millennium

I definitely got subtitles.

Luschek to Caputo: "You look like the gay Edge."

Angel was an amazing series. In fact, I watched virtually the entire run without ever having seen an episode of Buffy. It used to be shown late night/early morning on TNT, after Star Trek the Next Generation, usually about 5 am. (this was in the days before Hulu and Netflix). When at last I got around to watching Buffy on Hulu, that show seemed silly by comparison. I found the camaraderie among Angel's team more credible than the Scoobies. So when the betrayal storylines came along (and there were a couple of them, but i don't want to spoil anything), you felt it. When characters died, you missed them. I never got that from Buffy. The transformation of Wesley Wyndham Price was also something to behold. What a great character and a great job by Alexis Denisof. Ditto for Lorne. The late, great Andy Hallett (who died needlessly from complications of an abscess tooth) somehow took the insane concept of a demonic lounge-lizard nightclub owner who can read the innermost thoughts of karaoke singers, and turned it into perhaps the most memorable character of the series (aside from Angel). The show never feared being silly either. As time went on, David Boreanis's comic timing improved and the writers continued to push the envelope, culminating in the utter stroke of genius known as "Smile Time." But don't just leap ahead to "Smile Time." To truly appreciate it, you have to work up to it. Many Buffy characters were humanized on Angel and given greater backstories until they all become tragic characters: Darla, Drusilla, Spike, Wesley, and of course Angel himself. You learn what a bastard Angelus truly was and how he ruined the lives of everyone he touched. "Angel" also introduces a new Big Bad -- the corporate firm of Wolfram & Hart, which made for plenty of good storylines. My sole complaint about the show is the storyline about Angel's son, Connor. Part of it was that Vincent Kartheiser was so annoying as the character (so irritating that I almost didn't watch Mad Men when I learned he was part of the cast), but the plot was poorly written and handled. The writers managed to turn it into lemonade by the final episode, but still ... Speaking of the final episode ... frustrating as hell. But it will never be forgotten. Angel's story is concluded in a canonical comic book. It's not the same, but better than nothing I suppose. The longer I think about this, the more "Buffy" seems as flat as a storyboard compared to Angel. He wasn't just the vampire with a soul. He was the vampire with a heart.

Maybe my perspective is jaded from watching too much Investigation Discovery. Lorna just didn't seem all that menacing or toxic. I would like to have heard more about the explosive device and how all that went down.

A much belated LOL @ this! I don't have any money, darlin', but canna pay you in Irish Spring?

I see it differently. Yoga's crime lacked intent. It was an accident. Granted, she was drunk and thus held responsible, although the same mistake might have been made had she been sober. Either way, she never intended for it to happen. Not only that, but Morello would be the immediate suspect. All it would take is a phone call to the prison to corroborate her whereabouts on the afternoon in question. Also, wouldn't the prison van have a GPS on it?

I guess I didn't get a real sense of menace from Morello, at any point. Usually when an offender is in court, the wardrobe is subdued, the demeanor impassive. But there was Morello, all dolled up, smiling, downplaying every charge. I couldn't take it seriously (and maybe we aren't meant to, this being a dramedy). She didn't do any terrible harm at the house either. When she found the wedding dress, I half expected her to urinate on it. Instead she took a bubble bath. It was Stalker Lite, enough to add a shade of criminality to the character, but not enough to alienate my affection for her. YMMV.

I like Morello, but the show did a disservice to victims of stalkers everywhere when it portrayed her as a hopeless romantic with a broken heart. I understand that it plays funnier to see her trying on the veil, taking a bubble bath, etc., but it glossed right over the words "explosive device" without any explanation. Plus it was a pretty sexist treatment of this crime. Picture a male prisoner with homicidal tendencies breaking into a woman's home, going through her clothes and other personal belongings. Suddenly not as romantic.

No one was ever burned for witchcraft at Salem, or, to the best of my knowledge, in America. Another example of this series playing fast and loose with history. Even captured Indians were not burned alive during King Philip's War (1675-1676), a bloody drama in which Increase Mather played no small part. Slaves were burned at the stake in New York City during the Negro Conspiracy of 1741.

I finished episode 4 feeling no impulse to watch episode 5. The Piper/Alex conflict, the Piper/Red conflict, the Piper/Larry conflict, the Piper/Pennsatucky conflict -- all gone. What's left? An hour of vagina humor? And the other Vee? That ain't cutting it. It's like going to a restaurant and finding all the best dishes have been removed from the menu. The Larry interludes only make it worse.

Did anyone else get a sense that Taryn Manning's lines were looped in, especially the scene in Healey's office? I wonder if the teeth prosthesis made it difficult for her to speak.

Is it possible Daya will be transferred to another prison? Hers is the weakest and least sympathetic storyline in the series. The only point of her being in this episode was for scat humor -- and it wasn't even humorous. The guard she hooked up with is every bit as uninteresting. The actress who plays Tiffany Doggett deserves an Emmy. I despise the character, but she pulls it off seamlessly. I almost freeze-framed the teeth when she smiled in the van, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

A few chuckles. Mostly meh. It's amazing how easily one can deflect potentially hostile prison confrontations with poker-faced sarcasm and snappy one-liners. Really didn't like the little Piper flashbacks. Running the gauntlet of the new cellmates felt so last season. The cockroach bit was overplayed. Sorry to hear Alex will be absent for much of this season. I think I felt as excited as Piper when she glimpsed her from across the yard. Alex is a far more interesting character. It was nice to hear Larry's father refer to him as "a half-wit." Honesty is always appreciated.

What's most frustrating about the Harrises and Elliott is that they fuck up again and again, yet are granted seemingly unlimited chances to get it right -- not because they've earned or deserve it, but because Discovery hopes it can make a buck off of them. Real life isn't like that. Any person who's worked to keep a roof over their head knows fucking up on the job can be fatal. Maybe if you're lucky, somebody gives you a second chance. But it's rare. Especially when it comes to substance abuse. It's even more infuriating to watch these guys try to spin the situation whenever they're on camera, making it seem like they're working class heroes, real comeback kids who've beaten the odds and are entitled to the spotlight. If Discovery wasn't exploiting them and their problems, they'd probably be in the gutter or in jail.

I want her, I need her, can I get her too?

Quite a contrast with the likes of Elliott, eh? "I only smoked heroin twice in the last two months!" I don't understand the Saga crew's complacency. They missed Bairdi season for no other reason than Elliott's selfishness. Yeah, yeah, he's an addict. But it seems to me that he CHOSE to go on that bender. Because he had been working pretty steadily until he got served and then, instead of being an adult, he made the conscious decision to leave the boat and hit the bars. Now those guys are marooned in Dutch. No work means no pay. Elliott's father put things in blunt perspective when he said, "You always hear about the big catch, you never hear about the guys who don't eat." Or something like that. Maybe it was just the edit, but the Saga crew doesn't even seem angry. . THIS.

I Dream of Jeannie? Really? LOL I grew up watching I Dream of Jeannie in daily reruns on UHF stations after school. I don't remember specific episodes, but I do recall thinking that Dr. Bellows made a wonderful straight man (in the comedy sense). Any show featuring a house- (or bottle-) bound woman who calls a man "master" would never make it today. Hard to believe that beautiful Barbara Eden is 82 years old now.

I've never watched Glee. I have seen the promos though.

Larry's attitude towards Piper's plight is epitomized in his last phone conversation with her, when he says something like "Who wants to kill you this time?" as if she's one of those dysfunctional types who can't get along with people at the office. You get almost no sense from him that she's really and truly in prison. Instead, it's as if they're participants in a high-end role-playing game. But I accuse the show itself of the same offense. Litchfield doesn't seem very genuine. The inmates rarely seem to suffer true hardships, just a whole lot of inconvenience.

Maybe it's just me, but the trailer for the new season looked more like a promo for Glee than a show about prison life.

The real culprit in the Salem trials was the admission of spectral evidence, which gave the "afflicted" girls all the ammunition they needed to send 19 people to their deaths. Spectral evidence ruled admissible by William Stoughton. But Cotton Mather advocated for it. Mather cautioned that spectral evidence alone wasn't sufficient to convict, but let's face it, that's pretty much what happened. I'd be hard-pressed (apologies to Giles Corey) to use the word benign when referring to Cotton Mather. The actor who plays Mather does a good job with the role (wasn't he on Fringe?) and like you, I am enjoying his friendship-of-circumstance with John Alden. Flawed characters are always more interesting. The two of them are not without sin, but those they fight are far worse.

He's a real prince. The twitter feed is completely sanitized except for ass-kissing praise and this gem from Elliott:

Finally this show starts to catch fire! Took long enough. I could have done without the zombie interlude. Really enjoyed the taunting by witch Rose. Cotton Mather must be rolling in his grave at this portrayal. I tend to cringe at the practice of taking artistic license with historical figures, particularly when unflattering proclivities are attributed to them without a molecule of historical foundation -- i.e., Mather's consorting with whores, drunkenness, etc. I'd have less of a problem if people had a firmer grasp of the historical Mather -- for example, everybody knows Abraham Lincoln wasn't really a vampire hunter -- but most folks today don't give a shit about actual history. They won't know and won't care to check whether the historical Mather was anything like his "Salem" counterpart. They'll just accept it as truth.

Elliott's twitter feed was brimming with salty language the day after the broadcast, a lot of it coming from Elliott himself, who was the recipient of tweets like "Man up, you p***y!" It was later scrubbed, with a woman named Shannon answering in Elliott's stead. Maybe she'll take over as captain of the Saga, too.

My bad. Even so, losing someone you're that close to is usually devastating, engaged or not.