Vee

Today on Morning Joe: Joe and Mika spent the weekend at the White House trying to make sense of this "rash order" and have come out with clear marching orders - throw white supremacist Stephen Miller to the wolves and ignore Trump or Bannon's culpability, claim his youthful zealotry 'took it too far' and it's 'all a misunderstanding.' It's all one long, demented episode of The Apprentice with Team Trump, and Miller is/was part of the inner-inner circle with Brannon - one of the others will be next.

Sheryl Lee (and Gary Hershberger) surprise audiences at a FWWM screening here in town, which I am now livid I missed. FWWM has been doing a small re-release at various arthouse theaters across the country in recent weeks, and I may go to one here in late February to see it on the big screen. I did not know it was playing before then. Fingers crossed she appears again!

A good speech: The Stranger Things gang, who I adore:

I have a lot of hope thanks to the people, but this behavior from the executive branch is outrageous and is escalating very quickly. We're approaching a point where I don't know what happens. The Times covers the internal chaos over the order.

Kellyanne has problems too, America:

The rumors are that Priebus is on the verge, can't handle this anymore. He pathetically went out and tried to defend this and the Holocaust statement which was pure Bannon. I think it's a strong possibility he will, or, if pressured enough, Trump will offload Bannon and Miller the way he did Lewandowski while trying to still keep them around. If it's him or them he always chooses himself. Meanwhile:

More grains of salt:

David Duchovny talks his career and his return to TP - "Agent Bryson is still working, she hasn't retired yet. She still has good legs."

Did you see John Lewis sitting in with the protestors at (I think) JFK? Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer did some theater that is important and works IMO:

I think most of them today have no spine. Even John McCain couldn't find his. A few have come out against it in the last few hours - Susan Collins, Sasse, etc. Sadly, the most principled Republican on the scene at the moment is none other than dark horse '16 candidate Evan McMullin, who is admirably very vocal on Twitter and has, I think, been out among the protestors today trying to help.

Grain of salt time, but not the first I've heard of it:

As I've said in other threads, I think they were the clear predecessor to what we see now with Degrassi on Netflix, etc. with seasonal arcs, which is what they ended up wanting to try to do. It was their management and finances that failed them, not the productions. Had they come out a year or two later with real funding and maybe a better platform I think they'd be going strong.

I think Priebus, like Ryan, lives in a cossetted bubble where if they just get their brilliant ideas in action everything else will fall into place. They don't want to dirty their beautiful minds with the everyday realities beyond gifted child theory, so Priebus is completely flummoxed by what's happening here.

Nine times out of ten if you watch a Loving episode before, oh, '92? '93? and don't immediately know someone you'll find out they were fired 6-9 months later. That's the problem. BTW: The Jeffrey Osbourne song still holds up. That song and opening are lush and timeless.

Yep.

We've probably all seen the same episodes online at this point but there were some great ones with Steffy addicted to pills or something, when she was with Clay. I'd stil like to see more from '92 and '93, but I think there's actually a ton from early in the revamp I just haven't had time to watch. I also loved characters like Tess or Lorraine, who might've gotten short shrift on other soaps but were stars on Loving/The City.

Angie, Frankie, Jacob, etc. on Loving was basically my first brush with them. I loved Debbi Morgan instantly and thought it was very cool when I discovered they were from AMC. I've never been too hard on crossovers when they're done well. I also loved them on The City. I didn't hear anything about Al Freeman being a part of it - I think it may have been offered in the late '80s just after Rauch let both Holly and Hayman go, whereas Freeman stayed at OLTL for several more years. And yeah, Agnes constantly reinvented her youth canvas ideas dating back to the original AMC over and over, I think, but they tended to stay fresh. I'm not sure how much input she had into the college scene revamp at Loving - with Cooper Alden the poor little rich boy, Ally, Steffy, etc. - but it feels a lot like her. Of course she did it again with the teens on AMC 2.0, very successfully IMO.

I will always love Linden Ashby for Mortal Kombat. I remember someone on Datalounge once said Robert Tyler is independently wealthy. I remember another ep from '94 I saw a few years back where I thought he and Jessica Collins were smoking hot - she was just smoldering off the screen. What they did with the Trisha character and her ending is bizarre even by today's non-standards.

I also recall one of the main soap journalists singing the praises of Elise Neal and hating that she was written out. I agree, big mistake. I always liked her - not sure what she's doing now. IIRC, Agnes also originally intended to bring Ellen Holly and Lillian Hayman onto Loving as OLTL's Carla and Sadie Gray. Holly said no so that was that. This may have been in the late '80s, I can't recall, but she did later bring on Debbi and Darnell as the Hubbards + Jacob. The show often intrigues me as this weird island of Agnes' various longtime ideas and misfit toys. In that sense Corinth's brief, silly cameo on GH a few years back sort of fit into that - this strange, gothic town time forgot.

I think the endless recasts of core characters, the constant turnover, etc. prevented the show from ever lasting. I find a lot of the eps from the early-mid '90s really intriguing as an encapsulation of Agnes' vision (and in some ways IMO a precursor to her AMC 2.0) but they seem to always struggle to find and keep a core. I liked the show back then too.

Let them try. The reaction to this is unlike anything I've ever seen in America, including anything from the Bush years. The social media age is a different game. You can either worry or you can fight. From an acquaintance:

This is new: