SeanC

Schafer is such a talent. From Levinson's interviews, parts of these specials involve plot developments that would have happened in Season 2 -- in this case, obviously, bringing Jules back home, and presumably the revelations about her mother.

Randy Oglesby was a regular guest actor on a lot of shows I watched in the 1990s and 2000s, but it feels like I hadn't seen him in a while, so it was cool to recognize him as the doctor.

He's not likely to be a World medalist at this point, but Jason does pretty well for himself; he won silver at a hotly contested Four Continents event just last year. Skate Canada Challenge was happening as well this weekend (busy busy). This program gave me so much joy (I do love good junior dance): A number of senior Gadbois teams also showed up with quirky or weird programs too, including Fournier Beaudry & Sorensen's first competition in a year and a half. For things other than dance, Roman Sadovsky had what is probably his best short program ever: And, thank God, a really good winning ladies' free skate:

Cassie was severely depressed. But she wasn't deliberately intending to die, I don't believe -- she just knew that was a possibility and had a fallback plan.

Ken was solid. There's just an inherent weirdness to seeing anybody other than Trebek in this role.

Well, at least after this episode the servants aren't going to have to clean up the Duke's ejaculate from various and sundry locations on the grounds and furniture.

"See you next week." In a better world, perhaps. It was hard to really enjoy the game, under the circumstances.

The custom applied to princes on the continent as well. At most you could marry morganatically, which did not make the bride a princess or bring any succession rights.

In the British peerage the order from highest to lowest is: 1. Duke (Duchess) 2. Marquess (Marchioness) 3. Earl (Countess) 4. Viscount (Viscountess) 5. Baron (Baroness) Barons were most likely to be introduced as “Lord”; for the higher ranks you’d be more likely to specify the title, though this wasn’t universal by any means.

Anybody not of royal title is a commoner in one usage (see, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and Lady Diana Spencer, both daughters of earls, but considered to be commoners who married into the House of Windsor). Of course, in another sense it’s silly to use that term to describe members of the aristocracy.

Not that this sort of media is concerned with historical accuracy (or needs to be), but for the record, a prince of the blood would not even be allowed to marry Daphne, let alone being pushed toward it by the queen. Daphne is a commoner -- a rich commoner, to be sure, but a commoner nonetheless. In fact, the real Queen Charlotte had multiple brothers-in-law or sons who attempted to marry into aristocratic families and whose wives were either never received at court or (after the Royal Marriages Act was passed; the law that would later give Princess Margaret so much trouble) whose marriages were legally invalid for lack of royal permission. From the late 17th century through the beginning of the 20th century if you were of princely rank you couldn't marry anyone who wasn't also royalty.

I thought this was excellent. Probably my favourite film of the year thus far (the Twitter thread linked in comments from a year ago seriously misinterprets the film, in my opinion). The only scene I thought didn't really work was, ironically, the scene with Alfred Molina's repentant lawyer. Compared to the excellent depictions of self-justifying guys elsewhere in the film, I didn't find the way that Molina's change of heart was written to be compelling.

They’d have to pay ABC for it. Whereas here they’re using footage they already own. The older competitions are also in much lower video quality than modern TV is accustomed to, which may also have been a factor.

She had COVID-19 less than a month ago, so unfortunately this was another season where health problems derailed her at the worst possible time. Fourth place at Japanese nationals was Rino Matsuike, the bronze medalist from NHK Trophy earlier this season (as well as the junior national champion). This kid is going places; she has a 3S-3T-2T as her penultimate element.

This was a big old swing for the fences, but it was mostly a miss for me, unfortunately. The movie has a whole bunch of ideas, but on a basic level it's kind of incoherent -- for instance, thematically it's trying to position Lord and the wishing stone (or whatever) as representing lies versus Diana's trusty embodiment of truth, but a monkey's paw isn't a lie; every wish Lord grants becomes "true", whatever that can be said to mean. There's no thematic contrast between these things, however much the movie tries to spin it as if there is. Much as I like Chris Pine, but I thought from the beginning that bringing him back was a mistake, and nothing in this sequel changed my mind about it, because it renders the whole movie backward-looking (and even if the whole point is supposed to be that Diana should stop doing that, we've already been on that emotional journey with this character). I don't think this sequel really takes Diana's character anywhere new, in favour of recycling through the character dynamic from the first film. Also, a lot of the special effects in this are...bad. Weirdly bad, honestly.