Black Knight

I don't think Camille was suspecting Adora in Natalie and Ann's deaths. Do you mean the conversation with John? She has no idea about the Munchausen by Proxy at that point; I think she's just always interested to hear something about her mother. And if you mean the conversation with her editor, that's them talking at cross-purposes - she's talking about Marian, he thinks she's talking about Natalie and Ann because he's out of the loop. As far as the sheriff goes, I feel he's the personification of Upton Sinclair's line, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." He's certainly heard the talk about Marian's death being Munchausen by Proxy, but we know from an earlier episode that Adora can get rid of him as sheriff if she wants. But his reaction after being told by Amma's friends that she's at home sick - maybe he had convinced himself up to now that Adora wasn't doing this with Amma too.

Another terrible decision by Camille, even though the interaction itself between her and John was rather sweet and lovely in its way. But really, how she didn't think that they'd be spotted heading into the motel - dumb. As soon as it became clear where things were going to go, I started yelling at them to hurry up and do it already, but of course they didn't get dressed afterwards, so...not quite as bad as getting caught in the actual act, but still bad enough. Luckily for her she's a Preaker and so the sheriff will sit on it. And Richard, oy. The sex with John was dumb but it's a bit much for you to be acting like a cheated-on boyfriend considering the extent of your "relationship" with Camille has been a handjob and one bout of sex. He's quite creepy in how obsessed he is with her in such a short time and on so little. Just like last week when he was wandering around investigating her instead of paying attention to the murder investigation. That it ended up in his learning about Adora's Munchausen by Proxy killing Marian still doesn't excuse it. Adora is really the supreme narcissist. She's already Queen Bee of the whole damn town and has been forever, but she still needs a daughter to be sick in order to get herself even more attention. She's a black hole, that one. And Alan knows but is too in her thrall to do anything. I wonder if he knew about Marian too while it was happening or only figured it out later.

I just read Connie Willis's Crosstalk, about a woman who suddenly gets telepathy after signing up for a surgery that would allow her and her boyfriend to feel each other's emotions and gets much more than she bargained for, and sadly ended up rather disappointed. I love Willis's humorous books (not that I don't generally like her dramatic ones also) - her brand of fast-paced farce is one of my favorite types of comedy, and I got this book on the expectation it would be one of those. And for about the first third or so that's just what it is, and I was really enjoying it. Then our protagonist is being led around a library by her love interest, because they need to hide somewhere there, and Willis insists on spending pages cataloging all the corridors and staircases they go through, while I'm thinking that this could have all been done in two sentences so that we could move on to literally anything else. The book bogged down right there, but I was hopeful that it was temporary and that the plot would start up again. Which, it does...but there is barely a shred of humor in the remaining two thirds of the book. It's all the romance with the love interest, which I wouldn't necessarily object to but this romance was boring to me - it's mostly endless talking about keeping their telepathy secret, and the book goes from having a large, varied fun cast in the first third to basically just the protagonist and her love interest. Also, the protagonist is pretty dense. I slogged through the rest of the book and haven't been quite so relieved in quite some time to finally reach the last page. In better book news, I also read Grady Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism, which has been described somewhat as Mean Girls meeting The Exorcist, and that's a pretty good description. It's also catnip for anyone who grew up in the '80s (which is when the book is set) - even the book cover is purposely out of Choose Your Own Adventures with other 80s stuff tacked on. It's funny, has a really good best-friendship at its core...but does also get quite creepy, with a couple of the truly most gross and disturbing scenes I've ever read. I love milkshakes, but I may never be able to drink one again after this book. And I laughed my way through the film version of The Exorcist, but parts of this exorcism got to me. I loved how the end of the exorcism came about. This book is in many ways a love letter to the books and TV and films of the '80s, from its references to the style of many scenes.

Heh. That reminds me of Bring It On, when Torrance tells Missy that the high school games are just practice for the cheerleaders.

And Alice drops a f-bomb at Grandma Wakefield's birthday party. You can't leave out the best part!

Yup, and I remember after John found out he wasn't Roman, Marlena and Abe had a conversation about how torn she was between the two men and Abe told her that he loves them both too. That always continued.

Reminds me of Chidi on The Good Place - spoiler for end of S1 of that show

Somewhere in the recap it was mentioned that Elizabeth says she's mostly upset that Jessica didn't just tell her that she wanted Sam because Liz would have given him to her (I guess Sam isn't allowed any agency). But of course, Jessica didn't actually want Sam... But yeah, you'd think there would have been something fresh for a betrayal than just another go-round of one twin getting with the other's boyfriend. I seem to remember that any guy that one twin wasn't actively shown trying to get with in the original SVH series, a later "secret diaries" book revealed she had gotten with him after all. Like, Elizabeth was never shown getting with Sam Woodruff in SVH, but a secret diary revealed that she saw him for a while behind Jessica's back. But even in the original SVH Liz's hands weren't clean - she arranged that cheating rendezvous with Ken Matthews, for instance, when Ken and Jessica were seriously involved and Liz herself was with Todd. I'm still stupidly happy that Jessica and Todd were endgame. I don't even know why. I know it's terrible for so many reasons. I always did think that the two of them had more chemistry than Elizabeth/Todd, who were as exciting as a dishrag, but that's not really it. I think it's because Todd and Elizabeth were originally presented as the perfect fairytale OTP couple and I usually ship the underdog couple in the triangle in those scenarios, out of some sort of perverse sense of "Don't tell me who to ship." I did it all the time with triangles on soap operas and it made for lots of painful watching because the underdog couple so rarely actually won out. So to have Jessica/Todd be endgame? That almost never happens to me. Ha.

Yes, Dare Me was about a murder that takes place in the world of competitive cheerleading. At least, I think there was a murder. Or at least some sort of crime. See how little I cared because it was so inconsequential? I think it doesn't help that Abbott's books remind me of the episode synopses for Rizzoli & Isles - almost every one was "Maura and Jane investigate a murder in the world of [something]."

Forget it, Jake. It's Sweet Valley.

I haven't read it, but you got me curious enough to go looking for recaps. Turns out in the first book, Elizabeth was dating and planning on losing her virginity to a guy named Sam (couldn't they have named the character something else? considering what a major character the first Sam was?) whom Jessica hated and correctly had tagged as a douchebag Liz shouldn't sleep with. So she got Sam to make out with her so that Liz would see them and realize how terrible Sam was, but Liz thought Jessica actually really wanted Sam, felt betrayed by both of them, and ran off to London. Five books later, her love interest Max pointed out the obvious, that given that Jessica hated Sam so much and had been constantly telling her sister to dump him, Jess really didn't want him at all and only kissed him to get Liz to dump him. Max got Jess to show up in London to confirm this, and the sisters made up and went back to America. While down this rabbit hole, I discovered that the final (so far) book in the entire SV saga has everyone ending up with someone except Liz, as the book ends with Bruce declaring his love for another woman. Apparently enough readers protested that Francine wrote an alternate ending where Bruce swears his love for Liz instead and posted it on her FB for free downloading. I forgot how terrible her writing is...

I liked Abby when Ashley Benson was in the role, and I think she could salvage the character as she has more charisma than Mansi and Miller combined, but it looks like she's too busy canoodling with Cara Delavigne to come back. Ah well.

Have you read Dare Me or another book of hers? Dare Me is the only one of hers I've read, and I don't know, it seems from the descriptions I read of her later books that they're all just variations on Dare Me. So although I liked it well enough I haven't been trying any of her other books. I've found if a writer's riffing on the same thing over and over the first book is usually the best.

I mentioned in the Unpopular Opinions thread that led to the creation of this thread that I just got the first of those for my niece and she tore through it. I flipped through it and thought they did a good job, but I was disappointed that the artists chickened out on drawing Claudia's book outfits. I wanted to see them try! I loved how we got descriptions of the most ludicrous outfits and were always assured that "somehow Claudia made it all work." But it does make me happy to think that the BSC will be relevant to another generation thanks to the graphic novels. Isn't Sweet Valley also supposed to have graphic novels?

It's already established that such an event is not defined solely by the person at the crux of it - a child cannot meaningfully consent, for instance. And there's a difference between what one might say and what one really feels. Camille was unquestionably horribly traumatized by what happened, even if she's not willing to say it out loud because if she did she'd have to deal with the pain of what happened instead of avoiding it in all the ways she currently does. And she does in her way acknowledge that what happened was a crime, because she included it on her crime scene tour. That's all quite different from someone who says and truly means that it was consensual (and can meaningfully consent). But some may still have to hear Camille actually say that she didn't want the train run on her even though there are various things showing she didn't, and in that respect I don't know that the conversation in this episode moved the needle. I can't remember for sure, but wasn't there something in an earlier episode about Natalie having an incident of violence where she attacked a classmate or something? (Or I could be mixing that up with 13 Reasons Why, which I just watched last week.) And I thought the "baby killer" accusation was thrown at John, not Ashley, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

Well, I had personally felt like it was clearly rape even before tonight and last week's discussion thread rather disabused me of that notion. Camille and Richard had already had a conversation about what happened that struck me as just as explicit as this one. Perhaps more so since the word "rape" was used by Richard in that conversation and it wasn't here. Nothing new of significance was revealed here since we already knew it was a train and that the guy who apologized tonight was feeling ashamed about what had happened (from their interaction at last week's town celebration). And a virgin girl is not going to gladly take on a train for her first time having sex. And her body is covered in scars from cutting herself. So I'm not sure if people who were still confused would no longer be confused after tonight's scene, or if they need to have Camille actually say herself that she was raped.

Personally, no. I do think some people are confused, unfortunately, but such confusion could be cleared up through dialogue. We don't need graphic flashbacks for illustration.

Ha ha, of course the ex-cheerleader group was watching and sobbing over Beaches. And all the insipid talk...no wonder Camille was practically chugging her wine. I still can't figure out why Ashley is sticking with John. All she cares about is popularity and he does nothing for that and didn't even before he became a murder suspect. Of course when Alan finally snaps and yells at someone, it's at Camille about poor, poor Adora. Richard investigating Camille made me uncomfortable. If she doesn't want to tell you, Richard, that's her right. You can either accept that or walk away, but sneaking around behind her back to learn the truth isn't cool. Why don't you focus on the murder investigation?

I never bothered with the California Diaries series because I was so pissed off that Dawn had been sent off from the main series. starri said something on the Unpopular Opinions thread that maybe Dawn was chosen for a spin-off because the publisher had determined in some fashion that she was the most popular character (who knows if she actually was - again, she was my favorite along with Stacey but I've also seen a lot of people who didn't like her), but my kid self wasn't thinking about any of that - I just didn't want Dawn to be in a different series with characters I didn't care about.

Not for me. I enjoyed Mary Anne's initial arc, but she got kind of insufferable once she got her boyfriend, was allowed to wear better clothes, etc. I was reminded a little bit of a line from the Cathy comic regarding Charlene: "It took her 35 years to meet someone decent and 7 seconds to get smug about it." That was Mary Anne to me. Dawn and Stacey were always my favorites.

There really should be. On TWoP there was a thread for, allegedly, the Sweet Valley TV show but all the discussion was of the books, and luckily, although the posters were worried about it, the mods either didn't notice or the mod responsible for that forum was actually a fan of the books herself and so let it slide. The discussion was quite lively and really can support a thread (just look how quickly it's taken over Unpopular Opinions). And for quick cash, she's got the new graphic novel adaptations of the BSC books. I just bought my niece the first one and she tore through it in an afternoon. I flipped through it myself and was overall quite pleased, but I was disappointed that they chickened out on Claudia's outfits. I wanted to see the artists actually try to draw some of the ones described in the books. I loved how we got these descriptions of truly ludicrous outfits and were always assured that "somehow Claudia made it all work."

Heh heh, I had so much fun reading that book when it came out. The f-bomb was amazing. And for an unpopular opinion - [whisper] I had always wanted Jessica and Todd to be endgame. [/whisper]

Why do they think it would be Rafe's baby? Jordan dumped him for cheating on her with Kate and then was in a relationship with Chad for a while before leaving Salem. If she's had anyone's baby, it'd be Chad's.

Ha! Yes, I also remember posting on AOL about soaps before TWoP came about and added soap discussion threads to its website. But in the case of Marlena the serial killer, I definitely remember us TWoPers posting about the storyline. DH said in an interview that when she was told Marlena was the serial killer, she asked if it was Stefano, if it was a twin, if she was being brainwashed - all the usual DAYS stuff - and was told no, it's Marlena. But yeah, they ended up retconning everything, rehiring people and creating Melaswen. God, I remember how hard we laughed at the SFX when Marlena's coffin zoomed through the earth to Melaswen.

Sparked by Nancy Wesley! (aka Patrika Darbo) Aw, I loved Nancy and Craig...