Bastet

Both her voice and her face make me turn away; there's something about her I find creepy. It was easy enough to avoid her show (it's not my type of cooking), but now she's haunting me via those commercials.

Oh, and also? I hate the retooling of the theme song this season. Kind of intensely.

He's like Friends' Ross -- Rachel says they need a break, and he goes out and fucks someone else that same night. Laura says they need some time apart to think, and he goes home, empties his apartment and disappears to another continent. Really, guys? As difficult as it is for either one of them to be vulnerable, she's been honest with him about how it felt being left by her father and by Wilson, and also that she fears he'll do the same. That's why his actions bother me so much; his intentions in leaving are good, but he knows what leaving by means of clearing out and disappearing is going to do to her.

Mildred pisses me off in the two-part season opener, telling Laura she's horrible for wanting to go home and leave Mr. Steele to his own devices. Yes, Mildred is right that he didn't show up to Scotland Yard because he's in trouble rather than because he's ditched her again. And even Laura knows she's just blowing off steam, and Mildred's role is to counter her arguments. But she gets so outraged by it. It's not like Laura is pulling the idea of him voluntarily disappearing out of her ass. But Mildred redeems herself in the wrestling episode when she says that after Steele turned Crunch's case down, she went to "the boss" to make sure. Ah, season four. A lot of good episodes, but it's ridiculous they're not truly together by the end of it -- they are so clearly committed to each other after London. The wrestling episode is where I left off. Harley the fan club president (Reseda chapter) is one of my favorite Steele characters. "Oh, wow."

I've had a few benign lumps removed from my breasts, and the first one was in a position where removing it meant damaging some of my milk ducts. My surgeon was all atwitter that I might not be able to breastfeed. (I told him it was a non-issue, since I would not be having kids anyway, which pretty much sent him over the edge. Asshole; for the next one, I got a different surgeon.) If I was going to have a child and could breastfeed, I would. I think it's better than formula. But formula is still good for babies, so I just do not understand all the furor. If someone is filling their baby's bottles with Diet Coke, go right ahead and judge. But formula?

Oh, dammit, I knew there was something I wanted to record this week! I haven't seen that in a long time, and can't really remember how I felt about it, so I wanted to watch it again. I wonder how long I'll have to wait. Once was enough with Parnell, so I skipped that one. But it did give us a great off-screen moment between Myrna Loy and Roz Russell. Russell lived down the street from Loy, and MGM put her in several roles that Loy didn't want to do. At a party, Russell joked that Loy would toss scripts out her front door, they'd roll down to Russell, and that's how she got her roles. Loy quipped, "Where were you the night I rolled you Parnell?"

My newest pet peeve: The writing on my smoke detector that cannot be seen (at least by my eyes, but with glasses on) unless I stand on a stepstool. Even though, given the layout of my house, it's overkill, I recently replaced the hallway smoke detector with individual smoke detectors in the bedroom and office (and then a combo smoke/carbon monoxide detector in the hallway) to bring things up to code. I want to see if the my usual placement of candles in each room will set off the detectors when they're lit or at the moment they're extinguished, so tonight I'm experimenting. I look up to see which one of the two buttons (one button for testing, one button for silencing) to push should they go off and I cannot read the labels from a standing position (and I'm 5'9"), because it's merely raised lettering in the same color as the button. I've stood on the stepstool and thus now have that information, but shouldn't it be something one can see quickly, without needing to go find something to stand on?

What's the main dish?

The clue basically asks for a famous French feminist and none of the three can come up with Simone de Beauvoir? “Nicknames” was a rather stupid word to use in that category title.

From Cagney & Lacey to 9 to 5 ... Now I hear Violet fielding several lines worth of business calls and then, "Violet News -- Oh, come on, kids! ... No. There is more than one peanut butter and banana sandwich in the world ... Okay, love you too. ... No, I don't want to talk to the dog. Bye-bye."

I have long wished Evelyn Prentice was a better script, because I'd have loved for MGM to continue to put Powell and Loy in some dramas as well as all those fun comedies. They both turn in good performances, and Una Merkel is always a delight (plus the new-on-the-scene Rosalind Russell), but it's overblown and soapy. And, yes, the Code definitely hindered things. And as a PSA after several recent posts ... it's Katharine, not Katherine, Hepburn. (Friends chose the spelling of their daughter's name in honor of her, and the three spend their lives annoyed by the inevitable misspelling, so it always jumps out at me.)

If I did that with The Women, it would be on pause so often it would take half a day to watch. So much terrific dialogue in The Philadelphia Story and so much great acting from a divine cast (not just the three main players). But there's this one, huge, underlying flaw throughout that tries to ruin the movie for me. It doesn't - in fact, I love it - but it's aggravating.

Of course. But my point, which I probably didn't make clear because I didn't go into detail about the VP talking to her, was she felt this level of phone activity that would otherwise be unacceptable was instead okay because it was her kids calling. As I said above, I don't like "I'm more deserving of X because of Y" entitlement in general when it comes to workplace allowances. Since we were on the subject of those for whom the "because of Y" is "because I have kids," that's the story that sprang to mind.

Erin told Linda she brought a nanny cam to court when she went back to work after having Nicky, so she was already practicing when Nicky was still young enough for that.

I don't think I've ranted about this here before, but talk about coworkers who think their status as a parent entitles them to special treatment reminded me ... In my first office job, I was first on phones for our department since I was low woman on the totem pole. One coworker got calls multiple times per day from her kids and, to a lesser extent, her husband (needless to say, 99% of them were about things that could have waited until she got home). It blew my mind then, and it still does looking back on it; I never bother anyone at work over the phone with personal stuff unless it's important or time-sensitive, because it's disruptive. It reminded me of Cagney & Lacey, when Mary Beth had a nervous breakdown and Harvey came storming into the precinct giving Samuels hell for how hard he works her and Samuels fired back with how maybe Harvey ought to examine his own role in her stress since, "Every time I come out here, she's taking a call from you or one of the kids about dinner, or laundry, or who's doing what." Because it was constant. And it was noticeable to everyone, including the department VP, who eventually said something to her. It's not magically appropriate to receive personal phone calls throughout the day, every day, on the office phone just because the callers are the fruit of your loins.

And that sequence is really well done, too. I enjoy that movie. It's one of my favorite Clark Gable performances. And, of course, the first pairing of Myrna Loy and William Powell. I love the relationship between the three characters, especially how the fact Blackie and Eleanor still love each other is perfectly okay.

Oh my; I'd give a wide berth to anyone walking around proclaiming Columbus Day as "their" holiday. People need time off because life is like that. Any brand of, "Well, I'm more deserving of it because of reasons" entitlement gets on my nerves.

I finally got back into my re-watch, and finished season three last night. That finale is still brutal all these years later, with Laura sitting there in Steele's empty bedroom. And William Westfield is a non-entity as far as Steele's actions; I couldn't remember if he knew she was going away with him, and not only does he not know that, he doesn't even know there's a spark between them (not that knowing all of that would have justified his leaving without a word). They lose their license, and she says as awful as it is, maybe the time it takes them to get it reinstated will be good for them, forcing them to really think about whether they want to be together now that they're not required to do so by work. And he panics, rushing off to scare the licensing guy (who took the bribe to pull their license) into immediate reinstatement of the license. Like, "No, I can't confront this now, so I'm going to make sure we're still forced to be part of each other's daily lives." But then he obviously decides, "Alright, coward, I do need to figure out what I want, and to do that I need to confront my past." It's all good up through that point. But then he brings her biggest fear to fruition, by disappearing. A simple note, if he couldn't bear to tell her in person, that he needs to fill in some blanks, understand some things about himself, etc. and when he has that, he'll be back? Nope. Packing a few weeks worth of clothing, indicating an intention to return? Nope. He empties his apartment and vanishes. So she's telling Westfield she can't start anything with someone until she knows for sure she and Steele can't make it work, and goes to see Steele (still carrying her bags, which he'll ask about, so presumably she's going to tell him she had the opportunity and interest in exploring a relationship with a nice guy to whom she's well suited, but stayed home instead) and discovers his answer to the question of whether the agency is the only thing holding them together looks to be, "Yep, see ya; now that there's no point in playing Remington Steele, I'm moving on." Ugh. Leave a note, ol' chap!

I think about how good the scene when Kristen discovers her mother (at least they got Brooke Bundy back) has given her sleeping pills and says, "You've just murdered me" would be with Arquette and get really annoyed that Knight is there instead. Her vibe with Joey and Kincaid is all off, too.

Halftime wound up being perfectly timed, but then I still wound up missing most of the game due to a phone call. So this is all I have to offer: On a shallow note, Catherine’s dress was beautiful and I want it. I got FJ, but I’m not sure if that’s only because Steinbeck’s oeuvre rather randomly came up in conversation at a dinner party a couple of weeks ago. (My, but that sounds pretentious; bodily functions and ‘80s pop music were also on the conversational menu, so ...)

It's 2015. It's past time for the show to take a good look at its practices and address some of the reasons it's still so disproportionately filled with white male contestants.

Since many of us here have complained about the general inability/unwillingness to communicate in complete sentences, I'm going to share this snippet of an email I just received from a friend who advertised her car for sale on Craigslist yesterday: "I'm ready to hand the keys to anyone who can write a complete sentence with proper punctuation."

Exactly. Work-life balance is important for everyone; it's not just parents who are entitled to it. Anyone who hasn't read Elinor Burkett's The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless should do so now, because that side of the coin does not get nearly as much attention as it should.

Oh, me too. I'd love to see something in the vein of Nick and Nora (I liked Hart to Hart, silly as it was, largely because of that). But I do not want to see a remake, with new people playing Nick and Nora Charles. The old TV show was a pale imitation, and inevitably so, as would be any big screen remake. Because I don't care how much chemistry any two actors have, how talented they each are in their own right, or how well written the script is, they will not capture the absolute magic that is the original.

Does that mean Giovani becomes a recurring character? He was so annoying! I can't believe (well, yes I can, given the typical writing on this show) it took them so long to consider perhaps it was someone just dressed as a Navy officer. I was expecting the early seasons to be better (figuring most shows go downhill), but of the four episodes I've watched most have felt kind of off in some way.