wendyg

I think that despite Jimmy's procrastinating habits - and that mash-up last week of how he spends a day "writing" will be familiar to professional writers everywhere - he's spent most of his life reading books and pursuing a very narrow range of other activities. His father said to him, more or less, "I'd give you the ball, and you'd sit on it and read a book." Granted, he's older than this, but a friend of mine when we were in our 20s wasn't sure whether dogs could walk up and down stairs on their own. He'd grown up in an apartment building and always taken the elevator.

Mabinogia: I thought SELFIE got pretty good eventually, but that the show committed suicide in the pilot with the visual of the vomit bags. I'm sure a lot of people tuned out right then and never returned.

I love read stories like those. I thought this was a great episode and the best they've done.

I, too, thought it looked like Westchester County. In which case, who wants to have to drive somewhere for coffee in the morning? Though I'd expect the in-house coffee supply to be Zabar's or another specialist Manhattan coffee beanery, not Starbucks.

Also, the way Bry and Vikki related to each other as women with common biological and emotional experiences that Maura couldn't access. I thought that was beautifully done, both acting and writing.

I absolutely loved the opening scene. That's exactly how you'd expect that situation to go in that family.

Silje: Doris Roberts and Ann Morgan Guilbert both spoke, and lots of men were silent.

I didn't know about the stand-up routine until I read the recap. That made the show snap into place for me as a modern relative of Alice's Restaurant. In the latter, Arlo Guthrie (and others) had to turn a hilarious 18-minute talking blues (if you've never encountered it, YouTube has it in full) about his experience with the draft into a full-length feature film (at a time when films aspired to be about stuff). Like Notaro here, Guthrie in the movie had to remain largely calm while madness swirled around him (the draft, drugs, his father dying of Huntington's Chorea...and in the middle of that a Kafkaesque conviction for littering).

Yep. Younger guy in back was in PTSD. Delivery guy was the next episode, I think. Becca tried to force her to tell Paul, and he did find out.

I thought the money Gretchen left was for the therapy, not the food and drink. I actually like the way she's treating the therapist very much like she treated Jimmy at the beginning - the link being that both are people she knows she needs and whose help she wants but who scare her. She's pushing the boundaries to see how far the therapist will let her go - and the therapist, IMO, knows this is what's happening and has actually been pretty good about setting the limits she has to. I think she has Gretchen pretty well figured out. Becca was binge-drinking while pregnant last year, too. "I can have one," she told anyone who was looking at the party that ended last season, over many, many drinks.

Was glad to see Vernon and Becca and Killian back. Not familiar with the term "motorboating"; when did that come into use?

Jimmy and Gretchen told Edgar that pursuing Lindsay would be a disaster, but it was great entertainment for them. That kind of pushed him to decide going after her wasn't a good idea. It was quite a bit later that Lindsay went back to Paul.

possibilities: I would agree that your timeline is a little out of whack (for two women of Grace's age who had careers at that time you need look no further than Fonda and Tomlin themselves). By the 1970s, the options for women were growing fast. That said, I always assumed that Grace didn't start her business until her kids were older, somtime in the 1980s, say, when there were plenty of women doing such things. And despite what I said above, I'd agree that someone like Robert would be much more likely to want a wife who was always available to do business dinners and so on. But those aren't really incompatible.

There are many, many eople who think "growing up" means a life of boring adulthood, yes. Some people are even proud of not doing it. These people are not role models for that approach to life. blixie: Yes, and was it twins?

Well, Lindsay did a fair bit of hiding her real self from Paul, as she lamented to Gretchen when telling Gretchen she should tell Jimmy she had clinical depression. Paul is the archetypal "nice guy", who uses his outward kindness to manipulate and control. Dumping Amy to recommit to Lindsay is a great example: while we saw him and Amy as soul mates, he may have been way out of his comfort zone with someone who was so ostensibly perfect for him. Actually, Jimmy and Gretchen know each other much better because at the beginning they told each other the truth about themselves because it wasn't ever going to matter (because no feelings, no commitment, no future). Not knowing Gretchen speaks Spanish is a detail; more profoundly, he knows what makes her laugh.

Probably all the wives in these scandals suffer in much the same way.

The Kings often said TGW was based more on the Anthony Weiner scandal(s) than the Clintons. I've just seen the new documentary about Weiner ("Weiner"), and you can really see it. There were a lot of bits of or inspirations for Alicia's and Peter's arc that I recognized. It's a superbly done documentary: captures the real people with empathy while acknowledging the inevitable absurdity. As Weiner says at one point when asked why the scandal blew up so big, "I lied to them. I have a funny name."

I absolutely love the way they filmed Edgar's cooking here and last year when he made the breakfast lasagne.

One question: Gretchen said she's starting therapy. What's the purpose of that, given that she has clinical depression, which AIUI is a brain chemistry issue. Is it to learn coping skills?

The thing Jimmy seemed to forget is that Gretchen is an exceptionally accomplished liar. There is no way of telling which of the many things she told him were true. We do know now that she speaks Spanish for real, though. Did anyone else note that Jimmy is so self-absorbed that he assumes his buddy Edgar Quintero, with the Spanish name and the noticeable though faint Hispanic accent, doesn't speak Spanish? I think what really set Lindsay off was the "forever" and "no surprises" aspects. She's interesting, because she has an inner conflict between her desire to be a free spirit doing the kinds of party things she and Gretchen used to do and her desire for security and safety. It's also possible that away from Lindsay, Paul (who looks more like Roger Ebert every day!) has gotten used to having a female companion who actively enjoys everything and anything he wants to do, and that's reinforced his natural inclination towards control and dominance. It certainly came as a surprise, though; I half expected Lindsay's phone to ring with a demand that she come down and do the song with the band. This show has always revolved around taking the tropes of romantic comedy and giving them a new twist based on its specific characters, and this episode was no exception. That said, compared to every other episode the show has done, this one felt a little flat to me. Although Jimmy's reaction to Edgar's offer of bechamel sauce was a classic moment for sure.

topanga: There was a non-fiction book written in 1995, when female gymnasts were still tiny and very young, that talked about the stunted puberty many of them (and figure skaters) suffered. In some cases, coaches effectively tried to keep them overworked/underfed enough to ensure puberty would be delayed (or they would be amenorrheic). The book was LITTLE GIRLS IN PRETTY BOXES, by Joan Ryan. While it's obvious there have been changes since (many of them changes she called for in the book), I think it should answer at least some of your questions. It has a Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Girls_in_Pretty_Boxes.

selkie: The IOC made those same demands in London in 2012. I thought it was completely outrageous. (btw, there's a very funny British series called 2012 in which a bumbling committee tries to get London ready for the Games...) But the IOC has been notorious for its demands for decades - I highly recommend Andrew Jennings 1992 book The Lords of the Rings (updated a few years back as The New Lords of the Rings), which blew the whistle on the rampant corruption. Note they've added five *more* sports for the next cycle. The best hope is that cities stop bidding because the demands are too absurd. That's really the only thing that's going to stop this ridiculous escalation.

Wiser not to punch him when you may be seeing him again. I was ready to give up on this show after episode 5 because the show just wanted jelling at all, but I finally watched 6 and 7 back-to-back today, and they're the best episodes they've done. I think, cautiously, the Kings may finally have found their feet on this, although I still can't see how they would make it a multi-year story. The best laughs of the week always used to be on THE GOOD WIFE - nice to see the tradition resume.

Journalists don't get some sort of exemption from NDAs they've signed. It's not uncommon in the tech world, for example, to be asked to sign an NDA in order to get an early look at some new product or whatever. My policy is not to sign them because I don't think that's the relationship I want to have with people I'm supposed to be writing about. I've never heard of anyone being sued for something like that, but you certainly wouldn't be trusted again. In the case of a TV show I'd expect them to enforce the contract, which probably specifies penalties. I don't understand what's supposed to be so humiliating about Darius's comments to Ruby. Having to live up to someone else's expectations of you is not a good basis for a relationship, so I thought he made sense.

backformore: I feel the same way about the supposed hilarity of spiking a character's drink with alcohol or food with marijuana or whatever. I view that as a form of assault, and deliberately poisoning someone's food, even with something that won't kill them, is no different.