Stowaway

I spent most of this review worrying for Tara and Dave, and most of the rest of it wondering if there's a project where Thomas Haden Church can play Hal Holbrook playing Mark Twain. Also, this does resonate somewhat: "If you like Catastrophe but wish it had more fights and less baby business, this is the show you've been waiting for." Except I still have the SJP aversion, so I'll probably wait to see end-of-season write-ups to decide if I'll watch the whole thing.

I had one truly rich friend in college, and my memory of the kind of stuff her parents served was fish baked in parchment with a cheese-plus-vegetable risotto. And it was the mid 90s, so sun-dried tomatoes and portobello mushrooms everywhere.

100% yes! I think the aspic craze goes back to a James Beard recipe from the mid '60s. This is totally a case of the middle-aged writers thinking about what was "fancy" when they were that age, instead of looking around at what was actually happening in LA in 1994. I will say that a quick search of the archive just now makes it look like Gourmet magazine made a lazy attempt to bring aspic back in the '90s. But that's not where the person who wrote "geezed up on coke" was getting his information.

Maybe I'm just geezed up on cold medicine, but at first I thought that was Shelley Duvall in the key art. I thought I was going to have to go watch the episode for once.

Wait. Milk is gross, but milk solids fermented with bacteria is OK? I don't expect anyone to explain their weird irrational food issues, but that took me a bit by surprise. Side note: If this somehow shifted into being a podcast where Sarah, Tara and Dave just discussed their weird irrational food issues, I would still be on board (though I might take a pass on the visual aids).

Seriously, if it was nothing but gifs of Brandon's pants, it would be worth the click.

So this is what it feels like when doves cry.

I'm surprised they didn't use college as an excuse to write her off the show. She was always the least convincing "teenager," her character was never really integrated with the rest of the cast, etc. But what do I know? I look at IMDB and see that Joe E Tata's role is only going to grow, and I don't really understand how that works, so. . . the show contains multitudes, I guess?

I was '96. But. . . go Bears! #DylanMcKaywasrejected

A lot of southern colleges take their student honor codes really seriously (or are really serious about pretending to), and use student government (or some similar, separate "honor code club" type thing) to enforce it. A friend of mine did his PhD at UVA and at one point accused one of his students of cheating. He described the process of going before "honor code club" as being like this: "Student, did you pledge your honor to the honor code?" "Yes." "Well, then you're honorable so you probably didn't cheat. Did you cheat?" "No." "The honor code tells us that students at this school don't cheat or lie, so obviously it didn't happen." Anywhere that lets their student government do something more meaningful than restock the vending machines is going to have people who take it more seriously. I'm pretty sure Brandon is just restocking the vending machines. In fact, I think that's what the Task Force was about, too.

We may be talking about two different things, based on the article you linked. Who gets to set the agenda of a student-run organization is definitely something that can raise tempers in the US. (Long ago I had a friend who was involved in a vote rigging scandal for his University's chapter of the Young Republicans. By the time I knew him, he had changed his politics, but always seemed weirdly proud to have been part of the vote rigging.) But being president of the student association/body/class/whatever is just six people fighting over who gets to put a meaningless bullet point in their law school application. It's a popularity contest in which 99% of the population isn't paying attention.

My class president was the actor who played Chunk from The Goonies. That's the beginning, middle, and end of what I knew about student government. I remember his campaign posters had a picture of him as Chunk. If not for that, I would literally have known nothing. Because no one cared (even at a school that's sort of famous for people supposedly caring).

Snarky and edgy are fine. This interviewer came off as bitter and unprofessional. The "who's your favorite English writer" bit rankles particularly. I would have been beginning my "career" as an English major around the time this interview came out (at the school that rejected Dylan McKay, go Bears!), and if someone had asked me "Who's your favorite English writer?" in that spirit, I would have made them feel very foolish for thinking that ranking English writers was what the major was about. I can hardly blame Tiffani Thiessen for not having my pretentiousness at that age. Again With This has already gone way past the point where I stopped watching 90210. If anything, it makes it a more fascinating listen. If you'd asked me in 1999 if 90210 was still on the air, I would have said, "No, that must have been canceled years ago!" I admire Tara and Sarah's fortitude. I hope the project doesn't drive them insane.

Thank you Tara! I think even the Josh of that day would have had more training/guidance in that regard. But we live in a magical time, where I can go to Neflix, pull up "The U.S. Poet Laureate", and find and watch all the Josh scenes as a 10 minute self-distraction project. It's interesting that the only sensible thing that happens in any of his scenes is a woman cautioning him to shut up. (Also, apparently I misremembered and his rant about fandoms is from another episode?) I don't know why I'm so interested. . . I think Sorkin is the writer (in any medium) I've done the fullest 180 on. I'm not surprised the issue that set him off was sexism. He's earned it. (Though is it me, or has it actually gotten worse since then?)

A couple of people mentioned wanting the dirt, and I can only give my own perspective. When that episode aired, I was both a TWoP reader and a West Wing watcher, but the fact that the episode was based on Sorkin visiting the TWoP forums and being moderated was something I didn't know until much later. Two things I cared about had combined without my realizing it! I just completely missed the whole thing. Also, my memory of Josh's rant about fandoms is that he basically says it's possible to like something without buying into the crazy fan community, and to me that was the whole point of TWoP: a place where people liked things you liked, but didn't go off the rails about it. You could go to a Star Trek fan site if you wanted to rank your favorite Cardassians (or whatever Josh says), you went to TWoP when you wanted to be, as the slogan said, snarky. So to find out that the rant was directed at TWoP just seemed really misplaced and confusing.

So disappointed you didn't get into Sorkin on the TWoP forums. Tara teases it at the beginning, and then it never happens! My least favorite Sorkin tic is the straw-man villains who are just there to make the heroes look smart. You brought up the religious fanatics who get schooled in the bible, and that's a real Sorkin go-to, but for sheer lazy writing nothing beats "Crime, boy, I don't know." Also: the Jackal, I never got it either. Jackal Truthers unite! Perfect Nonac. Thank you! I've done a couple of Friday Night Lights re-watches, and each time I like Julie Taylor less. Not just this season, but the whole run of the show. Who does she think she is that she can do better than Matt Saracen? No one can! Side note: if I were to ever to a cannon submission, I would be torn between my desire to put a new show on the list (probably the UK Utopia, though it would be hard to pick a single episode that stands out from the rest), and the need to correct the omission of "The Son" from the honor roll.

Woah, I was expecting it to be an interview in which Tiffani is bitchy. Oh, no, it's an interview where the writer is bitchy. Like, insanely so. Is that what Sassy magazine was like?

It was a mild imdb surprise when I first saw that Kirstie Alley was in 25 more episodes of Cheers than Shelly Long was. My jaw dropped when I saw just now that Tiffani Thiessen was in more episodes of 90210 than Shannen Doherty (and by almost the same amount). Can you two really keep doing this through six more seasons? Are you sure it's safe?

There should be a previously.tv theme week built entirely around this.

Sorry if this double/triple posts; the button kept getting stuck on "submitting." Frisky Dingo is on Hulu. I'm glad Dave mentioned the gender fluidity on Steven Universe, because Monty wasn't doing justice to how subversive that show is. On the one hand, yes, they're gems (their bodies are like the projections from a Green Lantern power ring), they're not having sex as we understand it. On the other hand, there are a lot of romantic moments between what appear to be giant pastel women. But, like Monty said, not until about 40 episodes in.

I was so quick to get used to the different kinds of "Genie Scenarios" that I took a glance at this and saw "Genie Center" and wondered what that might be. But that's cool, they don't all need to be Genie Scenarios. Unless you think they should be? I mean, you're right, if you think they should all be Genie Scenarios, they probably should , who am I to interfere?

On the late, great firewall & iceberg podcast, Dan Fienberg once imagined a CW show about sexy, young bridge trolls starring Chad Michael Murray. Why does this not exist?