selkie

I enjoyed about the first 2-3 seasons of Sex and the City because it actually made me laugh on a regular basis. I really didn't care about Carrie/Big or Carrie/Aidan or the other attempts at romantic relationships on the show- it was all about the tantric yoga sex scenes and the' you've got to be kidding me?' reactions. Then the show stopped being funny and I only really watched out of habit.

One of my favorite female friendship stories on tv has been between Bev and Carol on Episodes. At the start of the series, Bev was inclined to write Carol off as another Hollywood flake, but over time they've become quite close and supportive of each other. Though it's a friendship that has typically massively failed the Bechtel test because so much of the on-screen bandwidth tends to involve discussions of Carol sleeping with another one of her male bosses even though she knows it's a bad idea. (Someone on the Episodes subforum described Carol as a baby bird who tends to imprint on whoever has the big office next door, and it fits.) And now Carol's new boss is Helen with the usual results, though Helen treats Carol far better than the guys have. And we have Bev and Carol having the same sorts of conversations about relationships while hiking in the mountains that they've always had. The only thing that's changed is the gender of Carol's partner. So we suddenly go from Bechtel fail to Bechtel pass because it's now Helen instead of Merv?

Murder will get your show cancelled as well- 'Megan Wants to Marry a Millionaire' was off the air the day after one of the bachelors was arrested for murdering his non-Megan wife. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Wants_a_Millionaire

My problem with House of Cards is the same one I had with the later seasons of The Sopranos- if you're going to have someone you could consider as going beyond anti-hero to villain as protagonist, then the villain needs to have a foe that's either his equal or someone he knows he can never beat. I don't want him to win every time, even if he has to work at it. The protagonist villain wins every time is too depressingly like real life to me, and I don't want to sit through that. Early Sopranos did work for me because no matter what other victories Tony had in his life, he was never going to win against Livia, and the show seemed 'balanced' enough for me to stick with it.

The Williams sisters seem to have a decent head for business so it could be they're trying to come up with something a little more all ages here.

The Novak Djokovic special collection from Uniqlo consists of three different shirts colors and two different short colors: http://www.uniqlo.com/us/men/featured/novak-djokovic.html It's also kind of expensive compared to Uniqlo's normal product line- they're largely The Gap of Japan with a few different special collections every season.

Universal showed ladies short this morning. I understand why Elena is in first, but where the announcers saw 'embracing her youth', I saw 'looking rather like a junior'. Anna's program just seemed a little more mature in the battle of the 16 year olds. And, man, I'm glad that Joshi Helgesson used 'Blackbird' for the short instead of the long because she went with such an awful cover of the song and I couldn't wait fori t to be over. It had me thinking of the point in a Grey's Anatomy episode where Meredith has to deliver a message to crying parents about how their kid only has a 20% chance of making it.

I'm glad to see that Polina seems to be working through those issues okay. Even with the bad choreography, there's s distinctiveness to her skating that I enjoy. I think it's a combination of the long & lean creating interesting angles (I thought her Bielman actually managed some elegance) and her tendency to flap her arms in different ways than I usually see on ice.

It's going to be interesting to see if Chen has one great year or a great career at the senior level. Did I hear correctly that she's too young for senior Worlds this year?

Mirai crashed into the board and while she finished her program, the tears at the end seemed to be for physical as well as emotional pain. I think I heard chatter in the background about sending her to medical after her scores were announced. Ashley's interview at the end was of the 'I finally put it all together in competition what I've been doing in practice; they need to consider me a podium threat now.' I like her honesty and how she doesn't play the false modesty game, but it did seem rather self-centered.

I've had a soft spot for Ashley Wagner ever since she got angry instead of crying her mascara off after just missing the team for the 2010 Olympics. Yes, she has all the edge of a mewing kitten outside the ring, but in a sport that still seems stuck in the 1950s world of very slavic-looking people in fur coats and who probably consider Barry Manilow to be edgy, and who still seem to have an expectation of what a 'ladies' skater is supposed to be, she doesn't quite fit in with that. And she doesn't have the personality to go full-on Surya Bonaly or raw talent of Tanya Harding (if Tanya actually had a decent work ethic and hadn't been a criminal...) to cast herself fully into the rebel role, so she's in some sort of uncanny valley of almost like what we'd expect from her but not quite.

I'm very annoyed at NBC for its embargo of short program coverage. Seems like they won't release the shorts to Universal Sports even after the competition is over. (Universal actually tends to rerun meets, games, etc. in the overnights and early mornings rather than doing straight infomercials.) And it can't be for ratings reasons because Universal is also doing both massive short & free skate coverage or Europeans.

The Smithereens mention Jean Shrimpton's hair in 'Behind the Wall of Sleep' The Barenaked Ladies have Harrison Ford and Kurosawa in 'One Week' as well as having a verse devoted to the X-Files

As does "Rock On", covered by assorted bands over the years. And "It's the End of the World" has Lenny Bruce, Leonard Bernstein, and Lester Bangs. Weezer- "Buddy Holly" and Mary Tyler Moore. She's a C lister by professional athlete standards, but "Hey There Delilah"- Delilah DiCrescenzo- has a couple of Ivy League degrees, has qualified to represent the United States several times at the World Cross Country & Track and Field championships, and has a long time boyfriend not in a band. And does indeed still live in New York City.

I chuckled at 'Are you there God?..." but I also give props to Polina for being upfront about a subject usually talked about quietly in back rooms and internet message boards. She did look a little bigger this season- still extremely slight but no longer like you could accidentally snap her in half. Most teenagers would be pretty mortified about having that kind of discussion about their body to the national press. Carolina Kostner gets a 16 month suspension. Be interesting to see if she tries to come back from it. http://espn.go.com/olympics/figureskating/story/_/id/12178927/former-world-champ-carolina-kostner-banned-16-months

LKH was the first author who came to mind for me too. I liked Anita as a kick-ass monster hunter, but the series just turned into porn without plot, and if I want to read that kind of story, lots of writers do it better.

I thought Transparent was a case of some very good actors elevating some scripts that would have otherwise been straight out of the After School Specials slush pile, save for lots of sex.

The Battlestar Galactica reboot- I love science fiction, can enjoy edgy and bleak if there's a good story there, and really dig long story arcs. But I need my speculative fiction to also deliver in the sense of wonder category, and they tried too hard to be gritty and socially relevant that they forgot about the wonder, and I only made it about half way through the original miniseries before I switched over to watching Farscape DVDs.

I wasn't a big fan of hers for her on-screen work, but I respect the heck out of her production company. If not for Lucy and Desilu and their studio space, there would be no Star Trek, I Spy, Mission Impossible, Dick Van Dyke Show, or many other really good shows.

While Bates had a long & comfortable NHL career and played enough games to qualify for the league pension plan, Anthony was a career minor leaguer in the kinds of places where you're making about $18K plus get team-provided housing for the season. You're doing well in North American minor league hockey when you're in the AHL (AAA league) when you can make $50-$70K a year and don't have to get a summer job, even if you don't have a two way contract with an NHL team that gets you a few days here and there at the NHL day/short term pay rate. If there wasn't family friction about it, I wouldn't be surprised if Bates ended up giving most of his share of TAR prize money to his brother because the income gap between the two is pretty huge.

I can still enjoy Miami Vice today because it so very much embraces a very specific time and place rather than trying to be timeless. Okay, and I like the 80s music that was so key to the series that they cleared 100% of the music for DVD release rather than going cheap and substituting music like so many shows did when rereleased. (WKRP, I'm looking at you.) Same goes for the very 1960s feel of the original Hawaii Five-O. On the other hand, we're trying to rewatch L.A. Law now, and 'm just not quite feeling it a few episodes in.

I'm a little curious to see if Fresh Off the boat manages to get Orlando demographics right. While there isn't much of a Chinese population in Florida, Orlando does have a significant Vietnamese population, and I'd actually be impressed if they managed to work in a joke about the Huangs getting mistaken for the Nguyens. But hey, it's Hollywood. They don't normally admit that anything smaller than Miami might have some subtle diversity going on.

And at least Six's nastiness had the excuse of coming through his regeneration to see.... Peri, who manages to be my least favorite companion, even more so than the black & white era screamers like Victoria. If I was stuck with her, I'd be plenty grumpy too.

Tim Bayliss on Homicide:LOTS was bisexual. And then after he'd been dating men for a while, they tried to pair him off with a female detective and fans bitched about that big time. Because Tim already had enough issues and had suffered enough that he never should have been paired with a horribly annoying character played by the excruciating Michael Michelle. You could argue that in Oz, Chris Keller was bisexual and not just a situational homosexual while he was in prison. Probably the same for Beecher. Unpopular The Voice opinion: other than having a bit of a soft spot for Shakira, I really don't care which coach wins the show. And I miss season 1-2 Cee-lo before I realized what a sleaze he was and when he cared enough to do some freakishly entertaining stage shows for his singers.

Yeah. When you're talking 40 hours of film minimum (and frequently far, far more than that) that's going to need to be edited down to a 42ish minute episode, then airport non-drama is easy to cut in favor of more interesting things. Though one of the posters at RFF did briefly make it on screen in TAR 24, IIRC, for being a laptop person helping Margie & Luke find flights in SE Asia.