Maximona

I think there are only so many amusing court cases a show can do unless it's that ripped from the headlines format. Which is why I suspect there will be only one more season of TGW.

My impression was quite the opposite -- they're selling drugs so that they can keep the ranch. The ranch doesn't pay for itself; property taxes in NY are exorbitant etc etc. They don't want to give up the family land because without it they have no identity. If the Montauk Ponderosa goes away, the patriarchy disbands, no more of those insufferable group breakfasts.

Terrific episode. The video game drone images, Saul by the fountain holding the gun to his head, Carrie lying to Saul -- just brilliant, emotionally gripping, moving stuff. Of course, Saul knows Carrie is lying to him. One has to assume that in his position, he's lied similarly to many other people over the years. Loved Quinn telling Carrie, "Good night, when she is going into one of her mania-fueled angst-and-self-flagellation monologues. I suspect the plot is edging toward a Carrie/Quinn Trek into the Tribal Lands to save Saul. Maybe Khan comes with them. Kahn and Carrie definitely have a Thing for one another. For my own selfish reasons, I 'd like to have them have One Night of Passion from multiple camera angles.

Oh, I think the writers are making very deliberate choices here.

I loved this episode. I thought it was hilarious (particularly the mistaken juxtaposition of the black-and-white Will Gardner death courtroom with the Irish jig music, the bad Dino cartoon, the even worse Who's Alicia In Bed With NOW cartoon). I liked the banter with the video guy. To me, it seemed quite obvious that Peter has real feelings for Ramona. Not so real, of course, that he wouldn't cheerfully sell her down the river for the sake of political expedience, but then he's a politician. I also like the Alicia/Finn pairing. Emmy, Schmemmy -- I think Juliana Margolies is an EXTREMELY limited actress. She's PERFECT for this role because Alicia is such a guarded personality. But among the many things that Margolies does not do well is the simulation of love or human passion. George Clooney carried a lot of weight in ER! With Finn, I feel as though I'm watching icebergs mating or something and it's just perfect. My guess is that we see one more season of TGW -- you can already see it starting to implode -- during which Alicia metamorphoses into someone else's "good wife," Finn's good wife (since he's serious enough to want to marry someone he's having an affair with.) Kalinda just bores the hell out of me. Seriously. Quite a task for the wardrobe department to find a leather jacket that a black hole can fit into! Yeah, she was an interesting character the first season or two. She's not now. I will be happy when she knocks off Bishop and goes to prison, or whatever end the writers have in store for her. I guess I'm also in a minority for liking Bishop -- he brings such a nuanced menace to what is essentially a cameo. And, yeah, Matt Czuchry has been doing a fine job in an increasingly thankless part. He has lost weight.

I thought this was a pretty strong episode, and I'm relieved that the show has evolved beyond the treacley premise of Two Strangers! In Love! Can They Overcome the Odds Against Them? etc I had a little epiphanal flash listening to Fiona Apple crooning over the credits: This is actually more Allison's story than it is Noah's. And Wilson was really gripping in this episode, particularly in the scene where she tells Noah, I don't CARE if I live or die. It will be interesting to see if this is really all there was to "the affair;" whether its only real significance was to set larger plot forces in action, or whether Noah and Allison will kiss and make up in Episode 7. The drug stuff was certainly debated vigorously in this very forum and foreshadowed strongly enough so that I had no problems accepting it. Also found the pseudo-paternal bond that Martin seemed to be developing with Cole a potentially interesting plot point given the relationship between Cole's wife and Martin's father, and didn't quite get how the horse escaped. Heavy symbolism, right? She reminds me of you, Cole tells Alison.

I don't think what they put in Carrie's capsules was lithium or any of the other meds that Carrie takes routinely. I think they swapped that for ketamine or some other cheap hallucinogenic. The plot point has nothing to do with Carrie reacting to blood levels of meds which were prescribed for her. The plot point has to do with her reaction to being dosed by a rather powerful hallucinogenic. Which she swallows because she thinks it is a med she has to take daily. Of course, since she doesn't know she was being dosed, her response when she starts hallucinating would be to assume her disease is spiraling out of control and so, to take more meds. Of course, I'm not in close telepathic communication with the writers who spun this plot point, so I may have my head up my ass. :-) But I didn't think the writers were off their mark at all. I thought they were standing right on the tape! :-)

Ummm, no. Bipolar medication is something that people take everyday since its effectiveness depends upon maintaining adequate blood levels of the med. Tasneen knows this. Symptoms do pitch and escalate, so it's not unrealistic that Carrie might want to take more if she feels the dose she took was inadequate for symptom control. My quibble on this account was that Carrie, even at her most medicated, has strong paranoid tendencies and therefore would be the type to place a single hair in the bottle so she could tell whether it had been tampered with. Even bad spies know they need to do stuff like that. And Carrie is a reasonably good spy. I don't think her condition is general knowledge. Much was made about hiding it from her employers in Season 1, I seem to recall. I confess, I lost interest in the show in Seasons 2 & 3, only tuned in intermittently. Did she every come clean with her employers (apart from Saul?) Maybe she did, but that would seem out of character to me. Anyway, if her condition isn't widely known, no way she would jeopardize her position with a trip to the doctor. Being Carrie, she would Tough It Out.

It would have been a great scene in a naturalistic series. The problem was that it occurred on Sons of Anarchy, mere minutes after I saw some guy's hand chopped off and his fingers wriggling on the ground like little earthworms. So no, it wasn't a great scene. Just more WTF? I guess I just can't compartmentalize to the fangirl standards demanded of me.

Jack Nickolson, too. So Abel DOES have other career options. Marilyn Manson and Juice have waaaay more sexual chemistry than Chibbs and Althea. This was the best show of the season, which means 15% of it was marginally watchable, and the last two scenes with Abel were really quite strong. Problem with all the mass slaughter -- besides the fact that I have long ago forgotten why the Preacher's wife and the Preacher's son are important to the creaky plot machinery, and I have no interest in refreshing my memory -- is that when you contrast these cartoonish scenes of violence and mayhem -- like how many corpses have there been now? And the BAU team from Criminal Minds still hasn't shown up to start profiling Jax? -- it seriously detracts from the stuff that is strong and compelling.

While you write so beautifully, this made me laugh out loud, I don't agree. In fact, I rather thought that Saul and the Warlord could easily come to a settlement ending the war if they were only given the power to negotiate it.

Excellent analysis. Just so.

It's the same day. It has to be for the sake of narrative continuity -- otherwise the scriptwriters could start presenting wildly different memories within the Allison/Noah bookends. I don't think Allison remarried. The detective calls her MIZZ Bailey. I like the idea that Allison and Noah are each other's alibi, and in the present tense of the detective interrogation, they now not-so-cordially dislike each other. Their memories of one another certainly do seem to mix dislike and blame with attraction. I agree that Dominic West's McNulty was the weakest link in The Wire, but I think he's really good in this. I think the whole point is that he's not devastatingly attractive. Allison isn''t looking just for someone to have sex with. She's looking for someone to rescue her from the trap of Montauk life.

Guess I'm in the minority here, because I thought this was a really strong episode. Carrie's meds were tampered with. I couldn't quite figure out whether someone had slipped her ketamine (a horse tranquilizer with hallucinogenic properties in humans) or had merely substituted baking soda for lithium -- some bipolars do have psychotic symptoms when they're in the manic phases of the disease, and we have seen Carrie growing sicker and sicker this season, although that's been nicely underwritten (even with meds, she's increasingly volatile and never sleeps.) The Carrie insanity scenes were painful to watch, but I didn't think they were gratuitous. In context, they worked for me. She's the CIA's Cassandra,always right, never heeded. That's enough to drive anyone mad. Loved, loved, loved Saul's dialogues with his captor. The captor's comments mirrored my own thoughts about 9/11 at the time -- so-o, since Bin Laden is Saudi and the majority of the 9/11 thugs are Saudi, why aren't we doing something about the Saudis? Oh, right. My car uses gas. Duh! Brody's momentary reappearance spooked me! And I love the insanely handsome Pakistani officer in whose arms Carrie eventually ends up -- he was the only one who noticed that Carrie was not well earlier in the episode. The scriptwriters have built a three-dimensional character there with remarkably few strokes, which I always admire in scriptwriters. I am looking forward to some episodes where my BF Quinn goes off into the Tribal Lands --preferably bare-chested -- to steal back Saul, so if the hostage trade doesn't fall through, I will be very, very disappointed.

Guess I'm in the minority, but I thought this was a pretty strong episode from the hilarious mock trial prep between Viola Walsh and Cary (Rita Wilson = very funny) to the focus group internalized as a Greek chorus in Alicia's mind. Loved Owen's puppy dog face, and Eli's little lecture on the true meaning of photo ops. To me, Kalinda has always been the weakest character on the show. She seems to have wandered in from another genre, a low-budget 1980s thriller or something. The Good Wife is a dialogue show, and Kalinda doesn't talk. The character's schtick apparently is her irresistability. In real life, that kind of charisma is very much in the mind of the beholder, the real life people who impel that kind of reaction have a tendency to be blank screens, and yes, Kalinda is pretty blank. But it doesn't work (at least for me) given the all-high-speed-repartee, all-the-time style of the rest of the show. I won't be sorry to see the character go, and I agree with whomever said above that she probably takes out Bishop and ends up in jail -- it would just be too weird to kill her off given Will's sudden death. No. She kills Bishop, exonerating Cary in the process, tidying up that increasingly irrelevant and distracting storyline. I assume we're coming up soon on the last season of The Good Wife. Shows that follow a single character's storyline just don't have the traction of shows that can rip yet another story with a fresh cast of guest stars from the headlines every week. The full circle would be to have Alicia finally ditch Peter and become somebody else's "good wife." I like her with Finn. There's an obvious attraction, and he seems to bring out her better qualities. I've never liked Juliana Margolies as an actress -- although I think she's perfect for this show, and I do like this show. She has a really limited range and displays of human affection don't seem to be within that range. Nevertheless, insofar as she's capable of chemistry with a costar, I think she has some chemistry with the actor who plays Finn.

I thought the detective called Allison Miss Bailey. That would make her divorced but not remarried. The glam new look would have to come from a divorce settlement -- presumably Mother Courage finally sold the ranch. (And this is really picky of me, but nobody on the East coast refers to a place where horses are kept as a "ranch." We say "horse farm!" Every time I hear ranch, I roll my eyes.) I liked this episode a lot. It's interesting that Allison remembers the sex as rhapsodic, and Noah remembers it as hurried and (one assumes) no particularly satisfactory since it definitely is not front and center in his memories of the day. I think Oscar was looking for a way to ingratiate himself with Noah as a way to get in more tightly with Noah's Famous Writer father-in-law. Maybe he wants to cater their next big party; maybe he's star-struck. Both sets of in-laws were horrible in their own ways. Mother Courage and the patriarchal horse farm boys are marginally more bearable than Helen's parents, but just barely. Poor Allison! A smart girl forced to go the way of so many smart girls in small towns -- early marriage, pregnancy, a husband she's fallen out of love with. I thought the first scene in Allison's POV was really subtle and well-done. I don't think Cole knows she's having an affair per se; I think he knows she thinks watching him surf is bor-ring! And that signifies the end of the marriage when the guy has muscles and good look,s but very little understanding of what his wife is all about. I love Athena. I assume that she went through her own version of what we see Allison going through before she ditched Montauk.

I love Joel, of course -- I mean, what's not to love? But I thought the New Boyfriend's kiss on the forehead and graceful retreat was a class act all the way. Plus he and Julia have some history, and he gets her work. I'd like them to stay together.

I thought the Alcatraz trip was chaos was well done. It's entirely in keeping with Amber's personality to make Big Plans that she can't possibly come through on. And I held my stomach when I was as pregnant as Amber. And, no, it wasn't to keep the baby from falling out. It was because the baby was moving. Its a rather odd sensation to feel a baby moving inside you. I tried to curtail this behavior when I was at the mall or other public places because, you know. Other people get squeamish. I was totally on Drew's side in the thing with Zeke. I totally get why Drew feels the need to major in something that he doesn't have the slightest aptitude for. I was an economics major at UCB, too, (although my natural inclination would have been to be an English literature major), and you know what? Economics is fascinating, and you can learn it, but there is a steep learning curve, and yes, you need to put in long hours hitting the books. Are Zeke and Camille bankrolling Drew through college? Because if not, he's going deeply into debt for the experience, so yes, he really needs to maximize it. Zeke is being very, very selfish not to realize that. But Zeke, of course, although lovable, has always been supremely selfish. Also no kid in his early 20s is going to relate to making memories for his old age. No kid in his early 20s believe he's ever going to get old. Zeke and Joel were entirely believable. There were many times during my first marriage and eventual divorce that I suspected my family vastly preferred my X to me. But you know, we're modern, we lived in Berkeley, there are times when we all still show up at family events -- he with his new wife and kids; me with my new husband and kid. Marriage in many ways is more like an adoption process than a romantic relationship. Sandy is a total rude bitch. The rule to making those blended present and X-families mix, is never to leave anyone out.

The Bridge. A very good show that got canceled because even though it had a lot of corpses, most of them were Mexican so, you know: Who the fuck cares? Sons of Anarchy has become the Number One comedy on my TV-viewing schedule. Frankenpreacher! Girl fights! A cop driven mad by her lust for biker dick! The only thing that could make me happier is maybe a crossover segment with Criminal Minds, but alas! that won't happen. Different networks and all. I kind of would like to see Garcia get stuck babysitting Abel. I've watched SOA from Season One, so I'm kind of a captive audience. It's worn its own little groove in my brain, and that groove craves closure. I started watching just because I know the area that it supposedly takes place in very, very well, and I loved the idea of calling a town in California's oh-so-UN-charming Central Valley, "charming." It was always a trashy, melodramatic show, but it did have its moments -- mostly when Katy Sagal was on the show because unlike most of the other cast members, she can actually act. It's sad to see that Katy Sagal is still acting because those scripts are an insult to anyone with talent. But I guess when you're married to the showrunner, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. At this point, the only thing I really, really, really hope Sutter spares us is the Jax and Gemma incest scene before he kills her. Though I suppose, it's inevitable.

Oh, I don't think Quinn is a lovesick puppy. I think Quinn's deeper emotions are aroused when he can position himself as some kind of White Knight. See the Case of the Ass-Stompin' in the Diner in defense of the apartment manager's honor. I think Quinn viewed Carrie for a while as a victim, which, of course, triggered all his residual White Knight romantic impulses. We're watching the scales fall from his eyes. I don't think he likes her at all now.

I dunno. One of the things that made Saul such a great op was that he always managed to motivate his subordinates and manipulate the canaries around him at the same time. The plot really worked in this episode, but I'm really turning off to the show because Carrie is just so unlikeable. I can barely bring myself to watch her on the screen, Ironically, one of the problems here is that Clare Danes is such a great actress that she's breathing real life into this highly unendearing character. Totally made sense, of course, to use sex as a recruiting tool with the boy. In fact, of course, this is exactly what Carrie did with Brody. One assumes it's her modus operandi. But I suppose in these days when binge-TV watching has superseded going to movies, movies still have the edge at presenting morally ambivalent characters. On the TV screen, I seem to be drawn to characters who are likable somehow. Jerks that do horrible things. But likable jerks that do horrible things. Maybe that has something to do with watching in my home versus watching in a blackened theater where I can suspend my own moral biases more easily. Carrie is just too unsympathetic for me to care what happens to her. I am looking forward to Quinn infiltrating the Tribal Region to get Saul back, though.

Agree about the nosedive. Honestly? I think some network honcho held a gun to the showrunner's head and said, "Make TGW more like Scandal!!!!!"

Huh. Well I guess sexual chemistry is in the mind of the beholder, because as far as I'm concerned, these two actors have enormous sexual chemistry together. I like how slow-moving this series is. That it doesn't seem to be about the whodunnit standard TV plot resolution, but about the way multiple and wavering present tenses glide toward that resolution. That there are so many small brush strokes. For me, the problem isn't Noah and Allison's alternating realities or the discrepancies between them but the clunky way the murder mystery framing device is being used. I'm not sure how I would correct that if Showtime had hired me as a writer -- maybe foreshadowed the police detective as a younger rookie cop in some of the Noah/Allison status detail scenes? Dunno. The detective is clearly lying to the two witnesses, feeding them what he thinks will establish empathy and trust -- to Noah, the divorced husband, he's a beleagured father whose bitch X won't let him near his kids; to Allison, who has clearly married up (stylist eye shadow,) he's in a happy marriage. This makes me think that Helen's mother may have died, and Alison is now remarried Helen's father.

Location, location, location. Berkeley, California is not exactly the center of the music and voiceover world, even in Northern California. Mostly, they're in San Francisco. Very difficult to lure prospective clients to a place that has absolutely no downtown parking (Berkeley.) As for the Luncheonette... Presumably, Crosby and Adam threw in their entire life savings to get it up and rolling -- as a new business, iI suspect it would have been an unlikely candidate for an SBA loan or any kind of loan for that matter. Their attachment to the business is as emotional as it is practical, and it is very, very hard to walk away under those circumstances whatever the practical reality of the situation. I've been there myself; I lost a business I started in the Great Recession of '08. One tends to lie to one's significant others because one lies to oneself. You just keep hoping, praying, magically thinking, Damn, I KNOW I can turn this around SOMEHOW... So I think these scenes have the real ring of... Well. If not exactly truth, verisimilitude. I love this show, and I'll be very sad to see it end. Yeah, yeah. The characters can be annoying at any individual moment. But I love the arcs. And, YES to Sarah channeling Lorelei -- The Gilmore Girls is another show I miss bigtime.

Sons of Anarchy is now the most hilarious show on TV. Even Modern Family is only a distant second.