Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Question: How did Alan's parents die? On their gravestone it says they died in the same year.

Answer: They never say how they died. It seems to be grief related, but anything would be speculation. They spent all their money and time into searching for Alan, and Sam dies when he's 70, which is below the national average, but still a fairly old age. And if he spent his time and money, he may have disregarded his own health (speculation). Even though Carol is only 61 when she passes, she may have realised she'll never see her son and then he husband has now passed away and she couldn't bear it and passes away (speculation).

Bishop73

If that was always sad, I wonder if he blamed himself for the fight before it disappeared.

Show generally

Question: How exactly did Walt poison Brock? It doesn't make sense, the hospital said it was lily of the valley, but Walt and Saul confirmed it was ricin.

MikeH

Answer: Walt does use Lilly of the Valley berries to poison Brock. Vince Gilligan said he and the writers imagined Walt went to Brock's school with a poisoned juice box (there's subtle clues to confirm Walt knew what school Brock went to). But, when Jesse went to Saul's office, Saul's bodyguard, Huell, does a cigarette pack swap on Jesse when he pats Jesse down. Now the cigarette pack Jesse has no longer has the vial of ricin in it and Walt tries to convince Jesse that Gus stole the ricin and used it on Brock.

Bishop73

Question: Why do Alex and his droogs go to beat up the writer and his wife? What did they do to him that made him want to choose them in particular?

Answer: They don't have a reason beyond wanting to commit crimes. Alex says as much. There's nothing special about the couple, it was just a crime of opportunity.

Answer: Alex and the Droogs had taken the drug "synthcameth" which induces the desire for the old "ultra violence" and were seeking violence in a stolen car; they just happened to end up at the writer's house.

michael g

Question: Before they break up and Larry comes home, was Anna planning on leaving him that night and telling Larry the truth? Or did it just happen because of Larry's confession?

Answer: She was planning on leaving Larry. Notice how he questioned her about her appearance - she claimed to have had a bath, but was dressed again. She initially told him that she went out to buy milk. Then she explained that Dan had been at the house. Most likely, she got dressed because she was ready to leave their home in a hurry.

I think that Anna didn't know what she wanted.

Show generally

Question: What happened to Julia? They spend time building up a character and then she dated Frasier and they broke up, and in the next episode there is no mention of her leaving the station - no one talked about her?

Dan23

Chosen answer: TV shows frequently have short-term characters who never appear again. Maybe Julia got another job. Maybe Julia still works at KACL, even if she is never shown or mentioned.

Answer: She became victim to "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome." Which is described as: "when a character in a television mysteriously vanishes from the show. No write-off, no death, not even a passing explanation of what happened to the character."

Ssiscool

It's annoying when they introduce the character build it up and then get rid of it with none of the characters mentioning it.

Dan23

Answer: While it's never mentioned in the film, the most likely explanation is that Harry, as a rich kid, grew tired of "slumming it" and decided to move back into his mansion.

Answer: I saw it as they needed Bryan out of the house to stage Lenore's body. Lenore had already been kidnapped the previous day and now they needed to plant her body in his home.

Bishop73

Question: What is the purpose of the initial TV montage?

Answer: To me it never looked like a montage. It was just someone flipping through the channels (channel surfing) until they got to "TV Time" where they stayed to watch the commercial for the PleasanTVille marathon. People (especially before DVRs) sometimes just flip through the channels looking for something to watch, especially if you don't know what's playing on each channel.

Bishop73

Question: What did the captain say and mean after Gina says that it's been rough sometimes without her husband but her and Josh are ok?

THE GAMER NEXT DOOR

Answer: "There is a strength to this one." Just meaning he sees Gina as a strong, independent woman who's been able to keep going despite losing her husband.

Bishop73

Answer: As stated previously, Will returned from spending the summer in Philly at the beginning of s03e01. But this is the first time the audience sees Will going back to Philadelphia.

Bishop73

Question: Sally tries to prevent Jack from taking over Christmas using Fog Juice. How will fog stop him?

Answer: As seen in the movie, the Fog Juice made it difficult to see anything. Sally had hoped that with no way of seeing where he was going, she would be able to stop him from leaving Halloween Town and save his life.

Answer: He's coming back from his vacation in Philadelphia.

Question: Did Brooks really have McClanahan play in the third period of the game against Sweden even though he was injured?

Answer: Yes, he did. Seeing McClanahan play through his pain inspired the rest of the team and helped them come from behind to a 2-2 tie with Sweden, which turned out to be vital.

Question: Why did Brooks want to make his players hate him?

Answer: Since they all came from different, sometimes rival, universities, and thus had no commonality, he wanted to give them someone to dislike together, instead of fighting with one another. If they could all bond over what a bastard Brooks was, they'd come together faster as a team and have a chance of winning.

Answer: Randall Stephens. And strictly speaking, he didn't "help" Norton create the fake person...he did it on his own initiative, to launder Norton's ill-gotten gains. If Norton knew about Randall Stephens at all, he likely didn't understand the purpose but trusted that Andy was doing it for his (Norton's) own good.

Question: Why was the camel left with the 2 murdered men?

Answer: It is stated very plainly that the Arabs left the camel behind because it was lame. This was a dramatic device to demonstrate the Arabs' ruthlessness: They murdered two human beings in cold blood, but allowed a lame camel to live. Note that the camel scene appears in the 1965 film, but not at all in the 2004 film.

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: It's unknown why they left the camel there.

raywest

Question: During the slapping, what did George mean when he said send him up to the front?

Answer: "The front" means the front line, i.e., where the enemy is being engaged. He's saying that since the soldier isn't physically injured, he should be fighting, not (as Patton sees it) being a coward and shirking his duty.

Answer: He meant that he intended to send the soldier back to his unit where the main fighting with the enemy is taking place. This is referred to as "the front."

raywest

Answer: No, it is not known what he was selling, only that it was likely some kind of an illegal or unsavory business transaction. His business was to steal things then illegally sell them.

raywest

Answer: It was never a serious relationship. Ginny had always had a crush on Harry and only started dating Dean when she thought Harry would never be interested in her. Dean and Ginny got on well at first, but Ginny was always defensive if any other student, including Dean, was in any way critical of Harry. Dean, to keep the relationship going, worked hard to always appease Ginny and stay on her good side. Unfortunately, this tactic annoyed Ginny, and later led to her breaking up with Dean.

raywest

Question: Why do Borg always attack earth with only one single ship? We already know from ST: Voyager that Borg have so many ships in the delta-quadrant that they sometimes attack with 10 or more ships at the same time. Why don't they just send 2 or 3 of their cubes next time? Borg knows that the Federation needed their very last resources and a lot of luck to defeat the Borg Cube last time (Battle of Wolf359). So 2 ships at least should do the job this time. Instead they again send one cube and risk defeat.

Goekhan

Answer: The Borg think like machines. They have calculated that one cube is enough to conquer Earth so they send one cube. Both times they were defeated because of incalculable events. Both times they didn't have a reason to send more than one cube.

lionhead

This is wrong. Borg do have a big reason to send more than one cube the second time. They know that Locutus (Picard) is there somewhere and can log-in into the Borg hive when Borg are near him. He received visions from the Borg shortly before battle and calculated with this information "unimportant" weak-spots which destroyed the second Borg cube. If someone knows your weak spots and this someone is nearby, then Borgs should be more precautious than last time.

Goekhan

The Enterprise was not at the battle, the Borg knew that, Picard went in against orders and intervened. This time the Borg took more than just a cube anyway, they took time travel with them. They probably had it as a contingency plan.

lionhead

The contingency plan is even more brainless, explaining one plot hole with another one. There is absolutely no need to fly into the earths atmosphere to start their time machine. They could've done it even more safely before entering federation territory.

Goekhan

That doesn't make any sense. They didn't have to enter the atmosphere, I don't even think they did. The sphere escaped the exploding cube and almost immediately opened a vortex. Also, saying that they "could have done it even more safely before entering federation space" is nonsense since they needed to be in federation space for the contingency plan anyway. Nothing safer about it doing it outside of federation space, just takes more time.

lionhead

Answer: The Borg don't care that much about Earth, or losing a single cube. They are mostly testing the water before fully expanding towards the Alpha Quadrant. Their space is in the Delta Quadrant and still a long way from expanding into the Alpha Quadrant.

Not entirely true because the Borg queen was on board the cube, and they had a contingency plan to go back in time, making their efforts quite elaborate. They have attacked Earth twice now, because they know about it from the Enterprise (and Q) and plan on conquering it and expand into the Alpha Quadrant. A cube is equivalent to an entire fleet of ships and Picard accurately calls this action by the Borg an invasion (the second one).

lionhead

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