Milburn Stone

I've known of Four Daughters being the source of Young at Heart, Rinaldo, but have never seen more than snatches of it. I can easily imagine Garfield being great in the part Sinatra later played. However…I think Sinatra's performance of a depressive was especially moving because it didn't take place in a time of economic calamity. In Young at Heart, the state of the nation's economy can't be used as a rationale for the character's despair; his depression's roots go much deeper. Suffice it to say I find Sinatra utterly, heartbreakingly convincing. (All of the above should definitely be received in the FWIW category, since I can't really compare Sinatra to Garfield, having never seen Garfield's whole performance in the part. But I offer it anyway.) Astute observation about "One for My Baby" being one of the rare exceptions to an Astaire performance becoming the definitive performance.

I have a routine of fast-forwarding through lots of the grade-B musicals I DVR from TCM. I love (or at least am fascinated by) all the musical numbers. But with all too rare exceptions, the plots of these musicals are just so dumb, the attempts at characterization and humor so lame. I always give them a chance, but at the first sign of mediocrity, I make a decision that this is one of those movies that requires fast-forwarding to the good parts. To name a movie that rewards watching all the way through: It's been a while since I've seen Young at Heart, but I'd add that to the list of outstanding Sinatra performances. His portrayal of depression in that movie is haunting, and his emergence from it is moving.

Thank you. Like others, I was like, "What in God's name would cause her to suspect the washing machine as a hiding place for anything?" This provides an answer. But also like others, I really thought she'd be smarter than to wreck her case with an illegal search.

Regarding your first paragraph, Constantinople, this is why I talked of the dash of Lewthwaite's actual suspected terrorism being integrated into the character. For all Redgrave's radicalism, she's never been accused of that. But every other aspect of the character calls Redgrave to mind more than Lewthwaite. (And I think this would also have been the case had Judy Davis played her.) The show implicitly asks the question, "What if someone like Redgrave secretly went much farther in the direction of radicalism, all the way to terrorism, than anything the public suspects?" It imagines that as a starting point, and takes off from it. Regarding your second paragraph, Redgrave's Wikipedia entry shows that her radical activism has continued into the pretty recent (not ancient history) past. I quote: "In December 2007 Redgrave was named as one of the possible suretors who paid the £50,000 bail for Jamil al-Banna, one of three British residents arrested after landing back in the UK following four years' captivity at Guantanamo Bay." Putting aside whether you or I think Redgrave is an admirable character, I think it's safe to say the right-leaning showrunners of 24 look askance at her activities. And I doubt whether they are that much older than 49 themselves. I'd venture to say that at least the older half of the 18-49 demographic has some (at least peripheral) awareness of Redgrave's activities, enough for the show to use that awareness as a signifier.

I'm gonna go with Redgrave as the main inspiration. Couple of reasons. The actress playing the not!Vanessa Redgrave character looks a lot more like Redgrave than Lewthwaite, from what I can tell in a Google image search of the latter. She's also close to Redgrave in her dialect and mannerisms. And from what I can glean from Lewthwaite's Wikipedia bio, Lewthwaite doesn't come from the wealthy, patrician background that the not!Redgrave character, and the real Redgrave, do. I also think Redgrave may be better known to more members of the audience than Lewthwaite. If the writers picked Redgrave as their approximate model, they didn't do it just for their own inspiration. They did it as a form of shorthand for the audience. They want the audience to bring something to the character, by saying, "Oh, I get it, she's supposed to be like X." The character gains more resonance that way. But shorthand doesn't work if you use a model that few people (or relatively few people) have heard of. When I referred to the not!Redgrave character as "ripped from the headlines" upthread, I probably should have made clear that I didn't mean "ripped from today's headlines." It's true that Redgrave hasn't been in the news lately for her radical activism. But it wasn't so long ago, and well within the memories of most, if not all, of the audience. Perhaps it would be accurate to say that the character is a fictional mix of the two models, with a heavy emphasis on Redgrave. She combines a dash of Lewthwaite's actual suspected terrorism with Redgrave's everything else (including her radical activist past and present).

I'm glad someone else is picking up on how the character is essentially the show's ripped-from-the-headlines surrogate for the extreme-radical (at least in the public's perception) real-life Vanessa Redgrave. It reminds me of when Homeland created a character who was clearly not!Christiane Amanpour.

To me, the most disturbing thing about the segment's reliance on dick jokes for humor is that it is beneath the show to do that. John Oliver is clever. The first two shows demonstrated that he can put together an original comedy-news half-hour that holds its own, and even does some things better than others are doing. Just because HBO allows gigantic pictures of old saggy dicks that doesn't mean that Last Week Tonight has to resort to them to get a laugh. It's as if John Oliver fears that unless he exploits the full limits of HBO he won't be able to differentiate his show. A basic lack of faith in his own talents is the reason for that fear. Color me disappointed. Perhaps I'm more sensitized to this because of the unfortunate experience of recently seeing Neighbors, which also relies on dick jokes far too much. It's cheap, it debases the audience and the culture, and it's so patently the last resort of those who are desperate to be funny and can't think of a cleverer way to do it.

The radical mother gives me a Fake Vanessa Redgrave vibe.

I loved whenever they did the "randy academics" played by lovahs Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch.

Are we meant to accept the nearly top-to-bottom incompetence of all institutions because Bemidji is supposedly a "backwater town"? Nothing else explains it, so I guess that's what we are supposed to believe.

I agree that the parade of "Barbara Walterses" really hammered home Cheri Oteri's supremacy. It's a great loss to comedy that Oteri seems to have vanished from view.

Oops. I see that now. Sorry.

Thanks for finding that clip, BizBuzz! I used to love that show. (Not sure how well it holds up now based on that clip, but it seemed pretty fresh to me in 1967.) Besides the info that Cassidy was offered the role of Ted Baxter, it seems to me likely that the MTM creators had the "Oscar North template" in mind when they conceived the character. It's not mere speculation that they would have been well aware of the character; director Jay Sandrich was a common element of both shows.

I agree, and would add the other musical in which he played Gene Kelly's sidekick, Summer Stock. Was Cover Girl Phil Silvers' "breakout" movie role? Looking at his credits in the imdb, it seems to have been. He was in some stuff before that, but not in any major "second banana" role that I can tell.

The sketch in which ordinary hotel events were seen through the lens of the supernatural was brilliant.

My memory could be wrong, but I thought the only thing Lester was treated for was the concussion or bad bruising around his head from running into the wall on purpose. Apparently he concealed the gunshot wound on his hand from the nurses and physicians completely! Which is even more unbelievable than a failure on their part to report it to the police. I reach this conclusion because the gunshot wound wasn't treated by the hospital in any way, not even by putting a bandaid on it.

Paige is in a commercial for Stouffer's Lasagna!

That's certainly unrealistic in our world, but my impression was that we are meant to believe the world in this year's 24 is the world of a few years in the future. A world in which China has expanded its global influence (and intimidation) so vastly that even Europe is in its sphere of influence. A world in which even Britain feels safer throwing in its lot with the Chinese than with the Americans. (Or at least must weigh seriously which superpower to ally itself with.) None of that is recognizable from our world, but if we take this year's 24 as a fantasy of what might happen in a few years if things go wrong, it's at least buyable for the sake of being able to enjoy the show. Now I admit it doesn't make sense that this year's 24 takes place in a near future instead of the present, given that the characters are only supposed to have aged in real time since last we saw them. But placing it in the near future is the only way I can make sense of it at all, so for me, doing so is a necessary precondition for watching (and enjoying) it. All that talk about China sending "friendly" battleships into the Mediterranean was supposed to mean something.

I think all of them.

Thanks, Hal. Sadly, I can't remember who those people are, either. (Sigh.) I think I'm just going to relax and enjoy the ride and not worry about the fact that I don't understand half of it.

Can someone refresh my memory as to how these sketches came to be? Who was the guy who gave the physical descriptions, why were Philip and Elizabeth (in those guises) persons of interest in an investigation, what was the investigation, and how did the sketches come in to Stan's possession? (Other than that I understand everything.)

I am always astonished to find out how much money certain movies don't make, especially when they are by "name" directors, star well-known actors, and come from major studios. For instance, how much money do you think the very funny 2006 movie Idiocracy made (written and directed by Mike Judge, starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph and Terry Crews, and released by 20th Century Fox)? I'm talking total domestic gross in its theatrical release. If you guessed $439,000, bingo.

I'm missing the meaning of the ice scraper and how it connects to other Coen stuff. Enquiring minds want to know! As to how much the Coens are involved…I kind of feel that they're not the ones putting in the allusions to their own work. I know they're "executive producers" on the show, but that might have just been a necessary condition to buying the property for television, not an actual job function. I feel like the true show runners are clever and highly familiar with the Coens' body of work, and are entirely capable on their own of throwing in Coen stuff for their and our amusement.

Good question. I don't know where the show is going, but I'm noticing--with the exception of the killing of Vern and the dog--that everyone Malvo messes with (still don't know how any of you know his name, but I'll use it, too) "deserves" it in one way or another. In this way, he's sort of a Robin Hood of murder and mayhem. He doesn't kill good people (like Vern) unless he has to. And there's an improvisational quality to his trouble-making, like when he got the stupid kid to pee into the gas tank and then turned him in (for the crime of being stupid, I guess). So I can believe he's improvising a bit with the King, in his continual quest to avenge the good by punishing the bad and/or stupid.

This was the one negative, which I hope the show is smart enough to figure out and not repeat. Otherwise, I was amazed how "necessary" I thought the show was! Like many, I was thinking "How is this show going to be any different from TDS or Colbert? It's doomed!" But I was wrong. With the exception of the TDS-derivative interview segment, it has its own point of view, its own way of going about things. This episode made the stakes feel higher than TDS does, with the in-depth coverage given to the India elections--a surprisingly long, surprisingly serious, yet entertaining segment. Oliver is clearly brilliant in his own non-Stewart, non-Colbert way and the show justified its existence much more solidly than I expected it to.