abelard

I just came here to say what an idiot Ross is. I caught up late with episode 7 so only yesterday did I watch him turn down the MP nomination and see it go to George. AFTER he already turned down the magistrate position and see that go to George. ARRRRRRGHH!!!! How dumb can one man BE???????!!!! You know, this story is clearly called "Poldark," but if it were called "Warleggen" (and I think one of the books is called Warleggen but that's not what I mean -- what I mean is that if the series had made George the hero, and not Ross), it would be about how the aristocracy are sliding into poverty and idiocy, while the self-made capitalists are smart enough to take the important decision-making jobs that the "nobility" are too noble to turn down. It's so infuriating that this exact plot arc has happened TWICE to the *same characters.* Okay, rant over. Oh wait no, there's another thing to rant about. How could Ross be so stupid as to double-down on his career idiocy with his idiotic behavior to his wife???? If Ross had half a brain he'd see that the one person he should never intentionally piss off is Demelza. Just for the sake of keeping a happy and stable home life, he should at least reign in his tendency towards impulsive, reckless speech with her (and plus she is a wonderful character and wonderful for and to him). But nooooooo. Not Ross. Okay now I think I'm done. I hope the show makes Ross worthy of affection and respect again soon, but for now, I've had it with this moron.

How I wish Rachel's siblings could have seen her chat with Bryan's mom before they their meeting with Bryan. It looks like they will already be suspicious of Bryan's smarminess (thank goodness, someone needs to do that reality check for Rachel, who is getting carried away by his endless slobbering kisses), but it would have been even better if they could have seen and heard what kind of family she might be marrying into. I can't deny that I'm hoping the next episode shows Rachel's family are able to shake some of Rachel's starry-eyed-ness over Bryan out of her. If she were dating him in real life, if he had to interact with her friends and family periodically instead of just having these magical pre-arranged international jetset dates with her, then for sure her inner circle would have questioned his smooth-talking skeezy manner by now. Add his family into the mix, and they would have had so much *more* to question. That is not to say that I don't think Bryan legit cares for Rachel. If she picks him in the end, I'll wish them luck and all that. I mean, just because someone comes across as over-the-top doesn't mean they're a terrible person; people can *seem* inauthentic but actually *be* authentic in their feelings. I'm just saying that for a woman to choose to be with someone like that, who has all the lines at the ready every single time, it's better for her if her confidantes can ask her the hard questions: Is he genuine? Can you see what a show he puts on for you? And, ideally in this case, Could you *really* live with all the demands for closeness, for time, for prioritization, that his mother will put on him? I think dating in a reality show bubble is hugely detrimental because it minuses out all of these natural, built-in questioning and vetting mechanisms that a woman usually has.

This is my first season watching and my big takeaway is that this is a *terrible* way to try to meet one's future spouse LOL. However, given that Rachel is in it to win it (to win a husband/father for her future kids -- though obvs also in it to win a TV career of some kind), I suppose I'm rooting for what I'll call the "Peter Scenario" at this point. The Peter Scenario is one in which Rachel *doesn't* automatically get engaged to the "winner" at the end of the season. Instead, she hears what Peter has been saying for several episodes: that this is a really fast timeline for a couple to decide if they want to be together forever, and what they need is *more time* together to decide. Whether she decides that about Peter or someone else, I think that ending the season with a committed relationship that might lead to marriage is the only sane way. From other posters, it sounds like that used to be a viable option for the end of a Bachelor/Bachelorette season. (All that said, I also think that Peter isn't very much into Rachel as a prospective wife. But even if Rachel picks Bryan or Eric, I think she should pick him to be her Very Serious Boyfriend with Intent to Get Engaged within the Year, not to be her immediate fiancé).

I've never watched The Bachelorette before, I only jumped in b/c I saw an African American woman was going to have all of the "choosing" power, and I am glad I did!! This show can be ridiculously funny. It's super-produced and I have nothing but praise for how stage-managed it is -- I am enjoying it! Okay some quick thoughts about the contestants: -Bryan: Hot. But smarmy. -Alex: Hot. But too goofy. -Peter: Hot. But too serious and IA with others who think he's just not that into Rachel. -Dean: Pretty. Too young (in personality). -Jonathan: Pretty. Too dumb? Tbh the strongest contender I see now is Will, though Kenny and Diggy could come up in Rachel's estimation and Peter could get more invested in future eps. I actually liked the Anthony date a lot but I don't think they were smitten with each other at all -- I've been on dates where it was the date itself (the occasion, the setting, the events of the evening) that was awesome, not the person that I was on that date with, and that's exactly how the Anthony date seemed to me.

Well I was so impressed with several singers in the first two Knockout rounds (Ivonne, Jordan, and Morgan were my faves, and I also really liked Viktor's performance), that I had high hopes for round three. But NOPE. That was so underwhelming. Even people that I really liked underperformed. Shelby was fine but a huge disappointment given what I feel she is capable of. Nobody from tonight excited me at all. I would have gotten worked up about some of the coaches' decisions but I just thought everyone performed badly (compared to their abilities) so in the end I didn't care who stayed and who went. Well, except that I thought Nadja really should have stayed. She has a great look and great energy, and she does a kind of pop/r&b that no one else is doing as well who's still in the competition. Nadja getting eliminated in favor of Emily Ann makes me angry only because I really haven't seen anything from Emily Ann that I think warrants Blake's belief in her. Like, Danielle Bradbury was 1,000 times the singer that Emily Ann is at this stage in the competition. Yes Emily Ann is totally adorable and *looks* like a star but her voice doesn't impress me at all right now. Maybe if Blake can help E.A. improve tremendously in the next 2 rounds I'll feel like, Okay, he made a great pick and a solid investment of his time and energy. But today, I feel a big Nuh-Uh about E.A. However, now I have 3-4 people I am rooting for in the lives and that's more than I've ever had in any season of this show. So, tonight aside, I guess I am in fact looking forward to the live rounds as long as my peeps remain in the game.

Adam said "You have no idea how good Shelby is" after advancing her in the Battles. I guess she could flub her knockout but everyone from her battle partner to the coaches talked about Shelby's "power" when discussing her natural vocal ability. I'd be surprised if she doesn't advance. Blake picked Emily Ann over Morgan in the Battles, and just reclaimed Morgan in the Knockouts. It would be interesting if he doesn't advance Emily Ann after her Knockout. I sort of think it would be an admission that he picked wrongly in the Battles. Not that anyone, including Blake, cares about that, but it would just be interesting to note. (Personally, I thought Morgan was the clear winner of the Battles and Blake only picked Emily Ann b/c she is younger and he felt he could have "the greatest impact" with her -- but Morgan is already *there* imo.)

I'm surprising myself by having three favorites at this point in the competition: Ivonne, Jordan, and Morgan. I've only ever had two other faves before EVER with this show: Michelle Chamuel and Craig Wayne Boyd. But most seasons, while I appreciate really strong individual performances, I don't really have any longing for anyone to win or even advance. Cassadee Pope's rendition of Over You was a case of splendid song choice, great styling, fantastic stage movement, and adequate vocals, and I ate that up, but I wasn't rooting for Cassadee the entire rest of the season. But right now, I'm cheering on Ivonne and Morgan, and also hoping for a lot of advancement for Jordan. It feels weird to care. The Voice is super entertaining to me b/c of the coaches, not the contestants, but for some reason this season's singers are getting to me!!!

I loved this season, but I always get so angry at Healey and at Aleida (Daya's mom). Every time I see them, they display more and more that they are The. Worst. at what they do. Healey is the worst prison counselor and Aleida is the worst mom, even if she and Daya made peace this season. Aleida makes one bad decision after ten billion. Ugh. I really enjoyed that several characters I despised or just disliked last season or in S1 (Piper, Cindy, SoSo) got great writing and storylines this season, and now I am fully on board with their arcs and can't wait to see what happens to them in S3. Red, probably my favorite, had another great season, as did Crazy Eyes and Poussey. It bummed me out a little bit that Taystee didn't get more to do. But she was practically the lead in S2 so I didn't mind that the other characters got the spotlight more.

A quick note on Sally and Suzanne: I think that what many viewers found so terrible about the Don/Suzanne affair was the thought of what would happen if Sally found out about them. Sally adored her lovely, kind teacher Suzanne -- what if she, say, stumbled across Don and Suzanne kissing or something? It would have devastated her. So I think (yet another) reason that people despised that affair and that mistress was that it seemed to pose a serious threat to one of the favorite and most vulnerable characters, Sally. AND I think that seed of fear, planted in the viewers' minds, paid off in spades when Sally discovered Don with Sylvia. Everything we (the viewers) had feared might come to pass with Suzanne came to pass with Sylvia. Everything Sally said to Don afterwards -- (paraphrasing) Don't you think about how awful it will be for me, to have to go into that building, and maybe see that woman, and have to smile when I'm standing next to her in the elevator???!! -- is very close to what I think Sally would have thought if she'd found about Don banging her teacher. I was grateful that Sally was older, old enough to articulate her horror to her father at his carelessness, at his disregard for what his daughter might have to go through because of his cheating, and old enough to perhaps understand or come to terms with it fairly rapidly. Anyway, my take is that the affair with Sylvia delivered on some of the dark promises held out by the Suzanne affair. I also think Suzanne in many ways previewed Megan: sunny, breezy, great with kids, beautiful in a very warm and charming way (not like Betty's elegant coolness). So Suzanne had her utility to the show in the long term, she set up some story beats that paid off years later.

I think the reason why some viewers "hate" so many of Don's mistresses is that they take up so much screentime. When a cast is this strong -- and it's a big cast, and they could frankly just go from strength to strength if they featured, say, the top-billed 7 characters exclusively -- the long and many scenes with Don's flings just feels interminable. I would have felt the same about Peggy's sister and mother if we had seen them as much as we have seen Don's side pieces. We were not subjected to any category of "lesser" character -- Pete's family members, Joan's mother (though her former roommate was GREAT), even Glen, whom many people didn't like -- nearly as much as we were subjected to Don's women. If I ever rewatch, I'm definitely going to fast forward through all those women's scenes, at least post-Bobbie Barrett (I thought Midge, Rachel, and Bobbie were at least more interesting as characters in their own right, and would have been even more interesting if they had not been Don's mistresses).

Also WTF with Claire wanting to be a freaking ambassador? Her job when Frank was in Congress was in running a big environmental NGO that she had founded. And this season she was like, If you don't make me ambassador now before I turn 50, I'll have absolutely nothing if/when you get kicked out of office. WTF?!? I know Claire gave up her post at the NGO but it's not like she has zero skills or zero track record on the job market. Seems to me that she could have gone right back into a career if it came to it (I mean, just thinking logically about her resume and all). I'm sure she periodically had to suspend her working life, or take weeks off at a time or whatever, to campaign for Frank in the past. What was so different this time around? She had never been the meek little pretty puppet for Frank's political career before -- if anything, she probably PLAYED that role in the public's eye, making herself more meek than she ever actually was. I don't get what changed so drastically for her, when there was nothing she had to do this season (this campaign) than she had ever done for her entire life. IA with what you say about Frank's arc (becoming a tyrant who is strangely tone-deaf to everyone around him, like Jackie -- and like Claire) being more understandable than Claire's arc. Frank got the power he wanted but then he started losing and it made him selfish and angry and he made mistakes he never would have made before, I get that. But what motivated Claire's sudden realization that she HAS to be in politics (or whatever her realization abt the ambassadorship was), that she CANNOT BEAR to ask Frank to help her (in the past, it seems to me they helped one another plenty, at every turn, in fact), and that she feels like she has only ever built up his career (an arrangement it seems they both agreed to long ago, anyway -- and plus, Claire did indeed have her own career, apart from Frank, until he became VP), and that she feels small and insignificant and hates herself for it (when she was just doing what I assume she has done for every single one of Frank's campaigns, which is putting on a great show that people can believe, so that she and Frank can reach their mutually agreed upon goals)????

I get Claire's storyline this season -- all the beats, how it was written and how it was played -- but I just don't buy it. I am incredulous that a woman who had dedicated her entire life since she was 22 to her voraciously ambitious husband would be surprised now, 28 years later, that OMG IT IS ALL ABOUT HIS CAREER. I am not at all saying I disagree with the sentiment -- I think it's a shame how, in general, many women devote themselves to their husbands' goals and seem to have no life of their own -- but it's just that Claire always seemed to be A-OK with the deal between her and Francis before. WTF is she doing crying foul now?!?! It seems to me that she never talked to him, never actually told him what was going on with her, made many moves on her own that backfired, made some moves on her own that worked, then attacked him, then threatened him, then he threatened her b/c he was like, "WTH I need you to do what I know you can and what will work for us, as per usual, as per our entire lives together", and then she walked out. Why didn't she lay out some terms in front of him? Why didn't she say, Give me this and I'll give you that? Why didn't she throw a fit much, much earlier and say, This is not working for me the way it used to? Keep in mind this is a couple who told one another minute details about the affairs they were having with other people, to have a good laugh about it!! (I'll never forget when Claire told Zoe about the spider that Frank killed in Zoe's apartment -- LOL Zoe, no you don't know her husband better than she does!) I feel like Claire Underwood for two seasons was really really different than most women characters and than most women, period. Just as Frank is meant to be so uniquely and supremely evil, and their marriage was supposed to be the only one of its kind, so Claire, too, seemed like the only one of her kind. Claire and Frank were two killers (literally and figuratively) who had found one another, could only ever have been themselves by joining forces, and forged a marital bond that was wholly separate from any conventional norm of marriage. But this season Claire became somehow representative of the rich white unfulfilled under-loved under-appreciated American woman. In Claire's monologues I could just hear all the women that I personally know who just feel absolutely nothing for their husbands after 25+ years of marriage b/c they feel it's been all about him all these years, leaving nothing for them. I sympathize with my friends who are going through this, and I do think there are big structural problems in gender relations and societal expectations that make it hard for women to have their own thing while their husband goes out and grows a big career. BUT BUT BUT I never thought Claire was supposed to be like "those women" -- I think she would think of all other women like that, as "those women who don't know wth they're doing, what they signed on for." Claire of S1 and S2 would sneer and look down her nose at women who weren't smart enough to make deliberate choices and plan out their life ambitions. Claire this season, by becoming more "relatable" to many women, just lost the thing that made her so distinct in seasons past, which was her very distinctiveness, the fact that she insisted on standing apart from the herd, being like no other woman she had never known, being completely herself, standing beside a life partner who, like her, has no peer, is like no one else, in a marriage that is wholly sui generis.

It's striking that whoever wins The Voice this season, Pharrell clearly lost The Voice. Pharrell came in riding high from one of the best career peaks that any contemporary performer has ever had, at the height of his fame, performed admirably in the blinds (one could even say Pharrell dominated - over Adam, even) -- and over the lives, Pharrell demonstrated he really does not know what he is doing on this show. The domination of the vets tell me this show is a game that must be strategically played, and Pharrell's strategies all came to naught (or, he didn't really have any interesting ideas about how he was going to position his contestants in the first place). IA with the person above who said that Gwen did much better than Pharrell, her strategies did work often, I actually blame T3N for falling at the last hurdle. Super, super glad the WC went to Damien and I just love that it was a huge F U to the producers of the show, who I'm sure would have rather had a Team Gwen or Pharrell female in the mix. Oddly enough, the fact that the 4th spot went to the guy who would've got it anyway reassures me that the producers don't "fix" absolutely every outcome of every voting night. I am positive that the producers did tell Blake last season that he simply could not win again (and I'm super glad that Usher, not Adam, took it), so I am wondering what they're thinking this year in terms of Blake vs. Adam. I personally would much prefer Blake and CWB to win because I like Blake more than Adam and CWB more than the other three, but maybe they want Adam and Blake to tie at 3-3?

I have been a big fan of CWB but that was very poor song selection imo. I love The Eagles, nobody loves that band more than I do, but it is hard to sing The Eagles without full harmonies and seem like an impressive singer. Better to sing one of Don Henley's or Glenn Frey's songs from their solo careers; those songs are written for one singer to sound great, whereas The Eagles stuff is written for four or five blended voices to sound great and for the band to sound great. Yes yes, I know that Henley solos a lot on Eagles songs, and Frey does too, but I still think the real "glory" notes of all those songs are blended harmonies. Damian was great. Matt was very good but that song does nothing for me. Everyone else was a big "meh" for me tonight. Hope that next Monday is WAY way way better. So it's Top 5 for the Semi-Finals. And how many for the Finals? 3 or 4?

I think Taylor Swift just won the voice. I mean that in the best way. Her performance was perfect for this show. Every contestant on The Voice from now on should study her performance of "Blank Space" last night to see how it should be done: she worked the crowd, played to the entire audience, sang two lines to the Coaches (with that cute little kick in Blake's directions), she winked right at the camera at just the right moment, she let the backup singers carry the tune in the middle so that she could move around more, and then she hit several glory notes at the end. She's not a great dancer but her choreography was excellent and she executed it with precision: when she came back to the center of the stage, she really nailed her mark, she was dead center in relation to the set and the band behind her. In addition to knowing how to maximize her interactions with the crowd and Coaches, her movement in the space, and her looks at the camera, she exuded a level of confidence that 99% of contestants can only dream of. My goodness, well done, Taylor Swift. Even though I know that big music stars get a lift from singing their latest releases on The Voice, I am always pleased to see it when a huge name still puts out enormous effort, and plans their Voice appearances really thoughtfully, and just really tries. I hate it when big stars sort of half-a** it on this show. I really appreciated that Taylor Swift not only sang on the catwalks surrounded by audience members, but touched hands and pulled up that one hipster dude and sang one line directly to him, right into his eyes. She wasn't "above it," not at all. She worked the show like she had yet to get her first #1. Adam's group performance was really strong, though I think they could have benefitted from about three more rehearsals. My big takeaway from that was how young and contemporary Damien looked. He was styled to look like he fit in with the three white dudes, all of whom have a hipster-y vibe, and I loved that look on Damien: a light-colored denim jacket, dark-wash jeans. Just so current, not "old" at all. Why can't they style him like that when he sings his solos? As someone commented upthread, I also thought his singing on Only the Good Die Young was very good, very pop/rock, and I would love to hear him sing more uptempo stuff like that. He can do it!! And it would make him seem his actual age!!! Pharrell's group performance was very beautifully sung, even though Pharrell has about a tenth the singing chops of Danica and maybe half of the singing chops of Luke. On this song, Luke's stupid smiling didn't bother me b/c it fit the song, since it's about optimism and hope and gratitude. The real standout was Danica, by about ten miles. What a voice. She was singing in her upper register without strain. She is so mellifluous it's crazy. I think Danica gets guff for coming across as so much older than she is but otoh, she does great with old standards and her voice is old-school and she knocks that out of the park, maybe she should just sing Billie Holliday and Lena Horne from now on. I think I would buy an album of Danica covering great jazz standards. CWB is getting a lot of praise today for being "already there," but he wasn't already there when he started this show -- The Voice really got him to this level. I always thought he was a looker, but it took Gwen's styling to bring out the HOT that was waiting there, underneath the outdated fringe. CWB has a bit of cheese in his performances, and Blake has managed to knock that right out and keep CWB squarely in the "outlaw cowboy" (as Blake says)-with-a-heart-of-gold box, where he's doing great. CWB's proclivity to cheesiness now comes off as tenderness, and Blake's choices for him have let his voice come out full-range, with that depth and roughness that makes him really stand out. Well done, Voice. If CWB doesn't win this season, I'll think something is very very wrong either with America or the producers. So now I am rooting for CWB, Damien, Danica, and I guess T3N for the top 4.