Wax Lion

That part reminded me of Rachel Maddow. She has a very similar way of responding to that kind of attempt at intimidation, except John was more profane and aggressively sarcastic, while Rachel is calm and mild-mannered when she presents a letter like that with the full context. I started fantasizing what a John Oliver/Rachel Maddow news hour would be like (Maddow's national debut was as the serious news person on a radio show opposite Lizz Winstead, so she's got experience working with a Daily Show-related comedian). One thing about adding profit into the mix is that it adds corruptibility. It probably doesn't matter what religion the college administrators are, they probably thought the Scientology museum was a good idea because the church offered nice financial terms for the trip. I'm a little surprised we haven't seen a Red State cut the school budgets and have a variety of groups offer to donate textbooks that minimize slavery in history or "teach the controversy" with evolution. Heck, I think there is a program where public colleges can get funding for teaching Atlas Shrugged (with a professor approved by the program). It's much simpler than taking over school boards and have the media notice your guidelines adds crazy shit.

I think that format has been in place since at least season 8, when AG took over but it was probably used to give a lot of time to those "hilarious" Chilltown phone calls. They use the DRs like a mockumentary sitcom. I like a funny competitor but when they start bringing props like huge, nicely-lettered signs, I start thinking about production writing DRs and planning these things with the HG they want to charm "America". I don't think there will be a second All-Star season. Survivor has ditched All-Star seasons in favor of finding ways of finding themes that bring back various vets. I think BB has already followed a similar path, except they've done it in ways that continue to push AG's pets. If we had another All-Star season, AG would probably face pressure to include fan favorites who weren't her pets like Jen Johnson.

I watched the movie this weekend after reading all the issues I still have with me (basically the Mike Carey and Denise Mina runs) in anticipation and I realize why I found the movie disappointing but not horrible. The first time I saw the movie the "Bad Habits" story went by so quickly I forgot how it was included. And the big change bothered me when I notice it -- the ending of the comic storyline has John selling his soul to three different demons who realize that if he dies they'll be obligated to fight a war over which one of them gets his soul. In the movie, John commits an act so noble it earns him passage into heaven, which obliges Lucifer to cure his cancer. That's a huge difference and it takes away what's a major aspect of John's character for me. He's clever. That's what I need for this show to have. I need John not to just be a cynical asshole like Dean Winchester, I need him to be someone who outsmarts demons.

FWIW, his upcoming Fox drama "Empire" has been called his attempt at making a black "Dynasty" so it shouldn't be too heavy.

I'm so glad he discussed how for-profit colleges are scamming the GI Bill. I've heard about this before but I haven't seen TV cover it until now. Not even when Mitt Romney talked up a for-profit college with a terrible record while campaigning in Florida, which would have made the topic timely.

I thought Twisted would have been great if the three leads could have just been friends. Let them have all the romantic entanglements the PLL girls have, just make it happen with outside characters. Not every straight male and straight female lead have to fall in love. It's not like PLL has lacked for stories without Emily developing crushes on Aria, Spencer or Hanna.

At her peak, Rivers was an amazing comedian and one of the earliest groundbreakers in comedy. There are so many ways that her influence can be felt on The Daily Show, at the very least she (with Phyllis Diller) opened the door to Jessica Williams and Sam Bee. She eventually became a hack comedian, going for the obvious and tired insult instead of something with a little bit of insight. I think there's a place where impertinence is key in comedy but Rivers lost track of that fine line.

From what I've seen in comment threads, one issue is that it's actually rather complicated to avoid having your pictures from being backed up to the iCloud. It reminds me of those occasional alerts that go around warning you that a social media site has changed their privacy settings with complicated instructions on how to restore your old privacy settings.

Sometimes I get the feeling Rachel looks forward to holidays not because she wants time off but because she's hoping to a holiday weekend news dump.

To add to the complaints about the stupid cafe story, first the daughter offers to give up her cheap-looking necklace to convince the cafe owner to let her go seek out the driver. Then we see her walking with her shopping bags as they look for the driver. She couldn't offer to leave behind the stuff she just bought while she went looking for her driver? Not that any of this story made any sense.

While I'd agree with the sentiment, I took those comments as Glass being at a point where he can look back and see how ridiculous it was to think that way. At least, my reaction to his stories about panicking about getting caught setting the table was that he was joking about how stupid it was to be concerned about those kinds of things. I read a few articles about Glass when he came out. He was referred to as a "comedian's comedian" a lot. Sometimes I wonder if that's how comedians tell a colleague that he's too good at comedy for the average person to get. (aka "You're not bigger because people are stupid.") Glass did have me thinking about how nicely we've progressed. He feared being defined by his sexual orientation and thinking back to the days when he started, most openly gay comedians were expected to make jokes about how gay stereotypes are so true.

On the 'shows that never got a chance" tread someone mentioned Outsourced, which I'd place on this thread instead. Maybe the show should have found a new title instead of keeping the one from the movie it adapted but I think the concept could have worked. Unfortunately in execution, it was a show about an American living abroad who spent most of his time teaching his new co-workers (who, again, weren't the foreigners) to be more American. The lead actor just didn't have the depth to elevate those bad scripts. It could have been an interesting show if the show was more about him adapting to a sudden and unplanned move to a foreign country (and not with the stale diarrhea jokes of the pilot). The second huge mistake of the show was trying to make the boss, a guy who decided to fire the entire staff except for the protagonist to increase profits, as a lovably wacky and high-maintenance guy. If they made him more of a jerk, the show wouldn't have seemed so insensitive to the issue of outsourcing. So basically, we had a show with two character types that are unbearable in real life -- the sociopathic businessman who cares more about increasing his next bonus even if it means ruining lives and the ugly American. The way Outsourced was made, it pretty much embraced those two as people we're supposed to find charmingly flawed.

In the past I've been impressed at Chris' ability to get conservatives to have actual conversations instead of spending the "discussion" looking for the closest talking point to use. Tonight, he had a NY Post editorial page editor who usually infuriates me. He's usually pretty bad about saying things that don't relate to the discussion. This was the first time I've heard him sound like he was listening to what people were saying and actually responding to them. I disagreed with everything he said, but it was an actual discussion about an issue and not two liberals having a discussion and a conservative interrupting with Fox News talking points.

@HighHopes, I actually think that would be an amazing twist for a season. That would require strategic adjustments and there would be reason for someone to offer themselves as a pawn (or for a betrayal where John convinces Bob to go up as a pawn to enact a certain plan when Bob is HoH, only for John to betray Bob and it's a secret plan to get rid of Bob).

Eh, I think media pundits who stick to this bit of common wisdom need to acknowledge that BB1 was over a decade ago. I think if given a chance we'd match the British pattern (or at least the BBUK Channel 4 pattern) where a couple annoying people get eliminated first before people start picking a couple big drama HGs to stand behind and the boring ones start getting voted off. That said, I'm not sure I'd be happy with letting the audience vote people out on a show still edited by AG. I'm still bitter at the way "America" voted the way her editors told them to every time in BB8, especially the way the show went from "Kail said something ignorant about gay people, hate her!" to "Here are acceptable slurs to use againstl a gay man, providing you're doing it for your daughter."

I kinda love the opening for Brit soap for a variety reasons, including that it's a little bit of a mess now. Back in 2006, they revamped the titles into a fast-paced, let's-show-every-character-for-a-second into with some fun design. They style of it has changed over time, this 2011 version still shows just about ever character, but the look of how they're featured is pretty different. One problem with the current version is that the stylized portaits don't quite mesh up anymore. I have a hard time describing how, but it looks like different artists trying to match the same aesthetic and almost getting it. Here's a more-or-less current one. However, it also changes constantly. If a character leaves town or is murdered, they're taken out of the credits by the next episode. Another character showed up in the credits the episode after she moved into a boarding house where a bunch of characters live together. For soap viewers that's a little shocking, since soaps often keep the same opening even when its featuring characters that have been gone for months, even when they try to minimize that risk by only featuring the iconic characters who have been around for ages. (And the story of the fall of Another World involves the creation of a very stylish opening that cost so much to make it was a struggle to update.) Every other British soap I've seen has had a generic opening that focused on the setting more than the characters.

I'm really looking forward to seeing Todd Glass. He's pretty funny. He came out a couple years ago and I don't think I've seen him release anything since then. I'm looking forward to seeing his humor as an out gay man. I watched his last comedy special mentally replacing the pronouns in his relationship jokes.

I think this was the moment the dual HoH twist was designed for. I'm sure they were hoping it would happen sooner but AG and her crew are glad they finally got someone to go from HoH to evicted in a week. The premise is that being isolated in the BB house saves the HGs from the first round of the zombie apocalypse. It's a different hook on the zombie trope where the protagonists wake up and find the world after the world has been destroyed.

Okay, first a confession, while I almost always check out Big Brother, I can't remember a season I watched from beginning to end. I don't think I've watched a single finale because I usually lose interest once a certain player is evicted. Then I just look for an article on finale night to tell me who won. The first season I really tried to watch was All-Stars because I knew of a lot of the All-Stars, even if I had only watched one or two episodes of Nakomis/Cowboy's season and The Ex Factor. I finally saw season six after giving up on BB8 in disgust, so my experience with the sovereigns came in reverse. I saw fans say plenty about how great Janelle was, only to see her be manipulated by Will. And while Keysar was billed as Mr Strategy, he seemed to be taken down by really stupid mistakes both times. He sure was pretty, though. Plus, while I never liked The Friendship, I liked the Sovereigns a little less every time they called the Friendship the "Nerd Herd" using nerd as an insult. That just made them seem like the stereotypical jock/cheerleader mean girl, except their opposition was way more awful. One of the players I do miss is Kevin. I tuned out on his season early, pretty much after the episode where someone tried to call out racist comments but all the racism and homphobia was edited out, making Lydia seem like someone who brings her race into every argument. However, I was eventually convinced to return because I heard Kevin was pretty entertaining, especially as he was trying to save his game while realizing he was stuck with a terrible alliance. Really, I don't remember much about his gameplay, mostly his attempts to supress his eye rolls whenever his alliance said something stupid (which was often). As I recall, that was also the season Chima had that awesome moment where she used the live eviction to call CBS out on the racism. Too bad what happened afterward. Speaking of Drew Daniels, where was something about the early days of the Zankie showmance that gave me the impression that Frankie would have loved to make Zach his Diane, where he betrays his showmance for an F2 alliance and makes a big dramatic moment in the game.

I wonder if that's the kind of thing production would count as outside information, telling her he wasn't happy about her behavior he was seeing.

I'm not a huge follower of the Disney Channel but my understanding was that Sam and Kat did pretty well and would have continued if not for behind-the-scenes drama, some of it coming from Ariana's music star rising in between the time when she agreed to the show and the start of production. While I agree with the sentiment, I think that only comes to play when the F2 are the same gender. If they were played by a guy who is in an F2 with a female floater, they'll praise his gameplay and accuse her of sitting back and enjoying his work. As for bringing people back, four is usually the magic number. They've only brought back a jury member before once but when they brought back someone in season six, there were four choices. Every week "America's Player" was told to try to get a hamster nominated and to work for one nominee to get out. Usually, it was only a matter of losing his bonus if AP was tasked to get one nominee out and the other one was evicted. One week, Dick's alliance (which included AP) turned against him and planned on voting him out. Thanks to the a firmly edited show, the 'Who should AP get evicted?' vote went in Dick's favor and suddenly the DR went from 'Eh, fail at your AP task if you don't like $5,000." to "Fail at this task and the next audience poll will be 'Is it time to replace America's Player?'"

I agree, if I were to give advice to someone about to go into the BB house, I'd try to give them an idea of the different ways the game gets rigged, what prompts BB to rig for one person and tell them they have to play production just as much as they have to play the other hamsters. ETA: If she were smarter, I'd say Nicole's crying could be justified. Considering how bonkers some fans could get, there's reason to worry about fearing you won't be able to have a social media account without a deranged Grande fan cyberbulling you thinking it will get the fan Arianna or Frankie's attention.

I don't recall Luke ever appearing to be interested in girls. Are you thinking of Noah, who slept with Maddie before admitting his feelings for Luke? In general, I'm starting to think the new cliche is going to be the "gold star" gay and the guy who was with a woman for a night resulting in pregnancy, giving the gay couple a biological child to raise together. We had that with Kish on OLTL and WilSon on Days and probably a couple more I'm forgetting. Degrassi feels a little different because the "straight" character barely hinted at any attraction to guys (the one hint was seen as him being cruel to Tristan, IIRC) while Noah, Fish and Will relationships with women always felt like part of a coming out arc.

Bill Wolff has worked with Wallace, as she has appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show a few times. She may be unbearable on Morning Joe but she's very different on TRMS. While she worked at MSNBC, the only prime time show to include Sippy Cupp was The Last Word (which seems to feature a lot of the daytime MSNBC hosts). I'd like to think that gives an advantage to the reasonable Wallace and cuts off Cupp's chances.

@Fremde Frau, I totally agree that a little-discussed area is the need for better media literacy. I also found myself disagreeing with John's conclusion that we need to buy more newspapers. For one thing, from my understanding of the industry, subscriptions and newsstand sales were never the main source of revenue, not as much as classified and legal ad sales. Sadly, a lot of that has gone away. (A rant about how newspaper conglomerates could have avoided this problem by investing in the future instead of focusing on maintaining profit margins is probably another topic.)