shapeshifter

I'm pretty sure Bess's brother or some other knowledgeable character estimated that it would take a few hours for the poison to work. I remember thinking that the real purpose of the line was to give her an alibi if it came to the point of her needing one.

Currie Graham (the director) is usually up to no good, but I'm assuming it's related to the real life criminals she did her documentaries about (who was the guy she met in the car in the first ep?), and maybe since the ex has money trouble, he's in on it with the criminals--like splitting the ransom or something. The only problem with Currie Graham being the red herring is that he hasn't (yet) done anything suspicious to distract us from the ex, the gardener and the nanny, or the drug dealers. Of course, the seemingly sweet, clueless assistant who's having an affair with the ex could be involved too.

I asked myself that on a regular basis a couple of seasons ago, but last season was a slight improvement, and now I'm willing to cringe through a lot of it if there are a few chuckles to be had—which there were for me in this one—although I not only disliked the Raj-Stuart bit, but Sheldon's recounting of the flip flop experience was too gross to be funny, at least for me.

Exactly. The casting and acting are fine; maybe with so many producers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6461706/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast) they all thought someone else was checking the scripts?

Now that you mention it, I am reminded that I always seem to stop watching shows without any comic relief. L&O shows have had wisecracking Lenny Briscoe, Munch and Finn, and Breaking Bad had giant magnets and pizza landing on the roof, but a show primarily about an abducted child probably can't go there… …or at least not in a way that is consistent with the tone of the story. As mentioned in this post and upthread, there were quite a few bits of dialogue that needed some serious editing.

Reading this post while dozing off, it first registered as a hope for a new variety of medicinal marijuana that would cure Raj's personality problems,* which, while not witty, elegant prose, could actually work—but probably not on CBS. *and maybe Sheldon's too?

I was thinking it could be: "LITERALLY!" (USING THE PRE-n MEANING OF THE WORD AS THE STANDARD) AND OTHER OFFENDERS ON THE GRAMMAR POLICE DOCKET where n is the date of the change. Unfortunately, when I consulted the OED, I found: So pick a year, folks. Or maybe: "LITERALLY!" (WITH THE ORIGINAL SENSE OF THE WORD AS THE STANDARD) AND OTHER OFFENDERS ON THE GRAMMAR POLICE DOCKET

Nah, Henry's a frickin' zombie, right? But when Dimitri meets some horrible end, Henry will be weighed down with guilt, which he will bear iwith great nobility.

Yes, and totally yes! BTW, @Xantar, is your screen name after Max's home planet? Very happy to see Nadine, Russell, and Foreign Minister Chen back and in fine form. I'd be happy with a spinoff featuring them, although I'm not sure how that would work. Also glad that Blake was back to dealing out cute comments; he just doesn't work for me as a champion of social issues. But Dimitri. *sigh* Hopefully they'll kill him off quickly so we don't have to worry about or think about him being tortured anymore. I thought he was going to have a nice little romance with Stevie. Guess not. Only dark and dreary for Dimitri.

Thanks to everyone upthread who said this was worth watching. I had to work when it aired and wasn't going to bother catching this episode because of the "Benoah" drama. Now I see that arc as possibly (pretty please?) a way to feature the other actors while Olivia is dealing with the fallout offscreen. Yeah, not really, but anyway… When the perp fell to his death, Peter Scanavino managed to convey more emotion in a few seconds of body language than anyone else did in the whole 42 minutes. On the opposite end of the acting spectrum: Oy, the actress who played the 20-year-old victim—do they still have elocution schools in NYC? The script did a good/great job of including all the necessary parts in an effective, balanced manner within the time constraints. It would have been more realistic to have that sort of perp's activities developing and becoming known to law enforcement over seasons rather than minutes, but then it would be like Red John from The Mentalist, and I hated that arc. So I guess I prefer the Readers Digest version of the serial rapist/killer story. The real plot point was about victims and how they are seen and see themselves, which could have been a little more developed —maybe if the guest actress had better skills.

Did he ever actually make it? So I guess "impromptu Saturday meeting" in the script signals the wardrobe folks to press the studly tennis shirt for Adan Canto/Adam. Was that a designer dress on Italia Ricci/Emily? (The one with bare shoulders?)

That seems unlikely to me for that era. I just assumed she wanted a more American-sounding, more WASPy name. I always knew my grandmother's name was Rebecca, but census records show it was Rivka. My father said the only language permitted in the home was English, even though it was his older sisters' fifth language.

Hey cuz @ShelleySue! *waves*

I wasn't. They would be my cousins too. One finds out about such oddities when one's inheritance consists mostly of life-shortening inherited diseases that make your spit a hot commodity on the genetic studies circuit. Since this makes me sound like more of a crackpot than I am, you can read about it in layman's terms here or in scholarly prose in a 2014 article in the journal Nature Communications. Basically, we would be 30th cousins. But I have 1st cousins I've never met, so I'm not expecting a family reunion anytime soon.

It's really sad to think there were no other records for them. After Bernie Sanders' Judenrat uncle turned out to be a hero instead of a schmuck (which would be the first assumption), I guess I just wanted Larry David's ancestors' slaves to turn out to have been treated better than usual.

But without more information it would just be speculation—which is itself a reason for the lack of recorded information for slaves.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. would never be considered an impressionist, but he certainly reflected back to each of these two very different personalities their own sentiments, and he did so without any sense of judgement. I guess that's what draws in the audience. Anyway, it bugged me that even though both Bernie and Henry seemed to use the word "plunder" as a euphemism for rape, many viewers would interpret it to mean that their ancestors were just robbed of possessions.

(Can ears scream?). Mine do, although It's more commonly called tinnitus. Since the offending pronunciation is really just a contraction (try picturing it as comin') it doesn't really bother me.

Currie Graham does always seems to play characters who are up to no good, but maybe he'll just be a red herring. The assistant sleeping with the boss's shady ex has just set feminism back a few years, or at least signals the rebirth of the Blonde Bimbo.

This show is now background noise. I can't bear to watch the stupid. Happy's the only character I can still handle. I was sure the double crosser intended to defect to Russia since he was fluent in the language.

For me, this series has become a filter of sorts. For instance, when I read an article on the life and death of Tom Petty that didn't mention Vietnam, I immediately thought: What was his lottery number? The 1970 ranking is here: http://www.historynet.com/whats-your-number.htm If my boyfriend had been a year younger, he wouldn't have gone.

But does it really pass the Bechdel test if the conversation is about worrying about what the men will think of what they say? Everything is better with Regina King.

In the Breaking Bad podcasts it was pointed out that they often used fake-but-similar words and substances so it wouldn't be a how-to of drug manufacturing. Maybe that's what they did here too? Or not.

I too thought this felt "glossed over," but then I recalled a Vietnam vet who I had interviewed in the early 90s telling of how the guy who slept next to him had a human skull that he used as a candle holder. He didn't say anything else about it. I got the impression that simply stating the fact was all he could say and that the listener should be able to understand the enormity of it.

Not sure if Jeremy Piven's acting alone is going to make this worth watching. I didn't watch more than a few episodes of POI either. And what's up with keeping his relationship a secret when The person he's with wants to go public? In most cases that would mean she should dump him faster than a soft reboot. After "the crowd" (i.e., everyone) knows about Sophe (the crowdsourcing app), won't all perps just wear Unabomber-style caps, hoodies, and sunglasses? I can imagine conspiracy theorists and Big-Brother-is-watching paranoiacs wearing them all the time too.