Vee

You guys have got to stop taking extremely obvious bait.

Slightly longer version. And a lovely story from Millie Gibson about getting advice from Karen Gillan, Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill.

Credit where it is due to Kasie Hunt: She runs him down in this thread. Embeds are failing, so I would post more about the WP buyout/layoffs and James Bennet's latest, insanely long screed in The Economist about how emotional liberals are to blame for him being fired from the Times over that infamous Tom Cotton op-ed, but I'll wait.

Another fun clip from the Christmas special:

Deadwood is one of my all-time shows. Looking back at NYPD Blue recently on Prime too it's astonishing what they were allowed to get away with just in terms of visual style and tone on network TV, at least in the early years. But of course that also came out of what I've seen of Hill Street Blues. I've only seen a little of the early stuff but it was my father's favorite.

The latest Blue Peter winner goes BTS at Doctor Who. Her name: Verity.

Sorry about the paywall - none came up for me so I linked it directly.

Since we no longer have the status feed after a now-banned member used it as their burn book and I didn't know where else to put this, I thought this old thread might be appropriate for this piece about David Milch, writing his last screenplay with Alzheimer's.

Back in February with an hour-long premiere!

Another for @DRW50, from the commentary for "The Giggle" only available in the UK:

It is interesting to me how much the end of The Giggle and the conclusion with Fifteen urging Fourteen to seek help and settle down, 'do rehab' (which makes Fifteen the more contented and stable character he is - he is the future product of that Earthbound rehab) connects with the Tales of the TARDIS shorts. Particularly RTD's - he wrote the specials but also the (very good) Five/Tegan Tales short in which they discuss the events of Earthshock. In that short, Tegan says many of the things Donna says to Fourteen in the specials; that he never stops running, never takes care of his mental and emotional health after the traumas they suffered. The aged Five then suggests that perhaps the memory TARDIS they find themselves in is a form of therapy, something Fifteen tells Fourteen to get. From what we've been told since the last special, the aged Doctors in the Tales shorts are almost certainly their bi-generated selves from the alternate, split timelines created retroactively by the events of The Giggle - I believe either Colin's or McCoy's confirms this in their short, that they are from AUs where they never regenerate. What I'm curious about now is if we will see the memory TARDIS from Tales in future episodes of the main show. It's obviously a setup and an ethos that RTD has some investment in. As for Fourteen, I hope he is relegated to rare, perhaps feature-length specials in series hiatus periods, preferably 3-5 years apart. I've enjoyed the iteration but less is more.

What Wikipedia claims (and what wouldn't surprise me is true) is that Frons himself and Frank Valentini ghostwrote a week or two of material between Malone and Higley. I do remember claims at the time that Dena and Frank had rewritten portions of the Santi story climax on the fly - Cristian had returned from the dead brainwashed by Tico to kill Governor Brooks (who Kevin was running as Lieutenant Governor with) on Election Night, and so on. I think all that Manchurian Candidate stuff was Malone, but some of the latter half (and the subsequent stupid reveal-upon-reveal that Cristian was an 'imposter', only to turn out not to be an imposter, and Cris shooting Tico instead I think and his mysterious death in the hospital) was Higley. There is a precedent for this - JFP, who was the apple of Angela Shapiro's eye, went without a HW for most of 1999 before being forced to hire future bestie Megan McTavish. And here's the Storm of Change promo I still remember (and was so excited for): Malone and Griffith had apparently been ghostwriting on the show in January and possibly parts of December '02. It showed - the scripts and acting (specifically, Roger Howarth, who'd been phoning it in for years but brought it big time in scenes in which Todd learned Mitch had raped Viki) leveled up tremendously. Frankly a lot of that ghost month was better than what came later. And meanwhile, Howarth has later revealed he took the nearest exit right around this time when learning about a future story - the tale of this from that podcast we've recently brought up is, I think, muddled by the show's soap-unfamiliar host and confused with rumors from the '90s about Todd and Marty. But the rumor at the time, in '03-'04, was that Howarth left over the "Rashomon"-style 'was it rape?' story planned for Todd and Blair, the story that played out at the end of 2003 instead with Trevor St. John. And based on Howarth's recent comments about a friend passing him the number of the EP at ATWT when he was stressed about continuing at OLTL, I believe it.

It's all worked out!

No. That was the "Storm of Change," which was the big event ushering Malone and Griffith back, when ABC heavily promoted at the time as the star writers of the '90s returning. It was in February of 2003. During those weeks Nora walked in on Troy and Lindsay together and dumped him, Joey returned amidst the blizzard, Flash/Sarah hit town, Mitch kidnapped Natalie and Jessica and tried to force Viki to choose which one of them would get undead Victor's heart, etc. I was very excited for it but after the first week or so (which had Nora's great confrontation with Troy, and one of the kinkiest love scenes in soap history with Troy and Lindsay) it became quite a mess - Victor turning up alive, etc. Dena didn't arrive til late 2004, when Malone was fired. And by late I mean late November-December - the last of Malone's work aired somewhere in the November sweeps period IIRC with an assassination attempt at Governor Harrison Brooks, and it was Higley whose big brainchild pitch (Tess) I think may have killed Tico Santi. I think Higley also had a hand in some rewrites to that election climax.

That was always my preferred scenario, and still is. Though at this point he'd really be more of a community activist in the same ways as Andrew with maybe a dark past re: why he left the collar behind, which we were never privy to.

I have already waxed wistful about BMH's curate Joey many times. I think I am one of the dozen people in America who enjoyed that iteration of the character. It was Malone's obvious attempt to give Andrew Carpenter a heir apparent (right down to his forbidden lusts for married women), and it fit Joey's character background. It just was poorly plotted and given the worst possible romantic partners.

See, I liked it when they did that on AMC 2.0 because (and people will laugh, but hey) Rob Wilson's Pete had some of James Mitchell's imperious coldness when he got angry or was stymied in business. Physically he was a beautiful package and a fantasy prince for Celia Fitzgerald, but he had a darkness underneath that could be riled when someone didn't help fulfill his dot-com dreams. Further, they made it a story point that he used to be a four-eyed geek played by two almost certainly gay actors previously as a kid and teen on the network show - once she got him into bed, Colby Chandler needled him about being the nerd who'd had a crush on her when they were both played by different people. It gave the hunkier Pete an air of overcompensation. I don't mind the transformations when they are acknowledged. YMMV. Once again, wildly OT as an excuse to talk about the Hulu soaps!

Llanview's own on Andre Braugher: More from the cast of Brooklyn Nine Nine here.

Always nice to see more obvious bait.

I don't mind the idea, and I do think it's plausible he would change to be a contrast to them as an adult. But seeing as you have a lot of fans or critics including I think Levine speaking out against it lately, I do think Khan's idea is pretty good. Psychiatry has changed a fair bit since Frasier's heyday.

The scene I remember on YT was talked about in here a while back - it was a pretty melancholy, frankly depressing scene where Ed and Carla were in a restaurant talking about how their renewed romance hadn't really worked out, that they were going through the motions together and that she was taking the judgeship in AZ with Sadie. He wished her well. I do think Dorian was there, IIRC. I don't know if there was one with Sadie too, but it wouldn't surprise me. I don't know if it was said when Ed left that he had decided to reunite with Carla and join her and Sadie in Arizona. I've heard that before but it's not anything I can verify.

Holly said why she didn't attend in her book. It's been a couple days. Not verifiable. But regardless, this is all just another attempt by one blocked troll (not JoeCool) to stir up drama by grabbing at any hot button topic or controversial actor they can. They go from thread to thread hoping people will bite. They're also misquoting Jeff Giles' book; Erika has only addressed the claim re: her quote in the soap mags in the '80s about the show no longer having 'have-nots', and she did so in her fan newsletter, not Llanview in the Afternoon.

I think the suggestion I've seen had more to do with it purely surviving more easily on the network vs. any creative element. I agree it sounds like weak tea material. This whole angle reminds me of nothing less than the last two Indiana Jones sequels, if you'll pardon a tortured parallel. By the time Indy 4 came around in the 2000s, Denholm Elliott (who'd played Marcus Brody in the first and third films) was dead and Sean Connery was either not interested or well enough to return. John Rhys-Davies, for some reason, did not appear in that one. So what was their solution? Add not one but two new 'longtime friends of Indiana Jones': John Hurt and Ray Winstone! They stuck out like sore thumbs to me, obvious replacements. Same thing happens in the unfortunate Indy 5 recently: Antonio Banderas turns up for a few scenes to do very little except pretend to be a buddy of Indy, and the relationship with Toby Jones' character feels equally like a replacement for Marcus Brody. Anyway, this is all a longwinded discussion of Indiana Jones when I could've simply said: I hate when shows or movies do this with replacement characters years later. The character should be more unique if it's taking the place of another.

Really?? That's malpractice, same with Knots and Millennium among others. I do remember the early episodes and the movie, which I really liked.

Didn't they fire Nathan Varni years ago? I could've sworn.