JessDVD

Oh, and I forgot to mention, Kirk* was a welcome addition to the judging panel. He's aged well. *Sean Gunn's part in Gilmore Girls. I had no idea he was in GOTG.

Show would have been more interesting if it had just been Bull's jury duty. As it was, neither case was sufficiently focused on.

I of course had already forgotten that Reeves died, and am not really interested in Torres losing it over Reeves' old sunglasses, but that could be my advanced sense of IDGAF in this area. All the casting changes in the last few years - I'm hoping that we can stick with the current bunch because the dynamic seems to be tighter and decent now. We could lose Jack at any time but I've just resigned myself to the reality that the writers deliberately keep at least one annoying cast member around for some reason I haven't grasped yet. Kasie is way better than Abby. Not having Reeves is a bummer but he was one team member more than we really needed. COTW fell flat, which is a bummer because it could have been really interesting. Statistically speaking, women are much less likely to be serial killers, and their reasons are statistically different than men's, so couldn't we have explored that? Rather than just leaving it at ditzy soccer mom? I of course called it about 15 minutes before the show figured it out, putting my record another notch closer to perfection.

I stand by the principle on any cooking show, that if you KNOW that Scott Conant hates raw red onions, then you are an idiot if you come on Chopped and make a tossed salad with red onions for him. But when Shinmin whines that every single dessert is too sweet, I have to question why, exactly, she's there to judge a show that has as one of its primary focuses, making a sweet treat on the display. Put me on the judging panel, I promise I will only complain if it's actually gross or has a weird texture or something. Sweet is great. I'll even set aside my hatred of coconut and almond.

Way behind on all the fall premieres, finally caught this one last night. We all KNOW that Pride is going to live through this and be miraculously healed within 3 eps max. This is fine, in principle (Although I would have found it WAY more interesting if he'd died, like every other human being in the universe would have), but the story of how we *get* there HAS to be interesting or I'm going to tap out. My suspension of disbelief has its limits and I think I've decided that assassin lady who apparently, like Pride, is not susceptible to normal human injuries, implausibly trekking across the entirety of New Orleans to sneak into a hospital, take out two law enforcement, and knock Gregorio in the head (ok, I enjoyed that part), and so on, while having been practically run over, shot in the stomach, and I've forgotten her original injuries that caused her artful eye bruising, but that too, is all beyond my ability to handwave. The show is interesting enough on its own merits, guys, this isn't Hawaii Five-O. And I could have rolled with the above potentially, if I'd had any idea who this lady was or why she cares or why we should care.... so this all kind of dragged, is the point. I'm also kind of over the TV trope of "Fearless leader in peril, everyone else on team completely loses their shit over it". Is this how law enforcement teams generally work? I assume they have each others' backs and would take a bullet for each other, but the level of shit losing in these shows when Fearless Leader is in peril (so, basically every week between all the NCISes and other procedurals I watch), is way over the top IMO.

All the best moments compiled here already. My only addition is that it took me nearly a full 48 hours to figure out what "Everything is bonzer" means. I'll be here all day.

FroYo is great but I digress. ;-) We intended to do a re-watch but my trying to binge my way through 8 seasons of Blue Bloods before season 9 premiere airs (I'm halfway through season 5 and I think it airs tomorrow so I'm sunk) got in the way. We're probably going to banish our kids to the basement around 6 PM and watch the last few eps of season 2 before the s3 premiere.

That bridge collapse was the worst CGI I've seen since about 1995. Where the case fell flat for me was that they didn't really delve into (past a cursory mention) the fact that insurance companies are (I assume) mostly comprised of normal and kind people who have to make tough decisions about what medical care they will and won't cover, so that they can continue to offer reasonably affordable coverage to the majority of people and continue to pay their employees and reimburse doctors and medical facilities. And yeah, some of them just care about the bottom line, but sometimes that means that good people have to make tough choices and insurance companies aren't obliged to cover everything just because that person's story is super sad (Um, like every OTHER person's story isn't super sad? Which was Benny's point, basically, with all the other patients testifying). What I also didn't get was, it wasn't like they had a liver on standby for her but they just needed the 400k to do the surgery so here they are suing. All her winning would have meant was she had the money to pay for the surgery IF there were a liver available for her before she died. I probably would have just had the procedure, arranged a payment plan, and waited for the trial with the equipment people to go through (which she probably would have won), then used the payout to pay off the debt. Or used gofundme. :-) Plaintiff's lawyer's outburst about "that's what insurance is for!" read like someone in the writers' room recently had a family member die either due to malpractice or inability to afford treatment. RIP Cable. Where's the case from the families against the builders of the bridge??

My husband sent that to me the other day. He's been well-trained. I still haven't had the opportunity to use it in real life though.

I think the thing that bugged me about Larry / didn't bug about Millie, was that when Millie came in around season 2 or 3 or whenever it was, and was making changes like sealing the steam tunnels (forcing Larry to not live there), it was played like we're supposed to hate Millie because she was so mean to Larry and aren't his quirks adorable; when I can completely understand why a department chair would want to do that. And her advice to Amita about not dressing like a teenager was good advice and also played like, what a jerk she's so mean. I hated Liz the first time I watched the show. The last time I re-watched, which was in the last year, I liked her a lot more, minus the part where she and Don were dating. The only other relationship bit I hated was Charlie's one night stand with that one chick. I usually skip that episode. I also skip that one with the guy killing all people with names of the disciples in the same manner that they died. I thought the concept was interesting and wouldn't mind re-watching it for that, but it was soooo creepy with all the music and gore that I haven't had the guts to try it again.

My mom told me at the beginning of the summer that I should be watching Blue Bloods because she knows I like procedurals, NYC, and family shows. I have quite enjoyed it and am now near the end of season 3. I don't think I'll be able to binge my way up through the end of season 8 by the air of season 9 but I'm going to try. :-) Baez has just been introduced and so far I like her, but I do miss Jackie, whom I was predisposed to dislike because of my dislike for Esposito's character on NCIS but turned out to like her (Jackie) quite a bit. It's nice to have a show where I'm not diving for the remote if one of my kids happens to come downstairs when they're supposed to be in bed. The list is short.

I love this show! I re-watch every couple years, though I usually end up losing interested not too long after Megan leaves. I think seasons 2-4 are the best. The ones with Edgerton are our favorites too. "You might miss, but I won't" is said in the DVD household often. Other memorable ones include the One Hour one (Don's at a therapist and everyone else is trying to rescue a kid), the one with the weird cult and the girl that runs away, the one with the playground sinkhole, and anything with David and Colby. I actually liked Millie, I'm not sure that was universal. Less of a fan of Larry. Big fan of the Jeans of Justice (for those TWOPers), and Charlie's hair. As I recall, the show creators would post on TWOP also, which I really appreciated.

That's like my least favorite thing about what reality TV has become (other than its life-ruining capacity), when someone does a vow renewal or whatever, paid for by the show, comped by the advertisers, and probably an idea from the show producers anyway. I liked reality TV better when it was literally just following a family around doing the things they were already doing, not completely designed, fabricated, and written by the network/producers. I know, 2005 called and laughed at me.

Music! That first half sure was a retrospective of all my late high school dances and then college banquets and so on. Thanks to CNN for the N Sync moment, I feel better about the 90s one now. Anecdote that is related but of borderline general interest: I was in marching band at our local university in 2002 and 2003, and some enterprising students arranged “Hot in Herre”, “Crazy in Love” and “The Whole World” (all mentioned in the show) into stand cheers for the band to play in between plays. For some reason, one of Nelly's people (might have been producer?) was at one of these games and heard us playing Hot in here, and told him about it and sent us a nice note saying how cool she thought that was. The latter half of the decade, was when I wasn't listening to much music so I wasn't sure what they'd be covering but I had heard of or knew about almost everything they mentioned. I thought the comment that the decade began with the boy bands but ended with the single ladies was interesting. Also didn't realize that Single Ladies was that long ago. I contend that if the music industry had been willing to buy into the Apple store and buying individual songs concept at the beginning, they might not have gone belly up. Sure, there will always be people will always refuse to buy what they can illegally acquire for free, but if microtransactions now are any indication, it's way too easy to pay 99c here and there and get songs you know you like, or figure, it's only 99c, if I hate it oh well, and then it all adds up to what people used to spend on albums or more even. I had forgotten about that litany of patriotic music in the mid 00s. Ahhh, to be the song writer who realized that forgotten and Bin Laden rhyme (sort of, anyway). I do love that Toby Keith one, the version I downloaded off of file sharing software of questionable repute totally bought legally is from a live concert and had some interesting backstory about his dad as an intro. Also forgot about that Dixie chicks stuff. I had their first two albums but i don't remember hearing much from them after all that political stuff. I'm guessing they broke that whole know your market thing, country music lovers statistically are not fond of those moves. Well, that's a wrap for this decade... Guess I'll see you all in about 3-4 years??

The only thing I really have to say about this one is, I have really really appreciated how in all of the episodes about politics, all decades too, all their talking heads have been extremely fair and balanced as they talk about both sides of the aisle, the people associated with them, and their positives and negatives. I smirked a bit at Palin too. We thought she was an ok pick at the beginning but she got majorly Looney tunes real fast. And sorry about that glass ceiling, Hillary. Sure would be nice if one or both parties could manage to find and/or nominate a woman who's qualified, not crazy, that people don't hate, and doesn't have majorly off-putting history (and yes, I realize I'm describing our current president, so maybe I should just say it'd be nice if either party could nominate people like that regardless of gender, do any exist???). So, music next week, that'll be nice after all this political stuff. I'm not sure I was listening to anything that was remotely popular during this decade and I can't remember what any of that was anyway, other than boy bands in the very beginning. I expect an appearance from Justin Timberlake at least once. The main thing I remember was the rise of Napster, Kazaa, and the like, and I assure you that all of my music in the 2000s was legally acquired.

Saylor, talking about her big order of cookies: I had to stay up till midnight! Laughed louder than necessary. My kids, who aspire to be in this show, which will never happen because they have no training or skills, didn't quite get whyi was laughing.

Well, I didn't really understand all the Enron, financial crisis, bailout, etc, back when it happened, and 10-20 years later, I still don't understand it. Oh hey Obama as senator sitting at the table talking about bailouts. We bought our first house right before the market tanked and I spent the following five years being jealous of all the houses in our area that were bigger and cheaper than ours. Fortunately we bought wisely and were able to stay on it fine. We sold three years ago when the market was a lot better, and my sister and brother-in-law bought a smaller house in that same neighborhood for another 10k higher this year, so at least that's turned around. Oh hey Obama as senator talking about the bailouts with Bernie Sanders behind him. (Mr DVD said, why on Earth is that surprising, he's been a senator forever, and I said it's just seeing people that wouldn't have been notable at the time, that now are notable to me) Something they're not mentioning, is those stimulus things the government offered people in that time. Both our parents did that cash for clunkers thing, and I seem to recall some sort of cash stimulus for everyone. And the year after we bought our house, so I guess it was 2008?, there was a large tax rebate for first time homebuyers. Oh hey Carl Levin, one of my state's senators. I'm done now.

My only problem with all this is that we're watching Blue Bloods now and in my head, Richard from Friends and Commissioner Reagan from Blue Bloods are the same person (both are played by Tom Selleck) and I'm struggling to reconcile where Monica fits into all this.

Yep, muggle net was one of my primaries too. And Steve Jobs died in 2011, so maybe they'll mention that when they do the 10s.

As I recall (it's been awhile, of course), Geocities, Angelfire (ah, blast from the past) and the like had some kind of basic editor that you could drag and drop stuff without having to know any HTML, but you're right - Facebook and YouTube pretty much just meant you had to type or upload and no formatting, design skills, or anything else was necessary, which opened up social media to people who never would have done their own websites. With them mentioning that Twitter originally had the 140 character limit and was intended to answer the question "What are you doing?" (totally didn't know that 2nd part), they should have mentioned that Facebook originally had a character limit and posted all of your content in the form of "Jessica is ______" so we were always coming up with weirdly worded present progressive language. And something ELSE they didn't mention is the privacy concerns that came with all of this. In the late 00s, a friend of mine actually had to resign from a teaching job (ironically, the same friend that told me about Facebook in the first place) because she posted a complaint about a student on her closed, private FB page, and somehow the student's parent found it and made a stink. We have a picture of my oldest (age 9 now) when she was a baby, gumming on Mr. DVD's Blackberry. She learned how to crawl with the encouragement of my LG Rumor phone placed 5 feet away from her. My 4th (final) child (age 3 now), it was some kind of smartphone, and I think I had at least 4 phones in between. That reminds me also about how they didn't address that before cell phones, you bought a landline phone and pretty much kept it forever unless you or your kid broke the cord from going too far away from the base, and now with cells, you end up getting a new one at least every 2 years. Mr DVD's current phone (Google Pixel XL) takes nicer pictures than some DSLR cameras I've seen. It was about 2015 when I got a new phone that took better pictures than our point-and-shoot and I started taking pictures on my phone only. These are the things that make me feel weirdly old, I was taking pictures on film in college and a digital camera was like "What is this sorcery" technology, and that wasn't THAT long ago (2002-2006, by the end digital cameras were a lot more common), and here we are not even done with the following decade and your basic point-and-shoot digital camera is basically obsolete.

Finally caught up. Bush years 1 and 2: they were far more generous to him than I expected, I was expecting them to nail him to the wall for his missteps. I do agree with the talking heads at the end of the second, that history will be kinder to him. Every president has things thrown at them but I think it's fair to say that W had a heavier dose than other recent presidents. Sidebar: even if you hated everything he did, his memoir "Decision Points" was an interesting read that helped lend some context. There are reviews on Amazon from people who never supported him, who appreciated the book. Last night, technology: that was an interesting ride down memory lane, if perhaps more focused on Apple than I thought was necessary. They were absolutely pioneers but I thought the focus was still a little heavy. The only thing I thought they should have included was how the instant messaging and ability to create one's own content on the internet (who else had a geocities website??) that rose in the late 90s and early 00s, led to online communities (I hung out in a lot of Harry Potter ones), which IMO is a component of what led to social media and its explosion. Man, I remember when I was in my dorm and my friend IMed me and asked if I'd gotten an account on "thefacebook" yet and I was like, what is this thing and why on Earth do I need it. Haha, famous last words. Fun tangential anecdote: back when you could create groups for no reason other than to be dopey (I seem to recall being in one that was something like "I love to flip the pillow to the cold side"), we made one called "thefacebook owns my soul" and some local reporter saw it and called me to ask if she could interview me for an article about this new Facebook thing. Being young, I didn't really realize how things that sound fine spoken make one look ridiculous in print. I sounded ridiculous in print. I hope my parents don't still have that article. The other thing about social media that they didn't address was how previously everyone had a screen name or handle, and once Facebook came on the scene, people were using their real names, which before was like, you never do that! The taking head who said that technology skipped a generation in its speed in the 00s was absolutely correct. I graduated in 02 and got a desktop computer for graduation that I think had 40 *megs* of storage and while that wasn't groundbreaking technology, it was considered pretty good for its time, the following year I got my first cell phone that did nothing except make calls. In 2010, Mr DVD got an iPad and smartphones weren't far behind for him. That reminds me that they also didn't talk about Nextel 2-way but I'm not sure I'm complaining about that mercifully brief period of history. :-)

https://deadline.com/2018/07/bull-annabelle-attanasio-exits-season-3-cable-mccrory-1202426351/ All that mystery last season about whether Cable would come back and now she's gone forever.

I thought about that too. NCIS has been the #1 show on CBS for a long enough time that I thought it would have merited a mention also. Again, I know they have a finite number of minutes to cover 10 years of TV, but again, they could have covered the Sopranos in half the time and been able to talk about crime procedurals or Discovery shows or the VERY IMPORTANT things that I watched in the 00s. ;-) I was looking for an old post on my Facebook and came across this gem: "[Mr. DVD] and I have been watching this series of documentaries on Netflix about the 1980s, 70s, 60s, and 90s is coming soon. We're in the midst of the 60s right now and I keep looking up to say 'The 60s were WEIRD'."

I could have done with less time on Sopranos and Daily Show (still talked about them of course, just less time, it seemed like they went on forever about both, especially Sopranos). I know they have a finite amount of time to cover a decade's worth of TV, but I was still a little surprised that they covered nothing that I watched in the 2000s, except for the 2.5 seconds of Gilmore Girls. Mr. DVD and I reviewed what we watched during that decade, and it was a lot of the TLC/Discovery shows - What Not to Wear, Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Jon & Kate + Hate (that one was mostly for the lulz), he was surprised they didn't mention the cancellation and reinstating of Family Guy and Futurama, and I watched a lot of the competitive shows on Food Network that rose in that time. We've never had HBO so I was kind of "really?" to all the focus on it, though I do get that it was important to the timeline of TV. Of the entire last episode of Friends, they OF COURSE chose the Ross and Rachel bit, insert massive eyeroll here. I'm excited for the 00s series, I was born in 1984 so I remembered bits of the CNN 80s, the 90s was like "This is my childhood and formative years" and now the 00s is basically my early adult life.

We watched the first four last night. Highlights: Ron Ben-Israel!!!! Waylynn Lucas! Experts in addition to Jacques. I thought that was interesting, since the other two had relative no-names (at least as far as pastry is concerned) for the guest judge. It's not like this is high art but it would be nice to have two choices for the 3-minute Staples easy button. This season seems to have embraced the camp even more than the last season, like it's a TV show about filming a TV show almost. All the appearances of the producer guy whose name is not coming forth in my short-term memory. I don't recall last season having as many demos at the judges' table either. Nicole: "Which one of you will be cashing a check for slightly less than ten thousand dollars because of taxes..." Variety of tasks made it more interesting. Pancakes, the stadium snack bar, the gingerbread houses. The winner's gingerbread house looked really nice. Unicorn cakes were a hot mess. I couldn't believe that BOTH of the women had such non-baked (not even under-, just non-) cakes. Like I get that baking is not everyone's thing and you don't know what you don't know, but how do you NOT know to do the toothpick test? I think what I really like about this show is that nobody is taking anything all that seriously and so it's all just a lot more fun (from my perspective, anyway). Sometimes the traditional cake shows or really any competitive reality show centered around food, especially the guest judges, can be all, this is SERIOUS BUSINESS.