Eegah

Isn't 1924 the time when young women started coming out of the woodwork claiming to be Princess Anastasia? With the Russians now involved with the story, I don't see how Fellowes could resist throwing that in.

Rade Serbedzija, who plays Violet's old flame, is a quintessential "Hey, it's that guy!" with his countless "foreign heavy" roles. I'll always think of him as Boris the Blade from Snatch, and other recognizable parts include Murad from Taken 2, Gregorovich from the final Harry Potter film, Gredenko in season 6 of 24, and the bum who gets Bruce Wayne's coat in Batman Begins.

I adore Rade Serbedzija, and I look forward to seeing where his storyline goes. Unfortunately, it also comes at the expense of the improvements I noted last week. Bunting is once again the reverse-Sorkin strawman who acts like an idiot and a jerk so we might have a chance to not notice that she's the one on the right side of history. The Bolshevicks were assholes, but that doesn't make the Czar and the nobles any less assholes, and these guys acting like they would have pissed on a peasant on fire just makes me giggle uncontrollably.

The Sherrif of Rottingham as a priest. It worked surprisingly well.

Did anyone else think the "serfs buying grog" joke was kind of funny? Although I am a fan of Andy Kaufman, so take that for what it's worth.

Episode 3 seemed to suffer a bit from being squeezed into half an hour. It was really weird that the story just ended with Sid telling his parents the truth out of hearing range. Thankfully, 4 was a lot better, and it was quite a blast going straight from it to Hugh debating the Russian Revolution.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by the argument about the Russian Revolution. Usually (as last week with Sarah) Robert's clearly in the wrong but we're meant to agree with him because he's more polite, but here it was a clear case of Robert and Tom both completely talking past each other. The Revolution was a very messy situation that boiled down to replacing one group of assholes with another group of assholes, but with less than a decade to process it I can absolutely understand why each of them is still sticking to their own version, especially with no Internet around to reveal how nasty both the nobles and the Bolshevicks were.

And of course, their being the same person is the big twist ending. That was quite a shock.

And then Crichton wrote a barely disguised strawman of one of State of Fear's major scientist critics into a completely pointless scene in his next book where he's a pedophile with a tiny penis. Yeah.

And so we get the grand return of Why I Hate the Working Class by Julian Fellowes. I almost have to applaud the writing gymnastics that dinner scene went through to try to make us root for the guy defending one of the most pointless and wasteful wars in human history. So it's now clear that Sarah Bunting is going to be Fellowes' strawman for the people who suffer under the thumb of people like Lord Robert, being as much of a jerk as possible about her views just so we might buy that the rich are blameless, holy creatures and we should all return to this society. That should be fun.

I was done with Dan Simmons the moment I found out about his horrific anti-Muslim views in the wake of 9/11. The only book of his I've read is Hyperion and it's going to stay that way despite the cliffhanger. I really liked Harry Turtledove for a while, until I read enough of his stuff to notice his constant use of a few particular phrases, which just made it impossible to take seriously. Most of all "as if to punctuate what was just said." On the subject of Heavenly Creatures, Perry/Juliet Hume had actually managed to hide her past for several decades, until that movie's popularity launched a campaign to discover what had become of the girls. It's particularly fun reading the "about the author" sections of her books, which are quite suspicious in their refusal to say anything except the other books she's written.

After loving Brian Jay Jones' biography of Jim Henson so much, one of my Christmas list items was his first biography, of Washington Irving. This was mostly just for the writer, as I'd never had much interest in Irving and had no knowledge of his work beyond the typical Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow. And boy, has that changed. The man lived a fascinating life that I've been gobbling down like potato chips, and Jones is just as engaging as before. And this time, he proves particularly deft at knowing just how much historical context to give us so we'll understand what's going on, without ever devolving into a dry history lecture. Also, after reading this stuff, Irving has completely supplanted Mark Twain as my choice for the funniest writer of the 19th century. I've laughed out loud several times during the book's excerpts from his work, a lot of which translates remarkably well to the present day. A particular favorite: in those days before photography, passports worked by customs agents writing their own descriptions of the bearer each time it was used, and in his letters home during trips to Europe Irving continually complained that he hated the latest one of these, just like someone today not liking their passport or driver's license photo. I'm holding off on getting any of his work until I finish the biography, but I'm greatly looking forward to it.

I really just have to shake my head sadly at the people (who thankfully seem to be a minority) bending over backwards to deny the ending showed what it showed. It's like, gay people have to fight like dogs in the street for even this amount of representation, so why would you want to take it away?

John Scalzi very smoothly called attention to this issue while discussing a different one. His book The Android's Dream features a character named Sam whose gender is never specified, with Scalzi's official stance being he doesn't actually know and everyone should make up their own minds. He ended this statement by casually asking what race people thought the book's hero was, as it's never specified either. One odd case is Louis Sachar's Holes, which casually reveals the races of several characters about halfway through. If I hadn't already seen the movie, I imagine that could be pretty jarring.

A bit of a weird one: Fishburne played Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It, while Jennifer Lewis played Tina's mother. As far as I recall they don't have any scenes together, just like this show.

Are we really sure that a show about an earthbending Avatar is nowhere in the cards? Not on Nick, obviously, but I'd like to see it.

I haven't read the original 101 Dalmations novel, but I've heard there were hints that Cruella was an actual devil, which were removed from all adaptations. Maybe that's where they're going with this one.

After seeing the new Ursula, I'm seriously wondering: did they forget they'd already used her? New actress, new design, new personality, massively nerfed powers...it's the only way any of it makes sense to me.

That would be Kristen Bauer, best known as Pam from True Blood. And she's actually the same actress who played Maleficent early in season 1, so they really lucked out there.

So, we now have a story about searching for the author of a book, which details all the weird stuff going on in a small town, of which numerous copies exist. Anyone else getting the feeling that the show is starting to rip off Gravity Falls? Although I guess they could also incorporate that if they wanted with it being on the Disney Channel.

I picked up Brian Jay Jones' biography of Jim Henson shortly after it came out, and it was fascinating from beginning to end. It's truly spine-tingling reading about his famous crew coming together one by one, and how even with everything he gave us in his too-short life, he still had tons more ideas that never got past his notes. It seriously makes you wonder just how much talent it's possible for one person to have, while also not shying away from the toll his workaholism took on his family life so it never comes off as any kind of hagiography.

"That's why Katara didn't get involved in that civil war nonsense." AKA "We could only afford so much Eva Marie Saint." Toph's natural awesomeness pervades the whole episode, and we even get Bataar's one redeeming moment so far. And I'm always impressed by the show's commitment to emotional continuity, with it making perfect sense that Opal would still be angry with Bolin, but something like this would earn him those points back.

I definitely got the feeling that Korra getting over her issues had to be rushed when the budget was cut. Still, it works well enough and hopefully that means the story plan will go at its intended pace from now on.

At first I was rolling my eyes, thinking this show really didn't need its own Ember Island Players, especially if they were just going to do a clip show rather than all new animation. But surprise surprise, it was pretty darn good. Mako's segment stands as Mike and Bryan's ultimate statement that they know they screwed up his story in the first two seasons, Korra's allows for some actual character development and is quite moving, and Varrick's is plenty comedy on its own that I didn't mind the wait at all.

Odd casting note: Jennifer Lewis played Tina Turner's mother in What's Love Got To Do With It, where Laurence Fishburne played Ike Turner. Shame they couldn't actually be together. I'm assuming Fishburne needed time to film Hannibal.