John from Cincinnati 7/15/07 (open spoilers)

John: Judas Priest is a genius on science. Judas Priest is my father’s son too.

Joe: Well, this was time well spent. :dubious:

That about sums up my feelings. I feel like I should have a better idea of what the fuck was going on with John’s monologue about his father’s word in Cass’ camera and the circle and the line on the wall, which is huge, but I don’t. And I was trying to pay attention, really hard.

What I did get out of it, and correct me if I’m wrong:

–Cissy’s loudmouth ranting was overheard by Shawn, who finally alerted Cissy to her rudeness and hurtfulness. She actually cares that she hurt his feelings, so she arranged for him to see Tina.

–Tina slept with Linc Stark for money.

–John can hear people’s thoughts and channel dead people, ala Bill’s dead wife Lois.

–Cissy was going to kill herself because she molested Butchie when he was 13 and she is such a bitch because the guilt is crushing her. John intervened to convince her to suck it up and live for Shawn’s sake.

–Shawn and Tina have tuna and talk. He wants her to stick around, despite knowing that she’s a porn star.

–The doc fixed Palaka’s arm, even though I thought the doc had to resign from the hospital.

–John wanted justice on the vato who stabbed him but they just wound up stoned/passed out in Bill’s van.

–John was multi-locating, appearing in Bill’s dream, to Cass, Link, and all the people at the barbecue at the hotel all at the same time.

–During this vision/multi-locating, John delivered a rambling monologue to all the characters on the show except Mitch, who was completely absent from this episode for some reason.

Of course I’m going to keep watching, not sure why, but if someone has a coherent explanation of what the hell happened in this ep, I’d be much obliged.

Um, what was up with the corpse that John took out of room 24? And I got the impression that no one at the barbecue saw him. I think only Cissy and Cass saw him.

I meant to mention that. I didn’t know who that was supposed to be either.

I thought it had something to do with the hotel owner. Wasn’t he molested by a guy in the room John pulled the corpse out of?

I hope this show doesn’t go the way of Lost, I got tired of the increasing mystery with nothing ever being explained. I mean polar bears, WTF?

The gray guy was the guy who molested Barry the Fairy when he was ten–it was sort of showing that he wasn’t really there, dead or at least inconsequential. I wonder if pulling “him” out of the room is a final exorcism of Room 24, allowing Barry to start to get over it?

Hey, it’s Jennifer Grey as Dickstein’s fiancee! :cool:

This one is going to take a LOT more watching to absorb, but I loved it.

We never saw Cass’s camera, but the various people who were at the barbecue were posed as if their picture was being taken (with the gray guy in the middle). So perhaps they are meant to discover the photo later when Cass looks at her camera.

And John’s speech mentioned his father in a way suggesting that his father is God and John is Christ.

Was there some doubt about that? John from Cincinati…JC…Jesus Christ.

Well, I kind of hoped it would be something other than that.

I didn’t catch that, but since they’ve already pulled Luke Perry and Ed O’Neill back from obscurity, I’m not surprised.

I wasn’t lovin’ this show at all.

But, at least it wasn’t flat-out annoying me. . .until last night. If I’m going to listen to 15 minutes of nonsense in 45 minutes of a TV, it better be more entertaining than that.

I thought last night was a mess. The thing about Cissy jerking off Butchie was distracting. The guy with the broken arm is annoying. John is annoying. Cissy is annoying. Sean is annoying. Kai is annoying.

I’m no longer looking for anything great from this show, but I’m not looking to be irritated right before bedtime either.

Wasn’t the chick in the diner, the one that put her shirt over the computer nerds head, Trixie from Deadwood? All the Deadwood connections are really pissing me off. If they are just going to recycle all the same actors and dialog from Deadwood, why couldn’t we have just kept Deadwood in the first place?

My thoughts exactly and yes, that was Trixie. I have serious doubts about our being able to see Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant and Powers Boothe, but it’s within the realm of possibility that others will show up before we ever find out if this show has a plan or not.

Shades of Twin Peaks with all the weird-for-its-own-sake posings and monologues. These are the least likable characters in any show I’ve seen on HBO. That, of course, excludes the HBO shows I have refused to watch at all.

Their popularity as a result of The Sopranos is being squandered and fast.

As for JC being Jesus Christ, consider these other possibilities:

Jeff Chandler
John Cage
Jessi Coulter
Johnny Cash
Julius Caesar
Jed Clampett
Johnny Carson
Jiminy Cricket

I don’t think we are forced to accept that Jesus Christ has anything whatsoever to do with this show!

I thought that Jiminy Cricket was perhaps supposed to be a christ figure.

Then we’re doomed to a pop-religion expose’ by way of lowlifes and druggies and porn stars. Just what every Christian has been waiting to see. Maybe it would have been a better animation thing?

As weird as this episode was, at least it got out of the vague hints about John’s religious nature and addressed the issue head on. But I still don’t know if I get it. He basically was hypnotizing those folks to try and “exorcise their demons” (ie, erase the really bad things that happened to each of them in the past). Maybe everyone will be all chilled out next week, groovin’ on the new vibe that JC planted in their heads. :cool:

Another thing I noticed. The episode was titled “His Visit: Day Five” and the previous episodes were “His Visit: Day Four” and so forth. So does that mean that John will disappear at some point and the show will concentrate on the characters’ reactions to what appears to be the second coming of Christ?

Hey! If we’re going for counterparts to the Jesus story, maybe the stiff in Room 24 is Lazarus. And Shaunie’s mom is Mary Magdelene. Is it possible Milch is rewriting the New Testament for Modern Times? If so, who are all these characters supposed to be?

Wasn’t one of the apostles a doctor?

There’s a problem with the head count for females, though.

Maybe the sax player is Gabriel?

So, there was one line of dialog that just totally baffled me. When Cissy showed up at the hotel, and the lottery-winner-guy said she’d once said something nice to him, right before that he said something about a solicitor which, even when I turned the subtitles on, I just could not parse. I tried like 3 times and it made absolutely no sense.

Does anyone remember what I’m talking about?

Not solicitor, solicitude.

Barry said to Butchie WRT Cissy, “In some circumstances, ‘you moron piece of shit’ may be heard as a blessed solicitude.” He went on to say that Cissy wouldn’t remember him, but she expressed a kindness to him a number of years ago. Shock is registered by all that Cissy had said something nice to anyone, ever, because she didn’t remember it, and Butchie thought it must be a case of mistaken identity. Barry went on to say, “One mother’s rebuke of her son, even if vile and obscene, may be taken as kindness by another, whose mother is not at hand.”

I’m not really clear what the hell Barry was on about, to tell you the truth.

I took that to mean that Cissy once said something to Butchie when he was being mean to Barry, so her yelling at Butchie was a kindness to Barry.