[DreamSword]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Second, I'm kinda with Fish on this one: I'm not really sure how the logistics of this work. So far it seems like the dreams are most directly impacting the dreamer, but in this case the old guy is passed out in the hospital and has nothing to do with the making of the horrible green sauce. How exactly is it briefly poisonous? I haven't rewatched the earlier episodes, but this doesn't feel consistent with how the Nightmares have been working so far.

The sauce is made poisonous due to the MOTW literally dripping poison goop into it. We see that both in this episode as well as the previous one.

Furthermore, the Nightmares do have powers that bleed into the real world. We've seen this before with stuff like the feathers in the church with the Crow monster and bombings happening in real life in the premiere.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

But I ended up scratching my head almost the exact same way trying to figure out fairly basic things about the present tense plot too, and I'm not sure if that's because the show is too smart for me or not.

...

Now, that kind of very literal stuff is generally a minor annoyance at worst, especially for someone like me, who always cares about the emotional aspect of storytelling more, but I consistently felt that same looseness in the way the episode is constructed there, too? There's a whole relationship between these three chefs that's more hinted at than shown, which not only makes the catharsis of the resolution much weaker, but even left me unsure if the way I'm reading into everything is even correct? I think the idea is that Sannoh deliberately wanted to use the surgery as an excuse to give his apprentices this big chance to come into their own because he's too stern to just encourage them normally or something? But for one thing, that would mean ZEZTZ is fighting merely to keep a situation from being changed for the worse, which I still think is less inherently gratifying to watch than a hero who can actively make a positive change beyond blowing up the bad guy. Even beyond that, though, without a scene of those apprentices actually, you know, reconciling with Sannoh at the end, it all ends up feeling a bit hollow?

Keep in mind that the premiere spelled out how exactly the nightmares each VOTW has works: Yes they are bad dreams where the monster resides, but they are still realms made up of a person's' subconscious desires. We see in his dreams that Sannoh is the one preparing the food himself; shouldering the responsibility that comes with the upcoming conference and the restaurant itself. Thus, it's pretty safe to assume that while he does want his apprentices to succeed, he's equally afraid of everything going wrong and wants to shoulder that burdon on his own, rather than seeing those he holds dear end up getting their lives ruined due to his shortcomings as a chef and mentor.

I also feel like people aren't exactly viewing how Zeztz has been handling its MOTW of the week plots in quite the right context? To me, these are the fast going B Plots. They are merely vehicles to get our main cast moving so things concerning them can inch forward. What with things like the Recovery Capsem and the twist with Nox's' identity at the end.

Not to mention, pretty much every episode so far has been almost entirely from Baku's' perspective(or his supporting cast), and their jobs aren't to get into the little nitty-gritty of these people's' lives; Simply to stop the situation at hand. As such, us as the viewer aren't going to get any super deep insight into how the chefs all talk to eachother outside of the relevant scenes or the fully details of the conversation between the newlyweds in the Crow two-parter, for example. The value is not in knowing every single little progression point of these people's' lives, but rather knowing that things have been made better, even just a little bit, thanks to the work of Zeztz and his crew.

I dunno man, "All he did was stop the situation from getting worse" seems like a really jaded take to me. Like, yeah. He prevented a bunch of people from dying to food poisoning as well as keeping a business(and those who work for it) from going under. I'm not seeing how there isn't a value of heroism to that.