天下制覇

I need to get started on next season's preview, assuming the coronavirus doesn't wipe out a few more production schedules.

Impressions:

As much as I'm checked out on this terrible show, it continues to flabbergast me how oblivious the writers are to the characters they've created. The episode begins with this big explanation about how their strategy is to prey upon and farm helpless beginners and knock them out of the game, framed as "woe is us" because one of them… just one of them… gets a bit winded from ruining hundreds of people's games. Then they're finally confronted by people who can pose even slight resistance and it's the end of the goddamned world… despite the 'good guys' then proceeding to steamroll them, bring everyone back from their loss, and march right up to facetank everyone else.

These are not people to cheer for, and any even slim pretext that this was some kind of satire was completely absent since we're now trying to pretend that this is a grand finale. These are petty entitled jackasses. Even Superman has to struggle against the random dude whose power is "has a gun that shoots pleasantly warm and fluffy quilts." At least have some people who figured out that she can be incapacitated, or use percentage-based attacks, or just run away. You can't have the characters not just act like, but actually be remorseless villains and then say "Oh, but we're actually not doing well on the scoreboard, and one of us is a little tired" and have that be enough to get the audience in your corner.

Next Episode:

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