Vee

Whither Neely O'Hara?

The David episode was as good as it could be given time constraints - I didn't believe when I heard he'd be a deadbeat, but his exile to Habitat for Humanity, etc. was a bit more complex than that and I felt it worked overall. It also was clearly a table setter episode for him to be around more often in future, which Galecki has said he intends to do with David moving back to Lanford. The stuff with him and Darlene, Becky and Darlene, etc. all worked. The Bev stuff is good (and in character). And the end scene with just David and Roseanne - who was at the most emotional we've seen her in years, and it was clearly not all acting with them as Roseanne Barr the actress has been taking a lot of time to get back on track performance-wise - was really affecting. I think Becky's arc - like Darlene's, and I suspect Roseanne's with her pain issues - is ongoing. They picked the Becky thread up from the last episode as she referenced it directly in her talk with Darlene about David.

Finally catching up after a long April - the Becky episode is probably one of the show's best since Season 7 or so. They really dug into Lecy's Becky and didn't just demean the character as was generally done with the recast. She also wasn't the butt of a joke like the first couple eps. And Lecy did an excellent job - her dryer, older delivery these days really works. They were also smart to let Darlene bond with her, and make Roseanne stand down and admit she was wrong and then pull out all the stops to do something nice for Becky. That's something that wouldn't have happened much in Seasons 7 or 8. The scene at the end with the parents joining the girls at the restaurant with Becky and Darlene drunk was very sweet. There's a continued focus on age and time, the constant struggles as the daughters age out of being near-millennials, on Roseanne trying to make ends meet with Uber and still having trouble with her knee ("I need to sit") which are both ongoing plot notes. Overall, this is what I hoped a revival could be once the furor calmed down. I hope it continues. I did laugh out loud at "her text says she's 'drunk as duck.'" I'm surprised that got past Standards and Practices. As for the last one, this is good so far - Bev: Hello, Jackie. You're looking tired. Jackie (re: her black wardrobe): Nice outfit. I see you're trying it without the sickle. Estelle Parsons has not missed a trick. I know she was still directing major theater (with Al Pacino, Jessica Chastain, etc.) as recently as a decade ago, I don't know if she still is. David - "Please, I'm vegan now, I have no upper arm strength!"

It looks like a mix of old and new, judging by the packaging and sample image.

Huge news:

These new pieces of weird European-Asian merchandising remind me so much of the same stuff done for the original show over there. Everything old is new again.

Finally:

I think it's turning out like the Colbert roast tbh - overnight intense fury from the Beltway press, followed by walking it back when most of the Internet says he was right. Wolf's not getting Kathy Griffin'd, in part because she wasn't nearly as foolish as Griffin was. Her remarks on Sanders were calculated and were not physical attacks. While she got vulgar at other times, it was in all the right places AFAIC. You already see Haberman, a queen of passive aggression, walking her attacks back when confronted by people like Kumail Nanjiani and trying to close the issue off. That doesn't happen often. Wolf will be fine and while she may have gotten a bit broad at times for my tastes, I thought she was mostly right.

I think I like Michelle Wolf, who may have made the Beltway media angrier than Colbert did when he roasted them at the end of the Bush years. Maggie Haberman and co. clutched their pearls over this frankly restrained attack on Sanders:

Marsha Warfield was a black gay woman on television in the 1980s when Bill Cosby was king. She was in an impossible position. I understand her angst but I don't fault her.

Maybe tangential, but still important. The video interview is harrowing. I always loved Kelis and didn't understand why she didn't take off bigger.

It's really not. They have no capacity for it.

Today in "Take Me Now, Sweet Abyss":

I'd like to point out that in the raw video from the courthouse, after spending the first trial and the beginning of this one hobbling and limping around with dark glasses and a cane claiming to be blind, Cosby strode out of there today like Sherman Hemsley in the opening credits of Amen.

No. There is no plan. There's just this.

Guilty on all charges:

WTF?? Now trending:

That's a shame.

A big deal.