SometimesBites

Finally able to watch the opener, and am hap-hap-happy. The opening scene with a quarry full of zombie was glorious. Thank you, show--it was a visual feast. Loved it later when we saw through Morgan's binocs the random walkers falling/sliding into the pit. Also enjoyed that the walkers who showed up in the woods had obviously squeezed out through the semi trucks--all exposed ribcages and jawbones. :) Eugene ecstatic over Tara's awakening was wonderful. Which of them will the show kill first? Nicholas has found redemption, and is so dead now. New baby Judith...cute, but wow, not even close. Glenn's "Dude, I'm supposed to be delivering pizzas" and Michonne's "Isn't that how the world is now? You always thinks there's one more peanut butter." I have a couple of responses to "why not just firebomb" the quarry, but as another poster said, if the simplest solution was always fully workable and well-implemented, what friggin fun would THAT be? Cardigan Carol, I couldn't love you more if you baked me cookies. So happy CDB and friends are back. It's been a long hiatus. He was hiding in embarrassment that in his many long-ranging scouting trips he somehow missed a quarry filled with a gazillion walkers.

Well, he's only off by a mere 1.3 billion people. Sure Kody, the massive environmental burden already being exerted on the resources of the planet are just a matter of opinion. He and Michelle Duggar ought to cozy up and chat about how overpopulation is a "myth" and the entire world population could stand shoulder-to-shoulder in wherever the hell it was she said. Interesting that massive reproduction and deep ignorance seem to so often coincide. ETA: http://www.census.gov/popclock/

I'd be delighted with a Carol/Daryl tryst (ever since their D:"I'll go down first." C: "Even better." D: "Stop it." moment), and I'd be delighted with a Daryl/Aaron tryst, for the FU stereotypes currency. :)

Quoting this simply for how exactly you expressed my sense of the entire Grady storyline. The hospital situation, with its inherent dichotomy of safety and menace, wasn't exploited thoroughly because they were too busy leaning on silly irrelevancies, like Dawn's relationship with her mentor, etc. How Dawn was able to maintain a grip on leadership for so long when her staff distrusted and disrespected her was pretty silly, and there were just pacing problems throughout. And the potential for a character like Beth--whose depth of development could have been every bit as intense as that of Carol--was wasted on the paper-thin acting ability of EK. In re-watch, it's the stuff I race through (along with the Rick/Governor table talk episode, and the Daryl/Beth moonshine episode).

They'll spin it like cotton candy. I foresee several talking head moments of Kody pontificating and doing his beady-eyed serious face. The one that looks like a chimp who can't figure out which box the banana is in. Apologies to chimps.

I think Janelle gets exactly as much as she wants and needs from Kody. Her expectations are realistic (meaning she doesn't expect him to meet many of her needs and she's reconciled to the fact that she'll never be number one in his heart), and therefore it's easy for Kody to meet those expectations. I think Kody actually has a pretty solid bond with Janelle because she is the one woman who doesn't push or challenge him--and as we know, Kody HATES feeling challenged. Janelle goes along to get along and is content with whatever crumbs are leftover for her. As hard as it is for most of us to imagine, Kody is the man Janelle wants, and I don't think she EVER had the expectation that he would lavish on her the level of adoration that he reserves for Robyn. I have a hunch that, after being married to Adam Barber, Janelle found Kody quite attractive and exciting. (I base that speculation only on the fact that Janelle and Barber didn't stay married long at all, and he frankly wasn't much to look at. Early pictures of Kody show a good-looking, fit young man.) It seems to me that Janelle is, for Kody, the PERFECT second wife at this point--undemanding, amenable, practical, not prone to outward jealousy. She lets the drama mostly swirl around her. I would just about bet that when she split from the family in the past it was almost completely to do with Meri. Meri doesn't have the same currency and power in the family now, and Robyn will never ever be able to bully Janelle the way Meri did--I think Robyn is afraid of Janelle. I think Janelle sees right through Robyn and just lets her run her little schemes and dramas. At the end of the day, Janelle knows that Kody can't be talked out of or manipulated out of plural marriage, because it is a principle that's intrinsic to his ego. She knows that as a pragmatic, non-combative, potential wage earner, her position is rock solid. All my personal opinion! :)

For a group of actors that I otherwise enjoy, that was pretty damned awful!

My oldest son sent me this fun short of TWD trivia:

Yep. Her name wouldn't have been Brown during the era of those film credits anyway. So I just spent $2 and 23 minutes of my life that I'll never recoup and watched the episode of Just Shoot Me that has a Robyn Brown in the credits as "model." The bulk of the episode is conversation among main characters; the remaining couple of minutes have crowds in the background at the office and in a tiny restaurant scene. Trust me--"our" Robyn ain't there. Now, y'all can repay me with a skinny mocha.

A couple of years ago I was poking around the webz and stumbled across another Robyn Brown who was an actress and wasn't Robyn Sullivan Brown. Although I can't corroborate that right now, I feel 99% certain that IMDb has mistakenly conflated Robyn Sullivan Brown with a struggling Z-list actress. I base that on exactly what DJ mentions above--that Robyn was living far from Hollywood and was making babies at the time these film credits happened.

The first commandment of Brown is "Thou shalt not tarnish the illusion that this shit works."

Yes we do. And one of the sad things about mass media in the 20th century and beyond is the heavy dilution of regional accents in the US. Yes, I admit when the Browns say "rill" instead of "reel" I notice and I roll my eyes, but I think it's because almost everything about them now irritates me! Funny how the regional particularities of my dear friends from Minnesota, Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, Boston, and Maine are like music to my ears, but even if Robyn or Meri suddenly sounded as if they grew up in England on an Oxford education I would be rolling my eyes at them. Let's face it: it's the staggering ignorance of the thoughts behind the words that really fries our hash...not the pronunciation.

Oh, that's easy. On the tv show, they just avoid mentioning that little tidbit. Sure, they reference that Janelle was really friendly with Meri's family--they just leave out the part about her being Meri's sister-in-law. See how simple? ;)

*wipes Not Your Father's Rootbeer off laptop screen

I completely agree with this. The family legends about the government busting up the family and hijacking the daddy had to fall away, their neighbors have been friendly, they have googly-eyed fans kissing their asses on social media and when they go out in public. So now, when navigating the ugly reality of having her man around only once or twice a week, Christine has none of that fantasy persecution to fall back on as to why her life sucks. Yeah, I think the age difference would give most of us a little pause. Fortunately, most women mature a little faster than most men, so there's that. :)

Although I think the Brown kids are surprisingly normal considering the wonky life they've led, I agree that the chickens won't come home to roost for several more years. Have to demur a bit on the Madison situation. She turns 20 in a couple of weeks and he's 28--not exactly a May-December romance. The concrete facts are troubling enough, that is, I'm bummed for her that she seems to have left school and I really hope that she'll complete her education and that their shared history in the polygamous world doesn't end up with her as a sister wife.

Agree 100%. I was actually a little amazed at how revealing that exercise was. Kody had zero filter. I thought, yes, this is the essential Kody: condescending, inconsiderate, and punitive. Christine and all the wives would do well to remember Maya Angelou's wise words: When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

That entire quote was like the written equivalent to the picture of the older boys/young men dressed up in their cowboy costumes. Wow.

Win-win for Maddie and the LDS church, IMO. I think Maddie needs to break far from the roots of her Dad's belief, and obviously it's better for the LDS church not to have any thread of connection with with the Browns, however slim.

I feel enough discomfort for Meri just having listened to the 11 voice mails--no matter what else may have been documented, I'll pass. Every catfish story I've ever heard had a sad and desperate person in the victim's seat. Each time their show reveals yet another facet of how emotionally bankrupt their relationship actually is, their common tactic is to claim incomplete understanding based on editing or mitigating circumstances (such as Christine's painkiller TH sadness). Bottom line ALWAYS circles back to "Our family is stronger than ever and we all have each others' backs and...look a bird!"

With the real estate market being a horror show since '08, I have a hunch there was a lot of creative financing and tap dancing done to get their asses into those homes. There were entire housing developments in Las Vegas that turned into virtual ghost towns when the big bust hit.

And how about letting the kids process it without a camera crew in the room?! I don't even think KODY should have been there for that moment. Those children should have been allowed a truly private talk with just their mother. Sadly, though, I believe Robyn is just as big an ass about the emotional ramifications here as is Kody. He's an insensitive, self-congratulatory asshole, no doubt, but there are things Robyn could do to try and mitigate their exposure to Kody's awful behavior. Instead, she throws her kids right under the wheel of his emotional steam roller. As we all have seen, she is a revisionist who wants to wipe out every trace of her actual history with another husband. On-camera evidence is bountiful: Her opening quote is that they all shoulda been together from the beginning. She forced the kids to call Kody "dad" the second they were married. She death-marched the older kids through a convoluted story about how her wicked first husband sorta stole her purity, when it should have belonged to Kody all along. She managed to unseat Meri as the legal wife. And now she's effectively wiped out David Jessop as the father of her oldest children.

I also remember the 3-year interest-only loans as a strongly feasible speculation that cropped up when they first got the houses. Since then it has been repeated as fact over and over. It sounds like just the sort of speculative financing Kody would chase, which is why I think it's been accepted as gospel, but I'm not convinced it's the case. It wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know it to be true.

It's the usual after-the-fact damage control. They see how many people are reacting with disgust and soft-soap or backpedal their story to try and calm the waters. I'd respond, but Kody finally blocked me. They don't seem to compare notes--I can't believe I can still tweet the wives. I try to be more careful with them, though...trying to keep my ability to keep an eye on them. ;)

The title of a piece of real estate can change w/o any change at all to whatever financing is in place.