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Firefly Lane Love is a Battlefield Review Season 1 Episode 4 Firefly Lane Love is a Battlefield Review Season 1 Episode 4

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Firefly Lane Review – Love is a Battlefield (1×04)

FIREFLY LANE (L to R) SARAH CHALKE as KATE and YAEL YURMAN as MARAH in episode 104 of FIREFLY LANE. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2020

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Firefly Lane Season 1 Episode 4 kicks off with Kate and Marah heading to what seems like Tully’s funeral. But while the mood is somber, there’s also an aura of serenity. 

Unfortunately, the whole scene is short-lived, and the rest of the episode keeps the two-year flash-forward a mystery. So, it could be Tully’s funeral, it could be someone else’s. 

In college flashbacks, we see Tully’s experience with her teacher, Professor Wiley. Yes, the Chad Wiley she was making out with at the end of Firefly Lane Season 1 Episode 3. Who expected him to be the journalism professor that guided her in the on-air sphere? Not me!

Initially, I thought maybe Wiley had been Tully’s more serious and promising relationship, but now, it’s clear that it continued down the same path of dysfunctional and problematic. At least, that’s what it looks to be now. 

Wiley, who gave off the impression that he didn’t like her in class, does try to stop their hook-up, but we know that they eventually give into temptation. 

In high school flashbacks, Tully and Kate decide to skip school and get high together. That’s when Tully informs Kate that she might be pregnant since she hasn’t gotten her period since Pat raped her. The thought is horrifying, and you hope that it isn’t the case, so when she eventually gets her period, it truly is a moment of relief and joy. I’m also impressed with the show for showing a bloody piece of toilet paper and owning it. It’s about time we normalize things like periods! 

The storyline parallels what’s unfolding in the present-day as Tully wakes up the morning after she passed out from drinking too much following her fight with Max. 

Kate is worried about her, but Tully shrugs it off as nothing before Kate’s mother suggests the hot flashes and memory loss may be menopause settling it. Tully is terrified by the possibility since she’s only 43 and it means that her chances of having children — even though it seems like she’s never entertained the idea of having any — are gone. 

However, the episode takes another unexpected turn when Tully reveals two lines on a pregnancy test, which means she’s pregnant with Max’s baby. Yes, at 43.

The idea of having a child past the age of 40 is frowned upon mostly because society has deemed it unacceptable. There’s a stigma against older parents, particularly, older moms. And while there are risks that come with having children once you are older, a woman’s life doesn’t end at 40! Some women, like Tully, spend their 20s and 30s dedicated to a career and don’t even entertain the idea until they are older because they aren’t ready in their “prime.” And there’s plenty of advantages including financial stability, ready (and willing) to settle down, and a wealth of knowledge that you’ve acquired through the years. 

So, while it’s entirely possible that Tully will choose to have an abortion (her prerogative) or will lose the baby, the simple fact that the series introduced this storyline is awesome and is reducing the stigma of waiting until later in life to have kids!

What do you think she’ll do?

The recital at the Ryan household is kind of a hot mess mainly because Johnny and Kate can’t figure out their relationship and poor Marah is caught right in the middle. You can say whatever you want, but children will always be affected by a divorce no matter how painless the parents try to make it. 

The problem with Johnny and Kate is that there’s still a lot of love and chemistry between them. I mean, if Marah hadn’t come home from school, it would have been wild in that bedroom. 

But that also doesn’t mean that they should give it another chance. I was all for giving it another go-around until their explosive fight during the recital. 

It’s still unclear what led to their decision to divorce. It seems like Johnny was jealous as Kate flirted with Travis, and while emotional cheating is still cheating,  it shouldn’t rock a solid relationship like Johnny and Kate’s. 

The bigger issue to me was Johnny telling Kate he wanted to be with her while also making it clear he wasn’t going to reconsider leaving for Iraq. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. 

My biggest gripe with this is that Johnny thinks he’s entitled to finding himself while Kate isn’t. As she pointed out, there are things she has wanted to do but couldn’t because she prioritized their family. 

In all the flashbacks, we see her striving to be a groundbreaking news producer, but when we meet her at the beginning of the series, she’s given all of that up to be a stay at home mom. 

Johnny didn’t even seem to acknowledge any of that because he was so focused on his own wants and needs. And while I get his side because it’s important not to lose yourself in your marriage and as a parent, but he wasn’t taking Kate’s wants or needs into consideration at all. 

He was basically choosing to leave to do something he wanted while she continued to be a parent and put Marah’s needs above her own. 

Kate has been disappointed, let down, and overlooked her whole life. She makes that perfectly clear during the flashback scenes in college when they go attend a dinner for her parent’s 25th anniversary. 

We know she’s been in Tully’s shadow for most of her life, and she watches as her own family takes more of an interest in her best friend than they do in her. 

Even her career path isn’t something her mother takes seriously, although she admires Tully’s work ethic in the same field.

Being exposed to that constantly takes a toll on you. 

Kate’s also not someone that likes being lied to, but it seems as though she was surrounded by liars. 

In the high-school flashbacks, she learns that her mother may have been cheating on her father, which is what changed her opinion of her mother and marriage in general. She also learns that Tully has been lying to her about her mother having cancer. It really would have been better if Tully just told her the truth. 

Also, I can’t help but wonder how Tully and Cloud afford the house (and all the drugs) since the latter never seems to go to work. I mean, she’s passed out on the couch on a random weekday at 2:30 pm! Did they come from a wealthy family?

And Kate doesn’t even know it yet, but her brother is lying to her about his sexual orientation, which will be a huge blow once she eventually finds out the truth and then realizes Tully knew all along. 

In the college flashbacks, we see Sean is struggling with keeping his orientation a secret and feels like everyone is moving on while he’s stuck in the same place. 

A now-grown Robbie comes to visit while he’s in town, and while Sean attempts to pick up right where they left off, Robbie informs him that he’s married and expecting a child with a woman named Hannah. 

It crushes Sean. His story intrigues me because, from past episodes, we know that he was dating an older man, but in the present-day, Sean shows up to the recital with a woman, who is very clearly his cover so that his family doesn’t think there’s something wrong with him. 

It’s heartbreaking to know that he had to suppress that part of himself for his whole life. Do you think Sean will ever come out to the family?

What did you think of the episode?

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Lizzy Buczak is the founder of CraveYouTV. What started off as a silly blog in her sophomore year at Columbia College Chicago turned her passion for watching TV into an opportunity! She has been in charge of CraveYou since 2011, writing reviews and news content for a wide variety of shows. Lizzy is a Music Business and Journalism major who has written for RADIO.COM, TV Fanatic, Time Out Chicago, Innerview, Pop’stache and Family Time.

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Who Is Rhys Montrose on ‘YOU’ Season 4?

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You Season 4 Episode 6 Review Best of Friends

YOU Season 4 introduced a plethora of new characters as it revamped the series with a murder mystery format. 

*Warning – stop reading if you haven’t finished YOU Season 4 – Spoilers Ahead *

The shakeup made sense considering Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) uprooted his life following the fiery events in Madre Linda that killed Love Quinn and started over in London, assuming the identity of Professor Jonathan Moore. 

Rather quickly, he got pulled into an elite group thanks to his co-worker and neighbor, Malcolm Harding (Stephen Hagan), who was the season’s first victim. Joe/Jonathan naturally despised Malcolm’s group, though he did find Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers), an author running for Mayor of London, to be a bit of a kindred spirit. They came from the same broken background and shared many of the same views.  

As the first half of the season unraveled, Joe sought out advice from Rhys on a handful of occasions, engaging in plenty of long heart-to-hearts with him, so it was kind of shocking when it was revealed that Rhys, as audiences have come to know him, was never real.

Rhys Montrose existed, yes, but he was never friends with Joe, nor was he the Eat the Rich Killer. The version of Rhys that Joe bonded with was a hallucination conjured up by his subconscious to protect himself and eliminate his darker, more deranged thoughts. 

YOU Season 4 Finale Episode 10 Review The Death of Jonathan Moore

You. (L-R) Ed Speleers as Rhys, Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 410 of You. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

For much of the season, we saw Joe desperately trying to set himself free from Rhys’ grasp. At first, he saw him as public enemy #1, who somehow figured out Joe’s real identity and roped him into a murder spree by threatening to frame him for the deaths if Joe refused to participate. 

However, once Joe realized that Rhys was a figment of his imagination, he began to look for ways to silence the evil little voice forever, while also trying to figure out a plan to cover up the death of the real Rhys Montrose. 

Joe was tasked with killing the mayoral candidate, who he assumed at the time was the Eat the Rich Killer, by Kate’s (Charlotte Ritchie) father, Tom Lockwood. When he arrived at Rhys’ secret countryside hideout and tied him up, he was infuriated that Rhys claimed not to know who he was, nor would he admit to kidnapping Marienne (Tati Gabrielle). Eventually, Joe’s rage and anger took over, and he “accidentally” killed Rhys, which is when fake Rhys showed up and revealed that Joe was having a semi-psychotic break. 

In the end, Joe’s suicide attempt ensured that his hallucinations were forever gone, though he did embrace the darkness he was trying so hard to snuff out, making him more dangerous than ever.

As for the real Rhys Montrose’s killer, he pinned it all on poor Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman), a fan of Rhys’s from the beginning, who flew too close to the sun in her attempts to bring down Joe Goldberg. If only she just listened to Marienne’s advice.

A huge congrats to the YOU team for pulling off yet another jaw-dropping twist, and to both Badgley and Speleers for completely immersing themselves in their dual characters. 

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YOU Review – Best of Friends (406)

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You Season 4 Episode 6 Review Best of Friends

Just when you thought you figured out where the season was headed, YOU pulls out the rug from under you yet again.  

I’m definitely starting to feel the whiplash that Joe/Jonathan must be feeling right about now. 

Things have gone from crazy to crazier rather quickly, as Rhys unveiled his true plan—along with how Joe is involved—while Joe came out victorious in front of the elite group once again, and all while a new suspect started piecing things together and realizing that Joe knows way more than he’s led on. 

While Joe spent numerous hours trying to figure out a plan to get close to Rhys, Rhys just appeared at Joe’s place one night without so much as lifting a finger. Joe may think he’s the invisible one in the city, but for a man who’s so well-known and loved, Rhys seems to get around without anyone noticing. 

And he made the rules of the game very clear—either Joe finds someone to frame for all the deaths or he goes down as the Eat-the-Rich killer, which isn’t exactly ideal. A little incentive goes a long way, so while Joe tried to distance himself initially, he couldn’t shake the desire for self-preservation and took the bait. He took the task rather seriously as it was either kill or be killed; he knew someone had to go down for it, but it had to be the right person.

With time running out, he genuinely began to consider Connie, but despite being an irrelevant character, he couldn’t justify pinning it on someone who was struggling with addiction and trying to turn their life around.  Connie wasn’t a threat to anyone, except for maybe himself, so Joe couldn’t justify destroying his life. 

But Dawn, well, she fell right into his lap. The few times we saw her snapping photos of the elite, and focusing on Joe–including when she spotted him at Rhys’ mayoral rally—I was convinced that she recognized him from his previous life. And that seems to be what the series wanted me to think so that they could pull a fast one on us because when Dawn pulled Phoebe aside to a “safe room” to keep her protected from the killer, it was revealed that Dawn was just an obsessive stalker who was connived that she was friends with the elite, Phoebe in particular. Dawn was a threat to a lot of people, so Joe took advantage of it. He framed her by planting Simon’s ear in her belongings, and since no one would ever believe a word she said over Phoebe’s accounts of what happened, Dawn couldn’t prove her innocence. Plus, she made an ideal suspect since she was at nearly every single event where a murder occurred as she was stalking the group. I mean, it couldn’t have been any more perfect if Joe had tried to plan it himself. 

You Season 4 Episode 6 Review Best of Friends

You. Ed Speleers as Rhys in episode 406 of You. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

However, his heroics did raise some questions from Nadia, his student and the lover of all murder mysteries. She noticed that Jonathan seemed to be at the center of every single scenario, oftentimes being championed as a hero, though he’s not actually connected to any of these people in any meaningful way. It’s a dangerous thing to play detective, especially when you’re setting your sights on Joe Goldberg.  Jonathan seems to like Nadia, but if she threatened him, I don’t think Joe would hesitate to take her down. Self-preservation is his M.O., remember?

Once Joe thought he finally got Rhys off of his back by framing Dawn, he decided to give into his desires and pursue a relationship with Kate. Honestly, Kate makes some really poor decisions, starting with just accepting Jonathan for who he is now and promising never to ask questions about his past. She wants someone to see her for who she is in the moment so badly that she’s letting logic take a backseat. Why would someone want to deny their past so badly unless they did something truly unforgivable? Kate wants to shed her past because of her connection to her father and she thinks that makes her and Jonathan equal, but they are not the same. 

By the time she realizes the truth about who Joe is, it might be too late.

As for Rhys, did Joe think he was really going to get rid of him that easily? Rhys has always wanted a friend to help him get to the finish line so to speak. He believes that they are the same, so he wasn’t going to just let Joe slip away.

And while his motive wasn’t evident at first, he seems hellbent on taking out those who don’t deserve their success and wealth. The three victims, Malcolm, Simon, and Gemma, all threatened his mayoral run in some way, so they were taken care of, and now, he’s setting his sights on the ultimate villain–Kate’s father. She may have a complicated relationship with her tycoon dad, but I don’t think Kate would ever want to see anything bad happen to him, let alone at the hands of the man she’s in love with. 

However, Rhys doesn’t seem to give Joe much of a choice as he still holds all of the cards. One might think that Joe could just handle this in the same way he always does, but well, you can’t just try to kill a killer. He’d see that coming from miles away. Joe needs to be strategic and deliberate in his plan, so for now, he has to play along. I, for one, am curious to see what all the hubbub is about Kate’s father–is he really as terrible as she makes him out to be?

As for Rhys, what is the catch? Fans were disappointed with the first half of the season since his reveal as the killer was obvious—and his motives, including his desire to kill Kate’s father–are exactly shocking or game-changing. What are we missing?

What did you think of the episode?

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What Time Does Netflix Release New Shows?

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Can you download TV shows and Movies on Netflix?

Netflix has become one of the most popular ways to consume new movies and TV shows. 

The streaming giant has not only dominated the TV and movie landscape but it’s changed the way content is released.

While primetime TV still adheres to a weekly episodic release schedule, Netflix—and many of the streamers that followed—adopted the idea of dumping a full season on fans, creating a binge-watch model. 

Most Netflix Originals are released in bulk, with the full episode order arriving at one time. A handful of shows, most recently Firefly Lane and YOU, has been split up into two parts—with the first half arriving a few months prior to the second half of the season, which definitely helps build up some anticipation and makes for more digestible viewing. 

Of course, as you anticipate new seasons and episodes of your favorite shows, you naturally want to know what time they are going to premiere.

The good news is that Netflix’s release times are pretty standard for original TV shows and movies. 

All titles are typically released globally at 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time, which is 2:00 a.m. Central Time and 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time. 

Netflix noted that some titles are considered an original in one country but not in another, and in that case, if they are premiering in a country where it is a licensed title, it will premiere at 12:00 a.m. local time. 

“Availability times vary for episodes that are released weekly or that follow their original broadcast airing,” the streamer also clarified. 

However, when it comes to those big-name shows like Outer Banks or Stranger Things, it’s safe to say that all episodes will be loaded in late in the evening, so you can either stay up and binge-watch or take the day off and squeeze them in bright and early!

Happy watching!

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