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.

Show generally

Question: Why has American Dad! gotten so violent ever since the fifth season? I mean they had a bit of violence in the first four seasons, but now ever since season five and so on nearly every single episode is full of all different types of violence.

Chosen answer: It is just the decision of the creators to do so.

MasterOfAll

Meet The Quagmires - S5-E18

Question: In the alternate timeline, Quagmire and Lois are married. In the kitchen, Lois takes a pie out of the oven and Quagmire says "Hey honey I'm ready for your pie and you made dessert too". Now I know this is some sort of sex joke or dirty pun. But what exactly does the joke mean?

Chosen answer: Pie is a slang for a woman's vagina. That's the meaning of this double entendre. He want to have sex with her and she just happened to have baked dessert.

Rydersriot87

Question: SPOILERS: If Seth was mutilated, wouldn't he have been unable to operate his Blunderbuss, thus never having eliminated the people he shot in his original timeline?

gobylo

Chosen answer: I came to realize the answer a week later, that once future Seth was sent back, his contract was terminated.

gobylo

Question: When Vito Corleone visits Sicily with his family, he is received by an old woman and a man. This people are the ones, I suppose, who helped Vito to escape when he was a child. However, when they are having lunch together, Don Vito refers to her as "grandmother" when telling his son to give her a gift. So, are the old woman and the man members of the family? And, what are their names?

Luiz Iervolino

Chosen answer: They helped him escape Don Ciccio's death warrant. He likely loves them like parents, and this would make them the childrens' grandparents.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: Why not just say that Harvey perished in the hospital explosion? It wouldn't cover up the people he killed, but still it would be painless and easy.

Brad

Chosen answer: Well, as you say yourself, it wouldn't cover up the people he killed. It would also immediately raise questions that couldn't be plausibly answered, principally why a senior public official was left to die in the explosion of a building from which everybody else had been evacuated. Likewise, it wouldn't explain how Dent's body was found a long way from the hospital a considerable time later - given the number of police officers who attended the scene, enough people would have seen the body that there's no realistic way it could have been kept a secret. Finally, there's a myth to be built; in terms of Dent's legacy, being brutally murdered at the hands of a crazed vigilante is a much better story to arouse public feeling than him simply dying in an impersonal explosion. For the apparently quite draconian Dent Act to be passed into law, Dent has to be seen as a martyr by the public, so that the public outrage is strong enough to allow such measures to be set up. The hospital explosion story, with all its holes, would never do for that; the story that they go with, that Batman killed him, works much better.

Tailkinker

Question: When Bond goes to the fighting ring and discovers that Maud Adams is dead, was that really a dummy of her? It sure looked like one to me.

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: No, it was the actor.

Question: It is stated that Merida is a tomboy. What exactly made her a tomboy in the first place? Can someone also please point out her tomboy behaviors just so I can get a better idea?

Answer: Nothing "makes" a tom boy, it's something they're born with. Some girls, myself included, from earliest childhood, just prefer engaging in sports or other physical activities and like exploring and being outdoors. Merida shows she is a tom boy because she easily adapts to using the bow and arrow and also likes being in the outdoors, hunts, and can use a weapon to defend herself, rather than relying on someone else to protect her. She is a natural-born leader.

raywest

Show generally

Question: If Monk is afraid of germs, then why does he keep touching things that could possibly have germs on them like parking meters or books?

Answer: Notice also that in the opening credits scene when he is touching parking meters her also wipes his hand on his clothes each time he does it.

Answer: That's the thing about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It's not something rational. He just has to touch things like that. It's not something he can rationally think through. However, since part of his disorder includes an obsession with cleanliness, he also has an assistant walk around handing him wipes periodically. It's like when he gets a cold and uses both a humidifier (because that's what you use when you're congested) and a dehumidifier (to counteract the effects of the humidifier). He may spout rationalizations after he does something, but his compulsions exist outside of any rational thought whatever.

Garlonuss

Chosen answer: It's not. The lizard in question places its own eggs in existing bird's nests.

Garlonuss

Question: What happened to Radagast? One minute he's running away from the Orcs, but then the Orc is standing on a stone and then Radagast disappears for the rest of the movie.

Casual Person

Chosen answer: We are never told, but given his confidence in his rabbits and the fact that he is a wizard of equal power to Gandalf (even if he has gone a bit odd), we can presume he escapes. Radagast doesn't appear in the book, his presence was pretty much invented for the movie, however he does appear very briefly in the first book of the Lord of the Rings (though not in the movie), so as far as the overall story goes, he must survive.

roboc

Question: Why does this movie have so many differences than the book? Why don't they want to follow the actual story line according to the book?

dinieland

Chosen answer: Any book-to-film adaptation will require changes, because what works on the page will not always work cinematically, for any number of reasons. Given the length of some books (the Order of the Phoenix clocks in at well over 700 pages), there's no realistic way that everything could possibly be fitted into the length of a movie, and thus it regularly becomes necessary to eject certain subplots entirely, condense certain events, combine characters or whatever else might be necessary to tell the basic story successfully within a two hour timeframe. As a result, many cinematic adaptations can contain significant deviations from the original book, but ultimately tell what amounts to the same core story. This happens with most of the Potter films, particularly those based on the longer books, but ultimately the main storyline remains intact, even if they take a slightly different route along the way.

Tailkinker

Question: This may seem like an obvious one, but why wouldn't Alice just let herself get bitten by a zombie to get her powers back? (Preferably, an answer more intelligent than, "for plot purposes").

Friso94

Chosen answer: She wasn't cured of the disease. The virus has already merged with her DNA. They simply suppressed her extra-human abilities. She's still immune, but getting reinfected would do nothing for her.

Garlonuss

Question: What is the hospitaler inserting into his mouth as he squats near the creek?

Answer: I thought it was cotton with oil of clove for a bad tooth.

Answer: The answer is a "miswak," a dental hygiene twig used, and still used, for cleaning the teeth.

Chosen answer: Nope. It was deliberately left vague.

Brad

Question: Where did Kim learn how to drive stick-shift? Is her dad that paranoid to prepare her for driving a stick-shift car?

lionhead

Chosen answer: Hardly paranoia, as such, more just giving Kim options. Kim has a noted interest in travelling abroad; cars in Europe are far more likely to be manual transmission than in the automatic-dominated US, and thus, by teaching her to drive a manual car, Mills may have made it easier for her to, say, drive a hire car on her travels. Manual transmission cars also tend to get better fuel mileage, are usually less expensive, certainly give you more control and are, in my opinion at least, more fun to drive, so there are some practicalities involved as well. Really the question is why wouldn't anybody at least learn how to drive a manual car, even if they usually end up driving an automatic.

Tailkinker

Question: SPOILERS: After young Joe shot himself, shouldn't he have disappeared? Seeming as the whole reason he's at the farm is because of old Joe, but if old Joe never existed to set certain events in motion in the first place, I don't see why young Joe's body would have just stayed there after he shot himself.

gobylo

Chosen answer: Because he still went to the farm. His body was there. He killed himself there. Plus since we don't know how the events would occur with real time travel (if possible), speculation about this can't be made.

shortdanzr

Chosen answer: Amongst the many complaints people have about Jar-Jar is that he seems to be portraying an old stereotype of an ignorant black person. Lisa is probably commenting on this.

Captain Defenestrator

Chosen answer: It's not so much that they're necessarily competing (indeed, the Doctor would be appalled to think that they were), it's really just that Amy has, at this point in the series, rather conflicted feelings about the Doctor and Rory. While on the verge of marrying the dependable everyman Rory, she feels an attraction to the Doctor, his exciting life and offbeat ways. As a result of this episode, she comes to realise that she does truly love Rory.

Tailkinker

Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie - S4-E6

Question: Homer bans Bart from ever watching "The Itchy And Scratchy Movie". But what exactly is the audience meant to think about this? Is the audience meant to think Homer did the right thing or Homer did a severe thing and the audience wants Bart to watch The Itchy And Scratchy Movie?

Chosen answer: Like many great episodes of the Simpsons, this one does not give us a good or bad guy. Rather, it's examining a family dynamic; parents want to protect their children, children want to prove their maturity. Just like in real life, no one is being especially unreasonable, they're just butting heads by each trying to do what they think is best.

Chosen answer: It is explained in the last episode of the series that the crack in Amy's wall is like a hole in time that's following her around, sucking in people and erasing their entire existence. When this happens, as it does with Rory mid season, Amy and everyone else who knew the person forgets all about them and their mind just sort of fills in the blanks in their past that that person would have filled. This is what happened to Amy's parents, they were erased from time before the Doctor met her, that's why he takes such an interest in her - she's the girl who doesn't make sense living all alone in such a big house. The events of the final episode set things right and restore her parents to existence along with everyone else the crack swallowed.

roboc

Does that mean the four clerics who were erased are also restored?

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