ZeroDiscipline

I remember this show making Adrienne seem just insufferable, and pinning the blame squarely on her being from New York. This is a thing with Aaron Spelling shows. Remember Jill, who couldn't even look at a bagel that is not from New york? And also on Melrose Place, Billy almost moves to New York and is lame about it, and Jo is from there and makes a point of being like "we don't do things like this in New York". It's as if Aaron Spelling has never actually been to New York and got all of his information from some episode of Leave it to Beaver when the dad goes to New York for business.

I assumed this is just another bad writing staff decision. I picture the writing staff sitting around a room, looking at the script, saying things like "we use the term "boy scout" an awful lot with Brandon. Is there another term? And then someone gets out a dictionary, or encyclopedia (remember- no internet at this time in history) and looks up alternate terms for boy scouts and came up with "webelo", with no context, and stopped right there without doing any further investigation. Like how the same writers decided that Lake Minnetonka was a good name for a Minnesota lake, and didn't bother to read a little bit further to find out that Lake Minnetonka is actually in the suburbs of Minneapolis and is not a tourist destination.

My UO is that I think Mandy Moore is best at acting when she is portraying Rebecca in the current day. I totally buy her as an older lady. The costume, hair and glasses help, but she also does a thing with her posture that makes her seem like she's slowing down. I do not think Mandy Moore sells Rebecca as a 40-something at all. She does just fine as a 29 year old before having the kids, but she's really just playing Mandy Moore there. And though I am growing tired of the Kate character, I think Chrissy Metz looks absolutely beautiful when she is crying, like in the dinner scene with Toby last week. It is the opposite of uglycrying.

She did! She fell for everything, and Kelly was always there with a dose of reality, whether it was dating Dylan, planning the race-war dance, smoking, being in a play, or marrying that caveman Stuart. Kelly was kind of a Debbie Downer anyway, but she wasn't truly sanctimonious until she hooked up with Brandon. It is a good thing Brenda got out of town, because can you imagine constantly being judged by those two dillholes?

I was home from work yesterday, all curled up with a thunderstorm and laundry, and flipped on the POP network, where they have started the series over with the original pilot. Rejoice! It was just what I needed. I didn't even watch it, just had it on. The soothing sounds of Brenda saying "laywyer" and ordering a banana dacquiri, and Brandon fumbling through dating the class rich girl was food for my soul. And then I had a new thought. You know how the writers always gave weird, non-trendy names to characters? Like "Donna", for instance, and there are many more examples of this. I always thought it was weird that the rich party girl's name was "Mary Anne". Like, if her parents were such rock stars, wouldn't they give their baby a cooler name? But now that I am older, I realize the writers meant to name her "Marianne", like after Marianne Faithfull. A fact completely lost on teenagers of the nineties. I can imagine Aaron Spelling not having a clue enough to hire young hip '90s writers, and this accounts for the weird fuddy-duddy stuff of the early seasons.

I just love that Val rolls her eyes at the whole thing right off the bat, while Saint Kelly is immediately sucked into the morass. I'll also admit that I have occasionally used the term "negator," with people, if only to get a reaction from them. And yes, I realize that could possibly make me as awful as Brandon. In the olden days, it would be Kelly rolling her eyes at Brenda for entertaining the idea of this cult nonsense. Valerie basically became the much cooler version of good-times Kelly.

Aha! I sort of remember this. If I had to speculate, I would guess that Val helped him by taking the opposite Donna approach, which, is what all of us were thinking, and would consist of saying "Whatever. Don't play if you don't want to. I'm sure your dumb broke ass will get another opportunity someday, somewhere else. Or will it? But if you don't want this gig at the L.A. club handed to you, then don't be a musician because this is the kind of stuff you will have to do on the regular." And then sashaying off to start trouble somewhere else.

So much word. I can't belive I was on Brando's side in the fight with Kelly, but he was completely correct and his tone had a point for once. Too bad he actually called Val's mom, but I LOVED that he said he couldn't explain why he was asking if she knew Val went to Jamaica. Busted being a snoop! Also, if Val was lying and didn't tell her mother that she was going to Jamaica, wouldn't she have - well, you know, called the Walshes to ask where her daughter was when she didn't turn up in Buffalo?! Did Kelly think that Val's mom didn't notice her daughter's absence? (Well, I guess Val could have lied and said she wanted to stay with the Walshes for christmas, but still, Kelly is a bitch). For sure. And also, if she didn't tell her mom, or made up some excuse, what is Brandon's point in calling her mom? The only possible outcome is to get Val in trouble. And that makes Brandon a very shitty "friend".

And he's over it! And didn't they shag the night of the fire anyway? It was certainly alluded to! Kelly is only like this to Val because she feels threatened by her, WRT Dylan and Brandon. Both of whom she screws over in a matter of months.

Yes, I am being sarcastic. Run of the mill smart-mouth over here. It speaks well of your character that you are giving me the benefit of the doubt though!

Yep, I mentioned this in the visual aids thread. It's completely absurd to me that Kelly gets up on her high horse about what Val chooses to do with her own goddamn Christmas vacation. She even says right in front of Kelly that she just couldn't deal with going home just yet -- with the implied BECAUSE OF THE MEMORY OF FINDING MY DEAD DAD IN A POOL OF HIS OWN BRAINS. And Kelly is still just eager to snot away. She gives me face flames, she is so terrible. Remember fun season 2 Kelly? Le sigh. Jesse and his legal career make me snort. I can't wait for the "5 year reunion" episode where Andrea and Jesse are about to break up because he's taking it out on her that he didn't make partner. At that point he'd have been out of law school what, a year or two? (Though his hairline clearly had at least 40 years' experience.) And how do we get from "I don't like that Val lied" to "I'm going to call her mother." Whaaaaaaaat? These are nineteen year olds. When the sketchy friend announces that instead of going to Buffalo for Christmas, she went to Jamaica, and brought back souvenirs, the appropriate response from a nineteen year old college sophomore is "Cool. Did you bring back any hash in your buttcheeks?" At no point would calling the girl's mother enter the picture. Way to be ungrateful, Brandon, as usual.

It's (supposedly) a soap opera show about rich kids in Beverly Hills...why would any of them acknowledge that? Hey now. Steve generously agreed to serve his court-ordered community service, even though his dad arranged for him to forego it.

I am so disturbed at the casualness with which Dylan approaches his DUI, and resulting slap on the wrist. At no point does he acknowledge that he got off real easy, because of his privilege. And then to take it a step further, when Jesse points out that he was lucky the cops didn't find any heroin in his car and Dylan angrily responds "Well then they didn't look hard enough did they?!??!?!" What a fucking miserable prick. Cannot be pleased. Why Jesse wastes any time on this dillhole is beyond me, except that he proves to be kind of a dillhole himself. Dillholes got to stick together. Man the writing on this show is so terrible, out of touch and yet kind of exactly how things are sometimes.

Why the fuck do Brandon and Kelly care if Valerie goes to Jamaica or not? At this point in time, she is what, 6 months removed from finding her father dead by suicide (before the later ret-con that revealed she killed him)? Couldn't she be forgiven for skipping Thanksgiving and going to Jamaica instead? And then be left alone? But I do agree with Kelly that she doesn't have to share her notes with Valerie, and should not be taken to task for that. And I love that Kelly calls herself a bitch, it saves everyone else the trouble.

I just love Val so much. And Kelly's face up there when Val says "You'd do the same for me, right?" Sick burn.

Maybe this show is really a murder mystery! And Miguel murdered Jack, and the kids are going to figure it out!

I am reminded that at my Catholic church growing up, midnight mass was actually held at 10 pm, because of all the inherent problems with churchgoers and the late hour. Kind of took the piss out of it.

Dylan's "What are we, married?" at the thought of giving Jonesy half his cash cracks me up so hard.

I once waited in line for two hours at a mall because my kids insisted they wanted to see Santa. My son was 2, my daughter 7. The entire wait in line, they were all "Santa Santa Santa!" I asked them repeatedly if they wanted to bail and come back first thing in the morning when the line was shorter. No way! When we finally got up to the front, my son freaked out and screamed his way through the whole thing, whilst my daughter made that Mikayla Maroney face because she was so pissed that her brother was ruining their time with Santa. You bet your ass I bought the photo. I bought the complete deluxe package, including a digital version so that I could make it our Christmas card photo that year. Everyone loved it, we totally won the Christmas card wars that year. I don't think we will ever send out another one, because we will never top that.

I feel like having kids of different ages is a different kind of "hard" than having three 8 year olds all at the same time. I totally agree with the original posters point. But it's all hard, kids are pretty impossible with all the changing and shifting. I have two of them, five years apart, and new issues crop up seemingly every day. Just when you have a routine that works, and you get comfortable with it, something happens and you throw away all the plans.

"You're going to have to find yourself a new black person"-- neighbor lady, dressing down Jack when he tries to get her to agree that Randall shouldn't take the opportunity to go to the new fancy school.

I thought Mandy Moore was way terrible in her scenes where she was supposed to be a Steelers fan. It was as if no one in that scene had ever watched football before. She should have been coached better, if she is not into football. But I know she used to make an ass of herself rooting for Andy Roddick at tennis matches back when they dated, so sports aren't completely foreign to her.

I think it's odd that Kate has custody of the ashes, not Rebecca. I am wondering if Jack and Rebecca were not together anymore at the time of his death.

I am getting a very strong "tragic accident" vibe. What if it is something horrifying like "Jack died trying to rescue Miguel and Shelly's kids from a tragic boating accident"? I don't think 2005 is necessarily the year he died, it could have been a lot sooner than that. Although, Miguel and Shelly have kids just a little bit older than the triplets, yet there have been no mention of any step-siblings. All of this means something terrible. My heart can't take it! Is there a speculation thread? Should we be using that now that we all know Jack is dead?

Happy birthday!