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fishcakes

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Posts posted by fishcakes

  1. Caroline is at least entertaining in a love-to-hate kind of way, and it's fun to see how much almost every other person there hates her. I got a huge kick out of Caroline sadly saying, "we tried," and Eyelashes being all, "OH HELL NO DON'T PUT ME IN THIS."

    Sydney was just stupid and ineffectual and since she's been enabling Caroline's attitude for the last few weeks, she deserved to go. Caroline really showed herself during the grilling by going on about how she did everything she could to help Sydney, but then didn't hesitate in telling Gordon that Sydney was in over her head. Her breakdown after the elimination was some of the fakest crying I've ever heard.

    • Like 6
    • Applause 2
    • LOL 2
  2. 4 minutes ago, Deskisamess said:

    Oh goody, DirecTV is squabbling with whoever owns this show, so I no longer see it. My current recording is the message about the contract expiring.

     

    You can watch it on the FOX website, although last night's episode is still locked. It should be unlocked at least before next week. Or if you have Hulu, last night's ep is available today.

  3. 1 hour ago, shapeshifter said:

    Or just a self-absorbed psychopath.🙃

    (typical of Monk's nemeses)

    Speaking of, I saw Mr Monk and the Astronaut the other day, and the astronaut and his smug, punchable face has to be the show villain I hate the most. Especially at the end as he's being arrested, and he gives Monk a nod of respect, as if that's worth anything.

    Favorite villain is maybe the neighboring farmer who killed Randy's uncle, if only for his befuddled reaction to Monk reeling off a long list of slang terms for marijuana that have no meaning to anyone but him. Bambalachi, the Devil's Parsley.

    • Like 6
  4. The series is getting a Blu-ray release, with the first season available for pre-order now. An Amazon reviewer said that they're releasing one season a month for the next 8 months, but I can't find anything official to confirm that.

    This is probably not worth it if you already have it on DVD. The season 1 extras are all identical to what's on the DVD version, so I assume the whole series will be like that. I do like the DVDs for the extras (and not being at the mercy of whichever streamer currently has it), but unless you're really particular about getting the absolute best picture quality, it's a big price difference: $40/season for blu-ray vs. $40 for the entire series on DVD.

    • Like 2
  5. Andy finally told Sylvia the reason he'd been avoiding sex was because he was having trouble with his prostate and he hadn't said anything earlier because he didn't want to tell her his body was falling apart. She told him he had to tell her these things because they were going to grow old together, and I don't think my heart can take this.

    • Like 2
  6. I'm about 4 or 5 episodes into Bobby Simone's arrival, and it's so funny to me that my reaction now is exactly the same as it was in 1994, which was, "welp, the show is ruined now." I adored Jimmy Smits as Sifuentes in LA Law (also when I saw the promos for East New York last fall, I tried a couple of episodes just because he was in it), but I really resisted him here. Eventually, I came to like Bobby a lot and I know I will again, but even knowing that now, I'm still having the same trouble adjusting to him as I did originally.

    I don't think it's just him vs. Caruso though; season 2 has a different tone from season 1. Season 1 was so gritty and unsettling, and in 2 it's like they sanded off the hardest edges. Even the first few eps of season 2, when Caruso was still there had a softer feel to them.

    • Like 1
    • Useful 1
  7. Sometimes when I'm wiping down the handle of my grocery cart and I look around and see that the only people in the store still wearing masks are me and three elderly people, I think about this tweet:

     

    monk.JPG

    • Like 6
  8. I'm just happy that Risotto guy got called out for having one of the worst dishes and told that if he didn't have immunity, he'd definitely be in the bottom 3. Was it Joe who did that? Brownie point for Joe.

    I was pretty sure Fish Taco was going home only because whoever makes fish tacos usually goes home. It seems like there was a recent season where fish tacos went home three times in a row and I couldn't figure out why people kept making them.

    • Like 2
  9. I'm rewatching this now for the first time since it originally aired and am about halfway through season one. I know it's been 30 years (!), but it's amazing how much broadcast TV has declined since then. The writing and the acting here are so good, but mainly the fact that there's respect for the audience as adults who won't get the vapors if they're shown a non-sanitized, non- black and white, non- good vs. evil version of the criminal justice system. Or the occasional naked butt. I mean, I do recall that some ABC affiliates did get a little bunched up and refused to air the show in the beginning, but I think eventually they all ended up showing it.

    I don't remember, but I think I might have missed the very last season or two, so I'm looking forward to seeing the whole series in its entirety.

    • Like 2
    • Applause 1
  10. I only recall a couple of times that Monk reacted to someone else moving on after a spouse's death, the first time being when the former police commissioner murdered his wife and it was his nonchalance about it that made Monk correctly suspect he had killed her. And the other time was with a college classmate who had remarried, and that mostly seemed to make Monk sad because he couldn't relate. But neither time did Monk tell them they shouldn't be grieving in the way they chose to, which is what Natalie was doing. Rather than justifying it, the fact that she didn't really know him makes it especially insensitive. Who would tell someone they barely know that they need to stop doing something that comforts them after someone they love has died? Monk was wrong on the issue of her expenses, but she was the one lacking empathy there.

    In any case, the point I was trying to make was that I thought Natalie's introduction could have been better, but because it went the way it did, I understand why some people still don't like her.

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  11. On 6/15/2023 at 7:57 PM, Bastet said:

    But I remain impressed with how smooth the transition from Sharona to Natalie was. ... And, as I've said before, I think it's easier for the audience to adjust to a new assistant - and later a new therapist - because Monk struggles so mightily with change.

    I thought it was a pretty rough transition. I didn't watch the show back when it first aired and didn't pay much attention to what people were saying about it, but there were enough media stories about how the audience was rejecting Natalie that even I knew about it.

    When I did start watching just a couple of years ago, the first episodes I saw were Sharona episodes. That was on Decades, I think. I quickly got hooked and saw that there were also episodes on H&I, so I started watching those at the same time, and they were Natalie episodes. I expected to hate her based on everything I heard, but I didn't. I liked Sharona more, but I didn't see why Natalie was so disliked. Before I got too far into it, I bought the series and began watching it from the beginning.

    Once I got to the introduction of Natalie, it made sense. In her first episode (where she hires Monk to find out why her house was broken into), she's perfectly fine. But in her second episode, Mr Monk vs. the Cobra, she's apparently been working for him for a couple of weeks and has just gotten her first paycheck but he says he doesn't reimburse for her expenses.  And he's wrong, of course, but her reaction is so horrendous that you end up having to side with Monk. When she finds out he's still paying rent on Trudy's office, she demands that he close it down so he'll have the money to pay her. And hello, she just started working for him; as far as the audience is concerned it's her first day as his assistant and she's trying to dictate how he deals with Trudy's memory. Later in the episode, she throws another fit because he won't close Trudy's office, leaves him alone at the funeral parlor, and he ends up getting buried alive. So, bad start for Nat.

    Then in her second episode, Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever, where he witnesses a murder, she gets on her first "karma" jag, telling Adrian that his inability to mind his own business is "bad karma," and actually accuses him of causing all the murders that happen when he's around. Not a great thing to say to a guy who spent years being guilt-ridden over the murder of his wife. She comes around by the end of the episode, but I still kind of hated her.

    Another early one was when they went to Las Vegas and she wasn't too bad there, except that she called herself cute a couple of times, which is never not off-putting.

    Because I had seen her later episodes first, I already liked her, but once I saw those very early ones, I hated her for a while and had to be won over again, which I eventually was. She obviously loves and cares about Monk, and I like anyone who cares about Monk, but I completely understand why she was initially rejected by the audience and why, to this day, people still don't like her.

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  12. I don't think Zelda was mistreated or that she thought she was mistreated. The Weissmans were high-maintenance in the way that children are high-maintenance, but clearly Zelda was part of the family, albeit the one who did almost all of the household work. It was Janusz who wanted her to stop working and cut off all contact; behind his back, she continued to talk to and do favors for them after she quit.

    • Like 1
  13. I know people have asked for this before and it looks like it was never resolved and then just forgotten, so I'm going to request again the return the alphabetical divisions to the shows we list on our custom homepages. This was standard before the latest update and there didn't seem to be an answer as to why it was removed, or if there was, I missed it.

    Without having the list of forums broken up alphabetically, it can be difficult to find the show you're looking for because it's just a mass of words that shifts every time you add or remove a forum. I don't even follow that many shows compared to other people I've talked to about this, and it's still an annoyance to have to scan nearly the entire list to find something that begins with anything that's not close to the beginning or end of the alphabet. For anyone who's neuroatypical or has a reading disorder, I would imagine that the custom homepage is very nearly unusable.

    • Love 1
  14. In the first episode, Caroline had a problem with Lan, who was kind of dumb but wasn't doing anything wrong, and now she has a problem with Megan, who also wasn't doing anything wrong. And if the previews are accurate (granted, probably not), next week she's going to have some kind of issue with Precious. So I'm thinking Caroline might want to start looking inward. It's not as if she's done anything impressive yet, and her presentation last night was embarrassing. Luther saved it and he wasn't even prepared.

    At the same time, Lan isn't too dumb to know the difference between a noun and a verb, Jake. And I liked that during the grilling she owned her mistakes, including the socks in the wineglass, instead of trying to pass them off on other people or "the group" the way Jake and Tony did. I do think Jake was the right person to go.

    • Like 6
  15. On 6/1/2023 at 7:05 AM, revbfc said:

    Forgive me if anyone already asked this, but does anyone know what alternate endings were filmed for the show?

    I haven't read anything about alternate endings, but I would be surprised if there were any. The Palladinos, Amy in particular, are known for having a particular vision for their work and insisting it be done their way. Actors have even said that there's no ad libbing, and that the script has to be followed word-for-word.

    • Like 2
  16. Sharona's return in season 8 wasn't too flattering to the character either. When Monk started to suspect that her uncle was murdered, she wanted him to forget about it so that she could still collect the civil settlement from the country club for his supposed accident. It wasn't as horrible as it could have been since she didn't know the uncle that well, but still made her look pretty callous. That whole episode was kind of nonsensical though since they had Sharona flying out from New Jersey saying she was her uncle's only family, conveniently forgetting that her sister Gail exists and presumably still lives in San Francisco.

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  17. 1 hour ago, chessiegal said:

    My favorite episodes are "Mr. Monk and the Kid" with Tony's wife Brooke Adams in it

    I love Mr. Monk and the Kid, but my favorite appearance by Brooke Adams is in Mr. Monk Visits a Farm, as the local sheriff who keeps brazenly flirting with Adrian. The scene where she wants to square dance with him and he says he can't because he's married never gets old for me.

    Sheriff: Where's your wife?
    Monk: She's dead.
    Sheriff: To be honest, I've got mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I'm sorry for your loss. On the other, [pulls him out to the dance floor] here we go!

    She's so great there, but the way he says "she's dead" is hilarious. He has a way of making things funny when they shouldn't be.

    And the flirting reminds me that I also love how appealing Monk became to Natalie in Mr. Monk Goes to the Bank when he was wearing the security guard's uniform. I would never, ever ship Monk and Natalie, but I got a huge kick out of how him in a uniform was really doing it for her lol.

    1 hour ago, chessiegal said:

    I usually watch 6 hours a day of this show on weekdays, 3 hours on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, then 3 hours on COZI.

    I own the series, so if I'm playing my copy, then I actually watch it, but when it's airing on COZI, I mostly keep it on as background while I'm doing something else. I do get sucked in a lot though because every other one has me going, "oh I love this one!"

    • Like 2
  18. 40 minutes ago, Suzn said:

    We don't know who she did marry.  There were hints in the pictures on the piano and the pictures shown in the 60 Minute interview but three marriages were apparently not important enough to even identify.

    They did name her husbands in the 60 Minutes interview: Paul Simon, Robert Evans, and Quincy Jones. The interview took place when she was still estranged from Susie, so it was sometime before 1990. I don’t think there was mention in other episodes of additional marriages between ‘90 and ‘05, but I may have missed it.

    • Like 3
  19. 36 minutes ago, Gramto6 said:

    Nice to see the gang again! But @fishcakes I think Randy does show his age too. I think he was young on the original so it stands to reason he has not aged as much, but I can see it in in. 3#, #7,  and #9 for sure.

    I don't see it at all! I did see a photo of him with a beard a while back and it had a lot of gray in it, but he just looked like a prematurely gray 35-year-old to me. I think he's got that Dick Clark/Bob Costas thing going on, where he'll look young until he's 75 and then age all at once.

    • Like 2
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