Dowel Jones

So, Ben, the First Gentleman of Indiana thing just didn't work out, eh? I did like that Michael and Trevor have an intercom connection. What would happen if Michael asked Janet for a cactus?

Exactly. After 5 years in the minors, she should have seen players come and go. I liked the way the show portrayed the behind the scenes world of baseball. What the fans see as a team pulling together and all that, is, in reality, a cold, hard business with cold, hard decisions made all the time. Even though the players make a boatload of money. Sometimes it works, sometimes it bites management in the ass. I wonder how much it cost the production company to actually fix those mirrors. Mike doesn't live in a secured apartment complex? He should. I loved Amelia's assistant's fumbled excuse for why he doesn't have Ginny on his fantasy baseball team. And her reaction. I actually remember tuning into In Living Color one night to see Jennifer Lopez's first gig there as a dancer (fly girl). I hope interest in the series doesn't die off after the Series ends and baseball becomes an off-season interest for many people.

Angels Memorial should have its ED closed for a complete remodeling. Yes, there are other hospitals in the LA area, believe it or not. The scene where the movie star/intern is on the gurney in the ED and private citizens are crowded around filming and getting in the way was just too eyerolling to believe. A little personal history to illustrate: I recently had to go through an ED visit for an injury. First, I went through the admission process at the front desk. Admitted to the ED, I was scanned for weapons first. As far as I could see, no one except patients were admitted past that point until the patient was stabilized. So Rob Lowe and Dr. Nolan bring a patient into OSHIT (my acronym for Only Surgical Hospital In Town), and there's no MD available in the OR. Why? Because he's too busy being a boss down in the ER, where there's plenty of doctors. No problem, right? Does anyone see a titanic collision between Dr. OR, Dr. Lowe, and Dr. Harden (sorry, lack of names there) coming up? That was a piss poor security guard, there. They need to train their personnel on how to put a suspect on the ground safely without risking the loss of your weapon.

Which, of course (in Hollywoodspeak), means that somebody is gonna die.

If you build a bomb shelter into the Capitol building, and then the entire building is destroyed by a bomb, wouldn't it raise suspicions down the road when cleanup works it way through the building and they find an existing room with reinforcing rods, etc.? By the way, note to self: no more government contracting jobs. So now they have the terrorist. Who, during interrogation, will eventually reveal that either his group was not really part of the plot, or that he had help from within the US Government. Uh oh. Or, he will be killed by nefarious elements before he can ever be interrogated. McLeish definitely had an upset look on his face when Kirkman hugged him in the war room. Was he expecting a different outcome? I find it interesting that not one other country has been shown to interact with the President. No ambassadors, no skyping, no nothing.

I was just waiting for Rich Dotcom, during his plea to Weller to avoid jail, to make mention of catching the world's worst criminals. A blacklist of bad guys, as it were. Attention FBI agents: When you're hunting an extremely adept assassin, it's probably best if you leave the personal issues behind and focus on the job.

Losing out to your own star for an Oscar named after you. That's tough.

He is listed as an executive producer....

Or, I'll even posit the complete opposite. They muck history up so much that they come back to find that time travel is not only possible, but everyday, and commercialized. Oy vey. Tesla has one. Virgin Galactic has one (forget about space, let's make some real money), Disney has one at each end of the US. Microsoft had one but Windows 12 crashed and God knows where they are now. And of course there's a government agency to regulate all of these cue balls rocketing around space and time.

Note to Stella: Removing private property from an incident scene, no matter how stellar (sorry) your motives are, is theft (except for PD). Kid Hepatitis could have had a field day with CFD, particularly when her superiors played along with her malfeasance. It's probably a good thing, because then Gabby would get her Mama Grizzly on, and stir the pot to boiling, requiring plot contrivances with Chief Boden and various mucky mucks across the board getting involved. Could take a couple of episodes to resolve. Molly's is a dive? Take that, Hermann! In all honesty, I would watch an episode of Bar Rescue if they actually featured Molly's as a bit of stuntcasting. You know what would really make my day? DCFS removes Louie to a temporary family until the dispute is settled, and when they show up, preferably at the fire station, Louie breaks into a huge grin and starts jumping up and down in sheer joy.

Sooner or later, if they keep screwing it up, they're likely to come back to a future where their entire team never existed and the time traveling eye was never built.

I still have this faint image in my mind of my boyhood catechism illustration of Purgatory as a train leaving earth and making stops along the way to heaven. What curious means to get your point across.

You beat me to it, Driad. I liked the way they even tipped their hat to Lehrer with von Braun's dialogue. I appreciated even more the emphasis on his famously flexible loyalties, which have been pretty much glossed over in histories of the US space program. He was not a hero. On the episode arcs, I really hope they step it up a notch or two, because the lighthearted look at their weekly entry into time travel and the continual "fish out of water" sight gags are wearing thin already.

However, Kevin was making $2 million a year off of "The Manny", so I think he would be able to afford temporary lodgings, even at New York prices. Unless he had blown all his earnings back in LA.

A doe walks out of the woods and says "That's the last time I do that for two bucks." Is it wrong to say that was the highlight of the episode for me?

By the same token, if you're going to use historical figures, use them in at least possibly logical roles. I hardly think that Judith Campbell, whose main function in life was to be a mistress to a President and a gangster, to be the central character in a plot to waltz right into a nuclear base, steal a plutonium core, and never once mention it in her memoirs. It would seem more logical to transport back to Hanford, WA, circa April 1945, and use someone there to steal the last batch of plutonium manufactured before the end of WWII, and accomplish the same thing.

I think Russell Jackson is behind all the shenanigans to get some revenge on Elizabeth for stepping on him all those times. Professor Doctor BlackOps is reduced to spinning in circles because he can't do anything. Worse, he's relegated to putting the shams on the pillows. Nice. The President must have had a rocket ride through the USMC ranks. Enlisting at age 18, going through basic and infantry training over the next year, and commissioned as a lieutenant at 20.

I'm just curious as to what military base keeps a nuclear weapon in a shed with only a padlock on a chain for security. And, as has been pointed out, plutonium is heavy, and that sphere would weigh about 15 pounds. Not the easiest thing to hold in one hand for any length of time. Regarding the testing in Nevada during the 50's-60s, if you have access to Google Earth, type in Nevada National Security Site, and zoom in a bit. It's 75 miles NW of Las Vegas, (and one ridge SW of Area 51), and the amount of craters there is astounding. They might not all be from nuclear weapons, but it's very obvious that large things went boom in that area, and would likely be visible for a long distance.

I think that was the undercurrent of the entire episode; how people view the world through the lens of their own life. Which, of course, leads to miscommunications and misjudgements.

Culinary Institute of America. Make way, please.

That's been rather glossed over in the first few episodes, to be sure. If she's 23, and has spent 5 years in the minors, then she would have been drafted by a major league team right out of high school, and sent either to A or AA ball. That in itself would have initially created huge media interest, at least for her first few seasons, and, locally at least, she would have been in the paper constantly. Yet, the show implies that she labored rather anonymously in the minors until being called up midway through the season. More backstory, please, if only a little at a time.

First off, what about Dembe's mole? I will not be happy if they allow him to get skin cancer. I was actually cynically pleased to see Red get caught in a trap just for once. Sucks to be the limo driver, though. You know, wouldn't word get out among the trained assassin on call groups that certain employers have a terrible track record in retaining their henchpeople? I mean, working for Kirk is not especially geared for the long haul. From his point of view, I guess, he never has to pay anyone off. I seem to remember a side plot involving some patent law malfeasance. Oh, yeah, that's right, some guy was stealing inventions from ordinary inventors, and killing them in the process because somehow they were the root of all evil, and he was going to fix that by breaking into a high security room and uploading all the information to the world. But the FBI, at the behest of the NSA, saved all that secret stuff, like how to make fresh water out of seawater and other possible lifesavers, because somehow it was critical to the security of the US that no one should know. Or maybe I missed something.

I realize it's a plot contrivance, but what public school would put pictures of their minor children on their website for anyone to view?

I am curious about one thing (well, several things about this show confuse me, but for the purposes of this post...), Suppose Reade retrieved the tape as planned, and puts it back on the rack, as planned. Cops eventually work their way down to the basement, where they notice a large supply of tapes with names on them. Review of any tape reveals that they are child abuse tapes. Cops write down all the names from the tapes, and one of them says, "Hey, this one says Reade. Wasn't that the name of the FBI guy who was just here? And this kid looks like him. Hmmm." I think he should be glad that he took it with him.

It must be working, because there's damn little of it around the place.