cali1981

So many comments about the quality of last night's show. It was so well constructed and so tightly written that every piece of the story fell precisely into place. Trai's performance showing Andre rapidly decompensating from the elevator to the boardroom was amazing, especially if he winged parts of it. TPH is so damn funny at times that you have to pay close attention to the throwaway lines. I've like seeing the now mature Judd Nelson as Barretti. The role fits him well. I loved the final rendition of You're So Beautiful and was rather surprised and impressed by Terence Howard's singing. It was really quite good and the whole scene just felt so right. When the show goes on break, it's gonna be too long a wait until it returns.

Nia appears to be a highly intelligent and very articulate young lady. Holly, you are doing your daughter no favors by pursuing this delusional goal of "stardom". Nia will indeed be a star but it will in a future and profession worthy of her abilities which look to be considerable. As soon as your contract lapses run away from this nonsense as quickly as you can and put Nia on her own glide path to true success in life.

I didn't realize that Paul Starks, who plays Tom Yates, was Mickey Doyle in Boardwalk Empire. He was one of the most idiosyncratic characters on that series and had that bizarre little panting laugh after a lot of sentences. Quite a transition for Starks. I did see Kim Dickens (Kate Baldwin) recently in Gone Girls where she played the investigating detective and was excellent as was the entire movie.

I recall that Rachel, even as a hooker, was heavily involved with Congressman Peter Russo and knew a lot about him and his various foibles. You remember Old Pete and how Francis faked his death by carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage but actually did kill him. Didn't Doug get close to Rachel because she represented a dire threat to his boss. He did become obsessed with the girl which probably saved her the first time around. Even after she nearly killed Doug in the woods that night, I'd always felt that his constant search for her had more to do with her threat potential than it did personal vengeance. He also told Frank earlier that she had been taken care of and now that he was back on the payroll he had more incentive than ever to see to that. I actually thought that his feelings for Rachel spared her again and when I saw the van approaching her at first I thought that Doug was going to take her into town but then thought that she was going to get run down like V did in Orange is the New Black. It was still a bit of a shock when in the next scene you saw her head being covered with dirt. Doug could not afford to fail another loyalty test so in the end, Rachel/Cassie had to go.

I thought that parts of the show were laugh out loud funny. Sweeney's wife ( the always great Laura Benanti) getting hot and practically salivating at hubby's explicit sexual references was hilarious. Dylan Baker is absolutely brilliant playing this wonderfully deviant creep. He is an actor who is always in demand and always works but I'll bet that he has a blast playing this role. I've really like David Hyde Pierce on the show as well. He brings a quiet gravity to Frank Prady. As far as Eli not being present, fine by me. The character has become so grating and cartoon like that sometimes it's a relief when he's not around. No reflection on Alan Cumming, a great talent but thems the lines he has to read. I love Sarah Steele as Eli's daughter Marissa. Her acting is first rate and Marissa is constantly interesting. Until last night, I had forgotten that Marissa had served three years with the Israeli IDF.

Same here. Having watched the show since its brilliant pilot, then through the first three great seasons and now through the long and painful decline. it's almost obligatory to see how at all ends. I have around 150 video clips of what I've thought were the best musical performances through the seasons (along with a few of the better dramatic scenes : Santana professing her love for Brittany, FInn and Rachel: She loves me, she loves me not and Puck and Quinn: Stay). I've added some from this season and will finish it out at some point. The music has always been the prime attraction for me. When the cast covers a song, in many cases they do it as well or better than the original artist and over the seasons for every miss there have been many more home runs and even grand slams. Listening to Lea, Amber and yes, even Jenna on the rare occasions that they actually let her sing has, for the most part, been a joy. Amber is a great singer and as for Lea, when Ryan Murphy called her a "once in a generation voice", he may not have been too far off. So many of her performances have been flat out brilliant (Being Good isn't Good Enough immediately comes to mind) that even in badly written and/or acted episodes, once that kid opens her mouth and lets it rip, for those brief moments, nothing else matters. So we all soldier on until the show comes to it's overdue demise and can only hope that RM and his cohorts don't bollix it up too badly.

In Myron's pants!

It's gonna be a lot of fun watching Marty and his once again partner try to sink Ellis' company's stock into the toilet. Whatever Marty is, Ellis is an ego-maniacal sleaze bag and I can't wait to watch him making the panicked, whiny calls to Kahn and Associates. Maybe he'll punch Monica in the nose also since she seems to be behind the "don't pay Marty what you agreed to" move. Might be nice to see the beyotch get smacked twice.

When you read everyone's take on the various characters in the series, it makes you respect and admire the writers and the show runners more and more. The world that they have created is populated by interesting, complex, three dimensional human beings, something that can be rare even on cable. The moves and counter moves every week sure keep us guessing and psychoanalyzing, don't they?

And just think about their parties. "Hi, we're John and Max. Welcome to our home and by the way, each of us is willing to bang every man jack and woman among you."

Vane ( who I like more and more) is delusional if he thinks that the the Royal Navy can't take Nassau by force if that's what it comes down to. Vane's history isn't clear so whether he ever served in Navy isn't known but Flint, who did, sure as hell knows it. There's no way that an "army" of undisciplined pirates could stand up to a large, professional fleet and its firepower. I kind of think that Flint may be a bit delusional as well if he thinks that Lord Ash will somehow agree to letting Nassau remain out of full British control, or even if he does, being able to convince His Majesty's Government to go along. I really enjoy Toby Schmitz portrayal of Jack Rackham. There's some real flair and wit to it and some of the best and funniest throwaway lines on the show. As others have said, there were a couple of gems last night.

This seemed like a filler episode so hopefully, with Tom's return, things will pick up again. I actually thought that Ressler made a pretty good argument against Lizzie's going to the cops and fessing up. He was right in his conviction that Lizzie's arrest would blow their entire operation sky high and that many lives might be lost as a result. It was sort of the Mr. Spock (RIP Leonard Nimoy) mantra about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few or of the one in a perverted kind of way.

My bad on the payphone but the writers are clever enough to give up just enough information to lead to what you think is a conclusion but not enough to be certain. They have given themselves a whole bunch of Pandora's Boxes to open next season. It must be a real high writing this kind of wild stuff and seeing it make it to the air.

This show is freaking brilliant! Look at what the writers accomplished last night. There were things that seemed apparent but then when you look more closely and you read all of the speculation here and I'm sure on other forums, you realize that any of it is possible. On the surface it sure looked like Sam called Frank to tell him to send Lila to oblivion but as others have pointed out, why would Sam have to identify himself. His name would have displayed on Frank's cell phone. All that we know is that Frank did kill Lila but at whose request/order isn't entirely clear. We seem to have a Rebecca who has, in the words of John Cleese in the famous dead parrot skit, "ceased to be". Did Frank kill her? Maybe not since he asked Annalise "what do we do now" implying that he found her in her current state. Frank is kind of a poor man's Ray Donovan, a "fixer" who solves problems for the Keatings (although Annalise may not know that Frank does his thing for Sam too). His back story is probably a gold mine for the writers. An even greater mother lode is Bonnie. She may be the most fascinating character in the play. She clearly has some very deep and probably bizarre history with Annalise and may have been shtupping Sam on the side as well. Liza Weil plays her to perfection. There be a lot of secrets there and the writers can pry them loose one by one over time. Laurel and Connor are sociopaths. Asher is a putz. Wes is, well who knows what Wes is and Machela is whiny and perpetually annoying. As far as the Grande Dame herself goes, watching Viola Davis chew up the scenery every week is one of the great treats on the tube. This may be the best assortment of broken and entirely unlikeable characters to ever appear on one TV show. Gotta love it!

Maybe, maybe not but for once you got to see Chloe with a real choreographer who cared about her and wanted her to be as good as she could be. He was completely supportive of the kid and was able to have his assistant demonstrate how he wanted certain movements done. This fairly tale about Abby Lee Miller being a great choreographer is sheer nonsense and is proven time and time again when you see true professional choreographers ply their trade.

I agree with all of you about Kalani. She is turning into a real beauty and Kira may have to lock her in the basement pretty soon because them boys are gonna come a calliing. It was obvious that Kalani and Sarah really are close and love to dance together in spite of whatever real or staged nonsense goes on between their idiot mothers. I thought that the two girls looked very good in their routine. Jill is a moral coward who talks a good game where Abby is concerned but can't back it up with real actions. Holly is right to put some distance between her and Jill and Melissa. Speaking of Melissa, it looks like she has one very pissed off pre-teen on her hands. Mackenzie seemed to be very upset at being yanked out of the video. Way to go Melissa. As usual, your younger child gets introduced to the wheels of the bus. As far as Boss Hogg is concerned, regardless of what is real or staged, does this woman not realize how badly she comes off every week. She is a vicious, manipulative, vindictive harpy whose primary mission in life seems to be to psychologically damage young girls as much as she can. When Sarah's mom said that her daughter wanted to be in ALDC because Abby is the bestest dance teacher in the whole wide world, I almost did a spit take. In what galaxy is that a fact?

A 14 year old? They have got to be kidding! This really doesn't cut it for me and can be a major handicap for the male Pro especially in the Latin dances.

The Duff? A bit beyond her age, eh? I'm surprised that Moron Melissa and Abby didn't have Maddie on the Red Carpet at the 50 Shades of Grey premiere!

That makes sense since Amber did win her season on Dancing with the Stars and a lot of the Latin dances are done wearing heels.

As idiotic as last night's show was, in it's favor was that it finally ended this terrible kidnapping story arc. However, since inquiring minds want to know, here's few questions/thoughts" - Uh, President " I can bang Olivia Pope whenever I want", you may have your sole reason for living back but you still have this little residual problem. You are engaged in an active ground war in a foreign country and have already suffered significant casualties. So how exactly are you going to worm your way out of this without being savaged by the families of those soldiers who died in your little 'no sacrifice is too great to get me laid" adventure. - Andrew was only the front man for what appears to be a vast conspiracy to possibly overthrow the government. This cabal includes the Secret Service, elements of the military, defense contractors who profit in wartime and a lot of the employees of the Executive Branch. What to do, what to do? I know. Since this is Shonda Land, we'll just not mention it again because we have no clue as to how to write our way out of this mess of a story line. - Why didn't Jake just cap Roman's evil ass? There has been nothing that Jake has wanted more than to see Roman taking a permanent dirt nap. Better than anyone, he knows that as long as Roman is alive, he is always a potential threat. - If Quinn buffs up anymore she may be able to enter the Mr. Universe contest. Good lord, she has bigger shoulders than I do!

What Mackenzie really needs is for Melissa to be beaten about the head with a 2x4 until she realizes that Mac should go back into public school, live a normal pre-teen's life and not have her head filled with false dreams of being a "pop" star or an upper echelon dancer. She does not have nearly enough talent to succeed as either. Mackenzie is a cute kid who seems to be not as cutthroat as her mother or as blindly ambitious as her sister. Get her away from this horror show before it's too late or her only childhood memories will be of her time on this insanity.

This can be best be compared to Claude Rains, as Capt. Renault in Casablanca, exclaiming in Rick's "I'm shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here". Is there anything that Melissa will not do to insert Maddie into any situation that gets her even the slightest degree of recognition? It's pathetic but the most pathetic is Holly who now sees Nia as having a brilliant career in show business. There are meds available for people with these kind of grandiose delusions. Holly should begin to use them. The whole audition scene was so scripted and phony that it was laughable. The only good thing about it was when MattyB's ( who just proves that having no talent is not an impediment to being a "star") father, after listening to Abby's line of BS just turned how back on her and walked away.

Absolutely! Truth be told, Morena is still one of the hottest women on TV and a lot of us would sit and watch her read the want ads. When she and Ben start macking, those two kids really put some oomph into their kisses. Sure it's acting but who wouldn't trade places with Ben in the locker room scene.

What was hilarious was when Olivia tried to "handle" the two hackers with another of her interminable self righteous soliloquies and the Asian kid set her ass straight with "I want the f-ing billion dollars". Oh snap!!

Yeah. Of all of the inane, idiotic things that happened last night, this one topped the charts because it was so outrageously offensive, It would be like, in 1962, the Cubans kidnapped Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy actually launched an invasion of Cuba to "save" her. I can see it now. In the charred ruins of the US, Russia and everywhere else after all of the nukes have been launched, somehow Jack Kennedy survives, comes up from White House bomb shelter, looks around and proclaims "Yeah but Marilyn was some piece of ass". This is pretty much President Fitz, letting the little head do the thinking for the big head. Just absurd.