Cheezwiz

Yeah, I'm not loving his character either. I don't find his relationship with Mindy believable at all, and I don't think he brings anything to the show. I'd prefer to just have more Norman and Sandy scenes. Also wishing they had cast someone other than Haley Joel Osment as Norman's grandson. He looks ridiculous in the role. The Scientology goons were great though! I sure hope we get more glimpses of Kathleen turner if there are future seasons - she's always a delight!

I feel the same way about Baumbach, he's very hit or miss for me, but there was a gentleness and lighter tone to this film that made it bearable (or dare I say, enjoyable) to watch even though it was about the dissolution of a marriage. For me, Baumbach's worst was "Margot at the Wedding" - super miserable story, and had no idea what it was even supposed to be about. That was the feeling that I came away with as well - that it did not feel like a marriage that was beyond all hope. They had serious issues, but ones I think could have been worked out with counselling and negotiation. They hadn't descended to that lower plateau of total contempt for one another. And, like others, I'm happy to see Randy Newman is still kicking around and had the opportunity to do create a score for something other than Pixar films. His score for "Ragtime" is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.

I enjoyed this movie overall, but found it a bit overlong. I didn't mind ScarJo at all, and generally I'm not a fan, and as expected, Adam Driver was great. I liked that it showed the emotional turmoil of a family breakup, but the film had a much lighter tone than I expected, which allowed me to stick with it. It was nice to see Julie Haggerty again (she looks great!), and Merit Weaver was fun in her small role as Scarjo's sister. Goodness, the L.A. house they lived in was lovely. All of the lawyers were entertaining. I love Alan Alda, and it was nice to see him again too. I understand the buzz about Laura Dern, but basically she was just doing her Renata character from Big Little Lies. Ray Liotta is perfect as a sharkey attorney. I think one of the points of the film is that lawyers make everything awful, and are the only ones who really win.

I think that's the tricky part for most native English speakers. Two ff's or ll's together make a certain sounds that are tough to guess just by reading, and there are certain sounds in Welsh somewhere in the middle between an 's' 'l' & 'th' sound that are reeally difficult for newbies to replicate without a ton of practice. I definitely liked the consistent nature of the language from the teeny bit I learned: there are no soft 'c' sounds in Welsh, so whenever you see the letter 'c' it will always have a hard 'k' sound. The pretty Welsh name for girls "Cerys" sounds like "Karis". Same thing for the letter 'g' always hard never soft. Easy to remember! Maybe I'll try re-watching Charles's lessons with closed-captioning on just for fun.

I really like the young actor who plays Julian - I had to look him up because I KNOW I've seen him in other things, but couldn't remember what they were. He was in Part One of the latest Stephen King IT reboot. It seems Brendan's dude-bro persona is not really winning people over (his roomie seems to be increasingly giving him the side-eye), but it's not enough of a comeuppance for me. He is such a little jerk, and I have no sympathy for him.

Yes, THIS. This part really bothered me. I was waiting for some kind of surprise twist where she would humiliate him in a devious clever way, and wound up very disappointed - the writing made no sense. I'm saying it loudly so the back of the room can hear: NOBODY LIKES UNSOLICITED DICK PICS. Will continue watching, because I love Kathryn Hahn, and have really enjoyed all of the adaptations made from Tom Perotta's books. And kudos, I guess, to the kid playing her son, because he really does seem like a 100% believable asshole. Hoping he'll get payback at college, but people like that rarely do.

The Queen's private train car looked so cozy and comfortable to me - I wanted to curl up in that nice looking bed and have a nap!

I really think Townsend was a girlish fantasy figure for Margaret. I'd be willing to bet if Margaret & Townsend had been allowed to freely pursue their romance, she would've eventually gotten bored with him and dropped him like a hot potato. Townsend sounded like he had a very steady temperament, and with her constant need for novelty and attention, Margaret would have likely found him stodgy over the long haul. And I don't think she was ever characterized as "nice". She was spoiled from the get-go. Her servants were thrilled when she finally married and left the palace.

The holiday version of Nailed it always cracks me up! Just watched the first two episodes. I'm curious as to whether or not the contestants really are as clueless about baking as they appear to be. Baking is an exact science, and there's always one contestant who assumes they can just totally wing it (hey, I'm looking at YOU, guy who poured half a bottle of almond extract into your cake batter!). I was actually kind of delighted by the seated Santa cakes in Episode 2: they all managed to create a Santa figure with a smile, along with a baby Wes on his knee! Glad I don't have to taste these creations though!

Sadly the UK suffered terribly following WWII. They did not seem to have the huge economic boost from wartime factory production, nor the healthy economy from the post war consumer boom the way the U.S. did. They were still doing rationing well into the 1950's. I always assumed there was an economic uptick during the swinging '60's, but from the sounds of their bailout needs on the show, that didn't happen. I knew the 70's were very bleak economically - all kinds of strike actions, restraint measures, (plus the troubles in Northern Ireland), but I had no idea that they resorted to doing power cuts as depicted in the show!

The whole series, I kept thinking Charles Dance would be so much better as an older version of Phillip than as Mountbatten! Oh, well. My other candidate for an older Philip: Bill Nighy. This is true - it's going to be much more challenging to dramatize events, because so many more of us will have them in our memories. There were a number of little stories in prior seasons that I knew nothing about, and part of the fun of this show is disappearing down Google rabbit holes to learn about the history behind each episode.

Glad it's not just me - I thought that establishing shot of the White House looked really weird, but I didn't have time to look more closely to figure out why.

It's very strange - almost as if they've passed the duties on to a team of rookie writers or something! Don't go Game of Thrones on us show!

Good grief, someone just dump the Marburg files in Charles' lap already! Sorry Chuck, but Uncle David was not a forward thinking individualist, he was a probable Nazi, and a lazy feckless sod to boot. This was probably much closer to the truth. People close to Wallis said that she initially had no real intention to marry Edward, but wound up getting trapped in a marriage with him, and permanently exiled. They weren't a grand love story, but they certainly deserved one another. Me neither - that seemed utterly bizarre. And you KNOW the Prime Minister ain't right if he doesn't like corgis! I don't know anything about the real Heath, but the show is certainly portraying him as a major turd. These final episodes are clearly all a set-up for future marital shit-storms, but the writing feels very off-kilter somehow this season. They've kind of done an about-face on Edward & Wallis, and seem to have dropped any nuance in the Queen's reactions.

I feel the same way about Jacobi - wonderful actor, but Jennings was just spot-on. I wish they had kept some of the secondary actors around for S3: Jennings as Uncle Nazi, and Greg Wise as Mountbatten. They're both at a RL age where they could age up convincingly. I love Charles Dance - he certainly has the right bearing, but Wise looked so much more like Uncle Dickie. If you look at pictures of Camilla from the late 60's (around the time she was a debutante) she was actually quite cute - you could see that she definitely had some sparkle and charisma about her that probably would have attracted men. But alas, no, she did not age well. The way they're portraying Anne is hilarious.

I wanted to know about this too - the close-out titles would have been a good place for that info, but sadly I guess we can infer that not much happened as a result of the tragedy.

Oh, Irish is such a gorgeous sounding language when spoken (much softer than Welsh, which has a preponderance of the guttural sounds we see Charles practicing in this episode). I am fascinated by both languages, as they nearly became extinct, but holy cats, all Gaelic language is baffling! Ha! I was thinking the same thing as I was watching! I kept wishing there were subtitles showing the spelling of the words Charles was trying to pronounce. Not that it would have made anything clearer since the spelling does not give any hint as to pronunciation! The YouTube videos are quite fun - the ones I found broke things into bite-sized chunks, but I didn't keep up with them and forgot the rudimentary basics I learned ("hello", "my name is").

I know I have seen excerpts from it. I don't think the documentary was completely buried as the show suggested. I think it aired in the U.S. and "the colonies" to more favourable reception.

Agreed - I thought these scenes were beautiful, and a great example of efficient world-building. It also made me think of my own great grandparents who would have lived in a village much like this one about 60 years prior to when this tragedy took place. Sadly, if you were a Welsh miner, your life was filled with tragedy, no matter the era.

I've been dying to see more of Tommy and his big-ass Deerhounds watching telly. Too bad this was only in flashback. Hope they sneak him in somewhere else before the season (or the whole show) ends!

Agree! The show's costumers are really nailing it. This was a really bad era for the female royals in terms of headgear. They all seemed to favour unflattering hats that looked like exaggerated floral swim caps or tulle encrusted poufs that sat on top their heads. I do think the Queen is wearing much more flattering hats these days than back then!

I have Welsh heritage as well, so I enjoyed the bits with the language, and hearing it spoken throughout the episode. But good Gawd, you couldn't ask for a wackier language - not quite enough vowels (except 'y') and a surplus of double-consonants! Difficult pronunciation, and as typical with Celtic languages, NOTHING sounds anything like the way it's spelled! Awhile back, I did stumble on some fun YouTube videos that teach some basics of Welsh language, which broke it down into manageable bits. (As an aside, I've always felt that it was the ultimate revenge of both the Welsh & Irish that they wound up much more eloquent and poetic with the invading English language, than the English could ever hope to be themselves!) As for the rest of it, I loved this episode - I thought it was interesting and touching. They have absolutely NAILED the casting for Charles and Anne - both actors are doing a spectacular job, and both have a slight resemblance to their real-life counterparts. The Queen's response to Charles's speech was absolutely savage. Just brutal. She was definitely pissed that he was using the plight of Wales to subtly air his own family grievances (even though the public would never have picked up on it). I'm not sure how closely the show's speech hews to the real thing, but it seemed thoughtful and empathetic rather than divisive. I enjoyed the scenes with Charles in his tutor's home - where he witnessed parents interacting in a loving manner with their child. The wonderment on Charles's face as they both put their little boy to bed was poignant.

Not to take the thread off-topic, but I have always wanted to see Bryan Cranston's portrayal of him in "All the Way" which was originally a stage play. Cranston is a superb actor, and made-up, actually had a significant resemblance to the real Johnson.

Applause! And YES to all of this! Johnson had a cornpone image in the media, but he was certainly no dummy. I do think it's possible that he and Margaret may have hit it off, given their outsize personalities, but unlikely that it resulted in an abrupt policy shift. Caro's biography on Johnson is excellent - Johnson was one complicated dude, and historical dramas that feature him often miss this. Despite his often boorish public behavior, he was not the uneducated hayseed the media portrayed him as. He came from a well connected political family, and knew backroom wheeling and dealing inside and out. If you like American politics and history, he's a fascinating character to read about. Oh, and Ladybird was kind of awesome - too bad she was just in the background in this episode. Any cursory research on Margaret will reveal that she was just an awful awful person.

I'm enjoying Colman's performance, but I can see where others are finding a resemblance to Carol Burnett. She did sketches on her show where she played HRH and spoofed the Royal Family. They're an absolute hoot and can easily be found on YouTube!