Vee

This is going a lot better than June. The moderators have been excellent so far. Linsey Davis beautifully called Trump's insane abortion answer (about executing the babies) a lie and threw immediately to Harris. Harris' abortion answer was flawless and she is handling him perfectly on the splitscreen. He lost his cool early and has remained on defense. She even hit him about the rallies in the middle of an immigration answer! This is going very well so far. Her smiles and laughter are driving him insane.

Sure, but which people?

The right wing echo chamber doesn't move new votes though. Otherwise it wouldn't be so close. I would argue the only thing that has had a new impact is the press whining and demanding she answer more questions and claiming she is some unknowable enigma. That can be rectified. But Walz and the convention were unqualified successes. The CNN interview didn't go in one direction or the other AFAIC, though it easily could've.

She struggled mightily against a very messy writing situation in her time at AMC, but she was always very good.

But none of those were successfully spun as failures.

Not too surprised. Jen Landon was too good to be true. Alexa is talented so I am alright with it.

Oh, I know. But she's far from the first or last NY star to slowly fall from grace, turn more to the right and gradually become marginalized. That is her current trajectory.

I didn't even bother tbh. She's gonna be on Newsmax in 5-10 years.

Speaking of James Earl Jones, he passed away today.

The GOAT:

Cameron was treated poorly by Joss and the character was not a priority for the writers. But William Lipton is not Cameron. Lipton had a lovely time at the show by all accounts and has no ill will.

William Lipton has an Amazon show. He's not coming back right now.

Because it's always been a tight race and because Harris has more work to do. She only got hard launched in July, which is unprecedented for any general election, ever. The fact that she's this competitive is remarkable. I happen to think she can break away from Trump and I happen to think it may not end up being close, but she's got more to do, particularly in the debate.

One point is not a surge.

Taniel is right about Cohn's sneering narrative-setting piece which insists that Trump is not only the 'change candidate' but the 'political center.' I'd forgotten how much Cohn shrugged off voter suppression and cheered on the imaginary red wave in 2022.

I still don't understand why they brought Mark back over and over on Dallas. They'd just done a long, tedious season story in which Pam does a wild goose chase around the globe looking for Mark and finally determining he is in fact dead after all, then the dream season kicks in and Peter Dunne and co. bring Mark back for real immediately on the heels of Bobby's death. The character doesn't work for me. I suppose they felt pressed to bring in a man, any man for Pam. I've been viewing the dream season with Dunne's KL team moving to Dallas concurrently with some of the Dallas hands moving to KL Season 7, and the contrasts are striking.

I think making the audience wait a year for Karen to have a serious romantic partner was right. You saw every step of her journey including false starts with other men before she finally let Sid go. My issues with S3's middle third are less to do with her family's story (except for some of the Diana eps lol) and more to do with other stuff that was standalone or felt circular. I do love how they very deliberately make you think 'Sid's risky operation' is another standard episodic TV setup a la Val in S2, and that he's out of the woods before then, only for him to die on the table very quickly.