Milburn Stone

Good news. Thanks, radishcake.

I loved the writing, and had no idea Sarah Treem was behind it until the end credits. But when her name appeared, I went, "Well, no wonder!" (Big In Treatment fan here.)

I didn't know about this, and now that I do know about it, I think it's cool.

Sometimes I wonder about character actors who repeatedly get cast as the poor schlub, or (in William Atherton's case, among others) the asshole, or (in Vincent Schiavelli's case, among others) the character who exists for no other reason than that he's uglier than sin. Does it do a number on their self-esteem that Hollywood considers them perfect casting for these parts? Or are they happy for the paycheck and what it validates about their professional skills? Or a little of both?

Only thing I could figure is that the writers are just plain tired, and subconsciously asking to be put out of their misery.

Looking forward to this. We watch on Crackle, on Apple TV. (Just started watching not too long ago.) Do the episodes appear on Crackle the same day they appear on the web? So Season 5 will begin on Crackle on November 5, the same day it begins on the web?

There have been many references in the media in the last few days to Jan Hooks being "not well," or struggling with some kind of illness, for some time. Does anyone know anything more specific about what it was?

As for likes...since you said "barring price," my inclination, for a musical I really want to see, is to pay through the nose if I must in order to sit in my ideal seat, which is in the orchestra between rows 4 and 8 in the center. Partly this is because I want to hear as much of the live sound of the pit band as possible. (The way things are amplified these days, you're hearing processed sound even if you're sitting in the first row, but the closer you are, the more live sound you'll usually hear in the mix. And also, the more centered the seat, the farther away I am from a speaker, and that's how I like it.) I justify the "paying through the nose" part by saying to myself that I don't go to that many musicals a year. And some years go by without my attending any. So when I do go, I'd rather pay a premium and get the most out of the experience. As for places to sit that I hate, I've enjoyed musicals from all sorts of places in the theater, but the one area I dislike is the rear half of the orchestra, under the balcony. It's the under-the-balcony part that is the deal breaker, not the distance from the stage. And again the reason is acoustics. Having the underside of the balcony overhead means I'm being cut off from the reverberant sound of the auditorium. The sound can't bloom there. It's dead. For "straight plays" (i.e. non-musicals), none of these considerations applies. I can be pretty much happy with the closest, most centered available seat, and also fine with the sides or the back, mezzanine, balcony, etc. (In a traditional raised-stage theater, I prefer not to sit in the first couple of rows because I don't want to crane my neck, but will take this if it's all that's available.)

I like this. As for Corey Stoll, two possibilities: 1. We will see him again, if future episodes use flashbacks to show us his dealings. 2. We won't see him again, and the creators deliberately cast an actor of his stature for the same reason Hitchcock cast Janet Leigh in Psycho: The audience never expects an actor of stature to get it in the first reel, so the shock is greater. I love Corey Stoll, but I'm OK with either decision.

You identify a real problem, and the only thing I'd add is that the problem isn't limited to actors. We also no longer have the writers and directors (with some ultra-rare exceptions) who understand movie musicals in their bones and know how to make them work.

This truly is a chilling (and very intentional) irony. When Brody killed the VP, the audience partly/mostly sympathized with Brody. We understood (because we saw the human tragedy from Brody's point of view) the cost of indiscriminate droning, we knew the VP was an asshole, and we cheered (tacitly) when Brody did the deed. Carrie, because of her emotional alliance with Brody, implicitly empathized not with his wish to commit terror but with the emotional imperatives that drove him. Yet now, Carrie has become what she and Brody hated most.

They haven't fixed it because it's not an error. It's the intention. Carrie (certainly the Carrie who exists so far in Season 4) is not meant to be likable. She's meant to be an uncomfortable embodiment of all that's troubling about U.S. policy and the tacit endorsement of this policy by most of America.

I know. His resumé probably has a category for Shows Killed In.

The tragic fate of Carrie is that she has a mental illness (much more all-encompassing than postpartum depression) that presents her with an impossible choice: medicate, and in so doing deaden the part of herself that is sensitive to the suffering of others; or go without medication, and suffer horribly herself. There is no third choice for her.

Watched it tonight. I was right. The show's sketches actually had ideas behind them. Not one sketch was a "recurring" one. Much of it worked like gangbusters. And even the stuff that didn't, at least was trying. And the difference was clearly Sarah Silverman. Ironically, the one sketch that was the exception to the above was the riverboat one--but not because it was plagiarized. It felt tired not because it borrowed ideas from outside, but because it cannibalized ideas from old SNL sketches. They've done the "untalented lounge act" bit for nearly forty years now, going back to Bill Murray, and along the way the Sweeney Sisters, that awful duo with Will Ferrell and somebody, etc. etc. Why, SNL, why? Other than that, Sarah really shook things up, and made it one the best SNLs in a really, really long time.

Who the hell else would do a "100th Anniversary of Bray Productions"? This is why we love TCM.

Besides that it's more than one word, I think it doesn't quite nail it. What's wrong with Carrie goes beyond postpartum depression. The quickness with which she was able to forgive herself for killing 40 innocent people speaks to an alarming capacity for denial.

I've always known what the Trylon and Perisphere were (or at least for the last fifty years or so), but I'm not seeing the connection to last night's episode. Anyone have a theory?

The show is fantastic again. Carrie embodies the entire United States in her inner deadness. You make yourself able to do wrong when you extinguish in yourself (through drugs or denial) any ability to care. But somewhere inside, one glowing ember of conscience struggles to re-ignite the fire.

We'll find out in about 15 hours, but I kind of think Sarah is going to shake up SNL tonight. I just can't imagine she'll stand for any of the safe, tried-and-true formulas the show allows itself to rely on. That may result in disaster, but it also may result in something wonderful.

You remind me of my experience seeing Anyone Can Whistle in a semi-staged performance with Audra McDonald, Patti LuPone, and Michael Cerveris at Ravinia outside Chicago. I came away saying, "Oh, now I get why it only ran 9 performances..."

I thought Colin Jost was much improved from last year, and the difference was simple. Last year, he had an unfortunate habit of giving a sly little smile at the end of his punchlines, as if he himself found the material funny, and (worse) as if he felt we needed help in realizing it was funny. That smile had the the opposite effect, because it took him out of character; also, nothing makes a joke unfunnier than someone signaling to you that it's funny. This episode, he played it straight. And as a consequence, his punchlines worked. (Not that every joke was a gem, but those in which the material was there went over well, because he no longer sabotaged them with that smile.) He must have watched his tapes over the summer--or someone got to him with some excellent advice.

Especially since imagining that an unseen force has taken away part of your body is exactly what a schizophrenic might do. (From my understanding of schizophrenia.) Except that it actually happened. Which bears on whether Kevin Sr. (who appears to have schizophrenia) is crazy or not. I read recently that schizophrenia is actually a disease of abnormally acute perceptions of the terrors of life and death, rather than delusion. That is, schizophrenics are driven crazy because they are less able to remain in a dream state of denial than the rest of us, who go about our daily lives blithely asleep, except in rare moments, to the certainty that we will die and stay dead for the rest of eternity. What happened on October 14 would just about guarantee an explosion in the number of people who are diagnosably schizophrenic in the society, even though their "disease" is that they are processing reality accurately to a degree that most of us won't do for fear of going crazy like them.

Well, it used to be.

In fact, if you try to envision shots in which people disappear, you quickly realize that the effect would have been ordinary in the extreme. We have seen people disappear "through the magic of film" a million times. The second silent movie ever made probably contained an effect like this. A home movie I made with my friends in 1964 contained an effect like this. The show created a terror in the audience far greater by not having people disappear before our eyes than it ever could by showing it. Just one of many shrewd choices the show made.