Bastet

You're right - only Hinman was before. Shea was killed after (and his body wasn't found until years later), when he was suspected of talking to the police. Thanks for the clarification; I'll edit my original post.

How you feel about the presentation of Abby is how I feel about that of Pratt. He's always showing up seasoned specialists. (The mods have clarified previously that we don't use spoiler tags in All Episodes threads for old shows.)

I always hear "the Tate-LaBianca murders," and Tate and the LaBiancas get identified by their full names, then it's just "and six others" in recaps of the events. Sometimes Sebring would get named in local coverage/conversation, because he was a semi-famous hair stylist in Hollywood. There were two other murders, attributed to different Manson followers, separate from the famous two-night killing spree; those really get lost!

My parents and I fold towels differently, and one time when I was folding a load of towels at my parents' house while she was recuperating from knee surgery, I forgot and folded them my way. I went to put them in the linen closet and promptly realized my error. My mom said she didn't say anything, because she was just happy to have them done and didn't care, but I would have started twitching had I put the towels folded my way in with the ones already in there, folded their way, so I re-did the ones I'd folded.

Heaven forbid! I went to law school knowing I wanted to work for a non-profit (practicing civil rights law), and when I wound up being at the top of my class, the dean of the career services department was shocked that I wouldn't use that ranking to go work for one of the big firms instead. Well, a) that's kind of the opposite of what I came here to do, and b) a big hell no to having to put in all that face time at the office and then be available even when I'm at home. The work-life balance in America is hideous in general, and at those big firms? It's insane (seriously; if you classify 40 hours per week as part-time, you are nuts). The money is great, but it's not worth it (and what's the point if you never have any time to enjoy the things you spend it on?).

What, reading for filth? It's an expression for calling someone out as the shithead they are by way of an eloquent burn. I can't quote it exactly, but Neela told Frank he's a horrible person, and starting her days with his xenophobic, sexist, etc. commentary was not going to happen anymore - all she wants to hear from him is silence, blissful silence.

What happened to Toby's apology to C.J. in Lord John Marbury, and what scene does this refer to: My votes: Father Cavanaugh's story The panic button scene Bartlet embarrasses Hoynes

Heh; or he could have a heart attack. And, yikes - with how many takes they do, the kid playing Oscar probably hyperventilated and passed out. This was Jessica Chastain's first screen credit, per IMDb. (I hear about her a lot, but the only thing I've ever actually seen her in is The Help, so I looked her up.)

After the helicopter, I suppose a tank was inevitable. Frank's presence annoys me on general principle, and because I don't for a moment believe that Kerry wouldn't have fired his ass long ago. I am so glad someone finally, instead of just letting his comments go with an eye roll, said right to his face that he's a horrible person who needs to shut his ugly mouth. I wouldn't mind if the tank fell on him.

Neela reading Frank for filth is probably going to be the highlight of my day. I hate that guy.

Having to clean those is why I'll never have gas again; I cook well on either gas or electric, so it comes down to cleaning for me, and the glass cooktop and its flat surface wins out. I hardly ever watch this show anymore, so I don't know if it's still a recurring storyline, but I used to see quite a few HHs flail about because a house had an electric rather than a gas stove. I understand having a preference, and a stove isn't cheap, but in the grand scheme of home buying it is such a minor thing to just run a gas line to the kitchen (because most houses have gas coming into the house, so you just tap in and branch off) and replace the stove. No need to act as if the stove is a potential deal breaker, especially if the HH in the next breath declares the refrigerator will have to go because it's not stainless steel.

Very blah disc last night - Trevor, Milagro, and The Unnatural. I couldn't have told you one thing about Trevor coming in, so as it went along I kept saying thinks like, "Oh, this is the one with the 'Dear Diary' line," and "Oh, this is the one with Tuesday Knight." It's a highly forgettable episode; Pinker Rawls is just a generic all-around jackass before and after the tornado, so the villain is not remotely intriguing, and the fact he can now walk through stuff is pretty bland for this show, so there's no interesting paranormal event to draw my interest. Then there's this weird final scene where Mulder says maybe Rawls was looking for a second chance, like I was supposed to have been somewhat sympathetic to the guy all this time. Why? He continued to be a violent ass, and didn't hesitate to terrorize Trevor because he felt entitled to him. So soon after watching Alpha, I just couldn't deal with Milagro. I made it through about 20 minutes and bailed. When writers create a character who is also writer and do a story about the creative process, it's usually unbearable, and this one is very much of that overwrought mold. The purple prose I could maybe have slogged through, but the characterization of Scully is just too awful to subject myself to. The whole thing is one big ode to the male gaze, so I just gave up and skipped to the next episode. Which, unfortunately, was The Unnatural, but after falling asleep and starting over with it several times, I did finally watch the whole thing again after all these years. It's an okay story, and if not for the awful "ticking of your biological clock" and "those last two problems are mine, not yours," the baseball scene would be a thing of pure delight. I'd still roll my eyes at Scully having never hit a baseball before, but I would love the hell out of that scene, because its happy energy is infectious.

I haven't watched it yet, but hearing Kondabolu interviewed about it on NPR Friday got me really interested in it. Thanks for the reminder (and recommendation).

I hate the Eagles as a division rival, but I hate the Cowboys on every level, so - with the Giants out of contention (boy howdy!) - I was not necessarily rooting for the Eagles, but, holy hell, did I enjoy seeing the shots of Jerry Jones looking like he was sucking on the pieces of shit he should be eating on a daily basis.

Bourbon (well, whiskey in general, but we'll stick with bourbon) makes pretty much everything better, but I do particularly love a hint of it in whipped cream. My favorites of the nationally-available brands are Knob Creek, Maker's Mark, and Woodford Reserve.

Sam was a teenage mother, and she said she met the baby daddy when she was 15, so if they've said how old the little psycho is, add his age to 16 and you'll get Sam's approximate age. I didn't see the episode when she went back to see a specific explanation, but since her work and friends are there, I figure she just came to Chicago with Carter for a visit, and then went back to the Congo, and isn't planning to return until she's closer to giving birth (assuming she's agreeing to his request that the baby be born in the U.S.).

Yeah, hell no to that nonsense. We're all involved in meal prep (my dad the least, because he's the worst cook), we all watch football, and we're all involved in clean-up (my mom the least, because did the bulk of the cooking).

Isn't that just something that happens sometimes - hair, eye, and skin color as babies sometimes change as the kid grows? If the actor is bringing her age-appropriate baby along to the location shoot, so they could just use that kid rather than hiring new babies (or schlepping the usual babies and their parents to Hawaii), it's pretty easy to see why they'd use the real-life kid in those scenes. The only drawback is there is only one kid in that case, and babies are quite limited in the time they can be on camera. I'm the one who originally brought it up, as something I read on the ER Wiki while looking for another piece of information; I have no idea if that's Kingston's real kid, and I pay no attention to babies, so unless they'd substituted the usual with a black kid or something, I wouldn't notice a switch. But if the Hawaii Ella is a different Ella than we see in "Chicago," then it probably is, indeed, Kingston's baby. I watched most of Friday's first episode, but then I was off to a liquid lunch; did I miss any significant developments in ongoing (or new) storylines in the subsequent two episodes?

Because Carrie Fisher wrote it. (I thought maybe Wedgeworth was doing Evening Shade then, anyway, but I looked it up and the Debbie Reynolds episode was a few years after ES went off the air.) If Carrie Fisher writes an episode about a crazy mom, of course Debbie Fisher is going to play the mom, heh. I remember April Winchell telling the story of them being at Reynolds's house, with Roseanne and Debbie talking about the potential tussle between Roseanne and Audrey, ultimately winding up rolling around on the ground, while Carrie Fisher looked on with basically no reaction. Winchell asked if this happens often, and Fisher said, "You have no idea." A link to the saved blog post was on TWoP; I'll have to see if I can find it somewhere.

Holy crap, Alpha. I knew the reason I never watched it again is I found the characterization of women offensive, but, wow. At first, it's just plugging along as a potentially dumb episode, the canid version of Teso Dos Bichos, but with some funny lines. Then comes Karin Burquist, and Scully's reaction to her. Just, no. There are the usual problems that come from men writing women, and then there is shit like this. That there are men who have a fantasy of women behaving this way is bad enough, but that there are men who believe women are this way, and that so many of them get hired to write scripts, is disgusting. If it wasn't for First-Person Shooter, this would be the most sexist episode the show ever produced. I looked up Jeffrey Bell, and he also wrote The Rain King, which hovered around the Nice Guy Entitlement Syndrome without fully embracing it, and The Goldberg Variation, which I don't remember having anything sexist. Also two later episodes I've never seen. And then went on to be executive producer of several shows I've never watched. So, who knows. But based on Alpha, I would give him a wide berth if we crossed paths.

Holy cow, there are so many. A start: "We've got people down. Who's been hit?" and fade to black in What Kind of Day Has it Been Jed Bartlet's "I am the Lord your God" entrance in the pilot Leo telling Jed he'll raise up an army against him in A Proportional Response Toby's embarrassed "I'm a very important person" in In Excelsis Deo Mrs. Landingham telling Charlie about her sons in In Excelsis Deo "I had woot canal" in Celestial Navigation Josh's press conference from hell in Celestial Navigation The staff telling Bartlet about their misadventures in Celestial Navigation (Can I just nominate every scene in Celestial Navigation?) Jed talking to the kid on the doomed ship in The State Dinner Jed stoned on pain killers in Five Votes Down Toby apologizes to C.J. in Lord John Marbury C.J. is vindicated when the polling numbers come in in Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics Hung over Josh meets Joey Lucas ("What in God's name is happening right now?") in Take This Sabbath Day Jed and Abbey's "Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong" argument in The White House Pro-Am C.J. does The Jackal in Six Meetings Before Lunch

One summer when I was in high school, I worked at a video rental store that had recently expanded to selling music (CDs and tapes). Making mix tapes was huge in that day, so we had a big display of blank tapes on a table near the registers. A father and son were in line, the son knocked over the display and started to pick up the ones that had fallen to the floor, but his father stopped him and said, gesturing to us behind the registers, "Don't worry about it; that's their job." I, the closest of the cashiers to the duo, said something along the lines of, "No, it's not, and it's your job as a parent to teach him that." Other customers applauded. Fuck that noise. The kid's instinct is to do the right thing - he knocked it over, so he picked it up - and the parent is trying to teach him the opposite?!

I can't wait to start voting against the Paul Revere knife.

I love Monday so, so much, and really need to watch that more often; I generally just watch Bad Blood, Small Potatoes, Clyde Bruckman, and Jose Chung's, as they're my best of the best, but I need to start making my second-tier favorites a more-frequent part of my life. At the time, I had no idea the actor playing Pam was Carol Burnett's daughter, but now when I look at her, I think, "Of course she is." (And that it's sad she died so young.) Agua Mala is just plain dumb, and Holy stereotypes, Batman - those are caricatures, not characters. But Scully is fucking fantastic through the whole thing. When she's in that bandana, glasses, and yellow gloves, I find myself ridiculously delighted by the image. The way she shows the deputy her badge is made of win, as is the "We're driving down [whatever road, with zero visibility, due to raging hurricane] ... No, that isn't very smart, is it?" phone call, and pretty much every single reaction shot she has. Arcadia is also dumb with fun moments, so I have never understood why so many fans squeal over it, and was thus quite amused to learn from Frank Spotnitz that the script required many changes, then they still deleted scenes they'd shot, and ultimately found the finished product subpar -- causing quite the confusion when it wound up being popular. I guess people will overlook a lot when Mulder and Scully play house. I truly cannot with the mytharc at this virus-spreading aliens planning to colonize/Syndicate pretending to align with them while trying to create a vaccine and, oops, accidentally making an actual alien-human hybrid/Faceless Rebel Aliens point, but I suspect if I could suspend disbelief and go with such a story, I'd think Two Fathers/One Son was a pretty good pair of episodes. I definitely liked it more than I did originally; I guess watching it now, having long accepted that the mytharc makes no damn sense (how many different "here's what's happening" stories/keys to everything did we hear about over the course of the series?) and I just flat-out do not care about it past season four, there's no disappointment in watching it, just an "It's not my thing" acknowledgment and enjoying what is there for me. But, my goodness, CSM and Krycek are suddenly Chatty Cathys in these, expositioning all over the place to Diana and Spender, respectively. And since when is Krycek so high up in the Syndicate? And why the hell isn't the green blood toxic to Spender? Krycek has been exposed to the black oil, and the vaccine, so fine that he doesn't react. But why doesn't Spender? Poor Spender, though; he finally acts like something other than the FBI's Chief Tattletale in this one, so of course he closes the arc getting shot by his own father. How Scully didn't just shoot Mulder in the fucking gonads and go take the X-Files back by herself, I will never know. I frequently want to strangle that punk, and perhaps never more so than in One Son. Everything Scully hurls at Diana in the decontamination facility is exactly what Mulder what accuse literally anyone else in the world, other than Scully, of under the same circumstances. The evidence of Diana's duplicity could not be any clearer if it had him by the balls the way Fowley does. Yet he just sits there and repeatedly admonishes Scully for daring to question his little chickadee. And then that scene at the Gunmen's? That's when she should have shot him and gone on with her life. I love the look the Gunmen give each other when Mulder is so obstinate and rude, but that does nothing to lower my blood pressure during that scene.

This one? If so, it's Volkswagen.