pasdetrois

"Revealed" blind item alleging that Kim is having an affair during RHOA production: http://www.crazydaysandnights.net/2016/01/blind-items-revealed-2-357.html

Loved: the touch of heather in the boutonnieres "to honor Mrs. Hughes;" the melancholy wander through that glorious, fading house; the bagpipers; and Moseley's regret over what might have been. So, if Anna's pregnant, does she stop working when she begins showing? (In terms of grand house etiquette) And does she retire to raise the child? She and Bates would lose her income.

I think the second episode was better than the first. I like seeing more of the other folks involved in the case, and less of the self-conscious "acting" by people like the horse lady and the Alligator Bar owner. It's hard to believe that the witnesses would make up stuff just to be on TV, but the timing is weird. Did no one to whom Eugenie complained about being scared step forward at the time of the murder? I wonder if the suspect (person of interest?) they interviewed clammed up and got nervous because he's black and was being aggressively grilled by a southern white detective. Although he was pixeled out, it looked to me as if he is a black man. The burro (donkey) is adorable! I wonder how this series came to be. Did Rodie approach the producers, or did the producers recognize the popularity of True Detectives and go searching for a story? As much as I love the Louisiana swamps and wetlands, every time they venture in there, all I can think about is MOSQUITOES.

Who fed Jesse's dogs while he was camping overnight? For all his talk about his love for his dogs, I wonder how well he cares for them, based on what we've seen. At least he looked cleaner in the latest episode. Sue's macho posturing while she destroyed her snowmobile was off-putting. Couldn't she have saved it for emergency use, or for a guest's use? Weird that she hacked up an expensive resource. Martha seems less skilled than Agnes - Martha kind of floundered around in the previous episode, where she took a boat out on her own. Agnes knows how to take care of bidness. I think Erik married the mother lode - a beautiful young woman with a ready-made family business and residences. I didn't realize how frequently one can get lost out there, even someone like the Hailstones who have gone to the same places for decades. For all the talk of bears, will we ever actually see one?

I'm with you. I've started recording the episodes so I can fast forward past the boring or predictable or annoying bits: Edith/Mrs. Drewe/Marigold tearjerker (predictable and annoying); Anna woe-is-me melodrama (predictable and annoying); impertinent Daisy (annoying); hospital snits: boring. Which left me with little to view last night. Well, the clothes and the pigs were very fine. I understand that times were changing and everyone was stressed, but clunky scriptwriting isn't the way to tell that story.

I'm going to try to stick with this because I'm a native south Louisianian, a James Lee Burke fanatic (his protagonist is Deputy Sheriff Dave Robicheaux of the New Iberia Sheriff's Department), and I remember some of these cases. But the scripting and staginess are hard to take. Louisianians are a very colorful tribe without the extra drama.

Another thought, regarding the Lady Mary scandal: I posted on another Masterpiece forum that I've finished reading three memoirs that featured English nobility during the 1900 - 1940 period. Some of that crowd was quite racy. Certainly she would have been discreetly gossiped about, but weren't they careful about glass houses and all that? Maybe it was different and more conservative in the north.

She looked 60 years old last night, with the horrendous wig and no color on her face. I had to brace myself for the inevitable Bates melodrama - not one but two murders! and now no babies. I suppose we will be subjected to the melodrama for most of the remaining episodes. Ugh. I liked that the script reminded us that unmarried female servants often went to their graves without sex. Mrs. Patmore and Mrs. Hughes referenced being virgins. Kind of like schoolteachers who were not expected to marry or have sex. A realistic but depressing note in the script. The clothing continues to be extraordinary. Even Mrs. Hughes' dark blue silk was lustrous and rich in the lamplight. I wonder if production piggybacked off an actual fox hunt. Thomas and Mary can compete for who has the palest skin. I think Thomas wins.

I don't like Chip. I find him greedy and arrogant; he's very entitled and I don't think he works as much as he'd like us to think. Also, he implies they live off subsistence and trading, when I'm pretty sure Agnes and her children receive revenue. (I'm familiar with her village's government.) He runs his mouth constantly while Agnes and the children are off to the side, working hard. He often says "we did such and such" when in fact Agnes or the girls did it. There's something off about him. Whenever any of the Alaskans go off on tangents about how nobody lives the way they do, I want to remind them that lots of Americans hunt and fish, including people who do it to be thrifty. There are people way back in the hollers of Appalachia or the swamps of Louisiana who are just as reclusive and try to "live off the land." And let's not forget that the federal government has for many years subsidized, with our tax dollars, the transportation costs of goods that are delivered to the Alaskan people. Jesse seems as if he's barely hanging on. His dogs seem kind of undernourished, although I may be wrong about that. Did Sue say that she left her elderly, retired sled dog in one of the cities? We saw Sue's kitchen! Looks pretty nice. I spotted a Kitchen Aid mixer.

I just binge-watched season one (Verizon is temporarily making Showtime free to HBO subscribers). I've been reading this forum as I view the episodes. As always I'm enjoying everyone's savvy observations. Several of my own: - With all the emphasis on Alison's affair, and the loss of her son, the fact that she's part of a major drug ring got swept under the rug. I mean, Noah left her (temporarily) because of it, but the viewers' outrage is over her affair. It's as if the fact that she was a drug courier for a long time means very little to the writers, who focus her navel-gazing on her child and her lover. Plus, wouldn't someone in the town have figured this out and ratted on them long ago? - I assume she's notably younger than Noah. Interesting that not much was made of this in the show or here in the forum. Maybe she's 10 - 15 years younger? - The detective is played by the guy who is Verizon FiOS' TV pitchman - every time I land on a certain channel, he's there, earnestly trying to get me to upgrade to faster Internet service. Also, as portrayed, the detective's passive role, with nothing but a few mumbled questions and a slightly sarcastic smile every time we see him, annoyed me. Have him do more, or less. He's literally like a pair of bookends. - The Whitney actress is too thin. Even on my flat screen TV, whose proportions are off and make everyone look wide, she's skeletal. I worry for her. (I know she's a dancer; I watched Bunheads.)

She reminds me of Elizabeth Olsen (the sister of the Olsen twins).

I admire Sue but agree her dramatic claims are a bit much to watch all the time. Although it's her nature to run around and complain, I continue to wonder if she amps it up for the cameras. I think production encourages it to emphasize her unique story (aging woman alone facing extreme challenges). This bugged me too. Did she really leave that camp unattended and uncared for all that time? If so, she put a huge investment at very high risk, which makes no sense to me. And...how come we never see pilots and hunters staying over in the camp? That's its purpose, but there's never anyone there. Maybe it's too much trouble to get the video waivers. Also, does Sue rustle up their meals and act as cabin housekeeper?

*Waving at jjj." I'm also binge-watching because Verizon is offering Showtime to HBO subscribers for a couple months. I caught up with season four this week and am into season five now. It's been very helpful to watch the episodes together, because there's a lot to keep track of. Everyone here has already hit the high notes, so I'll just say that I'm loving the show. Oh, and I'm just wild about Rupert Friend as Quinn. Not only is he beautiful, but he's playing the character perfectly. His story arc feels very organic. I still have to give props to Claire Danes for maintaining her character's intensity over the five seasons. (Her mania is realistic - my family member is bipolar so I've lived with it.) I appreciate her lack of vanity. Still love Saul - the guy is currently a former shell of himself, but that clever brain is still working overtime. This show would be nothing without the three of them. Only sour note for me is Miranda Otto. Her acting feels very ON to me. Ditto for the American journalist. On the other hand, love Nina Hoss as a very realistic Astrid.

Maybe Hanzee's mother was the cook/maid whom we saw in the kitchen during Mike's "visit."

What a sublime finale. I wept because I knew I was saying goodbye to old friends. And then when safe, standing up and hissing "don't coddle me" and stalking off. Aw, Pats, don't ever change. All I want for Christmas is for this series to find a new home.

The Abby Chronicles have ruined this series for me. Do the writers think the audience is too stupid to appreciate the technical story and that they have to give us yet another desperate housewife?

I chuckled at the cops' attempt to go undercover at the motel: every single one of them in identical fresh white T-shirts and crisp new Wranglers.

Marla also talked about "auditing" her mother. In Scientology, that's when the powers that be grill you about your behavior, history, etc. Of course, I know some fundamentalist Christian religions that do the same.

My friend forced me to watch this with her. Not having watched the show in a long time, with the exception of reunion bits, I offer the following observations: Phaedra seems drugged, compared to her first season or two. The babies are precious. Cynthia seems lost and floundering, which happens to some beautiful women as they age. Her appearance is becoming kind of strange. And there doesn't seem to be anything going on inside her head - is anyone in there? Todd is on the Househusband's Business Plan: marry, leverage the Housewife's fame for business purposes, exit with more money than you'd have been able to make on your own. In this case, he may have elected to execute Option A: have a kid and finagle child support when he leaves the marriage. I thought he seemed disgusted at the mechanics of the ultrasound and that's why he left the room. Where did all those men come from when the fight went down on the boat? I assumed the one who threw himself on top of Porsha was a field producer, but we were wondering about a couple guys who were wearing all black. Caterers? When did they all go get boob jobs?

Didi did a rare thing. A lot of times a public event becomes a battleground for egos who want attention, but I believed Didi really did want to be front and center in front of the crowd for Miss Birdy's sake, not to show off. I'm getting the sinking feeling that Dr. James is headed for a spectacular crash of some kind. She's unraveling. Dawn's love of nasty wound care, and her raptures about "I & D'ing abscesses" was bizarrely hilarious. Too bad we couldn't see more of Patsy's dawning attraction to the cute new doctor. How the passive-aggressive, insecure but determined Patsy handles that is worth an entire episode.

I like that we saw something more than hunting and fishing. I like watching how they build stuff and adapt to their surroundings. I'm beginning to wonder if Sue is exaggerating her situation. It doesn't make sense to me that she has no help at all - that's the way to ruin a business. But I do believe she's beginning to wonder if she can continue living the way she does. All that physical labor and her injuries - she's just working on borrowed time as she ages. (Speaking from personal experience) Why doesn't she hire help, especially since she apparently has loans to pay and has invested so much time and money into Kavik? The new guy seems more like the Alaskans I know than Glen does. Glen looks like he's been dropped in by central casting. There's something so perfect and polished about his affect.

Some tribes abhor cutting their hair. They will cut it short, as a sign of grief and in mourning, or they will cut off a braid while grieving. My Mandan friend wore a single braid for years, and cut it off when her grandmother died. When a member of my community died young, we had a memorial powwow and her female relatives had cut their hair short. My Oneida friend had waist-length hair, and when doctors wanted to shave his head for brain surgery (after a terrible car accident), he fought them so hard they sedated him. Don't know if any if this applies to Hanzee's story. When he told Peggy to cut his hair, I did take it as meaning some kind of emotional stepping away from his situation and family, rather than as an effort to hide his identify.

Ugh, so annoying - I cannot find the show anywhere on my TV now. Hopefully it will pop back up. Why do we think Bill is identifying as straight? I assumed he is gay - formerly married, fathered children, perhaps on the down low...then a divorce and he's inching out of the closet. Or simply lives his life now without proclaiming anything one way or the other. But definitely gay. Oh, and he has a phenomenal body.

And mayhem will ensue!

Eddie's lucky he hooked up with such a lunatic. Because she draws a lot of attention away from the fact that he's a very smooth liar with no conscience. He steadily and earnestly insisted they didn't have sex on the boat, even though there were cameras and mics everywhere. Then when it was revealed they had sex, he gave a dramatic performance that indicated he loathed Rocky and could barely stand to be in the same country with her. Within days of that they had sex in a hotel room (I believe Rocky), and he steadily denied that on the reunion show with absolutely no emotion whatsoever. That's some bizarre and disturbing behavior right there - the lying and the return to the, um, well after rejecting her and mistreating her. I suspect Lee is happy to fob Eddie off onto a Baltimore tugboat.