Carrie Ann

I LOVED his delivery of "Jake, the incredible time pressure." I missed it the first time because I was laughing so hard at the dance costumes and Samberg's sweet slo-mo moves, but my God, Braugher is just perfect.

I agree. I actually thought Laurel knew what Sara was up to in the last five years (or at least some of it), so I thought she knew she did the vigilante thing sometimes. I guess not, but that would have been kind of a nice move for the show. It sucks to be the characters in the dark, because it just makes them look stupid. If Laurel at least knew about Sara, it would have been a good start.

Also, I'm pretty sure the Arrow and Canary walked away from Lance holding hands. So, I mean.... He knows.

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Major downgrade in the handler department. I mean, no one could really compare to Margo Martindale, but this lady...I kind of felt like they overdid it by trying to make her so green. Like, she says that Phillip and Elizabeth are so important and the Centre wants to keep them happy and safe, and Claudia was the best they had. So they replaced her with this terrified 20-year-old? Phillip had to tell her how to do her job. Not promising.

Allison is a very strong person and...[incoherent sobbing noises]

Coming to Beacon Hills was...maybe not the best decision the Argents ever made.

3B featured a lot of Melissa being the best mom around, so, par for the course.

The Sheriff and Stiles had some great moments in 3B. Still waiting on a little action with him and Melissa McCall.

Poor Derek, no longer an Alpha, just hangin' around, usually being tortured somewhere (thankfully sans shirt).

I hope Lydia has more to do in Season 4 than have wide-eyed teary face.

No longer Void, back to being sweet and sarcastic.

He's the hot girl!

A chapter from Winds of Winter was released on GRRM's web site today, titled "Mercy." I haven't read it yet, but I just finished A Dance with Dragons a week ago, so this feels like a little gift to me.

I LOVE that Gramercy house so much, and I love Gage so much, that I'm sad they're going to sell. I can kind of understand Jeff's argument: this is his job and who he is. But couldn't they just wait until they have enough money to be able to keep Gramercy AND buy a second property to flip at the same time?

I think most of the firings have been deserved too, but there have been times where it seemed like it happened over something that he might have gotten over another time, but at that moment it triggered his trust issues and he couldn't let it go (Trace, for example). It seems like there's a sort of level of relationship with him where once you reach it, he actually might freak out on you for very little reason because he has some major trust issues and if he's stressed about something, he's sort of looking for something to be wrong. For example, the Jenny situation from last year seemed like an overreaction to me. He encourages Jenny to be friends with his clients, appreciates that about her, and then she went to a potential(?) client's vacation home. I guess she should have told him about it, but I can see how the lines would have become a little blurred and it just didn't occur to her. It was a mistake, and one she owned up to several times, but he wouldn't let it go until she "admitted" that she "lied" and intentionally took advantage of him and his clients. Thank God that therapist got involved or he would have torpedoed that relationship too. I honestly don't know how he hasn't ruined things with Gage yet, except that Gage probably doesn't put up with his shit and is too Type-A to make the usual mistakes people make.

That's it!

I started reading at about 9:00 last night, and didn't stop until it was done. I didn't want to look at a clock, but I am wiped out today. So obviously I was engaged by the story! It, like the movie, felt like a multi-episode arc of the show and I thought, for the most part, it captured the feel of the show and the characters really well. (Spoilers below!) The case was a little far-fetched, but not much farther-fetched than a lot of the show's mysteries. The one thing that was kinda hard to believe is that Lianne's stepdaughter's BF from Arizona would happen to go to Hearst, and then they would happen to have a murder there that led to planning this con. And the con in general doesn't stand up to a lot of scrutiny. There are about a million ways this doesn't work out for them--primarily, if the other girl had been found earlier, before they'd had time to set up the ransom thing. It's interesting to think of Veronica no longer being an only child, but I still hate Lianne, so I don't relish the idea of her/Hunter becoming a larger part of V's life going forward. I loved having so much more time with Mac and Wallace, and it was great to have Norris pop up again. I did miss Logan. The movie, for as much as it centered on the murder trial, really didn't have a lot of real Logan in it either, so I was hoping for a little more here (and to have him a little less somber now that he's been cleared of murder).

I agree. I love Peter Dinklage, but his terrible accent distracts me from his performance sometimes. Sorry! But it's occasionally been Oirish!Angel levels of bad.

I had the Six Feet Under theme as my ringtone in the early '00s, as well as Alias for a little while. Those are probably my all-time favorites.

I mean, it's probably going to be Starks forever for me, because you can't compete against the combined greatness of Jon and Arya, and I am really attached to Sansa and Bran (and Rickon, though that's just because he's so tiny and cute). I don't hate any Starks, so that helps too. My love for Tyrion and Jaime isn't enough to overcome my hate for Joffrey and Cersei, for example.

No problem, hiccup--sorry I didn't remember that it was in that thread, not this one! Dougal, as far as whether things make sense in-universe: I just didn't have many problems with where everyone was. It all felt believable to me. That just comes down to opinion, I suppose. So then a lot of the arguments just boil down to: I wish the movie was about THIS instead of THAT. Or I would like it better if Veronica did THIS instead of THAT. OK, but then our positions would just be reversed. I wouldn't have been AS happy with a movie about Veronica in the FBI with none of her friends around. I love the show not just because of Veronica but because of the world of Neptune. I would have missed that. And if this was the last piece of VM ever, I would only feel more strongly that I'd rather see something that involves more of the characters. Maybe it would have been a stronger story if instead of a job with a Big Money firm in NY, it was a job with some great nonprofit like the Innocence Project. So she's choosing between helping people in different ways/places. But I think the result would have been the same. She didn't want the life in New York badly enough to leave the investigation in progress. And in the process of continuing the investigation, she saw Weevil, Sacks, and her dad become victims of Neptune's corruption, and I don't think she could turn her back on that. But this isn't a prison sentence. I trust that she is intelligent enough to look at her options and decide whether she'd like to take the CA Bar exam and become a lawyer, maybe after her dad is out of the hospital. She probably won't, because I think she'd rather help people who can't get help within the confines of the (corrupt) legal system, but she does have choices. (And just to be clear, I know you and I agree on many of these points. I'm arguing with the people making these arguments...if that makes any sense!)

Me too! Obviously.

I so fully disagree with this when it comes to VM that I think that's the last article I can stand to read about it. NPR had a similar one, and I've seen a few others--either talking about how we should never revive any property that ends, or about how this is a depressing ending for Veronica, or arguing that she stays in Neptune because of LOGAN, which is so far off the mark I can't even talk about it. As far as Todd's article: I agree when it comes to something like Friday Night Lights, which I feel completely satisfied by. It had five solid seasons (well, four, plus a terrible season 2), and a real ending. Things were not very unresolved, and they had as much time as they needed to tell their stories. But with Veronica, obviously people (fans, creators, cast, crew, media) didn't feel that way. It did not feel complete. It didn't feel resolved. And not just that, but having this story be about bringing Veronica back to Neptune doesn't feel ham-fisted to me the way it apparently felt to Todd. It feels right. The trope of a hero staying in a dangerous line of work or a corrupt place because they HAVE to, because it's who they are, is very common. What's not common is having that hero be a woman, and I wonder how much of this criticism we'd hear if Veronica was male as originally intended. Does it suck that she happened to grow up in this shitty town, and that her father and friends still live there? Sure! Just like it sucks that Gotham is so corrupt that Batman has to stick around to keep people in line. From my perspective, Veronica has spent the last nine years running away from who she is and what she loves--she makes that pretty clear when she says she's not that person anymore, and then minutes later hops on a plane, and then spends the next week putting off her return to NYC. She would never have been happy being a lawyer in New York. Not for real, not for the long-term. To me, having her return to Neptune feels heroic. It feels triumphant. I don't see that as preventing the character from growing or changing. I see it as allowing her to grow in the most authentic way she can.