Vee

I thought she was very suited to that story in '95, but by '99 or 2000 her hair was that same straight drab look with the same blouses and stuff, and she just looked worn out and tired. I didn't buy her as a force to be reckoned with or a sexual magnet anymore.

What an awful, awful storyline. The difference between the Liza scenes from 1995 and this nonsense is jarring.

If I'm being very honest, Liza seemed very matronly to me from around 1999 to Marcy's exit. Watching those endless stories featuring her, Ryan and Adam became very embarrassing. I just couldn't buy her as some sex goddess who Ryan couldn't get enough of. She was a frumpy dishrag too much of the time. And it was a shame because she came on so strong and vibrant around 1995.

Tracy [!@#$%^&*] Melchior. Awful.

I thought Fiona Hutchison did the work of her career in this period - she was utterly heartwrenching. She should've stayed forever. This shitty Heaven Can Wait story always sucked, though. Nathaniel Marston was not worth this mess.

This is also when it was becoming abundantly clear Frons had curbed the planned reunion for Bo and Nora as well as Max and Gabrielle, so all they ever did during the Malone II regime, particularly in 2004, was a series of "funny" interludes where Bo and Nora got trapped together and talked about nothing. The plot never moved, it was just a series of transparent teases and time-wasters. The Colson crap nauseated me.

Glenn seemed more traumatized than Maggie to me. I think that's what that's about. I hope so. Really good scenes with him and Herschel.

I honestly just want to see a couple of these people (Michonne) stop mean mugging and trying to act all hard and just talk. That would solve a lot of problems in the last couple episodes. I never had much patience for Crazy Rick in the comics and I don't here. I was hoping that was mostly done after the phone stuff, which was surprisingly well executed given its Kirkman origin. The vision of Lori or whatever was well done but it's still a bit too comic book-y for me - just like I OD'ed on the whole "Woodbury as Thunderdome" stuff in the last couple episodes and hope that's reaching a resolution.

Andrea seemed like an absolute idiot when she opted to stay there after everything she'd seen and the addition of Daryl and the group into the mix. I guess she's gotten so attached to the idea of building a functional new civilization, somewhere stable, and getting through the 'hard times,' building something better. I can understand that motivation given her speech and her background pre-zombies, but it's a little thin on the actual page. And of course, the prison gang has it better off.

I really like Tyreese (is it being spelled the same as in the comics?) and Sasha, but I'm sure poor Sasha is doomed since there can't possibly be two black women on the show at the same time.

I liked Carol explaining Daryl's motivation. I love Michael Rooker and all, but a little of Merle in full-on shitkicker mode goes a long way with me and I was thrilled when Rick just pistol-whipped him into silence. I'm ready for that to be over.

I thought those Ally/Danny scenes were actually very, very good. TK was in full Young Brando mode back then. He and Laura Wright always had such chemistry and I thought it was a waste they didn't re-pair Carly and Lorenzo on GH when she arrived. Maybe they can try again when/if he returns to GH. Admittedly, my take on Ally and Danny there is skewed by the fact that I only very, very vaguely remember what role Danny played in Casey's death. But it seems like they really tried with that redemption arc and had a capable performer - unlike, say, the Bobby Ford saga on OLTL.

I loved Richard. So cute.

Yes, but later on, when they began moving Lindsay away from Nora - and into sexcapades and flirtations with David, Rex, R.J., etc - the character became more of a mover and shaker as a supporting player, including with Clint.

I'll be behind by a couple episodes when it premieres - going through my backlog from the marathon so far - but I should catch up by tomorrow.

I always loved Tess. CH's Lindsay on OLTL ended up morphing into her, pretty much, in later years when the writing for the character under Tomlin, Malone, etc. became much healthier and well-rounded.

I can't wait for Chad Coleman as Tyreese. That character was a great part of the comic - and fortunately, I expect he won't have the same damaging role towards Carol on the TV series - and most of all, I just loved Coleman to death as Cutty on The Wire. He is an incredible actor. I always fantasized about him coming onto OLTL as Joshua Hall to romance Rachel Gannon. Hey, they got Frankie Faison and Tonye Patano as recurring players.

I just hope the new EP - another one of the writers - is as consistent. But we'll see. Maybe Kirkman/AMC will just keep going down the ranks and fire them all.

I think they did give up to 308. I'll have to check, I think I just miscounted. Up to 4 now anyway.

The speech Maggie gave actually was the one Glen Mazzara had to give to his mother, who'd just died, over the phone. I'm not surprised, as I didn't expect Kirkman to be capable of that.

Saving 5-8 for tomorrow's marathon on AMC, followed by the new episode. Killer Within was of course very good - I've seen parts of it before. The strobelit sequence in the tunnels with T-Dog and Carol was particularly well done. I like how each season has had a distinctly different feel and tone, and pace. This is night and day from Season 2 with the whole Terrence Malick's Eden thing on the farm - it's very tough, and the unit has changed so much and become a lot more competent.

It's easy enough to find DIVX files and then run them on the TV using the PS3 and a thumb drive. If I'd wanted to I easily know how to get those episodes. But I have the cash, it's only a couple bucks and I figured I could shell it out on Amazon for those two or three episodes. After that it's all On Demand from 304 til 307, or until the marathon tomorrow.

I just finished Sick. Felt just terrible for Lori. She takes too much [!@#$%^&*] from fans, IMO. I didn't think Rick's reaction at the end was quite as cold as other people say - I think it was the most he could muster and that he was trying. Lauren Cohan's speech to the unconscious Herschel was wonderful.

Thanks. No, I don't have the DVD or Blu-Ray sets, just Netflix. Maybe someday.

That actually raises another question about Brown and Esensten for me. I've never thought of them as much more than occasionally gifted hacks with only a moderate threat level - thanks to their runs at GL and AMC - but I don't know all the details of their run at GL, either, in terms of the black canvas. It seems like they can at least be said to consistently have made an effort towards an integrated soap. IIRC, they claimed to be instrumental in bringing back the Hubbards at AMC - I don't know if they were blowing smoke, but they had worked with Debbi and Darnell heavily at Loving/The City, and of course Lorraine and Charles and so on. And obviously they attempted those other characters. And when they came onto AMC they brought with them Angie, Jesse, Frankie and Randi all in one go.

I assume their work at GL was limited to maybe Vicky Spaulding and David, but I don't know very much about that and it is curious.

They too rarely alluded to Viki's integrated self in later years - JFP did it once with Viki 'invoking' Niki to summon the courage to sing "I Will Survive" at Crossroads with Ben in 1999, and Ron Carlivati played with it when Viki accessed the Jean side of her intellect to deduce the truth behind Tess's various capers. And I loved the latter instances, but it was not a lasting, consistent change in the character. I wish they would've explored that more. I still wish that, but I also think that in her own way, Viki has loosened up a lot in the last five or six years with stories like Paris, TX and her romance with Charlie, her friendships with Gigi and David, all of which felt a lot more loose - so I suppose you can say that's a more organic kind of presentation of her integration. Still not enough, though.

That sounds interesting. I can remember the little girl - Rain? - and the adoption plotline but not the rest of it. Pity they wasted Monti Sharp, and Frankie.

Lorraine was so great though. I think I can remember her on Loving as well as The City.

I heard the show wasted Elise Neal. Big mistake.

I think Time Warner On Demand only has 303 and up. And don't I have to pay extra for that?

Make that 304 and up. That just doesn't make sense.

I really liked whoever it was who played Richard Wilkins, but that may be influenced by my having a thing for a young Australian friend of mine. He was cute and fun.

What fascinates me about Loving now, at least in the early-mid '90s is how it feels like pretty much stock Agnes Nixon to me, a primer in just how she views soaps and how her machine runs - she seemed to keep visiting and revisiting a lot of the same simple, basic youth triangles and canvases, trying to make them work. While there's some nutty stuff, a lot of it seems like simple, somewhat elegant storytelling in a lot of ways, but effective no matter when you revisit it. You have Jessica Collins (who was very good) and Robert Tyler alone in a bar unable to be with each other, and that's all you need. Same with, say, Amelia Heinle as Steffi and Michael Weatherly's buttoned up but tortured Cooper. And then of course there was that whole college revamp where the Rebecca Gayheart character was basically the same model as a Tara Martin/Becca Tyree/etc. Until down the road, characters like Steffi or Dinah Lee seem to supplant her in the same role of a vulnerable young woman who still clearly has integrity. The problem is that Loving I think eventually just became a petri dish for numerous people's ideas, including Agnes's - there was no real core beyond a few people. It was completely fluid.

I'm thinking of buckling and renting another Season 3 episode before Sunday's marathon. We're snowed in here.

That didn't stop my ex from loving both stories.

Who exactly was Melissa Dye's character supposed to be again? Why'd she do it?

I know serial killer stories are played out now but I've never seen one done as classily and well-handled promotion-wise since then. I could go for a well-told one with that same effort.

I don't think she was a tease or a brood mare or housewife or whatever. I think that's all fanboys, or people expecting how they would act in their idealized version of a zombie apocalypse versus how real people actually would behave. I thought she was just a human being trying to keep things functioning and struggling with her own mistakes, and I thought SWC always put that across very well. She came off so real, and I was not expecting much, having suffered through comic book Lori for ages. But I've liked her work a lot, along with Laurie Holden's. I really don't care about all the fan rage - I think they do good work, and most of the time I think their characters were/are well-drawn and complicated, even or especially when they're frustrating.

And yes, I liked Season 2 a lot. The Eden parable was more thematic for me, however pretentious that is, not a meta-commentary on the production (though that may yet come to pass).

I've only seen "Seed" so far but Season 3 is pretty exhilarating and quite a change. The group is a very smooth unit now, and I think the time jump was smart (if only for the fact that Chandler Riggs is growing like a weed). I'm not too sure about adding Michonne and the Governor, though. Michonne can be interesting, but at the initial sketch both are very cartoonish, teenage-boy's-fantasy comic book characters - a black ninja lady with katanas and zombies on chains because she's so extreeeeme! A one eyed madman with a tank, or whatever it was the Governor had in the comics! The actress seems good, and I know David Morrissey is great, but Kirkman is a gushing acolyte of Rob Liefeld and the old '90s Image Comics boom and it's always showed. There was a key comment by someone on Deadline a couple days ago ranting about how many more goofy comic book caricatures of Kirkman's fans expected the show to add, like Jesus, the kung fu expert from recent issues. I just can't be bothered with that crap either.

Again, I think the reason they did that with Carol was Kirkman. Virtually every character in his comic is that brittle, vindictive and quick to turn on each other, and the dialogue was as broad and obvious as anything he ever did. The comic Carol was a headcase, and I just - can't with that [!@#$%^&*].

I can't imagine why they would've had Lori do that, but it all sounds like Kirkman to me. I didn't have much of a problem with her reaction to Rick as others - I think she was mostly blaming herself, and I really have few issues with the TV Lori that most people do; I think the character is far more sympathetic and that Sarah Wayne Callies has done a wonderful job.

Scott Wilson (Herschel) was stellar and very idiosyncratic as a younger actor, not only in the legendary film of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but also in William Peter Blatty's films of his novels The Ninth Configuration and The Exorcist III: Legion (the only true Exorcist sequel, and a cult hit for years), but he has such dignity as an older man. The whole second season, while certainly flawed, really reminded me of a parable of the Garden of Eden, or a Terrence Malick film. They had it all, and little by little it all went to hell.

I thought it was just AMC at first. I've since heard otherwise more than once. At best I think it's both AMC and Kirkman. Glen Mazzara certainly alludes to that in some of his new interviews.

Incidentally, about the Season 2 finale - the first half is excellent, up til the campfire at the end, really, but once again, Robert Kirkman comes in to poop on the show with his attempts at "character development" and "dialogue," which all roughly translate to everyone turning into histrionic PMS cases regardless of gender. Out of nowhere, everyone's incredibly offended by Rick opting to not mention what Jenner told him. Is this really the most relevant beef to have at this moment in time, given their circumstances? I don't think so. And yet Carol is suddenly all pissy, because apparently Kirkman is feeling the need to invoke the comic book version of Carol (or really almost any other character in his comic), who's a very different woman than the TV show version. "We don't need him!" When would any of the survivors left alive say that? When? They all care for each other, a lot. If I believe one thing about the second season, I believe that.

My problem is that Kirkman takes a very adolescent view of his characters and his world in terms of what he thinks is 'edgy' and realistic - in those comics, virtually everyone's a cynic, everyone's bitter, everyone's ready to turn on each other. Or they're idiots. When Rick went on the warpath in the comics, as he did in the finale of Season 2, it was justified by the character he was in the comics and the characters everyone else embodied and what they'd been through. These characters, on the show, are different. Their experiences and relationships are fairly unique. I just didn't believe any of that crap in the second half by the fire, with Rick suddenly turning into Napoleon and Carol and everyone being all pissed. It just didn't work for me. It was Kirkman from on high, forcing his viewpoint from the comics into the world of the television show. I can see Rick being at the end of his rope after what he's just been through, but they didn't do enough work in the script. Or rather, Kirkman didn't. But he rarely does.

I'm going to catch up on Season 3 (I buckled and bought "Seed" on Amazon to watch, and may watch a few more before the marathon on Sunday) and then try to stay current with everyone else. I don't know where this show will end up, but I just hope that I'm wrong on my suspicion and that this doesn't end up being, as is rumored, a succession of showrunners fired to continue to fulfill Robert Kirkman's (IMO) deeply flawed mandate which creates a lot of very shallow characters and scenarios.

So is the mid-season premiere also on Sunday? I'm marathoning a shitload of episodes on my DVR that day because I've only seen up through Season 2. Not sure how many I can mainline in one day, but I thought it was a pointless waste of money to pay for episodes on Amazon between then and now when AMC is showing them for free over the weekend. (Though the commercial breaks are going to take some getting used to)