Blergh

One of the animated Hunchback of Notre Dame's gargoyles was voiced by the late marvelous performer Mary Wickes in her very last role at 85 so I had a soft spot for the movie despite the fact that it somewhat bowlderized Mr. Hugo's intentions.

Only in terms of an endless line of Alberts establishing a perpetual Saxe-Coburg dynasty upon her own death re Great Britain &Ireland and the Empire . However; Vic was indeed quite invested in becoming the Grandmother of Europe and, despite numerous previous prolific monarchs having attempted this and failed, did sincerely believe that, if she her descendants were on all the thrones, she could nag them and their governments to play nice together and there'd be no more wars. Of course, even by the close of her own life, she'd seen Kaiser Wilhelm totally ignore her advice to govern like his late father (whom she admitted she'd loved MORE than her own sons) and be kind to his widowed bereaved mother.

OK, on TV those who are termed 'housewives' (even those who call themselves 'real') are NEVER seen cleaning ovens, sorting colors and whites for the laundry or taking out the trash but few if any authentic ones can make that claim!

Good question, TattleTeeny! She had her quirks and often could be quite troublesome to King Friday and the other Neighbors. However; I liked that she was happy to be an independent museum owner & a handy lady AND that she and Mayor Maggie encouraged girl viewers to consider that they COULD run stuff on their own! Like Grandma Walton, she was the vital lemon that kept the show from being too sweet!

BuyMoreandSave, Yes, I recognize that sexual assault and harassment is virtually as old as time. However; it should be noted that unchaperoned DATING itself was virtually unheard of until the close of the 19th century. And do you truly believe that there have been no negative contributing factors by popular music and entertainment re those crimes in the last sixty years but that they've only been positive influences re participants and audiences? Do you think that venues with 10 thousand or more folks in various stages of intoxication being urged from the stage to do 'whatever turns you on' have been a good thing- even though they often have blatantly ridiculed the idea that anyone else should so much as object much less have had any right decline to participate? No, I'm not saying rock or any other form of music and entertainment is a totally evil and wicked concept and there have been many positive things to spring forth from it as well as entertain. However; both by virtue of having lived through a few generations and studied those of earlier generations, I can't pretend that rock's all sweetness and light which has only helped participants and audiences with zero exploitation of the same.

The former? Not so much as Vic took great pride in her maternal side re the tiny duchy of Saxe Coburg putting themselves on every throne they could get (and Vic ALSO wanted to do the same re her own family-in the belief that her being the literal 'Grandmother of Europe' would keep everyone from fighting). The latter? Oh, yeah, Vic was DEFINITELY a meddler not just to her children and grandchildren but even uncles and aunts much older than herself whom she literally queened it over! Not to take away from Vic's meddlesome aspect, but to be fair, I think she also recognized that her motherless granddaughter Alix was a painfully shy and extremely soft-spoken person who could be easily overwhelmed by the extended Romanovs and the courts- regardless of Dear Nicky's support and affection for her! In the end, it was the sincere love the couple had for her each that won over Vic's initial misgivings (though never entirely her Russophobia which she believed could be threats to her Indian Empire via Afghanistan).

While I actually agree that Bauer was better for Jo than Laurie, my UO re Little Women is that I'd like to see a movie that stayed with Miss Alcott's original vision of having Jo staying single! When the book was first being written, it was in serial form via a literary magazine and when Jo turned down Laurie's proposal stating that her goal was to be a self-supporting single woman her entire life, the outcry from readers got the publishers to demand Jo not do that.

anyanka- Grand Duchess Marie wound up having an endless . . hissing contest with Vic while Vic was easily charmed by Alix's spouse whom she called 'Dear Nicky' and, in fact, the earliest surviving known film footage of Vic was taken during an 1896 visit of the Imperial Family to Balmoral and they could be seen walking beside her as she rode in a pony cart holding her favorite dog (and it appears that the controversial Munshi was walking behind the group). Now's a good place as any to try to sort out the Alices, Alixes and Alexandras connected to Vic. Her 2nd daughter was given the old English name of Alice . However; after she wed the Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse (and she was given the title 'landsmutter' [literally 'mother of the nation'!]), while Alice took great satisfaction in doing good works for her new subjects, she got annoyed with them pronouncing the e at the end of her name so that it would be 'Alis-SAY'. She decided that when she named her youngest daughter for to have this avoided by having her being named Alix. Meantime, her older brother the Prince of Wales had married Princess Alexandra of Denmark but everyone in both their families called her 'Alix' as well. OK, fast forward to 1894 when Princess Alix of Hesse wed Czar Nicholas II, not only was the name of Alix completely unheard of in Russia but it wasn't the least Russian to boot so they insisted she be called 'Alexandra'. Oh and 'Dear Nicky' happened to be the Princess of Wales's nephew (and his mother, her younger sister, had had to change HER name from the Danish Dagmar to Marie when she married Alexander III). It also needs to be mentioned that, despite his grandmother-in-law's hostility towards his nation, Nicholas II ALWAYS spoke and wrote in English to his wife in private conversations so there would have been no language barrier had he been given refuge!

I can't help but feel that WWI wound up being the excuse virtually every member of the Windsor family was looking for in ending their ties with the annoying Kaiser (even after he was said to have Abdicated and living in a tight exile in Holland, George V didn't so much as write him again much less visit him despite the two having virtually grown up together). OTOH, I can't help but think that Edward VII and, especially, Victoria would have been absolutely livid at George V patently refusing refuge to one of Vic's fave grandchildren and her family (the Romanovs). I mean, Vic herself had no less than TWO deposed French dynasties living in Great Britain at one time and she'd have just told anyone to 'naff off' had they dared complain about her giving refuge to a grandchild (and if the government had attempted any flak, she'd have made a public spectacle of her disdain as she did Gladstone re Khartoum).

If we're going to go into his offstage life, I thought it was intriguing that he admitted falling instantly in lust on his first British tour with Samantha Juste- then waxing about how much in love he grew to be with his first wife before his own excesses doomed their union. I also thought it poignant that when she died of a stroke in 2014, despite both of them having since remarried, Mr. Dolenz was quite upset over her death. Moreover both his current wife and one of his daughters by his 2nd ex paid tribute to how they much liked her as a person not just everyone being civil for her daughter's sake and feeling sorry for said daughter but how welcoming and wonderful the late Miss Juste had been to them!

OOPS, I stand corrected (but not in lifts).

Thank you, folks, for reminding WHY I grew to dislike Friends so much- I got sick of every character's entitled, self-justifying, myopic 'tude!

Maybe it was all those ping-pong balls Mr. Moose dropped! We never saw him below the neck but I guess he'd stepped on something behind the counter to cause them to fall! OK, this brings up an unpopular opinion about the Jerry Lewis Telethon! On the first Monday of every month, Captain Kangaroo would celebrate the viewers' birthdays by having a cake with the number of candles equal to the order of the month (e.g. 1 candle for January, 2 for February,etc.). OK, even though it had been years since I last saw the Captain, I had decided to tune in one last time to have them wish 'me' a happy birthday with that cake with nine candles that first Monday in September. But what happened instead? Why my local station had the Jerry Lewis Telethon on and refused to consider telling Jerry to take a nap for an hour so they could have the Captain wish me a Happy 9th Birthday which I'd never have again !! Man, I was MAD! LOL And, no, I'm not going to say the date nor the year of my birthday!

Actually, while HSH Princess Mary (May) of Teck had been born to a German (barely) royal family, her mother (Princess Mary of Cambridge [AKA 'Fat Mary']) was Vic's first cousin and she herself was born in Kensington Palace in the very SAME BED as Vic had been born 48 years +2 days earlier! Yes, from the very brief recording I've heard her speak, she did have a slight Germanic way of pronouncing things but how much more British could one get than being born in Vic's own bed? Somewhat like Vic herself (whom she originally called 'Aunt Queen'), she'd started out as a poor relation of the monarch in the crowded royal anthill/aunt hill of Kensington but luckily for her, 'Aunt Queen' decided she'd be a good, stabilizing wife to her somewhat erratic heir presumptive, the doomed Edward ('Eddy'), Duke of Clarence. He would die shortly after their engagement was announced but everyone thought she'd be an even better choice for his stuffy younger brother the new heir presumptive, George, Duke of York! Yes, from that point onward, she went from being the granddaughter-in-law of a queen to a queen's grandmother!

I think that 'prolly' is best for parrots wanting crackers NOT people who need to use 'probably'! I also hate 'whatev' which is lazy for 'whatever'. Sad thing is that in X number of years, it's likely that PRINTED dictionaries will consider both these terms (as well as one I especially loathe[ 'sick' -meaning excellent, awesome,cool, wonderful, congratulations,etc.]). But perhaps dictionaries will cease to be printed before those terms/ definitions ooze their ways in.

One thing for sure is that Mr. Jones was by no means intimidated by taller women- in fact all his wives were taller than him and it's interesting that he never seemed to wear elevator shoes and rarely boots to attempt to bridge the gap!

While Miss Grassle and Miss Stewart did outstanding jobs playing the mother and teacher upset over the fate of this lost child, I couldn't help but get the late Mr. Landon's frustration at trying to have a serious moment with Carrie once she was found- inasmuch as she seemed to respond as though she was annoyed having been interrupted from playing with Play-Doh instead of being a young pioneer girl who'd nearly lost her life and had just been reunited with her family! I also think somehow the entire plot would have worked better had it been Melissa Gilbert's Laura that had fallen down the well as the latter was a phenomenal child performer!

OK, here's an unpopular opinion: while I didn't like Stan, I thought at SOME point someone (like Sophia) should have told Dorothy that since her 38-year long union with him had been the pits from the very beginning, she should have tried to work towards being RELIEVED it was over (even though it was Stan's doing) and that her life had been much better since the split. Thus, instead of poisoning herself with her grudge that he'd ended it, she should have worked towards being indifferent to him rather than getting upset if any other female expressed an interest to him!

And I felt bad for Jo who suddenly had to do that gigantic scholarship project for other underprivileged girls on her own ALL because of Tootie's tantrum and Mrs. G's Beatlemania flashback! That means that the fate of all those girls getting a chance to get a good education and make something worthwhile of their lives was ENTIRELY now on Jo's shoulders alone and if she'd flubbed up (which never got stated one way or the other) they'd have also suffered due to this one inexperienced student having had to have to juggled the entire deal on her own. I hope that Jo REALLY told both of them off for how selfish they were!

janie jones, I stand corrected. I suppose I should have said Miss Hearst didn't opt to be a full-time performer/has been in known movies/tv shows in the last eleven years. In any case, her one-shot on Pete and Pete was far better IMO than I'd have expected-especially from someone not famous for being a thespian!

OK, since the subject of Patricia Hearst seems to have become a somewhat hot topic re the TV movie, I thought it would be worth mentioning that while she has NOT opted to become a performer, she DID do an episode of Adventures of Pete and Pete playing (of all things) the uber Stepford wife/mom who'd bought the Petes' family home for the younger Pete and refused any and all reasonable offers to return it! Without giving everything away, this character seemed as though she could easily choke a victim with the brownies she'd baked for them and never lose her barn door smile! Too bad she was a one-shot but Miss Hearst made it quite a memorable one at that!

Obviously, I don't know the late Mr. Jones's daughters or last wife but I found it a bit telling that when he died, his daughters started a relief fund to keep his beloved horses that he'd raised and considered family to be well-maintained and fed while his last wife does not seem to have participated in this. It should be said that his learning to care for horses as a teen somewhat saved him from total despair when his mother died and gave him a reason to think his horizons could be beyond having to spend his entire life struggling in a working class neighborhood.

Funny thing is that Mr. Nesmith's character was to be CALLED 'Wool Hat' (and was in the Pilot by the one-shot manager) but, thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and he was just 'Mike' regardless of how much he wore that hat!

I'm not sure whether it was the writers or the exec themselves behind it but IMO, Crossing Jordan's blunder was that they lost all interest and faith in the title character to the degree that by the time the show finally faded away entirely, Jordan herself was a barely seen supporting player in what had been her own show! I think the idea of a forensic pathologist spurred to help others due to being haunted by the unsolved murder of her own mother was quite fascinating but they seemed not to think so- and it would have nice had they kept the focus on her even if she eventually had to resign herself to not being able to solve that mystery within her own lifetime.

OK, I'll just say that the ONLY character I'd liked on Friends was Phoebe but by the time I had to quit watching even she had become snotty, mean and jaded (and her bearing her brother's and sis-in-law's triplets just to cover up Miss Kudrow's actual pregnancy was just too awkward). I tried to rationalize it that she'd gotten corrupted by her acquaintances' 'tudes but it still was sad to see her become one of 'them' and when the show's 'saving grace' becomes almost as unlikable as the others one can barely endure, that's when needs to quit the show . Ironically, I think had Phoebe stayed homeless and never hooked up with the others, she'd have stayed a good, caring and helpful (albeit flaky) person.