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CaliCheeseSucks

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Everything posted by CaliCheeseSucks

  1. Can't argue there, it's a fair point. Agreed about the contrivance but in a way, I'd welcome seeing those four interact more regularly. I generally find Robert and Sol (moreso Robert) exhausting on their own but rather enjoyable when they interact with their exes (or their partner's ex). If it means less-to-zero of Peter next season - yes, please!
  2. I did not buy for a second that Grace would tank Mark Cuban's investment offer.
  3. So much this. He's a character I wish had been cut loose years ago.
  4. In spite of having watched every season, I haven't always been the biggest fan. Often by the final episode I felt let down by the promise of season (and series). This is the first time I finished where I thought everything worked. I will never care about the kids but they annoyed me less this time around; same with Sol and Robert. I think breaking Grace out of the beach house infused fresh air into the primary relationship. I've been disappointed in the past to see them introduce characters - be they totally new to G&F or supposedly old friends - only to see them vanish after the episode ended. I was glad to see Millicent Martin again, and appreciated that Mary Steenburgen had more than a walk-off appearance. I still don't understand why on earth Sol and Robert continue to socialize with Peter. He's really a toxic, hateful person who contributes nothing to that relationship. That's one character I wish they would have completely dropped already.
  5. From the Primetimer article about cancellation rumors: Most people here have probably been on the Project Runway ride since the beginning. Who really thinks it deserved any of the nominations it got during the increasingly awful Lifetime seasons? The Bottomless Fries season was nominated in the top category, for goodness sake's. Tim was nominated (with Heidi) for best host when he was reduced to performing like a Price Is Right girl, fawning over refrigerators. To me, S18's failure to get an Emmy nomination for the show or host(s) suggests that voters were voting for it out of habit - and not actually paying attention to what the show had become, which was a cheap, depressing shell of the show that started on Bravo. In addition, PR had a long hiatus - a year-and-a-half - from the time it transitioned back to Bravo. Long absences can be an awards killer. Even though Veep's final season did make a show of nominations after a two-year absence (qualifying in far more categories than PR), it came up with nothing on awards night. Give them time and voters move on. Bravo would be foolhardly to cancel PR, which by all critical accounts has somewhat been restored to some of its former glory that Lifetime had sold off to the highest bidders. It is undoubtedly a better show now than when the TV Academy was showering it with nominations. To circle back to the topic of 'Blast Off': I thought this was a good kickoff and I was relieved Jenn and Asma were booted, though I suspect we have Nina and Brandon to thank for it being a double as Elaine clearly wanted to give Asma another chance. Elaine is, in fact, the only thing I haven't liked about the reboot.
  6. None of what they're doing with Jonah makes sense. It doesn't make sense he's running for President, it certainly doesn't make sense anyone who wasn't a bottom-dwelling desperado would go work for him, and turning him into an endless geyser of horrific vile insults doesn't make a lick of sense. As I said last week, in the Iannucci Era, the insults were part of a larger story being told; with Jonah, insults *are* the story. It's as if David Mandel thought it was enough to channel every terrible thing Trump has done/said through Jonah and have that suffice as an excuse to keep him around. But the context for why Trump 'got away with it' isn't at play with Jonah's character, and someone like that could *never* get away with it. Insults are not plot. I did like Richard and Selina's outburst at Catherine but a few good lines does not a good episode make.
  7. Definitely, something was missing in that spot. As soon as Stevie started crying at the front desk, I expected a 'Maybe This Time' moment - but it still did not disappoint. An outstanding season finale. It's a shame that the Television Academy fails to recognize the show, because that Best Actress In A Comedy Series trophy belongs in Catherine O'Hara's hands this year. Even Roland was amusing in this episode - that line about Jocelyn planning a funeral for under a hundred bucks gave me a good laugh.
  8. Holy cow, the creative collapse of this show is unreal. There's barely any plot anymore, just excuses for endless insults (whereas the insults used to be part of overriding storylines, and thus more satisfying). Everyone has been Congressman Furlong'd. None of the pacing of the plot points in the first two episodes makes a lick of sense and everyone - everyone - acts 100% stupider than they did in the Iannucci Era. Thank goodness there's only five more episodes. It's just cringeworthy-awful.
  9. In fairness to the point she very poorly tried to make... Of course, party and campaign loyalists are rewarded in every Administration. That is generally the rule, not the exception and it's not a Democratic/Republican thing. It's how D.C. works. What she failed to clarify, though, was to Bill's point: Never before has an Administration so front-loaded appointments, top to bottom, not just with loyalists but either: A) Utterly unqualified stooges who have no business running a dog walking business, never mind a major government bureaucracy/department, or B) Utterly compromised individuals who represent the industries/areas that are supposed to be under the oversight of said bureaucracy/department and instead, once installed, dismantle or gut said bureaucracy/department's mission statement with regard to those industries/areas.
  10. Enjoyed the interview with Julián Castro, though I parted ways with his take on Biden. My blood pressure absolutely went through the roof when Bill minimized Brett Kavanaugh's behavior as just "drunken teen stuff" (not his exact words but pretty much his exact sentiment). What in the hell? I wish they would revisit the two-person panels that were being experimented with last year. Last night would have been an excellent time to deploy it again and leave Danielle Pletka out of it.
  11. I expected the proposal as soon as Patrick parked by the side of the road but it was still very well done. There was an extra in the background of the hospital seen that, at least from a distance, looked like it was Amir and I kept expecting there to be some reveal with that (but am glad it wasn't). Always nice to see Twyla get a little more screentime.
  12. I think it changes the point significantly. The difference between two weeks notice from renewal to production start time and a year is significant. Plus, you can flip the argument on its head: Most shows *find* their voice once they're past the awkward 'setting up' season and have enough episodes under their belts to know what (and who) works and what (and who) isn't working. Savage certainly had more time to prepare for season two of I'm Sorry than, say, Dan Harmon with Community, Michael Schur of Parks & Recreation and The Office or Tina Fey & 30 Rock. There's a long list of shows - including those previously mentioned, though many more beyond that - whose second seasons are considered at or near perfect after wobbly starts. In fact, Schur has rather famously said that (not the exact quote) after the first six episodes of a show are done, the real first season should start, because it takes about six episodes to really know how the show is going. I just don't buy that Savage had a sophomore slump or she was too pressed for time. What we saw this season is what she has when she does in fact have a very long lead time from renewal to shooting. In my opinion, it just wasn't very good.
  13. That's a bit off - TruTV announced it was renewed in August 2017. Filming on season two began... oof, it wasn't until mid or late summer 2018. Can't remember when I started seeing her Tweets about it. But it was in the ballpark of a full year between renewal and production of season two.
  14. It was a surprisingly lethargic show, given all the news of the week and the breaking news of the day.
  15. Can't say I was familiar with Irshad Manji before (IMDB says she was last on in 2011) but I found her interesting and insightful.
  16. According to the AV Club, 'Searching For Mr. Larson' was held over from last season, thus explaining Hader's writing credit during this season.
  17. I was wondering if I had missed something between Ruby's asking her daughter about the dump and the girls ending up at a dumpster. What was the point of setting up the daughter's recitation of information about the dump only to, well, dump it for no reason? The showrunning is absolutely awful. It's as if no one is paying attention to the mess coming out of the writers room and demanding some quality control.
  18. My eyes rolled right out of my head during that scene. Yeah, no. His lawyer is not taking a gang-banger client to her private club as her guest. It would be interesting to see Manny Montana in a role where he his being irresistibly charismatic and attractive to the opposite sex was believable. As a drug dealing killer? I'm not buying it. It's not the actor, it's absolutely the character. He's a horrible person.
  19. Hae's diary was included with appeal filings, so it is a public record.
  20. Same - I actually had to google 'forums.previously.tv good girls christina hendricks.' Anyways... I keep watching for Retta and to a lesser extent, Christina Hendricks but I really don't see how many times they can go back to the "this close to doing something/forced to do something/making a bad situation worse" well. It felt repetitive in season one and having every episode end with a cliffhanger just doesn't do much for me. I'd rather they engaged my interest in tuning back in based on the storyline being well-presented, not a continual gimmick.
  21. Not to mention, Tim *and* Heidi were producers; they had some creative control over elements like the gimmicky challenges, the lack of challenge time, etc. etc. The decline of the show on Lifetime has as much to do with their neglect (or greed) as with Bunim/Murray & Lifetime. I thought the S17 was as good as could be expected: It felt fresh and unshackled from the horrible Lifetime years. We'll never get back to the magic of S1-5 but they made a darn good effort at returning to the elements that made people fall in love with the show during those seasons. Even the auf of Cavanaugh was more in line with the Golden Era Rule that saw boring designs go first. I don't have much hope for Frankie in the long-term but I have no issue with her getting a chance at redemption. However: I am not sure how many weeks I can take of "Millennial Velma" (™ Difficult People) AKA Hester Sunshine. She has "keep me, I'm SUCH a character" stamped all over her.
  22. Another thing that really drove me crazy this season: The overbearing attempt to nickname things, which seems like her trying to make buzzwords from the show happen. It reminds me of the commentary from Seinfeld episode "The Yada Yada" where the writer Peter Mehlman was certain 'anti-dentite' was going to takeoff but instead 'yada yada' was what caught on; or "The Strike," which included the Festivus details based on one of the writer's fathers, never imagining it would take on a life of its own. But then again, I also think Seinfeld had a stronger supporting cast around its titular character and thus, those things *could* spring organically out of the mouths of others. I don't think Andrea Savage, the showrunner, really wants to 'share' what she thinks are the potentially buzzworthy bits with the characters in Andrea Savage, the character's, universe. She wants to perform them all herself and this season, it made the show almost unbearable.
  23. The only person even remotely comparable vis-a-vis having a similar series would be Jerry Seinfeld - and really unnamed, by extension, Larry David, whose Curb Your Enthusiasm has more in common with I'm Sorry than Seinfeld does. God knows, I have no interest in the 'comedy' of Allen, Belushi, LCK, Cook, Tosh, etc. (Ansari generally plays it fairly clean with his Master Of None character as nerdy, neurotic and needy - not at all what's being suggested here.) Having established that: No, this is not a gender-based criticism. Larry is outrageous but his character is more consistent and the plots of Curb (well, until the most recent season, which was a super-sized mess) more cohesive than I'm Sorry. I never once have felt watching Curb, "Wow, Larry David just loves to write excuses for himself to get naked in a scene" - a thought I had several times during this season of I'm Sorry. The few times you'll see Larry pull his punches in a confrontation tend to be because he's literally intimidated ("Thor"), not just out of plot service. In short, I think it's obvious that Savage doesn't have the creative discipline of David to know when to pull back on being outrageous for the sake of outrageousness and ground her character's outspoken tendencies into more organic moments. Her character's interactions with others need to stop feeling like an excuse for Savage to perform stand-up, with those other characters just thinly-veiled excuses for Savage to act out in front of them, with very little believable response in return. This show went from being one of my favorites in season one to one of my biggest disappointments in season two. You cannot chalk that criticism up to sexism. It's a failure of showrunning.
  24. Agree 100%. This season, I was far too often annoyed with how OTT Andrea was behaving compared with S1. It was especially incongruous when she needed to be forceful, with Shorts (over the behavior of his renters) and chickened out for really no good reason other than plot service. Some rando rings your doorbell, comes in and vomits all over the place... and you *don't* know how to bring that up to your neighbor who leased the house to those people? Please. Thank god, I have been asking people about this in other forums and I seemed to have been the only person who noticed/was distracted/totally annoyed by it. I'm at the point where I wish they'd minimize the child's appearances if they're not going to get the actress a speech therapist. Plus, the show already mined that situation last season, in the finale - Andrea accidentally sent one of the schools Amelia was accepted to the picture of the woman biting the guy's dick. Which never really made sense to me, given how much time they spent establishing that the image file was buried away in a old tax folder - why would she have been in that folder in the first place in order to have accidentally attached it to the school email? I don't know, I like a lot of things about this show but I found myself more distracted by shortcomings and inconsistencies this season.
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