SuzieSioux

I'm really just logging on here to express my very pleasant surprise that... I am enjoying this so far. If you knew me, you'd know I can't stand this series, the tone just doesn't do it for me, and Murphy is always losing interest 3 episodes in and everything goes off the rails. But these two episodes were much more serious than I've seen in previous series. I am cautiously hopeful going forward! It basically is Cruising @gesundheit. For those above wondering about the weirdness of the cowboy in the jockstrap at the police station, this is lifted completely from Cruising. Based on a real thing that apparently used to happen, allowing the police to beat up suspects who would never be believed if they reported it because what judge would think that a random, near-naked cowboy walking into the room and beating you up was something that really happened?

Tara was 100% right with what she said about Hollywood hypocrisy, in my opinion. Whoopi is taking this too personally, and I think her and Joy talking about painting with too wide a brush is them missing the point. This isn't the first time we've seen something like this either. This might be a good thing, all up. Maybe people will finally stop idolising other people for acting and getting so caught up in silly ideas over "celebrity".

Ricky Gervais was spot on when he told them to their face how awful they were. "Most of you have spent less time in high school than Greta Thunberg" I also remember him saying. Overpaid, overfeted and undereducated. When you realise that, it all makes sense.

I was thinking of this when I saw the clip of their discussion on colonisation. Whoopi brought up India, not in her usual: "Here's the thing!" patronising way, but actually in a tone suggesting she was interested in adding to the conversation. That was refreshing. I'm sorry, but to me Sunny was being a bit of a pill during that discussion. I still thought she had some interesting points though - the one about the reparations that were made to slave owners, that came out of the taxes of the British, which would include descendants of the slaves was something I hadn't known before (and seems to be a good example of how messed up our world can be sometimes). But when Sara said: "Any royalty stands on the backs of others, that's what the history of colonialism is..." and Sunny interrupted: "Well, the history of colonialism is that they stood on the backs of black people..." then I can see why people here and elsewhere roll their eyes at Sunny a bit. They were talking about the British Empire, yes? The largest empire the world has seen, covering pretty much every continent on Earth? Whoopi had already brought up India. Countries like Ireland were decimated. And historically, colonialism hasn't even just been a European thing. Perhaps people will roll their eyes at me now, haha, but history matters - especially if we want to learn and improve.

Agreed. Also, I hope people realise that the way she talks about Nicaragua on the show like she did this week is not the whole story, and her family aren't exactly squeaky clean in all that. Agreed.

I will never understand why people like Stephanie (and Sara and Whoopi sounded like it too) defend utter trash like the Kardashians. They will never love you, you will never be part of their club, you will never make money like they do no matter how hard you work. People are believing a lie - if you just stay working and working and working in an attempt to become part of the elite (and therefore never end up bothering the elite with pesky ideas like a fairer system that may take some of their undeserved wealth away) you will be fine. But you have to work harder and harder and if you're not getting anywhere it's all your fault, you should be working yourself to the grave. The whole thing is sick. I hear frequently of how in the US people have to work multiple jobs and they still struggle to get by. Are they just not working hard enough? Stuff like this makes you really understand the motivations behind the French Revolution.

The best two comedians who parodied The View panel were Kenan Thompson and Fred Armisen playing Whoopi and Joy. When they replaced those two with female comedians it wasn't very funny at all.

Yep. Only a few months back, I read Sigourney Weaver talking about how she would still love to work with Polanski and making excuses for him for what he did.

Exactly. I wasn't offended. To be honest, I could barely make out the point she was trying to make, though if I squint, turn my head backwards and stand upside down in a bucket of piranha fish then I can sorta see what she was getting at, at least with the "man's inhumanity to man" part. I'm also just kinda over this "let's be outraged over every little thing someone says" thing that's going on these days, and can't bring myself to care about this particular blunder. Why does it surprise anyone that a celebrity who can barely form a coherent sentence at the best of times would say something in this way anyway? Now, if she were arguing for the introduction of restrictions on us or something, I could see people getting upset, but she clearly wasn't doing something like that.

QED! (This show has made Carrie the character I enjoy watching the most! How did that happen?!!)

I agree, I think I felt that more in this episode than any other. The only other episode I've enjoyed close to this one was the Diwali episode, and no surprises, they were both written by the same person.

@Yeah No I really enjoyed reading your post, it was very interesting and I agree with you. I hadn't thought of it before but when you said: I realised that this is so true for me too. I'm passionate about equality and multiculturalism, and I don't believe true equality comes from icing out one particular segment of society. As you say, that's revenge. Re: the writers on this show, one of them is Samantha Irby, and when I found out she was friends with Roxane Gay, it all made sense. There is a group of writers out there now who are very keen to point out every problem from the past, real and perceived, but when it comes time to writing themselves and fixing these things, they tend to show that they have no skills in this area at all, apart from lazily hitting certain "diversity" notes. Gay claimed that episode 5 of AJLT (written by Irby) was "truly excellent" and I'm sure there's no bias there at all (she said, sarcastically). However, I haven't heard many other viewers rave about that episode at all. In fact, it gave birth to the hilarious "Hey, it's Che Diaz" memes which are anything but complimentary. Irby absolutely seems like the kind of person who wants people to be put off by the kitchen scene so she can claim victimisation. But I digress. Thanks for letting me rant, anyway.

I'd say this was the first episode I've seen in the reboot that I thought came even slightly close to replicating the feeling of the earlier series. Not a whole lot, but it was getting there. As someone who's never liked Carrie very much either, I thought she had some moments here where even I liked her. I appreciated the picnic scene, as most everyone else did, and I did like Carrie telling Miranda: "You can disagree, but you can't leave" or something. That moment felt like it was referring to something bigger, like, it was almost a comment on the way people engage generally these days, or something. I like Seema. She's probably the only one of the new cast that I want to see more of. I agree that the scenes of the professor without any of the main cast was a bit weird. I kept expecting Miranda to turn up too, but I don't necessarily hate it either. I just think that character needs to be more interesting to want to spend time with her and her friends. It wasn't a bad moment, it was just... yeah, weird, I guess. In the earlier series there were a few moments where Stanford got his own scenes too, but he had been built up as a character for awhile when that happened. I do this too. I then promptly forget to check it to follow up on listening to the songs, but still! 😆 I'm so glad you had this experience. Without going too much off topic, I feel a lot of the conversation around 'cultural appropriation' has gone way too far in one direction where it's now frightening people from engaging with each other, which is really sad. I hate thinking of us segregating ourselves like that. The term in its original use is meant to be a neutral one too, not a fancier way of saying 'offensive' or 'racism'.

I don't find anything gross about Brady and Luisa's scene. In fact, most television about teens these days has some really mean and unpleasant sex scenes (think of 13 Reasons Why or Euphoria) that don't really bear resemblance to reality. I thought it was sweet that Brady and Luisa actually seem to - shock, horror - like each other and were having fun. The only thing Miranda and Steve need to do is to talk to him about consideration for others in the house when it comes to noise and leaving things lying about. But also, it's played for laughs really, that's the point. I noticed it was becoming a topic of discussion in the media, like on The View, with people getting outraged by it. I guess it's a cultural thing and I just don't get it. Because in my country no one really freaks out about their kids having sex in their house or thinks it's a bad thing. It's generally considered a good thing, so the parents know they are safe and not in a car in the dark somewhere. The reality is they ARE going to do it, and you can't stop it, so it's best to go with a situation that is much safer. No one wants their kids in danger, surely.

There was a survey done recently (by progressives) that showed 98% of Latinos polled reject the term Latinx. 'Latinx' has generally been considered an offensive way for anglophone Americans to try and "fix" Spanish to be more in line with English grammar rules. In a way it could be argued it's "language colonialism". Many people out there seem to struggle with the idea that grammatical gender is not the same thing as socio-biological gender. https://thinknowtweets.medium.com/progressive-latino-pollster-trust-me-latinos-do-not-identify-with-latinx-63229adebcea