Blergh

It somewhat pains me to say this. However; as much as I enjoyed the show and liked the performer, I would not have wanted Mary Richards for a relative because she'd have an excuse-generating enabler for known toxic relatives and ' family friends' and tried to make it an all-or-nothing package deal re my having HER in my life! I truly think she failed Rhoda especially re letting Phyllis almost always be catty to her without so much as objecting to Phyllis's cattiness. Yeah, Rhoda definitely could (and did) take care of herself. However; I'm sure she would have really liked Mary to have been in her corner rather than trying to excuse away and make nice Phyllis's annoyances.

To say Mr. Hawking had had to express his brilliance in spite of his rather daunting sets of physical challenges may be a bit of an understatement. Ironically, I'm actually more shocked than I thought I'd logically be considering everything because somehow (in the fact of all the facts), I thought if he could live THIS long under those conditions, he'd somehow always be around. Perhaps his drive to expand his knowledge may have been the key to what can only be described as longevity in his case! RIP (and I hope you REALLY rest) Mr. Hawking!

Oops! Thanks for catching that, UYI!

I'm not sure if one could call this a case of 'reverse nepotism' but the tragic Margaux Hemingway DID establish herself in the movie industry after having been a model a few years before her sister Muriel. However; as visually intriguing as the first Miss Hemingway was, she had the misfortune of having the speaking voice of a 60-something alcoholic character actress so her cinematic career would not last and it was barely hanging on when her younger sister Muriel entered the scene who not only has a perfectly good voice but also capable of playing a wide range of genres. While Miss Muriel Hemingway is no longer a major star, she has had a steady career.

I like ALL the above characters but I think the problem I'd have with Julia and Dorothy wouldn't be intimidation itself but the fact that I'd be afraid if I said one syllable that wasn't lockstep re their world POVs, that would trigger lengthy rants and not only would they refuse to consider any other POV outright but any attempts at objections would be used as the perfect excuse to PROLONG said rants. I always got the impression that they believed their rants were THE most important thing that could be happening in their corners of the world- if not the world itself! Yep, from experience I'd likely be doing a great deal of nodding just to get through a good part of the day with them but could barely wait for my times with them to be over. Yeah, I'd probably want to avoid having anything to do with Capt. Kirk and not really trust his captaining 'expertise' while I'd like to try to hang out with Spock and McCoy. As for Capt. Picard, yes he's the most paternal and friendly of the ST captains but, even with him, one could never entirely relax because he could go from 'friendly Grandpa' to 'battlefield general' in an instant (though I know that is a valuable asset re transportation and combat, etc.).

Did anyone else think that Marla (the now homeless woman in Northern California) somewhat looked as though one might imagine Cass Elliot would have appeared had the latter been fated to live to her golden years? Regardless, I hope that the man who'd been looking for her at least will give her the option of staying at his home for as long as she may want even if she doesn't want to move in permanently.

I think it would have been quite cool had Elizabeth Montgomery herself stepped on the Bewitched set, then said something close to the following: "Hello, I'm Elizabeth Montgomery. For the past five seasons the part of Darren was played by Dick York. For reasons I'm not detailing, Mr. York will no longer be on the show but we wish him all the best on his future endeavors. There'd be no show without a Darren so, without further ado, I'd like everyone to welcome Dick Sargent who will be playing the part from now on! We hope you keep enjoying the show!" Then Mr. Sargent could have walked onto the set and the two of them could have bowed before the audience, walked offstage, then the new credits could have started and the new show (and season) could have commenced.

For the record, my own mother wore her fave blue formal dress over sixty years ago when she wed my father and they were quietly wed in her mother's apartment with roughly a dozen of their closest family and friends because she didn't want to have the same kind of trainwreck deal that had totally frazzled her sister.. Ironically, my mother was actually retroactively recreating OLDER wedding traditions of brides wearing their fave formal dress and not getting into a one-time-only elaborate white gown carried by dozens! Yep, my mother's way had been done by brides for ages until Queen Victoria went for the big all-white wedding (and would ALSO insist on an all-white funeral after decades of wearing nothing but black).

OK, here's a Star Wars UO, I have zero interest in not only seeing any new movies but even less in seeing any TV productions. I haven't attempted any since ROTS (and the whole 1-3 Eps proved to be a bummer). IMO, continually seeking out new SW stuff expecting somehow to have things as fun and interesting as in Ep.#4 A New Hope makes as much sense as eating oatmeal that's been reheated dozens of times and expecting things to be as fresh as the very first bowl of it yet setting oneself for another round of indigestion. Can't ONE person producing any authorized form of it do so without making it a wet smack?!

Interestingly enough, when Big Bird went to visit Mr. Rogers, (as per Carroll Spinney), the latter tried to insist that Mr. Spinney take off the 'bird head' on camera while visiting the 'main house' so the young viewers at home would know that this was a man in a costume but Mr. Spinney refused saying he'd promised Jim Henson that he'd never do so on camera. Thus, Mr. Rogers compromised a bit by having Big Bird ONLY show up in the Neighborhood of Make Believe where puppets who lived in viewers' imaginations would be right at home with a costumed bird! Oh, as long as we're doing human guests, I loved it when Johnny Cash visited Oscar and insisted on being called 'Johnny Trash'! LOL

Yeah, I wondered why the WW fans weren't protesting Xena en masse.

Oscar Edmund 'Cap' Garland was born in 1864 (three years older than Laura) and would be killed from a boiler explosion in 1891- at just 26 years of age yet certainly was colorful and heroic enough for Mrs. Wilder to want to immortalize as a hero who saved the town from starvation! I have to wonder if Almanzo who would live to 92 ever pondered the irony of their very different fates and whether Cap would have still glowed had HE lived to a ripe old age!

No, not at the time. However; some featherbrain actually went on a rant about the calamities wreaked from cousins marrying to the widowed Victoria who icily put an end to it by exclaiming 'We were cousins!' Still, I think it's likely that that particular union went to cousin well one time too many which brought down two dynasties on opposite ends of Europe (Russia and Spain) via the hemophilia the close union triggered from obscurity (and there IS evidence that some early deaths of boys in the Saxe-Coburg line may actually have been evidence of it before V&A).

I actually liked her before you brought up that story (and am willing to try to let that slide as a horrible anomaly). However; I have to wonder if she'd want either of her children to be stuck on a bus with someone telling them that that had happened to them.

Then I have to wonder why Mr. Nesmith didn't just say that instead of saying what he did.

The Subforum to discuss all current news re Monkees and their projects. OK, here's some BIG news: On February 20,2018- it was announced that Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith will tour as a duo for a 16-date schedule starting in June. Other surviving onetime Monkee Peter Tork will NOT be joining them. Quoting Mr. Nesmith , "He has his reasons. They are very private."

George VI never attempted to make his daughter Elizabeth anything but the heiress presumptive so that tells me that he thought that somehow he and his wife might possibly have a late-in-life son. Amazingly enough, there WAS gossip of the 51-year-old Queen Mother being in the family way upon her husband's death but it fizzled out almost immediately. Had that gossip proved true and she'd actually borne a SON, it would ended QEII's reign within months. To bring this back to the Vic world: there was some gossip that William IV's wife the 44-year-old Queen Adelaide might have been pregnant upon the 72-year-old's death but, again, this fizzled out. However; Queen Adelaide (as Duchess of Clarence) HAD borne two daughters who'd died in infancy so had she had a third child that would have displaced Vic-regardless of the gender.

Willy had been her fave due to being the firstborn of her many grandkids. However; things somewhat soured re his ill treatment of his mother Vicky (Vic's fave child) and his openly supporting the Boers against the British in South Africa. Also Vic considered his wife the Empress Augusta (called 'Dona') to be a mindless, pompous bore- despite the fact that Dona was a granddaughter of her own beloved half-sister Princess Feodora of Leiningen! Still, somehow they were able to put that aside when he made it to her deathbed and actually supported her with his good arm as Vic breathed her last. One of the frustrating things about Willy was that, occasionally, he could actually show some decency and even compassion but those moments seemed very short lived. At the tail end of WWI, he even tried to have the widowed Grand Duchess Ella of Russia rescued (who had been worked tirelessly as a nun for helping the destitute after her own husband's assassination ) due to his having admired her as a youth- despite the fact that their nations had been engaged in a horrific war on the Eastern Front and had only recently made an uneasy truce when the White Revolution overthrew the Czardom. Alas, she was executed anyway. I think, apart from Vic's anxiety re Alix's choice of mate happening to be Russian, Alix and her siblings being the children of the too-soon-departed Princess Alice never wavered re being among Vic's faves! Of course, Vic was by no means above playing the faves against each other when it suited her!

I have to admit that the wives intrigued me more than I would have expected (at least via seeing them rerun decades after the show). Since Katie was the first female to marry into the Douglas Clan since the late 1st Mrs. Steve (and not amscray like Meredith MacRae's character did with the original Eldest Son Mike), I thought it was intriguing seeing her bringing some feminine touches into the 3 generational male household- and initially butted heads with Uncle Charley but soon worked out an agreeable truce. The wedding episode was funny in that it showed how she and her almost entirely female family and bridal party were carefully pacing themselves through every detail to get everything just right the morning before the wedding- while Douglas Clan woke up at virtually the last minute,frantically dressed and barely made it to the church on time. The downside was that they made it seem as though her bearing and caring for triplet sons was as easy as falling off a log! Also, since Robbie had abruptly left to work in Peru for the last season (since the late Don Grady parted ways from the show), I could imagine she was hanging onto the union just to get help with triplet caregiving from her extended and extensive in-laws but perhaps would split from Robbie once the triplets were old enough for school and she could work outside the home. Barbara had a little more spunk than Katie and it was interesting to see her sometimes defer to the younger woman's judgment re how to deal with all these guys solely due to Katie having been married to Robbie longer than she'd been to Steve. Yeah, it also seemed odd that she seemed to relate more to her husband, stepsons-in-law, stepdaughters-in-law, stepgrandsons and even Uncle Charley (her stepsons' great-uncle) than her own too-young daughter who looked as though she'd picked up at the last minute from a hippie commune bake sale rather than someone she had borne and raised from birth. Polly was intriguing in that she seemed more desperate to marry to escape her domineering father than actually being in love with her husband Chip. I mean, even Steve gave Polly's father a jaundiced 'get lost' look rather than buy that he was SO concerned for Polly's wellbeing re them eloping. Oddly enough, I could imagine her splitting from Chip ASAP once she realized that she didn't need him to save her.

Yep, it SHOULD have qualified for this year (and Mrs. Guy as well as the director Jason West were quite disappointed that that documentary about Rose Marie didn't get a nom). It also needs to be said that it wasn't just them interviewing her and showing random shopworn film clips that had been seen in the rerun circuit for decades but Mrs. Guy herself gave him full access to her own personal collection and guided him in his vision despite her advanced age and failing health! IOW, between ignoring this brilliant docu AND her 90 year career, they REALLY showed their willful obliviousness to her!

I vote VERY Bad Decision (and I went into some detail in the Movie Section: Subsection- Unpopular Opinions). However; I'll just add that, considering (as per the 'Monkees in Concert' footage), the bulk of the show's viewing audience then were preteen girls, what were they thinking/smoking in making this?! Not only did this prove confusing and depressing to the audience they had but virtually everyone of other demographic groups found it pretentious and pointless! To each one's own re those who want to believe that this was an overlooked treasure but, IMO, this (and the last network special 33 and 1/3 Monkee Per Revolution) not only trashed everything they'd worked hard for but also are simply chapters best remaining closed re appreciating the band's work on the show, the music and their projects from 1970 onward.

The Oscars Memorial thread did NOT include Rose Marie who died in December at age 94- having had a 90 year career on stage, screen, radio, television capped off with a documentary (Wait for Your Laugh)of said career released last year! Boo!

One of the most telling (and candid) revelations I've ever seen re any family member of a celeb was when his parents were interviewed and his mother said that many people ask them if their son was like Major Winchester and she replied 'If he WAS, do you think we'd ADMIT it?!' (as opposed to a flat out denial). RIP, Major Winchester. P.S. Yes, I know that Mr. Stiers had a very steady career and was working almost to the end. However; that character was the most iconic and as long as we're sharing fave Winchester moments, I always liked the Christmas episode in which he'd attempted to be a Secret Santa to local orphans by giving them the finest chocolates only to find out that their caretaker had sold them on the black market. He was ready to tear the caretaker a new one when the old man replied that he knew that the children would have loved the chocolate for Christmas Day. However; via the windfall, they'd have enough cabbage and rice to survive for a month!

I've had some doozy managers in my time. One insisted on a new procedure that not only caused a great deal of added work for all employees but also needless delays and confusion in output. Despite EVERY single prediction of what could go wrong coming true several fold, that manager insisted that the problems that had arisen had to be ALL the employees' fault and not the procedure's! No surprise that this manager ranked dead last in the organization re our mandatory surveys!

Agree that the show wasted the talents of the late Mr. Knight and also I wondered if Nancy Dussault truly thought it had been worth leaving Good Morning, America for this?! Oh, yeah, the character Munroe Ficus ranked with Urkel re annoying sidekicks that seemed to be there that only producers and studio audiences were known to like but no one seemed to know anyone else who liked said characters (like Kardashian fans). One of the tiny positive notes re the show was that Muriel Rush's mother was played by the legendary Audrey Meadows while the late downstairs tenant's sister was played by the funny Selma Diamond but the audience barely saw them. Too bad, I don't recall these characters ever meeting because had they spun off to their OWN show and ditched this mess, it would be great!