[Unsolved Mysteries - General Discussion]

15 hours ago, North of Eden said:

Such laziness I've come to expect from  flashbacks to an earlier time on any INVESTIGATION DISCOVERY show but  when you have the pedigree of UM...you don't chintz out and do that.

Not to get too far off topic, but OMG this bugs the shit out of me. I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices it. I was watching I think Fear Thy Neighbor and the episode took place in the 80s and I was just like, "80s kitchens didn't have granite countertops and stainless steel appliances!" 

[Current Plots Discussion: Actually Today's Episode]

4 hours ago, norcalgal said:

Using that logic, ANY and ALL rapists/murderers/etc. IRL who have a tough childhood can get off scot-free pleading their craptastic past.

Don't forget mothers!

[Fast Foodies - General Discussion]

3 hours ago, Bastet said:

I'm the one person in L.A. who doesn't think In-N-Out is anything to get excited about

Omg, I had In-N-Out for the first time in 2018 after years of hearing about how good it is and it is ridiculously overhyped. I was just like "This is it?" It was inexpensive and the milkshake was really good, but the food was just average. For my money, Portillo's, Whataburger, and Shake Shack are all way better. Hell, the burger place a few blocks from my apartment is way better (Byron's, for those of you in Chicago). 

[S01.E16: Reunion Part 3]

The message that calling a woman of color aggressive can be dangerous is right, but Jen is 1000% the wrong messenger. She is aggressive and she has massive anger management and self-control issues. She shoved Whitney; she threw a glass at her husband's party; she's had multiple tantrums. She needs to stop hiding behind that message. We all saw it with our own eyes.

[Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy - General Discussion]

The show has been picked up for a second season: https://deadline.com/2021/02/stanley-tucci-cnn-1234699770/

[Crime Scene - General Discussion]

11 hours ago, Cheezwiz said:

I'm not saying there are literal ghosts wandering the hotel stalking people, but I do believe that energy collects in certain places and affects those immersed in it, much the same way heat gets absorbed into a wall and bounces off on people. The sheer amount of awful stuff that has happened there (and I don't mean the standard miserable OD's which are bad enough) is sort of staggering. Interestingly, I watched another documentary recently called "No One Saw A Thing" which kind of plays with a similar theme: a bunch of townspeople shoot a man who had been terrorizing the town for years to death. This man was admittedly heinous, but no one came forward, and no one was ever charged. Immediately afterward, the town's fortunes began to nose-dive, and a series of other ghastly high-profile crimes - which would normally be statistically very unlikely - happened there.

Are we the same person, Cheezwiz? I've said basically the same thing about energy, but to explain why I do believe in literal ghosts. At the risk of sounding like a hippie, I think sometimes something so bad happens that the energy from it sticks around and keeps playing itself out (like the Japanese tsunami episode in the most recent Unsolved Mysteries season). I remember once in college I was living in a terrible roommate situation (nothing too serious, just standard young people drama). I was walking home from class and it was a beautiful spring day, the sun was setting, and I just felt really content. Then as soon as I walked into my house, my mood dropped because my roommates had just been fighting and I could like feel it in the air as soon as I walked in. And I feel like, if you can feel bad energy from something as inconsequential as a stupid roommate fight, then you're going to feel energy from serious things like murders, suicides, overdoses, and accidental deaths.

Was No One Saw a Thing about Skidmore, MO and it aired on Sundance? I became obsessed with that story after first hearing about it in an episode of the podcast Criminal. Then Buzzfeed Unsolved did a video about it and I found on Youtube a 60 Minutes story about it from the early 80's. I didn't put any thought into what happened to the town after the murder, but the documentary really showed how secrets fester and it seemed to infect the town. I wonder how the town would be today had someone confessed rather than everyone having to keep a major secret like that. While I don't normally support vigilantism, the justice system did not help that town at all, so I can't really blame them for doing what they had to do to protect themselves from someone who had shot multiple people, raped and abused women, and set a house on fire. Even with the most deserving victim, though, murder's gotta be a tough secret to live with.

 

[Crime Scene - General Discussion]

I binged this yesterday and felt like they could have cut out the 2nd and 3rd episodes and just made it a regular documentary rather than a docu-series. I did not care for the "web sleuths" 😒 and "youtubers" 🙄 at all. Especially the guy with the eerily calm voice who had a friend visit Elisa Lam's grave, film it, and touch the headstone, then cried about it on camera. Like, what?! He just creeped me out. And I was very put off by the people who visited the hotel like it was an amusement park or something. People died there tragically, lots of people, so maybe don't treat it like a joke.

I was in LA for the first time in 2018 and the homeless situation there is shocking. And I've spent most of my life in Chicago, so it's not like I'm not used to seeing homeless people. My cousin, who lives there, took us to some weird 1970's brutalist hotel (I think it was a hotel) downtown that had a revolving bar/restaurant at the top and then he drove us around the neighborhood afterwards. Like the docu-series showed, there are literally blocks and blocks packed with people living in tents. Seems like CA, which would be the 5th largest economy in the world if it were its own nation, should have the resources to tackle this issue... But I don't want to get too far off topic.

The general manager seemed to have a Jack Torrence-like devotion to the Cecil. Especially when she was referring to the hotel as she/her in the last episode. But honestly, with that history, the only thing that could help that hotel is to burn it to the ground and start over.

I definitely went into watching this thinking Elisa's death was unsolved, but it was pretty clear by the end that it's solved. Everything that the web sleuths flagged as suspicious had reasonable explanations (and to be fair, even though they annoy me, a lot of them admitted that). Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.

[S01.E13: Chilly Reception]

1 hour ago, nexxie said:

Speaking of cons - watching Mary’s choir follow her instructions while looking at her in horror said it all!

This show might have a chance if they lost Jen and Mary - and Brooks, of course.

I remember in the episode with the Met Gala lunch - with Valter! - the older man who was helping her set up placed one of the ear pod boxes upside down and she was like, "That's upside down. Can't you read?!" Seemed like she forgot she was on camera for a minute and showed her true self (not that her fake self was that much better). That's why, to me, Mary will always be so much worse than Jen, no matter how many obnoxious, violent temper tantrums Jen throws. Mary is a legitimately bad (not just Real Housewives bad) person who is scamming money out of her congregants to maintain her lifestyle, her house in Carmel, IN, and her ridiculous "closet" full of ugly clothes. 

Agree that the three of them need to go.

[Unsolved Mysteries - General Discussion]

On 11/18/2020 at 11:15 AM, CrazyInAlabama said:

I remember some of the early episodes, including one about adults just walking away from their lives, and how many did that. 

It's crazy how so many people got away with it too. No internet, credit card use was not that frequent, less surveillance. When my sister and I were born (1977 and 1982), you weren't legally required to get your baby a social security number, so we didn't get one until the mid to late 80's. Adults back then could just go in and apply for a new social security number and it wouldn't be seen as odd. 

One thing I learned from the OG UM was just how monstrous early to mid century social services was. One story that made me cry was this old man talking about how when he was a kid - in the 20's or 30's, I don't quite remember - his mom put him up for adoption in NY and NY social services just put him and a bunch of other children on a train headed to the west coast and the train would make stops through out the country and adoptive parents would just show up at the train station and pick a kid they wanted. And they got to take the kids home with them! Seemingly no background checks or being able to follow up on the child's welfare. This poor man was looking for his sister, who his mom did not put up for adoption, and sadly he died without ever meeting her. 

[S04.E06: Terra Nullius]

God, that scene between the queen and Diana. Someone who is clearly struggling is reaching out to you and you can't even give her a tiny bit of kindness? I've seen more kindness and empathy between strangers at a bar (particularly drunk girls in the bathroom) than she showed Diana. 

[S04.E04: Favourites]

This episode could have been titled Shithead Children. Or more accurately, Shithead Children Don't Fall Far From Their Shithead Parents. Mark Thatcher - shithead. Margaret Thatcher - shithead. The entire royal family - shitheads. 

I used to think Peter Morgan was too enamored of the royal family and the queen in particular, but this season he's really pulling no punches. Now I'm wondering if he's a small-r republican. The royal family is a toxic mess and they really embody the phrase "hurt people hurt people." And they just keep repeating the cycle.

[S04.E02: The Balmoral Test]

5 hours ago, qtpye said:

I am less than 20 minutes in and right now I can not stand what dicks the royal family is being towards the Thatchers. The worsts are Phillip and Margaret...two people who have been catered to and pampered their whole lives. 

I'm at the part where they came down dressed for dinner. You must be a massive dick to make *Margaret Thatcher* sympathetic. I do like Denis Thatcher, though. And at least they're self-made.

[All Episodes Talk: All Rise]

1 hour ago, seacliffsal said:

It is rare that an episode has two classic cases in it, but this was definitely one.

I had somehow never seen this episode before and it was so good! I got the sense that the first defendant, the one who parked in the driveway, was the prettiest girl in a small town when she was younger and that's why she thought she could charm the judge with her potato chips story and seemed to think that it was cute that she broke into a home and stole a car.

I've seen multiple comments on here about Judge Judy seeming meaner and more over her job this year. That's not something I've noticed until this episode today, which I think was from 2012 (the dad defendant said something like "last year, in 2011"). She yelled, because that's her thing, but way less than she has in the newer episodes. She didn't repeat the same insults over and over. Her comments were still biting but much less mean-spirited. 

[Season 1 & 2 Discussion]

And Ted Lasso has been renewed for a third season! https://news.avclub.com/apple-hit-ted-lasso-gets-a-super-early-season-3-renewal-1845513460

ETA: And I learned from the comments section that there is an AFC Richmond website - https://afcrichmond.com/

[Unsolved Mysteries - General Discussion]

The Jack Wheeler case reminds me of the Elisa Lam case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elisa_Lam), mostly because of the odd, slightly creepy surveillance videos that have been released in both cases. And because both victims had mental health issues. With Elisa Lam, the shocking but totally inaccurate theory was that she was being tormented by ghosts at the creepy murder hotel Cecil Hotel. In Jack Wheeler's case, I think the shocking but totally inaccurate theory is that it was a hit. That's awfully sloppy for a hit, both how his body was disposed and the manner in which he was killed. I mean, beating the shit out of someone wouldn't necessarily kill them. My guess is that it was either a random killing - they kept saying that if it was random, the killer wouldn't have put his body in a dumpster, but I don't get why. It wouldn't be that hard to throw one body into a dumpster and it's not like he was dismembered and put into a bunch of different dumpsters; now that would be a lot of work for a random killing - or that he ended up in that dumpster for whatever reason and was killed when he was tossed into the dump truck.

[Murder, She Wrote - General Discussion]

3 hours ago, welnoc said:

Count me in for another who loves the Jessica/Seth dynamic. I keep going back and forth between thinking of them as an established couple with separate domiciles, and them being just very dear friends.

One thing I really appreciate about Murder, She Wrote is that it was actually pretty progressive for the time. And in some ways progressive even by today's standards. I think a lot of other shows would have paired Jessica and Seth, but I like that they remained friends because I feel like friendships between grown men and women are rarely shown in entertainment. 

She also didn't have children (though she did have a million nieces and nephews and cousins and sorority sisters), which I thought was a pretty bold choice. They alluded in one episode that maybe it wasn't her choice not to have children, but still; I'd be interested to know why she wasn't given children, especially since even today women who don't want/can't have children are judged.

And lastly, she was also pretty non-judgemental about other people's sex lives. Even when she found out her former student was a sex worker, she was taken aback, but she still had an open conversation with the madam, who let her know that not all sex workers come from broken homes and bad families. And of course there's classic If It's Thursday It Must Be Beverly, where Jessica has to talk to Beverly about her relationship with Amos' deputy because Amos and Seth are uncomfortable talking about sex with her. 

And this has been my Ted Talk about Jessica Fletcher: Feminist Icon.

[Past Plots Discussion: Whatever Happened To...]

1 hour ago, CanaryFan98 said:

Heather Tom was never on Days although she did write an Op-Ed to a soap mag(I think SOD) years ago calling out JER for how terrible it was to write that Mimi was barren because she had an abortion(course that's a moot point now as Rex knocked Mimi up with Emily).

Oh God I forgot about that Mimi abortion storyline. Good for Heather Tom. I made the conscious decision to stop watching Days regularly when Mimi was sobbing and said, "I killed my baby. I killed *our* baby." All My Children did a more progressive abortion storyline in 1973 than Days did in 2005 (I think that's around when it happened).

[Spoilers And Shockers]

37 minutes ago, Pearson80 said:

So, soaps may not get the respect that they deserve from Hollywood but they are the hardest working actors and are beloved by their fans..

David O. Russell (who I know is pretty ugh) actually loves soap opera actors - https://www.vulture.com/2015/12/david-o-russell-loves-soap-actors.html. There's also a pretty great catfight scene between Natalie and Erica on All My Children in that article.

Soaps today may not be as good as they once were, but there have been some really good storylines with top notch acting in the past. I think a big part of the reason they haven't been give the respect they deserve is because the audience is largely female. A lot of entertainment largely enjoyed by women is often derided as "chick lit," "chick flicks," and "guilty pleasures," which is such bullshit.

[All Episodes Talk: All Rise]

I might rewatch the granddaughter episode to count how many times she said betwixt. She said between at first then quickly corrected herself to say betwixt and I was like, "She knows that between is an actual word, right?" 

So both her mother and grandfather filed false police reports against her? She reminds me of the line from Justified: You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you're the asshole. 

One of my favorite Judge Judy moves is when she emotionlessly hands Byrd a tissue to give to a crying litigant. (Although occasionally the litigant has a good reason to cry and I feel for them.)

[Current Plots Discussion: Actually Today's Episode]

I did tear up a little when Sami and Allie said their tearful good-byes. Mothers and daughters making up after a fight always gets me right in the feels, probably because I was such a shit to my mom during my teenage years (standard teen girl shit, not soap opera level shit).

I've never really been a Sami fan - though I do love Lumi and I love seeing characters (and actors) with such a shared history interact with one another - but during this visit I've firmly become #TeamSami. At least for now. Everyone teamed up against her for no good reason and were so reflexively "Sami's wrong about this" and overreacting to everything she did. And at least once an episode it felt like someone talked shit about her. Even random people, like Abby in today's episode. I almost screamed at my tv, "Give it a rest, you guys!"

[Current Plots Discussion: Actually Today's Episode]

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people refer to Africa like it's a country and not a whole-ass continent. It's not just on Days, and it happens in real life, but it's been annoying me on the show the last few days. "I'm going to Africa." Cool. Where exactly in those 12 million square miles are you going?

Is Lani aware of how many women in prison are mothers? Or does she only give a shit about Kristin and to hell with all those other moms?

[Get Organized With The Home Edit - General Discussion]

I tried to watch this show, but once the three assistants showed up in the first episode and I saw that all of them looked the same - medium length to long hair, side part, beachy waves, all black outfits, young white women - I was immediately turned off. It was like a creepy home organization cult/sorority. After reading the comments, it sounds like I just would have gotten progressively angrier while watching, so I'm glad I didn't watch past the first five minutes. 

[Season 1 & 2 Discussion]

15 hours ago, howiveaddict said:

Hope it gets renewed.

I googled it because I also love this show and have watched each episode more than once and it's already been renewed for season 2! But because of covid, obviously, they don't know when they can start filming season 2.

Whenever I rewatch the episodes, I pick up on little things I missed watching it the first time. Like in this past episode, Roy mouthing the words to Let It Go, probably because of his cutie patootie niece.

I also recently learned that the actress who plays Rebecca played the "Shame! Shame!" nun on Game of Thrones.

[All Episodes Talk: All Rise]

One of my favorite things about Judge Judy is the audience reactions and there were some great ones today. The best reactions were when the plaintiff said her ex-husband racked up over $4,000 worth of tolls (that guy was a real piece of work) and when that awful defendant said the plaintiff's husband was gay (did the plaintiff even speak at all during the hearing?). I think I even gasped when I heard $4,000. 

[Love It Or List It - General Discussion]

11 hours ago, absnow54 said:

This week’s Change of Heart, the couple said that they listed the house, but couldn’t sell it for the price they wanted, which makes me think David’s appraisal numbers are total bull.

Does anyone remember the HGTV show "Bang for your Buck" that was on I think around the early 2010's? They would feature three different homes that recently had the same renovation (possibly on the same or similar budgets, I don't remember). The host and a guest designer would go into the renovated room in each house and evaluate the work that was done and then at the end of the episode they would wrap up by going over how much money each house would get if it were to go the market and how that compared to what they spent on the renovation. People on that show would rarely make more money than they spent on the renovation. At best they would break even. And sometimes they wouldn't even recoup the full cost of the renovation, especially if their renovations weren't bland, like putting orange cabinets in the kitchen. David's "appraisals" are always at least break even and usually show the new value of the house more than covering the renovations costs, so I agree with you on his appraisals.