mstaken

Amen! My votes: P.S. I Lo -- L, D and T -- Rory's Birthday Parties ++ Updating for my votes and Taryn's: Season 1: 17 - The Third Lorelai 17 - Forgiveness and Stuff 17 - Rory's Birthday Parties 17 - Double Date 17 - Cinnamon's Wake 15 - Pilot 15 - Lorelais' First Day at Chilton 15 - Kill Me Now 15 - The Deer Hunters 15 - Kiss and Tell 15 - Love and War and Snow 15 - Paris is Burning 15 - Concert Interruptus 15 - That Damn Donna Reed 15 - Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers 15 - The Breakup Part 2 15 - Emily in Wonderland 13 - Christopher Returns 11 - P.S. I Lo... 09 - Love, Daisies and Troubadours

Oh, how could I forget about Broken Mirror?! It's definitely one of my very favorite Elle episodes, not to mention a sneaky 'always much more awesome than I expect it to be' episode overall. If Elle had stuck around, do you think she would have eventually formed closer relationships with the team's females? Or do you think she just wouldn't click with JJ and Garcia either way and would only have become close to one of the team's females if she worked with Emily or even S4's Jordin who, like Elle, was kind of edgy and defensive yet sharp and in possession of a good heart?

Same here! That's the thing---he was narcissistic and pompous in many ways, yet also sensitive and compassionate. You might even say he felt for others TOO deeply to do the job effectively long term. More than maybe any other team member, Gideon illustrated the hidden hazards of being a profiler who excels at getting inside the hearts and minds of others. Exactly. And while Jason/Mandy irked the hell out of me at times, I felt it was that intensity---which serves as both a major strength and detrimental flaw---made him so compelling. While most of my favorite Gideon moments involve Reid (yeah, I know...shocker!), I really did love the Gideon-Hotch dynamic. I loved the tension between Hotch's genuine affection and admiration for Gideon and the mutual knowledge that Hotch might have to 'report' Gideon as unfit to serve in the field. I felt like Hotch wanted desperately to be able to trust Gideon as much as he liked and looked up to him. He defended Gideon outwardly to Morgan and others who questioned Gideon's stability out loud, but never fully shed those nagging doubts. Needless to say, Gideon's departure served to validate some of the team members' fears! Do you guys think Gideon has been in touch with Reid, Hotch or any other team members? Do you think he's currently happy and sane?!

Our season rankings our identical, so I guess an "Amen, sister friend" is in order here. I really love this episode, though the series-long Lorelai/Emily 'one step forward, three steps back' dance can get awfully exhausting for me as a general rule. Still, some of the Emily/Lorelai scenes here are among my favorites, and I love the scene with Paris, Rory and Jess bonding over books and junk food beyond he telling of it! Just don't get me started on Dean in this episode, okay? Really, it's for your own sanity :) How did I not know until now that you love these as much as I do?! Let the Games Begin wins my award for the episode that improved most for me with repeated viewing; I recall being kind of neutral on it when I first watched for reasons that now escape me, but now it's a special favorite.

This one is definitely my favorite of the Christmas episodes! Funny and poignant and all kinds of wrong in the most quintessentially Office-ish sort of way.

Ah, Gideon. There are CM characters I like a lot more and characters I like less, but Jason Gideon is the one about whom I'm most ambivalent. In comparing Gideon with Rossi, his replacement, someone smarter than I am once said something to the effect of "I LIKE Rossi more, I'd prefer to have a drink with Rossi if he were a real guy...but, as a viewer watching fictional characters, I find Gideon far more compelling." That kind of sums it up for me as well. Mandy P. gets a little to 'stagey' for me (and don't get me started on what he appears to be like offscreen!), but I found Gideon a really interesting, can't-look-away-even-when-I-want-to character, and his relationships with both Reid and Hotch are still among my favorite intra-team connections of the series. What were some of your favorite (and/or least favorite?!) Gideon scenes?

Willowy, I don't have a second name there, so maybe some random person received it?! I just enabled my PMs there so that you can send me one, though. Looking forward to hearing from you! I love that scene as well. I love her in this whole episode, actually. Ah, Demonology. I'm still always conflicted on this episode. It was a bit of a mess in some ways, yet oddly poignant anyway. This is definitely one of my favorite episodes for her character as well. And it was one of the times when I saw this connection between her and Hotch that I really enjoy.

I rarely end up reading fanfic, but one featuring the return of Nathan Harris and involving Emily, Elle and (presumably!) Reid sounds like fanfic heaven. Please don't forget to post it somewhere around here so that we can read and subsequently gush about it!

Amen! I'd love to see the Elle/Emily dynamic. Emily is a little softer, more emotional and outwardly empathetic and seems to find it easier to trust and bond with females than Elle, but Emily at times also seemed more socially insecure and eager to fit in than Elle. I think they'd have all the stuff you mentioned in common while maybe also learning from their differences. And now I totally need to see this happen---if never on screen, then at least as part of a fanfic! More Emily-related topics for us to chat about: Your favorite/least favorite Emily scenes and episodes? Who did you feel Emily clicked best with on the team? Who do you most wish Emily had had more/better scenes with?

It just worked out that way, Taryn! I'm thrilled that you've migrated over, by the way :) You can give ++ to all three episodes, -- to all three episodes, two ++ and one -- or two -- and one ++. In other words, whatever combination you'd like! Make sense?!

Hee---although I don't see their dynamic as romantic or sexual, rest assured that I'm totally obsessed with the Paris/Rory frenemy-ship and hold the UO that it's probably my very favorite non-Lorelai/Rory relationship of the whole show. A more general UO is that I think GG mostly sucked at depicting romantic relationships. They were pretty good at the buildup and rather scarily good at capturing that immediate post-breakup angst, but the way they wrote and directed the show's actual romances tended not to work for me. Speaking of which... Heh---I kind of wanted this for both Rory and Lorelai, though especially Lorelai. One of the most U of my Os is that I think Lorelai ending the series as contentedly single made by far the most sense for the character and everything that had transpired on this show, not to mention a refreshingly unique way to end a series. Oh my god, YES. I get that it was supposed to be cute, but it came off as cringe-inducingly condescending and, like many aspects of the Rory/Logan dynamic for me, just never quite felt natural. I always felt like Logan was talking to a kindergartner going up to bat for his first little league game: "Go get 'em, Ace!" But, again, that's probably just my weird reaction to Matt C.---for me he almost always came off as so smirky, condescending and smarmy (thanks for using that adjective---it applies perfectly t both him and Max IMO!) that even things like the perfectly benign "Ace" stuff made me wince.

That's EXACTLY it, Nolieblue. (Great to see you here, by the way!) In the past, I could more readily handwave the show's rather sloppy plotting, inconsistencies in characterizations, excessive quirkiness that sometimes crossed into grating, over-the-top insanity, etc., because the show was just such a life-affirming, mood-boosting burst of warmth and joy. Sure, the characters were sometimes sad, angry, and realistically unpleasant to each other, but overall it was a show that celebrated life's pleasures, both big and small. It was a flawed but upbeat world populated by people who (gasp!) seemed to actually LIKE each other more often than not. Those last episodes of S5 and a scary 95%ish of S6 was, for me, just so conspicuously devoid of that sparkly fun and cozy warmth which makes the show so distinct for me. And just as the show's effervescent enthusiasm of the first 4.75 seasons was infectious for me, so, too, was the comparatively grim dreariness of S6. I actually tried to rewatch all of S6 last year in hopes of falling in love---well, even falling in LIKE with it, but everything about the tone and characterizations actually depressed me, and that's pretty much the antithesis of what I look for from GG. And it wasn't even darker in a deep, high quality way, you know?! More like AS-P just arbitrarily decided to stomp all over exactly what once made her show so beloved with no clear objective in mind---other than to irritate a large portion of her viewers ;) It's so true. And I hold the UO that the very popular Poes is among the few S3 episodes I don't love, so it's funny that you used that one as an example. But, yeah, I often have to either be in the mood for over-the-top quirk or have my fast forward button within easy pushing range :) I still can't read any reference to Rory's ridiculous grand theft yacht-o without laughing...albeit laughing in a bitter, what-were-the-writers-smoking sort of way :) I think your above point actually helped pinpoint why I hold the UO of liking S7 a little more than most...or, er, at least disliking it less than most. I guess I just don't really expect ANY show to maintain its high quality past four or five seasons. Plus, for me S7 at least made a valiant attempt to recapture some of the warmth and charm that was so sadly lacking in S6, though whether they succeeded is certainly up for debate! I do hold the UO that DR, while far (and I mean, like, really, really, REALLY far) from perfect, sometimes gets a little more blame and criticism than he deserves, while AS-P often gets something of a free pass despite the fact that she saddled DR with quite a mess of a show to clean up before making her grand exit. So for our next bests and worsts: Best friendships/friendship-y scenes? Best/worst dates/kisses etc.?

That Will and JJ are totally destined-to-be soul mates, of course. I know you so well! ;) It's kind of sad that I genuinely have no clue as to whether JJ truly loves her husband. For a long time, I couldn't even claim with any assurance that she *liked* him. JJ is so underwritten and the actress so flat that it's usually so hard for me to ascertain what (if anything!) she really feels about pretty much anything. But I'm inclined to agree with Old Dog:

Ha! I've actually been wondering whether to attribute my book slump to the fact that, as I get older, I have less and less patience for sticking with books that don't immediately engage and interest me...or whether my TV addiction has finally fried my brain to the point where I now lack the mental energy and attention span for the majority of today's novels. :) A huge thanks to those of you who have friended me on Facebook. You've already made my cyber-world a more interesting place. And now that you've seen my snarky reference to Gwyneth Paltrow's divorce on there, you know that I'm not as nice a person as I hope to be! Pixel, it's Master's! I know this only because I have two of them that I don't actually use :) (Yes, I was one of those people who turned out to be better at school than at 'real life'!)

Hee! Needless to say, I got that one wrong :) I also managed to screw up the Something Blue question despite seeing that episode a mere zillion or so times. I mean, who DIDN'T wish they were blind for certain parts of that episode?!

It's funny, because I actually don't see nearly as sharp a distinction between Original Recipe JJ and post-S6 JJ as most do. For me, she was always flat, cold, dull, fairly disdainful towards the rest of the team and unrealistically, unrelatably awesome at everything she did. And now she's...well, flat, cold, dull, fairly disdainful towards the rest of the team and unrealistically, unrelatably awesome at everything she does, albeit to a slightly greater degree! As noted above, though, the fankwanks I adopted about her being *deliberately* depicted as the popular, superficially 'perfect' All-American girl who could connect well with the public at large but kept an icy, distrustful distance from those allegedly closest to her for a variety of reasons makes her a lot more interesting for me in those earlier seasons, though I know I'm probably giving the writers far too much credit there for what is probably just a severely underwritten character played by an actress I find it nearly impossible to connect with! Exactly! Heh---yeah, that's probably my very favorite JJ moment of the series. Do you guys think JJ is truly in love with Will?

I like the soundtrack about a million times more than the actual episode. Don't even ask how often I've listened to it; the answer will frighten you all :) And since we're confessing BtVS UOs: I think The Body is the most overrated episode of the series. I prefer S6 to S5, which I actually dislike almost as much as S7. I can't stand Faith, and not in a 'love to hate!' way. Combine that with my irrational hatred of the Xander/Willow tryst, and you have my UO that S1, S2 and S4 are all much, much more enjoyable for me than the understandably lauded S3. You know those super cheesy episodes that most people justifiably mock, like Teacher's Pet, I Robot You Jane, Some Assembly Required, Reptile Boy, Bad Eggs, Go Fish and Beer Bad? Those are all among some of my most rewatched favorites. Sadly, I'm not kidding!

Maculae, I had no idea, either! And, if it's any consolation, I probably would have been far snarkier about it than you were, so please don't feel badly. :) This UO goes hand in hand with my Dean and Max dislike, but I actually don't love Season 1 nearly as much as most do. Many GG fans I know name it as their favorite season, but for me S2, S3, S4 and even parts of S5 are far more awesome and hold up much better for me with repeated viewing. On the bright side, as already rambled about, S1 is the season during which I find Luke by far his sharpest, most interesting and attractive, and I do love s1 Rory. But, ugh, the overly juvenile, cutesy, vain Lorelai of S1 drives me all kind of crazy; way too many scenes feel overlong and OMG-yes-we-GET-it! heavyhanded to me, especially by this show's standards; and the overall tone feels so precious and twee that at times it borders on saccharine for me. And in my admittedly biased view, there's way, WAY too much Dean and Max :) There are surprisingly few S1 episodes (Rory's Birthday Parties, Double Date and the far less popular The Third Lorelai) that I'd consider absolute favorites of mine, and a whole bunch of them that I'm more than fine skipping upon rewatch.

Oh, yes, thanks for making this distinction! I have a tendency to get attached to personal favorites that even I can admit aren't objectively the 'best' of the series. (Masterpiece, anyone?!) Such a fantastic, endlessly rewatchable episode for me. *sheepishly raises hand* Well, maybe 'like' is too strong a word, but I don't dislike it. I just can't begin to justify why :) I'm curious as to what you dislike about Ashes and Dust, ForeverAlone! Or do you just happen to love and connect with it less than most other S2 episodes? By the way, I love that you share my love for Zoe's Reprise. My three to keep from S2: Sex, Birth and Death (see above gushing); The Fisher King, Part 2 (I actually prefer it to Part 1) and...hmmm...I'm totally torn between Aftermath for the Elle/Reid scenes and North Mammon for the chillingly resonant case! I'll pick neither and go with Perfect Storm but, sadly, that may have changed by the time you read this :) And, argh, it pains me not to include Ashes and Dust as well! Three to ditch from S2: Big Game/Revelations (objectively, they're very well done episodes...I just don't happen to enjoy watching them!), Profiler, Profiled and Jones (JJ meets her creepy, soon-to-be baby daddy and I'm not a fan of Reid's addiction storyline!) My three to keep from S3: Doubt, In Birth and Death and Elephant's Memory My three to ditch from S3: The Crossing (I'm totally with you on not really liking this one, Forever Alone! Even that scene with Hotch and Rossi regarding divorce, which I'd normally like, felt really forced and off to me), Lucky/Penelope (I think a recurring pattern of mine is that I don't love many 'team member in peril' episodes, on this show or most others, and especially when we know said team member will ultimately be just fine!) , and...hmmm...I'll go with About Face. My three to keep from S4: Argh, only three?! This is even more painful to narrow down than my S1 favorites! I'll go with Soul Mates, Masterpiece and Shade of Grey. And about 16 others :) And it seriously pains me to omit Zoe's Reprise! Three to ditch: Amplification (I get why many adore this one; I'm just not a fan of OMG-a-deadly-virus-that-of-course-they'll-all-survive! episodes in general), Brothers in Arms and...hmmm....maybe Roadkill.

Devil's Trap -- Pilot ++ Provenance -- 19 - Scarecrow 19 - Faith 19 - Pilot 19 - Hell House 17 - The Benders 17 - Dead in the Water 17 - Phantom Traveler 17 - Devil's Trap 15 - Wendigo 15 - Bloody Mary 15 - Skin 15 - Hook Man 13 - Bugs 15 - Asylum 15 - Route 666 15 - Nightmare 15 - Shadow 15 - Dead Man's Blood 15 - Salvation 13 - Something Wicked 13 - Home 11 - Provenance

Willowy, my PMs are disabled, so I never received them! You know I'd love to hear your bests and worsts, though...even if I'm reading some of it "again" :)

My favorite season is 4, but I have to admit that S1 often threatens to steal that top spot. S1 has got a different feel (due in no small part to the fact that it also has a different team!), so the question of which one I watch more often is pretty mood-dependent for me. S4 has more of my favorite cases and almost no clunkers, feels like a smoother and more polished season, and I do like Rossi and Emily. But S1 just has a certain energy that I really adore---Gideon and Elle gave the team edges and flaws; the team members had better defined niches and specialties back then and seemed more distinct both in their professional roles and their personalities; Hotch was more likable and compelling to me then than in any subsequent season; all the cool facts and psychological insights related to profiling feel so fresh and new. S2 comes in third for me. I don't like Reid's drug addiction storyline, and there are definitely some skip-worthy episodes for me here. But I do love the introduction of Prentiss (self-professed geeky, socially awkward and blunt yet bright and competent S2 Prentiss is probably my favorite incarnation of this enjoyable but very inconsistent character) and it has a couple all-time favorites of mine, like Sex, Birth and Death, which I've watched an obscene number of times! Next comes S3. It's a good, consistent season that I enjoy, but it just doesn't happen to contain many of the episodes that I absolutely love. There's a big gap between those first four seasons and all the rest for me. S5 and S7 are about equal for me, surprisingly enough. Both have a few episodes that I really like a lot and many that I don't. Then comes S8, S6 and...well, I'll wait until the end before ranking 9, but suffice it to say that it's a lot closer to the very bottom of my list than the top! Starting with S1, if I could keep only three episodes... (yes, I insist on torturing myself with these questions!) Compulsion, Derailed and...hmmm. I'm so torn here, because I really love A Real Rain, Fisher King (though I prefer Part 2 to Part 1), The Popular Kids, Broken Mirror, LDSK, etc., etc., etc. But I think I'll fill that third spot with Extreme Aggressor. It still hooks me all over again every single time. If I had to get rid of three S1 episodes...: Natural Born Killer (I've seen this season a million times and still always forget that this episode even exists, which isn't exactly a great sign!), Somebody's Watching (you guys know I love Reid, but this episode just really doesn't work for me) and What Fresh Hell.

I took a hiatus from Degrassi and thought I might have even quit for good, but came crawling back a few episodes ago. And I was glad as I did, as for me recent episodes have been among the most enjoyable and engaging in recent memory. This one, however, left me kind of meh. I almost never like love triangles, and suffice it to say that the Miles-Maya-Zig triangle is not exactly proving the exception to this rule. I remember really liking Maya when she first got to Degrassi and thinking she had a lot of potential to be pretty well-defined and interesting, but now she's just an utterly generic character for me whose only noteworthy characteristic is that she happens to play the cello. And somehow Miles is even blander---I'm not sure whether it's the acting or the writing or some combination thereof, but he just seems really stiff and unnatural and a total snooze for me. Zig, meanwhile, I don't buy as the 'sexy, troubled bad boy who of course isn't AS bad as rumors would have you believe.' On a brighter note, somewhere along the way I grew to really, really like Jenna and Connor. I also like Jenna and Ali's friendship, which feels really natural and authentic to me. And, you guys, how and when the hell did I start to adore Becky?! She's actually a really well-written and well-acted character IMO, and I love that she's shown some clear growth without completely shedding the flaws and quirks that make her distinct. I agree with the above poster that Jack is a surprisingly promising addition so far. I kind of love that she's so poseur-y and pretentious about art, music and cool coffee, yet also someone whose authentic feelings come through---it totally reminds me of some of the teens I've worked with. I like that she and Imogen seem to have a lot in common, as I'm so very weary of the 'opposites attract' trope. Apropos of nothing, I still can't stand Clare or her new haircut. I'll readily admit that she's not as annoyingly self-righteous and weirdly overreactive as she used to be, and thank god they stopped having the actress over-emote in every freaking episode, but now I just find her really, really dull.

Libad, Charisma is near the top of my Amazon wish list! Did Barbara Hall give any indications as to what a third season might have included? I'm assuming Ryan played a fairly large role in it, but has she revealed any other storylines or character arcs she had in mind?

...Or we could pick our three favorite and least favorite episodes from each season?! Whatever floats your CM-obsessed boat!