SomePity1066

Yes to this ! Not only tiresome, but maddening as well ! Perhaps Rick will go off in search of the errant, ridiculous teens who have learned NOTHING in all their years of being a survivor of the ZA, and then someone will go after Rick, and someone else will go after them, and so on and so on until all of Alexandria is at the Hilltop. Perhaps they can all hide in Gregory's closet together when Negan and Company come a-knockin' again ? The writing this season has been... off to me. There seem to be only four types of dialogue being employed and it's becoming repetitious and annoying: 1) I'm making a lofty speech to rouse the troops to justice 2) I'm ignoring said lofty speech because I have feelings about my feelings and even though it's the ZA I still have to listen to my heart and do the obviously wrong thing 3) I'm scared, stupid, and defenseless and will continue to be scared, stupid, and defenseless because I haven't been paying any attention to current events for the last few years 4) Ow. Ow. Owwwww ! That hurts. I'm dying. I'm dying. I'm dead. I long for the days when I was, quite literally, on the edge of my chair, holding my breath and not even aware of it, while watching this show. They will never, ever top the "Don't Open/Dead Inside" raw, visceral impact of the first episode, but I'd like to think there's still life in the series somewhere.

Far too many things in this episode that made me shout at my TV like a loonie. I hate feeling like a loonie. Does Hilltop distribute Nyquil to its residents and tuck each other in, leaving no one on watch ? Did no one notice/hear the (presumably locked) gate being pulled back, a car entering the compound, and four HUGE bonfires being assembled and set ablaze ? Coorl appeared on screen and I knew, somehow, immediately, that he'd be taking off, yet again, to do the worst, most stupid thing imaginable. For the love of all that is holy - stop going on rogue missions, and stop going after people who go on rogue missions ! What is this, the 8th or 9th time he's pulled this shit ?! C'mon, Coorl, grow up. Roller skating during the ZA ?! All that was missing was The Turtles "Happy Together" playing in the background. Truly the most insipid moment of the season, if not the entire series. I found myself WISHING the walkers would turn up as Coorl roll/clomped around like a doofus. On a good note, everyone who has owned the watch is now dead. Maybe it will go to Coorl after Enid bites the dust :)

...aaaaand now I have that in my head ! I just know I'm going to say that in front of a group of adults now :) But totally agree, especially about the race car contest - that was so bogus ! If the cheftestants (do we still say that ?) have to compete in silly, non-culinary ways to earn an advantage then how is it still a COOKING competition ? I have crazy knife skills and can competently made four of the five "mother sauces", but can't dunk a basketball and I'm lousy at Jenga. Guess that means I'm a bad cook ?

I thought so, too, backformore ! All of the other "hacks" seemed ridiculous in comparison, especially the martini shaker as a double boiler (what ?!) and the Mason jar shaker, but my French press is going to be coming out of the cupboard-of-the-damned tonight when I make my garlic/tarragon chicken.

If that's the case, Hecate7 (and I think that's a great observation/hypothesis, BTW !) then it explains why the plot unfolded the way it did in the episode and goes a long way toward some kind of reasoning behind Dunham's motivation for making the characters, especially Hannah, the way they are. Still leaves me absolutely reeling, though, as to why Dunham still continues to proffer her chirpy taking head on the Inside the Episode actually defending what Hannah does and why. Living her truth, finding her voice, being her best self, expressing her heart, choosing her choices, blah freaking blah - that happy clap-trap bullshit of misguided feminism and entitled hipster shenanigans makes my blood boil. Since Dunham isn't/hasn't yet explained that she finds what Hannah does as repulsive as we do then I have no choice to conclude that she's just FINE with it. She may actually think that she's created some kind of charming, emblematic TV heroine here, like Carrie Bradshaw or Rachel Green, but, in reality, she's made a character with no character. Someone needs to tell her that if you're going to create a TV persona with no discernible redeeming qualities, like Larry David, you have to at least make them funny or interesting, which Larry David was, and Dunham's Hannah is neither.

This entire season, with the last episode in particular, has me nodding wholeheartedly in agreement with posters here who have indicated that we're all being set up for a spectacular implosion of Hannah's character, most probably in the two-episode season finale this weekend. The triumvirate of sexual acting out - going down on a random stranger at a spa, flashing the principal, and then blowing a guy she's only friends with - all add up, to me, to Hannah totally losing her shit. Even for her, and this is really saying something, this season has been a slow motion train wreck of epic proportions. The worst part is that Lena Dunham, in all her faux-empowerment glory, doesn't seem to recognize that Hannah's spectacular decline isn't a model of feminism and that her veritable celebration of mental illness isn't something to be lauded. Dunham loses me more and more each week with her Inside the Episode comments that become increasingly more tone deaf as the season drags on. Perhaps next week she'll have Hannah shit her pants in public and then walk around with it all day while explaining that she's just "expressing herself" ? I'm not kidding here - I can actually see that happening. Hanna isn't some adorable, twee millennial who wears quirky hats while "finding her voice" in the Big City. She's a profoundly damaged, insufferable twat who, in the "real" world, would have no job, no friends, and no home. The lack of consequences for her ri-goddamn-diculous behavior is so frustrating that I need to find a better word for "frustrating" ! I just want to yell at the TV screen "That's not how this works ! That's not how ANY of this works !!!"

Oh my good Lord, I KNOW !!! I'm only surprised that Lena/Hannah didn't twist her face and rubber shoulders into yet another unfortunate, wrinked, all-too-self-conscious toddler pose with the inevitable upturned eyes and batted lashes and ask, while proffering five splayed fingers to Ray, "Is it THIS many monies ?!?!" Jesus in a sidecar ! How many random, inappropriate, dangerous, rude, obnoxious, infantile, selfish, bizarre, disingenuous bullshit behaviors is she going to display before she gets 302'd to Bellevue !? Side note: Not making light of mental illness here. Not at all. Just objecting to Hannah/Lena's absolute celebration of her version of it. Her message seems to be "I'm a horrible, weird, damaged person, but I REVEL in it ! I'm SUCCESSFUL in that horrible weirdness, and I'm here to stay !" Ugh. Her Keystone Kops run through the rest stop in pajamas was just too much to bear ! I swear, I really do - I could HEAR the theme to Benny Hill playing in my head as she Prancercised (Google it !) with her pajamas flapping over her cowboy boots (!?!?) in circles through the building. Who does that ? WHO DOES THAT ??? It should be the title of the show. GIRLS: Who Does That ?

Hey guys - hugs and hope to all, but I'm out of here. I've lost my taste for the snark. It's been really, really fun. Y'all are good, good people. I wish you all the very best, I really do. I'll be observing now and again, but I think it's time to get my butt off the couch and start living my life instead of just commenting about it. You've been good friends - real friends, and I will miss you. Truly. Please take care.

Post of the day ! Bonus points for "breatessesses" ! Liquid gold, Jerry ! Liquid gold !!!

You have my every sympathy, CrazyCatLady ! There is nothing in the world like dental pain ! I know half a dozen women who swear they'd rather go through labor and delivery again rather then go through a root canal or anything else more serious than a filling again. I've never had a baby, but I have had root canals - EIGHT ! - and I learned my lesson the hard way. What I do now is arrange to pick up my prescription for the pain meds two hours BEFORE the appointment, take one, hang out for a while, then go to the appointment. That way the really, really bad pain never hits me. And, you don't have to stand in line at the pharmacy in a painful haze while drooling and then having to ask for your pills by pantomiming and pointing at your mouth because you can't talk ! Percotheths ! PERCOTHETHS !!! And if they didn't tell you, as they certainly should - don't use a straw !!! I did with my first wisdom tooth extraction - it pulled out the stitches and the packing and I ended up with an infection in my jawbone and something called "dry socket", which is every bit as bad and gross and painful as it sounds. Sorry for the advice barrage ! I'm not a dentist and I don't play one on TV, but I wanted to pass along whatever I could to be helpful if at all possible. I'll be thinking of you and hope to hear that you're doing better and no longer stuck eating "mushy meat" ! ;) On another note, I tried to get tickets for the David Bowie memorial concert at Carnegie Hall in March, but it was a no-go and I refuse to pay ten (or twenty !) times the face value to StubHub or TicketMaster. They are cultural vampires, and total bastards that ruin the opportunity for normal folk to just enjoy a concert or play like we used to before they started buying all the damn tickets en masse in 17 freaking seconds. Did I mention they are bastards ? I found solace in watching DB videos and found one that I'd all but forgotten - Blue Jean. Such visual artistry, even if the look is a bit dated, the makeup on Bowie's face is simply brilliant, and the deep, jazzy saxophone is like sunshine to me. It came out in September of 1984 - I had just started my senior year of high school, and I bought the album (on cassette !) to play on the school bus to and from school. On my Walkman. Thirty-plus years later it still translates...

Wow ! That's a whopper of a Happy Birthday message ! Seems like Michelle has FINALLY learned her lesson about posting pathetic, generic, repetitive messages to her children like they were interchangeable cogs in a giant machine. She must have had an epiphany and had it laid on her heart and encouraged by the Lord to personalize each message to reflect just how precious every flower in her garden is ? What a spontaneous event ! A miracle ! Right ? That's what happened here, right ? I mean, it's not like they read the blogs about themselves. Or PTV ;)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BASA9I0AJvh/ I look at all of Ben's hopeless, judgmental, fire and brimstone, sad, Oh-Woe-Is-Moe, teenage-posturing posting as the Fundie version of a Facebook post where someone says "Oh, my God ! I just can't TAKE people anymore !", someone asks "What's that matter ?", and the response is always - ALWAYS - "I don't wanna talk about it..." Someone needs to give Ben some Haagen Daz and a Midol.

http://www.webcomicalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/spork_n_beans.jpg Poor Little Jackson in 20 years...

Bingo ! Even though the Bateses are far, far more palatable and sometimes downright pleasant to watch I have to remind myself that the psychopathology at work within the entire Gothard crowd is pretty much uniformly hurtful, misogynistic, and predatory. Even JB and his carnival barker, hyuk-hyuk "I'm a Goober for Jesus !" bullshit is a well-crafted act that has been fooling people for decades. But Gil Bates, in his down-home, likable, charming husband and father role, is a thousand times more insidious, as another poster (whom I can't remember - I'm sorry !) noted earlier somewhere on this board so brilliantly. He's the "guy next door" who is also a monster. That's the problem with monsters - they don't always look the part. We want them to have horns and a tail and red, glowing, laser-beam eyes, but more often than not they look just like you and me.

Gah ! And who eats/feeds directly from a can ?!?! Old timey cartoon hobos, that's who ! Not blaming Jana on that account, though - that one has Michelle written all over it.