Milburn Stone

We're about 8 or 9 episodes into Season 2, and something in the Season 2 main title montage caught my attention. There's a shot in it that is clearly from a blown take! It's the one with Phyllis and Mary in Mary's apartment. Phyllis' hand is on Mary's shoulder, and they are both breaking up and looking at the crew. Without doubt, one of them blew a line, or made a very funny ad-lib that took them both out of the scene. It's a lovely moment, actually. Just surprising that it made it into the opening montage. (Or maybe it's surprising that it never stood out to me before.) I don't know if this moment is in the opening of later seasons.

Ironically, then, this makes Larry the wokest one in the room. Because Larry is the one making an issue of the baby's skin color, raising a subject that everyone else (including the prospective parents) would prefer not to talk about. He's the one that provokes the conversation about race, and brings to the surface the parents' disagreement with each other over preference.

Either way, an expressed preference is revealing of unconscious racism. (To which our society is highly woke these days.) For him to want the baby to be dark is to raise the question, "Wait a minute, is there something wrong with whiteness?" For her to ask this question is to raise the complementary question, "Wait a minute, is there something wrong with being black?" The only "safe" (woke) option is to claim that a baby's skin tone doesn't matter at all, whether or not one actually feels this. It's clear from the whole season that Larry has a beef with safeness/wokeness in all its forms, and enjoys flirting with danger to expose it.

This is probably a really dumb question, but I was assuming there were explosives inside the chicken. A thawing chicken wouldn't start an explosive blaze just by sliding into a vat of oil, would it? (Or would it?)

I would be surprised if there are any more "benefits." When sex was interrupted, and Jimmy confessed who he was working for these days, and Kim said, "I'm really glad you told me," I read a lot of fear that was at odds with how "glad" she was. The kind of fear that is a powerful antidote to feeling frisky.

When Lalo said to Jimmy, "The 7 million's no problem, but you're picking it up," what did he mean? Jimmy's picking up the tab? He doesn't have that kind of money. Or did it mean something else? Also, what kind of business is Madrigal, legitimately? From BB, it didn't seem to be a company that was all about chain restaurants. But I never did understand what they did. Obviously at some point they invested money in the drug cartel--or maybe they've really been part of the drug cartel from the beginning--I just can't figure what they put down on their tax forms as the business they're supposed to be in.

A Jew myself, I find the show incredibly powerful, and true about what it means to be a Jew. I'm not sure I've ever seen any work of dramatic art do a better job. Separately...I usually find shows that are obviously allegorical to the present time to be irritating. I'm saying to myself, "Yeah, I get it, I get that you're really talking about the madness we're living through now. My, aren't you the clever one." That stuff is all David Simon, because when Roth wrote the novel, the past wasn't a presage of the present. But this show feels so emotionally true about both the past and the present that I'm helpless but to go anywhere it wants to take me.

Related to actor height...Last night we continued our episode-by-episode journey through The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and for some reason I noticed that Mary (in heels, no doubt) standing face to face with Lou was basically the same height as Lou. I always have thought of Ed Asner as a short guy, and of Mary Tyler Moore as a tallish woman. When they're not standing face to face, I still think of Mary as taller than Lou. But the evidence showed otherwise. It's like that optical illusion where one line appears longer than the other but they're both exactly the same length. All of which goes to show that it's hard to know how tall anybody on film is.

This is a great observation, and pertains just as much to Jimmy's current behavior. In playing that "prank" on Howard, does Jimmy ever think he might be destroying a man's entire life forever? I doubt it. In his narcissistic need, I'm sure he convinces himself that his acts are mere perfidy and the suffering of his powerful victims is minor compared to his own. Mesa Verde is going to be "OK." Howard is going to be "OK." Chuck was going to be "OK."

That's my question, too. If anything was nearly as despicable as conning Kim, it was continuing to try to ruin Howard's life. What does he gain by it? He's told Howard to go f**k himself in no uncertain terms. Howard is not perfect, but he's not the worst person on earth either. This scene really made me hate Saul.

This is great news. Thank you, @angora. Just in case anyone is as confused as I was when I went to the site, it appears that this has not started yet. (I didn't quite get that from your post, for whatever reason.) It begins this coming Thursday.

Stop, you're both right! 😄 To want a show that brings pleasure to millions to cease bringing pleasure to millions is just mean. But to watch a show for any reason, even hatred, and then giving expression to that hatred is perfectly valid.

I don't think there's any harm in my exploring this--at least I hope not. I take you to mean that Wilder (as pretty much everybody in Hollywood, but no one else) either knew or thought Grant to be gay, and so in Curtis' deception of Sugar, in which he pretends as Grant to be a man incapable of sexual feelings for a woman, Wilder was playing a very inside joke.

Obviously, one person's "slow moving" is another person's "agonizingly protracted dread and suspense."

"Since" would work fine, but "being that" is not incorrect. Hey, be thankful they're not saying "It being the case that..." Which would also not be incorrect.