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gesundheit

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Everything posted by gesundheit

  1. So they really cut the character of Steffi the Staffie from this adaptation? Foolish decision!
  2. I can easily see why they cast Bhanu - very overzealous, enthusiastic, warm guy who's incredibly animated and will probably be beloved at first, but it's always dramatic to cast someone on Survivor who was simply born without guile. Had he not ended up in that tribe situation, the guilelessness probably would've been an occasional wacky moment but not really doing damage until later in the season where he'd emerge from the supporting cast and then everyone could see how unhinged he was and then he'd flame out fast. It could be extremely entertaining! But instead we got we got, and it was deeply un-entertaining. If it just get revealed at tribal, she's going to be a fast target for the schadenfreude of it all. Exactly! His mistake wasn't trying to get new allies by giving them dirt, his mistake was telling his tribe he'd done that. Me too. I loved Survivor AU and was halfway through a marvelous season when Paramount+ yanked it. Heartbreaker! (I was also in the middle of Survivor South African and Survivor NZ -- depressingly small grand prize, but still fun!)
  3. Spoiler-tagging this just in case book details are against the rules!
  4. It's so bizarre that changing all the character's relationships and conflicts and personalities from the book in order to make things more dramatic has actually made it less compelling. So disappointing. It's basically the Lifetime movie version. Seems like they thought the series would be more appealing if they added a bunch of secret sex. (They were wrong.)
  5. Someone needs to tell the L.A. writers room that calling the first day of spring "Sundress Day" in NYC is ridiculous, since it's almost always in the 30s on the first day of spring. (As it was this week!) "Every woman in New York wears a sundress that day," my ass! (Also why did a bar have "Happy Pride" in the window in the winter?) He's always neck-deep in a bunch of big Amy Schumer projects, so I wouldn't be surprised if he likes the flexibility for his directing/producing work. Why is Olivia such a mean boss? She wasn't as bad as usual this episode, but she did get a few digs in at the cops that were already there on the scene. Her "everyone in this profession besides me is utterly incompetent" attitude is terrible leadership, Brene Brown would not approve! (And neither would Cragen.) I mean, thanks Liv -- without your expert wisdom nobody would've thought after going to Queens to identify all the potential places that may have employed the victim the day prior, they should find out which one it was! Only Benson would be sensitive enough to think of going to the homeless man's turf to ask him what he saw instead of hauling him into the station! Thank goodness they have her uncanny sapience.
  6. Still no separate reward challenge in a 90-minute episode. No thank you! What did Randen say at the end? My TV cut off. Did we get a medical update, is he okay? That was so awkward having everyone rejoice about his removal. Bhanu's god sure does have schadenfreude! I did see the preview for next week, though, and I guess
  7. Well this should be... bizarre! Rockefeller Center will turn into an SVU-immersive experience The area will temporarily be renamed "Olivia Benson Plaza."
  8. In my experience people in their 70s and 80s with sprawling body art look completely badass. I needed someone to press her on that. What in the world does that mean? Who just says that without elaborating? This show is doing a great job casting social media archetypes. Last season we had "that one social media friend who makes absolutely everything about astrology" and this time we have "that one social media friend who makes absolutely everything about her adult ADHD diagnosis." That said, I liked Astrology Woman (I forget her name) by the end of last season, and I already liked ADHD Woman by the end of last night's episode. There's my personal lesson is reducing people to their one annoying quirk! It looks like next week is 2 hours again, though. Hopefully we go back to 90 minutes. 2 hours is too much! Do we know? I feel like there has to be some behind-the-scenes arrangement for that sort of thing. That had my jaw on the floor. And why was he parsing the several/seven thing so much anyway? If the timer is 4 hours, then you have 4 hours. It's not some trick that proves it impossible.
  9. Jon does definitely interrupt his guests more than Trevor did, but it always feels like Jon's engaging in a conversation that he knows enough to participate in -- Trevor often respectfully sat back and yielded the floor because he just rarely knew enough to really engage. I like both styles, but I consider Jon's guests to typically be there for a conversation and Trevor's guests to typically be there for a interview. (Not that constant interruption is okay for a conversation, either! I just mean I think the basic premise usually means hearing more of his voice than we were meant to hear of Trevor's, and that's okay depending on the topic. But I definitely want to watch all the extended versions because many thoughts I wanted to hear the rest of get cut off!)
  10. Also pretty handy that Liv just has full-time live-in childcare for her son that makes it easy to just hop a plane on a whim with no notice to the caregiver
  11. Wouldn't it be glorious if the United States had anywhere near as robust a passenger rail system as the SVU writers' room has given it in their imagination? Poor Velasco with the awful exposition. "Tanya Garcia." "The girl we found OD-ing in that bag in that hotel room back in January?" Ouch. (And why did they even clarify that at all? There never would've been a question that they had an ID witness! But of course we needed everyone else to be dumb as a brick again so Olivia can have the genius eureka moment.) And by the way, great news! Tanya's fine, the trauma and drugs are no match for aftercare from Olivia Benson! "Perp on the run -- let's send the 60-year-old in couture shoes!" So uh... what happened to the showrunners' big promise back in 2020 that they were going to start presenting IAB in a new light? Since rooting out dirty cops and police corruption is actually a good thing and shouldn't be presented otherwise? Guess they abandoned that. Sure, they might want to have an opposing opinion on the squad to be more realistic, but zero chance Fin would be the loudest advocate of Blue Wall of Silence out of everyone. Why so much drama about identifying a boy vs a girl? This is a allegedly a bunch of enlightened people who are conversant in vics who identify anywhere along the gender spectrum, but apparently now it's grounds for self-flagellation if you can't tell that a short-haired girl is a girl on first sight. I'd love to be grateful that the Maddie storyline is over, but unfortunately the "Olivia's personal feelings aftermath" has only just begun.
  12. I agree. Partway through this finale I was thinking they actually could have another season with these two working together (still with tension/conflict but closer to the same goals), but of course that twist ending pretty much extinguished that possibility. I was a little bummed by that because of the fantastic chemistry whenever they had scenes together that weren't straight-up adversarial. (Obviously the adversarial scenes were great, too, but hopefully my point was clear!)
  13. I did bristle for half a second when Melissa was "covering" and pretending she waited 2 more years after 14 to smoke and got called out that that would only make her 16 -- but 16 absolutely was the smoking age when Melissa was 16! Her cover was fair! I was going to say the same thing -- there's no way they didn't smoke together. For comedy's sake they're complete opposites in every way, but we have to picture something they actually did together that would lead to that many years. I can definitely picture him getting her to try it and then Janine realizing exactly what she explained -- that it calms down her neuroses and anxiety. (But not something she does at parties!) I didn't really buy the serious FADE woman being so utterly unprepared to answer a single question, but it was funny nonetheless! Jessca was hysterical, and in just the right dose. Wouldn't want her to be recurring because the shtick would get old, but it was perfect for one episode.
  14. Hilarious. I just said last week that I hope they didn't make us watch any of Liv's EDMR sessions, and boom! Right in the cold open of the next episode. Also hilarious: a therapist asking for Liv's assistance, and Liv thinking she had to explain to a therapist that she's a mandatory reporter. What would any adult professional in any field do without the wisdom of Olivia Benson? Also hilarious: just to demonstrate how Liv's more saintly than all other humans, they write a scene where McGrath's wife just found out her friend's son definitely raped her daughter but took a quick break to accuse Liv of going after McGrath's job. As if. Also hilarious: they tell us the whole episode it's required for IAB or the ADA to be present at all times in this investigation because of the McGrath situation. Well, at all times except... the actual arrest of his daughter's rapist, an arrest happening mere steps from McGrath's home. Amazing. Not hilarious and actually good: I forget her name but I love the IAB agent and am delighted that she'll be the new girl. Obviously she'll have to live in Liv's shadow, but at least I can thrive off of the shreds they'll toss her. Anyway. Last week sure was a nice breather! Back to the Benson Hour. (Oh wait! One more hilarious: McGrath says he should've seen that his buddy was a wife-beater, and instead of her usual "you can't always know," Olivia just smirks at him.)
  15. But once again with the hilarious 1970s version of NYC -- when that property manager was like "eyyyyy -- crimes happen in this building constantly, whaddya want, it's Brooklyn!" as if most of Brooklyn isn't now more upscale than the Upper East Side. (Of course this what happens when your writers room is on the other side of the country and probably lived in 1970s NYC and hasn't been back since outside insulated work travel between airports, hotels, and events/meetings)
  16. Hey, actually a pretty solid episode! Almost old-school. Couldn't really tell where it was going, fantastic famous guest star who gets some meaty material, detectives and lawyers doing actual detectiving and lawyering instead of just St. Olivia doing mental health counseling! I don't even mind the dumb Olivia bookends if that's the price of admission to the good stuff. Truly. I thought the mom hated Olivia anyway, but now all of a sudden she's her best friend and entire support system! That infuriated me. Woman, you did nothing! You bailed on this woman's horrific story partway through, you don't get to have the wise, self-congratulatory wrap-up with her! Agreed! I assumed that's exactly what we were getting when they demonstrated that he's an uber-wealthy, for-profit cosmetic doc -- that's SVU catnip for an evil dude. But nope, they actually let him just be a fairly decent guy dude with some midlife insecurities! And it was actually really cute the way he was so proud to his wife about being "undercover" and having to go back to finish his "job." The ingredients are all still there! I'm expending all my energy trying to feel gratitude for that instead of resentment that they can still pull it off but typically choose not to. (This is not to suggest this was ever some masterful piece of prestige TV, but they did have a formula that often did the trick.) Also I hope we don't have to sit through any of Liv's EDMR sessions
  17. Good grief, this episode. SVU proudly taking up the "wokeness has gone too far!" mantle. Embarrassing. Of course they try to do an episode focused on race and are afraid to put Fin in it after it took that turn. Instead, it was Olivia who could speak on it the most wisely! Because of course! And I'm already sick to death of the Maddie thread. This is going to be insufferable all season.
  18. Exactly -- she could've gotten a great offer for a full ride + stipend doing criminology graduate study somewhere she had a teaching assistantship covering some criminal justice courses. Easy. But nope, instead we get miracle unsolicited job offer falling from the sky.
  19. I've long said this show must be a real thorn in the side of the Chamber of Commerce, considering they love few things more than having folks either new to town or even just on a vacation in town being the victim of a brutal crime immediately. (In fact, the only people getting attacked more than newcomers or tourists are college students or nannies from far away)
  20. Ah, one of the nation's pre-eminent minds in criminology! Truly an expert at work
  21. It's like I finally let go of my inexplicable aggression about Rollins's absolutely ludicrous send-off story, and then they bring her back "in action" just to annoy me more. Once again, has zero credentials to do anything but at best give a guest lecture or two in a criminology course, and yet she's a full professor at an extremely competitive university. Teaching a social science! How would she respond to peer review? Does she even know APA? What kind of assignments is she giving those poor students? And now Olivia actually comes to consult her as some Yoda-esque criminal expert/sage, something that never actually happened while she was a detective? (At the very least they could've had her teaching criminal justice, which would actually track. Criminology does not.) This is what bugged me the most -- seems that they're doing it again, going with a season-long arc that we're repeatedly forced to check in on and then probably endure two-episode/three-episode arcs at the end of the season. Literally the opposite of SVU's appeal, which is that it isn't serialized. In fairness, she only got one Emmy 18 years ago when both the show and the TV landscape were very different. This is not respected as a quality show in the field, just workhorse commerce at this stage. Points for endurance and longevity and giving east coast actors and TV directors a place to work when they need it. Such awkward writing in this episode. Detectives would really just sit there speechless if a mother is demanding that they tell her what they're doing that she couldn't do? Name something! And then at the end? Tell her obviously that finding this other girl is good news for the search for Maddie because now they have information and a witness! Oh and the NJ Olivia counterpart had Olivia's exact hairdo, which gave me a chuckle. Subtle!
  22. And maybe she was! Maybe she did have weird sexual obsessions and maybe she did physically act out! It would make sense with her history. But none of it changes the caregiver culpability. That's the saddest part, is that there's this subtext that if Natalia did even a handful of the things they've accused her of, it justifies the abuse in some way. It doesn't matter! I think your second paragraph here is probably the answer to the first! They mentioned in the second season at some point that the Ciccones didn't legally relinquish their ties to Natalia until about 6 months after the Barnetts picked her up. It wasn't quite the quickie adoption Michael tried to make it sound like. I can't stop thinking about Michael saying in season one that this mental institution just gave her back to them, insisting there was nothing they could do and that she was a danger. As if. In a way he is also Kristine's lawyer, since acknowledgment of Kristine's abuse implicates Michael's complicity, so the (legal strategy) story is that it didn't happen, that Natalia was an unmanageable presence, and Michael just did the best he could in impossible circumstances. And yes, absolutely a slimeball! I think the awful apartment neighbor also got pretty cruelly exploited by this documentary. I have no doubt they didn't disclose to her that there is definitive proof Natalia was a child at that time, and so of course her immediate reaction to a video clip of someone she'd known only as a creepy and problematic adult is going to be based on the long-held understanding of that person she's had for over a decade. If she was given all the information and had time to process it before that, then I stand corrected, but considering this show's approach I highly doubt it. This was such a deeply unethical documentary that I feel guilty for watching it, but now I'm just sucked in and will continue following the story. I'm still mystified as to why she can't get her legal age changed back? That has to be in the works for inevitable civil action. I can't believe Michael is still resting on "but she didn't grow at all in the years she lived with us" -- she has dwarfism! She didn't grow in height but she obviously grew in other ways. And he'd seen her once she reached adulthood, that physical change is not something that happens between 22 and 33! (Don't know why I'm looking for logic from that man.)
  23. I wondered too. Side-gig-slash-money-laundering front? Or maybe he was used to some previous nefarious cashflow that he doesn't get anymore and had to take this on because he was living even outside his very good high-ranking means?
  24. I assumed it would be eventually, but I'm glad Phoebe's affair is finally connected to the main thread about family violence. It had seemed like a corny add-on to what was otherwise such a lovely show. I can't remember all the names but I was also glad to see how they depicted Ry falling prey to another controller and how easy it is for that to happen, when the new one seems like a rescue from the old one.
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