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Well, at least this week there was a throwaway line about Sherlock having a head cold. JLM sounded awful. The case of the week was a bit grisly but interesting enough. Hopefully the nyoopi guy will be a new recurring character. He is a former ATF agent so Sherlock could consult with him. Dan Lauria is one of those actors who makes everything he's in better.

They are in their 40s. That's not old. But old people have sex, too. I wouldn't say they're living apart. They are splitting their time between two residences due to job and kids. They can go back and forth to Camp David on a daily basis, if they want. They can also have sex any time of day whenever they want to make time for it. It doesn't require an overnight stay. I'm baffled why this is even in question. They're a couple. Of course they have sex. That's what adults in a relationship do. It doesn't need to be shown or hinted at.

It's irrelevant to the story lines and what the show is about. We have seen that the Kirkmans have a good marriage and have lived in the White house for a couple of months now. Regular sexual activity is a normal part of a functioning marriage. Viewers can draw their own conclusions if they care about that at all. The show doesn't need to address it in any way.

Being a sleeper agent and being Tom's mother are not mutually exclusive. Russian agent Scottie could have been put in place shortly before or after she married Howard. Getting pregnant could have been planned or a serendipitous oopsy that was used to solidify her relationship with Howard. If a sleeper agent is willing to marry her asset with the intent of maintaining that marriage for years then starting a family with him is not such a stretch. Once the baby is there maternal instinct kicks in and she is just like any other woman who loves her child and stays in a bad marriage for reasons, except her reason are more nefarious than most. If Scottie is not Tom's mother she still has to play the part convincingly to maintain her cover to her team and the world at large regardless of who Howard thinks she is. I hope Howard turns out to be the good guy and he and Tom take down Scottie so the character can be written out of the show. Terry O'Quinn improves everything he is in. He would also be a much stronger lead than Famke Janssen. I am not impressed with her and she is getting really hard to look at, what with her mediocre acting, borderline emaciated body and over-processed face. I thought it was funny that Howard made a comment to Scottie that she was too skinny and needed to eat some carbs and then for the rest of the episode they put FJ in outfits that showed exactly what Howard was talking about.

This episode had some good moments but overall it was not as good as last week. I didn't care for Kirkman in this episode. He quickly reverted to the naive, insecure person we saw in the first few episodes. That's getting old. Kirkman is not stupid and has been in office long enough to know that he needs to project strength and confidence at all times even if he is not feeling it. He let Moss take charge and walk all over him. At their initial meeting in the oval office he sat down in the corner of the couch like he was an awestruck visitor and let Moss lean on the desk like it was still his. He then brought out the tough guy posturing with an already beaten down Langdon, when it wasn't really necessary. The first scene to introduce the story line showed the cover page of a report with the country name "Naruba" in big letters on it. Everyone pronounced the name with an "N" at the beginning throughout the episode. I don't know what more they could have done to indicate it was a fictitious country. I'm not liking Hannah being officially promoted to the lone cop with carte blanche to be reckless and take unnecessary risks. That's such a tired cliche. That also means Forestell will be sidelined. Reed Diamond is a solid actor. I'd like to see more of him as the boss leading the investigation, not a loose-cannon field agent. I don't recall seeing Maggie Q in anything else but I'm not impressed with her in this show. The acting is passable, but her over-botoxed face is really distracting. She's not a good enough actor to overcome the handicap of having a frozen mask for a face. She is 37 years old. It's ok to look her age and the character would be more believable if she looked her age with a face that showed some life experience.

This is a network-owned show. Making one actor/character the focus of a season is a decision that the network would be heavily involved in. Writers and show runners don't have nearly as much decision-making power to determine the direction of the show as some fans may think. The network is calling the shots in the background. The show runner's job is make the show the network wants. I think the shift in focus from Emma to Regina had a lot to do with the change in leadership at ABC. Paul Lee had his vision of what he wanted the show to be. Channing Dungey clearly has a different vision.

Apples to oranges. Breaking Bad only produced 62 episodes over 5 seasons and had less than 2 million viewers for most of its run. That is equivalent to less than 3 seasons of a typical broadcast network show that has to crank out 22+ episodes in 10 months. It only did consistently well for the final 8 episodes. I see cable shows that only produce maybe 8 or 10 episodes a season as a different animal from broadcast network shows that have to produce more than twice as much programming in an extremely tight time frame. Lana played a dual role in season 6 so it's not surprising she got more screen time. It was divided between Regina and the Evil Queen.

Adam said they are doing pickups for multiple episodes for the next couple of weeks. So, yeah, principle filming wraps this week but tying up loose ends continues.

The same could be said about season 5. The Dark Swan story arc and Emma's quest to save her boyfriend also suffered from declining ratings the entire season. Jennifer Morrison was not able to keep viewers interested, either. I see season 6 as just a continuation of a ratings decline for an aging show. That is a problem with lots of shows that rely mainly on serialized story telling for their A plot. Eventually they run out of steam. It's no coincidence that the most successful and longest-running scripted dramas on broadcast TV are police, medical or legal procedurals with maybe some serialized elements for the B and C plots. They can go years, even decades without running out of stories.

Lana, Colin, Robert, maybe Gilles as a recurring character, if he is popular with the young female viewers. Networks do ongoing market research and know which characters and actors are popular with viewers. Story arcs and screen time get adjusted to reflect this. Lots of shows do this.

I think the 6B screen time chart reflects which actors ABC wants to retain for a possible season 7.

Karen and Deniz are guest stars, too. They may have committed to multiple episodes but that is not the same as being under contract as a series regular. They are free to take whatever other work comes their way.

Naveen Andrews can only take on other work if the studio he is under contract with for Sense8 gives him permission to do so. Eddy said at Comic Con, I believe, that NA was not available to them so they had to recast. Contracts are negotiated individually. Maybe Silvestre had it written into his contract that he could guest star in his old show, time permitting, and Naveen didn't have the foresight or clout to do that with Once. Or maybe he had moved on and had no interest in reprising the role of Jafar. Oded Fehr is not under contract. He can take on whatever work he wants and is not obliged to wait around for any one studio to give him more work if he gets other offers.

Like sports, 60 Minutes is a show people tend to watch live. It is appointment TV for a lot of very loyal viewers so if it does not end on time at 8:00 people continue watching instead of turning the channel to watch a scripted drama that they can always watch later at the abc web site.

It sounded like JLM had a bad cold.

I think the villain may turn out to be a group of people with ties to the former president mentioned in this episode. A domestic conspiracy could go in the direction of a group of ultraconservative old white men who think the country is too liberal and want to "make America great again" by putting their people in key positions to influence decision-making and consolidate power. The plan to install MacLeish in the oval office didn't work so they are trotting out a former president as elder statesman volunteering his advice and support to the inexperienced president. A former president wanting to get actively involved in the government again should raise eyebrows but it sounds like Kirkman may fall for it.

Sending the family to Camp David was a way to accomplish a soft exit from the show for the characters. The show seems to be developing into a political thriller so there is really no place for the family in that. The family drama in the fist half of the season went over like a lead balloon so it's better to just eliminate the characters in a plausible way. I guess they thought one dead child was enough. They could always kill off the Alex later and then the kids go to the grandmother.

I liked this episode. One thing I appreciated was that in season six someone finally pronounced Wesen correctly. Too bad it was a guest star who only had a couple of lines. I hope the actor, being a native speaker, told them all they had been saying it wrong the whole time. I've always wondered whether it was a choice or just ignorance to mispronounce a word so central to the whole show.

Atwood's story is done. They can't bring him back and have him investigate a case that he was personally involved in. And having a dead son as the elephant in the room in all of Atwood's scenes just wouldn't work. Reed Diamond's character has taken over the role of Hannah's boss who she works with to crack the case.

I really liked this episode, even the final scene. It's not in any way surprising that Hook killed Robert. Robbing the king and killing his royal guards was a big deal that would put a permanent price on his head. Of course Hook would kill the only witness to his crime so he doesn't have to worry about being caught on his supply runs for Pan. That's just common sense from his perspective. It really is not a stretch that Hook would see it as in his best interest to kill Robert and would not feel bad about doing so. Also, Hook lived in a time and place where people had a completely different attitude toward death and killing than we do. That was clearly established early in the first season. Hook was just as much a product of his time as the other characters. A complicated explanation for his behavior is really not needed. Hook was not some gentleman pirate who politely relieved folks of their valuables while taking care not to harm them. He was a full-blooded pirate, the kind who pillages, rapes, kills and commits other despicable acts of violence. We have seen a bit of it and Hook has talked a bit about his exploits. All his talk about "good form" is like Emma and her superpower. It's just something he likes to believe he has but really doesn't. Everyone has some delusion about themselves that they hang onto so they can feel better about themselves or believe they are more special than they actually are.

They massacred a village of civilians. Mike told Kirkman that he instructed the VP's security detail to stay back.

Graham was a plot device minor character who died in episode 1-7. The other characters got a plausible explanation of his death that they accepted and he stopped being relevant in the following episode. His dramatic purpose was to raise the stakes and show viewers it would not be all fluffy romance. There's no need to revisit Graham's death. That chapter was closed 5 years ago. Emma knew Graham for, what, all of two weeks. He wasn't her boyfriend or any kind of romantic partner. He just gave her a job.

My point exactly.

People were in Maia's line because she is white and Lucca is not. They were showing the kind of pervasive everyday racism that many people don't want to see or give any thought to.

They showed Hannah jump on Mike and whisper to him to contact Chuck about Catalan.