DearEvette

For me, jumping shark isn't necessarily a show going bad or sliding down. It is one specific event or plot point is so fucking ridiculous that you can tell at that moment that the creators have lost their damned minds. And of course it leads the show into something you no longer recognize. For me that was the introduction of B-613 on Scandal. Prior to that, the first 2 seasons of Scandal were fantastic. The election stealing plot, the assassination plot, the episodic stuff with Olivia as a fixer. Great stuff. But then we meet her parents. Her mom is a terrorist and her father is the head of a shady organization and suddenly so is everyone else around her and it has cannibalized the show. Everything became about B613 and its spy vs. spy shenanigans. Two seasons worth of character development was shit canned, personalities were retconned and the show went from a nice serialized show with some soapy elements to a murky conspiracy laden crap fest. I could never watch again after season 3.

I enjoy a good 'What/If' episode. When the show imagines a different timeline or continuity for their characters if something about the past had changed them. Grey's Anatomy had one that imagined what it would have been like if Ellis hadn't had Alzheimer's and she had been loving and supportive and had actually married Richard and Meredith had grown up in a loving supportive household. Grace and Frankie's most recent season ended on a what/if that imagined what the ladies' lives would be like if they hadn't moved in with each other. Tv Tropes also has a variation of this trope called 'For Want of a Nail' where one small thing creates a ripple effect that sometimes lasts that sets off a whole new direction or continuity for a show or sometimes just confined to one episode like a tv ep version of the butterfly effect. One of my favorite episodes of Community did this with Remedial Chaos Theory did this in combo with a groundhog day trope. And the resultant 'darkest timeline' was funny. Also Eureka's 4th season premiere used this trope to change some continuity and to jump off a bunch of new storylines.

On Atlanta, season 2 episode Barbershop. Paperboi's barber Bibby is a one off character, never before seen but the episode revolves around him and the actor who played Bibby made the entire episode a complete riot.

I've spent the last couple of weeks on and off bingeing this show. And I just got to this episode. It more than any one to date had me laughing from start to finish. Sober Grace was a riot. Also Coyote and Frankie knowing the names of all the orangutans(and being concerned about which one escaped) just felt .... right. And as much as I like the older set, I really love how this show does the relationship dynamics between Bud, Coyote, Mallory and Brianna.

Man... I thought for a hot minute that maybe the baby was Bobby's and maybe Shay might be wrong about Lisa. But no dice. Lisa is even more trifling than ever. Poor Bobby. His walk off, trash toss after Josh spilled the beans was sad-funny. Big props to the wardrobe dept. for Shay's clothes. I LOVED that red jumpsuit she was wearing. I think I girl sobbed out loud at the ruination of if during the food fight. Shay's marketing ideas were great, but so wrong or Trey's vision and mission. And I loved all the dubious glances the guys were exchanging with each other even as they jumped to do her bidding. Heck, even Green Eyes seemed afraid of Shay. When Shay showed Josh her designs I was like... uh, the 80s called and want their TLC designs back. So when Josh said the line about the Bell, Biv, Devoe reunion, I about died. LOL. Trey's observation about him, his ex, her white husband and their co-parenting their kids encapsulates my favorite thing about the show. I super enjoy the dynamic of Trey, Shay and Josh. But I also like his ex-criminal roommates too. Their appearances are just right.

OMG! This is so me! I hate that entire sequence in the movie. The dragon egg contest in Goblet of Fire is the same. None of the cool tension in the book. Just Harry flying all over Hogwarts. But that final fight between Harry and Voldy in the last movie was a travesty. Honestly, from the moment Neville beheads Nagini to the moment Harry offs Voldy is just great climactic scene crafting in the book and ALL of that is lost in the movie.

Francis Ford Coppola is responsible for one of my favorite and one of my least favorite book-to-movie adaptations. One of my favorite adaptations is The Godfather. Not only was it faithful to the book, but it got the feel and spirit of the book just right. In most cases if I really loved a book, and even if the adaptation is good, I am still going to give the book the 'win'. But this is an exception to the rule. I loved the book, but the movie, imo, is stronger. Mainly because of Coppola's direction and the performance Al Pacino gives during the evolution of Michael Corleone. The final scenes in the movie still hit me in a way they do not in the book. Which is rare because typically I think a movie isn't able to capture some of the visceral emotion I feel when reading a good book. But this one did. I will say the book gave some context and background of the Corleone family that movie didn't so I understood the characters a bit better in the book. One of my very least favorite adaptations is Dracula. I remember having to reluctantly read it in a freshman lit class in college. My only exposure up to that point had been Bela Lugosi. I had no expectations when I actually read the book. But when I did I loved it. It was actually quite an exciting read and has become one of my favorite books. And I was so excited when it was being turned into a movie by FFC. But, holy shit I hated that movie! It looked good and great costumes and set design, but it had none of the spirit of the book. The book is a horror/suspense story with Mina as the heroine (with Van Helsing as her helper) who slowly runs The Count to ground, cutting off his support systems and his avenues of escape one by one until they basically corner him and finally get him. The movie was a bloated mess with none of the horror or suspense of the book. My biggest takeaway is Gary Oldman's laughable wig.

I am still experiencing this. If I do go to the last page and scroll backwards I will see the gold line on the post which marks the first unread. I see the gold outline if I click on notifications of a specific, post (yours for instance) or in the default 'all activity' stream which takes me to that specific post

Yeah, that is one of the reasons why I also think Eureka delivered one of the most satisfying series finales as well. The series finale really delivered on the tease and promise of that season 1 finale. They ended up exactly where that S1 finale said they would. I always appreciated that.

I always liked how the romance between Allison and Carter on Eureka played out. He was all gut instinct and went with his heart while she was all cool intellect and thought with her head. So it made sense how the viewer always knew from jump that he liked her but she was more cagey. But they gave broad hints in S1 that it wasn't one sided. And even thought they brought in other love interests for each one over the course of the series, when they finally put them together in S4 it was worth the wait.

So basically her daughter is the reason one series started stinking and her son is now the reason a second series started stinking? Jeez. Also unfortunately you'll never get away from the romance element in these books. Her background is romance as she began her career writing in the category lines. And these books are always categorized under romance in almost any search I do. Which is too bad because they aren't really romance despite the juvenile romantic antics and the sex. However she wants to keep her romance readership which is notoriously loyal when it comes to "author auto buys" which probably goes a long way toward why this series is still limping along. Romance as a genre has a lot of expectations by readers when it comes to authors and what they write so that even an author who has a huge readership when they write, say, historical romances might not get a warm reception by those same readers when they write a contemporary. It is one of the reasons many romance authors when they try to branch out into a different genre will write under a pseudonym in order to not disappoint readers who associate their names in a specific way with the genre and also, to grow a new and different readership without any baggage. I just learned that audiobook narrators do the same thing They'll narrate under different names sometimes depending on the genre. I am still pissed that her name is the prominent name associated with the Fox and O'Hare series since it is now glaringly obvious that what made that series so good wasn't her at all, but Lee Goldberg. Yeah, I am bitter.

Oh I really liked the Mother's Day episode. I love the mother's day cards crafting conversation with the ex-cons. So funny. Just the visual was funny. I liked the preacher trying to mediate between Trey ans his mom. He was laughably bad. "Oh another daddy? didn't see that one coming." I liked how the whole thing with Josh panned out. The intercut scenes of what Trey told him to say vs. what he actually said. LOL. But I really liked how they didn't make it some big marriage issue but t was really was about how well Josh knew his wife and what was best for the kids. I am one of those who thinks this season is better than last. I like how the show is evolving. I agree with a lot of this. I don;t necessarily think Shay is being marginalize as much as I think they are broadening Tray's world a bit and we are seeing more of the inner workings of her relationship with Josh. But I do think Haddish is so good in this that I would love to see her more. I will say I am really enjoying her new friendship with Faith. I am glad they are giving her a friend. She needed someone outside of Josh and Tray and I think Faith and the few times we saw her in her workplace helped to round her out a bit. On a technical note: Ever since Queen Sugar, I have been paying a lot of attention to how black & darker skinned folks are lit on tv and they do a great job of it in this show.

This reminds me that I was bummed when The Real O'Neals got cancelled. I liked that show and Martha Plimpton was especially great in it. I don't remember if the ratings were really that bad, but I think on some level their cancellation was because the lead actor pissed the bed and as a result everybody got punished.

Oh, I know Wanda was portraying Weezy. I wasn't referring to her when I mentioned the replacement actress who was playing Mother Jefferson in the live broadcast. ETA: Also, I think they ran an ad for the new summer show Grand Hotel every single commercial break. I felt spammed by a tv show.

I thought it was going to be cheesy, but I enjoyed it. It was a nice departure and a chance to see a bunch of actors working together who you normally wouldn't see together. I liked the Jefferson's outing a little bit better than I did All In The Family. I thought Jamie Foxx was a bit broad when he first appeared as George in the All In The Family ep, but I can't deny he brought in a burst of energy that the show had felt lacking up to that point. But he had course corrected very nicely on The Jeffersons and that felt more natural. Marisa Tomei was great as Edith. After the live show there was a retrospective that interviewed the cast (and Raven Symone for some odd reason, but I digress...) and they showed clips of the original episode that this cast had recreated. And the scene at the table where Archie is mad about the toast was sharper on the original. Archie was meaner, Edith came off as more beleaguered. Woody and Marisa totally softened the edges a bit. I thought Wanda was a bit miscast. Also the original Mother Jefferson is just so iconic in my head I could not really see the replacement actress in her place, also she got the disdain down correctly. Kerry Washington and Will Ferrel were great as Helen and Tom Willis. Will got Tom's stuffiness right, and Kerry got Helen's imperiousness right. In the after show special they showed the original N-word scene between Helen/George and Helen and Tom in the Hallway. Comparing the two, I do think, again, Kerry's Helen was a little softer. The original Helen was much more barbed toward George. Also I remember thinking Justina Machado was such an odd casting for Florence when the case was announced. Not because she was Latina, but becuase I didn;t think she could channel the essence that was Florence. But having gotten such a great surprise when Marla Gibbs showed up, I think the Justina Machado announcement was a red herring to disguise the surprise. Overall, nice experience. Also saw that during the whole hour I watched it trended 7 out of 10 top items on twitter. Good for them.

I'll take for 100 Alex.

I recently noticed, maybe within the last day or two, that when using any of the streams under the 'My activity Stream' list, when clicking on a topic link, rather than taking me to the first unread comment (as had been the default) it now takes me to the very first page of the topic. I double checked the settings, especially on the custom streams and they all are set to link to the first unread comment.

Big Shots - aired on ABC in 2007 for one season. It was a breezy, guilty pleasure kinda like Mistresses was, except it was about four guy friends. I thought it was well cast with Dylan McDermott and Michael Vartan being stand outs. And four main male cast characters were all different from each other and had different enough storylines that is was interesting. Of the female characters Nia Long and Paige Turco were my favorites. The show started out a little glib and glitzy, but I thought it hit its stride in the second half of its season. I especially liked the storyline of Michael Vartan and Nia Long's BFFs James & Katie who slowly realized they really liked liked each other. They had great on screen chemistry and snappy banter (although I think the show lit Nia Long criminally bad). I think it was a casualty of the writer's strike. Too bad.

I frickin LOVED that trailer. Those kids look excellent. What is really surprising me, though is all the commentary surrounding this show. If you ever though for a minute (like actually nobody really would think it) that race was not a complex issue, read some commentary around the optics of the show. You have these Hoteps going on and on and on about tv being for the white man and this show is an agenda blah blah blah. You have fans of blackish who dislike the casting of Tika Sumpter as Bow's mother, you have non-biracial folks who think it is being naive about blackness, you have people who don't think it gets communes right, you have people who hate the title, and you randos who don't want another 'retro' ABC family comedy. Good lord, it just looks like a funny family comedy!

Been through this with The Walking Dead. Had no desire to revisit it with GOT. Probably not a coincidence that both are adaptations from work from another medium that allows a lot more space & time to tell a story. The original story isn't done and no matter how involved the original creator is, it is obvious the new creators can't carry over the entire vision, especially as it has to build on what came before.

Yeah, I don't remember if you read the Kate Daniels series, but Mercy & Adam remind me a lot of Kate and Curran. Just these two series always go together in my head, usually because the books always seemed to be released at the same time and the writing, characters, and situations were always uniformly excellent. And each respective writer does their world build so well. In this one, I was a little apprehensive about he main antagonists only because they had already wreaked some havoc in the last Charles & Anna book. So I knew they could be troublesome.

I liked it too. And I understand what you mean by not thinking she is sexy. I mean, she is HOT, but she doesn't exude sexiness. Except once... in Strange Days the Kathryn Bigelow movie starring her and Ralph Fiennes. She was a total bad-ass named Mace (she had long braids in that one too!) and she was super hot and super sexy and you just wanted her and Ralph to shag each other to death. But he was too stupid to see what was in front of his face because he was obsessed by Juliette Lewis' terrible character. I did not recognize her at all! But then again her tv husband was so distracting. I swear he looked like a human version of The Cowardly Lion.

So CBS released some trailers for their new shows coming this fall and one them is a drama called All Rise starring .... GASP... Simone Missick....a black woman. They have a couple of others with POC leads, EVIL starring Mike Colter. And a comedy called Bob Hearts Abishola which seems very Mike and Molly-ish (I never actually saw a single episode of Mike and Molly, but this is what I imagine it was like). But Honestly watching the trailer for All Rise I kept checking to make sure I was actually on CBS' site because the show looks positively ABC-ish. I'll check it out of course because I love her and the show actually is something I'd normally watch... on ABC. Here's the trailer:

Hard pass on Miley but I was so damned pleased to see Nicole Beharie show up I had to rewind to see if it was really her! Yes. I will be all over that episode!

Just finished Storm Cursed by Patricia Briggs. It is the 11th book in the Mercy Thompson series. So far no series fatigue here. I enjoyed it immensely. This one was nice tense with a good formidable foe for our heroes. And made some real interesting character choices for 2 of the series long term characters. And started to fill in some blanks nicely for a fairly recent addition to the recurring cast.