Egg McMuffin

Not buying that reasoning given the actual dialog. Carol mentions Jack first because Jack is the one who is being transferred. Carol: “Jack is being sent to South America on an engineering project and he’s taking Pauline with him.” There simply isn’t definitive proof whether Jack or Pauline is Carol’s sibling.

We never found out which one of Oliver’s parents is Carol’s sibling. She mentions in season 5 that Jack has to go to a remote area for work and Pauline is going with him. But that’s it.

I thought they could have retained the Darrin/Endora rivalry without them constantly being at each other’s throats. They seemed to soften towards each other right after Tabitha was born but it didn’t last. And by the time Dick Sargent took over the role, they just despised each other. It was unpleasant to watch.

It ended at the right time. It was unusual in that many of the kids were older teenagers and young adults when it started but they still had enough younger kids to carry some story. By the end, all the kids except for Nicholas were adults, and that limited the stories. I thought the whole thing with Susan naming her daughter after Abby (Sandra Sue) was a little odd. I get they were fond of Abby but she’s only been in their lives for a few years. But I never cared for Susan as a character to begin with, and she only got more boring after they married her off. IRL, some of the kids had developed drug and other personal issues by season 5, and it was disrupting production. It was still doing well on Wednesday nights, but ABC sent it off to Saturday night at midseason presumably to kill it.

I watched Seinfeld in first run and enjoyed it. It’s a great, clever sitcom. However, I have little desire to rewatch it. When it comes to classic TV, I want to visit with characters that I enjoy and like. That’s not the Seinfeld gang.

Landon was a plot-driven producer, so we didn’t get to see character development like that. Too bad. So we didn’t get to see the Nellie/Perciville courtship play out over a number of episodes - it was rushed so we could get to the wedding. And there was a big missed opportunity for Laura and Nellie to gradually get closer during Nellie’s last season of the show, after she was married, culminating in her emotional reunion with Laura in season 9. Instead, those two characters hardly share the screen after their respective marriages. So the season 9 reunion comes out of nowhere.

They could have easily lived together again. It turns out that the bill for the school van was never paid in full after all. Blair tries to bribe the judge to forget the whole thing, and he’s so furious that he sentences the girls to working in the Eastland kitchen again to pay off balance on the original bill plus a fine. See, it practically writes itself!

Re: Pernell Roberts. Even if he had Landon had been on better terms in the 1970s, I don’t think he would have guest starred in LHOTP. He just didn’t want to be associated with Bonanza after he left that show. He wouldn’t even allow his clips to be used in retrospectives. I remember Entertainment Tonight did a story on Bonanza in the 80s, and they actually stated at the end that they didn’t show any clips of Adam because Pernell Roberts wouldn’t allow his clips to be used.

I don’t even like wearing hats so I can’t imagine wearing a wig for those long days. Lucille Ball in her later series used to tape her face back to hide her wrinkles, and then plop a curly wig on top to hide the face tape. Sounds very uncomfortable.

The whole Nancy arc is bizarre to say the least. Let’s slap a wig on a child who looks nothing like Nellie, and pretend she’s a dead ringer for her. And worse, this is a psychologically damaged child who knows that the only reason she’s been adopted is to replace the child the mother really loved.

In fairness, Gil Gerard was just another actor on the show. Michael Landon was the boss, and people have different relationships with their managers than they do with colleagues.

Yes, but that wasn’t vacation. That was family medical leave to deal with Albert’s addiction to morPHINE.

To enjoy anything about season 10 (the post-series TV movies), you first have to accept that nothing in the season 10 universe makes a lick of sense. Charles and Caroline are wealthy, summer starts in December, and the Wilders are allowed to award custody of stray orphans to emotionally disturbed kidnappers.

A punch to the ribs would have been an appropriate response from Caroline.

People, please. Charles was a huge success in the men’s clothing biz because of his charm and sparkling personality. He even came up with the idea of idea of putting a little horse logo on men’s shirts, inspired by Laura’s late horse Bunny. As for Albert’s medical school tuition: college is tuition free in heaven.

The bad word was probably something like “stinker.” I don’t like the intro (third season I think) where June and Ward wake the boys up. It’s kind of a weirdly intimate moment that’s an odd choice for a sitcom intro.

Merlin’s acting was wooden in everything I saw him in: Little House, Father Murphy, and Aaron’s Way.

The blind school was in Winoka, a fictional town in the Dakota territory. If we use South Dakota as a proxy for Dakota (North Dakota would be further from Walnut Grove), then Winoka could be as little as 100 miles away if it’s in the eastern part of Dakota, or at least 400 miles away if it’s in the western part.

And Nancy. She likes to murder people, you know.

I thought it was great that the show carefully set up a reason for JR’s villainy from the first episode. JR didn’t do bad deeds just for the sake of it; he was doing them to gain his father’s approval by building up the company. When Jock died, they did a storyline about JR giving up on his work because it didn’t matter anymore now that his daddy wasn’t around. JR eventually snapped out of it and went back to his villainous ways when Bobby reminded him that he was now building the company for his son instead of his father (thanks, Bobby!).

Sue Ellen was the best mother on the show. Let’s compare her to the others: Ellie played favorites (“Gaaaarrry!”), guilted her sons to live at home as adults, and was party to denying her granddaughter’s mother the opportunity to raise her. Pamela abandoned Christopher after her car accident. Rebecca abandoned Pam and Cliff. Jenna was coy about Charlie’s parentage, and then tried to keep Lucas away from Bobby and his family. Patricia Shepherd directed her daughters, Sue Ellen and Kristin, to pursue rich husbands at any cost. Afton denied her daughter the opportunity to know her father. Valene’s mother dumped her on relatives so she could pursue her dreams of being an autoharp superstar. The Dallas fathers were no better, btw. Jock played favorites and helped contribute to JRs villainy by feeding his insecurities. He also treated women like second-class citizens. JR treated his son’s mother like crap. Ray took a bizarre interest in his teenage stepdaughter’s romantic life. Bobby abandoned Lucas because Christopher felt insecure. Gary abandoned Lucy.

Oh, I’m totally with you about Bobby (who I liked a lot despite his enabling JR), Bobby and Pam as a couple, sleazy Mark Graison (aka the Pornstache), and the dream season. I liked Jock too because he was such a complex character. I guess I should have read Agatha’s post more carefully because I don’t dislike most of the characters. I just agree that they’re flawed.

Agatha, I’m a big Dallas fan and I agree with all of your points. In some ways, Miss Ellie is the worst. JR doesn’t pretend to be anything that he isn’t. Miss Ellie is super sanctimonious for someone who stood by while the Ewings kept Lucy away from her mother. Her desperation to keep her adult sons living at home and her characterization of those who move away as having been “lost” is just bizarre. I also didn’t like how Jock became a candidate for sainthood after his death (though that happens in real life too). JR even says to his mother at one point when she’s going on about how she doesn’t approve of how he’s running the company that she has no idea about some of the crap Jock pulled. She did know that he had Sam Culver’s uncle institutionalized so he could gain control of his land (and Culver’s uncle died in the institution). And in another episode, some farmer wants revenge against Jock because years earlier, the farmer refused to sell to Jock, who then bribed the farmer’s customers and bankrupted him. Nice. Jenna was nothing but a plot device to keep Pam and Bobby apart. Her finest moment is when she lets Bobby go, right before he gets run over by the car. She should have been written out after that. I thought that writing out Donna was a big mistake given that they were losing Pam at the same time. But I also hated her divorce from Ray and the eventual Ray/Jenna pairing.

Big Girls Gone Bad Week (as opposed to Mean Girls, which focused on the kids): Amy Hearn fakes her own death Caroline does a baby swap Nancy tries to kill Melinda Laura attacks Brenda Sue Harriet’s Happenings

I like “Zaldamo” better.