BookWoman56

In the matter of the Hotch/Haley divorce, I was much more on Haley’s side than Hotch’s. IIRC, when they married, he was either in law school or had just started in the legal field, working as a prosecutor. Typically that job is a precursor to then going into private practice with a law firm, with more money and more flexible hours. Instead he opted to join the FBI and become a profiler. Obviously he was entitled to make that career choice, but I can’t blame Haley for not being on board with it, especially when his new job brought danger into their personal lives. I believe it was in The Fisher King that a messenger came to their home and delivered a message to Haley to pass along to Hotch. To me, that was the beginning of the end of the marriage. It’s one thing to know that your spouse is profiling dangerously violent killers and rapists; it’s quite another to have that element of crazy show up on your doorstep. Added to that was the issue of Hotch not being able to be there for events related to Jack. I don’t recall the specifics of the incident, but I remember that Hotch was unable to be there when Jack was ill and at the ER or something similar. That incident was probably another nail in the coffin, and I empathize with Haley. I know from personal experience that there can be a turning point in a marriage or relationship, when you realize that your spouse/significant other is simply never going to be there for you in stressful situations on any kind of regular basis. So for me Haley’s decision to end the marriage doesn’t make her a villain in any way. She wasn’t getting what she needed/wanted out of the relationship and I see no indication that the situation was going to change. From her perspective, Hotch valued his job more than he did her and Jack. And when Foyet tricked her into revealing her location and she realized who he was, I don’t think what would have been going through her mind was that now she realized why Hotch pursued serial killers. I think it’s much more likely she would have been thinking that the combination of her ex-husband’s career and his team’s failure to catch Foyet was going to cost her life and quite possibly the life of their son as well. (FWIW, the phone call during which Haley tells Hotch to let Jack see the less serious side of him makes no damn sense whatsoever; she would have been expecting Foyet to kill Jack as well, even if Jack was hiding.) I realize that it’s very unlikely that a serial killer would target the family of a profiler, but that’s another issue entirely. If Haley had married Hotch knowing he was going into a dangerous career that meant he would frequently be away from her and their child, I would have less sympathy for her, even though I firmly believe that either party has a right to bail on a marriage when one or both realizes it’s just not working any more. But it bothers me that now Haley is dead, all of a sudden Hotch seemingly does have more time to spend with Jack than he did previously. What that says to me is that he could have cut back on his crazy hours while they were still married, but chose not to. Again, Hotch was entitled to make the decision he did regarding his career, but I can’t in any way see him as a victim in the divorce issue. He made his choices and those were the consequences; to me, it doesn’t say much for Hotch that Haley had to die for him to make Jack a higher priority in his life.

For me, JJ has come perilously close to the category of “ruined character,” a character that was originally ok but through a combination of bad writing, unbelievable story arcs, and sometimes bad acting, morphs into someone who generally evokes a response of eye-rolling. The situation with her reminds me of what happened to the character of Lisa Cuddy on House. Lisa Edelstein, who played Cuddy, wasn’t happy with the amount of screentime that she was getting. She was apparently BFFs with one of the show’s writers or producers. And so Cuddy went from being a hospital administrator mostly in the background to a front and center character who was in the audience’s face all the time, and who suddenly could do things much better than she used to, up to and including being the one person in the entire damn hospital who could locate a missing infant. Also, at Edelstein’s suggestion, the character became House’s one true love, even though that change necessitated retconning canon to a ridiculous point. A certain level of backlash ensued, ratings declined, and IIRC, the showrunner or head writer or someone at a similar level got demoted or fired. Prior to the last season of the show, Edelstein couldn’t reach a contract agreement with the show, and so was gone from the final season. Result: a much stronger season that focused on the main character and his relationships/issues rather than a secondary character who had been shoved down the audience’s throat one too many times. In the case of JJ, my willing suspension of disbelief just disappears. I can’t get past the fact that this is a character who started out as a media liaison who flatly stated she did not want to be a profiler. This was someone who was traumatized by the admittedly horrific scene in an early season episode where she has to shoot several dogs who look as if they are about to attack her the same way they did one of the victims; her trauma was so bad she nearly shot Prentiss accidentally, and she spent much of that story arc being shaky and almost nonfunctional. So the idea of her going away for a few months or whatever and then suddenly being this fearless, fierce profiler who can engage in physical fights/shootouts with unsubs with no sign of angst at all, and who seems often to be a better profiler than her colleagues who have been doing this for much longer: it just doesn’t work for me. The travesty of 200 just cemented the fact that her character arc was done terribly. If TPTB want me to believe in JJ’s transformation, they need to show, not tell, the steps involved in that change rather than just have it all conveniently happen off screen. I have nothing against AJ Cook, and certainly she was entitled to ask for more screentime, more interesting storylines, higher pay, or whatever. But the result of the writers/producers/showrunners agreeing to some of those requests has not been good. Maybe in the hands of better writers, it would have worked better. As is, for me to regard JJ favorably again, she would have to have her screentime reduced so that other characters have a more equal distribution of screentime. She would need to occasionally display the same kind of doubts about her profiling decisions that other characters have done. She would need to occasionally be wrong, just like everybody else on the team has been. In addition, she would have to rely less on shooting and fistfights with unsubs and more on actually profiling them. That issue is not unique to JJ; I have problems with Morgan for the same reason. In a show that is supposed to be about profiling, the characters spend damn little time profiling and more time getting answers from Garcia’s magic computer, then rushing to the unsub’s location and ending everything with a gunshot or knockout punch. I miss the days when the profilers used their knowledge and skills to figure out why the unsub was doing the things he was, predicting where he would strike next, and leveraging their understanding of the unsub’s psyche to disarm or subdue him. What has happened to JJ’s character typifies, to me, what has gone wrong with the show as a whole. It’s transformed from being a believable and occasionally flawed analysis of the psychology of serial killers to an action-oriented, often unbelievable run-of-the-mill procedural.

While watching, I wondered why in the scenes at the specialty shop, there was at least one closeup shot of the shop's door, complete with store name and logo. But then when Bedelia is sitting on the bench at the train station and looks at the camera, I am fairly sure she has the bag from the shop, complete with store logo, placed beside her so the logo (and possibly the name of the store) would be visible to anybody watching the video. So, I believe she is not only laying bread crumbs, she's laying a very detailed path with road signs of bread crumbs. Anyone watching that video and recognizing her would be able to figure out not only what city she is in, but the stores she frequents.

I could tolerate Garcia in smaller doses if the writers would fix a few things: 1. Refrain from having her compulsively blow her own horn every time she provides information to the team. It apparently doesn’t matter that the team desperately needs the info asap, because Garcia is going to waste time telling the team how wonderfully awesome she is, or how awesomely wonderful she is, ad nauseum. 2. Stop with the infantile terms of address she and Morgan use. “Baby girl” is not an appropriate way to address anyone in the workplace, much less in a government workplace. Even if Garcia likes it, the use of that phrase denigrates her professionalism. She’s a grown-ass woman working a technically challenging job, not a three-year-old getting praise from a parent. (As an aside, several years ago a colleague kept addressing me as “little miss,” despite the fact that she and I both were well into our adult lives and she was maybe 5 years older than I, and our job ranks were equal. She was not happy when I requested her to stop doing it, but she stopped. I did not need for my other colleagues to think of me as a child and as someone with less authority than this person. Garcia doesn’t need that nonsense either.) Similarly, she needs to stop using the various cutesy/borderline insulting terms by which she addresses Morgan. When everybody on the team feels the need to tell you that you’re on speakerphone for fear you’ll blurt out something wildly inappropriate, it’s time to reevaluate how you converse with colleagues. 3. Quit having her go into meltdown mode every time she sees an image of blood and gore. She’s been doing this job for 10 years now. If she can’t deal with the fact that the nature of the job demands that she view bloody and gory photos, then maybe it’s time to … I don’t know, get a different job? It’s one thing to get emotional/have a visceral reaction to a few things, such as a team member being in danger or as noted above, when realizing that something truly horrific is going to happen, such as the woman being attacked by a pack of starving dogs. But if a large part of your job consists of looking at gruesome photos and you can’t deal with it after 10 years on the job, then you need to admit this is not a good fit for you and find something else to do. IRL, Hotch or someone would have referred her to HR for job counseling and/or a transfer. I don’t have any wish for Garcia to die, either accidentally or as a victim (I’d much prefer Morgan for that role), but I’d like to see much less of her. I liked her back when she was quirky but good at her job. Now the quirkiness has been dialed up to a gazillion, and it’s less that she’s good at her job and more that her magic computer knows everything. I’m fully expecting at some point to hear, “Yes, of course I can tell you which man in a city of one million just ate the brand of candy bar whose wrapper you found at the crime scene.” In earlier seasons, she would sometimes tell team members the info was unavailable or they needed more specific parameters, etc. Now apparently all business records, even from mom-and-pop establishments 50 years ago, all medical records, etc., are online and searchable.

What it should have been, IMO: Major profilers and administrators: Rossi: 4 hours Reid: 4 hours Kate: 4 hours Hotch: 4 hours Action figures: JJ: 3 hours Morgan: 3 hours Supporting characters: Garcia: 2 hours Unsubs: 2 hours My thinking is that more time should be spent on the profilers who actually profile. A little less time on the so-called profilers who mainly kick down doors and/or shoot people. Much less time on the tech analyst. Least time of all on the unsubs. With JLH gone, I’d like to think that Reid would get more screen time, but I’m not delusional. I think the best I can hope for is that the “extra” screen time will be more or less evenly divided among the existing profilers, with no large increases in time for JJ or Morgan, both of whom are on screen far too much already for my tastes. I am not overly fond of Hotch, either, but see his role more as the person who manages the team, not necessarily as the person doing a lot of profiling. I’m sorry to lose JLH, because I thought Kate made sense as an actual profiler, whereas with JJ I can’t get past a couple of aspects of canon: her being asked in North Mammon if she wanted to be a profiler and firmly saying that she did not, and her being so traumatized by the dog attack, etc. in Revelations that she couldn’t function and nearly shot Prentiss by accident. She seemed so emotionally fragile during that episode, and so unable to handle the stress of physical violence. I just don’t have the capacity for the kind of cognitive dissonance that would allow me to acknowledge that JJ is unable to handle the psychological stress of a dog attack and having to kill those dogs, but she’s now such a crack field agent that she was handpicked to go hunt down a major terrorist. I am unhappy at the prospect of no solid female profiler on the team, but I don’t necessarily want them to replace Kate either.

I have mixed feelings about the finale. I thought JLH conveyed Kate’s reactions and emotions convincingly, and most of the performances by regular cast members were reasonably good. I’m sorry to see JLH go, because I thought Kate was a believable profiler, with an inner strength that allowed her to be efficient or empathetic as needed but also show a sense of humor. But other aspects bothered me. For starters, in previous episodes it had seemed as if Markayla was the one who was actually chatting with the online guy, and Meg’s participation was limited to just being there for the selfie when the guy asked for photos. Then at the attempted meeting at the mall; so far the girls had not done anything outrageously stupid. You meet someone online, fine; the first time you go to meet your online friend in person, yes, you do that at a public place whether you are 13 or 53. So I found it a bit unbelievable that all of a sudden Meg is so into this guy she’s never met face to face, and that we’ve never seen her actually chatting with, that she would get into a minivan driven by a stranger. And yes, the unsubs played it well, in that a mom driving a minivan will seem safe, even when not. But Meg’s heard the horror stories from Kate, and should have been more hesitant to hop into the minivan. It would have been more reasonable for her to insist they should take a bus or something downtown to the concert venue, while Markayla was not in any way suspicious. A scene where Markayla had been trying to sell Meg on this plan, while Meg expressed doubts about it, would have helped make the situation more believable. Instead, we got the profilers’ scene with the male friend, who describes Meg as telling Markayla to slow things down but simultaneously head over heels about this guy that her BFF also has the hots for. But given that any discussion about the wisdom of this plan was omitted, there’s Markayla as the ringleader of this little expedition. Meg manages to give Markayla the window of opportunity to escape, while Meg is still held by the captors. And yet not once in the hospital scene was there any serious expression by Markayla of guilt over her role in this situation having played out the way it did. Kate at least expressed her conviction that the kidnapping was her fault when the photo tipped her off who was behind the kidnapping. Markayla, not so much. Maybe I missed it, but there did not seem to be even a token “Oops, can’t believe I fell for that routine and now my BFF is being held captive by BSC people.” Instead, she came across more as “This ordeal was so terrible for meeeee! I had to watch someone get killed in front of meeee!” Of course, matching the stupidity of the girls getting into a strange minivan, was the concept of a crime ring that provides victims for serial killers. Now, I am not a BAU analyst, but I kind of thought serial killers enjoyed not just the kill, but the stalking/taking of the victim. They’re predators who derive pleasure from the hunt, not domesticated cats who wait for you to deliver up a live mouse for their entertainment. Going online to buy sex slaves, somewhat believable; going online because you can’t be bothered to hunt down your own victims to kill, not all that believable. While much of the purpose of this finale seemed to be to lay the groundwork for Kate to take a year off on extended maternity leave, I still think this episode would have worked better as the penultimate episode of the season, with Mr. Scratch as the finale, and Kate handing in her resignation then, after having some time to think about not just what happened to Meg but also what her priorities would/should be for the next year. I didn’t hate the finale by any stretch, but it just felt tacked on as a way to give Kate a rationale for leaving the unit. It didn’t help that I loathe episodes that reinforce the “stranger danger” idea that Gideon had debunked in one of the early seasons, when he talked about how we as a society have trained kids to be afraid of strangers in trench coats, when they were overwhelmingly much more likely to be harmed by family members or friends.

I didn't mind Seaver, although she would have been much more believable if she had been brought in as someone who'd been an active agent for a few years, instead of as a cadet. In the hands of better writers, her backstory could have been interesting, because she would have intimate knowledge of the behavior of a serial killer who also had a family, and she would most likely have encountered some discrimination or skepticism while in the FBI because of who her father was. But again, that's assuming her story was created by better writers, which in this case is a risky assumption. I'd be fine with CM jettisoning some cast members, particularly Morgan. Although in general I much prefer the first few seasons, IMO Shemar Moore was definitely the weak link then in terms of acting and although he's improved, he's just barely adequate most of the time. At this point, it's a tossup for me over whether I dislike JJ-centric or Morgan-centric episodes the most. Morgan bores me and JJ's total metamorphosis from media liaison who didn't want to be a profiler to superninja badass profiler is so unbelievable as to take me completely out of the storyline when she is the focus of an episode. I have nothing against AJ Cook as an actress, but I dislike having any character shoved down my throat by producers who are hellbent on convincing me that the character is the most wonderful, amazing, and superskilled person ever. I am also fine with JLH and her role, but was fine with JT and her role. Apparently if you are female and a brunette on this show, your expiry date is much sooner than everyone else's, for whatever reasons. To me, though, the main problem with the show over the past few seasons hasn't been casting decisions so much as moving away from actual profiling, which is what drew me into the show initially, and instead moving to a token two minutes of very shallow profiling per episode, with a good 10 minutes spent instead on action sequences, including one of the team physically taking out the unsub at the end. And every time I see one of those endings, I'm reminded of how Gideon told Reid in LDSK that he didn't need a gun, which I took to mean not that Reid shouldn't carry a gun, but that the ability to figure out the psychology of the unsub was much more critical. My UO is that if 95% of the time you have to rely on shooting the unsub just as he/she is about to kill yet another victim, instead of getting into the unsub's head and catching the unsub in a noncrisis situation, then you're not much of a profiler.

In the last couple of weeks, I binge-watched the later seasons of CM and then felt compelled to rewatch the first three seasons as well. I’d seen some of the later seasons but had missed some episodes and wanted to get caught up. The difference in how Reid’s character is treated between those first seasons and now really stands out. In the beginning, even though his colleagues thought he was quirky and somewhat inexperienced, they seemed to respect his intellect and acknowledge that he could make significant contributions to profiling the unsub of the week. He was frequently able to see patterns that were too obscure for others or to have knowledge that helped solve the case. Also, Reid seemed to be more able to hold his own when he was insulted, such as in LDSK when Morgan gives him the whistle to hang around his neck because he failed his firearm proficiency exam, and then at the end of the episode Reid gives it back to Morgan after demonstrating that he (Reid) could in fact hit a target when it counted. Contrast that with now, when Reid is frequently the butt of jokes or ridicule by his colleagues for being intelligent, as if that’s a character flaw. The pattern now seems to be: 1) the group discusses the case; 2) somebody makes fun of Reid; 3) Reid’s only contribution to the case is marking the locations of the last three victims and drawing a circle around those locations to produce a “geographical profile” (which I could do with zero knowledge of criminal psychology); 4) the rest of the team has the designated takedown of the unsub while Reid is apparently back at the local law enforcement office; and 5) then the writers show that Reid still exists by a token shot of him sleeping on the jet on the return trip. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sure, there’s the occasional Reid-centric episode, which seems to consist primarily of giving Reid yet more tragedy to be angsty about, but it’s increasingly rare that his character makes any substantive contribution to profiling the unsub. Evidently, the showrunner thinks it’s much more interesting to watch a team that supposedly specializes in analyzing criminal behavior engage in physical confrontations with the unsub, whether it’s slugging each other or shooting, than to have that team actually profile the unsub, figure out where the unsub is, and use their knowledge of his/her psychological state to convince the unsub to surrender and only use physical confrontation as a last resort. I’d also like to see Reid have a more fulfilling love life, because it is impossible to believe that women would not be hitting on a guy that intelligent and beautiful. Morgan’s abs do absolutely nothing for me, and I’m sure there are plenty of women IRL as well as in fiction who value intelligence more than muscles, and who would also find Reid physically attractive. The idea that Morgan has women falling all over him while poor Reid can’t find a date (except for a woman who ends up getting killed in front of him) is simply preposterous.

Fatal Attraction bugged the hell out of me when it came out for numerous reasons, most having to do with gender issues. It plays into the cliche that a husband being unfaithful, while not wonderful, is something that the wife should forgive, whereas I can think of almost no movies where a wife's infidelity is treated that way. I know some exist, but not too many come to mind. (Although I have not seen Spanglish, my understanding is that the wife has been unfaithful, and probably 95% of the reactions I've observed to that movie are rage that she tries to treat the infidelity as something the husband should forgive/get past.) It's not that I regard infidelity as unforgivable per se; it's just that there seems to be a serious difference in how it's treated for male characters versus female characters. What killed Fatal Attraction for me, though, is that Michael Douglas has an affair with Glenn Close, realizes she's now BSC, and yet does not let his wife know that there's a BSC person who may do crazy things such as taking their child on an unauthorized excursion, killing a family pet, and finally breaking in to the home to attempt murder. In Anne Archer's situation, after killing Glenn Close, I'd have been telling Michael Douglas to pack his bags. The man didn't want to confess to having an affair, even when his silence meant that his family was at risk. His cowardice endangered his family, and IMO there's no way in hell Anne Archer should have let that slide. Glenn Close is painted as the woman who tried to destroy the marriage, as if Michael Douglas was an unwilling participant in the affair. It is painfully apparent that once Glenn Close is dead, everything will go back to normal. If the genders had been reversed, I suspect there would have been some recriminations, possibly ending in the husband telling the wife that he saved her life, but can't stay in the marriage.

On the issue of Charlotte hanging on to the ring with the idea of someday giving it to her daughter, it's fairly common for people to keep an engagement ring from a marriage that ended, and then have the stone re-set into a different setting, or turned into a necklace rather than a ring. To me, that makes more sense than trying to sell it, when you're only going to get a tiny fraction of what the ring cost. While I can see that it might be considered weird for Charlotte to keep the engagement ring as a ring and give it to a child she had as the result of another marriage, I personally don't see anything wrong with turning it into a different piece of jewelry and giving it to her daughter. Of course, given how the episode turned out, Charlotte wouldn't have to face that issue. I also thought it was not appropriate for Miranda and Sam to offer money in front of the entire group. Doing that put Charlotte in an awkward situation, where if she didn't make the same offer, she would seem as if she wasn't as good of a friend as they were. But the whole situation could have been avoided if Carrie had just flatly announced that she was moving out of her apartment into something she could afford, rather than bringing up Big's having offered her the money, which in turn seemed to make Miranda and Sam offer money so Carrie wouldn't be tempted to accept Big's offer. For whatever reason, they seemed to feel protective, as if Big would somehow exploit the situation. While I don't like Big, I can't see him lending Carrie money and then demanding sex/relationship status with her because of the loan. That said, I don't think Carrie deserved to be bailed out of her own mess, and hate what the writers did with that arc. Showing that you have good friends you can rely on in a true emergency is fine, but instead the show made it seem as if Charlotte needed to be taught a lesson of what it means to be a good friend, which in SATC-land appears to be giving Carrie whatever she wants. And here's the thing: IMO, being a good friend sometimes means you have to refuse to give your friend what she wants, and instead tell your friend uncomfortable truths, such as that it's not your responsibility to lend her money so she can keep a specific apartment.

In the restaurant scene where they are discussing the finances, I saw nothing wrong with how Charlotte treated Carrie. She did not want to offer money, so she said nothing. Was sucking on her straw the mature way to handle the situation? Perhaps not, but still much more mature than sitting there expecting your friends to bail you out because you've spent all your money on designer shoes and the big bad bank won't give you a loan because you have no savings and bad credit. I don't really think Charlotte had any good options in that setting. If she flatly said, "No, I will not lend you money," then that would have sounded as if she didn't approve of Samantha and Miranda offering to lend money. There was no reason for her to walk out; there's a difference between being so offended (rightly or wrongly) by a topic of discussion that you feel you can't stay, and sitting there wondering when two of your friends got their lobotomies, because they're falling over themselves to rescue a third friend from her own stupidity. I don't fault Carrie because she had financial problems; it can happen to anyone through a combination of circumstances. I do fault her for throwing a pity party for herself after Aidan left, during which she seemed shocked that Aidan expected her to buy the apartment to reimburse him or else move out so he could sell it to someone who could afford it, She behaved as if she was entitled to that apartment, even though she did not have the means to buy it and frankly IRL would not have qualified for the loan even with the down payment from Charlotte. This is a sore point for me, partly because I work for a very large bank, in the mortgage area, specifically in the area dealing with what happens when people default on their mortgages because they lose their jobs or their spending habits get in the way of making their mortgage payments. I've heard too many horror stories from parents/siblings/friends who co-signed loans for family members or friends, or loaned them cash they really couldn't afford to lose, and then had their own credit damaged when the person defaulted, or they needed the money back and couldn't get it. It sounds harsh, but one of the most critical pieces of financial advice banks give to parents/siblings/friends, is this: If your family member or friend doesn't qualify for a loan without borrowing from you or getting you to co-sign, there's a good reason for that. Don't co-sign or lend money on a mortgage unless you can afford to pay off the mortgage yourself or lose the money without any strain on your own finances. In Carrie's case, she didn't have the down payment on her own; she had bad credit; the bank rightly saw her as a poor credit risk. That's the point at which many people would face reality and set up a budget, stick to it and within a few years, be able to buy a home. But Carrie felt about the apartment the same way she did about Big during their initial relationship: she wanted what she wanted on her schedule, no matter what. Of the people Carrie knew who were willing to lend her money, Big was the only one who could afford to take the loss if Carrie never repaid him. Instead of accepting his freely given offer, she manipulated Charlotte into doing something against her own best interests, and that Charlotte had already stated she was not comfortable doing. What Carrie did to Charlotte wasn't being a friend accepting a favor; it was being a user.

That incident makes me loathe Carrie and want to reach through my tv screen and bitchslap her. Aidan was generous enough and committed enough to her to buy both her apartment and the adjacent one, all so she wouldn't have to move because she had no way of buying when her building went co-op. Yet when Aidan moves into what is technically now his apartment, Carrie acts as if she's doing him this huge favor by letting him share some of her precious closet space. IIRC, this is also the episode where Aidan's dog ends up eating a pair of shoes that Carrie had forgotten she owned, and she threw a hissy fit as if he'd deliberately destroyed a family heirloom. I understand being annoyed that a pet has destroyed something you love, but when it's something you have literally forgotten you own, I can't muster much sympathy. And no, she displayed not the slightest bit of gratitude that Aidan's generosity saved her from the reality check that she couldn't afford to buy the apartment and so needed to find something she actually could afford. Maybe this episode was foreshadowing the selfishness Carrie displayed when she and Aidan finally did break up for good, and she ended up guilting Charlotte into giving up her own engagement ring so Carrie could have a down payment. It was as if the audience was supposed to give Carrie credit for having turned down money from Samantha and Miranda, and just accept that of course Charlotte should give up her engagement ring. That just bugged on so many levels, not least of which was that the financial situation aside, Charlotte might have wanted to hang onto that ring and save it for the daughter she wanted to have. It's one thing to decide that you no longer want a physical reminder of a marriage that has ended; it's quite a different proposition to have someone who claims to be a good friend show up uninvited on your doorstep, harass you about not having volunteered to lend her a serious amount of cash, and then criticize you for still wearing a ring from a marriage that recently ended. That sequence of events does not, in my mind, automatically lead to "Oh, yes, I insist on giving you my engagement ring so you can buy the apartment, when you've been so careless about your personal finances." It should have resulted in "Bitch, sell your $40K worth of shoes to someone or actually move into an apartment you can afford, get your financial act together, and pay your own damn way." This was not Carrie forgetting to bring money for lunch and having to borrow a small amount of cash or credit for a couple of days; this was serious money that Charlotte was in no way obligated to fork over. Whether Charlotte had money on hand after the divorce isn't the issue; the real issue was that Carrie had been financially irresponsible for many years, and having to give up that apartment should have been the logical consequence of those actions. The writers, OTOH, seemed to regard the situation as Carrie somehow deserving to be bailed out of her own mess, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why, other than they didn't want to have to build a different set for a new, cheaper apartment.

That scene bothered me tremendously because it was so mean-spirited. My day job is as a technical writer, which involves writing materials myself and editing pieces others have written. I also occasionally teach a college freshman-level writing class, and have all too many students who literally do not know the difference between there/their/they're. But Natasha had written those notes by hand, and when you've been writing variations of the same thing over and over, it's all too easy to let a mistake slip by. So, Natasha makes one tiny spelling error, and somehow she's an idiot? It's not as if Carrie's own writing was particularly strong; that "I couldn't help but wonder" verbiage got very old, very fast. I agree with the post upthread that at the scene where Carrie had stalked Natasha at lunch, Carrie was expecting Natasha to apologize when Natasha began her response by saying, "I'm sorry, too." Carrie was self-absorbed enough to think that Natasha somehow owed her an apology for having been an obstacle keeping Carrie and Big apart. Natasha owed Carrie nothing except total contempt and disdain. No, Carrie may not have been able to control how she felt about Big, but she sure as hell could have controlled her actions, especially after one of her BFFs had pointed out to her how hurtful her actions were. Having sex with Big once when he was married to someone else could be understandable, perhaps, as two people caught up in the passion of the moment. Continuing to do so, though, just speaks to Carrie's total disregard for other people. Between the stalking Big at church, stalking his first wife at her work, having an affair with a married man, and then stalking Natasha to force an apology on her, it's as if Carrie had no respect for anybody's boundaries. A few weeks ago at work I heard one of my colleagues, who constantly talks at a high volume, tell another colleague the story of how he met his wife. While in college, he met two women who were roommates, and he began dating one of them. However he had zero interest in her and wanted a relationship with the other roommate, who initially did not like him. So for a couple of years he strung this woman along, deceiving her into thinking he was serious about her; he boasted that he had driven off her other boyfriends. He did all this in an effort to make the woman he wanted jealous enough to become interested in him, and eventually she did decide she wanted a relationship with him. The colleague who was on the receiving end of this story asked him if he had any regrets about his actions, and his response was, "No, I got what I wanted and the other woman eventually married someone else." He was completely oblivious to the fact that this story made him sound like a complete and total jerk; that his actions had most likely caused the friendship between his wife and her former roommate to end in bitterness; and that he had shamelessly used this woman without any regard for how hurt and resentful she would feel when she realized he had seen her only as a path to his true desire. And at that moment when he finished his story, I thought that he reminded me of how Carrie might be equally oblivious when telling new acquaintances the story of how she and Big ended up together. "Oh, we dated and then split up after I stalked him at church and stalked his first wife; he then married someone else and I was in a relationship with another man, but we both cheated on our significant others and only broke off the affair when his wife caught me in their house. But it's all OK because ultimately we ended up together."

To me, Caleb has always come off less as an authentic singer and more as someone playing the part of a singer in a B movie. But essentially I never cared enough about his on-stage persona to get riled up about it, especially in a fairly lackluster season. But the interview he gave dissing fans who had suggested he sing that "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" song and using the R-word to describe those fans, followed by a half-assed apology that really wasn't an apology: that is the point at which I'm angry enough to do something about it. I hate that song with the fire of a thousand suns to begin with. I can't stand Diane Warren songs in general and have major issues with Steven Tyler on the best of days. So I have some built-in sympathy for anyone forced to sing that wretched, wretched song. But Caleb is in a singing competition during which he and other contestants will be told to sing songs they don't like. Other contestants when handed that song have performed it well. So to perform it badly and then rant about the fans who had suggested it? That action was sufficient enough to move me off Team "I Don't Care Who Wins" and onto Team "Anyone But Caleb." So at this point, yes, I'll be voting for any other contestants except Caleb who remain on the show. As noted elsewhere, Caleb has a fairly generic rock voice, but can only perform well when he belts; he's not attractive physically and certainly isn't charming. In short, I don't find him enough of a special snowflake to give him a pass on this issue. I can only imagine what a PR nightmare he would be as the winner.

I based my assessment of Steve's willingness to do that sort of thing on the way he "took care" of the dog he got. That is, bring home a dog, play with it, and then expect Miranda to actually do the grunt work in taking care of it. However, my real point, which I didn't make clear, wasn't so much as to whether it would fit Steve's character to do such a thing, but that the writers would never have had him do it. First and foremost, character "growth" in a male character rarely seems to be demonstrated by having them do things for other people; it's much more common to see them stand up for themselves, make career moves, or possibly learn to get past their commitment phobia, etc. So, for me, one of the ironies of the show was that while it initially touted itself as a show in which female characters were proud of their sexuality, it still conformed to some very traditional gender stereotypes, among which was one I hated from the last couple of seasons, that if you are a female over 40 and unattached, you're desperate and your life is meaningless. Career success and good friends? Those signify nothing if you don't have a man in your life. Carrie did so many things over the course of the show that made me dislike her, that it's sometimes hard to choose which specific one was the worst. But two of them were the previously mentioned episode in which she and Big have sex in Big's home, and then Carrie flits around the place afterwards, invading Natasha's privacy, and still being there when Natasha comes back. It's only after she's caught cheating that she throws a hissy fit with Big, which to me says she's not sorry for cheating; she's just sorry she got caught. Tied in with that is telling Aidan about it just prior to Charlotte's wedding. How self-centered do you have to be to pull that sort of stunt right before one of your BFFs is getting married? The other one that induces rage is her laying into Charlotte about not offering to bail her out of her own financial mess, when she and Aidan have broken up for the second time and she has to buy her apartment back from Aidan or move. It's great that someone has two friends who are willing to volunteer to help with a down payment, even if their doing so makes me wonder when they got their lobotomies. But Charlotte was in no way obligated to offer Carrie money, and maybe it's just me, but if a so-called friend shows up uninvited on my doorstep and throws a fit because I didn't offer a significant amount of money to someone with the financial sensibilities of a five-year-old, that person would no longer be considered a friend. After that point, I could no longer suspend my disbelief, especially when Charlotte caves and gives her the engagement ring. I really could not see why Charlotte would continue to be friends with her, after being treated like her responsibility as Carrie's friend was to be an ATM for someone stupid enough to think that 100 pairs of shoes @$400 each meant she'd spent $4000 on shoes, and entitled enough to believe that even if she couldn't afford her apartment, she shouldn't have to give it up because she was just that fabulous.

Sam remains the only contestant whose voice I like enough to want to listen to, and his stage presence is improving. I think what he actually needs more than anything is some life experience away from his current home. Essentially, there's nothing wrong with him that five years and a couple of bad relationships won't cure. Of the rest, Alex IMO does the same thing every week, and he's obviously talented, but I freaking hate the Jason Mraz style of singing, and I can't watch Alex perform without cringing. And yes, he looks as if he's about to piss himself to the point that I have to take a bio-break myself when he finishes a song. Caleb strikes me as a total poseur; adequate voice, all right, but brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Jena continues to bug. Jessica is obviously getting the villain edit, and while I've liked one or two of her performances, she's not a strong enough singer for me to care, CJ apparently cannot stay on pitch, although he was much better this time around. But one competent performance doesn't make up for all the other weeks. Dexter is the country equivalent of Caleb: adequate singer, no originality, fine to listen to in a bar if you like that genre, which I don't. Nobody was really a train wreck, but nobody had a standout performance either.

Yes, I've been seeing Cynthia Nixon on Hannibal and either she has not aged well or they made her up deliberately to look a bit haggard. Nixon is the cast member I've seen far more of in other roles post-SATC, and her range has been extremely impressive. While the character she's been playing on Hannibal is also cool and analytical in the same way that Miranda could be, Nixon was very convincing on a episode of House as a very messed-up patient with Munchausen syndrome. When she played Miranda, I've got to confess that I preferred Miranda version 1.0, before they decided to soften her up. I admired the Miranda who bluntly asked the group if they could talk about something besides boyfriends and sex, and who made snarky comments, much more than the Miranda who felt compelled to give her demented MIL a bath. Of course, one of my pet peeves is when character growth for a female character consists of her learning to put everybody else's needs ahead of her own needs. Think about it, if the roles had been reversed. If Miranda's father was the one who developed senile dementia and was wandering the streets, would Steve have given him a bath after chasing him down? I think not.

The show had an entire season to do those things, and instead showed mostly the trivia surrounding Barney and Robin getting married. And I understand that their wedding was a pivotal point for Ted, because that's how he actually met the mother. But if the showrunners wanted the big emotional payoff to be that Ted and Robin eventually reunite and have yet another chance to be a couple, then they needed to show the changes in a season-long arc and build to that moment, instead of doing the half-assed "Gotcha!" moment of reveal that they did at the end of the finale. Ted could have stated early this last season that the mother was dead, but that he was grateful for the time he got to spend with her, and this last season could have shown him grieving and then moving on, while showing a more compelling reason for Barney and Robin to get divorced other than lack of wifi. Show Robin having a successful career but spending time with Ted and the kids after the mother's death.. Show both Ted and Robin compromising on some of the big issues that had plagued their previous relationships. Give the audience a reason to become emotionally invested in them becoming a couple again, instead of introducing a perfectly lovely and brilliantly cast mother only to kill her off and five seconds later have her children be nonchalantly telling their dad to hook up with Robin. I still wouldn't have bought that storyline, because I truly do not believe that Robin ever loved Ted the same way he did her, but a last season that at least tried to make narrative sense would have been far less insulting to viewers. Whether Ted specifically said in an earlier episode or season that Robin was with the gang for Thanksgivings isn't the issue; the problem is that all the preceding seasons very much implied that Robin was a constant presence in their lives, but the finale showed her choosing not to hang out with the gang any more, all because the writers wanted to use that decision as code for "Robin loves Ted so much she can't stand to be around him while he's happy with another woman." Sure, Robin looked happy to see Ted at the end, but being happy for a few minutes doesn't get them past all the other obstacles, up to and including that Robin has repeatedly said she doesn't want kids. Many women who don't want kids would hesitate to get involved with a man who has two adolescents for whom he is solely responsible, and Robin as her character has been established would most likley regard Ted being a single father as a dealbreaker. If the show wanted me to believe she'd be willing to become a stepmother, then they needed to show her bonding with the kids over time and having a discussion with Ted about the issue. Obviously, I can fanwank that she changed her mind about kids, but I shouldn't have to fanwank that sort of thing. It's not like there was insufficient time to show some changes in both Ted and Robin, but the writers were more interested in doing that final twist where the audience finds out the mother is dead but Ted's going to finally get to hook up with Robin again. Incredibly bad storytelling, to the point that the HIMYM finale will have a place in pop culture as how not to end a series.

If only she would in fact have ever shut up. Even once. There were of course numerous actions of Carrie's that I hated, but her incessant whinging about her love life, her insistence that every single conversation had to focus eventually on her, her inability to STFU and let other people discuss their own situations, and her attitude that came through so clearly that she was a special snowflake who deserved a lifestyle she couldn't actually afford and who couldn't believe that anybody would dare dislike her, up to and including the woman whose marital bed she usurped: those were the characteristics that made me want to reach through my tv screen and gag her.

The problem for me isn't that they didn't show certain things that Ted said Robin did; it's that what they did show to the audience didn't match up with some of Ted's comments. Take, for example, his comment that Robin was never alone. Yet some of the scenes with Robin in the finale very much implied that she was unhappy and alone, because she was supposedly pining for Ted after belatedly realizing that he was the one she "should" have married. The notion that Robin showed up every Thanksgiving for dinner with the gang? That does not match up with Ted's kids, when young, having no idea who this strange woman was. The issue for me is that a lot of what happened in the finale actually negated things Ted had said and in many ways negated Robin's previous character growth, not to mention Barney's. And at this point, knowing that Ted intends to try to make things work with Robin for the umpteenth time, I have zero faith in his credibility as a narrator. Even the showrunners have said, essentially, that this wasn't really a show about how Ted met the mother; it was instead a story about how Ted finally gets together with Robin. So, their statement paints Ted's declaration from episode one, that he's going to tell the kids how he met their mother, as a lie. So, anything Ted said that the audience didn't actually see? Based on the precedent established by the show itself, if there's no scene showing that something did in fact happen, anything that Ted said is likely to be another big fat lie. Yet the audience is supposed to believe that Robin, who in the finale still prefers dogs to kids, who in the finale still prefers living in a downtown apartment to living in the burbs, is going to want to suddenly change her entire life because Ted once again has the hots for her. Ted can talk all he wants to about the pictures of Aunt Robin that the kids supposedly drew, and how Robin had a great career and was never alone. But the show, and the showrunners, established Ted as a lying liar who lies. So, I for one don't buy it.

Because it cannot be said often enough: Shut up, Carrie.

With the finale, HIMYM joined Sex and the City in the category of shows where the finale so enraged me that I will most likely never rewatch any episodes of it. HIMYM accomplished this by doing essentially the same thing as SATC: spend years showing the audience why two people are a completely dysfunctional couple when they attempt to have a romantic relationship, and then ignore all that evidence to reunite them in a contrived, unconvincing plot twist in the last five minutes of the series. Aside from that, though, I simply can’t get past the total WTFuckery of Ted sitting down with his kids, and telling them the story of how (a) he met this woman he obsessed over for years, despite declarations on her part that she just didn’t love him that way and in fact loved someone else enough to marry that guy; (b) that by a miraculous coincidence on the day the object of his obsession marries someone else, he just so happens to meet their mother; © that this woman he had been obsessed with shut herself off more or less from the entire circle of friends because she couldn’t stand seeing either her ex-husband move on or her ex-lover be happy; but (d) now that the mother is oh-so-conveniently dead, he wants to hook up with this woman. The kids would react by assuming that their dad married their mom on the rebound from this woman, that their entire marriage was based not on mutual love but their dad needing a consolation prize, and that this woman they know as Aunt Robin is the woman their dad never got over. In all seriousness, they’d be wondering if their dad hadn’t been having an affair with Aunt Robin while their mother was still alive. There is just no way in hell the kids react to that story by saying, yeah, dad, go boink Aunt Robin. Many years ago I knew a guy whose parents sat him down the day before he left for college and gave him the speech of how they’d really been miserable for the past 6 years but had stayed together and pretended to be happy for his sake, but now that he was leaving home they were getting a divorce. This announcement fucked him up for years, much more so than a divorce would have done when he was 12, because their 6 years of “happy family” act convinced him that every so-called happy marriage was in fact a sham. What Ted just did to his kids is more or less the same thing. If they thought their parents were made for each other, they now would think their mom was just a pit stop in their dad’s journey to get together with the real love of his live. That is a horrible, horrible legacy for Ted to give to his kids.