From how I understood it, the letter was from coma-Emily to bad-ass Howard. She and him were having an affair, but she wanted to make sure bad-ass Howard would protect mild-Howard from any threats that might come from his world.
So, I have a strong feeling her “accident” wasn’t an accident after all. Bad-ass Howard loves coma-Emily. Coma-Emily loves bad-ass Howard, but doesn’t want to hurt mild-Howard. Mild-Howard is unaware of all of this, and so was Other-Emily up to the point bad-ass Howard pointed her to that letter. And why did he do that? Because she asked if coma-Emily loved mild-Howard. That was his answer.
Excellent show so far. JK Simmons is always great.
I haven’t been watching, but since folks here really like it, I’ll catch up. My only problem the JKS is it’s hard for me to disassociate him from his role in Oz.
I’ve seen the ads for it, and too bad they don’t give the one version a goatee.
Not coma-Emily, other-Emily. When she arrived home after reading that letter, she pricked her finger on a poisonous needle that was planted on her lamp switch by mysterious spies. Looks like she’s dead now.
I have only seen three or four episodes of this, but the way it works is, there are exactly two of everybody over 30 years old, one from the West side and one from the East side, unless they are killed off or die. We also know sometimes people cross and infiltrate the other side. However, if, as we are meant to believe, dead Emily was from the East side, then the comatose Emily has to be from the West side. She was put on the hit list by yet-to-be-revealed parties because of whatever she was into (we know nothing about it yet), but they failed to finish the job and so far she is still alive, but in a coma for the past weeks.
BTW, I’ve noticed on many shows (this one too), turning on closed captions gives you info you wouldn’t otherwise have. For example from this thread so far:
The writers refer to the other Howard as “Prime” (Prime being the bad ass one). Which I guess means I shouldn’t think of Him as the other, as they think of the other other as other
They often will give the name of the song when it starts to play including the artist’s name.
Definitely like this show. Cool concept and nicely done.
I wasn’t getting that at all. I still think coma-Emily is from “our” side, just that her and bad-ass Howard somehow met up in the past and had a fling/were up to something? We still don’t know what… But I kinda need to see that scene again where soon-to-be-dead Emily is reading the letter.
We also saw the German-language public service announcement about making sure you report anyone who shows signs of illness, or risk quarantine or criminal charges. Even at the height of the AIDS epidemic, we never went quite that far.
It could be read as an affair, and I thought about mentioning that in my earlier post, but it wasn’t definite enough. But it’s certainly plausible. We know Badass Howard and Non-Coma Emily had a relationship in the past, and it’s not so crazy to think he might have looked up Coma Emily at some point. I mean, this whole arrangement is just tailor-made for creepy personal interactions.
Imagine if he’d played both Shillinger and Beacher in the first season of Oz. It’s like that, but with less sodomy.
Yeah, we get that in science a lot, if you’re drawing diagrams of different embodiments of the same device, you might refer to part A in figure 1, and part A’ (A prime) in figure 2, to show that they serve the same function even if they’re slightly different.
So Mild Howard is Howard, and Badass Howard is Howard Prime. But that biases us to think that Mild Howard is the “normal” one.
I’ll just stick to Ossis and Wessis, which is fair and symmetrical.
I understood from the episode that both Emilys were working in their respective departments of “Housekeeping”, but Wessi Emily got wind of what was going on and was able to warn (Ossi) Howard, while Ossi Emily had no clue about it before the events of the show. Then again, we are probably still missing most of the pieces of the puzzle.
OK, watched Ep1 last night. I liked it. Simmons is really good, and I think actors love having the opportunity to play two different versions of the same character. I just don’t get why Howard1 didn’t tell Howard2 about the flower thing for the nurse. It seemed like he left that out on purpose. Don’t spoiler that for me if the answer is revealed later on. I’ve only seen Ep1 so far and I’d like to see it untarnished.
I don’t think it was on purpose. It highlighted the differences between the Howards. Howard1 just isn’t as detail-oriented and disciplined as Howard2, largely because his life has never depended on getting every detail correct. He was still reeling from the whole Big Reveal, and just wasn’t thinking about getting everything absolutely correct. Heck, he almost forgot to buy flowers at all, if you recall, and had to tell the guy to stop at the last minute as they passed the flower shop.
It also highlights how good Baldwin is - she’s watched Howard1 long enough to know his routine, down to even this small detail, and she not only notices the discrepancy, but also realizes its importance.
But Howard1’s job, every single day, is to get the details right. That’s why it was such a big deal that he “broke protocol” and mentioned the stain on the other guy’s tie. Anyway, yeah, he almost forgot the flowers, but he told Howard2 the nurse’s name and then forgot the flower in the vase thing. I’m sure every viewer picked up on that and just new it was going to blow the whole thing. I know I sure did.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out. They threw out a nice little teaser at the end of Ep1.
Yeah, but as he says with the tie issue, why does any of that matter? To him, it’s just a routine he does every day, and is no different than anyone else who has to wear a particular uniform for work. He literally just takes off everything he’s wearing, and puts on the provided clothes. He doesn’t have to think about it, because someone else has made the rules, and set up the system for him. And even when he screws up, there’s no real consequences, just a talking to by his boss.
With the flowers, he had to do the thinking for himself, and he failed at it. There was no one else involved who could have picked up on the detail he missed, and it cost them.
I rewatched the end of episode 3, to listen to the letter from coma-Emily again. Yeh, not sure why I thought Howard2 and her were having an affair—maybe because of the secretive nature of a handwritten letter to Howard2. But there was nothing explicit, or even implicit, that would show them being involved romantically. Just that she is definitely a spy, and her and Howard2 were up to something prior. She remarked that she’d been keeping Howard1 at arm’s length to shield him from everything, just like she’s sure Howard2 had to do with Emily2. And, to protect Howard1 if anything were to happen. I’m curious what they were up to.
