem I have with this show, which is what did the cult actually have to do with that one guy getting possessed? Were they two separate, unrelated coincidental events? "Oh, this guy left the bullshit cult and then got possessed immediately afterward?" Or is the cult deprogrammer responsible? WHO KNOWS? Let's move on to next week's thing! I am amused by Ben's complete lack of concern at the end. "Yeah, they did dumb cult stuff, but I'm okay!" Right, they've really just given up on the case-of-the-week format - which I get, now that there is LORE to cover!, but also makes me feel a little weird, when you compare it to the earlier episodes of the show that felt more episodic and thus specialer. "C is for Cop" and "S is for Silence" and "Z is for Zombie" and any of those other season 2 episodes with Graftonian titles and honest-to-god mysteries with real plots to them.
The show can easily lean into its weirder aspects as the bottom falls out and still be extremely watchable, but I do miss that micro-level structure more than I want the macro-level plots resolved.
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on Jul 29, 2022 8:51:39 GMT -5
So, there's been a few clues, but it's recently occurred to me that the show has Ben's age somewhere around his late 30s, as opposed to Aasif Mandvi's actual age of 56. There is his much younger sister, of course, there was a reference to his mom playing a CD in the car when he was a kid, and this last episode he referenced a dorm room circa 2004. Don't get me wrong, I love Aasif Mandvi as Ben, it's just sort of weird they have him playing a character who is probably supposed to be 20 years younger than he actually is, when there is really no reason to.
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