shapeshifter

No, I haven't seen the show at all. So please do tell us all about how car radios were featured in the plot—although I bet if it's not the battery getting drained, it's either the blaring noise of the still-on radio foiling the getaway, or a nostalgic song makes someone take action, or the announcement of a serial murderer on the loose causes an exchange of looks between the two people in the car that conveys I-now-know-that-you-know-that-I-know (which is most likely something that Only Happens On TV).

It was a discussion about whether or not you shut off your car radio before turning off the car. The reason to turn your car radio off before turning off your car is so that when you next start the car, the battery isn't also draining into the radio. Did I get that right, @ganesh? ETA: IIRC, this first came up with either "Only On TV do people turn off their car radios when they turn off the car," or, possibly, "Only On TV do people leave their car radios on when they turn off the car." —Which might have been a corollary to some other thing people only do or do not do on TV when turning off their cars, like turning off the heat or air conditioning. I do wonder whether it is only on TV that when the spouse (usually the husband) finds the the victim dead by means of a weapon that causes a lot of bleeding, and the spouse calls 911, the detectives on the scene will immediately assume the blood got transferred to the spouse's clothing in the course of the spouse killing the victim, rather than touching the victim to determine if s/he is dead, or to try to revive the victim, or to hold the victim and sob. Also, is it only on TV that it is very difficult to determine how the blood was transferred?

Hee.

Yes, I too assumed Joan Rivers was a template for Midge, but seeing Rose Marie memoriams lately reminds me of how similar to Midge's jokes about men (especially the exes) were those of the character of Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke show. Sally was the hint of spice in an otherwise sanitized environment. Rose Marie's Sally Rogers—the tough-talking, behind-the-scenes funny woman—could also have been an inspiration for Suzy. Or maybe I'm just seeing similarities because of RM being a comedienne of the time period and her recent passing bringing her to mind.

Thanks, @Jaded! It's got prettier, more easy-to-read color blocks too. Yes, NCIS LA will be replacing L&O SVU on Sundays until 8pm when Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior takes over (is it as gratutious as original flavor CriminalMinds?), and then on Fridays we will lose L&O to CSI.

Worst writing and directing of the week: The only reason Jane's lover got shot in the head was because he put his head out the door in the middle of a firefight to talk to Jane, which only makes sense because we know Jane magically makes people do stupid things for no good reasons. I was so sure they were going to go all soap opera and have Alie get PG with PJ. I'm guessing Gomez didn't transfer Lake from his trunk to Jane's dead lover's trunk, so I guess the tall brunette female PD mole office assistant (who happens to be the lover of the mole assistant on Jane's show) put drugged unconscious Lake in the now-dead lover's trunk.

The zap2it.com website that I rely on for schedules has been glitchy, so, just in case anyone else has that problem and hasn't gone to the individual station websites: Decades is currently showing a Diagnosis Murder marathon, and New Year's day COZI is showing a marathon of The Nanny.

There's going to be a New Year's Day The Nanny marathon on COZI TV from 9:30am/8:30am to 8pm/7pm. Here in Chicagoland northern suburbs that's 5.2 OTA (Over The Air). It starts with the pilot.

One obvious storyline would be a variation on the Sonny and Cher act—including the eventual, inevitable breakup—perhaps with Joel being told by club owners that they will not book Midge if Joel is on stage, which leads to him taking a managerial role, which leads to conflict with Suzy and more infidelities with bimbos to soothe his ego, and finally his departure to California—which would give a nice place to park the kids off stage. I don't know if I will be back for more, except I've been fascinated with Rachel Broshanan since Manhattan, and, like others here, I'd like to see more of this version of Lenny Bruce—with him and Midge having at least one drunken one night stand—plus, Tony Shaloub always amuses me. But still—I was never addicted to the Gilmore Girls, inspite of my appreciation for the witty dialogue, and here, as others have also noted, that clever patter is often distractingly anachronistic.

maybe as if Jane Lynch was making a point of not upstaging Rachel Brosnahan in the manner that Midge did to Sophie—perhaps to be sure to convey that Midge was the superior talent, especially to those more familiar with Lynch's body of work than Brosnahan's. —and/or Sophie was written in such a way to be sure the audience saw Midge as the superior comic, in spite of Jane Lynch's reputation in that genre. —and perhaps this, but she made it work To me Midge's trash talking Sophie seemed very consistent with Midge's getting jailed twice, etc. for doing bits that also "killed." Also: Sophie's palatial home had the same effect on Midge that Midge's digs had on Susie, so, in a sense, Midge was speaking for Susie too—but Susie was in a too fragile, vulnerable economic position to appreciate Midge's takedown of Sophie. There was also the symbolism of Midge being unable to refuse the charity of the fur coat, which would have been a driving factor in the Sophie shaming. Perhaps Sophie was even baiting Midge and, after the scandal of the comediennes hit the papers, Sophie basked in the satisfaction of having passed the torch to a new generation of comic women who would not have to wear fat suits. Sophie didn't need to work anymore and may have been relieved to retire to soirées with musicians of note. After all, Susie, Lenny, Harry, and Sophie all stated that opening for Sophie was to be expected to tank any comic's career, so what did Midge have to lose? And perhaps she was going to put an end to this particular altar of sacrifice by sacrificing herself. I doubt she consciously considered this outcome, but we, the audience (and Susie), can see it as clearly as we know of the crucifixion that awaits Jesus after he preaches against the ruling leaders, and then the crowds carpet the ground in front of him with palm fronds. As a petite Jewish [and often unintentionally funny] woman reared among Nordic blondes in the Midwest, who learned at puberty to shorten pants, this bugged me too. But I can fanwank that it was knee length on Sophie, and that Midge turned up the sleeves the way my equally petite mother taught me, but that the fur coat's poor fit on Midge ultimately contributed to Midge shaking off the advice of Sophie.

Is the significance of the titular line that the surviving adult Dionne Quintuplets would be disappointed in Abe giving his daughter a curfew because of the related mistreatment that the Quints endured and later campaigned against?

I've only laughed maybe 3 times so far, and I think 2 of those times were at Tony Shaloub's lines. But then I rarely laugh out loud at comedy. But maybe it isn't just me? Divorce is not amusing. Dialogue can be entertaining for its clever wittiness without making us laugh. Given that old Vaudeville derived humor is not going to amuse most modern audiences (us), just having actors perform that material with a laugh track is kind of boring; the Lenny Bruce and not-Red Skeleton bits might have been better if they were interspersed more between the characters' dialogue or facial reactions.

Yes. I kept thinking that this is what the Gilmore Girls would sound like set in late 1950s New York City if they were Jewish. Not everyone is a comedian—Penny Pan and Astrid aren't—but the many who are have the same style. If Joel's father had been restricted to only telling story jokes and maybe riddles and bad puns, it would have explained the formulaic model that inspired Joel. Amy Sherman-Palladino is a gifted writer, but many of the lines that are too good to delete should be cut from the script and saved for another day.

Does anyone know if there's a trope entry for this? Seems like there should be. Or is it based on some fable or scriptural story?

I missed chunks of this episode because of real life family drama ('tis the season when paid time off equals family obligations), so, if anyone here watched: Did Jane suspect Tom was Lake's father when she set him up to date her sister (who became his wife)? Did Tom's news reporting put Lake in [more serious] mortal danger? Are Bird and Jane OTP? Is this a soap opera?

Recently one of my local stations aired the episode in which Leonard tells Penny the story of why he is Sheldon's roommate, and specifically about how Sheldon not only saved his life, but didn't "rat me out to Homeland Security." I think they should try to air that episode after every new episode in which Sheldon is being a jerk.

Did I miss details about how Amy was related to HLG? All I caught was the shared DNA by his male relative and her own.

Does anyone know specifically who the "they" are that commenter from the article Kirky V refers to here? (https://io9.gizmodo.com/1821480405):

I've been saying the same thing since this whole Stemitri thing started. But. I will give the writers credit for coming up with believeable (albeit annoyingly frustrating) dialogue to put off Dmitri's putting an end to Stemitri (Stalexi?) yet one more episode:

I was a little sad to see how much younger Stephen looked in the January 2017 rerun last night. It's been a stressful year. But maybe he's laugh-sobbing all the way to the bank? Or maybe he just had Botox last January?

Like leaks damaging to Bess should she decide to run for prez? ETA: Dimitri may not be a US citizen, but "Alexi" probably is, right? So the CIA can't spy on Alexi. Right? And it was Alexander who was canoodling with Stevie —just ask her. Or…?

Actually, kudos to the digital props folks for at least having the picture on Dimitri's phone different than the print the CIA dude was looking at after Professor of Religion Spy Daddy left the room. The phone pic had Stevie making kind of a duck face kiss, whereas the print had her smiling. But, yeah, the smiling pic looked like it came from the phone rather than from the camera of the CIA guys in the car. IDK. We could fanwank that the CIA hacked Dim's phone.

Hardly worth mentioning, but the episode title "shutdown -r" (or "shutdown-r;" I've seen it both ways) is either a command to reboot the remote computers (I think running Linux) or to restore them to an earlier state—presumably with some additional commands. I wish there was a programmer posting here. I appreciate that the hatchet job (who'm I kidding? It's a freakin' axe, not a little ol' hatchet) was mostly off screen, but it still ups the violence quotient to an unacceptable level for a lot of would-be viewers. But then I guess it's not any worse than Fight Club. And I guess it was earned. It's not like it was just added for the sake of reaching some sort of Mature Audience rating. Found it (for now):

—who, if they do introduce at this point, might as well be named Evil Captain Obvious.

I skipped last week, and I'm not sure about this week's. The non-dream parts were about as silly as the dream parts, when they should've been, IMO, more realistic in contrast. And then: Oy. I'm guessing the purpose of the triangle (don't make me list all the reasons I hate triangles!) is to illustrate why Paige is Walter's twu wuv. Sigh.