Vee

Speaking of Bonnie Langford, another great short from the Blu-Ray range: @DRW50will enjoy the revisit to Paradise Towers.

From the "Well!" Department:

Peak Stein.

He didn't want it to begin with. I believe he got cornered into it.

I give it a year. Meanwhile:

I think Schumer may have wanted to get caught on the mic, to push GA turnout (which he is pumped up about here) more. I think the idea of a returning "red tsunami" is a Beltway champagne wish/caviar dream, and I think we will keep the Senate. But we'll see if they're right. I think nobody knows anything this year in particular.

I'm not convinced this hot mic moment was a mistake by Schumer.

Don't feed obvious trolls, Donna. You spam the board enough yourself.

Fantasy makeout session in which Trina imagines Spencer with her in bed instead of the cop, but still no actual shot of the two actors actually kissing? Okay, interesting!

Right - I 'd forgotten the original title. I didn't know that about Capricorn! The publisher's is a much better title tbh.

I thought you loved that first Capaldi season! Ah well. Apparently The Power of the Doctor was first written by Chibnall thinking he'd done a JNT and that the show might be gone for years and wrote it accordingly as a kind of finale, a la Survival at the end of the McCoy run (where I think they re-dubbed the end dialogue with a V.O. by Sylvester to give some kind of sendoff) - it wasn't til late in the game they learned RTD was back. Somehow I'm not surprised Chibnall very nearly took us back to the wilderness years.

@DRW50I'd never noticed this before (timestamped below), from the Series 8 finale. Apparently they did this after the cold open where Clara poses as the Doctor to fool the Cybermen - and to highlight the growing symbiosis between Clara and the Doctor. Those are her eyes, not Capaldi's.

A pretty good BTS special, with some lovely stuff for Sacha Dhawan (among others) in here as well. A

I haven't seen enough of the PA debate to make a call on how it actually went. As a person with a much more minor disability than what Fetterman's currently dealing with, all I'll say is that we're about to put the new online wisdom that 'debates don't matter' to the test. Not because I think Oz did well (he didn't) or Fetterman necessarily did so terribly, but because the Beltway media looks down on him more than they already do most Dems not only because of his current disability, but because they fear him and his infringing on what they consider the turf of the GOP - 'real Americans.' They resent the discourse changing, and he intimidates them. This is in no way full-throated endorsement of John Fetterman, who I've had a number of issues with (especially among his online stans, but that's not all his campaign). But if not for his stroke this race wouldn't even be a question at this point IMO. For the sake of the party, and to prove the Beltway wrong, I hope the new wisdom about debates being moot holds true re: the results and him taking a win. I suspect it does. Meanwhile, Jay Rosen finally is the one to say the quiet part loud about what the media refuses to admit to re: booking insurrectionists - they can't not book them, because then they can't book Republicans. A good thread: And now, the moment you've been waiting for: Cenk Uygur.

Kim must've gotten over it, since she was practically keeping Agnes Nixon afloat during the AMC farewell special on The View in 2011. Agnes was holding onto Kim for dear life and crying on her shoulder throughout, and Kim was comforting her constantly. I've never forgotten that.

I could've sworn it was retitled by the publisher. I don't know the whys of 'Capricorn.'

Make no mistake: I will be gobsmacked if we keep the House, lol. But if it's tight at all, and we keep the Senate, I'm calling that a win. A month or two ago I was getting the same vibes from this situation that I did from the supposedly impossible GA runoffs in 2020-21; I quietly thought folks might be in for a surprise. I don't know that I feel that way now anymore, but I do think we're in for a ride.

A lot of them don't think, period. So idiotic.

BBCA was terrible for Doctor Who - they would literally speed up the episodes' runtime onscreen to fit more room for kludged-in American ads. I stopped bothering with them long ago. And the farce of putting the current show on an AMC streaming service no one uses (AMC+) and the past series on HBO Max was ridiculous. I knew RTD/Bad Wolf would be smart enough to consolidate the streaming platforms for the shows into something simpler and convenient, and I'm glad it's finally happened. I also love the new/retro logo.

It's worth noting that Russell T. Davies (once and future Doctor Who showrunner, among many other huge dramas in the last ten years) has a docudrama miniseries coming up about the UK soap Crossroads, Nolly, featuring Helena Bonham Carter as its long-running star Noele Gordon. IIRC Davies cut his teeth in the business submitting spec scripts for soaps like Crossroads. I do think soaps can easily have a future on streaming, whether you re-jigger how many days per week, whether it's arc-based, trimmed casts, whatever. Most everything on TV today still springs from soap opera, from the serial drama. GH could do well, as could the currently-defunct main ABC soap brands. The problem in America at least is none of the remaining soaps have demonstrated a true will to change their format or revolutionize their shows or their mindsets. B&B and Y&R have international money propping them up likely for years to come, but overall they all seem to prefer to simply drift towards the abyss on learned apathy and laziness, and fear of losing what they consider their only lasting, shrinking audience that might hasten that drift - aging white seniors. They don't want to thrive, they don't want to recapture a young or minority audience (even the minority audience that continues to stick by them, probably the most loyal of all), they don't want to grow or change or evolve anymore. They are simply surviving and subsisting on the allowance of networks that have nothing to fill their timeslots with. They want to keep the lights on and keep getting paid while doing as little as necessary for as long as possible. That's what it looks like, that's how it feels. Soaps could change and grow. Here they don't want to. The UK soaps at least have a shot at recovery any time they like because there is still real money and high-level investment behind them over there, no matter how weak they are lately. You don't see Joe Biden showing up on GH like you did QEII on Eastenders shortly before her death.