Mermaid Under

Sometimes I think Lucy Liu's wardrobe should have third billing - before Aidan Quinn and Jon Michael Hill. It certainly gets more screen time.

I was coming here to ask if (among the 6 of us watching) did anyone think that Julian didn't actually shoot Bishop? Because their interaction on the docks (and in fact Julian's responses to Alan Cummings character the entire episode) was weird, and the gunshot was very deliberately off camera. To me, that says that someone had a story line in mind for the Julian character. Not that it will happen. This show was renewed despite not being popular, so they may get rid of Naveen Andrews as a cost saving measure,

This is different than a new character coming in and upsetting the comfortable status quo. Look at the title, referring to time. This is adding yet one more plot to the pile of movie and television story lines that tell the women watching that all woman anywhere at anytime need is to be laid and/or have a baby before it is too late. Maybe they will do a good job with the adoption plot. Maybe Lucy Liu even inspired it because of the son she had (as a wealthy single woman in real life) by a surrogate. It is still something that concerns me.

I'm not sure I would have enjoyed that subplot - the whole getting a girlfriend/boyfriend on the way to happy endings. Even though Jason was young when his father disappeared, and the story line didn't imply the father abused him, he is still obviously very damaged goods. Jason needs to deal with his anger or emotional or abandonment issues (or whatever it was), not get laid. There were two other things I missed/didn't understand. First, the Cassie's father subplot. What did happen when he confronted his dead wife's lover? Since he knew about the affair, and decided to stalk the guy, what about the outcome caused him to get so drunk he apparently was robbed (I assume) and sent home with the police. And the letter - did the lover hand it to him when they met, or send it along later? And secondly, is it really so easy to drop a murder investigation? How is Cassie going to explain that to the whole team, and to her superiors? I'm assuming she is only going to share the truth with Sunny.

I agree with this but it makes me wonder how (if) the writers can keep things fresh when they've established this closed circle of personalities.

Series 2 began last night in the US. I absolutely love formulaic drama, and this series and the actors are terrific. But it felt like they took all the suspects from the last series, put them in a soda bottle, shook it up and let it spray out. Prosperous white man in position of power with shady past (who also happens to be gay). Woman with shady past that she is hiding from husband and family. Still looking forward to watching the ending.

I liked it, which means it is doomed. I'm old and I like uncomplicated procedural dramas. Especially on Sunday nights with the late start times because of boring but lucrative sports, and the 15 minutes of commercials that make every hour long drama just 45 minutes. Add too many subplots about evil corporations or crazy-eyed men out to rule the world (Timeless just returned to the airwaves) and you've lost me. And Alan Cummings is just interesting to watch, which is really rare. Normal folks can't do anything about aging pets. Barbara Streisand was recently in the news about cloning her dog, and since Alan Cummings has mad CIA connections - maybe there is hope for Gary 2.0. This was really different. Lazier writers would have left those subplots on the table for when they ran out of ideas. I was surprised when he admitted being CIA right off the bat. Alan Cummings looked fine, they just stuck him in a tight jacket.. Naveen Andrews was surprising. He used to be so beautiful. He's still handsome, but noticeably less so.

This program has started slowly showing up on the various PBS stations that I have access to. But for the past 6 months, it seems I've only seen 4 programs - Thai food, prune cake, pie dough and guacamole. I know that PBS does innumerable repeats, but I wonder how many episodes were done for the first season of the program? In general, think the whole ATK, Cook's Country and Milk Street (because it really isn't any different) format has gotten a little tired, regardless of who is at the helm. I think Julia and Bridget have improved a bit (they were quite awkward without Chris at first). They are women of a certain age, and surrounded by good food, so I consider their weight to be pretty typical and don't think it has any bearing on their hosting abilities. The cook I've always liked least is Becky. In the 4 episodes of Milk Street that I've seen, Chris has been traveling (to England, to Thailand) somewhere before the episode opens. That must make this pretty expensive to produce.

The 2018 season started last night with an episode in Harrisburg, PA. Maybe there weren't enough "finds" this time. I thought they spent way too much time with each person that was on camera. Much longer than I remember from other episodes.

I was waiting for the Artful and Dodger and Fagin to break into "You've got to pick a pocket or two". I thought the whole street kids make a family was hokey - pathetic writing. Little Man? Aside from that, the B story about the team suddenly not being on board with Pride's plan - it might mean more if it wasn't completely out of the blue. They've never not backed his "gut".

As for Carly Simon's grandmother - I thought there was a heck of lot of speculation going on there. First - Gates presented Carly Simon with a list of passengers on a ship from Cuba whose names were unlike any name her grandmother had used and told her that these were her relatives. If you agree to start with that leap, they discovered this child on that ship who grew up and became Simon's grandmother was illegitimate likely born to teenager (possibly raised by her grandmother rather than her mother) and had Cuban slave ancestry But Gates and Simons decided and agreed that all her secretiveness was due to being mixed race.

Speculation is the calling card of most genealogy series on TV, and certainly this one has engaged in their fair share of it. I was surprised that Gates didn't suggest that the mulatto children were the children of their owner. I noticed that as well, and for me, that is not typical of him in this series (which is the only thing I've ever seen him do on TV). He is generally pedantic, and has an agenda of certain facts he wants to present, regardless of the guest and their needs. I laughed when Larry David yelled something like "you did it" when he was informed that his ancestors owned slaves. I've always been surprised that Gates didn't find something that connected Ming Tsai to slave ownership in the south.

I've read that one of the hardest things to do (for TV writers trying to capture the recent past) is to ensure that they don't mistakenly view things with a modern perspective. beadgirl, I don't even know if you live in the US. If you do, try to find some high school yearbooks from the 1960s. Historical societies or libraries often have them. Read what the women who graduated during those years put down as their "ambitions" for the future. Maybe by the late sixties things were changing a bit, in the media and in large cities. But in the early or mid-sixties, you'll see how trapped women still were. I wouldn't trust any source that wasn't actually from that time. I'm not saying that they all of these women ended up as nurses, secretaries, or school teachers. Many of them eventually became much more than that. But when they were becoming adults, these were the paths that were open to them.

I had an offhand question, and another thought about Joan's pregnancy (apparently mentioned in the previous episode, unless you happened to be in the US). The killer shepherd/gamekeeper - for folks in England, what accent was he supposed to have? Joan's pregnancy - because Morse handed her a pile of money when she came by (idiot) I assumed she used his cash for a back alley abortion. The falling down the steps is an unrelated red herring - either an accident, some sort of cover up, or her married lover is both a cheater and violent. Or perhaps the doctor is sympathetic to the plight of women needing to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, and is covering for her with that old fall down the steps and miscarry malarkey.

As someone who was alive during the sixties, no. Not lawyer or doctor, except for a very wealthy and very exceptional few. To most women the typical paths were secretary, teacher, nurse. Period. And if you couldn't afford any education after high school, a bank teller like Joan. And all of those poorly paying professions were really only placeholders until you married, at which time you were expected to leave the working world. It took exceptional imagination and strength for a young woman to think of herself as something other than that in those days, and most did not. They know she was alive ten weeks ago. Your comments seem to be assuming she hates her parents. I don't think there was any indication that was the case before now. She is angry with herself because she made choices that were supremely stupid, but she has chosen to punish them.

Did I miss something big? Who shot Scottish Tam and his driver and how did that fit in? Did they get killed by the gang that hired them for screwing up the murder for hire?

I haven't had a chance to check my recording yet, but on the east coast it seems they broke away from watching paint dry (golf) at 7 PM and went right into the Sunday evening line up. They said that golf was continuing on the West Coast. Someone at CBS must really hate Elementary; either the rating skew old or the program is too expensive. Sunday night after sports is where executives put TV shows out on the iceberg to die.

What I thought I saw in the preview was Sister Ursula sitting alone at a table (without her wimple) with what looked like an anguished look.

Sister Ursula's stance reminds me of what happened after "managed care" insurance started impacting US hospitals in the mid to late 80s. No matter what the insurance companies put in their advertising slicks, patient care suffered from the very first minute it was implemented. And it has continued to suffer for 30 years or more, except that now this poorer level of care is considered normal. No one remembers or expects it to be human or personal. And there was a brief scene where it seems like Sister Ursula is starting to slip. Maybe mental illness or addiction?

My recording also cut out because of basketball overruns. But before I watched this online, I wanted to see if there were any comments about Michelle Hicks (Jonny Lee Miller's wife). Since there are none, I'm hoping that her part in the show was pure nepotism, and relatively harmless. First, I found her oddly wooden as a model, and even more so as an actress. Second, I just hate it when married actors work together. For the most part, one partner is more talented than the other, and the other partner is given a pity part because of the star. It is just uncomfortable to watch. In cases like Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, where both partners are equally talented, I have no issue.

Isn't a given that when somebody says they are quitting or retiring or getting out "right after this last case" they get killed ugly?

This reminds me of the last season of Cold Case - which was cancelled for high production costs as well as having ratings that skewed too old. To save money, each week a different actor would be written out of the episode. If Loretta or the lab guy is MIA next week, we know this is the last season long before the network announces it.

Then I missed the explanation of why the black mad scientist was making one of the lab mice record Lucy and the widower. That seemed like an unexplained phenomena, along with Rittenhouse or whatever the name that must not be mentioned. And why the female mad scientist/secret agent picked Lucy, which Flynn told her was no accident. I've recorded both episodes and will likely continue. But I probably shouldn't bother to comment because (after finding out what moment in history they are going back to) I skip to the end just to find out how Lucy's life has been screwed with. That's all that interests me. Whatever happens, I know Lucy will find Flynn and chat with him, the team will stop his plans, but not kill Flynn or the show will be over. Since I don't think the show will last more than one season, they should be thinking of way to wrap this up.

That didn't work for Mrs. Hudson.

If I'm remembering correctly, the actress was"let go" for nebulous sounding reasons- after the first season. Although she stuck around long enough to be killed off in the second season. So it seems odd that she is replacing an actress who is sort of in the same situation. In order to get rid of Ferlito in CSI NY they wrote a storyline where the character was fired for mishandling evidence in a rape case where she knew the victim, and then a few episodes later she was killed off and never mentioned again.