Pallas

I'm very amused to seeJaney characterized as depressed and with attachment issues, since over the four years of the show, Miles quoted scirpture more often than Janey said boo. The baby-Janey-twins never did give up their day jobs.

Today's PRIMETIMER feature has more on the new and returning characters.

Becky questions Jackie's people-picker; Harris has a choice between college and another offer.

People may marry without knowing much about life, intimacy or each other; they can strike up terrible mis-matches. Or near-hits that are still big misses: couples who are really buddies or romances. Or where one partner is ready and the other only wants to be. Or most painfully, where a good match jumps the gun. In those marriages -- undertaken under false premises -- infidelity is likely and, to my mind, not necessarily definitive. People may not change much, but they can grow up a lot. It turns out that Joel had tons of unfinished business: with his parents, and with the social expectations of a very conformist time. He figured things out in the wrong order. A mistake more common than not, and one that he's pretty much devoted himself to putting right, ever since. Midge might have some sympathy, since it's now clear that she got married when she still had tons of business not even begun. For one, finding her genius. For another, finding the person within the layers and layers of competence, craft and veneer. She may never get to the bottom of that, because she's a swimmer, not a diver nor a drifter. We don't really want to spend our quiet moments with Midge Maisel. Neither does she. But in some marriages it only takes one who puts it first to make it work. As the heroine sings in The Music Man, "And I would like him to be/More interested in me/Than he is in himself/And more interested in us/Than in me." The story may be that Joel's becoming that one. I've seen it happen.

Absolutely. Alone and miles away in the countryside, a middle-aged mother listening attentively to an honorary's most recent draft of his latest diligent speech for the upcoming iteration of the same dreary occasion! As helpmeet to Charles, Camilla has been the ultimate Good Sport. She's his benevolent alpha who the forerunners (Mountbatten, van der Post) were for.

Responding in Season 3 History.

In the topic for S03.E09, Milburn Stone wrote, Charles's most sympathethic biographers acknowledge that until the last two decades, his greatest character fault has been an obdurant self-pity, and his greatest occupational weakness has been a need for validation from others. Sometimes this insecurity has been blamed on his introspective nature or his willingness to deliberate: I disagree that either quality is at fault, or a fault. Even in a Prince of Wales. But some are born with an innate ability to go it alone, as well as a drive to measure themselves against standards they select and re-shape with their bare hands. (See Anne the No-Nonsense, the peerless Princess Royal with nerves of steel.) It is a confidence that not only knows, "You'll do as I say" but conveys via viscera, "You'll do as I say, and all will be well." You see it among children in pre-school and on the playground; you see it among dogs set free in the dog park. It's animal magnetism: what we in the West, anyway, call leadership, and in its presence fellow creatures great and small feel safe. Charles wasn't born with this, and worse luck, his nature's need to be valued and nurtured was met by...well, his parents, and their natures: never more alike than in how much they differ from their son. With either his mother the Queen or his father The Prince, Charles would be forever be barking up the wrong tree. What they failed to see was that Charles didn't need toughening up as much as he needed jollying up and bolstering up. Real reassurance from a benevolent alpha would, Charles rightly sensed, enable him to thrive. That's what drove him, as a young man, from mentor to mentor. But the mentors he chose (or who chose him -- first Mountbatten, then Laurens van der Post) were no Socrates to Alexander, or even Falstaff to Prince Hal. They weren't men that the young Prince might go to school upon and then surpass, without a backward glance. Or they might have been, but only for another prince, at a much younger age. Charles needed his mentors to appreciate him as much as to educate him, and that gave them the means and the license to use him. It's as Morgan has his Anne say: "We (meaning you, Charles) need to be sure that we're using them, and not the other way around." I think Charles still found value in what Mountbatten and van der Post offered, simply because, despite all, they were fond of him, they saw him and they listened. To paraphrase Charles Ryder in Bridehead Revisited: "They were the forerunners." And he seems to have found the strength to be at ease in his own skin, now that he can look back on the first three-score-and-ten years of his life and see that the crown was never to be its culmination. What he was really waiting for, was for something within -- slowly cultivated through a fulfilling marriage and conscientious daily life -- to take root and grow. Not majesty, but maturity. Not rule, but peace.

Sanctions have been issued and several posts removed for misgendering the murderer Skylar Deleon, the subject of the piece shown 1/17/2020. To repudiate Deleon by misgendering her is to repudiate her gender identity, not her crimes or her character. That insults transgender people in particular, and everyone's gender. For more information, the GLAAD Media Reference Guide is a helpful resource.

I think Justin's publicist released the statement yesterday because they were told or tipped that Page Six was about to publish the story of his recuperation. Also, not speaking ill of a former employer (including Disney/ABC) to everyone who might employ him in the future (including Disney/ABC). The statement was pointedly upbeat and collegial in how it acknowledged all the powers that be. Except the current showrunner. Alexit.

To me, this sounds like a negotiation that went very sour. Looking to the rest of his career, Justin and his management may have asked for a more flexible schedule, an Executive Producer's credit, other opportunities within the production and/or a salary hike. Both sides had a drop-dead option. Justin's option to walk came at much greater risk (to his reputation within the industry), but he or his management may have wagered that production wouldn't play its last card, either. Or, at least by the time that negotiations got harsh, he may have been willing to bet the house and lose.

Confirmed by ABC, via People. He's long gone.

The Tonight Show continued to be taped in New York at 30 Rock for Carson's first ten years as host, beginning 1962. The show moved to California in May 1972. I'm pretty sure we'll see Midge appear there "soon," in show time.

The next episode is indeed Becky's-boyfriend-roots-for-different-teams*, and will air January 20 (Canada) and January 21 (U.S.). * "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair," South Pacific

A sequel to thirtysomething, ordered to pilot by ABC, as reported by Variety.

Time to move on...