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Addressing Baker Dill being sentient: He does seemingly start to become sentient when he pulls the knife on the 2 drunk guys in the beginning. That's the beginning of things starting to go awry. I assume that when Baker pulled the knife, this could also be the moment that the kid got the knife in meatspace? We as the audience know something is off because that's when the salesman first misses Baker, he's very confused as to why Baker isn't there at the coast. He should have been there according to the strict predictability of video game timing. Something changed. I guess you could assume this is when the kid started to code the game into the new game: killing the stepdad. ? Before this time, it was just Baker being the player in the fishing game. I don't think Baker has the literal spirit of the kid's father, but I do think this is the "eaten the forbidden fruit" moment. Whether he has free will is unclear and doubtful, but I do think he became sentient.

Just about to start the episode, but in case nobody mentioned BAKER DILL = BAD KILLER

Wow I can't believe I have been calling John "Paul" all this time and no one corrected me. I sort of thought when the son showed up in the video game that it meant he was also dead? (I wasn't sure if he had killed himself or perhaps had been killed for his crimes?) I'll admit to checking out towards the end. Mostly my take away from this is that maybe I should take a vacation to Florida. And then I googled if it was filmed in Florida and it was not. It was filmed in Mauritius, and I was like, Oh I should go there. But it's kind of far and then I ended up looking in the Caribbean. Long story short, I went to Antigua in May.

I mean, the twist of this movie is just the final episode of St. Elsewhere. It traded an autistic boy looking into a snow globe and reimagining the people in his life, to an autistic boy looking into computer code and reimagining the people in his life. I know that they don't specifically say that he has autism spectrum disorder, but he's definitely written that way. The stepfather calls him a 'creepy weirdo' who stays in his room all day with his video game, but that his teacher says he's a genius. His mother gets super defensive when he's mentioned. His bedroom is still very childlike. Doesn’t seem to want or have any friends. He's hyper-focused on the world he's created and that world only. He has a strong sense of justice. Having him actually commit murder was the nail in the coffin for me. After sitting with the movie for a bit I thought maybe I was just reading into things, but then I read some Tweets from a few other people with ASD who felt similarly. I just couldn't enjoy this one. The cat(s) were adorable though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The nerdlinger salesman guy says that, at one point, the game was just about fishing but then became about killing the virtual stepfather. So, my original take is that the salesman represents a character in the game whose role became obsolete as the focus of the game's critical path changed. The salesman seems to also become sentient because he is constantly showing up late to meet Dill when meeting Dill is his only purpose in the game, so the fact that they keep missing each other confuses him, he somehow starts to question why this is the case, and BAM! nerdlinger comes online as a sentient being. But the movie also portrays nerdlinger as a "The Architect" from the Matrix type, in that he says "I am the rules" and somehow knows what the overall objective of the game is ... or at least, what it used to be when it was just a fishing simulator. Placing him in both roles -- a standard NPC for Dill to interact with and also the embodiment of the game's overall AI -- is perhaps the worst aspect of the way this movie was written.

This was my interpretation, and I think it's borne out by some of that out-of-nowhere voiceover that gestures at how consciousness might be an emergent property of this kind o code. But as the gang touched on several times — and what was really at the heart of June's confusion whether this was a video game at all — it's not clear whether the son is playing his own game. Like, when you see screenshots that are anything but code, it appears to be a relatively simple-looking first-person view of a person fishing off a boat, which suggests he's playing as Baker Dill. But if you take everything that's happening in Plymouth as how it appears to Baker Dill, and not how the kid sees it, you're positing that Dill is an AI consciousness, not as an avatar the kid is merely piloting around. That distinction is super important because it's the answer to the question of "who makes the decision to kill Abusive Greek Dad?" It seems to me that the kid has already made up his mind and is guiding Dill to that conclusion. Which means Dill doesn't have agency and there really are no consequences for the moral dilemma he's placed in (especially the last minute wrinkle with Lucky Gas Pumper, as you said earlier). But all this really goes back to what Jason said at the top of the audience Q&A — if the questions are about the internal logic of the video game world, we can just stop right now because there simply aren't answers to be found.

"Serenity now! Insanity later." - Lloyd Braun, if he watched this movie -- Probably,

Also, there are a lot of dumb mistakes that can be lampshaded by the universe having being created by a disturbed 12-year-old, but I object to the idea that this kid knows that a Swizzle is an authentic, rum-and-bitters-based Caribbean cocktail, but not enough about it to know it's a tall drink with a lot of ice, fruit juice, falernum and an eponymous stirring stick. Looks like he got his Swizzle recipe from this woman:

I posit to this forum that there never is a moment where Dill actually becomes sentient. By necessity, he is always doing exactly what his coding as a video game character tells him to do. The salesman character says that the game used to be just about fishing, but then slowly became about committing this murder, which implies that the IRL kid has changed the focus of a game he's creating. Fair enough -- the evolution of a piece of work is a natural part of game development, and artistic creation in general. But if the game has been changed, so too must Dill's coding also have been changed. The murder of the stepdad avatar is the game's new critical path. If Dill and Plymouth Island and all the NPCs are in existence, this means the game must be turned on and someone is playing. If not, it can only be that these characters are just alive and functioning of their own freewill in the game, in spite of what the player is having them do. And that is what is known as a "broken game" -- when the character doesn't do what the player tells them to, the game is broken. What this must mean, therefore, is that Dill's "coming into awareness" is part of what he's programmed to do as part of the course of gameplay. He is still doing what his code is stating he should do. This is classic determinist philosophy. Freewill is predicated by one's ability to choose and then act upon that choice. If the choice is made for you and if your actions are not of your volition, you don't have freewill. IRL kid is essentially the god/creator of the in-game universe. Nothing happens in the game that the creator doesn't know will happen. If Dill's awakening is something god knew would happen, then it isn't really sentience. He's still just doing what he's programmed to do. He has the illusion of freewill, but not actual freewill because he doesn't transcend his programming. If Dill has any consciousness, it can only be in a Get Out-type scenario, where Dill is aware of himself and somehow still being carried along on the game's path against his will or better judgment.

I dunno, for narrative purposes I am willing to suspend disbelief that the characters within the game buy their world as real, and to express that to the audience (and to not give away the twist) the world has to seem real. This actually touches on something I was thinking about this movie and that it lacks a stylization. How interesting would it have been that when the twist were to be revealed that the world got more and more video game like... Less detailed, the same NPCs walking down the street, more obvious souless behavior... even some pixelization?

One can argue that the kid didn't write the "dialogues," didn't decide what his virtual dad, femme fatal mom, and evil step said and did on the island. He merely programmed the AIs, designed their personality, and had them react to each other in a simulation of the real world. The problem with this argument is that I'm not sure if the director is capable of doing this as it is apparent he knows very little about how video games/ simulation work. I mean, there is no way a kid, genius or not, armed with only a pc and all the current technology has to offer, can create a sentient AI and a virtual replica of the reality that is real enough to fool a sentient being into believing it's real. Dwarf Fortress is the most complex indie game I can think of, and it takes 2 people and it's still not finished.

Last-minute curiosity question: What kept this studio going until now? It seems like the studio would get some kind of boost by Vanessa being a world-class professional but most people don't even know the place exists. (I'm assuming Lovejoy's comment that no one was coming to the party was sarcastic but still...) Also, how does Vanessa train for her pro career? She obviously can't do it while teaching and wouldn't want to show up the students in the class by dancing professionally in front of them. This seems especially egregious at the world championships where she and her partner are representing the ENTIRE U.S.A.! If I understood the movie, her partner was based out of Chicago. Did they meet in Kansas City to rehearse?

This was amazing. I was at the live show in ATX. I have two comments from the ep: 1. I lost it when they mentioned Nirvana b/c I tried to send this to them earlier that morning 2. I can't believe Queen man won the 2nd Opinion slot. I def hoped the girl who did hers to Deep In the Heart of TX would win; The crowd just clapped right with her and flabbergasted Jason, lol. Also, the obligatory "June, John, and Jason".

Stuff! That! BURRRRRGER!

These are the truest words ever spoken. Oh, and if you want to crumble some of that sweet, sweet BC on a burger, I won’t say “no”

You can if you want but why would you? Blue cheese all day every day. Wings it's a must. Salad not a must but a good blue cheese dressing or the real deal crumbled in. Give me blue cheese all the time!* *Cam Bert is well known to have very unpopular tastes in food.

Just remember when watching this movie: Academy Award Winner: Anne Hathaway Academy Award Winner: Matthew McConaughey Academy Award Nominee: Diane Lane Academy Award Nominee: Djimon Hounsou And for what it's worth: SAG Nominees: Jason Clarke and Jeremy Strong

Expanding on what others have said about the leads' being together: WHY?!?!? She showed no interest in him and he was physically smitten, not with her dancing. It wasn't "Hey, she's a great dancer AND beautiful to boot! I gotta get me some of that!" It was "Hey, she's hot. I'll win her over with my Latino machismo and sweaty body." Also, I felt so bad for Jane Krakowski being dumped. At the competition they made a big deal of Vanessa and Chayanne keying off each other. I'm glad she finished the dance with Julian and won the trophy but that just diminished the story's impact as well. Then to show him and her riffing at the studio and poor Jane is sent back to the chorus. Not fair at all.

One big issue for me was everyone treating him like the handyman even when he showed he was more. When Vanessa Williams left him at the Cuban club he said it was a 2-hour bus ride back. So he took her to a place maybe an hour or more out of town? How did he find out about it? Why couldn't he have gotten a ride with one of the club goers? When Kris Kristofferson heads up to the pier to go fishing he says to Chayanne "I'll see you up there." WHAT?!?! You couldn't take him in your truck? This was supposed to be a trip for the both of them. Yet when Kris first meets Chayanne Kris says that the pier is several hours away! And that's with his own car! Chayanne could have been riding a bus for half a day to get there! As a side note, it drives me crazy when movies or TV shows mention places but no other identifying marks. Law & Order does that. "Hey, they spent time at that new club in SoHo." or "Next to the Chinese laundry on Seventh Avenue." OK, I'm pretty sure Seventh Avenue spans a LOT of Manhattan. Maybe you could narrow it down a bit? I understand these are fictional locations but still...) Second side note: the 555 telephone number. Now that everybody knows what it is and why it's there it takes me out of the story when that prefix is used. It reminds me the story is deliberately fiction.

For real. I feel like his hips don’t lie (that they’re wooden)

Early in the movie, Rafael is tasked with decorating the dance studio for their "weekly party." I get that I'm a homebody, but honestly, is there anyone here that would be interested in going to a party EVERY WEEK? That sounds utterly exhausting.

I'm pretty sure Vanessa's burrito wasn't toasted and it fell apart as soon as she even thought about taking a bite

http://www.kraftcanada.com/recipes/cuban-style-burrito-183902 This is the first thing that comes up I search "Cuban burrito" and the directions include putting it on a skillet.

Also this is where we need Taylor Anne's input, but I would imagine the Cuban population is no so large in Texas. I would imagine most of the Hispanic people there are from Mexico. I could be wrong. It just seemed everything was Cuban run or themed or maybe Mexican culture and Cuban culture has more overlap than I thought.