wendyg

I thought ep2 was worse than the pilot. Gary Cole has aged just fine; he's playing scruffy for this. Have a look at him on THE GOOD FIGHT.

I continue to feel that Martin Sheen was miscast in a very specific way: he was chosen to be the perfect husband for Jane Fonda, which he is. But he has no chemistry with Sam Waterston, and without that it's very hard to root for them as a couple. I think the idea behind the musical comedy is that now that the two have come out of the closet and are happy together both are breaking the bounds of their repressed characters - Sol by becoming more assertive and Robert by loosening up - among other things, by singing. Sheen is a fine actor, but I just think he wasn't right for this. I've been trying to think of 80-ish actors who might have had better luck, and one that springs to mind is Charles Kimbrough (Jim Dial on MURPHY BROWN).

Query: in all the many, many incidents of substance abuse in which we've seen Gretchen engaged - including a day-long drinking session that included several different types of alcohol - have we ever seen anything make her *ill* before?

ElectricBoogaloo: She went back to her home town for her sister's giving birth, but wound up avoiding actually seeing her parents. Spent the time with a high school friend (Zosia Mamet).

Oh, no, I agree. There were always scheduled activities - hayrides, hiking trips, etc. - but it was always up to the guests whether to join in.

willowk: Actually, in the 1980s when they were being built a lot of malls pulled shopping away from town centers, and they were opposed in numerous areas for that reason, as was Wal-Mart when those stores started being built. Quite often, malls were built just outside the town limits, and the result was a dying town center, loss of revenues for the town, and so on. Ecommerce is now killing the malls. It's a sort of cycle of shopping.

Yes, I remember at least one of the Smileys - Virginia, I think, who once performed what I later realized was Anna Russell's routine on "How to Write Your Own Gilbert & Sullivan". It was funny enough as "The Hat Things", as Smiley billed it - but much funnier when Anna Russell did it. (Look on YouTube!) It sounds like I would like it a lot less now.

I did not care for this season (in my head, the series ended at the end of season 3...), but as I said when she appeared on TRANSPARENT and again on SUPERSTORE...I love Meagan Fay *so much*.

Well, actually, in my childhood we spent several New Year's breaks there along with various of their friends who had kids of similar ages. No comedians that I recall, but lots of ice skating on the lake, hiking etc. It was a great place, and lives fondly in my memory. I could never afford it now!

AuntieMame: The name is Mohonk. My parents used to go up there for short vacations. Great place, though hardly cheap. Very old-world. (Among other things, no TV.)

Just a reminder that in real life Lily Tomlin is 79 and Jane Fonda is 81...and Betty White is 97...and they're all still *working*. It really depends a lot on genetics, lifestyle, health, wealth...

Reminds me of the scene in MAD MEN where Shirley and Phyllis have a conversation where they call each other by the wrong name. But that was set in 1969; you'd hope we'd gotten beyond that! Nanjiani, Nayyar, and Penn look and sound nothing alike! The lesser ability to distinguish faces from other races is a real thing, though, and as has been noted, is an issue in police eyewitness testimony, lineup identification, and immigration. It applies as much to non-white people trying to identify white faces as the reverse.

Katy M: real fact. 3 people max.

Dani: the reason the Higgs Boson prize was awarded so quickly was that the winning scientist had predicted it long - I think decades - before, and the discovery confirmed the ground-breaking importance of his work. So I agree that the timing is ridiculous. Looks to me like the show is shaping up to give every character something to go home with at the end: Sheldon gets his recognition, and then we can end with Raj's Indian wedding.

I found this one kind of annoying because *obviously* they're not really going to elope in the 2nd episode of the last season and there's going to be a wedding.

Makeup has never been part of my life. I decided when I was about 13 that if I never got used to how I looked with it I'd never think I looked bad without it. But I don't have the kind of job where an employer would care. (These things may be linked.)

Your contact with the people you meet on the road tends to be rather shallow, though - particularly as you rise through the ranks and start staying in hotels (my personal experience is on the folk scene, where you stay with people a lot and most of the people you know, also know each other, but even there the successful ones transition from clubs and personal hospitality to auditoriums and hotels). The more successful you become the more you become isolated from anyone who isn't in your immediate family or working for you (and sometimes even them), and the more you're in a different place every night. And when you do get time off to live a "normal life" for a bit, you're still largely isolated because your friends and family have jobs, and aren't free to hang out with you all day. Plus, for a comedian, there's also the factor that everything that happens in your life is grist for your act, so even when you're apparently just hanging out with friends you're watching them all the time - and that goes double if you do, as Midge says she does, "observational comedy". (Nora Ephron wrote about this in her much-better-anmd-much-funnier-than-the-movie-novel HEARTBURN; her main character was married to a daily columnist who is always asking himself whenever anyone says anything, "Is that a column?").

I really missed Lindsay and Edgar.

Pretty sure that was written in November, the day after the election. The vanity card before it was predicting he'd be enraged the following week.

This episode felt to me like a PSA for rich people: news flash! Poor people struggle to pay their medical bills! Agree about the money, though. I had one friend who was perpetually broke, and when he did have a little money he'd go out and buy himself the latest TV-watching gadget (new TV/VCR/DVR/etc.). I thought it was a mistake, but at the same time I understood that at least that way he got some respite from the grind and then after all you can get a lot of use out of a TV if you watch as much as he did. There's also a lot of peer pressure involved. I won an award once, and everyone kept asking me what I was going to do with the cash. When I said I was going to put it in a tax-sheltered savings account they were really disappointed. Why didn't I spend it on something I really wanted? Because one thing I really want is the knowledge that I'll have some money 30 years from now...

Even if I hadn't heard the word before, there's a rather famous scene in the 1969 movie Woodstock. Have a look for Country Joe and the Fish.

It strikes me that all the Susie-love in the show is ASP's fantasy for herself, with Susie as stand-in. :) The point about Midge's choice, I think, is that she didn't even consider *asking* Benjamin if he would accept the life she wanted and could offer him. He might have been wrong about himself, but she didn't even give him a chance; she forgot he even existed as soon as she got the call. And I think she went to Joel because she knew she'd trashed Benjamin, and whether or not he knew it yet that road was closed. People reacted in all sorts of ways to the Depression. A friend's parents were left so shaken by it that for many, many years he and his SO would go for walks on garbage night looking for things worth scavenging and even today he counts every penny. Consciousness of it is embedded deeply enough in me that I literally shouted at the TV when I saw that Bill Clinton was signing to repeal Glass-Steagall, financial market protections put in place to prevent something like the Depression from happening again. That was in 1992...and guess what happened, not so many years later?

There's a documentary about Tig Notaro that shows her progressively working on pieces and improving them. It's not boring...nor is THE BIG SICK, which shows Kumail Nanjiani gradually improving his act and becoming progressively more honest and open.

Re working on bits: yes. Midge worked more on Joel's act - keeping notes of what worked, reviewing what didn't, etc - than she does on her own. I don't buy the effortless genius thing. It would be more reasonable if you saw her figuring out new lines while working the coat closet at Altman's. (Which no one I ever knew called "B. Altman" even though that was the official name.)

Is there a known start date for season 3?