ShellSeeker

Oh, agreed for sure. I watched up through season 5, and then the premiere of season 6 completely turned me off. It was the school shooting episode, and it played to me like a gratuitous ratings grab, and something done for shock value. I found it very distasteful. I gave it a couple more episodes, and then there was a scene with Jax showing up at the brothel to see the madam (I think played by Kim Dickens) who he'd been sleeping with. And showed him with the big sad puppy dog eyes when he found out she was with a client. Really? You're upset that the prostitute is boning someone else? That was it for me.

What about bandannas in every color of the rainbow?

Loved Carrie Fisher. I loved that she didn't let herself spend her whole life defined as Princess Leia. Funny and fearless. Took what life threw at her and kicked its ass. I have a good friend who used to work for Debbie Reynolds when she had her hotel in Vegas. I invited him to spend Thanksgiving with us this year, which he has a few times, but he already had plans to attend Carrie Fisher's 60th birthday party in LA. The one that hid me hardest this year was Glenn Frey. Hotel California was the first album I ever got, and I listened to it over and over again. The day after he died, I heard Hotel California on the radio on my way to work, and I sat in the parking lot and cried when I got to the office.

I love it too, and I would also never use it if it was something you had to make yourself. Egads. A few weeks ago I had empanadas on the menu for dinner. I was so annoyed that there were no puff pastry sheets at the store, only the shells, but I bought them anyway and figured I could improvise. It turns out they were a lot handier than the sheets, because I popped them in the oven, finished up the empanada filling, and the filled up the cups and topped them with cheese. No rolling out the dough, folding it, sealing with a fork, and so on. My only mistake was that I didn't realize you are supposed to separate them before cooking them, so some of them didn't rise all the way into the full shell shape. It still worked pretty well though. Then a couple weeks later I wanted to try them with a spinach and sausage calzone recipe, and when I went to look for the shells in the freezer section, and all they had were sheets. LOL. I didn't think the cheese straws were a bad idea, but they were way too big. She should have made them about half the size. I did like the idea of the pot pies in the small individual iron skillets. But puff pastry doesn't seem like it would work that well as pizza crust.

Hi everyone, I changed the title of this thread. Now taking votes for the 2017 thread name!

From episode 4.6, Mixed Doubles: Frasier and Niles just spotted Rodney (the Niles clone who Daphne has been dating) with Adelle, the woman Niles has been dating. Niles is preparing to confront them, and Frasier says, "Niles! Whatever you do, do not engage him in a physical fight. The whole thing would just look too weird!" And now I'm watching 4.7, A Lilith Thanksgiving, which is one of my all time favorites...where Frasier and Lilith are trying to get Frederick into that snooty prep school.

I could see the elf thing coming a mile away, but it still made me laugh. I've got 10 more nights of that damn thing. The mom of one of my daughter's friends (who is a good friend of mine) is super creative with their elf, so my daughter is unimpressed with ours. Our poor elf lives with someone who is an IT nerd with an accounting degree. Her creativity is limited. And the throwaway line of, "It's about half the price of the one you're thinking of" made me laugh too.

I enjoyed this episode too. That zucchini and goat cheese tart looked amazing. If I tried it though, I'd have to top it with prosciutto or something to get my husband to eat it. The bars she made at the beginning looked amazing until she defiled them with raisins. Ugh. I hate raisins.

I did like the scene with Greg and Oliver in the bathroom. And I thought it was funny that Taylor and her frenemy were back on speaking terms because they were talking about what fools their mothers made of themselves. Heh.

I didn't have a problem with this either. Kids know how to push your buttons, and daughters especially know how to push their moms' buttons. Mine sure does. One morning she kept saying she didn't feel well. This was after a pattern, over a week or 2, of ravenous hunger suddenly triggered by the word "bedtime," and a mysterious stomach ache that only I ever heard about, that would also coincidentally strike when it was time to get ready for bed. So I was inclined not to believe her. She said she felt like she was going to throw up, and I said, "If you're going to throw up, go into the bathroom and do it. I want to see it actually happen." She marched into the bathroom and proceeded to puke her guts out. I of course felt like the world's worst mother. On the other hand, my husband was very impressed that she was able to vomit on command. I think Randall at least convinced him not to do it that night, when he pointed out that if he did, then Christmas Eve would always be a horrible day for Chloe (his daughter). How did he put it? Something like, "This will always be the day that her dad splattered himself all over the pavement." I would also love to see Jimmi Simpson as a regular on this show, but he seems to be popping up everywhere these days. I had a, "Hey look! It's William!" [Westworld] moment when I realized who it was.

OMG, the commercial breaks on this show drive me insane. I would not be able to watch it live.

A great big AMEN to the Nonac submission! I gave up on HIMYM a couple seasons before it ended, and the finale still infuriated me. I quit watching because I thought Robin had become such a harridan that I didn't understand why both Ted and Barney were so infatuated with her. I thought Marshall was going to develop a crush on her too. It is possible for a woman to be both focused on her career and not a complete shrew. Ugh. It really annoyed the crap out of me.

OMG, me too! I was about 10 when that happened. It's the first Major News Story that I remember, where everyone pretty much stopped what they were doing when they heard about it. I lived in Saudi Arabia with my parents at that time, and it was even huge news over there...long before the days of the internet and the 24 hours news cycle. I remember that article in Time, and those pictures too. Ever since then I've always wondered how/why people join cults. I understand how it happens but at the same time I don't understand it either, you know? I always love storylines like this, even the super cheesy 90210 variety of them. It definitely seemed to be a thing in the 90's, now that I think about it.

I wasn't looking for reasons to dislike Hillary. I voted for her, but my first choice would have been Bernie. But I still think her campaign didn't do a good enough job getting her message out. In the debates, she would talk about what she wanted to do in pretty broad, general terms, and I heard her say many times that people should go to her website to learn more about her plans. Who has time to do that? Not me. Like plenty of people, I work full time, and like everyone else I have to get to the grocery store, get the laundry done, plan/make dinners for the week, get my daughter to school, to and from all of her activities, make sure she gets her homework done, gets through the shower, makes her lunch for school, and gets into bed at a reasonable time. And I'm quite fortunate to have a husband who is very supportive and pitches in and does his share. And my mother-in-law lives with us too and is always willing to help out if I have an early meeting or if I'm travelling for business. Single parents, or people who have to work more than one job to make ends meet sure don't have the time or interest to go to someone's website to read up on how a candidate is going to make things better for them. I just don't think that was a realistic strategy. Sure, you need website for people who want to do further research, and to head off any accusations from the opposition that you're not being transparent, or that you're talking out of your ass. But you can't assume that everyone's going to do that. There is no doubt that the media played a huge role in how this election turned out, on that we can agree. The Clinton campaign made a tactical error in thinking that much of the media was helping them by detailing all of his outrageous behavior, but in the age of the Kardashians and reality TV celebrities, the old saying is more true than ever: any publicity is good publicity.

Her campaign, then, did a terrible job of getting that message out. Like others have said, their approach was to let Trump keep running his mouth and let him hang himself. I don't really blame them; like everyone else, I figured that's exactly what would happen. Boy were we all wrong. I heard Howard Dean interviewed recently, and a few years ago, and both times he talked about how the Democrats were able to take control after the 2006 mid-term elections. He said they campaigned in all 50 states. They didn't really believe they could win in places like Utah or Texas, but he said that if they hadn't gotten out there and defined their message, Rush Limbaugh would have done it for them. I think that's what the new political landscape is now. This election proved that any state can be a swing state. You could probably throw out Texas and California, but other than that, all bets are off, and you can't take anything for granted. There's been a lot of talk about how outdated the Electoral College is, and there may be some truth to that, but on the other hand, on the news on election night they were talking about how the Clinton campaign had to rush back into Michigan at the last minute because the polls showed the race tightening. They hadn't spent any time or money there in weeks because they assumed they had it locked up since Michigan has been a reliably blue state in the past. You can't blame that on the EC.

Yes, this. I've spent the last week and a half reading and listening to a lot of news stories because I wanted to understand how this happened. It seems to come down to 3 big things. First, people were pissed about the DNC stealing the nomination from Bernie, and it translated into people voting for 3rd party candidates, writing his name in, or just staying home and not voting at all. Then there's Hillary herself, and she just had too much baggage. Like you said, much of it was quite possibly unjustified, but it still added to the perception of baggage, and in politics, perception is reality. But I'm not even really talking about emails and Benghazi. You can't talk about how much you care about working families and want to help them, and then turn around and cozy up to Wall Street and take their big donations. I don't doubt her sincerity about that, but you can't have it both ways. The days of "what's good for Wall Street is good for Main Street" thinking are long gone. It made her look very disingenuous. And finally, people want jobs, and Trump tapped into that much more successfully than the Democrats did. I heard a really good story on NPR the other night talking about that. Trump was out there talking about how he was going to bring all these jobs back, and painted this hopeful rosy picture. People latched onto that. The Democrats (as a group, not just Hillary) said, "The steel jobs are gone, and they're not coming back, but we're going to get you training for new jobs," and then didn't elaborate on what steps they were going to take to make that happen. It played as lip service, and to a certain extent it probably was. There were no concrete plans laid out for how people were going to get all this great training that would allow them to start working again, or even what those jobs were going to be.

Heh. This was the first episode where it seemed like there was a client who could actually pay the huge fees they must have to charge. I also thought that if he took the case of the woman who sued the doctor, if she decided to sue the company that made the robotic arm (or whatever it was), it could be on contingency and he could get a share of the punitive damages. This show is OK, but clearly it's an expensive operation. I keep wondering how the hell they make any money and stay in business. Or maybe Bull is independently wealthy?

I liked that idea too, but I also would not do it for Thanksgiving. We always smoke our turkeys, and I look forward to it all year long. I brine them for 2 days beforehand, and the combination is fan-freaking-tastic. The only drawback is that you can't make gravy with drippings from a brined turkey, because it would be way too salty. But my husband doesn't like giblet gravy....the whole idea of giblets completely skeeves him out. So I buy the jarred stuff, and doctor it up with some white wine and spices. I pointed out to him that the stuff in the jar is also made with giblets, and his said that was OK since he didn't have to see it being made. LOL. Everybody has their weird food things, and that's his.

And who could forget "The Place Sans Sucky?"

Really, Ina, you're having tea at the White House with Mrs Obama, and you still wear the same old blue schmatta?

I wanted to see how those were made because my husband and I went to a New Year's Eve party last year and someone brought shot glasses made from Jolly Ranchers, and also some made from chocolate. They were fun, and looked really cool. I opted for a chocolate one, and let me tell you it was pretty damn delicious with shots of Bailey's. I was telling my husband the other night that I do find quite a few recipes on food blogs via Pinterest, and the most annoying thing about them is that the blogger usually has to write some long elaborate story about how the recipe came to be, how she (most food blogs I run across are written by women) decided, on that particular day, to make that recipe, and so on. "We're getting close to Thanksgiving, which means we'll be eating leftovers for the next week, and so I thought making Indian food would be a nice change of pace before we get into the holiday. Normally my husband doesn't like anything with curry, but he loved this and ate 3 helpings!" and on and on and on. I really don't care, I just want the damn recipe.

I like the idea of Mike and Amelia being business partners. Like you said, he knows the sports side, and she knows about PR and the media. It could be good for both of them. I also like their relationship. They have good chemistry, and so far they're both being fairly mature. Like someone said upthread, not necessarily an epic love affair, but 2 people enjoying each other's company.

I thought the multicolored Spanish tile they did around the fireplace in that one house was really hideous. It did look better after the house was staged, but I still did not like it at all.

I was watching that same marathon. The manufactured drama on this show really makes it hard to enjoy, or even find believable. There was the one house with the high windows in the basement (or lower room...maybe it was a split level) that they were going to convert into a bedroom, and then there was the "bombshell" that they couldn't make it into a bedroom because the windows were too small. FFS, even I know that a room must have at least one egress window to qualify as a bedroom, so there's no way they didn't know that going in. It drives me nuts. The exterior/scenery shots for the house in Riverside with the huge yard were also misleading....there was an overhead shot of the ocean. Riverside is not close to the coastline at all. I did think the dinosaur pool was pretty cool.

I was 40 when I got pregnant with my daughter in 2008, and I was 41 when she was born in 2009. I was indeed of "advanced maternal age" and I was at the doctor every couple of weeks to get poked and prodded for one reason or another. I think what it comes down to with Toby and Kate is that they're both very insecure, and their insecurities make them do over-the-top or even irrational things. Someone else said upthread that it seemed like Toby thought Kate was blowing him off when she told him she wanted to watch the game alone, which seemed like an accurate read on the situation to me. He overreacted by inviting her over to his house to watch the game with him and one of his buddies to keep her from doing whatever it was he thought she was going to do without him. Insecure and a little paranoid on his part. Last week, Kate let her curiosity about Toby's ex-wife get the best of her, and she looked up the ex online (normal curiosity), read her Facebook page (also normal), drove past her store (normal, but edging into unhealthy curiosity), went into her store (stepping over the line), and then pretended she was there to apply for a job and the unsuspecting ex interviewed her and wanted to hire her (way, way, way over the line). So I'm hoping that a big part of their relationship that we see is both of them overcoming their insecurities and learning to trust each other, and themselves.