pigs-in-space

I'm excited to see the old DCOMs I loved, but I would have also liked some of the older ABC Family original movies too. I saw maybe one or two of their Christmas ones, but there were definitely a bunch of others.

Thank you funky-rat for the excellent summary. Well, I can't say I blame HBO for not changing it. It's a great name, and very evocative.

I really dug the Good Omens credits!

Not so much a forum, but my fave costume website, frockflicks.com, did recaps of it and there were some comments there. That's where I was introduced to the show.

Why was the old thread deleted?

I just watched and I'm so bummed I missed the earlier thread. I've been enjoying this so much and might have to re-watch.

Thank you! Those texts...wow, lot to digest. I was exhausted just reading them. Seems like a toxic combination between both of their issues, and Conrad needed professional help. Also interesting that she had romantic feelings for a "friend" named Alice (more detail in this article). I hadn't heard/read about that at all.

Same, although I suppose that's subject to change after I watch part 2. The Blotter Presents covered this in their episode out today, and I'm so glad they mentioned the two things that really bugged me: the credits, and the seagull walking around while text messages were on the screen. Does anyone know where to find transcripts of all of the texts between Michelle and Conrad? A quick google search only led me to find the ones from the day Conrad passed, but I'm curious about their earlier text exchanges. My biggest criticism of this so far is that it provided nothing that the Dateline episode didn't already do. Again, maybe part 2 will change my mind, but I didn't find it particularly interesting given that it all felt like a retread.

I just watched all of this on Hulu. The main hallmark of a cult, it seems to me, is that they don't allow their members to keep in touch with people who leave or with outsiders. That's a huge red flag. I felt horrible regarding what she went through, but the dude at the gate clearly had no power and I didn't blame him for not wanting to listen to her. That Norma from the FLDS was a piece of work. Her smugness and perceived persecution were eye-roll worthy. Maybe if Warren Jeffs hadn't been marrying and raping underaged girls and using the church money as his personal piggy bank that wouldn't have happened, Norma. Notice how she skirted around the question of what age is appropriate to be married. I also thought it was interesting that we saw her and some of her children and sister wives, but not her husband. Where was he? Why didn't he want to be on camera?

Which is pretty much while I got bored with watching and got so behind on my watching, then just stopped. Obviously others kept watching and continued to enjoy the show, but for me I lost interest with Jack largely out of the picture.

I also gave up on the show when I heard Jack died (I was a bit behind and just stopped once I heard the spoilers). Their relationship was really the main draw of the show for me, even when I enjoyed other characters. Add the increasingly anachronistic hair/make-up/costumes certainly didn't help.

She seemed pretty clear in the podcast that she said "penis."

I just found out there's a podcast series on this called Believed, by NPR/Michigan Public Radio. The episodes vary in length, but I just started today and I'm already on episode 7 out of 9. It's really good and goes into some more detail about the investigation(s). Well worth a listen as a companion to this documentary, and it features some of the same women who spoke in the doc (although it also has some others that weren't featured). The podcast I mentioned goes into this and gets the story from Kyle Stephens herself. Her father had chronic pain and was on a lot of medications, and it sounded like there was a lot of family stress because her mother was basically trying to keep everything together. She only told her parents a small part of the abuse (that Larry rubbed her feet with his penis), and just kept repeating that part. They took her to a child psychologist who she didn't like and wasn't comfortable around, and she didn't tell him anything further either. After a year of her father asking if she was lying, he even said he would make her life a living hell if she didn't tell the truth. So she lied and said she made it up because she was so miserable. It was a heartbreaking story.

I watched tonight and it was very well done. I appreciated that it wasn't as long as Leaving Neverland, just because it meant I could watch it in one sitting. While the whole story is heartbreaking, I think it's particularly cruel that he so often abused the girls while their parents were in the room with them. I can't imagine the guilt and anger that must cause for both the parents and children. I loved the judge in the case and how she was not having any of Nassar's self-pitying bullshit. The gall of him to protest about how awful it was for him to have to sit through the victim impact statements, as if that was even a portion of the pain those women and their families are feeling. His lawyer also didn't do herself any favors on this. She'd have been much better off just declining to be part of the production.

Beauty's in the eye of the beholder, I guess, because I liked her hair (it was a bit severe, but it fit her character and it was a nice change from the standard beachy waves most Hallmark leads have) and thought the glasses were cute too. They seem pretty on-trend right now.

Dang, I'm out of free articles this month and the NYT has started blocking incognito browsers.

I'm a woman too, and I'm also incredibly squeamish about blood draws. I've never fainted but have come close. Even just talking about it too much can make me break out in a cold sweat. Somehow the part where they switch the vial mid-draw is almost the worst for me! I know it's not logical, and I wish I could change it, but luckily at least for now I'm not at a point where I have to get blood drawn more than once a year.

Once I noticed them, the unblinking eyes definitely started getting to me as well. Yikes! Even in the deposition videos when she was basically exposed as a fraud she still had them. I’ve been consuming pretty much everything Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos related, and this was a nice addition to the group. It barely scratched the surface of everything that went on at Theranos, but that’s to be expected of a two-hour piece. My absolute favorite part was the celebration footage with “Can’t Touch This” and the super awkward dancing. Her brother wasn’t even mentioned in this as working with her, but he was the only one with rhythm dancing behind her. The other employees called him and his friends the “Duke Bros” I’d I recall correctly. Nepotism was strong there. ETA: I meant to say that I’m 100% the type of person that this device was supposedly created for. I’m not afraid of needles (vaccines are fine!) but as soon as they start taking blood I get woozy and just the thought of having my blood drawn fills me with dread. I’d love for a solution to allow them to test with less blood, even for just some common tests. But if course it has to actually work otherwise it’s useless. Like the Edison. (Who was also less of an inventor and more of a thief of other people’s ideas.)

I'm torn on the profiler thing, to be honest. Despite being a big true crime fan, I don't really know enough about it to say whether it's baloney or not, but I do know I've enjoyed what Jim and Laura have had to say in the past. Not so much recently, because I stopped listening to their podcast probably a year or so ago for the same reasons as everyone else. But Laura Richards' work with domestic violence and stalking and risk assessment models is something I really admire and I think is really useful to law enforcement in terms of homicide prevention. I think my favorite part of this episode was Sarah saying for all of posterity that she once found Jim Clemente hot. (Also appreciate the Lisa appreciation, though! She seems to have a thankless job at times.)

I think these are the same people who see children as property, rather than independent beings. Otherwise they'd want what's best for the kids - which is not killing their other parent, ffs. The Harrison family seemed like a really nice family. I too was bugged that so much information was withheld until the very end. It would not have been any less interesting of a story to get that info earlier. I also liked Dannie's family too, though (and I liked their lipstick colors, tbh!). I thought their big mistake was letting her, a freshman girl, date a senior boy. That is just icky. I say that as someone who has a sister who just finished her freshman year of HS.

Mike does - his fiancee was his college sweetheart. Vinnie made a joke on the yacht regarding Mike having a college degree.

And yet all the roommates (except Sam) claim to still be friends with him, which makes me judge them by association. Ron has showed his ass so many times, and IMO he's crossed the line between occasional asshole/domestic abuser a few times. I caught an earlier rerun from the first season two nights ago, and even back when he and Sam first got together he was showing the warning signs - super sweet one moment, suddenly turning and getting really angry the next, especially when Sam dared to talk to other guys. I don't get why the rest of them are still friends with him. And yet despite all of that, I wish Mike had just said, "Hey, can you stop ribbing me about the IRS thing? It's a really difficult subject for me." Instead he got passive aggressive about it, which I understand but kind of shows shades of the old Mike. Makes sense since getting sober certainly doesn't take away all your flaws, but I wish he'd taken the high road there.

I did not even catch that until you pointed it out. Too funny. On rewatch, I realized that before I was still so stuck on the shit thing that I didn't catch how ridiculous Snooki was being later. The constant "You're going to ruin my marriage!" before anyone else even brought it up was dumb. And maybe I'm reading into it, but they protested so much about being only friends that it made me wonder if either of them was holding a torch for the other. Not really the desired outcome of all of Snooki's protests. Jenni still shows that she's one of the most mature in the house, as always.

I agree Ronnie should've taken care of it. But if they were going to make one of the other roommates clean it up, then having a competition between all of the roommates to see who'd clean it up wouldn't have been misogynistic. It's the assumption that it should be one of the girls that pushes it into that category for me. But hey, YMMV. There's plenty to pick on when it comes to this show outside of Ron's shit. :-D

Feel free to disagree, but just because it’s producer driven doesn’t mean it’s not also misogynistic. Maybe if they’d also had a climbing contest to see if Vinnie or Pauly would help I’d have given them a pass.