Kel Varnsen

Does it matter what he says. I mean it's not like he is ever going to make another MCU movie.

I wish they showed more of Roy's press conference. His answers were hilarious and I really wanted to know more reporter nick names. I did like his scene with Rebecca though. She is right he is full of shit about wanting to be left alone. Because if he did, well he is rich enough to go live in some isolated village out in the country somewhere, where people won't bother him. The Nate stuff still bugs me though. I liked Jade seeing right through Rupert almost immediately. But if she is that good at reading people, why hasn't she picked up on how Nate is still kind of a jerk.

This show is getting better. Now that I know the names of all the major players that really helps. That was probably the most frustrating part of the pilot, figuring out who they were talking about all the time. Only one small nitpick though. Would the US ambassador to the UK not have a private washroom in her office. Her having to leave her office to pee seemed weird. Especially since the Embassy looks like a relatively new building.

Would that be possible? Most of my knowledge of that kind of thing comes from shows like Dragon's Den. So my assumption is that Jack bought a percentage of KJPR with her money, and that money was used to grow the company. But I don't think those kind of purchases come with money back guarantees. So if she wants her money back she would need to sell her percentage I think. Unfortunately the only two people we have met that could have the funds to buy it would be Rebecca (good) or Rupert (so very bad).

I am trying to remember, at the start of the series was Keeley still an actual model or was she at the "former model" stage of her career by that point. Even if she was still modelling, I never got the sense that she was some kind of huge super model like the woman Nate went out with. So her biggest claim to fame in the last few years was probably Roy's and before that Jamie's girlfriend. And her and Roy broke up months ago, and he was hardly the guy who spent a lot of time in the public eye. And they even said this was some huge hack of many different celebrities. The more I think about this storyline the more I think it could have been a perfect way to show how Keeley is great at her job. If she is supposed to be this super great PR person, who especially is good at doing PR for celebrities (and is really connected to celeb culture); she should know this is far from the first phone hack like this. And she should know what kind of response works and what doesn't. And then when you have Jack coming in with her dad's lawyer response, you could have Keeley say something about how if Jack doesn't trust her to know how to respond to this, then she probably doesn't trust her to run KJPR.

They have talked about trying to rebuild US foreign relations, since I think a previous administration. So I assume that Trump, or a Trump-like president happened in their world.

The Kree Supreme intelligence is still out there and combined with the Kree military empire they should still be a threat.

I was thinking about that and I kind of wish Nate would realize he is in kind of a good position with respect to Rupert and stop kissing his ass. Because as far as we know, right now West Ham is at or near the top of the standings. Rupert firing Nate right now would look really bad. Plus if Nate's coaching is actually working then it could also hurt the team. Plus if Nate gets fired while being a winning coach it would make him very attractive to other teams who might want to hire him. Especially since convincing the public that Rupert is a rich asshole and terrible boss, probably wouldn't be that hard.

I would say he has a chance if he really wants one. Sure he could probably find some idiot to fund a little indie movie where he plays the lead in a Barack Obama biopic. He wouldn't of course go to jail for it. But the question back to him would be why would you want to play a Black man, and what do you think would be the public response if you did?

Plus it seems like Nate is still being a jerk. Sets up a fake, seemingly forced, diamond dogs and then when one other guy there trys to talk about his personal problems, Nate shuts him down. Then when Henry, Ted and Beard show up at the West Ham match, Nate can't even bring himself to wave, to a kid. So nothing has even really been fixed, it is more like just that everything is going Nate's way (great job he is doing well at, boss bought him a fancy car, and he has a hot girlfriend who he previously had a crush on).

I liked this episode and Kate was really good. Especially the part at the end where she told Hal that all his actions were fucking with her head so much she couldn't think straight. Since that is sort of how I was feeling. I especially didn't see the point of the called off assassination attempt. Because either Kate and Hal trust the Iranian guy or not. Saying you called off an assassination doesn't really mean anything since you have no real proof they had planned it in advance. I am hardly a fashion expert. But I feel like if you are a short relatively skinny white person with short black hair, you should never wear a grey suit with a bowtie. Since even if the bowtie isn't red you are going to look like Pee Wee Herman.

But that was less mall culture and more that malls were places where it was easy for teens to find jobs. Most of the mall scenes take place while the characters are working. The only things I think that really wouldn't fly would be the abortion like you said, and Spicoli's anti-gay slurs. Stacey with the older guy might work if he was younger and she was older, since the plot of that was more that they had sex and then he blew her off. The bigger factor is I think that Hollywood doesn't really make R-rated movies about high school anymore. And even though it wasn't an American Pie style gross out comedy it's still something where I don't think it would be good if rated PG-13.

I get that, but has there ever been a situation where people have tried to protect their jobs, in spite of technology changes that has ever worked. I watched the Light and Magic documentary in Disney Plus a while back and in the last episode they talked about how ILM changed from a company that did models, and stop motion and matte paintings to a digital effects company. And the effects artists who were able to adapt and apply their previous skills in creature design and movement and learn computers were very successful. The ones who didn't pretty much lost their jobs. I am sure even for writers it was something similar. Back in the days of typewriters, there were probably admin people around to retype scripts when notes and changes were put on them. Now the script is on your computer and you don't need someone to retype the whole thing when you want to change it. Just like the studio accountant doesn't need an army of accounting clerks (with little green visors) because excel and other spreadsheet program put them out of work. I used procedurals as an example because those seem like the most basic shows that would be easy for an AI system to copy. So if you want to keep your job you better be able to write something more original than that.

Yea I get the not over working thing, but it also seems like in any job, if someone can do the work of two people then then paying them more should also be an option (not just automatically hiring more people). The no AI scripts thing seems interesting too. Because from my understanding of AI it can only create things based on data that is fed into it. I heard an AI version of a Nirvana song on the radio a few weeks ago and it sounded like a Nevermind outtake, not a new song Kurt might have created. So if you fed every drama script into an AI script generator, you wouldn't get something original like Lost or the Americans or something. You would probably get a boring episode of Law and Order or NCIS.

The whole Keeley storyline this season has been weird. Each episode they spend so much time at her office but we have no idea how her company is doing. The stuff with Nate kind of bugs me too. Like how is his relationship going so well, and how has he kept himself from exposing his asshole tendencies to Jade. Like what if he goes to her work now that they are a couple, what happens when she is too friendly to another patron for his liking? Or if she laughs when he does something embarrassing. I liked when right before they went to the West Ham game, Beard said he had to make a stop. And then he was wearing all his Richmond gear. But was Ted's home always that big. I also thought it was just a single storey apartment, not a house with multiple levels. Too bad Keeley doesn't know someone else who is super rich who might be able to fund her firm. Some googling tells me that the English Premier League team with the lowest value is still worth around 200 GBP. With Richmond being in London I would assume it would be worth more. So if Rebecca wanted to fund the KJPR office to get it running, it would take what a brief phone call?

If that is happening that's obviously not good. But at the same time making a rule where you have to have a minimum number of writers would work a single writer or team of two writers who are able to write a whole season on their own. If the union rule says there has to be four writers in that situation those people would probably be paid less. Plus the WGA represents movie writers too. So if the goal is to just get more writers working, why not have the same rule for movies. Kill Bill 1&2 were about the same length as an 8 episode sitcom season. Would anyone think of telling Tarantino that her needed to hire a second writer to work with him, rather than writing the whole script himself?

But doesn't the showrunner (usually the head writer) have at least some power in determining who gets credited as a writer on a specific script? My favourite show of all time is Deadwood and I remember watching a bunch of the behind the scenes stuff, and more than one writer talking about how David Milch would basically re-write every line of their script, but then still give them sole credit for writing the episode. In a way the whole thing just sounds like some crooked Sopranos style union thing. Where like Tony comes over and says your window repair job will only need one person, but because of union rules you are going to have to hire 3 carpenters, 2 labourers, a foreman, a safety supervisor, a plumber and my cousin who will never actually show up.

It still seems weird to me and seems like it would work against writers or writer teams who are more efficient and can get more done with smaller numbers of people. I mentioned Craig Mazin before, he is the only writer on the Chernobyl mini-series. Would anyone ever expect screen writers or song writers to hire extra people to work with them just because? If I call a plumber to fix my toilet and he says that it is a one person job, but I am going to need to pay for two plumbers to show up at my house just because, I would be pretty annoyed.

That was interesting, although the part about a show having to have a minimum number of writers seems weird. Like if one or two writers can write a show by themselves so that it is their vision, what is the point of hiring extra writers? As long as it's good why does it matter. Like how Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant wrote every episode of the Office by themselves, Gervais also wrote every episode of After Life by himself. To look more at North American stuff, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckman wrote every episode of The Last of Us. So what would extra hired writers be doing in situations like this?

On top of that I read that Netflix at least has been building a stockpile of scripts. And since they are shows where the seasons are short and you would typically have the whole season written before one episode is released. So if that is true they probably have a bunch of shows they can push into production if this thing goes long.

If only there was someone that Sam knew that works with the team and could help him navigate the press coverage on this. Too bad there is no one like that. Also as a beer nerd, specifically a British beer nerd I can't believe that I never noticed the Fuller's ESB and London Pride hand pumps at the Crown and Anchor. It makes sense since the real pub is a Fuller's pub. It also happens to buy my favourite brewery in the world. Now I am trying to remember if we ever got a scene with Ted trying cask beer. Since he hates tea, I am guessing he would also hate low carbonated, cellar temp beer.

She settled with him out of court back in the 90's. And my understanding is that she has been asking for the courts to drop the case since then. Not making any suggestion that those choices were right or wrong, but her message has been pretty consistent for a long time.

Except Disney doesn't own the Fox network. When they bought Fox the company, they took everything but the network, Fox News and I think their sports Network. My understanding is Fox cancelled 911 because it was expensive to license the episodes produced by Disney.

This one was pretty good. I think my favourite thing was that the new strategy didn't automatically turn the team around enough to have them win. With lesser writers that would have definitely happened. I also liked how in the running practice Jamie had no problem with it and was ahead of everyone, I always enjoy little payoffs like that. Don't really care about Keeley and Jack. Because nothing is really going on with it. I wish we had spent more time at Sam's restaurant getting to know his kitchen staff instead. For Keeley it would also help if we had a better idea of how much of the company Jack owns. Is it a 50-50 thing which wouldn't be so bad or does Keeley only own line 20% of KJPR? Also Keeley being basically off in her own show was really obvious since if she had been interacting with the team and doing PR she could have mentioned to Sam that his message was important but there is no way to win a twitter fight. Trent at the end was pretty fun. A nice reminder that if you become a football writer for a major newspaper it's probably because it is a sport you love. Although I am wondering if in the end he is not going to be able to publish his book at all because he won't be able to remain the impartial fly on the wall observer. There is also me who is ok with seeing Nate realize he was an asshole and trying to be better without any kind of forgiveness or acceptance from Ted or the Richmond team.

Ok apparently I do remember more. Brian Doyle Murray was either his landlord or maybe his boss. His dad was played by Chris Elliott's actual father.