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Aya Cash will be in the cast of THE FRANCHISE, starting on MAX October 6. She plays the producer of the latest installment of a superhero franchise. The Guardian had a preview piece that says it's based on the real-life chaos surrounding all these big franchise projects. It sounded fun.

Nope. I would have been as intersted in watching wallpaper.

I guess I'm the only one that didn't love this. I think I've seen too many episodes like it, where a couple of characters take stupid risks in the unfamiliar outdoors...

IME this sort of thing can go either way. I've known people who saw found money as a chance to save or pay a bill...but I've also known people who just want something for themselves for once. The latter is no help longer-term, but I can understand the reaction if you think it's the only time you're going to be able to have a little fun.

Also Freddy in Mad Men. I always love his work.

This episode was written by Lecy Gorenson!

I think this show may have lost me just for the sin of hiring Linda Lavin and killing her off ten minutes in. What a waste!

Not sure when they shot this episode, but Huffman is and has been for the last couple of months in a play in London called HIR. She's very good in it, so finding her way back.

I was also taught to double-space as a child. But computers arrived, and desktop publishing, and the double spaces mess up proportional fonts. I trained myself out of it 30 years ago. If you submit material for publication, there's arguments of professionalism and also not making needless work for editorial staff.

Hm. I love that movie, but BDR was the talent agent for absolute no-hopers, for whom he worked his butt off. Whenever anyone *did* become successful, they left him for a better agent. I don't see a lot of Susie in that.

Is The Addams Family the only show in TV history to be based on a series of New Yorker cartoons?

I know musicians who are still touring full-time in their 80s so don't see why Louise shouldn't be. That said not clear to me why she can't find ways to play locally. Or why she hasn't in all these years.

My feeling is that if the other kid is passionate about the instrument but Mark has been able to match his technical proficiency in just a year and a half of practice the other kid doesn't have a shot at a professional career, at least not on that instrument. Maybe in some other area of music - composition, conducting, teaching, etc. But yeah, it's a stupid plot no matter how you look at it.

Count me among those who preferred season 1. It's interesting, though, to think about the very different circumstances under which the two seasons were conceived. S1 was highly constrained: White had a very short time in which to deliver the scripts, and all the action had to take place on the grounds of the resort, with limited ability to enlist extras. The result was a tightly enclosed piece that explored the negotiations and power dynamics among wealthy and less wealthy people glued together through marriage, family ties, etc. S2 White had much more time to write and a greatly expanded canvas geographically, but he also had much less time for the themes and ideas that went into S1 to germinate (I'm assuming that he could write S1 fast because his head already had lots of ideas in it that had collected over years; for S2 he had less time for ideas to occur.) The result is a more sprawling and disconnected piece where the stressors are often external rather than internal, which I find less interesting. I also think it's harder to muster sympathy (and you need *some* to make a compelling drama) for the extraordinarily wealthy than it was a couple of years ago because their toxic influence has become much clearer in that time. Daphne S2 seems to me Rachel S1 plus five-seven years. I think Ethan's late-stage behavior makes some sense in the light of the story he told about Cameron's always pinching the girls he was attracted to before he could get to them. (I actually knew a pair of men with that sort of issue; the recurrent loser told me one thing he liked about his then-current girlfriend was that she wasn't beautiful enough for someone to want to steal her from him.) Valentina's recurring rudeness to guests was I guess supposed to indicate that here was a woman who needed to get laid. Because it was certainly unprofessional and, one would have thought, would have let to complaints that got her demoted or fired. Jennifer Coolidge's appeal as an actress remains a mystery to me. Loved Portia's clothes.

Schwimmer did a lot of live theater both before and after FRIENDS, and his acting in other things I've seen him in (IT'S THE RAGE) has been excellent. I also noticed during the reunion show that he'd been interested in every aspect of making the show - he was the one talking about the camera crews and stuff.

I disagree that putting Kurt and Diane back together at the end was "fan service". I think it was the whole point of the show: it's the good fight. Through the series, Diane tried various forms of fighting (law, throwing stars), and then increasingly tried to opt out (microdosing, Lyle's treatment). At the end she has a choice: to go on fighting by staying with and loving someone whose ideas are the opposite of hers, or giving up and dropping out with someone who just makes her feel good. We *have* to choose the fight and to deal with each other, even when we disagree, or we ultimately lose everything.

I'm glad you're enjoying the Twitter spectacle but a lot of us users really loved what we had there and it's really sad to watch it being destroyed. "On the Internet, your home always leaves you," someone said on Twitter earlier this year. Former TWoPpers I'm sure uderstand.

The other possibility that occurs to me is that Goodman's weight loss has changed the contours of his mouth and his old dentures don't fit right any more.

John Goodman's pronounced ill-fitting dentures sound has been bugging me; I would assume the actor can afford good ones. Then it occurred to me maybe it's meant to be a character thing, because Dan certainly can't afford anything. A friend of mine who was broke most of his life had a similar problem and never got it fixed even though by then he could have afforded to.

Hunt is appearing in a play in London at the Old Vic this month and some of October.

I thought it was clear that Marion was talking to the Lifeline care team who knew he and how mentally capable she wasr; she told them to call the police and said she was OK, gave them the license plate number. I don't see why the police wouldn't take the intermediary's word for it.

I don't see it as wanting to make good with Kim. I think he'd told himself that the only two choices in life (as the scammer told him as a child) was to be a wolf or be a sheep. He refused to be a sheep. When he challenged Kim to do what she was telling him to do - turn herself in and take the consequences - he thought she'd never do it, and his lack of faith in humanity would be justified. But then she *did* confess. So a third imaginable path opened up for him, too.

No one else could have said that with the same depth and richness. An Emmy for Carol Burnett, please!

Of course, in a lot of those cases the only reason the husband could spend all those years in school and do all that work is because the wife worked a crappy job and took care of the kids so he could do it. And for much of Sheila's and Danny's marriage he was the breadwinner and she stole their money to binge in motel rooms.

Apparently not. I know "fetch" as in what you tell a dog to do when you throw the ball (as well as "fetching" as in nice dress). So I was just baffled.