Jiggyfly
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- Apr 8, 2013
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HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD.
13. Trooper Barrigan and Billy Costigan, Jr., The Departed
Save for Mark Wahlberg, almost everyone dies in The Departed. But even more shocking than the high body count is the unceremonious way in which the hero goes down. Having apprehended gangster-masquerading-as-cop Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) on a building rooftop, cop-masquerading-as-gangster Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) seems poised to give the audience the justice they want. Then, after the elevator reaches the ground floor, the doors open and Trooper Barrigan (James Badge Dale), a minor character and friend of Sullivan’s from the police academy, puts a bullet through his head (he also kills Anthony Anderson’s Trooper Brown). It turns out that, like Sullivan, Barrigan is also a mole in the Boston Police Department. There’s no music, no elaborate action sequence, no tense standoff. The only viewer satisfaction in the scene comes from Sullivan killing Barrigan just moments later, framing him for everything. But even that feels cold. The lesson? Being a rat doesn’t pay. [Dan Caffrey]
14-15. Katherine Hale and Mike Cosmatopolis & Yolo and Constable Bob, Justified
Befitting its Elmore Leonard heritage, Justified loved to play with expectations, introducing villains who’d be undone by the last person you’d expect or heroes in the unlikeliest of places. The most noteworthy of the former was Katherine Hale (Mary Steenburgen), a ruthless fixer who became one of the final season’s Big Bads. Amongst her achievements was finally getting the upper hand on the show’s long-time cockroach Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns), their increasingly dangerous business partnership reaching a boil once she learned he ratted out her late husband. Ready to kill him, she was stopped by his long-time bodyguard Mike (Jonathan Kowalsky), who admitted while Duffy may need to die Mike would still have to kill anyone who harmed his boss. Katherine pumped him full of bullets, but he still had enough strength to reach out and crack her windpipe in two, and she died in disbelief that such a marginal character could take her out.
On the other side of the spectrum was Constable Bob (Patton Oswalt), whose main claim to fame was carrying a “go bag” to be ready “when this shit goes Road Warrior.” These self-delusions meant he was dismissed by his peers, regularly pushed around by those who’d known him all his life. His chance to shine came in “Decoy” when he was taken captive by Detroit gangsters on the hunt for an old enemy, and he endured several beatings by the cocky Yolo (Bobby Campo) when he refused to disclose any information. It turned out those beatings were simply Bob biding his time, letting Yolo get close enough so Bob could stab him in the leg, get into a brawl, and eventually gun him down. Yolo’s superiors were stunned at the outcome, but as Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) succinctly put it, “People underestimate Bob at their own peril.” [Les Chappell]
16. Jack McCall and Wild Bill Hickok, Deadwood
When “Wild Bill” Hickok and his entourage arrive in Deadwood, the effect is not unlike when President Obama comes to New York. Hickok was a legit celebrity in the days before TMZ, and his arrival in the first episode of HBO’s show of the same name gets the locals all aflutter. Unfazed by the attention, he quickly finds his way to a local card game, and enlists fellow recent arrival Seth Bullock to help him out of a jam. With his twin Colt revolvers, outsized reputation, gorgeous flowing locks, and affinity for gambling, it’s not hard to see why some lesser men might want Wild Bill dead. As good as he is with those six shooters, however, Hickok does not have eyes in the back of his head. Instead of going down in a Bon Jovian blaze of glory equal to his legend, Wild Bill meets his end when a resident loser named Jack McCall, angry about some perceived slight, walks up behind Hickok while he’s at the card table and shoots him in the back. [Drew Toal]
17. Philip Marlowe and Terry Lennox, The Long Goodbye
While Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe is usually depicted as the epitome of private detective cool, Robert Altman’s 1973 iteration of the character in The Long Goodbye seems outmatched right from the start. First seen unsuccessfully attempting to fool his finicky cat with inferior cat food, Elliott Gould’s mumbly, rumpled ’70s Marlowe gets drawn into a case involving the murder of the wife of his slick pal Terry Lennox (baseball star Jim Bouton), pursuing leads intended to find the real killer. When Marlowe discovers—after being repeatedly duped and beaten in his investigations—that Terry killed his wife after all, the smirking Terry taunts him after Marlowe tracks him to his Mexican hideout. Calling his friend a “born loser,” Terry—and the audience—is shocked when the seemingly over-his-head Marlowe agrees, saying calmly, “Yeah, I even lost my cat,” before plugging Lennox in the gut. Throughout the film, Altman and Gould hinted that their Marlowe has hidden depths. In his one, final act, Marlowe proves it. [Dennis Perkins]
18. Lorne and Lindsey McDonald, Angel
The only character besides Angel himself to stay with Joss Whedon’s vampire detective show from pilot to finale (albeit in a recurring role), Lindsey McDonald was the rare human adversary as tough as any demon. He had an array of magical powers, was a match for Angel in a fight, and was the closest thing to an opposite number the undead gumshoe had over the years. And just so we know he’s evil... he’s a lawyer! So in the series finale, “Not Fade Away,” when Angel hatches a plan to take down all of his enemies at once, even Lindsey himself is surprised to learn he’s low on Angel’s list. Rather than a one-on-one supernatural battle for the ages, Angel sends his least deadly ally—demonic lounge singer Lorne, who usually specializes in comic relief and exposition—to dispatch Lindsey in mundane fashion, with a decidedly un-magical gunshot to the chest. [Mike Vago]
19. Benny Blanco and Carlito Brigante, Carlito’s Way
“Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.” Al Pacino’s most memorable line from The Godfather, Part III ends up being the heart of a much better Pacino gangster film from just a few years later. In Brian De Palma’s crime drama, Pacino plays Carlito Brigante, a gangster who gets out of prison early and tries to go straight, with former associates around every corner, trying to lure him back to a life of crime. Early in the film, Brigante tangles with ambitious up-and-comer Benny Blanco (John Leguizamo) First he turns down a partnership with the younger man, and then intervenes when Blanco attacks his girlfriend in a jealous rage. The film moves on, as Brigante gets roped into one caper, and then another, finally realizing it’s time to cash out. He collects his money, and gets ready to board a train with his pregnant girlfriend, content that he can retire and leave the criminal life behind once and for all. But waiting for him at the platform is one last adversary—Benny Blanco. The spurned small-timer has taken over the space Carlito had once occupied in the crime firmament, and shows up with a lethal reminder that you can’t simply walk away from the life. [Mike Vago]
20. Patrick Danville and The Crimson King, The Dark Tower
Never one to pass up a good anti-climax, one-man Maine doorstopper factory Stephen King surpassed himself in the final moments of his sprawling, multiverse-spanning Dark Tower books. It’s bad enough that when the series’ uber villain, the supposedly omnipotent, reality-shattering Crimson King, finally makes an appearance at the end of the story’s final book, he’s revealed to be little more than a crazy old man, impotently hurling grenades from a locked balcony of the titular Tower. But the malignant monarch doesn’t even have the decency to die at the crippled hands of Roland Deschain, the last of the noble Gunslingers. Instead, he’s wiped out—literally—by Danville, a deus ex machina character from King’s earlier novel Insomnia, armed with little more than a magical pencil eraser, and the author’s palpable desire to get this damn thing over with and be done with the series once and for all. [William Hughes]
21. Norris Ridgewick and Ace Merrill, Needful Things
Ace Merrill isn’t on par with Randall Flagg or even Christine in Stephen King’s pantheon of villains, but anyone who’s read a King story set in Castle Rock knows that he and his family are bad news. In The Body, young Ace uses a switchblade to strike fear in children’s hearts (Kiefer Sutherland memorably plays him in the novella’s film adaptation, Stand By Me), and though the 1991 novel Needful Things finds him older and fatter, he’s still every bit the terrifying bully he was back then. That’s why it’s such a surprise–a delightful one–when the bullet that splits his head wide open was fired by none other than Norris Ridgewick, a meek and diminutive local deputy who knew Ace’s abuse all too well. Score one for the nerds. [Randall Colburn]
22. Catwoman and Bane, The Dark Knight Rises
Bane, portrayed by Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, is one fearsome guy. He’s an expert fighter with brains and brawn aplenty who wears a mask evoking a beast’s maw to boost his pain tolerance. In their first confrontation, Bane beats Batman handily, taunting the hero and then breaking his back in one move. Months later, Batman wins the rematch, but Nolan surprises viewers by having Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), enter offscreen and kill Bane with a blast from the Batpod cannons. Until the climax, Kyle, a self-taught brawler, is terrified of Bane—she even leads Batman into Bane’s trap in act two as a shaky peace offering to the villain. But with an entire city held hostage, and without Batman’s hang-ups about killing people, Kyle dispenses justice in her own ruthlessly pragmatic style: from a safe distance and with a lot of firepower. [Matt Wayt]
23. Swink and Countess Bathory, Stay Alive
Scour the Creepypasta wiki and you’ll find plenty of creepy tales about possessed video games. Stay Alive, unfortunately, is not one of them. In this 2006 snoozer, an age-old murderess named Countess Bathory possesses the movie’s namesake video game, then kills anyone who hits the Game Over screen. An hour of convoluted mythology later, and our heroes find themselves faced with Countess Bathory herself. But it’s not our hunky hero who stops her, nor his crafty love interest; no, it’s Swink, a useless comic relief character played by Frankie Muniz in a backwards visor. It doesn’t help that we were led to believe Swink died just minutes before, and that there’s no explanation for how he dodged a fate that every other character in the movie couldn’t. Hollywood, take note: Horror ≠ Frankie Muniz in a backward visor. [Randall Colburn]
24. Tommy Darmody and Nucky Thompson, Boardwalk Empire
Boardwalk Empire’s Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) built a legion of enemies as the boss of Atlantic City. His lucrative bootlegging operation and often petty disposition meant he was constantly clashing with rivals at home and in New York City, motivating both gangsters and FBI agents to take him down. Yet despite fighting off such iconic criminals like Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) and Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) to hold what was his, his downfall came from someone at the bottom rung of that very organization. Joe Harper (Travis Tope), seemingly a disaffected young man who Nucky brought into his crew, confronted the boss when he was preparing to leave Atlantic City for good and revealed his true identity: none other Tommy Darmody, the son of Nucky’s one-time protégé Jimmy (Michael Pitt). Jimmy never forgave Nucky for turning his mother into a teenage pimp, leading him to go to war and get shot in the face at the end of season two. Tommy returned the favor with multiple bullets, paying off a debt Nucky thought he’d settled long ago. [Les Chappell]
25. Sidney and XXXX, Layer Cake
Daniel Craig’s extended audition for the role of James Bond was 2004’s Layer Cake, in which his character (who is never named, and listed only as XXXX in the credits) moves up through the cocaine trade. While he’s on the opposite side of the law, Craig still show’s Bond’s ruthlessness, unflappability, and way with the ladies as he masters London’s underworld. After Craig rises to the top of his profession, he does what no movie criminal manages to—walk away on top. Except minutes after announcing his retirement and walking away, considering the pile of bodies he’s left in his wake, he comes face-to-face with Sidney—a nobody whose girlfriend he effortlessly stole early in the film—who shoots him, presumably fatally. And in a twist that’s only a twist in hindsight, Sidney’s played by future Bond costar Ben Wishaw. Watch your back, James. [Mike Vago]
26. Eddie Thawne and The Reverse Flash, The Flash
The villain on the first season of The Flash is Eobard Thawne/The Reverse Flash, a guy from the future who traveled back in time so he could ruin the Flash’s life. He also happens to be a descendant of the Flash’s friend, Eddie Thawne. At one point, The Reverse Flash kidnaps Eddie and tries to break his spirit by telling him that nobody cares about him in the future. Basically, as far as history is concerned, he’s a nobody. This actually gets under Eddie’s skin, and he’s a broken man by the time he’s rescued. When The Reverse Flash has the normal Flash on the ropes, though, Eddie takes advantage of his status as a “nobody” and shoots himself in the chest, preventing The Reverse Flash from ever being born. It’s a dramatic way to save the day, but at least he proved that his life actually mattered. [Sam Barsanti]
13. Trooper Barrigan and Billy Costigan, Jr., The Departed
Save for Mark Wahlberg, almost everyone dies in The Departed. But even more shocking than the high body count is the unceremonious way in which the hero goes down. Having apprehended gangster-masquerading-as-cop Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) on a building rooftop, cop-masquerading-as-gangster Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) seems poised to give the audience the justice they want. Then, after the elevator reaches the ground floor, the doors open and Trooper Barrigan (James Badge Dale), a minor character and friend of Sullivan’s from the police academy, puts a bullet through his head (he also kills Anthony Anderson’s Trooper Brown). It turns out that, like Sullivan, Barrigan is also a mole in the Boston Police Department. There’s no music, no elaborate action sequence, no tense standoff. The only viewer satisfaction in the scene comes from Sullivan killing Barrigan just moments later, framing him for everything. But even that feels cold. The lesson? Being a rat doesn’t pay. [Dan Caffrey]
14-15. Katherine Hale and Mike Cosmatopolis & Yolo and Constable Bob, Justified
Befitting its Elmore Leonard heritage, Justified loved to play with expectations, introducing villains who’d be undone by the last person you’d expect or heroes in the unlikeliest of places. The most noteworthy of the former was Katherine Hale (Mary Steenburgen), a ruthless fixer who became one of the final season’s Big Bads. Amongst her achievements was finally getting the upper hand on the show’s long-time cockroach Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns), their increasingly dangerous business partnership reaching a boil once she learned he ratted out her late husband. Ready to kill him, she was stopped by his long-time bodyguard Mike (Jonathan Kowalsky), who admitted while Duffy may need to die Mike would still have to kill anyone who harmed his boss. Katherine pumped him full of bullets, but he still had enough strength to reach out and crack her windpipe in two, and she died in disbelief that such a marginal character could take her out.
On the other side of the spectrum was Constable Bob (Patton Oswalt), whose main claim to fame was carrying a “go bag” to be ready “when this shit goes Road Warrior.” These self-delusions meant he was dismissed by his peers, regularly pushed around by those who’d known him all his life. His chance to shine came in “Decoy” when he was taken captive by Detroit gangsters on the hunt for an old enemy, and he endured several beatings by the cocky Yolo (Bobby Campo) when he refused to disclose any information. It turned out those beatings were simply Bob biding his time, letting Yolo get close enough so Bob could stab him in the leg, get into a brawl, and eventually gun him down. Yolo’s superiors were stunned at the outcome, but as Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) succinctly put it, “People underestimate Bob at their own peril.” [Les Chappell]
16. Jack McCall and Wild Bill Hickok, Deadwood
When “Wild Bill” Hickok and his entourage arrive in Deadwood, the effect is not unlike when President Obama comes to New York. Hickok was a legit celebrity in the days before TMZ, and his arrival in the first episode of HBO’s show of the same name gets the locals all aflutter. Unfazed by the attention, he quickly finds his way to a local card game, and enlists fellow recent arrival Seth Bullock to help him out of a jam. With his twin Colt revolvers, outsized reputation, gorgeous flowing locks, and affinity for gambling, it’s not hard to see why some lesser men might want Wild Bill dead. As good as he is with those six shooters, however, Hickok does not have eyes in the back of his head. Instead of going down in a Bon Jovian blaze of glory equal to his legend, Wild Bill meets his end when a resident loser named Jack McCall, angry about some perceived slight, walks up behind Hickok while he’s at the card table and shoots him in the back. [Drew Toal]
17. Philip Marlowe and Terry Lennox, The Long Goodbye
While Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe is usually depicted as the epitome of private detective cool, Robert Altman’s 1973 iteration of the character in The Long Goodbye seems outmatched right from the start. First seen unsuccessfully attempting to fool his finicky cat with inferior cat food, Elliott Gould’s mumbly, rumpled ’70s Marlowe gets drawn into a case involving the murder of the wife of his slick pal Terry Lennox (baseball star Jim Bouton), pursuing leads intended to find the real killer. When Marlowe discovers—after being repeatedly duped and beaten in his investigations—that Terry killed his wife after all, the smirking Terry taunts him after Marlowe tracks him to his Mexican hideout. Calling his friend a “born loser,” Terry—and the audience—is shocked when the seemingly over-his-head Marlowe agrees, saying calmly, “Yeah, I even lost my cat,” before plugging Lennox in the gut. Throughout the film, Altman and Gould hinted that their Marlowe has hidden depths. In his one, final act, Marlowe proves it. [Dennis Perkins]
18. Lorne and Lindsey McDonald, Angel
The only character besides Angel himself to stay with Joss Whedon’s vampire detective show from pilot to finale (albeit in a recurring role), Lindsey McDonald was the rare human adversary as tough as any demon. He had an array of magical powers, was a match for Angel in a fight, and was the closest thing to an opposite number the undead gumshoe had over the years. And just so we know he’s evil... he’s a lawyer! So in the series finale, “Not Fade Away,” when Angel hatches a plan to take down all of his enemies at once, even Lindsey himself is surprised to learn he’s low on Angel’s list. Rather than a one-on-one supernatural battle for the ages, Angel sends his least deadly ally—demonic lounge singer Lorne, who usually specializes in comic relief and exposition—to dispatch Lindsey in mundane fashion, with a decidedly un-magical gunshot to the chest. [Mike Vago]
19. Benny Blanco and Carlito Brigante, Carlito’s Way
“Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.” Al Pacino’s most memorable line from The Godfather, Part III ends up being the heart of a much better Pacino gangster film from just a few years later. In Brian De Palma’s crime drama, Pacino plays Carlito Brigante, a gangster who gets out of prison early and tries to go straight, with former associates around every corner, trying to lure him back to a life of crime. Early in the film, Brigante tangles with ambitious up-and-comer Benny Blanco (John Leguizamo) First he turns down a partnership with the younger man, and then intervenes when Blanco attacks his girlfriend in a jealous rage. The film moves on, as Brigante gets roped into one caper, and then another, finally realizing it’s time to cash out. He collects his money, and gets ready to board a train with his pregnant girlfriend, content that he can retire and leave the criminal life behind once and for all. But waiting for him at the platform is one last adversary—Benny Blanco. The spurned small-timer has taken over the space Carlito had once occupied in the crime firmament, and shows up with a lethal reminder that you can’t simply walk away from the life. [Mike Vago]
20. Patrick Danville and The Crimson King, The Dark Tower
Never one to pass up a good anti-climax, one-man Maine doorstopper factory Stephen King surpassed himself in the final moments of his sprawling, multiverse-spanning Dark Tower books. It’s bad enough that when the series’ uber villain, the supposedly omnipotent, reality-shattering Crimson King, finally makes an appearance at the end of the story’s final book, he’s revealed to be little more than a crazy old man, impotently hurling grenades from a locked balcony of the titular Tower. But the malignant monarch doesn’t even have the decency to die at the crippled hands of Roland Deschain, the last of the noble Gunslingers. Instead, he’s wiped out—literally—by Danville, a deus ex machina character from King’s earlier novel Insomnia, armed with little more than a magical pencil eraser, and the author’s palpable desire to get this damn thing over with and be done with the series once and for all. [William Hughes]
21. Norris Ridgewick and Ace Merrill, Needful Things
Ace Merrill isn’t on par with Randall Flagg or even Christine in Stephen King’s pantheon of villains, but anyone who’s read a King story set in Castle Rock knows that he and his family are bad news. In The Body, young Ace uses a switchblade to strike fear in children’s hearts (Kiefer Sutherland memorably plays him in the novella’s film adaptation, Stand By Me), and though the 1991 novel Needful Things finds him older and fatter, he’s still every bit the terrifying bully he was back then. That’s why it’s such a surprise–a delightful one–when the bullet that splits his head wide open was fired by none other than Norris Ridgewick, a meek and diminutive local deputy who knew Ace’s abuse all too well. Score one for the nerds. [Randall Colburn]
22. Catwoman and Bane, The Dark Knight Rises
Bane, portrayed by Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, is one fearsome guy. He’s an expert fighter with brains and brawn aplenty who wears a mask evoking a beast’s maw to boost his pain tolerance. In their first confrontation, Bane beats Batman handily, taunting the hero and then breaking his back in one move. Months later, Batman wins the rematch, but Nolan surprises viewers by having Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), enter offscreen and kill Bane with a blast from the Batpod cannons. Until the climax, Kyle, a self-taught brawler, is terrified of Bane—she even leads Batman into Bane’s trap in act two as a shaky peace offering to the villain. But with an entire city held hostage, and without Batman’s hang-ups about killing people, Kyle dispenses justice in her own ruthlessly pragmatic style: from a safe distance and with a lot of firepower. [Matt Wayt]
23. Swink and Countess Bathory, Stay Alive
Scour the Creepypasta wiki and you’ll find plenty of creepy tales about possessed video games. Stay Alive, unfortunately, is not one of them. In this 2006 snoozer, an age-old murderess named Countess Bathory possesses the movie’s namesake video game, then kills anyone who hits the Game Over screen. An hour of convoluted mythology later, and our heroes find themselves faced with Countess Bathory herself. But it’s not our hunky hero who stops her, nor his crafty love interest; no, it’s Swink, a useless comic relief character played by Frankie Muniz in a backwards visor. It doesn’t help that we were led to believe Swink died just minutes before, and that there’s no explanation for how he dodged a fate that every other character in the movie couldn’t. Hollywood, take note: Horror ≠ Frankie Muniz in a backward visor. [Randall Colburn]
24. Tommy Darmody and Nucky Thompson, Boardwalk Empire
Boardwalk Empire’s Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) built a legion of enemies as the boss of Atlantic City. His lucrative bootlegging operation and often petty disposition meant he was constantly clashing with rivals at home and in New York City, motivating both gangsters and FBI agents to take him down. Yet despite fighting off such iconic criminals like Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) and Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) to hold what was his, his downfall came from someone at the bottom rung of that very organization. Joe Harper (Travis Tope), seemingly a disaffected young man who Nucky brought into his crew, confronted the boss when he was preparing to leave Atlantic City for good and revealed his true identity: none other Tommy Darmody, the son of Nucky’s one-time protégé Jimmy (Michael Pitt). Jimmy never forgave Nucky for turning his mother into a teenage pimp, leading him to go to war and get shot in the face at the end of season two. Tommy returned the favor with multiple bullets, paying off a debt Nucky thought he’d settled long ago. [Les Chappell]
25. Sidney and XXXX, Layer Cake
Daniel Craig’s extended audition for the role of James Bond was 2004’s Layer Cake, in which his character (who is never named, and listed only as XXXX in the credits) moves up through the cocaine trade. While he’s on the opposite side of the law, Craig still show’s Bond’s ruthlessness, unflappability, and way with the ladies as he masters London’s underworld. After Craig rises to the top of his profession, he does what no movie criminal manages to—walk away on top. Except minutes after announcing his retirement and walking away, considering the pile of bodies he’s left in his wake, he comes face-to-face with Sidney—a nobody whose girlfriend he effortlessly stole early in the film—who shoots him, presumably fatally. And in a twist that’s only a twist in hindsight, Sidney’s played by future Bond costar Ben Wishaw. Watch your back, James. [Mike Vago]
26. Eddie Thawne and The Reverse Flash, The Flash
The villain on the first season of The Flash is Eobard Thawne/The Reverse Flash, a guy from the future who traveled back in time so he could ruin the Flash’s life. He also happens to be a descendant of the Flash’s friend, Eddie Thawne. At one point, The Reverse Flash kidnaps Eddie and tries to break his spirit by telling him that nobody cares about him in the future. Basically, as far as history is concerned, he’s a nobody. This actually gets under Eddie’s skin, and he’s a broken man by the time he’s rescued. When The Reverse Flash has the normal Flash on the ropes, though, Eddie takes advantage of his status as a “nobody” and shoots himself in the chest, preventing The Reverse Flash from ever being born. It’s a dramatic way to save the day, but at least he proved that his life actually mattered. [Sam Barsanti]
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