Danielg342

I have a feeling we weren't supposed to like her, and that we were supposed to get a sense as to why her and Manny didn't work out. I will say Paola Nunez seemed to have a lot of fun playing the character. For that reason alone I want to see her again.

This show likes talking about bringing the fire... ...well... Manny really brought the fire. So did Paola Nunez, Gabriella's mother Roberta. I could totally buy they were once young, passionate lovers whose love fizzled out because they were both impulsive, pushy, intense and awfully stubborn. The kind of people who'd fall in love with each other instantly and go all-in, only for that spark to fizzle out when they realize they both drive each other nuts. It was fun, all of it, and I think I'd be down for more of it. I also want Luke vs. Manny in Hell in a Cell. Make it happen, WWE... The rest of the episode was rather uneven. I mean, it was great seeing everyone- especially Gabriella, Roberta and Sharon- dressed to the nines, though I wonder why the Three Rock inmates couldn't have been given some nice threads so they don't look out of place in their jumpsuits. Alix West Lefler did great as Genevieve, and Jordan Calloway sold Jake's awkwardness. They also have a cute handshake. We also got some rousing speeches from you-know-who...I have to wonder if a speech really would sway a Governor, but this is Hollywood, after all. The big letdown was Vince. OK, Vince has his reasons...they're actually good reasons in that tremors and a heart condition would be the end of Vince's firefighting career. ...but...gosh...it still felt like Vince was being stupid for the sake of the plot. I know there's stubbornness...but this is next-level stuff. Stupid stuff. Vince could have died, and playing with the heart is no joke. It's extremely risky of Vince to say "just shock me and I'll be OK", because there really is no guarantee that he will be. Again, I understand that Vince was worried about his job if he went to the hospital, so his actions still made sense...but that doesn't mean he still wasn't acting incredibly stupid and being reckless with his life. I also don't buy that whatever heart condition Vince has that Sharon wouldn't know about it. They've been married for too long...even if Vince is undiagnosed, he said the tremors and the arrhythmia happened before, so I doubt Sharon would never have noticed it before. Regardless, it's Vince's turn to be stupidly hiding something from his wife, just like Sharon stupidly hid something from her husband. Full circle, but... Episodes like this display the frustration with this show- they can make some real magic sometimes, especially when they let the characters drive the story (as what Roberta did tonight). They just fail to find it, mostly because they force it too many times.

The Hicks/Buck/Mumford fight did produce a touching moment. Emily Alabi also did well as Olivia. I'm glad she's decided to stay...and judging by the muscles she's got...Olivia should join SWAT. I also thought Zoe Powell was a bit more likeable in this episode than she usually is. Maybe Anna Enger Ritch is cut out for the main cast after all. Nichelle and Hondo also displayed some great teamwork too, though a home break-in will be tough to overcome in one night. Walter Fauntleroy did pretty well as the unhinged Bruce too. That's about it for the positives. It was a pretty rote case, and it succumbed to several cliches, like the British bad guy and the first guy to die was the black guy. I also have to ask questions about why important newspaper material was kept at a vault in the same place that hosts a swanky ball. We also had S.W.A.T.'s usual quick pace in its usual attempt to establish urgency...oh, and bad guys who are dangerous who will stop at nothing and kill whomever is in their way to get what they want. I've heard of shows having formulas but...this is over the top. No Deacon in this episode. Two more episodes to go...

The other part of that is what Harvey Weinstein would consider "Hollywood hot" is not what someone else would consider "Hollywood hot". Some may want Kaley Cuoco. Others will want Amy Farrah Fowler. Others will target someone else entirely. There's no "foolproof" look. Looking at those who have accused Weinstein of at least some kind of impropriety and I don't really see a "type". There's brunettes. There are blondes. There are people who are not what you would consider "Hollywood hot" on that list. There's young actresses and old actresses. Most are, admittedly, white but you still have Latinas (like Lina Esco) and you have Rowena Chiu and Lupita Nyong'o. If that doesn't reinforce the idea that predators are opportunistic and will target anyone if the mood suits them then I don't know what will.

Did Southern California Edison change management recently? I ask because I understand your company did have to settle numerous lawsuits related to allegations SCE equipment caused forest fires. Maybe it's due to my own cynicism having worked for a big company in the past that was completely profit driven, but my guess is that SCE only really started caring about safety once they realized negligence is going to cost them, literally, a lot of money.

It's common on police procedurals to portray the departments the heroes don't work for as nothing but obstructionists who do what's needed to hinder the heroes in their plot (think pushy FBI guys, procedure-obsessed bureaucrats, lawyers...etc.). So it doesn't surprise me that Fire Country resorts to the same storytelling tactic. I didn't have too much of a problem with how the electricity was portrayed in the episode, aside from the air of "things are happening because the writer needs them to happen that way for the plot". Of course, I don't know that much about electricity in the first place, so I likely missed some of the details. My guess is that the electricity storyline was written by someone who didn't have any knowledge about how it worked and simply read some things about it, applying what little they learned. It's understandable given the time constraints surrounding a typical Hollywood season, but it's also on the showrunner to better organize the writing so episodes are not left to writers who don't know what they're writing about.

Yeah, it doesn't matter what time of day or where they are or what condition they're supposed to be in...in Hollywood, everyone is always dolled up, especially the women. Step by Step kind of parodied this in an episode. Carol spots one of her kids (I believe it was Karen) going back into her room after she had just snuck out of the house. Carol asks Karen what she was doing, and Karen tries to fool her mother by saying she was just using the bathroom. Carol then asks rhetorically, "you put on mascara and all this makeup just to use the bathroom?" Karen seemed to understand her fate by asking how long she'd be grounded for and I forget what Carol responded with but Karen sure was benched for a while.

Criminal Minds is pretty bad with this too, as often the agents will work deep into the night and forgo sleeping just to catch their killer. Now, the agents of CM were supposed to deal with really "dangerous" killers who were almost always at risk of "devolving" into spree killers (which also doesn't make any sense, as that's now how real serial killers act) so you could justify the sleepless nights in order to catch the killer, but the show wasn't always consistent with the need to forgo sleep (the need for rest was even a plot point in S5) and I sometimes wonder if the stakes were really that high many times. Sure, the town might be on edge because they're dealing with an active serial killer, but it's not like the killer was always operating- there would have been times the agents could have slept. LOL. Well, Jack Bauer not sleeping isn't totally inaccurate- lots of people go without sleep, especially special operatives. What gets me about Bauer is that we never see him having to use the toilet or eating or drinking. He's in a highly stressful situation, he fights off sleep, he routinely exerts himself physically...that makes me hungry thinking about it. How Bauer doesn't need to eat despite all that is beyond me. Besides, they could have easily filmed him having a breakthrough while having his lunch or sitting on the toilet. I can do a lot of good thinking during those times, and Bauer could have too.

The reason, if nothing else, is for precedent. All court systems use previous rulings to inform and influence future rulings, but this is especially important in the North American law system which is based on common law. Precedents allow the court system to clarify points government laws don't cover and can become just as strong as actual government legislation. Which is why getting the ruling right is so important. As much as many of us want Harvey Weinstein to rot in jail, we shouldn't want our passion to get him in jail to muck up rulings and set bad precedents for the future. Because then we'd risk throwing a good person in jail who doesn't deserve it all because of a bad ruling.

I liked Jake telling Bode that Bode needs to learn that fighting for himself can be good enough, he need not always attach himself to someone else. I also thought Alix West Lefler (Genevieve) did really well in this episode. It was also great seeing Lochlyn Munro again and I appreciated that this episode didn't follow the usual story beat where people campaigning for the shutdown of the show-central institution see how good said institution is and the institution is saved. No, even though Three Rock more than proved their worth to the community, they're still getting shut down. I don't know where the story goes from here and I don't know if it's the right choice, but the show made a move that took some guts, so credit to them. ...but...Billy Burke... Sure, Fire Country may not always know the best about how to use him, but I'd have to say, it's a deal breaker if he leaves, especially if they write him out so cheaply. Burke and Diane Farr really centre and ground this show and give it its heart and soul, so the show should be wise to keep those two around because you can't replace actors like that. Yeah, likely we'll get some more Hollywood health and Vince is going to wind up being just fine despite the scare, just like Sharon was with her kidney (remember that storyline?), but I'd appreciate it if the show gave Vince and Sharon more meaningful things to do other than cheap drama like the kidney and Vince's electric shock. Just like S.W.A.T. before it, we've got three more episodes of Fire Country to go. Will Three Rock survive? Will Bode understand the meaning of life? Will we ever get competent writers on this show? One thing's for sure though- if a tree falls in a forest, at least Station 42 will notice.

I actually thought this was one of the better episodes...then the ending happened. Which only heightens my own fears that, heading into S8, S.W.A.T. has made a giant mess of things that it may not be able to recover from. If this was the final season, Deacon leaving at the end of the episode would have simply been heartbreaking. It may also still be frustrating, since Deacon leaving so abruptly makes the character look bad, but, in a final season scenario, it wouldn't be worth too much getting worked up about because there's only a few more episodes to slog through anyway. In this, new, situation...I can't help but feel with Luca, Street and now Deacon leaving that the show is falling apart. (There was also no Hicks or Nichelle today too, which only adds to the frustration) At this stage, it's almost imperative that, at least, one of those three scheduled to leave don't actually leave. It's also imperative that S.W.A.T. hires another lead character that can shoulder the load- even if one of the old guard returns- because the quality of the acting has declined too much and S.W.A.T. really needs something to freshen it up if it wants a longer run past S8. Some positive signs did come from this episode- Alfaro and Powell looked like they may have some actual chemistry, though I hope they keep those two platonic. We don't need Stris 2.0. As for the actual case itself, it was nice that the show gave another nod to what was supposed to be the hook for the show- Hondo having to juggle his role with the badge with his ties to the street. The show is at its best when it leans into the struggle Hondo has with trying to convince a cynical and leery community that it really can trust the police, because the show has done a brilliant job showing how Herculean that task really is. Hondo must feel that no matter how many steps forward he takes, he's also always taking two steps back. Two military vets who team up and take on the gangs to avenge their fallen daughter is a great way to highlight that, and, as much as you see the pain in the father's face that no one seemed to care about his daughter, you could also see the pain written all over Hondo's face, frustrated that many of the things he still fights against still happens, regardless of everything he does to make things better. It's this kind of wider but personal conflicts that the show has been missing. This was the first case that truly felt like it had some meaning, and the show really needs to have more cases like this. Plus, creating cases that leave a personal mark with SWAT members is an easy way to develop those characters since we get an insight into those characters. Three more episodes for this season, folks.

No, I don't think so either. There's just a difference between completing your task with time to spare so you can go home early and cutting corners on said task just so you can go home early. One is happenstance, the other is laziness. What I was also saying is that, sometimes, when we finish a task, we may not have necessarily finished it. It's not because we were bad at our jobs- it's another matter of us being human, in that we all make mistakes and overlook things. What tends to happen on these police procedurals is that, unless it's a plot point, you never get the protagonists leaving the crime scene thinking they've done their job when they actually haven't. If the task isn't done despite looking like so, one of the protagonists will have a "hunch" and they'll be back on the case, when, in reality, that wouldn't always happen.

I've mentioned it before, I think, but it's something Hollywood seems to always get wrong about every job, at least as far as the main protagonist is concerned. Focal characters are always diligent, punctual go-getters who put in the extra work to make sure they've done their jobs right, even if it means having to re-open a task at the end of the day instead of simply declaring the task "done" and going home. I have no statistics, obviously, but having worked in workplaces with lots of other people, I can safely say that there are very few people who are so dedicated to their jobs that they'll put in the extra mile to get things right. Now, I grant that the amount of people who "hot dog" at their jobs likely depends on the field, and most of my experiences are at low-paying jobs where employee motivation is already a struggle, but, knowing we're all humans, even at so-called "better" jobs, not everyone is going to be on top of their jobs all the time. Even the best will get lazy and give in to the temptation to cut corners, even if it would be disastrous for them to do so. Perhaps there's a good reason why Hollywood makes their characters so dedicated to their jobs. Firstly, a character who is lazy is typically not very likeable, and, secondly, it's not a very satisfying story if plots were always resolved because a character was simply lazy. This goes both ways- for the protagonist and the antagonist. You want your protagonist to succeed because they overcame everything the antagonist threw at them, not because the antagonist got bored halfway through the story. Conversely, a loss for the protagonists would not be impactful if they were not shown trying so hard to do everything they can to succeed at the challenge only to fall short. If the protagonist simply went through the motions and failed because of it, the audience would very much wonder if the protagonist would have succeeded had they actually tried, and they might wonder how serious the challenge really was if the protagonist didn't offer any effort in trying to overcome it. So while it's not accurate for Hollywood characters to be dedicated go-getters, it's a more satisfying story to write them that way.

Here's what was at issue. The appeals court basically stated the following: Harvey Weinstein had no criminal record before the New York trial, so, in the eyes of the court, he had not been proven to have done anything wrong before the trial Despite this, the prosecutor brought forth as evidence the testimony of several women who accused Weinstein of crimes he was not on trial for, and thus were not being tested by the trial at hand nor were they tested previously The jury then based too much of their reasoning for conviction on these untested accusations, instead of properly evaluating the accusations that Weinstein was actually on trial for. It's like this- you've got a murder trial with a defendant who has no criminal record. The prosecutor brings in all these people who testify the defendant committed murder in prior incidents. The prosecutor then says "because all these people said the defendant committed murder before, he must have committed this murder!" Well, you can't base a fair conviction on crimes the accused is not trial for, because those crimes are not being tested by the court. The defendant needs the proper ability to defend themselves, and they can't if they're faced with the prospect of having to answer for crimes they haven't been charged with (since charges need to be supported by physical evidence, not simply on hearsay alone). You also can't use, as evidence, accusations of crimes that haven't yet been tested by the court, since, in the eyes of the court, it is not proven that the defendant actually committed those crimes. Because of the presumption of innocence, since the accusations are not proven, you cannot say the defendant committed those crimes. Now, you are allowed to use character witnesses and use unrelated incidents to establish motive. Getting back to my hypothetical murder case, if part of the prosecutor's case revolves around suggesting the defendant has anger issues and wants to argue the evidence points to the defendant killing the victim in a moment of rage, the prosecutor can definitely bring in people who have witnessed the defendant get violently angry before, because then the prosecutor can prove the defendant can let their anger get the better of themselves. The prosecutor would still have to prove that the rest of the evidence proves the defendant's guilt, but at least the prosecutor can establish part of their case. My guess is that Weinstein's previous trial judge thought that by using the testimony of the women who brought forward the untested allegations, the prosecution would simply use it as evidence that Weinstein was the kind of guy who simply "would commit rape", not as evidence that he actually committed rape. The appeals court ruled that the trial judge erred in this assessment, as that the trial judge didn't stop the jury from using those untested allegations as evidence Weinstein committed the crimes he was actually on trial for. One other tangentially related point- Weinstein and his lawyers brought up the claim that the #MeToo movement unfairly influenced his trial, and there may be something to this. I mean, I really don't know how a jury can be expected to judge a case fairly when, on a daily basis, they're confronted by thousands of protesters who loudly shout at them and implore them to convict. There's a reason why juries are typically sequestered for deliberations- put in a hotel room without TV or newspapers and (I suspect) the Internet, because the judge can't risk the jurors being influenced by anything that would bias their evaluation of the case. How all those jurors- and the judge- can't be influenced by those protesters is beyond me.

Maybe I used the wrong word but it's semantics. The court simply said that the trial judge can't use as evidence the testimony of women who allege crimes against Harvey Weinstein that have not been proven in court. Which is especially important because those allegations were for similar crimes that Weinstein was on trial for. The judge ruled that because Weinstein had no prior criminal history before the New York convictions, it is a grievous error to allow testimony of people who accuse Weinstein of the same crimes as those he was actually on trial for, since it made the jury believe he had committed those crimes before when no court had deemed he had done so. My level of legal expertise is nowhere near a level where I'm in a position comfortable enough to say "the judge got it right" or "the judge got it wrong". I'm only going to comment on what I see. I know there will be people who will read what the court says and find confusion with it, since, in their minds, the "untested allegations" against Weinstein are as true as they can be, but, you have to remember that, in a court of law, if allegations have not been tested in court, a court cannot see those allegations as "true". It'd be like if someone was convicted of murder based solely on testimony of others that the person committed other murders other than the murder they're accused of committing. That's not a conviction that can be allowed to stand, because then you're risking people getting convicted purely on the weight of others simply running their mouths, with what they're saying being, potentially, falsehoods. People should only be convicted of the crimes they're actually accused of, not only crimes that stand simply on hearsay.