lofidelity

Does anybody else...not think it's that crazy to believe there are "models" living in small-to-medium cities all over America? I mean, if this person is claiming to be a high-fashion model with a successful runway career, yes, be skeptical. But plenty of people just model for artsy Instagram likebait photos (like Myles' antler and naked-near-a-lake shots), and that happens all over the place.

Wait, where was the masturbation scene? I'm not sure if I missed part of the episode, the FX website was acting up when I tried to watch. My guess is there isn't a point to the traditionally male names, it's just an artifact of the show being semi-autobiographical. Adlon's real-life daughters also have traditionally male names, and "Sam" rhymes with "Pam." Anyway, the first episode was a pleasant surprise. I really like Pamela Adlon, but I find her kind of uneven -- she has some really great moments, but she also has a lot of leftover 1980s-child-actor mannerisms that make most of what she does feel super forced to me -- so I was nervous that I wouldn't really like her carrying a whole show. But she and Louis CK definitely wrote to her strengths, and I really liked her in this. (Especially that scene where she's watching the text-message dots, dang.) I could do without CK's choppy editing, though. And it would have been nice to get more of an explanation of that flashback to her dad within this episode, too, that felt like it was just thrown in there. Hopefully future episodes will pick up the thread of that relationship.

I think I must have missed something in the beginning. Why was Vern asking Craig to do a search of the house? Was it because if Wes' "change in attitude" or did he already have the dirt on Rebecca?

Yesssssssss. There are a lot of things I like about this show, but it's got the same problem as Finding Carter: it gets so many of the basics of its subject matter wrong, and writes all of its adult characters as irresponsible and/or unethical -- in part because it's clueless about the basics of its subject matter and it part because the writers seem to believe that this makes things more dramatic -- when it would be so easy to write almost exactly the same plots and mine almost exactly the same drama, without resorting to wildly unrealistic situations and wildly inappropriate characters. In fact, it would probably be more compelling if they tried to keep things realistic. I mean, the total inappropriateness of nine-year-old Craig running the program and providing 99% of all the therapy for these addicts, Cynthia and Vern traipsing in and out of his office and being viewed as authority figures by the residents and knowing details of other residents' treatments, and Craig getting drunk with several of his sober charges could be solved if the writers had just...made up a program at which Cynthia, Vern, and Craig are all staff members but not in charge of the program and not anybody's therapist. (It would also be solved if the writers made up their mind about whether Springtime Meadows is a sober living facility or a rehab.) In fact, that's pretty much what I pretend is going on every time I watch the show now, so I don't have to acknowledge how fucking unethical literally everything every character does is.

It actually doesn't seem that strange to me, because Rebecca's "fall from grace" was different than Maddie's. When the other kids find out about Maddie, she has been identified as an addict who is in treatment for her disease. When the other kids found out about Rebecca, she was being arrested because she'd been caught dealing drugs to make extra money. Maddie was presented to them as someone who needs help dealing with an illness, while Rebecca was presented to them as a fuckup who had gotten herself caught. I'm sure if you asked Ellie & Co., though, they wouldn't identify themselves as addicts or as abusing drugs, and they wouldn't say that they're fuckups, either. Kids usually aren't self-aware enough to say "Well, if my friend who does all the same stuff I do has a substance abuse problem, then maybe I have a substance abuse problem too." (Or to say, "Well, if my one friend who got caught doing dumb shit with drugs because she's actually an addict, maybe my other friend who got caught doing dumb shit with drugs was actually an addict too.")

Folks more familiar with the foster care system than me: Is the whole Daphne plot totally unrealistic? That hearing was portrayed as a final ruling on termination of parental rights (everyone involved behaved as if the judge was deciding whether Tasha could be adopted by her foster parents) but the questions they were asking were appropriate for a fact-finding hearing. Also, as far as I'm aware it's not that easy to terminate parental rights -- the petitioning party would have to show that Daphne had made no progress toward being able to support her child, that it was unlikely Daphne would be in a position to parent her child in six months, that Daphne had not accepted assistance provided to her by social services that would allow her to make progress toward being able to support her child, that Daphne had abandoned her child and not made any efforts to maintain a relationship with her, that Daphne had abused or neglected her child so severely, or had such a severe mental illness, that she could not ever be considered a suitable parent for the child, etc. All of which appear to be untrue. Allowing only thirty days for Daphne to show that she can make enough money to support Tasha also doesn't really make sense. And finally, why was Callie even there? What judge is like, "Yeah, sure, let me hear from your rando teenage friend, who has never raised a child and is in no way involved in this case, and I'll also allow her to speak extemporaneously about the function of the foster system at large." It's also strange because it would make Callie's argument a lot stronger if she acknowledged that she thinks there are some cases (like her own) where kids are better off with their foster family -- when she says kids belong with their bio parents, she's not addressing anything about Daphne's case, she's just making a blanket statement about all cases and revealing that she would favor the bio parent no matter what. If she instead acknowledged that she doesn't think kids should automatically be placed with their bio parents, it would show that she's not biased and that she truly believes in Daphne. Also, now that you mention how much of the custody mess was caused by Callie's mother lying about Callie's father, and the fact that she also lied to Callie -- wouldn't it have been nice to see Callie dealing with that, instead of more Brallie shit? Here's this girl who thought her mom was an angel, and remembered her in an idealized way as the last safe caretaker in her life -- and all of a sudden she finds out her mom was lying to her, and because of those lies she ended up in foster care, had her adoption screwed up, and probably could have been living with a perfectly nice family during all those years that she was getting moved through the system. How is she not angry or hurt or confused about that?

Were they given a choice? I didn't watch the trial on television at the time, and I don't remember this being in the miniseries. I was on a jury panel for a trial that was expected to last quite a while, and I remember planning out my whole argument as to why it would cause undue hardship for me to serve for that long -- you can't just opt out of jury service. But the judge on that case was very nice, and dismissed anyone who said a lengthy trial would be a big problem -- so I know judges sometimes give jurors the option to say no. In all fairness: It's been a television event since June 17th, 1994. That's what the whole show is about.

Rice to Riches opened in 2003 (and was probably part of a money-laundering operation) so I don't think pudding shops are a trend so much as just one of those weird little businesses that populate New York but probably wouldn't work outside of a big city.

Okay, wait, has anybody asked why Jesus and Mariana had to have the same birthday party anyway? Why couldn't he have gone to the skate park with his five bros like he wanted, and Mariana could have invited people to the house or whatever for a party-party, like normal people? I'm sure there's some unavoidable conflict with twins over who gets to decide which dinner mom makes on the night of their actual birthday, or which restaurant the family goes out to, or whatever -- but who forces their high school age twins to have the same birthday party with friends?

But did people really refer to the trial as "the show"? That rang false to me. People discussed it as if it were entertainment, sure, but I don't remember anybody acting is if it were the same as Roseanne or Oprah. I mean, I was eleven years old, and my classmates and I were aware that the trial was really happening and that the trial coverage was closer to the news than it was to shows that reported "real life" stuff for entertainment, like Hard Copy or Cops or Rescue 911. I would totally buy someone saying "They should bring Kato back, he was fun" or "I wish they were still questioning Kato, he was more entertaining," but "They should bring Kato back on the show" doesn't sound like anything a real person would say -- it sounds like the writers are over my shoulder going "Do you get what we're saying about how people were viewing this as entertainment? Huh? Do ya?" while I'm trying to watch TV.

Yeah, when Nick was like, "My dad won't mind, he'll just be glad someone is finally using it." Why is your horrible dad, who is apparently so cutthroat he made you eat a burger till you puked to teach you a lesson about wastefulness as a small child, hanging on to this empty warehouse that neither he nor any of his business associates seems to have a use for? I mean, everything on this show is unrealistic, so it could just amount to nothing, but that definitely made me wonder what the hell Nick's dad does for a living. Or Lena could be wrong. Sally's parents specifically called Monte out as bisexual, and said Monte's profile indicated she was looking for men and women -- that means, at the very least, Sally could have signed up for the site as a dude and found Monte's profile. But you can also just browse on some dating sites, or fiddle with different options for what your searches will return, which means that Sally also could have found Monte's profile if she was just idly searching for people with different preferences to see who was out there, or if she didn't indicate a gender preference. Again, I know everything on this show is unrealistic, but when Lena said Sally must have been on the site as a woman looking for women, I wondered if it was going to turn out that Lena was wrong, and that Sally had seen Monte's profile for some other reason.

One thing that I find interesting about this episode and about the series' dramatization of the case in general is obviously we are supposed to feel for Marcia in this episode, and probably also identify with her at some points in other episodes (for example in the beginning when she kept reminding everyone two people were brutally murdered, they deserved justice, OJ should be punished for what he did etc.) but they keep giving her these insanely optimistic lines like "The gloves are our conviction" in the preview for next week. The Dream Team has been outsmarting her at almost every turn, they're finding weaknesses in what she thought was solid evidence, and she knows Fuhrman's racism is going to be an issue -- and yet the writers still have her acting as if this case is a slam dunk. In recent interviews, Clark says that in reality, she was aware through most of the trial that the prosecution's case was in trouble and that Cochran's showmanship was working with the jury. I haven't read her or Darden's book so I don't know if this is just hindsight being 20/20, but it just seems like odd characterization for the show to give her this almost-sunny optimism about the case all the time. At this point, it's so unreasonable for her to be so optimistic about the case that it makes her a lot less sympathetic in my eyes, because I'm impatient with how tone-deaf she is about everything around her. It also made the whole "poor Marcia Clark had to deal with sexism" plot in this episode feel manipulative, because right now Marcia is being written as if she's not bothered by anything except the criticism of her appearance and the issues with her childcare. You know, girl things. When it comes to the fact that she is massively fucking up this case she thought was a slam dunk, and can't seem to find a way to get ahead of the defense, she's totally unbothered! But someone insulting her appearance, sure, that would be what bothers her, because that's what women care about, right? I mean, as a woman, I totally understand why it would bother her and how belittling it is and how much it makes you want to scream that you are a goddamn professional with both a brain and a heart -- but I feel like, by showing her struggling with the criticism of her appearance/mothering/menstruation and not showing her struggling with how difficult the case itself has become, the show is belittling her just as much as the tampon cashier did.

Oh, maybe not. For some reason I thought Stef or one of the siblings knew about it (although maybe not about the kid) but when I had the 10PM rerun on, I realized he was hanging out with her alone. And it's not like he can count on Callie to be a voice of reason.

So that's two simultaneous plots in which someone accused of improper sexual contact with a minor (or someone who is just barely not-a-minor) turns out to be innocent, because duh it was totes consensual or duh the person who accused them of abuse was lying, all while Brandon, high schooler and actual victim of statutory rape, hooks up with yet another adult woman, and no one is concerned. Cool. Cool cool cool.

But isn't lewd & lascivious acts considered a lesser charge than statutory rape? Statutory rape means that there was sexual intercourse, while lewd & lascivious acts means there was sexual contact but not intercourse. I assumed the writers had chosen that charge so we could have a storyline where Gabe turns out to be a good guy who was just mistakenly convicted of a sex crime, you know, since that happens all the time and what we really need in this country are more "rape is fake and dudes get falsely accused all the time" storylines.