In an uneven finale, American Horror Story says you can’t outrun your fate
The apocalypse has finally come to an end. After nine episodes that seemed practically plodding after the overstuffed episodes of last year’s Cult, the season finale packed in everything, including so many clips from those last nine episodes you’d have to be forgiven for thinking an editor had been sleeping on the job and accidentally spliced the “previously on” in every five minutes.
The return of Angela Bassett was as welcome as it was wholly unnecessary. Marie Laveau barely has time to glare at Michael before he’s eating her heart. Her triumphant, blink and you miss it cameo captured the overall feel of the episode. There was a lot to smile about. Kathy Bates exploded! And her oozing head sang “Daisy Bell!” But what was it all for?
Likewise Cordelia’s sacrifice was so inevitable it seemed strange for it to play out like a surprising choice, to anyone involved. Since Mallory was first identified as the next Supreme, it was clear Cordelia would have to die so Mallory could rise and reach her full potential. Could Myrtle really be shocked by Cordelia’s suicide, especially when she offered an “I love you,” before walking very slowly and intentionally out of the room where their last hope seemed to be bleeding out in the bathtub? Billy Eichner’s jilted lover returning just long enough to stab Mallory was surprising. Where it ultimately brought the storyline was not.
Maybe the biggest problem the writers had to deal with was the fact the dots laid out in this season had, for the most part, been connected before the finale. If the audience understood Mallory and Coco must have been put under an identity spell for their protection if they were bumping around the bunker completely powerless, did we need to see it performed? If the pilot had already offered a peek into what their assistant/boss from hell dynamic looked like, did we need to see it play out under the watchful eyes of Madison? And while you don’t really need an excuse to watch Jessica Lange act, if we knew Michael eventually ended up in the loving arms of Ms Mead, desperate for a maternal figure, did we need to see his Grandma reject him completely then throw him out? It’s possible that scene even undercut, just a little, the moment when she leaves him to bleed out in the street after Mallory the time traveler hit him with her car. The moment just after he begs her to put him in the murder house does offer the night’s best moment of suspense. In a world where people often act against their own best interests in a spectacular fashion, it didn’t seem implausible that she might have preserved her grandson’s murderous spirit in the house with the rest of his family forever. But maybe she knew it was time for a new son of Satan to rise.
Getting past the terrifying new bit of world building that says you don’t need anything as specific as an evil ghost in the mix to give birth to the Antichrist, just two nice twenty-somethings who like coffee, going back to the season’s narrative beginnings (actually, to the series’ beginnings) could be seen as capturing an idea about the inescapable nature of fate. But while last season’s cyclical moment, the cult victim turned cult leader assassin turned cult leader at least captured an evolution, a second bouncing baby Antichrist, with the exact same MO as toddler Michael, just seems like a let down. The good guys won, and while it can be satisfying in a twisted way to see the people you’re rooting for realize their victory will be short lived, allowing only the audience to realize this bleak development felt hallow. Here’s hopping it’s all a set up for season nine— American Horror Story: Demonic Preschool. Maybe all Michael needed was some equally bloodthirsty kids to play with so he’d reach his full potential without so much angst.
That’s it for AHS: Apocalypse. Thanks for reading this season!
Stray Observations
- It was obviously suppose to be a call back to the pilot when the top secret apocalypse police picked up Timothy because his 23andme kit proved he had desirable DNA, but there is no way Emily, protestor against child labor, would go on even an apology date with a dude who said with no trace of irony he was .07% Brazilian.
- Even if you run over the Antichrist three times, you should probably just double check he actually died. Better safe than sorry when the literal fate of the world is in your hands.
- It makes sense Mallory would want to keep the whole knowing the future because she averted the apocalypse thing a secret, but in a school for witches, would it really be a big deal to tell Queenie she’s heard of the hotel, and it traps your soul? It seems less dangerous than counting on her frustration with traffic to keep herself out of harm’s way.
- So Coco, Mallory, Mr. Gallant and his Grandma were in the bunker because the witches set it up, Timothy and Emily were satanic plants, and Dinah and company got seats after she sold her soul. But Palo Alto tweedledee and tweedledum told Myrtle outpost three was full. So where were the rest of the celebrities? Surely they could have gotten some premium impersonators to round out the ensemble.
- Nan is the best. That is all.
Article via AVClub
Homeless vet, couple allegedly made up story for GoFundMe scam
The New Jersey couple who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in a viral charity campaign for a homeless man were allegedly working with the vagrant as part of an elaborate ruse, according to a new report.
Prosecutors believe that Mark D’Amico and Kate McClure conspired with homeless man Johnny Bobbitt to create their get-rich-quick scheme in 2017, NBC’s Philadelphia affiliate reported Wednesday.
The couple turned themselves in to authorities Wednesday, but Bobbitt was still at large, the news station said.
According a source who spoke to the news outlet, which said it had a copy of a criminal complaint, all three are expected to face charges of conspiracy and theft by deception for working together to create the ruse. The Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office is expected to make an announcement in the case Thursday, according to multiple reports.
Prosecutors did not immediately return a call for comment, and reps for the couple and Bobbitt were not available.
McClure, 28, and D’Amico, 39, created a GoFundMe page in November 2017, claiming homeless drug addict Bobbitt spent his last $20 to fill up McClure’s empty gas tank after her car broke down on I-95 near Philadelphia.
The charity campaign exploded, raising tens of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting donors in a matter of days — and ultimately shooting up to more than $400,000.
“It has changed my entire outlook about people, my outlook about people has skyrocketed,” McClure said of the donations at the time.
Their plan began to unravel in August of this year, when Bobbitt sued the couple, claiming they were withholding funds raised on the GoFundMe from him.
McClure and D’Amico, both of Florence Township, NJ, accused Bobbitt of being on drugs and refused to pay him until he was clean.
Article via NYPost
Janelle Monáe Is The 21st Century’s Time Traveler
It’s not enough to make list after list. The Turning the Tables project seeks to suggest alternatives to the traditional popular music canon, and to do more than that, too: to stimulate conversation about how hierarchies emerge and endure. This year, Turning the Tables considers how women and non-binary artists are shaping music in our moment, from the pop mainstream to the sinecures of jazz and contemporary classical music. Our list of the 200 Greatest Songs By Women+ offers a soundtrack to a new century. This series of essays takes on another task.
The 25 arguments writers make in these pieces challenge the usual definitions of influence. Some rethink the building legacies of popular artists; others celebrate those who create within subcultures, their innovations rippling outward over time. As always, women forge new pathways in sound; today, they also make waves under the surface of culture by confronting, in their music, the increased fluidity of “woman” itself. What is a woman? It’s a timeless question on the surface, but one deeply engaged with whatever historical moment in which it is asked. Our 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century illuminate its complexities. —Ann Powers
Janelle Monáe is many people in alternate timelines at once. She’s an archivist of right now, interpreter of back then, dreamer of one day. She imagines black people into the future in the midst of past and present threats of erasure. And after two studio EPs and three albums, the full scope of her work illuminates how the past, present and future might exist simultaneously. Who we were, who we are and who we’d like to be swirl and layer until timelines merge.
She’s Cindi Mayweather, an android on the run from an oppressive government dressed in black and white. She’s Jane, a human who holds onto her memories even as powers-that-be aim to systematically erase them. She’s a singer and actress; a queer, black woman who grew up in Kansas, City, Kan. to working class parents; an Atlanta transplant who sold her CDs and sang on Atlanta University Center library steps before signing with Bad Boy in 2008.
Monáe’s first self-released demo album The Audition (2003) was situated in both the present and the future. “Lettin’ Go,” a song about getting fired from Office Depot, appears on the same project as “Metropolis,” a four minute primer for the Afrofuturist world that Cindi Mayweather would love and live in. The universe she accelerated herself into was centuries away from the right now.
Monáe received the first of several Grammy nominations for “Many Moons,” a song from her 2007 release Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase). In Metropolis, androids are “the Other” in a dystopian reality set in 2719. The story of Metropolis revolves around Cindy Mayweather – just one of the characters Monáe would perform as, onstage and off, for much of her career.
These characters allow Monáe to sometimes speak in symbol and shadow. Timelines blur then sharpen, and visions of the future collide with present realities. “Left the city, my mama she said ‘Don’t come back home / These kids round’ killin’ each other, they lost they minds, they gone,'” she sings in Metropolis‘ “Sincerely, Jane.” Even when Monáe sings in character, the sense of something immediately true to her own life bobs into and outside of these voices.
Read more via NPR
Jada Pinkett Smith Admits to Struggling with Bias: ‘Blonde Hair on White Women Just Triggers Me’
Jada Pinkett Smith is revealing what “triggers” her about white women.
On Monday’s episode of Red Table Talk, the 47-year-old actress spoke about the relationship between white women and women of color, and revealed a surprising revelation of how she views the former.
“I think what crushes me, specifically in my relationship with white women, the thing that really breaks my heart is that white women understand what it feels to be oppressed,” Pinkett Smith said.
Her 17-year-old daughter, Willow, chimed in, “Because of their sex.”
“Exactly. Because of their sex,” the mother of two agreed. “What it feels like to be ostracized or not being treated as an equal.”
Pinkett Smith admitted to her own biases, saying, “I have to admit I’m guilty to that to a certain degree because I do have my own biases, specifically to blonde women.”
“Blonde hair on white women just triggers me,” the Girls Trip star said while snapping her fingers. “I’ve had to catch myself.”
“Do you have a specific incident with someone who had blonde hair?” her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Jones, asked.
“Absolutely. All throughout my childhood. I do remember experiencing being teased by white women in regards to my hair, how I looked, feeling belittled,” Pinkett Smith said.
Pinkett Smith then invited Red Table Talk producer Annie Price to the table to share her opinion on the racial divide between white women and women of color.
“Any time I want to have a conversation [about race] I’m afraid I’m going to offend somebody just by starting to talk,” Price said. “I feel like I’m going to say the wrong thing.”
She continued, “I hear a lot of times that white women have privilege and they need to recognize they have privilege. I’m sure I do. I just haven’t had the experience to recognize that I have the privilege. I don’t understand the feeling of racism. I feel a lot of times trying to be friends or trying to reach out to women of color, sometimes I feel like they don’t want to be my friend.”
Pinkett Smith said she believed “there is something unique” about “why black women and white women have such a difficult time [talking to each other].”
“We, even as black women, have to be willing to look at our biases that keep us from being able to bridge the gap,” she added.
Red Table Talk airs Mondays on Facebook Watch.
Article via People
Simon Cowell reveals he parted ways with Little Mix over disagreement on Woman Like Me
The group parted ways with Cowell’s label Syco just a week before the release of their LM5 album.
Simon Cowell has opened up about parting ways with Little Mix, the most successful act on his record label Syco.
The music mogul and X Factor judge told The Sun that the decision to sever ties came after falling out with their management company Modest over a songwriting credit on their latest single Woman Like Me.
Little Mix also said they weren’t keen on recording the song, which was co-written by Ed Sheeran, Jess Glynne and Steve Mac. The track peaked at Number 2 on the Official Singles Chart earlier this month.
“The irony was the record they were arguing about, which is Woman Like Me, they didn’t want to record,” Cowell said. “This was one of those ironic times that we were having a hit and nobody was happy.”
“It was just embarrassing but, funnily enough, I was more annoyed, again, not about me, but about the fact people who had worked so hard in my company were being misrepresented. Why do artists think they’re more important than staff members? They’re not. They’re the same.
Simon explained that the decision “wasn’t down to money”, adding: “Basically, they said we’d done a terrible job. I had agreed not to talk about this publicly because I thought it was a private matter. I said, ‘We can’t work with the management, it’s as simple as that’.
“Everyone’s like, ‘There must have been something massive and that’s why it collapsed’. Well, I can show you all the correspondence between me and the girls over the years, there’s never been an instance when we’ve fallen out. As I said in my email to them, I stand by the fact they are the hardest working bunch of girls I’ve ever worked with. They deserve everything they’ve got.”
MORE: Big albums still to come in 2018
Little Mix are gearing up to release their fifth album, LM5, on November 16. The group are due to perform on the new series of Michael McIntyre’s Big Show on BBC 1, which kicks off on November 17.
Article via OfficialCharts
Was Derek Fisher Worth It? Gloria Govan Loses Full Custody Of Her Boys To Matt Barnes
Matt Barnes just scored a colossal sized victory in his custody case against ex-wife Gloria Govan and was awarded sole physical and legal custody of their 10-year-old twins.
Barnes also got a restraining order against Govan that will extend through May 2020. But the order doesn’t include the children, named Carter and Isaiah, since the judge doesn’t believe she’ll be a threat to them.
Govan was also ordered to complete 26 anger management sessions, as well as 10 parenting classes.
The restraining order and mandatory sessions have to do with the “Basketball Wives” star being arrested in August after she and Barnes got into a confrontation at their sons’ school.
She was charged with felony child endangerment, which eventually got dropped but some might say the arrest led to the court’s decision to award Barnes custody.
Another theory could be that Govan’s high-profile relationship to Derek Fisher didn’t help her case either since it brought a lot of negative attention. If you recall, after Govan and Barnes split, she began dating Fisher, who used to be Barnes’ friend.
Then in October of 2015, Barnes drove 95 miles to Los Angeles and attacked Fisher after his boys called him to say he was inside their home.
Now, based on the judge’s ruling, Govan will be allowed to see her boys every other weekend and gets to have dinner with them every Wednesday evening.
So far she’s remained silent about the decision, but Barnes posted a photo with his attorneys, expressed his gratitude and called them the “Dream Team.”
Article via AtlantaBlackStar
Kim Kardashian Speaks Out on California Wildfires and Asks For Help During Emotional Speech
The Kardashian family shared a heartfelt message of support and appreciation for those affected by the California wildfires, and those fighting the infernos, during their acceptance speech at this year’s People’s Choice Awards on Sunday.
After presenter Chrissy Teigen announced Keeping Up With the Kardashians as the winner for Best Reality Show of 2018, Kim Kardashian-West, Kris Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian and Kendall Jenner took to the stage at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, where Kim spoke on behalf of her family.
“It’s been a really rough week in our home in Calabasas, Hidden Hills, and for our neighbors in Thousand Oaks and Malibu,” Kim shared, somberly. “Our hearts are broken from the horrific shootings and for those who have lost their lives and homes, as well as the hundreds of thousands of us that have been evacuated from the devastating fires that are currently burning.”
Kim and a number of her family members have been among the tens of thousands who have been evacuated from their homes due to the raging Woolsey Fire and Hill Fire that have been tearing through Southern California, as well as those who have been evacuated due to the deadly Camp Fire burning north of Sacramento.
“As horrible as this has been, it’s been amazing to see the resilient spirit of everyone involved, and the heroism of those risking their lives on the front lines,” Kim continued. “Action is necessary, so anything we can do to help, as simple as donating to the many organization that are collecting supplies, no form of help is too small.”
“Our country is stronger when we come together and we cannot face devastation alone,” she continued. “We must continue to reach out and help each other during these trying times.”
A number of other celebs, including Camille Grammer, Gerard Butler, Robin Thicke, Lady Gaga, Orlando Bloom, Caitlyn Jenner and many others, were forced to evacuate by the Woolsey Fire. Some, like Butler, have already returned to find their homes totally or partially destroyed.
They join the ranks of nearly 260,000 other residents in Los Angeles County and Ventura County who have been forced to flee their homes due to the fires, which have already scorched over 80,000 acres.
Firefighters from across the state, as well as those from neighboring states, have been working tirelessly on multiple fronts, to contain the blazes and combat the devastation of these horrifying wildfires.
“We would like to dedicate this win to all of the firefighters, the law enforcement and the first responders,” Kim said during the acceptance speech. “We really, truly appreciate what you have done for all of us. So please, let’s continue to pray for everyone’s safety.”
On Sunday, ET spoke with Jamie Foxx at the premiere of Robin Hood in New York City, where the actor revealed that many members of his family living in Thousand Oaks have been evacuated and are currently staying in a hotel until they learn the fate of their homes.
“I can’t tell people enough, in a world right now where it’s sort of crazy times to just look for the good in people. Stop looking for the bad in people,” Fox said. “And just pray for the kids, man, pray for everybody in California. People are losing their whole existence. we were fortunate enough to be able to move but a lot of people aren’t, so just god bless all.”
Article via ET