Bastet

Kneel during the national anthem, obviously.

Presumably. FOX liked the concept enough to pick up the revival/reboot (they keep calling it a reboot, from from what we saw them reading and shooting, it's a revival), but wanted the pilot reshot because it had a number of issues. They'd still want it to have all seven, though, because a pilot with the full cast will bring in better numbers than one where one of the surviving OGs is missing. But the budget for the series that has been ordered is such that they can't afford to shoot it in L.A. or retain the entire cast. So they'd either indeed cut an actor or cut a bunch of other costs - the cliffhanger leaves open numerous ways to go with this show (as opposed to the show within the show) if it carried on; if Shannen saw this as a limited-run series and didn't want to do any more, they'd just write her as dropping out (and write the show within the show without Brenda), but if everyone wanted to come back, they could do wacky hijinks storylines as Tori the producer tries to find ways to cut costs (actors - particularly Shannen - taking a pay cut would inevitably be a line of discussion, but also all sorts of meta "well, what if we did this?" funny ideas for shooting on the cheap).

Holy child-of-celebrity privilege, Batman - looking her up, Sophie indeed worked in NY and then L.A. upon graduation. That's not at all how one's career trajectory (moving up through the rankings of news/media markets) typically works, even with a journalism degree from a school like USC. Hopefully she appreciates the leg up. She uses "like" more than any trained broadcaster should, but fewer than many youngsters, and comes across pretty well. I’ve only seen the first – tacos – and this – steak – episode, but I enjoy it. It’s funny how very generational the differences in their choices are, and sweet how he’s happy to spend time with her in general, and especially sharing food. Tonight, “An affordable steak house – but I still need you to pick up the check” amused me.

I don't know if the Carrie Baird episode was new - my program guide listed it as such, yet simultaneously listed a 2018 air date - but it was new to me. I really enjoyed her on Top Chef; she progressed far, and frequently made food I wanted to reach through my TV and eat. That familiarity meant I was rooting for her from jump, but when Lamar took up the "Queen of Toast" theme to dismiss her, I was all in. Trash talking is a recurring theme, but if you bother to learn anything about your competitor, you learn she blew the minds of judges - and her competitors out of the water - by winning a late-round Top Chef challenge with "fancy toast" and her variations on it thus became famous. On many other match-ups, I'd have been rooting for Lamar, as his dish also looked delicious, but I'm glad hers was even more tasty and creative than the guy who dissed her (even if prompted). (Seth Meyers entertains me in general, and his "Are you the king of anything?" response and "I think you're the king of being sensitive" further endeared me to him.) I was a bit nervous for her against Bobby when she chose a dish with flavors in his wheelhouse. Huevos rancheros is a dish I grew up eating a modified version of when my mom made it as I hate egg yolk and beans; mine was egg white only, yum, but also missing a big ingredient as she didn't substitute anything for the beans in mine. I never bothered to make it as an adult. So I was excited by Carrie's chorizo - and a green sauce rather than red, as that's my general preference - but if you omit the yolks from both and the beans from his, I'd happily devour either one. I was glad to see hers come out ahead.

I don't think there was anything to break up, as they just had sex. Christine said in the next episode that she's more a player than a stayer but she likes Gabby and thinks they're kindred spirits. (It seems to me Christine likes her as a person - the only one in the cast she does, heh - and was perfectly fine with being her experimental hook-up as a one off, but would be okay with a friends with benefits arrangement for a while, but isn't looking for anything beyond a sexual relationship.) Gabby asked if Christine will date her if she signs the consent form, but that turned to the "I don't even know what I'm not ready for, and until I do, why would I put it on a piece of paper?" talk. At the end, she came out as "undeclared" to her castmates, but Brian got inspired to come out as Zach's dad, so they didn't get a chance to ask anything more about the woman who asked her to sign a consent form. In this one (I rewatched her scenes, as my lack of specificity in recalling the dialogue was annoying me), Jennie and Tori ask her what's going on with her husband, she says they're still trying to figure things out, Jennie says she hopes they do as he's a great guy, she says he is and she's not going to throw away 30 years of marriage for new discoveries, they find out it was Christine she slept with, and she says she's just trying to let things happen and not control everything (which they have fun with, and also with wanting to know if Jason knows). Fast forward to arriving in NY for the upfronts, and Chris is with her, gets introduced to Christine (which again amuses Tori and Jennie) and later cuts off her revelation about Christine by saying he figured she was the woman she slept with. He says he's not even that jealous, but isn't sure why ("Because she's not a guy?" heh). She apologizes, he tells her she has to stop apologizing, she says she's just confused and doesn't know, and he says, "I don't know how long 'I don't know' is going to be okay." She says she knows that and tells him he's her best friend. So that's where they are - basically, where they were back when she first told him about her latent sexual attraction to women being finally brought to the surface after being kissed by the bartender. It plays to me as she doesn't want to leave him for Christine, date another woman, or anything like that, but she doesn't know how to settle back into their marriage given what she has now acknowledged about herself. And he understands that, but needs clarity in order to make his own decisions (and she knows he deserves that). It's my favorite of the romantic/sexual storylines (by default, but also with a smidgen of genuine interest), but it suffers from being just one of half a dozen in a short-run series, and too much is left up to audience interpretation. I don't want to be spoon fed, but come on.

But he said much the same thing in this episode; when she said she's still confused, or unsure, or whatever she said, he said that wasn't going to fly forever and she said she knew. So they're still in limbo. I'm not sure if he's back home, or if he just came on the trip to celebrate this big thing with her. Hers was the only personal storyline I liked, because - while quite flawed - it was rooted in the messiness of reality, unlike the soap opera-style drama of everyone else's. She loves her husband as her best friend and the guy she raised a family with. She's finally confronting her sexual orientation, though, which brings into question how she feels about him as a partner; she loves him, she doesn't want to blow up their marriage, but she can no longer deny that maybe a necessary part of a romantic partnership was never there because she was meant to be with a woman instead. She just doesn't know what to do with that. And he's sympathetic to the fact this isn't just some mid-life wanderlust, but he's also not willing to be in limbo forever. It's the one thing I'd be interested in seeing continue to play out. Ian banging both mother and daughter, Jennie with her stage five clinger fling and mixed feelings for Jason, Tori reconnecting with Brian during a low point in her marriage to a useless leech, He's the baby daddy/No he's the baby daddy - none of that is my jam.

Ian time traveling to warn Steve off his hair and wardrobe was another great dream. And Shannen drifting off during meditation into a nightmare scenario brought on by the test audience feedback about sexual chemistry between Brenda and Brandon. The dreams and Christine Elise’s disdain for the cast have been my favorite parts of the series. The rest of it has steadily run its course for me, and I doubt I'd watch if they made more episodes; the interaction among the cast was fun, but all their storylines with other characters either don’t interest me or actively annoy me. I think it should end here; it was a good concept for a six-episode run (but only so-so in execution), and in the end they're all standing on stage together, happy to have had the experience no matter what comes next. “Brenda wasn’t a troublemaker, Kelly was. Kelly was a slut!” LOL. It killing Jennie to see her daughter enamored with Shannen cracks me up, too.

They are quite real, and pretty much the least that should be required (by the actors' union) on a set; it started off well with everyone - especially Gabby - supporting the idea, but the presentation of the position once one was hired was total caricature for storyline purposes. And, okay, this is indeed a storyline on a soap, but it's a fraught area in a fraught time, so to misrepresent this role right now is problematic to say the least. Add that to Anna going from rightly calling out Ian's behavior and justifications for it to wanting to bone him, and there's quite the disturbing oh, things were so much simpler in our day undertone to this project.

Yes, unless this is a pattern. He chose a rude way of saying he'd had a long, lousy day at work and did not wish to extend it for another moment; he should not take that out on you, as you not only weren't one of the causes but have no reason to even know he'd had a shitty day. But if it was a one-off, it wasn't that big a deal; I suspect if it hadn't happened in front of someone else, you wouldn't have thought much more about it once you got in and started working. If he doesn't mention on his own during your next interaction that he's sorry for snapping at you, you can bring it up if it's still bothering you, but - again, unless he has a habit of being rude and dismissive - it just reads to me as someone using thoughtless language in a bad moment, rather than any sort of personal attack.

I enjoyed Valerie's reactions to some of the clues/answers, and was rooting for her, even though she was sometimes slow to select the next clue (and, yes, I indeed mean sometimes, not often - sometimes she was quite noticeably slow, sometimes she was on the slower side of average, and a couple of times she was quick). Ixnay really surprised me as a TS; it wouldn't have if they hadn't performed well in the pig latin category up until then, but they obviously knew the language, and that is probably one of the most well-known words (along with amscray, the subject of the previous clue) even among those who don't. Austen as a TS surprised me in that no one even took a guess; I guess the challengers didn't want to risk losing the money. Same with The Howling; even if they didn't know the film, I'm surprised no one guessed it based on the category and verbiage of the clue. I'm not a Beatles fan (I like a few songs), and my mind went down the path of other scripted shows of that era at first, but then I had the thought it must have been some sort of special. After not coming up with anything, the date finally made me think of their famous appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and I was confident that was it. But I wouldn't have had time to write it down, and my brain probably would never have even made the necessary turns to begin with under game conditions.

I love that episode, especially when Brenda has to explain to Pope what happened, when she assigns Andy to carry the evidence bag for Sharon, that Sharon actually argues with Pope to let Brenda share the case with her (and has that good line to her that sometimes relationships are about what you're willing to overlook), Sharon and Brenda doing the notification and interviewing the dead guy's business partner together (he's a hoot, and I love their reactions to him), and the great scene between Provenza and Liz at the end (and just before that, when she invites Andy to join them the next time all Provenza's ex-wives get together - ha!) Also, when Provenza says the dog is ugly, Liz says she must have a type, and the camera pans back to Provenza and Frank in the backseat - they do, indeed, have the same face. It's hilarious. I also like Liz saying Frank needs to stretch his legs and Provenza arguing his legs are five inches long. And when Provenza and Andy aren't sure if the woman in the photo is the female robber, so Liz slaps her hand down over the picture so just the woman's cleavage is showing and they both immediately know it's her. (That part is so funny I will ignore the question of where the hell the police got that picture of the suspect, instead of pulling a DMV photo like usual.) Last time I watched the DVD, I watched that episode twice before moving on.

That's not the kind of breaking into song I was talking about, because a sing-along with an existing fun, popular song (and, indeed, I'd have been among the singing half of the restaurant) is not what happens in musicals - it's routinely having conversations, delivering major and/or extensive information, and such via song that turns me off most movie musicals, yet, oddly, not off musical theatre.

Jason: [Misses DD] Alex: The Help. Popular film. Good to have you back, Alex. Corvette surprised me as a TS. A few others - prevail, Thunderbird, boxing, Schlossbergman, and coffee pot - I wouldn't have predicted as TS, but that was the only one that had me yelling the answer at my TV in increasing disbelief. I loved the category where you combined last names; Bernsteinway and Koppelosi particularly tickled me. This was me exactly, with a break to laugh at "Goliathtown".

Actually, him having learned how to control his temper is one of the things that would make him a good one. Like Rusty said, Julio understands both the anger and how hard it is to let go of it. That he has successfully gone through the extensive anger management process himself puts him in a good position to foster kids who are angry about their life circumstances and have no idea what to do with that anger other than lash out at others. Hmm. Well, it's not like there's a database of dental records to tap into; they have to know whose dental records to compare the teeth to, and they had no earthly idea who the victim was at first, so no point in talking about it then. Once they suspected it was the poker player, I think they already had something else from the remains - fingerprint? DNA? (I can't remember since I didn't watch most of it this time) - to use for confirmation, so it may be that at that point there simply wasn't any need to mention teeth/dental records. They expand on in the next episode, when we learn that Cooper recently brought up having kids again and she's irritated with him because she had told him it's not happening. "If the baby thing is that important to you, find somebody else, otherwise stop talking about it" is what she says then. And even though we don't see him again after the "White Lies" arc at the end of the first half of season five, they're still together as of "Quid Pro Quo" in the second half, and there's no indication they're not still together at the end of the series. So it seems he indeed accepted it.

Same here. I also didn't much care for cartoons/animated movies as a kid (and it never changed). I guess I have a limited imagination, because it's always been somewhat rare for me to get into something that doesn't at least look realistic (I don't like most sci-fi, either). My mind is a strange place with strange rules, I'm realizing as I think about this, because I can count on one hand the movie musicals I like, but I enjoy quite a bit of musical theatre. So, somehow, the fact people don't, in real life, randomly break into song and dance makes the lack of realism a problem for me on film, but not when sitting there watching a live performance.

They'll have to work hard to not undo, let alone top, "A Stash From the Past". Among many other things, I love how the backdrop to that, and another episode, was that Darlene had (off-screen in the past) tried a few drugs as many people her age do, decided none of them were for her, and moved on; so much more refreshing than the Very Special Episode trope where experimentation is always a crisis. So if they're going to go the teen drug use route this time, it had better be appropriately nuanced. The handling of Harris having sex was in line with the original years, so hopefully this will be too.

I wound up watching football during breaks in “Skin Deep” rather than watching “Skin Deep” during breaks in football, because the episode cracks me up (high praise; not much tears me away from football). Provenza is hilarious, with all the ways he answers Heather’s phone and the stuff he does to scare off buyers (especially “We’re going to remove and test everything from this doomed dwelling”), and it’s really sweet that he’s up to all these shenanigans because he knows how much Andy wants the house. There’s also some sweet stuff about Rusty’s insecurity, that he got moved around so much the condo is the first place that has ever felt like home, and his biological mom never gave him the emotional stability, either, that lets you know “home” is something more than a particular physical dwelling. Plus, she ignored him in favor of boyfriends and twice outright abandoned him for Gary, so he’s all-around conditioned to have some anxiety about what Sharon and Andy living together will mean for him. But it’s mostly about the funny. I love the little moment in the beginning, where Andy does his “ta-da” gesture by the For Sale sign to kick off filming, and Provenza is in the background mocking him with the same gesture. Everyone gets great moments in this one. I love Sharon’s “About 15 minutes ago” when the dentist boyfriend asks if he needs a lawyer; it’s the perfect cap to how she and Provenza led him right down the path (I love their miming along as they describe how he swung the grill press). She’s funny in the morgue with Amy, marveling at all the work the victim had done, and I love the look they share when Andy unsuccessfully tries to dig himself out of a hole talking about fake breasts being firmer; it’s one of my favorites of their shared looks when someone is being a dumb guy, because Amy isn’t even in Sharon’s eye line at first – Sharon has to deliberately turn to connect with her. I also love that Sharon is the only person who can pronounce “realtor” correctly; all the “real-a-tor” going on drives me batty. Mike answering “I no understand; what is problem?” with “You’re practicing medicine without a license, and I find your accent really offensive” is pure gold, and I like the patient’s “duh” reaction when they tell her he isn’t a real doctor. “I’m lying face down in some immigrant’s garage.” I love her being wheeled out to the ambulance, ass up, in the background when the detectives are in the “doctor’s” office. Really, everything at the fake doctor’s house is funny, from Reserve Officer Watson being assigned to chase down the nurse (another great background shot, with her saying she knows karate and him tackling her) to Yu trying to bribe Andy and Provenza with cosmetic surgery (and the nurse saying she doesn’t think they have enough Botox in stock for the two of them). The Paula Poundstone cameo is random (there has to be some connection to someone on the show, but I’ve never come up with it), but “What do you think, I maintain myself with yoga?” is funny. Rusty’s Negative Nancy routine when he and Sharon are looking at the video footage of the house tour is great; “It attracts dead people” when she praises the pool is absolutely perfect. (There’s an editing goof in that scene, though; when the realtor hollered to call the police, Andy said, “We’re here, you idiot.” But in what is supposed to be Buzz's recording of it, they used a take where he says, “We are the police, you idiot.”) I even laugh at Heather’s name being Heather S. Lutz. Cuz she’s a slut, get it? It’s completely juvenile humor I only accept in certain situations, and this episode is one. There is a funny moment from this episode on the blooper reel; when Morales brings in the implants, during one take Jonathan Del Arco picks up the wrong ones, and Raymond Cruz points it out. Mary McDonnell smiles, does a mini eye roll and says, “Ray knows his implants” as Cruz says, “I know my implants.” It’s funny on its own, and especially because Julio noticing the difference and Sharon rolling her eyes in response could absolutely have happened in character. I noticed something tonight: Amy telling the cosmetic sales boyfriend she owns some stock in the company (but can’t afford the product, which is a great touch) ties back to the moment in “Taking the Fall” when she knows what an acronym means because she reads The Wall Street Journal. I really like seeing a black woman as an investor, since – as Dr. Blowhard pointed out in “Cheaters Never Prosper” when Amy was undercover with an extensive portfolio – her demographic is underrepresented in the market. “Cashed Out” I missed most of in favor of football, but I caught Amy telling Cynthia, “I don’t want kids at all - mine, other people’s, or yours.” Amen, sister. We need more main female characters on television who don’t want kids, but I’ll take what I can get with secondary characters where her decision is presented positively and as something she sticks with. I also saw Provenza’s amusing “How many more kids are you going to dump on us?” to Cynthia. I missed my favorite scene with Cynthia – and favorite scene, period - though, when she asks Julio what he was thinking when the killer took a hostage and he replies, “I don’t know, something like ‘Oh shit’.” Oh well, it would have been edited, anyway. (I like Cynthia, and, on a completely shallow note, love her hair.) In the opening crime scene, it always strikes me that they have the “You might have to lie a little/I can lie a lot, I’m not sure about a little” conversation while Buzz is filming. Sure, it’s about something personal, not professional, and a joke, but it’s not something they want captured for a potential jury. And I always want to tinker with the script at the end, because I think Rusty’s arguments in support of Julio being a foster parent should be flipped; his closing line about Julio’s shelter, shower, and food being better than the streets applies to anyone, but his observation that most foster kids enter the system with a tremendous amount of anger and no idea how to let go of it, and Julio is someone who understands all that, is specific to Julio and the actual good point Cynthia should have responded to. “Lieutenant Provenza thinks everyone’s crazy except him.” Heh.

I had this episode just on in the background, so missed a lot of details (including what was wrong with the sickly kitty who tested negative for FeLV), but I loved the shot of him checking out with the two cats to his chest, and the sick kitty having her paw draped over his shoulder. I'm often taken aback - given what's typical, in fact required, in my area - by how many people just hold their pets rather than properly restrain them, but in this case I simply found that cat's gesture adorable. The puppy who tangled with a car and escaped with a minor fracture also had a really cute face draped over the owner's shoulder as they all headed for the car with the promise of relaxing with treats for a couple of weeks.

This would almost certainly join my short list of long-running series that I enjoy the whole way through even if it went longer, but seven seasons is good and I am glad they know in advance when it's ending, so they can go out exactly the way they want rather than writing a season finale that can do in a pinch if it winds up also being a series finale.

This reminds me of that old "Dear Sir or Madman?" commercial, which I am annoyed that I cannot find online. The actor's line delivery when the wife reads her husband's error was perfect. Make sure the person/people you ask to proofread your resume(s) and cover letter(s) once you think they're ready to go have the grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills to actually help you; it's no use to, for example, hand it to your husband because he's closest to you, if having your phone number wrong is the only kind of error he'd catch. That's going to be a pretty short part of the interview; prospective employers want to know why you're looking to leave, especially when you've been with the company a long time, but they want something simple; they just want to see it's not a "wrong" reason for leaving and you don't sit there and criticize you boss and co-workers. It's more a test to see what you don't say rather than there being much importance placed on what you do say.

@funky-rat, I second this. Of all the negatives you listed here, the only two I'd bring up in an interview are that there is no opportunity for you to advance any further than your current position and that significant recent and upcoming changes make the company's future uncertain. That explains why you'd leave a company after 20 years, and with that out of the way you move on to all you'll bring to the new company on day one and how you want to continue learning and growing from there.

I watched "Monette" last night (where Charlene finds out her high school friend is a madam) and disturbed my cat laughing at Charlene when they ask her to sit down because they want to talk to her about Monette. She gets increasingly flustered as she says, "Oh no, I don't like the sound of that. Every time you tell me 'Charlene, sit down' it's bad news. Just tell me standing up. What is it? What? What? Monette's a man." The "Monette's a carpenter?" line when they tell her she's practicing the world's oldest profession seems to get more attention, but it's the moment before it that really does it for me - and it's all in the delivery. Unfortunately, I can't find a clip of it to post, but here's Julia's "I will not decorate a whorehouse" rant:

I thought I posted this earlier, but apparently not (and that was before I settled in for a night of football and drinking since I'm off tomorrow): Not at all; she asked for far too much. If she's going to take money as a private tutor, she needs to use her own materials -- her take on how to best digest, analyze, and communicate the subject in general, tailored towards the course instructor's teaching of the subject. So if she was tutoring one of your students and asked for your syllabus so she could properly follow along and guide her/him, fine. If she, in this out-of-district scenario, asked for, as you said, specific guidance on a discrete area of the subject, fine. But "Can I have access to all your materials?" Not fine. She wants you to give her your work for free, for which she'll turn around and get paid.

I've seen '70s disaster flicks like The Poseidon Adventure several times (I have an odd occasional fondness for them that does not translate to modern action-adventure films that are nevertheless so much better in many ways), but to me Lynley was Annabelle from the 1978 version of The Cat and the Canary, which I watched repeatedly as a child and watched again last month for the first time in many years.

Good gods, I'm only watching during breaks in the football game, and just that was enough to confirm my impression of Ree Drummond as someone I just can't stand to watch. I've never watched her show, because it's clearly not my style of food, but I've seen bits when watching something before or after on FN, and she comes across as a demented clown whose smile actually creeps me out. (I'd feel bad about that, but the little I've read about her indicates she's not my kind of person, either, so whatever.) I hesitate to even watch the repeat, she bugs me so irrationally, but I'm off tomorrow, so I think I'll have an extra drink or two and go for it. We'll see. If Alex - who I like to imagine is no happier sitting beside her than I am watching her, but reality is she could have easily refused so I'm projecting - gives Ree that famous stink eye of hers at any point, though, it would be one of my favorite episodes.