DRW50

Sounds like fun.

RTD ruined Torchwood for me with Children of Earth...not interested in seeing any of those characters again.

@Soapsuds

I read through the Feinstein article. I'm glad they at least took time to try to have an interview with her, which made the piece less heartless than most of the hellish Nation/Jacobin op-eds tend to be. Speaking of hellish, this man is among the worst of humanity so I am not surprised he's on the comeback trail.

More warring and toxicity at the Washington Post. A lot of right wing figures like Greenwald and Jesse Singal are rallying around Weigel, likely due to him always trying to carve out a dudebro lane on Twitter that tends to defend or turn a blind eye toward that circle jerk. It should be easy to say don't use your official account to shitpost and try to avoid the realities of aging, but instead it has to become an oasis of martyrdom. Meanwhile, the New York Times, at a time when they know the GOP is pushing to limit or ban divorce, pushes op-eds trying to shame and guilt people into staying in unhappy marriages. Oh and the woman writing this is a member of a virulently anti-gay breakaway Anglican church.

I think it would have been a mistake recasting Mike, especially with the shaky recast of Ed not long before, but I am sorry we didn't get a Mike/Alex pairing. That could have provided so many layers and so much family drama, especially if Hope returned. Alex ended up feeling much more aged than she should have been, between the pairing with Warren (who always seems very gay to me), then HB, and all the obsessive focus on Lujack and later Simon.

@Vee You'll definitely be getting a lot of Lisa singing in future. It works very well as Ciji - there's one coming up that closes out an episode which is one of my favorite Knots scenes (it's not the more famous scene along these lines). I never knew that about Dunne either. It's a shame Melrose ended up having such a poor ending. I need to revisit some of that season and see if I can get over the visual of Rena trying to play nutty in a cheerleading uniform.

@Vee I'm very happy you are still doing these, especially as they have little details I'd long forgotten (like Rusty returning). I grow to loathe Mack around season 9 and that never fully goes away, but he was very important to allowing both Karen and Knots to grow into a more confident place at this point, and the show really needed his energy. He and Michele clicked instantly and Knots wisely did not do what a lot of shows did and set him up as a heavy antagonist before telling us to like him. Regarding your thoughts on Richard and the community, especially Karen, I think where Richard benefited is that he was easy to understand. A go-getter who went bust, someone to pity, someone to take under their wing. Karen liked that because it made her feel good and she could help someone who needed help and would be clearly appreciative of that help. Laura was more complicated, much more guarded, and complexity is something a lot of people do not have time for. Laura tends to be "othered" for much of her time on the show, drawn more toward other damaged people than the designated heroines, which is one of the more realistic elements of Knots for me, and why I think the show loses a lot of its soul without her.

It's difficult for me to articulate, but the main difference for me in the first two seasons and afterwards is the couple-centric format. The women in the first two seasons are strong and relatively complex in the definition of their marriages and traditional family structures. Starting with season 3 the tables are turned with a female narrative becoming more prominent, and male characters (like Gary, and later, Ben and Mack) tending to be most compelling or active in story when defined through the women in their lives. KL tries, repeatedly, to bring in more dynamic male characters who have more of their own narrative, but the only one who ever really takes is Greg Sumner.

@Vee So glad you have stayed with the show through writing up these key episodes. I'm thrilled you liked Silver Shadows. Night is one of KL's best and is only enhanced by your thoughts. I hadn't thought about the contrast between this episode and the hostage episode until you brought it up, and how much more female-centric the narrative became between the two seasons. I feel like it's the difference between KL being strung along through melodramatic cliches and KL having character-driven drama. The late '80s has another nigh-based episode that is also very plot-driven melodrama (no spoilers), which just makes this period of the show even more special.

Scanned through this just now. By this point I was no longer watching Rosie's talk show on a daily basis as she was utterly exhausting, so I have no real memory of this episode. It's a full leadup to her interview with Barbra, talking about her lifelong devotion to Barbra, family memories, going around getting beauty treatments in preparation of the interview, etc. The interview is not in this episode, but is on Youtube.

Watching the opening credits and I still don't get Robin Sachs as Adam. He looks more like Odo.

Someone put this up. I think this may have been on Youtube before but I don't see it now. Not sure of the date, beyond January or very early February.

https://abc7.com/brad-johnson-actor-obituary-melrose-place/11923142/

Oh this isn't a pro-Oz post, he's absolutely a quack, but the media loves him, and loves Trump, so I will be surprised if he isn't all over TV giving his opinion on Fetterman's medical history.

Dave Weigel yet again trying to show us what an edgy edgy boy he is (he's 40 years old - not age-shaming, as I'm around there too, but I am not working at a "prestigious" paper which should mean some basic level of pulling back your endless shitposting) and then backtracking.

Was not expecting this. Kudos to Guy Pearce for being willing to return, and to Jason Herbison for thinking to ask him. https://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/neighbours/a40190862/neighbours-finale-guy-pearce-mike-young/

And he is likely running against a doctor who can easily use all this against him, with expertise no less. I hope all the people on the left who insisted Fetterman was the ideal candidate against Oz can help with a strategy session - oh wait, they want to lose, it makes them feel special. Never mind.

@Vee I haven't watched the episode yet, but the bits I've seen leading up are pure propaganda - characters going on about "Her Majesty" and how "family means everything" to her, and a very pointed choice to remove the portrait of Lady Di in the Queen Vic (the landlady is or until now was a huge fan of Diana's) replaced with one of HRH. It's obvious that the BBC, which is so cowed by the Tories at this point, mandated all of this.

I sound contrarian but I find myself far away from the opinions of many devoted fans, I'm sure. I skimmed a bit on Youtube just now but most of my opinion is from 15 or so years ago. I will say as an Abby fan I think it's a very important episode in keeping her as a nuanced figure, even if some might say it is not part of her overall narrative (and I don't turn a blind eye to thin material just because it has Abby in it - most of her material is dull as hell). I'm always glad to hear your thoughts on the incredibly compelling Richard/Laura relationship (Laura always has the most compelling relationships on the show, even if I think this hurt her in the end because it's much easier to watch or enjoy - or write - more cookie cutter material like what you increasingly get with Karen and Valene). It was around this time when I was finding my way into the show that I immediately connected with Laura...somewhere around this period is when we hear her talking about her mother and such. I do wonder if, as said above, Laura had a certain appeal to gay men, for a number of reasons - chief among them her never truly feeling like she belonged, no matter how much her financial or marital situation rose and fell. I like the Cricket story in that it calls back to Val and Lucy, something which should have been important to Val's narrative the whole time she was on Knots, but it's much closer to a generic early '80s plot, something you could find on Incredible Hulk or Little House with a few changes. Don Stroud I mostly just remember as being one of the first male celebs to pose naked in Playgirl. I just loved Stephen Macht's work on Knots and I wish he could have stayed much longer. Karen could have used him back in her life a few times to help puncture a certain bubble around the Fairgate house and her storylines and position on the show as the years passed.