Bastet

That was a great game. Except for Alex attempting to impersonate Hitchcock (thankfully, FJ was an instaget so I didn't get distracted by his horrible effort). But, Stephanie, the correct answer is, “Ugh, who are the fucking Patriots?” Marie Antoinette was a stunning TS. Maybe they all over-thought it, figured it was too simple and would wind up being an embarrassing guess? But Kate had a few answers where she thought she was wrong but went ahead anyway (and was right), so who knows? The India TS surprised me not that none of the three knew the specific fact at hand, but that none of them guessed it based on the entire clue. Washington was also a bit surprising. Newsome didn’t surprise me, because none of the three seemed to be at all confident in the sports category; it would have had they seemed strong on sports, but not under these circumstances. The Arts category was better suited to the first round. Same with the Quaker DD.

Yes, which makes it even more sad to watch, because it's obvious that Miss Kitty (the cat's real-life name) is sick; she was euthanized just a few weeks after her alter ego. Another layer to the backstory is that Kyra Sedgwick had to have her own cat put to sleep a few months before filming the episode. Red Tape is one of my favorite episodes of the series for introducing Sharon Raydor - total game-changer for me - but I also love it for such a heart-wrenching (yet heart-warming, because Brenda comes around and gives Kitty the peaceful death she deserves) conclusion to one of TV's best presentations of pet ownership. And then they continued on with Joel. As I've said before, it's difficult to film with animals, especially cats, so I understand why far fewer TV characters than real people have pets, and why those characters generally have pets never seen unless the plot requires. With that granted, I really appreciate seeing Kitty and then Joel lounging in the background, being shooed off the table as a scene opens, etc. Plus, Brenda and Fritz talk about the cat, even when she/he isn't present, like real pet owners do.

Carter did one last season. I'm not sure if anyone did one during the original run of the show.

Z is for the zzzz's Roseanne is trying to catch when Dan interrupts her sleep to insist they flip the mattress.

Hills has expanded the recall of some of its dog food (for elevated levels of Vitamin D, announced at the end of January); the updated list of affected products is here.

What season are you saying good-bye to on the first day of spring? Really? “My Left Ear” gave me a good chuckle, though. I never tire of hearing Alex say “genre” – it’s my absolute favorite of his pronunciations of foreign words (which I love; his accents when imitating someone are terrible, but his foreign word game is on point). I also never tire of Before & After categories. (It seems like there’s always a contestant who doesn’t pay attention to the category with those, but I love them.) And now I'm craving Pad Thai. The return receipt TS surprised me.

Even as a non-parent, this made me laugh out loud.

While I have not undertaken a scientific study, anecdotally, the number of people who rinse, rather than scrape, their dishes before putting them in the dishwasher seems to be higher than the number of those whose dishwasher's functionality actually requires rinsing. And the percentage of dishwasher owners who effectively wash (add soap and some degree of scrubbing to the rinsing) their dishes prior to loading seems exponentially higher than those whose dishwasher is so ineffective this extra degree of preparation is required (and should thus probably hand wash their dishes until a new unit can be obtained). The kid in the commercial says her mom "washes" the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, but the mom is only shown rinsing a dish. So maybe she rinses and the kid is exaggerating, or maybe she does pre-wash and we're just seeing her rinse after washing. The kitchen looks like one that would have a dishwasher among the majority capable of cleaning properly with scraping rather than rinsing, but - obviously, since the ad is for the detergent, not the appliance - we can only see the finish and overall condition of the kitchen. Maybe they do have a mediocre dishwasher. Probably not, but maybe. I'd be down with a "For the love of our finite water resources, stop!" message. But that's not what the commercial is presenting; it's a narrative that the same dishwasher - of whatever quality - would require rinsing/pre-washing (depending on what we're supposed to think Mom is actually doing to these dishes) in order to come out clean with a competitor's detergent, but not with super-duper (Cascade?) detergent, when reality is the dishwasher is more of a factor than the detergent. With that said, all the people who don't need to do anything more than scrape yet waste water because reasons irk me, so the kid doesn't bother me like she normally would.

It's possible I mildly enjoy some song I've heard on the radio a few times and never realized is by R. Kelly, but the only song I know for sure is his is "I Believe I Can Fly," and I hate that song to the point that when it was in some movie and was thus every-goddamn-where, if I walked into a store and it was playing, I'd give some thought to whether I could do something else nearby and come back later. R. Kelly always makes me think of poor Aaliyah, and my UO is that I never liked a single one of her songs I heard (which doesn't mean I actively disliked any of them, just that her music did absolutely nothing for me, song after song. I knew someone who worked with her (in fact, one of the other victims of her plane crash), and didn't hear anything bad about her, so it's not like I have any personal negativity coloring things; there was just something about her particular sound as a whole that never, ever did it for me. I didn't hate the songs, dislike the genre in general, or anything like that -- it was just this weird, specific thing where every new song of hers I heard, I had a well, don't care if I ever hear this again reaction.

I love the Myrbetriq bladder when it's sitting at the desk with her, and its eyes keep going back and forth between her and the doctor. (That was years ago when I first saw a commercial with it; they may run a different one now that doesn't include that scene.)

I generally do better with clues about Oscar winners of old rather than films of the past ten years or so, but FJ was an instaget. I went through that annoying bout of not knowing most TV clues a while back, but even though the only finale asked about I had seen was MASH, I ran the category. In fact, I ran the entire first round - good for me. Not so much with the DJ round. I did get all the geography and 15-letter-word clues, and got all but one in the classical music category because most of those could be answered by knowing something else in the clue. Speedo being a TS really surprised me. "Picked the right country"? At that point, Alex, she'd been running the category, so isn't it just as likely she was visualizing the map and answering accordingly, not picking one of the countries in that area and hoping to be right? That was a strong performance by the champ.

Because Cynthia was The Worst. I thought maybe the memory had become exaggerated over time, but when Pop put ER into syndication a year or two ago, I realized, nope - Cynthia was indeed unbearable. She would have been in any actor's hands, and Hargitay certainly didn't have the chops to elevate the awful material. (I don't think she's a bad actor, but by the time I gave up on SVU after five or six years she had improved from rough to adequate, so she's not a good one, either.)

Yet she still somehow managed to land it all by herself (even though she can't even drive a stick shift car); that five-second lesson he gave her really paid off! They did the same thing on Remington Steele. Hopping into a waiting helicopter (possibly after pulling that time-honored TV tradition of punching someone once and knocking them right out) to chase down the bad guys was quite popular in the '80s. (No helicopter chase on Moonlighting, but there was an escape via hot air balloon!)

It's also incredible how many characters know how to fly helicopters. Or can pick it up just from someone shouting instructions at them (like they can even hear to begin with).

She said to tell him she faked it, not that she fainted.

That is some deep fried bullshit right there.

I co-sign these two things so heartily. If you want to have sex, have sex. If you don't want to, don't. Don't do it because you think you're supposed to (because you're a certain age, because you're dating someone, because most people you know are, whatever), and don't not do it because the segment of society that has a list of rules saying when sex is and isn't an "appropriate" thing to engage in is looked upon favorably in mainstream media. Sex is a physical act. It may or may not involve emotional intimacy as well, depending on the circumstances. Whether you like one, the other, none, or both, is entirely up to you; they're equally-valid choices, and you may need to experiment to find out or you may already have some personal bright-line rules. Do what you want. All you have to do is be safe and honest. And, I don't know what young feminists are on about sometimes, but as a second-waver, let me assure you that, when it comes to sex, the feminist community simply wants you to know that your body is your own, and you should neither have sex nor abstain from it based on any of the various and conflicting sexist stereotypes inflicted upon us. The concern isn't with what people are or are not doing, but why they are or are not doing it -- is it truly a choice, or is it a decision made because society's rampant, ingrained, institutional sexism has lead someone to believe that's the option she is supposed to pick as a woman. So, no virgin shaming or slut shaming.

That's what I kept saying to my cat, that it would be a great rec room but was a bit much as a living room. I think the homeowners' personalities, especially the husband's, are among the minority that would dig it as their living room, though. Judging by how boring their own version of decorating was, yet all the funky stuff they'd amassed in their garage, it seems they gravitate towards the quirky but just have no idea how to decorate so just bought functional furniture and called it a day. So when their friends/neighbors said they wanted to go on the show and needed them to do it with them, the idea of asking for a '70s room appealed to them. The description of this episode had me wary, because the whole "it's a '50s room and a '70s room" theme sounded quite gimmicky, but it wound up being enjoyable. And saved from gimmick by Kahi's room, which was an elegantly understated take on the challenge - it clearly evokes that era, but you don't walk in and immediately say, "This is like stepping back into the '50s!" And I can't believe how good she made chandelier look (at least on camera from a distance, as someone else said).

Aging is fun, isn't it? Yes, your memory is correct on who Weller is (and that there were sofa covers involved - it's what he wrapped the bodies in). There are five more episodes to go before the two-episode season finale with Weller. (Which means they may not air in my market; sometimes where a two-part episode would be split over two weekends like that, the station just skips both of them and goes on to the next one.)

No, Wade Weller wrote the letters, at Stroh's blackmailing behest (because Stroh knew what Weller had done to about half a dozen young victims), as is revealed in the two-part Return to Sender that ends season two. Emma, after the first letter, asked Rusty to provide a print and cursive writing sample, so as to rule him out in advance of any defense objection, but that's the only reference to the (false) idea of Rusty writing them himself. The only thing Rusty does wrong re. the letters is fail to disclose the receipt of subsequent notes, which are increasingly threatening. And once on the stand in the preliminary hearing in the Stroh trial - a hearing precipitated by these threats on Rusty's life (a defendant has the right to confront her/his accuser, so Rusty's statements/depositions would be inadmissible if he croaked before trial, without proving he'd been killed as a witness to prevent him testifying; his testimony being cross-examined in a preliminary hearing will mean it's admissible no matter what happens) - Rusty nails Linda Rothman (Stroh's attorney) to the wall at her own game, a fabulous scene to which even she reacts with "well played" facial expression. So the letters wind up coming to a great conclusion.

I'm still watching, but I'd guess the same way my cat Baxter - whose blade of grass was two inches longer than the dog's - did; he bit it off whole, choked on it, and in the back-and-forth of that in the airway, it wound up in the nasal cavity. When it happened (many years ago; Bax is unfortunately long gone), I found Baxter seemingly choking on something, but couldn't find an obstruction. It kept on, so I rushed him to the vet, who also couldn't visualize anything in the throat and thus did an x-ray. As he was in the next room looking at the film (back when it was on film, heh), Baxter - in the exam room with me - sneezed, and an inch of green briefly shot out his nose on the output and went almost all the way back in on the following inhale. I very carefully pulled on the little bit that remained, and a five-inch blade of grass came out intact. Just then, the vet came back in to say there was a sliver of something far down the nasal cavity on the x-ray and he'd need to sedate and scope. I was happy to announce, and he was happy to hear, that Baxter had sneezed it forward, and I'd been able to retrieve and remove the culprit -- no further treatment necessary. My mom - who also watches this show, and who got a "You won't believe this!" call when Baxter and I got home after his incident - and I actually crossed lines calling each other at the same time after tonight's segment before connecting to say, "Did you see that - it's like The Bax!"

Heh. I found her quite passable until that episode called on her to summon up the emotion of Rusty telling her about the threatening letters and saying they have to stay away from each other, at which point her tearful retreat was pretty bad. It's kind of cute that she and Graham Patrick Martin both come from Louisiana - I don't use social media, but a friend once forwarded me a picture one of them had posted of the characters, tagged to the other, captioned something like, "Two swamp kids on an L.A. cop show." Switching to the episodes in syndication tonight, I love “Poster Boy” for opening with a killer taking a break from cutting off his victim’s head to gab on the phone with his grandma and closing with Sharon telling Rusty she loves him for the first time. Such things existing within the same episode is one of the show’s strengths. The facial expressions going on when Sharon holds out the handful of letters and Rusty realizes what’s at stake are every bit as powerful as the, “Whatever happens next, know I love you” line. That they may lose each other is devastatingly conveyed, and that’s just as big a development in their story as her giving voice to her feelings. The case is a good one, too. I won’t go so far as to say this makes all of Emma’s childish crime scene antics worth it, but her realization she’s been sitting on a couch containing a dead body and Amy’s “Do not. Scream” admonishment in response is a wonderful moment. Brandon's sweet relationship with his grandma is interesting juxtaposed with his twisted brutality; he is not taking advantage of her – he talks to her all the time because he loves her and she’s the only one interested in his life, not to get stuff out of her, because while she gave him things to make his journey west, he also tells her not to when she wants to send him money. It seems to all be of her own volition. I like his “Hey, Grandma, when did you learn to use FaceTime?” and immediately worrying that something happened to her for the police to have her phone. His remorse at killing Raquel is another one. And, speaking of poor Raquel, her friend brings out my inner old lady, because if she'd called Raquel to say, “FYI, that guy you’re in bed with is a serial killer,” instead of communicating that electronically, Raquel might be alive (he didn’t intend to kill her, just steal her stuff). It always amuses me that Julio has apparently memorized the entire Bible, because whenever they come across a reference to Bible verse – or what they think refers to a Bible verse – he can rattle off what that verse says. It also, as owner of a flip phone, amuses me that Caitlyn has one. There’s no cell reception at her apartment, so she has a landline, and for when she needs/wants a phone while out and about, she just uses a basic cell phone. And she’s young. It tickles me. My favorite moment in “Pick Your Poison” is when Sharon, Amy, and Emma turn in unison towards Dr. Morales and he asks, “What is this, Charlie’s Angels?” I love the way they look down at themselves and each other to recognize the pose they’re in. I also like that the next time he summons them into the room, he does so by calling, “Angels?” Hee. I love Morales. (And they turn in unison again; it’s a great sight gag.) But I don’t, well, buy that he, working so closely with the LAPD, wouldn’t know they call their narcs “buy guys.” The confusion works with Rusty, but not with him. And, speaking of the buy guy, this is another example of their appreciated (by me, anyway) habit of re-using common names like in real life, but usually avoided on TV -- the narc is Officer Cooper, and we will soon meet Lieutenant Cooper. The little background touches add up in good shows, and I like that when Amy starts to leave and the teacher calls her back to tell her about the fight between the younger brother and the obnoxious drug dealer, we can see a bunch of students walking by in the background as Amy opens the classroom door – the bell had just rung less than a minute before, so kids would be heading from one class to another. Also that Rusty’s protective detail is consistently seen in the background during his scenes. The episode manages to makes me laugh in the midst of realizing this poor kid was a sexual victim of his teacher, when Mike is doing his usual over-explanation, this time of the position that would lead to the placement of the teacher’s fingerprints on the student’s headboard. I love when Sharon cuts him off with, “I get the picture,” just as he really gets into demonstrating. I also chuckle at the obnoxious drug dealer saying they like to party at Grandma Pushkin’s house because she’s “like, deaf – and asleep after Jeopardy! [which airs at 7:00 here in L.A.].” Sharon slipping up and referring to herself as Rusty’s mother is wonderful, especially for how she catches herself and how Taylor responds, because we don’t often see the fact he's a dad, but that’s how he responds here – as another parent. My favorite part of the Sharon/Rusty storyline in this episode is how she calls his bluff when he threatens to go to boarding school if she won’t let him see the new letters, but a very close second is when she makes being evaluated by a therapist a condition of Option Three and Rusty responds, “What is it with you and the mental health industry?” And I love that she’s still not forcing therapy on him; this is just an evaluation. I also like when Rusty tells Taylor and Provenza “You already know my decision” when they give him Options One and Two and tell him to think on them and answer tomorrow – he’s been a right royal shit about the protective detail in the month between last episode and this, and he’ll continue to hate living as a prisoner until trial even though he’s the witness, not the criminal, but he’s not leaving Sharon. And, of course, Rusty reciprocating Sharon’s “I love you.” It seems it took him this whole month to say it, and I like that for its realistic characterization.

It was poignant to see that clip of Rhino, knowing he recently died. The adopters’ dog who passed away was adorable! The head tilt Beesa (?) did in her introductory segment was very cute, too. Creole was an instant hit – the way he wiggled up onto the couch and proceeded to audition for World’s Sweetest Dog. Well played, Creole, well played. He is going to be great when the grandkid visits, going by how he was with Luke. "Do you want to go inside" and he sprints for the door? I die. It just goes to show how many great dogs they have at any given time that someone with his looks, personality, and temperament with kids was there for several years. I think he'll make a great therapy dog in time, and love that they're training him for that. Sassy coming up for water the way dogs normally do for hot dogs or other high-value treats was heartbreaking. But it was so nice to see her body relax when she got comfortable with them, and then her jumping into the passenger seat like, “No, this is where I sit.” That was cute. The owner shouldn’t just let her out like that, and should have her tagged and chipped, but she loves Sassy and that dog is treated better than a whole lot of dogs in that area. It’s nice that they gave her a tag and encouraged her to get her chipped and go out with the dog. It’s more effective than lecturing. I burst into instant, hot, fat tears when Cairo broke free and ran after her owner. I’m glad she’s in the Pitz Carlton. Separation anxiety is very hard to deal with; she’s going to need a very specific type of owner, and there aren’t a lot of them out there. I'm glad she's making some progress.

There's a thread for While You Were Out

Carter as 1970s Burt Reynolds made me laugh every time I looked at him. I also laughed when they made Carter’s couple think Hildi was the designer working on their house – especially that she asked where the staple gun was. I continued to giggle at that through the commercial break. Saying “instant camera” instead of “Polaroid” was also good for a laugh each time. I was easily amused today, basically. Steve would be exhausting, one of those people who is always on – and entertains himself a lot more than he does those subjected to him. Him plus four sons – poor Margi. Both rooms were criminally boring to begin with, so anything was going to be an improvement. As aspects of each design were discussed/unveiled, I liked some and was iffy on others, so I knew this was going to be a scenario where I had to see it all come together. The ‘50s room came together well. The '70s room felt more like a collection of '70s gimmicks than a room, but they were into it. I really liked the stripes and the partition wall, but the Frisbees were too much for me. And if they're going to keep it a '70s room, they have to do something about that oak front door, because it stands out like a sore thumb now.