Milburn Stone

Thank you to everyone who's recommended Agatha Raisin! A detective show with humor that's actually charming and funny instead of just trying to be. (I'm looking at you, Brokenwood.) Watched the first one last night. The ninety minutes flew right by. I love all the characters in the village, and Agatha herself--and how the murder didn't even happen until what seemed like halfway through. Wonder if that will be a pattern. Anyway, top-notch in all departments, in front of and behind the camera.

Finally got around to watching. Bailed after about twenty minutes. What exactly was the necessity of that flashback between Beth and Rip? To set up another "prequel" once Taylor Sheridan loses Kevin Costner? I hoped the show would redeem itself after the awful spinoff-attempting S4. But no.

Great episode. We (the audience) knew that Dylan was Clem Redux an episode or two ago, and you want to shout that out to Alice, but I guess it's true to life that victims repeat patterns. Despite the audience knowing where the Dylan/Alice relationship was headed, it was still harrowing. The actress who plays Twig is awesome. Her breakdown was so authentic and moving. And this show has to be some of Sigourney Weaver's best work ever.

MMV, but I enjoyed her persistence.

Am I wrong, or did Watch TCM used to have everything that was on TCM in the prior week or so? I wish I could catch up with this one. Your description makes it sound pretty awesome.

Watched the first episode of Hinterland last night. Was kind of hoping it was going to be a continuing story rather than a self-contained episode, but it was pretty good. At times had an unwelcome thought that this was Shetland in Wales--even down to a Tosh semi-lookalike sidekick--but the scenery was awesome. I can't wait for the real Shetland's return. Even with a different lead, I have confidence in the show runners to do their magic.

I'm going to make a somewhat informed speculation. America was in the throes of anti-Communist hysteria. All sorts of people who weren't in the direct gunsights of HUAC and the McCarthy committee felt second-hand fear. Fear of being judged subversive was in the air. What better way to establish your mainline Christian patriotic American credentials, what better vaccination against persecution could you get, than by dropping into the conversation that you went to see Quo Vadis?

I hate it when a show wants me to feel something when every fibre of my being feels the opposite. Case in point, the nanny song. It could not have been more generic. A blend of two songs associated with a certain other nanny (Chim Chim Cheree and Feed the Birds) filtered through the modern-day-Broadway machine to produce some sort of 3D-printed, denatured, ersatz nothing. If the intent of the sequence had been for us to understand the song was terrible and all the Rattle community were fools for loving it, I would have been all-in with the satire of what passes for art these days. That clearly was not the intent.

I guess I missed the part in our conversation where popular culture was equated with cultural genocide. I just re-looked at all the posts of the last couple weeks and I'm still not seeing it.

Can you elaborate? Did the episode create this equivalence? Or are you saying that any treatment of the subject in popular culture (e.g., a show on Hulu titled Reservation Dogs) is inherently offensive?

Thank you for your bullet point description of that hell, @Nashville. Illuminating and horrifying. I have a strong urge to hope and pray that some of the boarding schools were run by compassionate leaders. (Similar to my prayer that some plantations and concentration camps were marginally less horrific than others.) I have no urge to rewrite or censor history. There can be no forgiveness for treating human beings as property, no matter that some in charge weren't as monstrous as others. I need to know more about the Indian Boarding Schools, just to know how widespread the worst of it was. 100%? 75%? 50%? Any percent is unforgivable. But I want to know if my hope for less than 100% is sheer wishful folly.

I feel like Matt Berry is getting to explore other colors this season.

Yes, that was a thing when I was a kid in the fifties and sixties, but I only knew that because movies, sitcoms and cartoons made such a big deal of it. I never understood why! Apparently it was as bad as a man walking down the street in his underwear! But a woman being ashamed because a half-inch of slip showed below her skirt never did compute for my boy brain and I bet most grown men didn't understand the shame either.

Contrarian opinion: Given Alice's choice of two romantic partners, one of whom seems tailor-made for her and whom she is clearly drawn to, maybe June really did know Alice's best interests. Whether or not June was the reason Oggi got deported, she knew he'd be deported eventually. Of course we don't know yet how things will work out with the the Park Ranger. Part of me wonders whether he'll turn out to be abusive like Clem. But it doesn't seem likely the Australian National Park Service would keep a known or suspected abuser in their employ.

Couldn't agree more that CNN is the place for breaking news. At this point, I'm pretty sure MSNBC views its all-Trump-all-the-time slant as a feature, not a bug. I'm sure the TPTB over there have long concluded there's no way they can beat CNN at its own game.

Big thumbs up on the first two, and will have to look into the third.

I loved that they used the actual original cast recording, with Diahann Carroll, and had the actress lip-sync to it. Someone on this show actually knows their musical theatre.

This show needed a shot in the arm and it got it! I'm delighted and looking forward to the rest of the season. (And secondarily, I'm happy for Martin Short that he's in a hit.)

I do too, but I think he could lower his smug-o-meter rating a good deal if he just eliminated or shortened his nightly opening monolog. He has good guests and he asks them smart questions and he lets them answer them. That's no small thing! The monolog we have to get through first always feels like it's fifteen minutes long (although it's probably more like three) because of the wearying pontificating and prognosticating. If he must give an opening talk on the theme of that night's episode, I think he'd be well advised to hold it to a minute or under.

Have now watched through Episode 6 (I think it was)--the one where Meko presents to the HBO exec. Her stepping up in the meeting, finally looking like she has a clue, put a new thought into my head--one which the show isn't allowing us to see. Here's the thought: She has always had a clue, but she--perhaps rightly, I'm not sure--is convinced that the subcontracted production crew are a bunch of lightweights. In her mind, she doesn't owe them any answers--she reports to HBO. Either she's known all along how to present herself and her vision and was deliberately holding back (she doesn't want input from the lightweights whom she has contempt for) or, what amounts to the same thing, only began to think seriously about the movie the night before the HBO presentation. Edited to add: I see now that @pasdetrois is thinking on a similar track, with the speculation that Meko has had it with the reality-TV shenanigans. That could be it also. I think it would related to my guess that she disrespects the producers (possibly for good reason). The producers may be only out to make themselves look good for the cameras even if it means denigrating Meko. Either way, she concluded early on that they are not her friends.

Not knowing that there were more episodes to come, we assumed this episode was the finale, and when it culminated in June's secret phone call, both of us literally cried out at the TV, "That was a terrible ending!" We couldn't believe it! The show had been so good; how could it let down the audience like that? As Emily LItella once said, never mind.

I find this one of the most interesting aspects of the drama. I loved Sally at the beginning. Now I hate her. I hated June at the beginning. Now I love her. Wait...what love story with Robber Barron? I must have really missed something! Question: Does this show consist of 3 episodes? Or are 3 episodes only what have aired so far, and more is to come after that?

Also, when Bear first saw the cops approaching, they looked to Bear like they actually might be aliens. So that's another reason he didn't run out immediately to stop them.

There are similarities, which is why this talented pianist decided to combine them in the first place, but the "left hand" is not identical. I put left hand in quotes because with both tunes, there are more to the harmonic progressions than strictly what the left hand is doing here. But however you define it (whether literally what the left hand is doing, or--probably more what you had in mind--what the harmonic progressions are), there are strong similarities as well as differences.

I believe you're (sadly) correct, as it regards bad new product. But they can't get new product (good or bad) unless writers and actors cross the picket line. And the studios recognize they can only go so long without new product. Can they go on for a while? Sure, that's why they haven't gone out of business yet. But I don't think there's a one of them who regards the status quo as a long-term strategy.