scrb

Only thing I can think of is that they either have Italian ancestry or they can document assets so that they don't have to work or at least get a job in Italy. My understanding is that visas are possible in that case.

For all the lousy things he does, Mickey has a way of being likable to many people. We'll see if the kids and Abby stay mad at him. There seems to be no genuine malice when he sets up his son for the beating. He didn't hide the money and offers to share it with him. Somehow though, only Ray stays mad at him.

Early review, mostly positive: http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/tv/article715519.html Interview with creator, who's leaving Orange is the New Black to do this show: http://www.salon.com/2014/07/13/i_wasnt_left_alone_to_run_amok_stephen_falk_on_writing_for_oitnb_and_becoming_a_showrunner/ So he says he subverts rom com conventions but still considers his show a rom com, like The Mindy Project. But a rom com with cynical people.

Early review, negative: http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillbarr/2014/07/11/review-fxs-married-hates-idealized-love-but-not-in-a-fun-way/ A more positive one, along with review od You're the Worst http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/tv/article715519.html

Actually $3500 for a first class on an intercontinental ticket like that is a good price. Even coach would be around $1500-2000 and if you were to fly business or first class to popular European destinations, the price would be well over $5000. In any event, the family seems upper middle class, with the son obviously having some taste for the luxuries hinted at in Abbudin. So they could have money put away to take extended leaves from their jobs or if they lived it up, they really couldn't afford to do that. Or maybe they are partners in lucrative practices which can afford to cover their patients indefinitely. Plus the kids are still in high school but have to be thinking about applying for college? So it wouldn't be a trivial decision to extend their stay. But maybe the writers didn't think through beyond saying they were a typical American family from LA with two working parents in well-paying (but not investment bankers or hedge fund managers) jobs.

That's a good point about them being able to decide to stay and suspend their practices indefinitely. Two doctors couldn't afford better than coach tickets so they can't decide to ignore their jobs on a whim. Unless bro Jamal gives them never-have-to-worry-about-working-again money, can they really take long sabbaticals from their practices?

I think his attempt to try to make the country more civilized is believable in one respect. We are to believe that he was horrified by what his father was doing so that he left as a teen and didn't come back until now. So it would make sense that as a grown man, who seems to have his brother's respect (the way he talked Jamal out of cutting out the guy's fingers and inviting him and the nephew to the wedding instead), Bassam would try to tap into his ideals and make a difference where he can. He managed to get Jamal to go far beyond what even the US diplomat (Andy from Weeds) was willing to accept. Now, if you want to say how could a sheltered teen of a despot develop this sense of justice and revulsion at the tyranny of his father (to the point of leaving his family and country) in the first place, that's an interesting question. Certainly they could explore that in flashbacks. Maybe he had a Western tutor or maybe his British mother gave him some sense of Western values into the precocious teen. So the scorecard so far: S1E1 - Barry gets Jamal to invite the dissident and his cousin to the wedding, instead of (further) dismembering him and killing them. S1E2 - Barry manages to get the hostage takers to surrender, saves their lives temporarily and saves the life of the wife of his nephew. S1E3 - Barry gets the real conspirator of the plot to kill Jamal to confess, gets political prisoners and the wrongly-accused free from prison, makes sure the chldren of the accused are taken care of. So thus far, he's done all the things which would make him sympathetic to Western audiences. Now does he flip to the tyrant that his father wanted him to be and when does it occur?

I thought Barry achieved a lot. Diplomat Andy was willing to look the other way on the initial hangings, whether or not they were guilty, just so martial law could be ended. But Barry made sure the right man was hanged, had political prisoners released as a gesture of good will and got a trust fund for the children of the accused. He supposedly left the country because he didn't like the way things are done so it's not too much of a stretch that he'd try to change things, since he's got some influence on Jamal. So in every episode, he's getting more involved than the reticent exile he was initially portrayed to be. He might have gotten discouraged or enraged after defusing the hostage situation in S1E2 and having the kids get summarily executed on the spot but he tried to push Jamal towards a more Western notion of justice (hanging the right man but having his children taken care of, getting the wrongly accused guy released as well as other political prisoners).

Wayne's cult took all these pains to hide out, blindfolding visitors on the way and so forth. But the authorities decide on a whim to go after him and they shoot up the place? How would they explain all the bodies? Not like there was armed resistance like Waco.

Are they even going to bring back Charlotte and Ray? Couldn't really understand how this side plot fit into the overall S1, unless it was just a way to fill out the shows.

What's the point, why worry about conservation or health or preserving the environment?

Member of the royal family going in to negotiate? Contrived. Yeah Barry's change of heart is unconvincing. Jamal must not know about Barry and Leila's past? Seems like he'd hold a grudge. Of he loves Leila as he claimed, even as she hated him. She had a perfect answer to Jamal in the hospital room, feigning shock that Jamal would doubt her concern for his wealth fare.

Heard that in one of their dialogues, it was hinted that Molly really nagged him until he finally relented and they ended up going.

Amy Brenneman looks too old to be JT's wife. The daughter's friend looked too old to be a teen. Is that suppose to be the chief's tattoos or the actor's tattoo? So unlikely for a cop much less a chief of police to be tatted up like that.

Reality is that American shows are primarily made for a North American audience, with sales to European markets for additional revenues. It's one thing to have Arab or other ethnic members in the cast but to have one be the central character? It really shouldn't be that surprising.

After the dozens or hundreds of women they slept with, Hank and Runkle should be passing on herpes or something else nasty to the love of their lives.

Everybody made out in the end, except for Stu -- or maybe that doll will do it for him. Runkle and Smurfette walk away loaded, Julia finds a man so she won't be tempting Hank -- who are we kidding, good looking women instantly fall for Hank, as on the plane -- and Hank gets his way too. Prince Charming gets his princess to ride off with him, after he's boned all the other damsels in the kingdom. The one thing though, Hank's persona is always nonplussed. Even when he's reading his heartfelt letter that melts Julia's heart, he's got the usual veneer of cool going, with a half-jokey tone all the way through, even when he's suppose to be speaking from the heart, so the clever wordplay suppresses emotional depth. Is this usually how Duchovny does his roles? He's always unflappable and zen as Hank, though when he found out about Becca's engagement, he seems to put his foot down. But he didn't stay mad long, he just went back to his easygoing, cruising speed, little effort needed from him -- as the series portrayed his conquests throughout its run.

Maybe nursing is an addiction too, more than the one thing that redeems her. At least this season, they smashed the veneer of functional competence in a respected field despite the addiction. Or maybe, her profession enabled her addiction all these years.

I've only seen JT on the short bit of Six Feet Under. And I haven't seen AB on anything regular than NYPD Blue. I guess they didn't opt for big name actors in the cast. These are more or less journeyman actors, with a chance later in their careers at stardom and acclaim.

So maybe he wants us to think he truly wants to redeem himself, rather than laugh at us from the top of the piles of his Lost money.

Yeah how often has he seen his nephew? He left at 16, now he's 40-something and they only mention the visit by the family to Disneyland, which must have been relatively recent for the kids to recall their uncle Jamal. He hasn't returned to the country before this wedding. I can see Michael having to attend the event in Godfather but Bassam seems to have more or less cut off ties to his family or kept it to a minimum. The show will need to explain this at some point, maybe it would also explain the kind of choices he will be making.

I visited Sydney in 2010 when the unemployment rate was under 5%, maybe closer to 4% or even less. US unemployment was still around 8% then. The boom they had going on at the time was due to exports of resources, including a lot of coal to China. Maybe there was a labor shortage of some type then. There was an HHI episode where a young American couple went to Melbourne to be instructors at a tennis academy there and they had a weekend to find a place. In cases like that, the employer probably provided generous relocation and housing allowances because they needed someone to start as soon as possible.

I think the Commonwealth nations allow their citizens to move around more freely so Canadians, Brits and Aussies. Not sure how easy it would be for Americans to get something like a residence visa or a work permit in Oz. There's a lot of people trying to immigrate to Australia, particularly from Asia. I think they try to limit that, since they could get native English speakers from the Commonwealth. That and until relatively recently, like within the past half century, Australia had overt racism against non whites.

It would kind of be unprecedented in history if the son of a despot turns out to not be a despot. But for him to accept the leadership position is to condone the depotism of the father to a certain extent, because you're saying nepotism and dynasties built from repression is acceptable. So why would Assad or Kim in Korea be more beneficent to the people than their fathers? Look at how they got power in the first place. If Barry ends up being the Thomas Jefferson or George Washington of the ME as depicted on this show, I think it would be hard to believe. If on the other hand he tries to be Jefferson or Washington but ends up being as autocratic as his father, that would be more interesting.

From the Slate review: Hmm, the reviewer is dubious about DL's deviations from the book. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2014/06/hbo_s_the_leftovers_created_by_damon_lindelof_reviewed.html Positive or hopeful review by Tim Goodman (Hollywood Reporter) but has this caveat: