Black Knight

Given that practically every character actor based in NYC appeared in the L&O franchise at some point, I suspect it'd be faster to list SATC's secondary/guest actors who didn't appear on L&O! (Yep. I just had some fun on IMDB randomly clicking on actors who did an ep or two of SATC. Most of them have at least one L&O appearance.)

I just binged all five episodes, and Ioved them. It helps for me that it's been a while since the last season aired, so although I know the "Joe is surrounded by other wonderfully awful people" thing has been done before, enough time has passed that I don't mind another go-round of it. So many darkly hilarious moments in this first batch of episodes. I enjoy a good murder mystery and am a huge Christie fan, so I enjoyed Joe trying to play detective and Nadia schooling him on the tropes. I couldn't believe the show passed up a chance to have them discuss those attendant with the "house party with a murderer on the loose," but I suppose there wouldn't have been a way to get that conversation in that wouldn't have made it too obvious to Nadia what's really going on with Joe's study of murder mysteries. I don't think Kate can rightly be considered one of Joe's women, as he's not obsessed with her yet, and I'm not sure he ever could be even were he not already in a "you" relationship with Rhys. She's so strongly herself that she's very hard to project onto. I suspect if they did date for real, it would be more like that relationship Joe had with a woman in S1 when he and Becks were broken up for a little while, where he liked his girlfriend fine, but there was no obsession and it was easy for him to leave her for the woman he was obsessed with. The Rhys thing is an interesting shift in that he wants himself and Joe to be murder partners. Love was of course fine with the fact Joe was a murderer and that she was a murderer, and felt they should be able to bond over that, but she wasn't specifically envisioning them having fun murdering people together. Love and Joe were killers in the same way, in that all their kills were triggered by particular circumstances. They didn't go out hunting for people to kill. It's that distinction that has allowed Joe to rationalize his murders, to hide from himself what he is. Rhys is holding up a different mirror than Love did, and I'm intrigued to see if that finally gets Joe to become self-aware.

Last I checked, protecting your QB was part of football. The Niners knew going in that the Eagles had a great pass rush. Now obviously two QBs getting injured is a freak occurrence even against a great pass rush, but it certainly raises reasonable questions about whether a non-injured Purdy would have been able to be effective while dealing with that pass rush all game. A great pass rush can render even proven, future Hall-of-Fame QBs ineffective. All their comments are giving the Eagles a lot of bulletin board material for the Super Bowl though. Since the Niners are obviously hoping that the Chiefs will "expose" the Eagles, you'd think they'd tone down the trash talk a bit.

The "my last year will be played with my son" thing just seems so narcissistic to me. I'm sure it's already tough enough to be playing basketball as LBJ's son when he's not a great player, and he'll have to live with knowing that whichever team ends up with him did so because they wanted his father, and then of course having to play on the court at the same time as his more talented father, with all the fights about his playing time and role on the team you can imagine his father starting with whatever poor coach ends up with this duo. And then when his father retires, the team will demote or drop him. He was already going to be overshadowed by his father as it is, but this is like the black hole of overshadowing or something. Hopefully I'm wrong and Bronny actually loves the idea of playing a season with his dad and doesn't mind all the negative baggage that will come with it, but...man, that just seems like a lot to put on a son's shoulders.

So Roger Goodell wants to be able to flex games into TNF as well. Talk about refusing to see what the real problems with TNF are, because then they'd have to do things they don't want to do, like only schedule teams coming off their bye week into the game (which would be a scheduling headache) or drop TNF altogether (bye sweet sweet Amazon cash). But all this is going to do is turn games that would have been great on Sunday into games that are blah on Thursdays. The problem is not the match-ups, the problem is that teams playing on Sunday do not have adequate preparation or recovery to play another game just four days later at a really high level, especially once it's a few weeks into the season. Now imagine being suddenly flexed into TNF to boot. I hope the players and teams fight this stupid idea.

Apparently he has an underwear line. I suppose the selfie was successful in that sense, since I had no idea his line existed and now I do. Free viral promotion!

Sure, they might be bringing Aidan back for the good press and draw in longtime fans, but that would be all out the window if SJP then deliberately had him written badly so that JC wouldn't want to come back for the third season. If SJP is willing to suck it up and work with a guy she doesn't like in order to keep the show going, why would she simultaneously be planning to tank it and thus hurt chances of keeping the show going? It's contradictory. The other thing is that actors don't mind nearly as much about bad writing as fans do, because actors get paid and that paycheck is usually the most important thing (how many actors can you name besides Kim Cattrall who have turned down the money for bad projects when they were otherwise available? It's rare), and so such a scheme on SJP's part would be quite likely to fail. And a longtime veteran like SJP would know that very well. Corbett is surely aware of all the bad publicity AJLT has gotten for writing characters and storylines poorly, so he knew what he was signing on for in terms of writing quality and he's obviously fine with it because $$$. He isn't an A-list star raking in the millions; like most actors he's going to sign on to whatever he can get and put up with the writing so long as the paychecks clear.

Funny, it's the reverse for me. I don't love Peyton, but I like him, and my perception of Eli will always be colored by what he pulled his draft year. Whiny baby. There are better QBs that went to worse teams without crying about it. Admittedly Eli was supported by his father and might not have been such an entitled jerk without Archie's input. (And I'm a Raiders fan, so that has nothing to do with it - I hate the Chargers.)

He already tried that. I wouldn't put it past him to try again, but there's still the same issue of Marks being perfectly content to sit and wait until the right offer comes along, if ever, as he did with Harden and the first KD trade request. Teams were already not really stepping up to the plate, given KD's age and injury history, and now KD's both older and currently out due to injury. What can the Nets really get back for him that is better than just having KD play whenever he's not injured? He's not the kind of dude to half-ass it on the court and the Nets know that, and a team with KD on it will always be a draw for fans as well as in contention. Ben Simmons is not going to sell tickets by himself.

Yeah, that one seems like made-up gossip to me. Aidan's not a character who has to be brought back and addressed. Aidan's not "the one who got away" for Carrie. She cheated on him constantly with Big the first time around, didn't marry him the second time around because she still didn't want to commit to him, kissed him in the second movie out of boredom and then rushed back to Big... If SJP doesn't want to work with him, all she would have to do is just...not bring him on. AJLT already had an entire season without him, even though Carrie was widowed in the first episode. SJP doesn't have to torture herself working with him in the second season and see to it that he's written so badly that he won't want to come back. My guess is that he's back because SJP actually does like him.

Was Betty staff, or just a resident who likes to try to run things and tell people what to do? I assumed she was the latter because of her age.

Yes, this show reminds me of Cold Case in that way. The victims on that show were mostly sympathetic people too. It's easier to take when seeing an episode one week at a time, as opposed to watching four episodes close together, so this will probably smooth out now that we're past the initial dump of eps.

No, it can be done. My mom and I would do it when we wanted to play but didn't have two other people around to make up a foursome. Basically you build the walls the same way, and face each other, and when you run out of your own wall's tiles then you move over the wall to the right to yourself. It's a longer game but also more likely to end with someone actually getting mah jongg. This was such a great episode. Charlie's fight with Irene and Joyce killed me. Stating that she wasn't going to fight little old ladies, and being forced to go back on that because she was getting stabbed with knitting needles and such. Hee!

I consider S3 the peak of X:WP, but S4 was also very strong. After that, episodes and arcs were more hit-or-miss. The writing for Gabrielle would be so annoying sometimes, and Steve Sears stepping back from writing really hurt. And Lucy Lawless being allowed to incorporate too much of Diana/Meg into her portrayal of Xena, and even outside the comedic episodes, was a killer for me. But I feel the two-part series finale was excellent, and was really happy that the show closed strong.

His claim that he was "blindsided" is total bullshit. The day she filed, they already had the entire settlement worked out, from their finances to custody of the children. That's why the divorce went through so fast and there weren't any interesting court proceedings for the media to report on. Wealthy high-profile couples who want to avoid public drama and messy fights typically handle their divorces this way (filing only after they have already worked out everything), and I wasn't surprised that Bundchen and Brady turned out to be like that. If he somehow got through the entire working out of the settlement still thinking that she wouldn't actually file once they'd agreed on everything, well, that's just pure silliness on his part. But I really don't think he's quite that obtuse. It's PR damage control because he knows a lot of people take her side and/or think he was dumb or foolish, especially since this season really turned out not to have been worth losing his marriage over his decision to un-retire: Losing season, backing into the playoffs, quick elimination.

Yes, but that means Wilson's a year older and another season will have been wasted. The whole point of acquiring Payton is to try to fix Wilson, so waiting a year just to pay less doesn't make much sense. After what they gave up for Wilson and, crucially, signing him to that big extension, they need to do whatever they can to make that work. It is interesting that Payton's agreed to it, but maybe he doesn't want to be that coach who walks into a great situation and gets derided as "winning with someone else's team," like Jon Gruden did. He may feel like he's got something to prove, especially with people saying the last few years that maybe he's nothing without Brees.

I'm not sure this retirement will stick, once his body's had time to recover this off-season. OTOH, maybe it really was Miami or bust for him, so once the Dolphins said they weren't interested in pursuing him this year, that decided it for him. If we look at some of the other teams that were mentioned as possibilities, you can see why he wouldn't want them. The Niners/Shanahan don't protect their QBs. The Raiders usually have an awful defense.

That wasn't really the issue. Like George said, they'd be able to work it out, and he'd already contacted someone to help with that. The real problem was that that would have necessitated going over the books, and Taffy didn't want the bridge loan and whatever other financial shenanigans he'd pulled coming to light.

No, that wouldn't work. Serious poker players generally keep their cards face down and only tilt the corners up briefly to peek at them. You'd need a camera angle pretty much level with the table, and those angles would typically be blocked by players' bodies. There would be issues with camera resolution, too. If you look up videos of televised poker tournaments, you'll see how the networks have to do it: Tables with railings the players rest their arms on, that have pinhole cameras built into them. Players keep their cards face down a couple of inches away from the cameras, so that when they do tilt the corners up quickly, the cameras can catch it.

They need OL upgrades in the worst way. And also a coach who knows not to have a TE trying to block the best rusher.

I was surprised by the extended cold opens at first, but now they're one of my favorite things about this series. Realistically, because of Charlie's superpower, it's never going to take her long to zero in on the murderer(s). But I like the extended cold opens for the way it really lets us get to know the people involved. And I'm impressed by how well the show maintains suspense through the sequence, sometimes about the identity of the murderer or victim, sometimes about how the murder is going to occur. Noting things that seem like they'll be clues later on is also fun.

I want the Eagles to win it all because I want to see what Quinta Brunson will do with it on Abbott Elementary!

Personally I didn't expect the 49ers to beat the Eagles today in any case. I think the long-term ramifications for SF from Purdy's injury are, consequently, worse than them losing a game I figured they'd lose anyway. This was an opportunity to evaluate Purdy against a top team and defense, and they missed out on that chance because of him getting injured right away.

I just finished this one, the last of the four that were dropped Thursday, and I'm sold on this series. Chloe Sevigny was great in this one. Something interesting is how Rian Johnson is addressing the "Jessica Fletcher problem" of how a protagonist who does not work in law enforcement gets involved in all these murder mysteries. The popular joke/theory has been that Jessica Fletcher really did all the murders herself and framed others. And Johnson is doing that here in a certain way: In three out of four murders so far, Charlie's said or done something that in some way affected the course of events so that murder resulted. (The Subway episode is the outlier.) It's a great explanation for how dead bodies pop up everywhere she goes. The best advice to give to anyone who comes across Charlie is: RUN! She's not doing it intentionally, but listening to her will get someone killed. Too bad she can't use her second superpower to get Cliff killed. I feel bad for Benjamin Bratt. While Natasha Lyonne and the awesome bevy of guest stars get to live it up, he's got a thankless part. There's no interiority to the character; he just shows up every now and again to glower at and temporarily menace Charlie. There's no suspense because the show would be over if he caught her. It's just a device to keep Charlie on the run.

Yes, but the question is when he will actually move on to the post-football phase. We've already seen one abortive attempt. I do understand his exasperation with the questions. Seriously, he's not going to declare what he's doing next year on some random interview. He'll announce it on his own social media once he's decided, or possibly in a high-profile interview that's teased ahead of time to be the one in which he declares his intentions. It's a waste of time to ask.