St. Claire

I think she was right to get the advice and work from the professional, but I think that Ben viewed it as her disregarding his position/taking away his agency. She started in with the discussion without him knowing and he expressed discomfort ("but *I* do our taxes"), then she told him somewhat offhandedly that he'd hired her at the end. Personally, I am happy to let others take care of my taxes (my husband does it now, but I'd be fine with a professional doing it if our financial situation became more complicated). Arizona telling Jackson didn't violate any ethics statutes, since April is not Arizona's patient; all she's doing is violating a friend/colleague code of not blabbing other people's personal stuff. The fact that they constantly treat each other even though they have personal relationships opens up all sorts of ethical issues, but Arizona's actions in this episode don't actually fall into that category. I am kind of on April's side. She didn't want to tell Jackson at the divorce signing, since she didn't want him to feel pressured to stop the divorce. He will want to be part of the child's life because he's enough of a stand-up guy that he won't abandon his child (I think he still loves April and will not turn his back on her either, but my main point is that he won't punish his child because of not being able to sustain a marriage with its mother). She didn't want to tell him up to now because she didn't want to seem like she was trying to recapture their marriage, and she didn't want to open up the "what if?" discussions about the OI. Although I totally disagree about her decision to not get tested, I still feel like it's her absolute right to make that decision. She's going to carry the baby to a gestation point that is considered viable (Samuel would have been considered viable in the absence of other medical issues based on how far along the pregnancy was), so she plans to have faith in the health of this baby and will face the challenges as they come. I would never make that decision because I would rather (a) get the reassurance that my baby is healthy or (b) know the challenges in advance so I could prepare. But, again, my choice is not appropriate for anyone else's pregnancy. I was confused by the timeline. The affair had been going on for 11 years, but the wife said she'd wasted 33 years on his meanness, so he must have started to act like a jackhole to her even before taking up with a new woman. Also, she was stalling the divorce so that she didn't lose anything based on the pre-nup, not because of any lack of anger during the past 11 years.

Co-signed! CBS, make this happen! Taye Diggs has done a number of starring (Private Practice, Murder in the First, Kevin Hill) roles as well as some supporting/guest ones (Good Wife, Will and Grace, and a few episodes as a Secret Service Agent on West Wing).

How many people's blood will be splattered all over Wes before this series ends? Ew.

Wow, Arizona was way out of line to tell Jackson about the baby without giving April a warning that she was going to do so. I agree that Jackson needed to know, but a "If you don't tell him by [next week/tomorrow/whatever], I'm going to" would have been reasonable. Dr. McSmolder is kinda stalker-y but is nice to look at, so I'll allow it. Jo was complaining about Mer not taking her seriously as a doctor/blowing her off for not being the favored resident, but her whole tirade against Mer was personal ("get your own boyfriend!"). That undermined her argument, IMO. I don't think Ben is as upset about Miranda making so much more money than him, he's upset by his domain that she's trusted him with for years (i.e., the tax prep) is being disregarded and he feels like he's being talked down to by the accountant. He's got less agency at work and now she's hiring a new person to take away his agency in their home life.

I stand corrected. I still don't get why Hank would confess to killing a child to avoid the public finding out about his porn collection, though. Every news clip about the kidnapping and alleged murder refer to him as a sex offender, so all he did was subject himself to a longer sentence than he would have served for the child pornography possession charges. It didn't help his reputation at all.

I vaguely recall that Just My Size had some complaints about its underwear commercials a few years back (backlash from the public, not networks' refusal to air) because viewers said they didn't want to see fat women on TV. Like, God forbid a woman larger than a size 4 gets to have pretty and supportive bras. I've long since stopped wearing VS stuff because it isn't comfortable for me, even when I'm in my skinnier self (I wore VS stuff in college, when I was about a 6/8, but my perimenopausal, sedentary mom body is currently a 14/16), either because of wedgies, scratchy lace, or the pokiness of underwires and I suspect Aerie and others of the same ilk would give me similar issues.

I started out liking the FBI guy, but I sort of don't trust him. He seems almost too friendly and easy going about letting Nina continue to lead the investigation. I want to like him, since I hate the stereotype of the overbearing, know-it-all Federal agents steamrolling over the local LEOs, but something doesn't feel right.

I may be filing in blanks to make this all make sense, but I thought Hank's previous conviction was an indecent exposure/public lewdness thing related to getting off in his car or something and that his porn was barely legal boys (not actual child porn) which the police used to emphasize how he would appear to the public and a jury. The police didn't actually have anything they could arrest him for, but they made him fully aware of how society would treat him if he were let loose.

Nah, the small print says that they are wearing lash inserts, so even wimpy-lashed girls can be pop musicians!

I think the nursing and the final shot in which they are sitting naked (or ostensibly naked; it's you can't see any body parts that are inherently unacceptable for network TV, but the implication is that they are totally nude). I have no issue with any of it, but I suspect that those two factors are a bigger deal to the networks than the size of the models. I think it's a great commercial, personally. I also remember that one of the networks (I can't remember which one, though) reject a LB ad a few years ago because it showed too much cleavage, so that folks may be remembering that. The networks' refusal to articulate why they consider the commercial unacceptable is only going to fuel the controversy.

A friend of mine at work was telling me about a woman on her internet message board ten or so years ago who sent out birth/death announcements for her stillborn baby. This same friend said that we will probably have Michaela be pregnant from the hook up with Asher. I reminded her that this isn't Grey's; except for Lila, they seem to know how to have sex and not get pregnant. Christophe as the bastard Mahoney was a plot twist you could see from space.

I think that once the justice system treats someone as an adult (i.e., if a minor is charged as such in court), he or she is considered emancipated in terms of plea deals and legal representation. I gave up on Season 1 partway through, but I'm glad I kept on with Season 2. Felicity Huffman included a question in an IG post on Wednesday night about who the viewers considered heroes and who they considered villains. I think we saw the grey in every character, and none were fully one or the other. I still believe that both Taylor and Eric are telling the truth as far as their own brains will allow- Eric doesn't believe that the encounter was rape because it went according to what they'd planned in advance and he never saw any sign from Taylor that indicated that he'd changed his mind. Taylor knows that he was too messed up to give an indication, and feels like his trust in Eric was broken because of the humiliation and ridicule after the fact. There was a lot of misguided righteousness, of people being so sure that what they were doing was upstanding and correct and moral, but the basis for why is was "right" came from a flawed place. The drive to do anything possible to protect your child may fly in the face of treating another parent's child with civility and respect. Lilah thinks she is right because of her religious beliefs, yet it drives her sons away and hurts them. Leslie is a fierce protector of the institution she is charged to run, and is lauded for it for years, but when she does whatever it takes to continue to protect her school, she wounds and alienates and harms individual students. Chris made some ill-informed decisions about the students he oversees without taking into account the larger landscape of his student body and the unintended messages involved with the suspension, and it brought some unwelcome light to the inherent flaws of a underfunded and overworked school. Terri an d Michael are walking the tightrope of "rising above" the general perception of their own race while still maintaining a connection to it (i.e., not selling out and "trying to be white"). I take back my earlier comment about no one being totally bad or totally good- I still cannot find a redeeming character trait in Wes. But being a teenaged jackass doesn't have to be a death sentence.

I know that I have to sign an authorization at my doctor for my husband (and my mom, now that I'm an adult) to be able to get info, so I would assume that siblings would also be denied access to medical records.

The more horrendous Eric's mother is, the more I am impressed with Emily Bergl as an actress. I only met her for a hot minute when some of the kids on the theater trip I was chaperoning were waiting at the stage door for autographs, but she was gracious and friendly and seemed really down to earth (up to and including how she finished doing autographs and just hopped onto the subway instead of being driven somewhere). The fact that the woman who was so open on that NY street could channel such a hateful personality (I cannot think of anything that would cause me to reject my kid the way she did, and her baseless accusations against her ex-husband make me ill) and make it believable is noteworthy.

I just saw a commercial for Trop 50, a previous grammar offender. The spot says that Trop 50 has 50% fewer calories (as opposed to the cringe-inducing "50% less"), although it still does not finish out the comparison (fewer than what?)

I am also intrigued by the DNA doctor being non-existent. So someone- some member of the family, police, whatever- faked a DNA result? Who does that serve? I think only the convicted killer benefits from that, in that he gets out of jail. But it doesn't really benefit him because no one trusts him anyway; he was a convicted sex offender prior to the trial, so being innocent of this crime doesn't buy him any goodwill. It would be an awfully long con for "Adam" to pretend to have been held captive for ten years. The physical trauma has been confirmed, so he either was really being abused or let himself get whipped or slashed or whatever to simulate the abuse (the scars on his back were not fresh). So, most likely, if this is a con, the kid is being used as a tool and is not himself the perpetrator of the con. My guess is that the writers will create some revenge scheme by the pockmarked man against the small-town mayor (he did say something about how the family "sure would [need lots of prayers]" in response to the clerk). I am not sure I want to get sucked into this, but here I am.

I don't think they actually articulated what her "bad choices" were, but I agree to the poster upthread who speculated that they were drug-related. I, too, made the connection between Megan going down in a helicopter and the doctors doing down in that plane. I really, really get irritated at blaming Nathan for "letting" Megan (? I think that was her name) get on the helo. No, he didn't "let" her do anything. It wasn't his choice regarding whether she, as a grown ass woman and a doctor, would accompany her own patient to [alleged] safety. I'm even less proud that I questioned it at the time ("Wha? Lidocaine is an anesthetic and saline is for hydration or cleaning") and didn't catch that he said "sailing" until I saw this post. And you know he will take responsibility even if he is totally OK with her being the primary custodial parent- he wouldn't even let her pay for his phone bill (she said he didn't need to pay her back this month, and he brought her the money anyway). They were pushing the "he's a stand up guy" angle. [ETA: I think Jackson really is a stand up guy, I just took that part of the scene as one way they are trying to emphasize it- it would be totally reasonable for him to just walk away from the bill at that point, but he wants to make sure he pays his fair share.]

When I first saw promos for this show, I was reminded (vaguely) of the book/movie The Deep End of the Ocean. I didn't actually read the book or see the movie, but I remember it hinging upon a child who was kidnapped and the challenges resulting in his re-assimilation to his birth family when he returns nine years later. I can't imagine not knowing for sure whether or not a child was yours after ten years, but I suppose there is an element of wanting an outcome so badly that you wouldn't recognize signs that he's not. I was slightly surprised at how quickly the psychologist wanted to shut down Adam's questioning, considering that he didn't seem to be uncomfortable or breaking down or anything when the detective was trying to get information. I understand the parents wanting to stop it, since it can't be easy for them to hear about "the man getting on top of me" and all that, but Adam was speaking about it in a fairly calm and straightforward tone, so letting him talk is the best way to proceed. As such, I am not sure how much I trust the psychologist (or maybe she was a psychiatrist).

I'm watching for scruffy-drunk Matt Saracen and also for young Shawn Spencer. Allison Pill reminds me (lookswise) of Kristen Bell.

I didn't DVR, so I can't go back to check this- we see Adam in the convenience store after he's been wandering along the highway, and he says he needs a ride, then we see him come to the police station in Red Pines and point to the ten-year-old article about his "murder" being solved. If this is not really Adam, why did he know to go to Red Pines? I wonder if the writers are going to create some long con on the part of the abductor that included him brainwashing the kid into thinking he was Adam, although to what end? I was sufficiently grabbed by the pilot to set up my DVR to keep up on it, but not enough to make an effort to watch it live. I suspect this will turn into one of those shows that I record and watch a bunch of episodes in a row while I knit or become a show I watch for the ridiculousness of the plotline, like I did with Harper's Island back in the day. I was partly pulled in by drunk Matt Saracen and slightly off-putting little Shawn Spencer.

I think time period vs. length of time is a factor as well- the four hours between breakfast and lunch are different to my system than knowing I'm going to miss lunch, and therefore trying to time an early snack and after-lunchtime snack to compensate. The awards are scheduled from 5:30-8:30 PST. so if you factor in travel time and red carpet, folks are maybe eating mid-afternoon and being at the ceremony during what should be dinner time. He also just got nominated for a Olivier Award. Very talented. I never knew this! When I was selling Girl Scout cookies in the late 70s, they'd already gone to having coconut and caramel. Also, some councils don't have Samoas; the caramel/chocolate/coconut cookie is known as "Caramel Delites." And so ends your Girl Scout cookie trivia segment of the day.

I'm pretty sure this was mentioned upthread, but I think it bears repeating- Jacob Tremblay and his parents are too adorable for words. I haven't seen Room, so I can't speak to the young man's acting talent, but he and his parents seemed very pleasant during the bits I saw of them.

Alan Rickman and David Bowie's deaths were both before Abe Vigoda's. I don't remember exact dates for any of them, but I remember being gobsmacked by how many of my cultural icons were lost in January (Natalie Cole, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Glenn Frey, Abe Vigoda...) Vigoda's absence was even more pronounced to me because of seeing the Godfather clip they used for Alex Rocco.

Kevin Spacey is pretty darned guarded about his private life, I think, so it's a big stretch to call him "openly gay." Elton John (1995ish Best Song winner for "Can You Feel the Love Tonight"), on the other hand... Chris Rock's continued tiny jabs about the racism (after noting that there are much bigger race issues to worry about than who is given a gold statue) reminded me of this West Wing exchange about robes in the locker rooms: Claudia Jean 'C.J.' Cregg: In the women's locker room. Sam Seaborn: But not the men's. Claudia Jean 'C.J.' Cregg: Yeah. Sam Seaborn: Now, that's outrageous. There's a thousand men working here and 50 women. Claudia Jean 'C.J.' Cregg: Yeah, and it's the *bathrobes* that's outrageous.

I've only heard it as "wet paper bag," with the intention behind the expression being that you are so weak that you can't even burst through soggy paper (which is notoriously soft and easy to tear).