I'm still not sold on Smulders. My biggest impression of her is the gag reel and her Wrath of Kahn impro. Which was hilarious. I could dig her in The Avengers because there was so much else going on . . . .

What I like more than anything is reading Buffista talk about a Joss network show again.

This!

I really really liked Mike's rant in the train station, about how they'd told him that if he were just a man, that would be enough, but they lied, and there are gods and superheroes now. It was really moving, and it felt pretty damned topical in this post-Occupy world.

I really liked that too! It was an interesting Everyman perspective, the idea that the very existence of superheroes suddenly sets the bar higher for being a person.

I kind of rolled my eyes at that, to be honest. I can understand super-beings being a pragmatic safety concern what with the Battle of New York, what happened in New Mexico, and the various Hulk rampages. But I fail to see how someone flying around in a metal suit metaphorically makes the common man obsolete, any more than Usain Bolt or Stephen Hawking already do.

I want to kidnap Colbie Smulders and trap her on this show so she never has to go back to HIMYM. She can bring Alyson Hannigan and NPH with her, even! Joss reunions for everyone!

I can support that plan.

Usain Bolt doesn't do anything useful. Stephen Hawking has already existed in multiple iterations through time, and this version can't go to the bathroom without assistance--I don't think the common person spends much time envying people in wheelchairs. Life's too busy for that.

But someone shows up and calls himself a god and flies and channels lightning, someone else transforms himself into a monster, etc, and they save one of the country's flagship city's from a (pretty fucking pointless) invasion of aliens? If you don't get freakouts I'd worry the populace had died inside.

Then again, I also supported Stargate command keeping the gates and the Goa'uld, etc secret, and largely because no one seemed to have a plan to deal with ensuing freakouts.

I am 100% behind Cobie in a way Scarlett never won me over.

I agree with both Matt and ita !. I like it as a metaphor for the 99%, but as itself? Yeah, I don't really see how the existence of gods and monsters raises the bar for ordinary humans in any way that Tony Stark didn't already. Stark is totally human and embodies what "the everyman" wants to be and almost no one can be: rich, powerful, and popular. (Honestly, no one gives a shit about smart, unless smart makes you rich.) At first I didn't even realize Mike P. was talking about gods and monsters; I thought he was literally talking about the 1%, as evidenced by his rage outburst at his boss.

I can see people freaking out over the gods and monsters. I can see people envying them. I just can't see the average person actually comparing themselves in any meaningful way with them. We admire them, dress up as them, take them as role models for certain qualities we want, but we don't decide we're shit and our lives are meaningless because we can't fly or turn into a rampaging giant.

At first I didn't even realize Mike P. was talking about gods and monsters; I thought he was literally talking about the 1%, as evidenced by his rage outburst at his boss.

Me, too.

I saw where he was coming from. Mike was struggling just to be a man providing for his family, and now there are these other people out there to show him another level he wasn't going to be able to achieve, people his son admired. He'd been actively trying to match superpowered heroes, and he was failing at that too. Last straw time.