kieyra

Watching the video above, I love them both and they both seem very genuine, but you can see that Nicole is often staring off a bit/not making eye contact, so there could be something to theory that she's a bit of an introvert.

Anyone around who was on TWOP during the Ugly Betty heyday?

Since I wasn't around till a few days ago, I have to know: did anyone ever make the joke I kept thinking whenever they say SCPD? (Sterling Cooper Pryce Draper?) No? Just me? Okay then.

I have a better sense now of why the beginning of S3 has caused some defection to SHIELD (or made it seem more appealing) but SHIELD never got me in the feels the way Arrow does. (I haven't seen the first two eps of 3, but got pretty spoiled due to bitterness fallout and have a good idea what's probably going on.) Anyway, I should probably dispense with the show-centric talk, but I was very excited coming off my Netflix run and wanted to say hi before diving into the threads. I'm a comic book non-starter (other than Sandman, and SHIELD/Avengers because Whedon), so I'm sure I'm missing whole worlds of nuance, but it's fun.

Hey guys. New show fan. Shotgunned the first two seasons via Netflix, got myself in a scuffle on the SHIELD forums, bought the t-shirt. I also started shipping Felicity and Oliver during their first scene together, but never thought the show runners would do anything with that, and instead by the end of S2 they turned it into a huge knife and twisted it in my HEART. And in case you're wondering how brand-new viewers react to Laurel in a binge-watch setting: Hate her.

Spoiler and O/T for arrow: Interesting. I'm glad I didn't let this spoiler discourage me from watching the second half of S2; you definitely had me worried. But I don't know who you meant besides Moira, and that death certainly provided massive story momentum and emotional payoff. I've been trying to figure out who the other two are that you're talking about; maybe you meant Isobel, but she barely even had a backstory. I won't argue with you that Laurel sucks, but when you said 'the best' female characters I thought you meant Felicity and Thea, for example, or maybe Sara, not a tertiary henchman like Isobel. Unless you were also spoiling early S3. Otherwise I've forgotten some other female character's death. Anyway, my bad in general for bringing this to the SHIELD forums and I'll back out of it; I wouldn't have made the original post had it not been for the somewhat somber tone of this thread (prior to my post) and my recently-discovered love of Arrow. I didn't mean to stir up a rivalry situation

I'm struggling. I've been assuming my meh-ness on the show was because I'm not that much of a comic person. Episodes keep piling up on my DVR. When I do watch, I like some of the character beats and some of the trademark dialogue, but it still feels like the show lacks any central hook. Then a friend talked me into watching Arrow. I was skeptical at first, but in midway through season 2 now (lately on Netflix) and I'm like a junkie and absorbing comic book canon like I've been doing it my whole life. (I assure you, I have not.) Cannot shotgun the episodes fast enough. It kind of makes me weep for what SHIELD could be, especially the action sequences, especially assuming Arrow has a much lower budget.

New viewer to the show, got up to this episode tonight, so posting kind of at random: always happy to see Bex Taylor Klaus on my screen. Also, Oliver + Felicity 4eva. I have no shame.

To be fair, you quoted one of the few negatives in a mostly positive article. :) (I loved Ugly Betty and so far I've be surprised at the positive press for this show this fall, so I'm hopeful of getting some enjoyment out of it.)

(Haven't read the book, but the title caught my eye because it's like an intentional play on "a song of ice and fire". )

I'd speculated in one of the episode threads, before I'd seen the whole run, that perhaps we would find out Mark/Marcie committed suicide, since we never see him/her outside of flashback. However, I wrote that before I saw the episode with the possible disconnect between Mark and Maura about being a transvestite vs. being transgender. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to take from those scenes that Mark and Maura really were different, or that Mark was just in deep denial. If the former, Mark could be out of the picture because of that disconnect, or if the latter I suppose he may still turn out to be dead. I guess we don't know yet, unless I missed something. I also appreciated the way they showed the different strata along the gender-identity spectrum, the way the self-proclaimed transvestites acted like going any further (hormones, or, gasp, transitioning full time) was just weird and something to be actively shunned. There is still that same level of stratification now (see: transgender activists vs. drag queens, a battle that got very very nasty online earlier this year).

I just finished episode ten. I can't believe more people aren't talking about this show yet. Jesus. I feel like I'm hanging out waiting for the inevitable buzz to happen. I don't even know where to start posting, the show basically caused me to have all the feelings ever. Edit: went over to avclub forums since not a lot of discussion is happening here yet. I saw a lot of reactions like my initial one upthread ("More Maura, less kids please"). But they seemed to be coming from a place of "these people are all unlikeable", which is not really where I was coming from--I just wanted to see MORE of Maura (and, ok, less of Gaby Hoffman). By the end I was invested in all their stories, although Ali was still a cipher at best, Hannah Horvath without the "writer" drive at worst...but that made Maura's final smack down of her feel so earned and so satisfying. Her "why did you let me cancel my bat mitzvah?" freak out resonated with me in a very uncomfortable way--I also had parents who were completely absent and hands-off (and, ok, on drugs), and there are a lot of dumb things I did, under 18, that it would have been nice to have someone say "no" to once in a while.

Jesus Christ, I am halfway through and the scenes at the transvestite camp are devastating. This show packs a serious emotional punch with the precision of a brain surgeon.

It seems towards the middle of the season we start getting more Maura. I'm getting a little less twitchy about Gaby/Ali, although midway through the season it feels like she's giving us Hannah Horvath at 30. I could still just watch a whole show about Maura and Davina.

This episode has been a high note for me so far in the series. Not sure why, exactly, but everything sort of jelled. I complained in the all episode thread about not enough focus on Maura early in the season (and too much Gaby Hoffman for my taste), but this episode and the one before it struck a very nice balance. Unspoiled: this episode's flashback to Bradley Whitford's character gave me a bad feeling. I'll spoiler tag my spec, although I assure you it's just spec. Overall, this is the best "indie" show going since Rectify. Very pleasantly surprised.

Very interesting idea. I don't think it's intentional, as you say, but it does make me wonder what a Sookie Stackhouse diagnosis would look like.

Meanwhile, for those interested in the history aspect but not so much the romance of this kind of show, I am super excited for Wolf Hall (BBC mini) coming next year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall_(TV_series) Meanwhile, the London stage adaptation of the same material is moving to Broadway: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/wolf-hall-stars-will-join-transfer-to-broadway-next-year/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

The show seemed to be well liked by all critics in this little fall roundup. I loved Ugly Betty so I'll be checking it out. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/jane-the-virgin/news/1931608/fall_tv_preview_5_critics_weigh_in_on_new_shows

Hmm, I really did like the show for the first four or five episodes, and I was mostly only here in this thread because "romance trope". I felt like the first lengthy episode with Claire and BJR was perhaps the high point of the show, although I had to fast forward through the flogging. But I believed in BJR as a bad guy in that episode. Now, yeah, just a cartoon. And something else along the way really cracked open the artifice of the show for me, not sure what. I think listening to the podcasts didn't help. Too much awareness of "the man behind the curtain". I haven't ever done that with a tv show before, but people kept gushing about the podcasts for Outlander and I caved. I don't think I'll do that again soon. Otherwise...yeah, I don't know. The mid season finale posts already sum up a lot of my thoughts on the finale, so I won't rehash, but yeah. I won't pretend I won't watch next half-season, but my expectations will be adjusted.

I just binged several episodes and I'm not sure how many, so I'll just avoid spoilery stuff. I will say that I wish there was significantly more focus on Dad and that they pulled way back from the kids, and WAY back from Gaby Hoffman. I know her whole thing is that she plays characters that make people uncomfortable, and I try to resist knee-jerk disliking her work for that reason, but I feel it would be better in small doses. Someone said in an episode thread that the role is different from her work on Girls, but it's basically the same character, just less psychosis. I.e., it's Gaby Hoffman. Right down to a meta scene involving three people getting a makeover in a department store and Gaby refusing to let them groom her eyebrows or put eye makeup on her. But they're not giving me enough of Dad, and his transition which is the point of the title.

I'm probably way overestimating my high-school Spanish skills, but do they play a bit fast and loose with the subtitles? Maybe that's common--I don't watch any other subtitled shows where I have a vague (very vague) grasp on some of the language.

Possibly The Voices of Terry and Ron.

As a non-resident fan of New Orleans, I was going to check this out even though I don't do franchise procedurals. From the responses above, it sounds like I'd better stick to Treme (which I highly recommend) for my slice-of-NOLA tv.

After listening to this week's podcast, in which Terry says "It's not a romance, I've been arguing about this for 20 years!" I realized a few things: 1) As someone who knew nothing about the source material and almost didn't watch the show after reading the book synopsis, keep in mind that I was (and probably a lot of us are) completely unaware of walking into what is apparently a well-established war-zone when we make comments that include the phrase 'romance trope'. 2) It seems like there's actually two levels to the debate: a) it's not a romance; b) SO WHAT IF IT IS? WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT?. And I don't really have a dog in either fight, all I've ever said is 'the setup is romance-tropey', which I think is accurate. But it's not like I'm saying any of the following: romance is bad, romance is the only thing that has tropes, the show is bad. Nothing like that, I just need more elements to sustain my interest in a lengthy scripted drama. But I can see why, with the '20 year argument' thing Terry mentioned, it's a sore spot among book fans. 3) If she's been having the fight for 20 years, then yes, I do believe she was likely influential in bringing the source material to RDM's attention. :) In the podcasts, she clearly knows every scene from the book(s) and fills in details that RDM is not familiar with. But once again, pointing out that women are more likely to read romance or quasi-romance novels doesn't mean anything 'bad'.

Voice of dissent: five minutes before the marital bickering started. That said, Ron was just allowed to get forty-five uninterrupted seconds after that, so I'll take what I can get.