AncientNewbie

Maybe because Phil's always been a cartoon, but Burrell has been consistently the most solid as this moved into late-stage life and got sillier. Worrying a lot about my own aging parents, this one really hit home and I felt he delivered well.

I got about 2/3 of the way through the pilot before I realised I didn't actually have to keep watching. I can deal with the Justice League of Diverse Firefighters. At least some actors of color are getting prime time paychecks from it, even if it isn't too logical from a plot point. Liv Tyler, though, just killed it for me...the overly weird drama about the non-arrest for harassing the guy re: the dead sister and the weird delivery in the pepper scene...just took me out of an otherwise benignly existing procedural.

I promise I'm not just being contrary, but I sort of liked their flirtation strategy. I had no desire to see them win, and felt they were pretty much incompetent in comparison to traditional Lead Dog, male or female, race stars. But they came on, did their thing, got lucky a couple times and did well a couple of times and just played their game. They didn't screech or tell me about their ankle tendons or lash out at the world. I guess I'm thinking: they wouldn't be my perfect example of a nontraditional successful team, but I like that someone in the game can do well without being the typical successful winner. So I cut them slack.

They really did grow on me. I didn't like how they wanted to hug everyone, but they always seemed to be having fun and not taking themselves too seriously. That's what I like in my racers.

Captanne, I really enjoyed that episode. The unusual pacing and the dream sequence/wishful thinking stuff both threw me at first, but the character exploration was something that I loved to see.

I think the general nature of the posts on this thread sums up the fact that we have so little coherent to say about the episode(s). Racy, silly fun would work if it was either racy or silly. They can put Bo in as many low cut tops as they want and shoot her top-only to ignore the baby weight, but she's not coming off as the sultry vixen no one can avoid. Lauren can entangle herself as much as she wants, but she's sort of a black hole of inconsistency so I don't know what to do with her anyway. And silly...the "two girls against the world" buddy stuff used to be the best humor. Now we don't see it. This last ep of the season tried to resolve too much that was only intro'd recently. Too much without explanation didn't work for what the show used to be and just loses viewer interest.

I binged. I tried to hold off, then "ep 4 before bed" became "finishing ep 10 and I need to be up in two hours." I honestly can't remember if I was in the OINTB forum on TWoP. How quickly they forget...

I didn't recognize her at first when her flashback started. She really can be quite striking. I'm hoping she has more to do in s3. Not that she wasn't strong in s2, but I'd like to see her in a less reactive role.

Red is an old school gangster, where you can nod at a respected enemy and walk away after an assassination attempt, but a new model prisoner who cares for her charges. Vee is a new school gangster who will eliminate her own for profit, but an old school prisoner who, well, will eliminate her own for profit. And here I thought there was going to be some profound pithiness when I started that.

Mendez could try to get visitation, but there's no guarantee where he'll be housed in the federal system. If the child is placed with Daya's family in NYC, the distance from his location and the relative poverty of her family are likely to work against him. If he's not incarcerated, his chances improve, but not dramatically as supervised visitation would still likely be required, which can be difficult to arrange. As for paternity testing, since I'm using my law degree today: it seems like Daya's mom likes the idea of keeping Pornstache on the hook for child support, so they wouldn't push it from their end, probably unless it was needed to keep the child. The test is, for lack of a better term, done in a vacuum. They don't take a cheek swab from the kid, sequence the DNA and run it against a federal database, which would tell us who the father is. A potential father and the kid are swabbed, their DNA compared, and the report comes back with a % chance of relation. That's where there's room for the writers to either go soap opera with something contrived or be really creative. If all the prison guards come from the local city and Bennett and Mendez are third cousins twice removed, maybe there's enough of a similarity to not rule him out. Most likely DNA would show he's not the father. Other thoughts: Piper not knowing she was going to trial and not knowing what was expected of her are big issues for me. It could be chalked up to Larry's father's incompetence but there's no way she should have sat down with the prosecutor without some deal being discussed. Before they even got to the point of moving her out of NY to IL, someone would have visited her in prison (and "no, AUSA, you can't talk to her because she's in SHU" would not fly) and discussed testifying. Figueroa's arc was too short. They didn't try to humanize her until the end and by then it was too late. Given her surname, there was ripe material for comparison with the inmates. I hope she isn't back, especially if she's ever indicted and imprisoned, because what made her special to the show was her graft and incompetence. Or back at all, because bringing her back as the new warden due to her commendations and such would create drama with Caputo, but I just don't care enough about her. Vee was a crazy person and I get where it seems they were going, but...I lost interest as she got more evil and more unhinged. I liked that she was a callback to what "prison" is in the public consciousness. Covert race war, drugs, violence...she was Oz and that was a good conflict in the softer world of OITNB and eventually everyone came to the realization that even success wasn't worth living in Oz. But the "I'm your friend and then I turn" got played out too soon. But I'm also not going to think she's dead until I see the funeral. I'm wondering if they'll do an "aging parent" storyline with Taystee where a paralyzed and "softened" Vee comes back eventually and Tasha is stuck, where may people are today, caring for someone who was just plain evil because it's a parent.

I hated that I used my real name when I set up my TWoP account and then felt limited in what I could say over the next nine years, but never wanted to start the post count over again at zero. So now on a new site where the count is already zero...I used my real name again. I'll be the one in the dunce cap. Longtime SYTYCD watcher and harsh critic of Nigel, Mary's laugh and nonsense judges. Delightfully love NappyTabs hamhanded overly literal choreo but rage against Mia's skilled yet overwrought choreo. Still contend someone could flop around the stage in a seizure and Nigel would rave about how such contemporary is the epitome of Western dance. So...hi everyone.

Thanks for clarifying--i didn't know that about Mark. She hasn't been in the media as much lately and I only see him with her.

It was her top that did it for me--no, not like that, you dirty minded people. It didn't strike me as a normal dance top/sports bra/whatever dancers wear as much as a boob presenter. Perhaps it fit the style of the dance, but mainly I felt like she knew Nigel was the only one she needed to impress and appealing to his lechery never fails. Even if this was all dialog in my head imputing it to her, it made it hard to care much about her dance.

Joining in to echo that I love the show and couldn't say why, but don't talk it up as much as I would anything else I love because it is...odd. So many people in raw emotional pain next to an exploding fuel truck of cartoonish action. It's like tailor made for my messed up tv preferences.

Me too. Of course, with this show that's a constant issue I have...it's either a sob story about a fam sacrificing everything to buy a thrice-used toe shoe or someone from a family that could just finance their own reality show because dance is about that expensive. Mary Poppins was my favorite because she brought something different to the table. I can't say who was the "best" dancer of them all, because I find myself running all the contemporary women together in my head. I don't know Wichita guy's story...does someone that only dances at home really drive to try out for this show? But it made for a great tv moment. I wish him the best because he seemed earnest.

The most obvious I can think of is Mark Kanemura, who seems to be Lady Gaga's principal dancer.