MsChicklet

An acquaintance hired Connor Homes, which did the North Shore kit house, to do his house in northern New England. He found out earlier this month that the company is shutting down and the entire workforce has been furloughed. They're trying to honor existing contracts and get all the materials out to the clients. Fortunately, my acquaintance's house was far enough along where this will have minimal impact on finishing the project.

Clanstarling, something similar happened with my grandmother. She was 102 and had dementia, and ended up in a nursing home around her 101st birthday. One day, my dad (her son) came to have lunch with her as he regularly did. She ate, the visit was pleasant, he stayed about an hour after lunch and she fell asleep. Sometime between when he left and the 30 minutes it took him to get home, she quietly slipped away. I like to think she spared my dad in the end.

I, too, knew once William said goodbye to the girls the way he did that he wasn't coming home with Randall. The decision to make this a standalone episode was absolutely the right decision. William and Randall needed to be the focus, no distractions, for the trip and William's end to unfold with the full emotional impact. Oh, and what an impact. My first tears were William and the girls. The first sob was William talking to Jack. These two amazing men, who never met but still brought forth their amazing son into the world. Nerdy Randall is awesome. I needed the levity of his call to Beth, his "chocolate sauce" comment, his Oprah moment and "I was raised by white people" comment with his cousins, and the robot. He and William and their family had that night, that wonderful gift. From the hospital to the ducks, I was a sodden, sobbing mess. Thankfully MrChicklet was on the computer in the other room with his headphones on. What I love about "This is Us" is how what happened here will radiate outwards. Beth and the girls. Kevin, who bonded with William. Rebecca, who will always have to carry her guilt. And what about Jesse?

This is just the beginning of the long reveal about Jack. There are reasons everyone loved him, and there are passions and insecurities which drove him for better or worse. And we're going to be learning about them little by little. Jack's outer layer was the amazing, loving husband and dad. But underneath that is someone who grew up in financial insecurity, in a home dominated by addiction and abuse, and possibly other issues that haven't been revealed. I'm liking Toby more. Not just because he's in contrast to Fat Camp Douchecanoe. When he instantly backed off when he saw talking about Jack's death was hard on Kate, and when he spoke of waiting to get married, he showed real maturity. I can see why Kate's not upset about being booted from Fat Camp. She may have been relieved to get away from a bad situation. There are other options, other fat camps, other ways to work on her issues. And I'm glad Douchecanoe Duke's nastiness didn't crush her.

Uproxx: Kate deserves a better story

Duke is an employee of the camp. Clients should be absolutely off-limits. His behavior should be cause for discipline, if not outright firing. Kate has possibly gotten the message from society that, as a fat woman, she should be grateful for any crumbs of attention she gets. It's why she's thrown by Duke's PUA routine (negging, violating boundaries, going alpha). Her instincts are telling her it's wrong. But she may not have had to deal with guys like this the way Rebecca or Sophie have, so she's not sure how to handle it. My hope is that she tells Duke that it doesn't matter that she's engaged, even if she wasn't she's not interested in him and he is to leave her alone from now on. Or else. Hopefully, the mares at the stable get as sick of Duke as we are and kick him in the head. Repeatedly.

UO: I don't really care about Dr. K. Partially because of my antipathy towards Gerald McRaney.

I don't know if Horse Guy fell for Kate. More like he's targeted her. He's been there a while, he probably recognizes those who aren't fully on-board with the place, and hits them when and where they're vulnerable. He raised a lot of red flags for me. He came across as an arrogant prick, probably a Chubby Chaser, who sees himself as the Fat Whisperer. She's a conquest.

THIS. A friend in another forum said he came across as totally PUA. First the "negging" then, when she thanked him, he went alpha and got up all in her personal space. Very creepy and gross.

An egg cream is a New York City soda. Milk, chocolate syrup, and carbonated water. No egg, no cream.

It went in through the leg. My concern was monitoring more than anything else.

Yep. Drive-thru health care. MrChicklet had three stents put in and was sent home the next morning.

This was the most I'd ever liked Toby. It wasn't just what he said, but how he said it and how he carried himself. He showed genuine humility, not the self-deprecation so many of us fat people learn as self-defense. I think he showed more respect for Kate, her feelings and her needs than he ever has. And Kate saw that asserting herself and saying what she wanted and needed paid off. I got some of what Rebecca was feeling. She didn't know about Kate's bingeing or the anti-depressants. It's not just about Kate's weight. It's about the gulf between the two of them, created both by emotions and physical distance. Rebecca is facing that, as much as she loves her children, she isn't really a part of their day-to-day lives. Randall has become more like Jack than he realizes. He is the one his family gravitates to when in need.

If there's no AB, there's no way ASP goes ahead with a second AYITL. If there is a second one, I have a feeling Rory's going to get a sample of why Lorelei fled Castle Gilmore all those years ago once Emily finds out about the pregnancy, and the parentage (if Logan is the father). She has already shown her claws to Shira and will have no problem injecting herself and her opinion on how things should be in the middle of this, regardless of what Rory says, feels, or wants.

What I liked about the Year in the Life: Emily's widowhood. She could be funny, mean, lost, impulsive, insightful and cruel. But it felt real. Lorelei's and Luke's communication issues. These two didn't learn from their first go-round. They just went along for so long thinking the other one wanted things this way, so it was good. Rory floundering professionally. As I said earlier, there are thousands of Ivy League (and other top J-School) graduates gunning for those jobs and bylines. So her not landing on a soft, fluffy cloud of professional glory was a good way to go. How Rory was with Dean and Jess. As I said in another post, it seemed like because she thought they were in her past, she could be more herself around them. I saw the heart, spark and wit of Rory come through with both of them more than I did with Logan. The final four words. Actually, I think they work better coming from 32-year-old Rory than from 23-year-old Rory. She was finally working through her professional crisis, she'd walked away from Logan on her own terms, she was starting this new chapter and ... blammo. The way Emily was practically shoving Jack Smith into the car on Nantucket. She's nobody's fool on that count. Lorelei's call to Emily from the vista. Emily was thankfully not awake enough to interrupt her and they both got what they needed. What I didn't like: Lorelei's stories on the patio after the funeral. Even with scotch on an empty stomach, it was out of character. It would have been more believable for her to either walk away saying nothing or staying passed out. Both of which Emily would have castigated her for, and there still would have been that amazing, raw fight scene. Some things went on way too long. "Stars Hollow: The Musical" and the Life and Death Brigade montage were both draggy. Cousin Aprilver. Could have done with just a mention. Paul. Useless, stupid, and made Rory look like a Mean Girl. Some of the wedding montage. I could have done with less music-video romping through the decorations and either kept it focused on the ceremony, or adding something from the next day with Emily and the townies there. I can't imagine Rory would drop the last-four-words bomb when Lorelei still had the whole wedding/reception day ahead of her. That was something that could have been done in a scene at the gazebo a week or so after the wedding, maybe as Lorelei had just signed the papers for the retirement home and was making plans for that. Logan. There was nothing about him that made me think Rory would settle for being his side chick.

I can see why Rory was late to her quarter-life crisis. First, she came into the news business just before it really began to crater. I'm guessing she got through 2008 into 2009 at least at the website which hired her to cover the Obama campaign. She probably spun that into a few other online gigs, with some freelancing thrown in, that carried her for a while and allowed her to think the brass ring was within her grasp, or at least getting closer. Problem is, major media was laying off left and right. Established veterans were going out the door. Rory was one of thousands of Ivy League graduates with dreams of the big byline. It's so competitive, it took her until 2014 or 2015 to get that New Yorker byline. Rory has always had blinders. She wanted to be a foreign correspondent. Everything she was doing built to that. She probably didn't see or passed on opportunities to do something else. She could have gone into editing, or some other specialty in writing. Even with those blinders, her stunning lack of preparation for the website job was way out of character for her. She was always the planner, the listmaker. It shows how off her game she is that she didn't go in there fully informed on the site and its history and armed with pitches she could give based on what she observed during the interview. I don't blame that editor (who was annoying as fuck) for being insulted. Rory's been very passive and avoidant at times. It's why she let things get as bad as they did with Dean and Jess. I had hope for her when she turned down Logan's proposal at the end of the original series, but it seems like his dad's assessment of her was right. She ultimately does not have the killer instinct and spine needed to succeed in the upper levels of the news business. And it's why she was in that Vegas arrangement with Logan, and kept up that whatever-it-was with Paul. Pride, passiveness and fear of failure (along with the cushion of her family’s cheerleading and her family's money and name) kept Rory firmly on a path that wasn’t right for her. Only now that everything is really, truly drying up for her professionally and personally is she looking up from that set path.

I was good with the pre-wedding wedding. Because Lorelei did it not for just herself, but for Luke as well. I think she saw that being married was what they both really, truly cared about. So this was her gift to Luke, being able to relax and enjoy the getting-married part.

I'm in the middle. I never thought Christopher was OMG TEH EVUL. I always liked him, and got why Lorelei loved him, but understood why she knew not to build a future for herself and Rory with him as part of the foundation. He has always been a sweet, funny, well-intentioned, smart, indulged, and weak-willed boy who, despite money and professional responsibilities, could not progress much beyond that. I liked Rory's chemistry with both Dean and Jess in the revival. Maybe because she saw them both as parts of her past, she was able to relax and be more of herself around them because she felt there was nothing at stake.

Ina. You're at the White House. Couldn't you find something better than another shent?

There was just a report on the local NYC news. They're saying the device was court-ordered, which makes me think he's got at least one DUI conviction. Sickening.

Devastating news. Anna Pump struck and killed by pickup truck

I've been on the barge for a while, but Luke's final storyline and Tony Geary's graceless departure had me booking a seat at the IDGAF table in the Floating Rib.

 That was almost as bad as Jon Taffer's product placements on "Bar Rescue" (sadly, a favorite of MrChicklet's) I liked the metal/wood table Clint did. Not crazy about the benches. I would have loved to have mixed it up with upholstered parson's chairs (which I believe HomeGoods has, so JoJo missed as product placement opportunity).

The wife should have gone with her first instincts as soon as she saw the counter material as a slab and stuck with "OH HELL NO." That pattern was fugly. A cushioned banquette with a small child. I hope the designer threw in a contract with Stanley Steemer as part of the deal. They could have saved money and hassle with just a round table and four chairs. They have the formal dining room for company.