Bastet

That's how I felt about it. In fact, after the first half of the season, I didn't even want to finish it because I thought the nostalgia factor was all it had going for it and other than that I fairly actively disliked it, but my friend - who was relying on me for Netflix access - wanted to finish it, so we did. Thanks to the second half, I wound up coming around a bit, but I still think it was just okay, that there wasn't a whole lot to it beneath the nostalgia.

After watching the series in such a compressed time frame, and thus hearing as many "No, really, this is what happened to Samantha" stories as I did "Wait, I was wrong before - this is the key to everything" tales in short order, when Mulder said, "I'm free," I actually talked back to the TV and said, "Yes! Me too, then."

I have finally seen the infamous Samantha is starlight episodes; after all these years reading disgruntled commentary and saying, "yep, sounds stupid," I can now officially say, yep, it's stupid. Now, the whole walk-ins/starlight thing is not any more stupid than the various stories people have been telling themselves for eons. The reality of death is a hard thing to cope with, and I understand wishing there was some peaceful place where "life" carried on in some fashion. It's deluding oneself into believing that fantasy is reality where I'm not going to go along. So, while I'd roll my eyes just as hard had these parents and Mulder swallowed a more traditional story, Closure is indeed crap. SUZ isn't bad, but Closure felt like it took three hours to get through. Mulder reading the diary was a very touching scene, though, because at least that part - her not being killed right away, but having been held and subjected to tests, and keeping a diary during that time - could conceivably have been real, so I can get into the emotions of it. (Whereas I can't possibly get emotional about Mulder hugging Samantha at the end, because it's not real.) And, whatever lies he had to tell himself to do it, Mulder finally accepting that Samantha is dead and moving on with his life is a good thing. To see him let go of what has ruled his life for all these years is what's ultimately important. X-Cops is another Triangle or Arcadia for me, in that I have no idea why so many people get so excited about it. It's fine. A refreshing little change of pace after six-plus years. Scully dealing with the cameras is hilarious (my favorite is hiding behind the ambulance door). But it's not a top 20, or even top 50, episode to me. And, goddammit, we finally get Scully telling Mulder what she's going to do, rather than being told by him what to do, and it's immediately ruined by him telling her to be quick about it and to gas up the car on her way back. It hasn't even been 12 hours since I watched Signs & Wonders, and I can't even remember specifics to mention. A bunch of snakes and crazy preachers, that's all I've got. Ho-hum episode. The next disc starts with First Person Shooter, so I better get good and drunk tonight.

Jed demands disproportional response options Toby hopes other vets will come forward We meet Abbey

Probably from when Roseanne is having back problems, and winds up needing the breast reduction.

Ha - I knew angry calls to both parties from people missing one of the Thanksgiving football games would work, and CBS (and thus Pop) would be back on Dish (now let's see how much my bill goes up). Now I'll have to keep an eye on the Saturday line-up to see when the episode with Carter's dad showing up following the stillbirth airs, even if I don't take the time to watch the others I missed.

If it's true, whatever he did to her the first time around would not mean it would make no sense for her to come back to the show (she has bills to pay and work she wants to do, so there's sense right there, on top of the other myriad reasons one could have in such a situation), or to be seen in moments of cordial conversation with him. So while I have zero reason to believe it's true because I have no idea who the source is nor do I know anything about either one of them off-screen, I also have zero reason to believe the fact she returned to the show, was put into a storyline with him, and/or was seen chatting with him during filming means it isn't.

I have no idea whether that rumor is true, but this: doesn't mean it couldn't be. I'll quote writer/producer/show-runner Krista Vernoff's guest column in The Hollywood Reporter, because I just read it a few hours ago, so her specific language and examples are on my mind, and I'm feeling post-holiday lazy, so I'm just going to use them. Quoting the arguments Brett Ratner's reps used to refute allegations against him, she dismantled the logic behind them. (It's not specific to those people and those allegations, she uses them to speak generally, as I'm doing here.) One was on using seemingly contradictory interactions between the parties to say alleged previous bad acts must not have occurred:

Yep - been there, but only once because there was no full bar; beer and wine only, and not a great selection. Good food, but the menu and decor are fairly indistinguishable from all the similar establishments in the area; these local, seasonal, farm-to-table restaurants are ubiquitous now, which is great, as that's how I like to eat, but they need to stop decorating and writing their menus the same twee way, not to mention get a little more creative with their food in order to stand out.

In my entire life, I've owned only one pair of Lee jeans, precisely because of the mom pants thing; in general, I can tell by looking at Lee jeans I'll hate them, and the few times I think it might work, it doesn't. But there was this one pair that looked like a good option when I held them up, and I was stunned to see Lee on the label. They turned out to be among my best jeans. So, I'd say odds are against you, but you may luckily stumble into a gem like I did. (I'm 5'9", so we're shaped differently, and the jeans are so old that even if I grabbed them to look up the info to share as general information, it probably wouldn't be relevant anymore.)

That one isn't a continuity error to me; an injury that disqualifies a cop from field duty does not have to be something that would also affect her daily life or pose an issue in another job, so there wouldn't be any reason to mention it other than in relation to that job -- they wanted to relegate her to desk duty, she resigned because that's not the kind of job she wanted, and it only ever came up again when her "Back when I was on the force" stories included mention of being injured in the line of duty (which led to the inevitable jokes about the guy being naked, not actually having a gun, etc.).

Since we didn't get to take our usual camping trip for Thanksgiving this year, I shall cheer myself up by bringing you some photos of Maddie the Motorhome Kitty. Baxter died just before Christmas in 2013, so Maddie was alone come Thanksgiving 2014. She'd have easily survived four days of only an hour or two visitation from my friend, but she was also a sociable kitty and quite a mellow one, going with the flow in almost all situations, and one who loved to ride in the car, so I decided she'd enjoy coming with me (my parents take their motorhome to the lake/beach the Sunday before Thanksgiving and I drive down that Wednesday to join them for the long weekend). Indeed she did. All the ones of her outside have me in them, on the other end of the leash, so I won't post any of those, but here she is looking out the motorhome - and sitting on the dining table, which she wasn't allowed to do at home, but, hey, it's vacation. It was so nice having her with me that year (she died the following September, so it was a one-off).

Bless Gillian and David for combating their six years of saying the same thing ennui, and expressing their happiness this would be the last season (so they thought), by saying to hell with CC's issues and playing M&S as if they are sleeping together by now, which, of course, in the real world they would be. Because the flirtatious yet completely relaxed vibe between them is delightful. I find The Goldberg Variation to be the most "yep, so doin' it" of the early third of the season (the vibe is strong in Rush and The Amazing Maleeni, too), which occurs after Millennium, so you could put that New Year's Eve kiss as their first kiss and assume the sexy times started after that, but TGV was filmed before Millennium - in fact, Hungry and TGV were filmed before the dreadful two-part season premiere - so it amuses the hell out of me that the actors didn't even wait for the kiss to change sexual tension to sexual energy. With the glaring exception of Orison, the MOTWs are solid as this season gets going. (In fact, causing me to wonder why this was the season I quit watching the show entirely at some point [after starting to lose interest in season five and slowly drifting away as season six went on], but then I saw that the next disc contains the starlight bullshit and Signs & Wonders, which I remember also disliking for some reason [reading how many times "Bible" and "church" appear in the episode summary, I have a hunch], and a glance at the rest of the season included First Person Shooter and Fight Club.) The mass hypnosis aspect of Orison could have made for a decent case file on its own, but bringing back Donnie Pfaster was a mistake, and turning him into something supernatural rather than the sick fuck (no pun intended) he is was a bigger one, doing a major disservice to Irresistible, since that plain ol' human "monster" thing was the whole point of how scary he is! I think TGV is the best of the lot, and it's one of only two or three episodes from this season I've ever re-watched prior to this, but Rush and Maleeni are enjoyable ways to spend 44 minutes. And that's impressive in the case of Maleeni, as I am not at all into magic tricks (I've even been to The Magic Castle, and I know I should have appreciated much more having access to a club not everyone can get into and featuring some of the best in the business, but it's just not my form of entertainment) and it spends a fair bit of time giving Ricky Jay and Jonathan Levit a spotlight. Millennium is better than I remembered; maybe my impression of it was influenced by the series it spawned, which I couldn't get through more than an episode or two of.

I love that Thanksgiving episode. I like D.J.'s play, I fucking love Anne Marie's response to that "people came here for the freedom" twit, and I love the re-enactment that skewers a bunch of Thanksgiving myths. The part at the end, though, perpetuates some tropes, which is a letdown after a whole episode subverting them.

I'm there a lot, and may well have already been to the restaurant -- what's it called?

I hate all the Christmas car commercials, but setting my general annoyance aside, I don't have a problem with her asking about the mileage. There are about 900 miles on it; if it was a used car, I'd definitely want to know why someone was selling it after so few miles, and if it was a new car, I'd want to know just how the hell many test drives it went on or how many dealerships it was transferred between to have that many miles -- of course, it turns out that's because Hubby decided to take it for quite a few joy rides before giving it to her. These "surprising someone with a new car for Christmas" commercials in general bring up all sorts of mine/yours/ours financial considerations, and are just overall weird to me. If you're sharing money with a spouse, that's a big purchase for one half of the pair to make without consulting the other. If you're not, that's an uncomfortably large gift. Even if you're not uncomfortable with that aspect, don't you want to have have some serious input (make/model, but also features and even color) on something you're going to drive for the next 15-20 years? My parents bought my first car when I was a teenager, and even under those circumstances it wasn't a surprise -- I'd researched, taken test drives, and zeroed in on what I wanted after they'd offered a car as a reward for my grades. I don't care how much of an ingrate it makes me seem, I believe you surprise someone with a sweater they can exchange or donate if it's not to their tastes, not with a new car.

Pan. Oops; now I think you know what they're saying, it just doesn't sound clear, not that you need to know the word. In that case, sorry. But, yeah, rather annoying "song."

Toby learns his brother is alive Jed demands disproportional response options Toby hopes other homeless vets will come forward

I hope so - if someone thought up impregnating Susan by that gross greasy guy out of thin air, they should be run out of town on a rail. She looks pregnant, and the character's bed rest would be a good cover for the actor's maternity leave, so I suspect that's the case, but I don't even know if Stringfield has kids, so I don't know enough to say, "Yeah, the timing works."

Did I just watch The X-Files or The 700 Club? After Sixth Extinction/Amor Fati, I feel like I just got beaten with a bible. Scully is fucking hot in that tank top and wielding a machete, and the "you are my touchstone" and face fondling scene at the end is beautiful in its intimacy. But otherwise? Awful. Between Mulder's visions of his alternate life and all the Jesus imagery, this should have received some sort of award for ham-fisted writing. At least Fowley and her crooked face are gone. Hungry was a surprisingly good episode for one that barely has Mulder and Scully in it. I would not have thought following a random monster though his life for 44 minutes would be enjoyable, but it was; I vaguely remember being somewhat annoyed with this episode, so I may have been having Moonlighting flashbacks and resenting the lack of the main characters (especially after waiting a summer and getting a two-part pile of shit for a premiere), but after all this time and watching several episodes per night, I liked it. And when M&S do show up, we get the gem that is, "I'm sorry, this is like good cop/insane cop." It's kind of funny, though, that Vince Gilligan didn't even bother coming up with a story for what kind of monster Rob is or how he came to be -- there's no sharing a folklore about a similar monster, no comparison to some rare animal that kills its prey in the same way, etc. Nope, he's just a seriously carnivorous dude with no ears and a tooth-tipped proboscis that shoots out of his mouth.

Same here, which is a big reason I'm bummed the Dish/CBS kerfuffle means I can't see the show for who knows how long; I remember liking Abby originally, and I like her now, but I don't remember when I quit watching, and was looking to see if my opinion changes via episodes I never saw the first time around.

I love Ann Wedgeworth's delivery when Audrey tells Dan to lose 50 pounds and cut his hair.

Pffft. Apparently, CBS owns Pop, so the pissing contest between Dish and CBS means no more Pop for me until they hammer out a new deal. Those bastards are going to make me miss Carter's dad showing up when Kem loses the baby, aren't they?

Panic button Not staying the execution Toby learns his brother is alive

The mytharc they're starting in Biogenesis makes me miss the mytharc I had just been happy to wave good-bye to in One Son. I remembered Three of a Kind being one of the ho-hum episodes this season is littered with for me, but hoped I'd discover I actually quite enjoy it (like how I'd been mis-remembering Drive) since many fans speak positively of it. But no. Gillian Anderson is absolutely hilarious with drugged Scully's reactions to Suzanne Modeski explaining what's going on (those faces! and tickling her!), I enjoy Frohike knowing Scully is going to kick their asses, and the "I can't decide who lights my fire" scene is smoking hot (yet feels like it was written specifically to fulfill a fanboy fantasy), but surrounding all that is a bunch of Suzanne Modeski, whom I can't stand, and the Lone Gunmen, whom I prefer in smaller doses -- plus, Byers's mooning over Suzanne is as unbearable as she is. I think if the Gunmen had stumbled into something not involving Suzanne, and called Scully in to help, I'd have enjoyed it a lot more, because I did like this more than Unusual Suspects. Field Trip I loved every bit as much as I ever did, though. It's interesting that their discussion in the office - her wanting to know why he can't, just once, look to the most-logical explanation rather than jumping to UFOs or Bigfoot and him wanting to know why he can't be given the benefit of the doubt after all this time rather than needing to do this song and dance at the beginning of every case - leads to his hallucination being a fantasy (that he's vindicated) and hers being a nightmare (that it is the logical, scientific explanation for the Shipleys' deaths, but Mulder is killed). And I love what what makes each of them realize they're hallucinating is being believed -- Mulder is giddily going along with having abducted an alien, causing Scully to finally say, "Gee, Mulder, you've been right all along," and then he realizes, "Wait, this isn't right." And she's happily solving the case, establishing that it's biology, not aliens, at work, but then Mulder dies in a way that doesn't line up with what she'd established about how the Shipleys died, and everyone - including the Gunmen - latches onto her original ritualistic killing theory and closes the book on Mulder's death, and now it's her turn for "Wait, this isn't right." Then I love that what makes each of them reason out what is happening is to hallucinate the other as working through the line of reasoning they themselves would normally be contributing - Mulder's mind comes up with the theory the way it always would, but it hallucinates Scully being the one to say it. Same with Scully - what she comes up with is the hole-poking and tweaking of the theory she'd have done to reach the conclusion, but she hallucinates Mulder saying it. And then, of course, the reaching for each other's hands in the ambulance, making physical the mental connection they've just experienced so intensely. Such interesting psychology in this episode! Plus, it's just a really fun trip. For the many "it's fine, but I don't ever need to see it again" episodes this season, and a few I hate, the ones I love, I love immensely.