Bastet

I think it would have been a great gift if he and Maura were a few years into an established relationship, but find it an extremely odd gesture when they've barely started dating. The two long-term boyfriends my best friend has had each knew getting along with me was every bit as important as getting along with her family, and in fact that he'd spend more time with the two of us than with her and her family. One came across an original script of a classic movie he knew I love and picked it up for me. My best friend and I both really appreciated that. But if it had happened earlier on in their relationship - and certainly if it had happened this early in the relationship - we'd have been creeped out by it.

I like that, too (when, quite frankly, it's something that would bug me nine times out of ten). And I know this is twisted, but I get a real kick out of them being dragged across the gym floor.

"Miami is nice, so I'll say it thrice." Sorry, Golden Girls moment there. I just heard this in a commercial, and it seems fairly rampant these days: Saying "There is" or "There's" and then following with something that should be preceded by "There are" instead.

Yes! That smile. Darkness Falls would be next on my list. Except now I can't watch it without feeling sorry for poor, puking Gillian. I like Fresh Bones -- a dude comes OUT OF HER HAND. And I like Chester. Plus, Callum Keith Rennie. I like that one, but I feel sorry for the actors having to go through the prosthetic makeup process. "As certain as I am of this life ... Howard Gordon is a dead man." (That's from the gag reel, and cracks me up.)

Yep, right before Eddie Sr. opens it, I believe. Beat me to it. I also love when Eddie Sr. offers to drop his drawers to show them the tail. Mulder is all eager and Scully puts the kibosh on it. This is another one with a nice job from the guest cast. Including the actor who plays the husband (the one who calls his wife "Baboo"), as his character and as Eddie playing his character.

I love the way the cop says Van Blundht's name after Eddie tells him the H is silent ("It's like Dutch or something.") "Alright, Mr. Van Blun-hut." "On behalf of all the women in the world, I don't think this has anything to do with consensual sex." "I was just here. Where did I go?" is one of my favorite lines, but this episode is pretty much a 44-minute collection of favorite lines. And moments, like Mulder breaking off Eddie Sr.'s tail and trying to hide it from Scully (or him covering his coffee cup to avoid getting Eddie dust in it as Scully uses the stryker saw). And just about everything Eddie as Mulder does; DD clearly has a blast with it and it's just wonderful.

I love that, too; it's funny on its own, but also has a couple-ish vibe to it.

That's one of the many things I love about it. "Just so long as you're attempting to record the truth." "Dear god, no - how could I possibly do that?" But mostly for Detective Manners ("Oh, you bet your blankety-blank bleep I am"), "Roswell! Roswell!" (and just about everything from that kid, like "You mean it's just a dead human being?" and his Dungeons & Dragons line), Alex Trebek, "This is not happening," the pie, the interrogations, "This is so embarassing," the ticking timebomb of insanity, "Did you check everywhere?" ... just about everything about it, really.

While my favorites list would have to get fairly long before they'd make the cut, I like both The List and 2Shy. The List is ... shall we say not good ... but I have an odd soft spot for it. I love "I only get five?" And Scully's equally droll observation upon realizing Neech's wife is cheating on him: "A woman gets lonely. Sometimes she can't wait around for her man to be reincarnated." And I laugh my ass off when Neech comes back as a fly. 2Shy I like for "Harlan" from Thelma & Louise and the fantastic way Scully schools the sexist detective.

Favorites: Paper Clip - If for no other reason than the three-way standoff in Mulder's apartment, but I happen to love to rest of it just as much. Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose - Peter Boyle hits just the right tone, so throw in The Stupendous Yappi and Scully's "I can't take you anywhere" and I'm sold. Pusher - So. Fucking. Good. War of the Coprophages - "Her name is Bambi?" There is nothing about this episode I don't love, especially Scully. "No, this is no place for an entomologist." Syzygy - The funny ones always make my list. And my mother and I still walk around saying, "Hate him, wouldn't want to date him." Okay, I can't stop at five for this season: Quagmire, Wetwired and Jose Chung's From Outer Space all have to be on here as well. Least Favorites: The Blessing Way - As much as I love The Anasazi and Paper Clip, I skip over this part of the trilogy. The Oubliette - Lucy drives me nuts, so I cannot get invested in her plight. Avatar - I like Skinner, but not this much. Hell Money - Everything about this is flat to me - writing, acting, directing. It's just boring. Teso Dos Bichos - Sewer rats, killer cats, and Yaje. Oh my.

Favorites: One Breath - My favorite Muldercentric episode, because Mulder is all about Scully in this one. Irresistible - Donnie Pfaster is pitch-perfect creepy, and Scully is so perfectly Scully Our Town - Delightfully macabre Humbug - It's hilarious, and the funny episodes wound up consistently being among my favorites over the course of the series. This one started a wonderful trend. Die Hand Der Verletzt - Pretty much everything I like in a MOTW, including a terrific guest cast. Oh, ass - I forgot The Anasazi. I'm not losing any of the above, so my Top 5 is a Top 6. Least Favorites: 3 - Duh. Fearful Symmetry - I actually want to like this one for its message, but it's just not well done. The Calusari - That kid is creepy, and not in the good way. But I do love "Did you learn about wind in kindergarten?" Sleepless - Mulder and Scully give good phone, but it's not enough; I don't even remember what the X-File in this one is about. Blood - See above.

Favorites: Small Potatoes - Because this is flat-out hilarious from beginning to end. Never Again - Because we finally get to see Scully delve into her frustrations. And, you know, get it on with a hot man. Leonard Betts - Because Paul McCrane makes LB one of the show's most sympathetic villains, and Gillian gets to say pages worth of dialogue with the look on her face and hesitation in her step when he tells Scully, "I'm sorry, but you've got something I need." Memento Mori - Because, horrible voiceovers aside, it crawls right inside my heart and takes up permanent residence. Unruhe: Because it has an even more sympathetic villain in Jerry, and I adore Scully as an investigator in this one. I have to cheat and do an honorable mention: Paper Hearts - Because it's a Muldercentric episode even this devout Scullyist can adore. Least Favorites: The Field Where I Died - Because it sucks. As I said above: Kristen Cloke can't act, DD can't cry, and while Morgan and Wong can write they don't do it very well here. Zero Sum - Because it has zero Scully. El Mundo Gira - Because it's John Shiban. Teliko - Because literally the only thing I remember is Scully in that white shirt, crawling through something to get to a drooling Mulder. Unrequited - Because it's boring.

"Keep it up, Mulder, and I'll hurt you like that beast woman." It's in response to his teasing her by throwing her "Unlike you, Mulder, I would like to have a life" remark back at her when she decides to accompany him to the Smithsonian. I also love when she springs him from the drunk tank, saying it's easy to see how they mistook him for a vagrant, and he asks if she's going to rag on him or take him to get some food. "Am I buying, or did you manage to panhandle some spare change while you were at it?"

Scully climbing in and out of an elephant's body via ladder to do the necropsy will forever be my favorite part of that episode. While Space is awful, I do love Scully's teasing Mulder about his fanboy ways. "Didn't you want to get his autograph?" and her line about getting a pony and learning to braid her own hair are just about the only things the episode has going for it.

I rarely eat fries, but when I do I always ask for them well done (or "extra crispy"). I hate potatoes, and the only way I'll eat them is as french fries - and only if they're thin cut and very crispy, so that they no longer taste like potatoes. They're just a crunchy vessel for my ranch dressing intake, basically.

It is stuff like that and "anti-gravity is right" that make me love Season One Scully so much. Scully growing more somber and reserved as the years went on makes sense given all the shit they put her through, but they didn't have to ditch the dry humor. Or the casual clothes. Better casual clothes in later seasons would have been nice, sure, but I'll take the Scully sitting with her sister at the kitchen table in a giant denim shirt and sweats over the Scully who doesn't even unbutton her suit or take off her shoes to slog through hours of videotapes in her hotel room.

Beyond the Sea is my favorite episode of the season, and I love it just as much for its impetus as its execution (heh, pun unintended) -- Morgan and Wong were the ones who actually stood up and said that to have Scully do little more than conduct autopsies and object to Mulder's theories was a hideous waste of some obvious yet unexploited acting talent and purposely set out to write an episode in which Gillian got something to do. Ghost in the Machine is terrible, but as I've said before, I just can't hate it. First, for the elevator blow job from the gag reel, but also for little flannel-clad Scully crawling through the duct work and making an impossible shot to save the day. If I was making a list of ten instead of five, I'd add Deep Throat, The Pilot, Eve, The Jersey Devil and Lazarus. But then that leaves out The Erlenmeyer Flask and EBE. I'm going with an even dozen.

Strange Fruit was one of those episodes you knew was going to be an emotionally difficult one just based on the title (that song is wonderful, but hard to listen to), and it delivered. The actor playing the little girl did a great job in the car, but the actors playing the '60s versions of the victim and his friend/girlfriend (I can't remember if they were dating) were the real standouts for me.

I only get five? :-) Favorites: Beyond the Sea Ice Darkness Falls Squeeze Tooms Least Favorites: Space Space Space Space Space Okay, really: Space Shapes Miracle Man Born Again Young at Heart

The house-flipping shows have their own thread, so now we have one for discussing the commonalities (and differences) among the various real estate shows -- House Hunters, Property Virgins, Buy Me, My First Place, etc. What drives you crazy about all of them? Which type do you prefer? Do you think the shows all dip into some giant applicant pool of whiny, entitled buyers? Do the real estate agents get to be snarkier on certain shows? Are hosts a good thing, or do you prefer an unseen narrator? Et cetera, et cetera. For the sake of my blood pressure, I had to stop watching the shows that delved into the buyers' finances. Watching people who'd only bothered to save up the real estate equivalent of pocket change for a down payment demand that the sellers pay their closing costs was just one annoyance too many.

I don't think it's confusing, and think it's telling that when the category does not happen to include any clues about female authors, it is not titled "Male Authors," but simply "Authors" (perhaps with some descriptor indicating genre, era, or the like). Of course, based on the show's history, if they did do such a thing it would be "Men Authors," so it would still annoy me even if it no longer offended me. I was watching an old episode of Law & Order: SVU last night, and heard a guest actor say "calvary" instead of "cavalry." I thought immediately of this thread, having just discovered it yesterday.

No, I wouldn't. Which is why I'd never look at such a home while house hunting. If I did, with general knowledge of the restrictions (which doesn't require reading the CC&Rs, but simply looking around) and then complained about the existence of such restrictions, I'd look like an idiot. Like she did.

That drives me nuts. I wouldn't live in a single-family home governed by an HOA if you gave it to me, so I certainly understand the "What do you mean I can't choose my own paint color?!" style of objection, but those of us who feel that way know not to look at houses in cookie cutter developments. To opt to tour such a home and THEN make the objection is just plain stupid.

Mannequin is nothing, ya'll -- my best friend and I saw Vibes in the theatre. And not that any network airs that Cyndi Lauper/Jeff Goldblum masterpiece, but if they did - I would still watch it. Because it's Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum. As psychics. On the trail of some secret mountain that contains all the universe's psychic energy. Which causes Cyndi Lauper to speak in tongues. That's gold, Jerry - gold.

My "noun as verb" pet peeve is coupon. Nails on a chalkboard. I also hate when the Jeopardy! clue writers use "woman" as an adjective. They like to have categories such as "Women Authors." It's fundamentally offensive because it presumes that authors are men by default, but it's also just plain annoying because if they're going to persist in such nonsense they should use "Female Authors."