elzin

For all the Tori Amos super fans who were disappointed she wasn't in last season and then super excited she is in this season... this isn't what we wanted. I guess Shauna never was a cornflake girl. And while I watched it, I was all "this is not really happening". But, alas, you bet your life it is.

Good thing there wasn't a fire at the morgue because having locked doors you can't open is a great idea. Almost as good as breaking into the morgue and some rich, litigious guy's car without gloves and then USING GLOVES TO TEXT. I lived in coastal Maine and that bucket thing is dumb even for the people I met there. Speaking of... I was also a juror on an attempted murder case while there and you know what? THE WITNESSES DID NOT TESTIFY BEHIND SCREENS TO HIDE THEIR IDENTITIES. I think I could ignore the dumb if the characters were likable. Or the mystery was gripping. I can only shut off so many parts of my brain. And yet I'm going to be stuck watching this because my kid thinks it's great and I can only be happy we've outgrown Disney original programming and never got into reality tv.

Watching it I was like "Scott Wolf isn't old enough to be a parent of a college-aged kid..." *pause for math* "Oh. He totally could be and not even have been a teen dad." I was hoping we'd get the answer to the murder in the first episode and have a season-long arc. I find mini arcs within greater arcs work well with mysteries. All season can be a drag, a new one every week feels so annoying sometimes. Oh look, another dead body in this tiny town. So as they didn't wrap it up, I hope it ends up being a good mystery at least. I liked it enough to give it another chance. Pilots sometimes are the weakest episodes before everyone settles in. Like the hair was not good and quality varied wildly from scene to scene and the make-up looked like it was put on with a putty knife on the ring-stealer friend. But sometimes that sort of thing gets better as everyone gets comfortable. Maybe not on the CW, but one can hope. My tween loved it and at least it was watchable enough for us to have a "grown up" show together.

Oh man did I hate almost every second of this season. I only kept watching to see if it redeemed itself in some way. It... did not. But at least I saved myself from the "should I watch S4?" dilemma. I hated hated hated Ani. Her whole character came across as a self-insert fan fiction. She's so smart and clever and kind and spunky and everyone instantly trusts her even though she's new (and secretly lives with the villain, who is now Draco-in-leather-pants!). Only this rando new girl can save the day! Hope she has time to solve the mystery because the two main male characters have the hots for the real her. I don't like the idea of Bryce having a redemption arc, but I concede that he was still a child and if it was written well (like the yoga scene or the letter he wrote as his mother) it could have been interesting and worthwhile. I mean, Tyler had a successful redemption arc. But it wasn't written consistently or satisfyingly. I believe by the writing he wasn't faking his regret, but I also don't care. And am I supposed to think that a bunch of children babysitting an almost school shooter is an effective, intelligent plan? Or covering up/looking past a straight up murder and a violent assault are okey dokey because all that matters is that the new girl figured it out and got all cutesy with the cops? "I'm going to tell you who did it but first I'm going to tell you about all the other suspects." WTF. If these people were real, the best thing that could happen to Clay is to run screaming to a college full of normal people and never go home again.

I enjoy LoVe as a couple, but I'm not a hardcore shipper. I hated Piz as V's boyfriend, but I don't need to see LoVe together instead because I'm invested. It's fine if they break up. But this? Ugh. He could have left her at the altar. Terrible, but understandable. They could have broken up over whether or not to have kids. He clearly wanted kids and she didn't. That's a big difference to reconcile. She could have cheated with Leo. Not entirely out of character if it's an arc devoted to her just making bad decisions. Terrible too, but understandable, especially after a dream that hot. He could have shipped out, fate of couple ambiguous. Or even ended it with the explosion and skip the One Year Later. I just finished the Farseer book series and one thing they said repeatedly in the last few books was don't do something you can't undo until you have fully taken into account what you can't do once it's done. Veronica can go back to Neptune, but Logan is dead dead* and it can't be undone. Maybe sitting on that for a while and thinking about it would have been better. Have him be in a coma, have her not be able to be there for him if his recovery made him asshole Logan. Have her want to leave, but he wants to stay. His fate being ambiguous gives options but now it's gone. And I've seen Veronica grieve Lily and Meg and the bus kids. I don't need sad V again, even if it's a different sad. I don't like the term Fridge thrown around but this really felt like a good definition. Character killed out of inconvenience to some other plot, especially to give someone TRAUMA. It felt forced and inorganic. I too don't want to watch Veronica Mars doing a modern day Murder, She Wrote, going from town to town solving crimes, especially if SHOCKING is the watchword. It's fine if the majority of the people from Neptune aren't in it, just Keith and Wallis and Cliff REALLY make sense regardless. I don't have faith in the writers to be satisfying. Not catering to my personal whims, but satisfying. Oh and I forget which thread it was but someone asked about Pony's name. In the Thousand-Dollar Tan Line book, they couldn't decide on a name and kept calling the gigantic dog a Pony until she didn't answer to anything else. * Yes I know no body seen and no one said dead, but if he weren't dead it'd be crappy of the therapist to share his message and it'd feel even CHEAPER to have him be alive somehow and made us think he was dead between S4 and a potential S5.

Tattoo guy (Jamie, apparently) really grew on me too. This double sucks.

This is some major bullshit. I was expecting him to win. Katsuji is still there and that awesome guy goes home? (or at least LCK) gah. I'm not sure I want to keep even watching anymore.

As much as I hate-watch the show only now, the actors are amazing. Not every actor every scene every episode, but most of them most of the time. They are the one bright spot for haters like me. With Downton Abbey gone, better chance for the ladies next year. Plus they work so well as ensemble. It's really hard to pick out who's the best.

I think Modern Family is still better than most stuff on tv, but it's nowhere near best-of-anything category any more. While I don't like Veep, I'm glad to see the statis broken.

OMG Tatiana! I'm going to start to cry again.

"please tell me you're seeing this too." DYING. I needed a laugh. I've been crying since Patton won.

Probably because the latter 6 appeared on tv a lot, but Anton was a series costar in the little-watched Huff. Early 2000s... Showtime? With Hank Azaria.

I couldn't appreciate the directing when I was too busy rolling my eyes at plot holes and inconsistencies. It's a whole package thing for me. I'm very jealous of people who haven't turned bitter like me.

I'll be the lone GOT hater. I'm incredulous that it keeps winning. I feel it's Emmy-stasis, that phenomenon that happens once something wins it wins every year, deserved or not. I was pleased with how different (for the most part) the start of the show was, and now it's rut time again. I know I'm in the tiniest of groups of GOT haters, and I wish so much I could love it again, but it's just so. bad.

Oh Patton I'm gonna cry

I've never been so happy with a show dominating like ACS tonight. Overall I'm finding the night uneven. When it's good, it's REALLY good, but it's few and far between. (Holy smokes Kyle Chandler just keeps getting hotter)

It was a fairly good episode. Wish it didn't have Dr Oz, but he was more benign than his medical advice at least.

That might be the only thing to redeem this season for me in any capacity. I hated this episode. Didn't like one thing about it. And it's not just WHAT happened but HOW it happened. It was boring and dull. The performances seemed half-assed. The cinematography didn't blow me away. The music wasn't striking. It just didn't work for me, not one second. I used to be sad there were only 10 episodes a season and now I'm relieved.

Like I said, she's on the older end of the spectrum, but she talks about herself as like a kid sometimes and she's not. She's a full grown serious adult. Although I'm older, she's got a lot more in common with my cynical Gen X self on a lot of things than someone who's still in HS. It feels grasping, like a marketing thing. "The Chew has a millennial." Well, technically, yes, but she's not a carefree young 'un. So maybe for me it's not the words but the age gap with the other hosts? I don't know. I guess I look at real young people and she doesn't seem to have much in common with them now because she's older and at a different point in her life.

She keeps referring to herself as a millennial and while there isn't a definite cut off for ages, she's on the older side. She did it this week to reference how young and hip she is and it's like "no..... you're 30 and married with two kids." Not that you can't be fabulous with those things but you aren't really a kid any more. Like if that generation stretches to people (kids still, really) born in 2000ish, what does she have in common with the 16-year old buying prom dresses right now that the rest of the hosts don't have? To them she seems like a baby but she's really not. I fall into the spot between her and the rest of the hosts in age. So it's not like I think of her as a creepy old lady while I study for the SATs.

I am crying several minutes into e12 from the end of e11 and had to push pause for a minute. I suffer from PTSD and relate to Kimmy a lot. The whole not crying thing? Something I did and spent many hours talking about in therapy. I mean, it's not like I never ever ever cried, but I rarely did when something upsetting happened to me. Fictional character? Waterworks. So to see Kimmy get ripped apart for it broke my heart because I got shredded many times too. Especially when people didn't believe my trauma because not crying was seen as making it up instead of a very tightly held coping mechanism. Like you don't cry because you feel like if you start, you will never, ever stop. So when she cried, had her breakthrough, I lost it. It was such a big step. This show is really helping me laugh at my own condition. I don't feel like it's making fun of it, but like it's laughing with me, not at me. It's such a case of "it's funny because it's true" for me.

If we wanted to go back to the mid 90s (and someone Dunne wrote about) there's Andrew Cunanan.

I am late to the Love party and I have to say it was a bit of a relief to see all the... I don't want to say negativity.... but let's say a lack of enthusiastic positivity. I didn't hate the show and I'm sure I'll watch S2, but that's mostly because I liked Jacob's performance and the character of Bertie. I can't tell if she's really that sweet and nice or if there's something seriously wrong and dark about her we haven't seen yet, and I like that ambiguity. I also like that it didn't make me hate her. There were points I hated both Mickey and Gus. She just couldn't keep her mouth shut at the Magic Castle? Even if you hate hate hate something, grown-ups can sit still for an hour and suck it up with a fake smile and then rip it to shreds on the car ride home. Showing up on the lot and neglecting the cat and Bertie crossed the line for me too. And Mickey's writers' room implosion was awful. I loved how he was called out by both Mickey and the ex for not really being a nice guy. That's such an important thing that happens, that guys self-label themselves as nice when they're really not. There's nothing wrong with NOT being a "nice guy" as long as you stop short of the asshole line. I think what didn't turn me off from S2 was that they both appeared to mature and recognize their broken parts within themselves. If the next season picks up after a long break between them during which they tried to work on not being terrible, that could be intriguing. If it starts with them hooking up from the parking lot I might turn it off. More Kerri Kenney wouldn't hurt either.

In the mid-80s there was this cult in Oregon that could make for interesting tv (maybe not a full season) when they hatched a plan Umbelina, I'm sorry to hear your stories. I'm also sorry if my bringing up Bundy upset you.

I never heard of Diane Downs and I am REALLY glad I didn't at the time it happened. I saw too many commercials for the Fatal Vision movie and was terrified for months my mother was going to kill me in my sleep. I was thinking something like Ted Bundy. He was so charming, supposedly, and he escaped at least once. Maybe twice. (I'm sick and my brain is kind of fuzzy so I apologize if it was suggested and my eyes glazed over it.) I like the idea of Katrina, that it doesn't have to be one specific crime, but I'm not excited for it. I'm sure it'll be good. So many interesting crimes might not be enough for a full season. I wonder if they'd do two five-episode arcs instead of one 10-episode arc. Lincoln's assassination was pretty bizarre, but maybe not 10 hours' worth of compelling.