Bastet

These two promos, embedded in that article, were new to me, and I love them, for how they incorporate the behind-the-scenes joy to be doing this again: I also like the Darlene and Darlene's daughter poses in the promotional photos.

It took me a very long time to like Pratt, but eventually I did; I think I started coming around on him right around the time he helped Chen with her father, but it's all been such a whirlwind. All I know is for the last season or so, I have found him quite likable, and a steadying presence, when for his first several seasons he really bugged me. The scene with him sitting there crying as they worked on him was great. I loved everyone toasting with mozzarella sticks. I still can't believe it was that asshole Frank who brought me to tears, but when he walked past the gurney I knew he was going to go call the elevator, and just that had me a little choked up, so when he reached out to touch Pratt, that got the old tear ducts going.

That's Fatima; a link to an interview with her about her cancer battle is posted in the Cheftestants thread. Her diagnosis came after filming.

Did Chris Carter write this episode? The horrible opening voiceover is straight out of his worst X-Files scripts.

I've seen it all now: Frank, of all people, just made me cry.

It does, thankfully. Only the first five episodes were released to critics - most of whom (at least from those I read) said this episode is awful, but once you suffer through it you get four good MOTW episodes that feel more like classic XF than did last season's episodes - but it was announced way back when that there would be mythology bookends, and the eight in the middle would be MOTW.

I didn't know Pratt was going to be in this episode, seeming to be okay, and then dying - I figured the season 14 finale was his last episode, and he went boom. This probably would have been a shocking episode had I not known. Not in the league of Gant being revealed as the mangled train victim, or Lucy and Carter getting stabbed, but quite the surprise.

To me, it's an exact replica of when Corday inexplicably boned that guy she'd been rightly calling a disgusting pig for weeks. They love to do it in general on this show (as do so many others) - have a woman tell a man she's not interested, have him refuse to take no for an answer, and present it as charming. They also specifically like to set up scenarios where the reason the woman is saying no is because the man is a sexist piece of shit, and no woman with an ounce of self-respect would touch his dick other than to punch him in the nuts, and then cut to heavy breathing and tearing off clothes. It's revolting.

They do that all.the.time. on this show, and it's disgusting every time.

Holy crap, this Damaris person is annoying as all hell. I know she's appeared at least once before - in which she was even more annoying - and it seems she's part of other FN programming I don't watch, so she must have something going for her, but I'm missing it, and she's on my nerves tonight.

It's not over, it's just happening in two stages -- the pre-show veteran LCK competition plus few people eliminated thus far LCK competition yielded a cheftestant to enter the competition as a whole at this point, and those eliminated going forward will still have a chance to beat each other and come back in later, presumably near the end as has happened previously.

The cheftestants being confused upon walking in to a cook-off in progress was rather silly; they weren’t expecting it at this point in the competition, no, but obviously it’s Last Chance Kitchen, especially with Claudette there. (I don’t watch LCK, so it was nice to get a glimpse of Jen, one of my favorites, and Marcel didn’t annoy me for the first time ever.) I wanted Lee Ann’s dumplings! Claudette’s dish looked quite good, too, I just have a major thing for dumplings. Am I really to believe Tom decided in the moment to bring back two instead of one, despite how that throws off the numbers for future challenges? There better be a double elimination coming up soon. Tanya’s “I hate camping; I’m already sleeping in a bunk bed, and now I gotta go sleep on the ground?” cracked me up. I will only go camping in a motorhome – I love being outdoors, but when it’s time to cook, sleep, go the bathroom, etc., I want the comforts of home - so I feel her, Fatima, and the others who wanted no part of this. Tent camping, in that weather? Hell, no. Carrie as Ms. Wilderness making sure they don’t sleep on the ground was fun, though. As was the fretting that actual bears wouldn’t recognize The Bears as family and leave them be. The top: Bruce’s pasta didn’t particularly excite me, but I can see how it was impressive, and I like how he came up with the texture. I’m a bit surprised it got the win, but I didn’t taste it. Bruce talking about the young chefs knowing ingredients he’s never even heard of was the first time I’ve liked him. Carrie’s cake coming out well made me really happy. She fucking dug a hole in the snow to make her own “oven” so she could make a cake. That is the definition of go big or go home. I was pulling for her. Fatima’s “She made an oven out of snow! Who does that?!” was great. Lee Anne’s goose looked incredibly rich and delicious; no wonder they were scraping the plate. She was my second choice. The bottom: Tanya’s lamb looked good, as I love lamb, but the sides didn’t do it for me at all and the overall dish seemed to be a mess. I was worried about her. Chris’s buffalo chili didn’t do anything for me, on any level. Tu’s rabbit was something that, when he was describing it, sounded good to me (I don’t like rabbit, but picturing the three ways with a protein I do like, the dish sounded good), but it didn’t materialize in execution. And there was nothing to it other than rabbit! He was my pick to go. And I can’t believe he was in just a t-shirt while they were cooking. The rest: Joseph’s squab looked over cooked, and I can’t abide over-cooked meat. Fatima’s duck breast looked delicious, and I’m not a huge duck fan. Adrienne’s quail looked so inviting, and I’m not a huge quail fan, either. Mustache Joe’s trout didn’t really register with me, as I don’t like trout, and there was nothing about the dish as a whole that excited me. Claudette’s dish, on the other hand, looked good despite my also not liking elk. Brother’s pheasant looked horribly over-cooked. I think he’s lucky others screwed up more.

I am so glad I watched the video embedded in that article, of the entire speech, because that was entertaining as hell. I wasn't familiar with her prior to this, but I dig her.

Knowing Pratt is about to die, it is comical how many good things are happening in the final days of his life. They are really piling it on thick. Hal Holbrook just cracked me up: "They're kicking you out because you didn't die soon enough?" "It's kind of discouraging, isn't it?" "Why didn't you tell me?" "I didn't want to upset you; you're depressive enough already. I didn't want you to bawl."

The "Chicago is the most dangerous place in the world!" propagandists would love this show, because the County General staff sure wind up being held at gunpoint a lot. I thought it was well done (what I saw of it; I missed big chunks). For all the drama, there were quite a few quiet little beats with Abby, and Abby with other characters. I really felt for everyone. I liked the touch that it was Haleh and Chuny, who were nurses with her back in the day, who hugged her when she told everyone she'd been at rehab. And I've always liked her friendship with Neela.

Aw, that's too bad; I didn't realize she wasn't there through the end. I guess having some former characters return (including appearances by dead people, apparently) will help things continue to feel somewhat familiar.

The actor playing Jackson's mom, Robyn Bradley, looks familiar to me, but I haven't seen anything listed in her credits, so I've either seen her on stage or I'm confusing her with someone else. It looks like Jackson (Jack?) has a sister. (Assuming any of the IMDb info is accurate, of course; a lot of stuff that's filled in ahead of time turns out not to be true.) Hopefully he's had a nice life with his family, and they're not about to blow it all up.

CC has always been about as reliable a narrator as CSM, so that interview doesn't automatically mean the "impregnated by science" thing is true, but the fact he's so casual about the very idea of it is revolting.

Well, frak. Couldn't it have been Ellen who got killed instead of Billy? Poor Billy. Poor Laura. Stupid Ellen. Billy was great when he found Dee and Lee together (a couple that is registering a big fat zero on my chemistry meter), telling her that, yeah, giving her the ring was stupid, and, no, maybe this relationship between them wasn't going to last, but, hello, she should have been honest with him. More effective to just lay it out like that than to get upset with her. And then he still saves her in the end. Laura in the morgue with Billy made me tear up. It's one of those scenes where Mary McDonnell is perfect in every single beat. I love the quick glance over at the body when she walks in, the way she reaches out to steady herself as she starts to cry when she sits down and takes a good look at him, and then fixing his hair. "That's better." And then "He was so young" as she gets up and leaves. I also like the dynamic between her and Adama in that scene; he doesn't try to comfort her, despite the personal bond they're developing, because he knows after he "It wasn't worth it," she would not be open to it, but he doesn't leave the room. It was such a good scene in CIC, too, with Laura, Adama, and Tigh all having someone they love at risk as they have the "we can't negotiate with terrorists" conversation. Tigh gets Ellen back, Adama gets Lee back, but poor Laura loses Billy. My other favorite scene was when Kara had to tell Adama she may have cost him another son. Scar showed an interesting dynamic, with Starbuck having to deal with this little snot she trained now being the hotshot pilot Starbuck used to be. The Kat/Kara confrontations played like Kara/Tigh, with Kara now in the Tigh role.

Yep, and I'm looking forward to it.

That's what I am curious about with the commercials - so you seal yourself into one of these tubs, and 1) wait for it to fill, 2) enjoy your bath, and then 3) wait for it to drain so you can get out. Aren't the first and last steps unpleasant when it's cold?

Great Googly Moogly, I need to start drinking earlier in the evening if I’m going to watch shit like this. Once I read the speculation that most of My Struggle II was a dream/vision/whatever, I re-watched it and felt that was going to wind up being true. My big issue with MSII was that the public, global scale of the events was not at all in line with XF, which has always been about things cloaked in secrecy and easily whitewashed as something else. So, having taken that as a given, I rolled with that aspect of this; the events of part two being real didn’t at all work for me, so I’ll just go with getting out of it, however it happens. I saw Cancerman’s opening VO a week or so ago, and pronounced it even worse than Mulder’s and Scully’s in parts one and two, respectively. (CC’s notorious VO/stock footage combo is always crap, but the My Struggle installations have been particularly bad!) I read several of the many reviews saying that, as usual, CC’s mytharc is shit, but just get through it and then you can enjoy good MOTW episodes. So that’s what I was going to do. But holy fuckballs. Congratulations, Chris Carter; you just made my issues with James Duff (Major Crimes executive producer) seem miniscule in comparison, and I’ve been riddled with anxiety about those for weeks now. Thanks for the relief, I guess. “I Want to Believe” morphing into “I Want to Lie” suggests this is as Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man was – CSM’s delusions and fantasies, totally untrustworthy (and thus, as I ranted about that episode, uninteresting to me). But the interview posted upthread suggests CC really is going with the “impregnated by science” bullshit (and claiming he planned that from the beginning; that’s a laugh, because motherfucker hasn’t planned shit for many, many years now). En Ami was shit. This is worse. And, to say again, that whole “it wasn’t rape” attempt at softening the horror of this storyline is abominable. How many times is he going to do this to her? Abduct her, experiment on her, harvest her ova, use them to create Emily just to make her die, etc. This show is seriously fucked up in its love of medical rape. Specific thoughts, jotted down during commercial breaks, because no way I’m going back and re-watching this: - Scully’s brain is flashing Morse Code? And Skinner is the one who leaps to “Find him” meaning William? Come on now. - Oh, Jesus, here we go with the VO. And it turns out Mulder’s is even worse than CSM’s. - Why are Scully’s eyebrows so dark? Gillian is blonde, Scully is a redhead; these eyebrows seem darker than before? At least they didn’t cover up her mole. And it is so refreshing to see a forehead that actually wrinkles. - I didn’t watch seasons 8 and 9, so was Spender really part of the adoption process, such that he’d know where William is? - Yes, by all means, let’s leave Scully in a hospital bed and send Mulder off on an adventure for the episode, before he can come save her. How new and invigorating. - I still can’t with CSM being alive; he was a flaming skeleton, for Pete’s sake! You don’t just get some skin grafts and carry on. Yep, sucks to have killed off your villain in the final episode, only to find out years later, oops, not the final episode, but he’s very dead, so move on. - The attempts to backtrack on the nutjob nature of the conspiracy introduced in part one by acknowledging/mocking the nutjob nature of current reality do not work for me - “I have to find our son; you need him, and I need you” is lovely, but not nearly enough to justify this William shit - Skinner needs to shave - Holy green screen, Batman; in 2017 we can’t make the background outside the cars look any better? - The Syndicate, alien colonization, it’s not what you thought, we’re the good part of the project, and we’re so close, blah, blah, blah. How many times has this been done? How long ago did I lose interest in the “no, really, this is the truth” bullshit?

Well, that makes it okay. I mean, sure, it was completely against her will, but, hey, there was no penis involved, so it's not that bad. Please, tell me some more how I'm too hard on CC.

Maybe it was supposed to be "end of," they typed it "endof," and auto-correct changed it to "endow."

I suspect Sepinwall's take on the first five episodes will turn out to be a rather accurate prediction of how I'll feel about them, what specifically I'll like and not like, so that sounds good, because there's more to like than not.