Vee

There's no buzz you won't harsh! And it's almost Empire Wednesday!

First David and Angie, now Rick and Michonne. Stop hating, marceline!

I really don't think they'd have any room, in 2015, to call an interracial romance a problem. They'd never get away with it. If they were on daytime, sadly, it would still be a different story. I think if anything someone might blame any ratings trouble (which they will not have) on them settling down in the new community, but I really don't think anything will deter what they choose to do at this point. The show is a ratings juggernaut and its creative team has finally settled.

I think it would be a copout if they didn't get together at this point, honestly. But we'll see. One key thing I think the prominence and massive success of shows and ensembles like Empire, HTGAWM, etc. will do is keep bringing down more pressure on other shows to face up to more and more diverse story and character integration. TWD has, fortunately, become a very multicultural show both in front of and behind the camera (half the cast and crew of The Wire are now employed here on a regular basis). But when you hear about a bunch of pilots for the new season being specifically retooled to add more characters of color in the leading roles and so on, in the wake of Empire or HTGAWM, or Sleepy Hollow - while that's a superficial solution, it is a good start. I can easily see the brain trust execs at AMC jumping to, "well, hey, we can do that too - let's have Rick and Michonne do it after all!" And for once they would not be wrong.

There are always going to be stupid fans of everything, and stupid articles. I just tune it out and focus on the show. I mean, how can you take anything like Tara being in love with Glenn seriously?

I don't think Michonne was desperate. I think she was just done, and knew - pragmatically, as well as emotionally - that they couldn't go on as they were forever. Like she told Rick, she's been where he is. She knows you have to come out the other side. It was a pretty emotional episode for me, especially when balanced between the two poles of those characters, and I could've potentially been good ending the show there as opposed to seeing another safe haven potentially slide into misery. I think the endless survival horror grind can only last so long - my interest has always been in seeing people build a community after the apocalypse, the nuts and bolts of that, and the new dangers and issues that arise from that kind of new existence. It was a really well-done hour. And I thought the two guys were very sweet (even if Eric is inevitably doomed). I loved Tara grinning like the Cheshire cat in the group shot at the end when Aaron said he was going in for his man - like 'yes, more gays!'

I think Donna had just evolved past trying to force herself to be with a guy like Mike - who Laura tells her she doesn't even like - after Laura's death and being with James and so forth. I think there is a lot to like about her work in Season 2, when she isn't trying so hard to be smoldering and the It Girl. (Although her scenes with Harold are, I think, some of her best work on the show.)

Yep, and tomorrow, around 4 in the morning, is the day Laura died. I know some are speculating the show will make a move or some new announcement tomorrow morning, much as they made the original announcement last fall at the exact time Cooper tells Diane he is arriving in Twin Peaks. I doubt it, but we'll see.

Eh, she wouldn't be that evil - the teenager would do most of it on his own and she would back out when it got too nuts. She would just be a typical schemer. Meanwhile, in year two, Holly would become the most active player in figuring it all out. I always loved Maureen Garrett. And of course, the good twin would have to wake up at some point and stagger into some public event.

Oh, fine, twist my arm! The show's long gone now so I might as well tell it. I know I did on some version of the board, long ago. Mind you, this was many years ago and I was just a kid and stupid, so this is pretty OTT and nuts: The idea, harebrained as it was, was predicated on Jason and Kevin Marler being identical, not just fraternal (I suppose you could have wanked it by having the family say, 'how did they turn out so alike?', but whatever). They would be SORASed and reintroduced as teenagers and we would discover they have a history of planning the typical 'twinning' sort of game - one twin pretends to be the other and so on. And of course, in classic soap fashion, one boy (Kevin) is good and the other (Jason) is "bad". Bear in mind that this was long enough ago that Ross and Jerry verDorn were still on GL, and Marcia Cross had yet to make a career resurgence with Desperate Housewives. So the seed of the idea, for me, started with Cross - who, at that point, could not get arrested in Hollywood beyond a few guest spots on sitcoms - taking over the role of Carrie Todd Marler. It would play on viewer recognition of her as Kimberly from Melrose Place, having her come back and be the 'recovered' crazy ex-wife. And no, Carrie Todd wouldn't have DID anymore, but she would be a bit of a schemer, and begin insinuating herself into Ross and Blake's lives. At the same time, the Marler twins would be up to their usual teen business. Kevin Marler would be romancing some nice girl - I can't remember who, but some legacy kid - while his brother Jason would be jealous of their love connection, and making all sorts of trouble for everyone, though he doesn't really mean it, until he does. In typical adolescent rebellion fashion, he would decide his parents are big fat phonies after their many break-ups and scandals of the past, and scheme to make their lives a living hell. He would then join forces with Carrie Todd, who would whisper poison in his ear to help him along. But over the course of the year, through a variety of twists and roundelays I never quite figured out, things would get way out of hand - Blake and Ross would separate, Ross would lose his job, the town would be scandalized and the Marler family would be humiliated and destroyed, torn apart, with Blake back living with Holly. Eventually, good twin Kevin would be the one to discover that his brother had started their family's downward spiral into motion, and would confront him at a secluded cabin in the woods - maybe a family place. Drunk and brandishing a gun he would tear into him, and Jason would beg for forgiveness. One thing leads to another, a shot rings out in the night, yada yada - Blake, Ross and Holly show up, and there's Jason with a gunshot wound to the head. He has shot himself with Kevin's gun, he is in a coma, possible brain damage, no one knows. So the year of all this sturm und drang would end with Kevin spending lots of time with his family at his bad, bad brother's bedside. Being the devoted son and brother, comforting a shattered Blake and Ross. Until, dunh dunh dunnnhhhh, the clock strikes midnight on New Year's, and we discover Kevin Marler watching old family movies, studying and mimicking his own actions and movements on videotape. Because, of course, Kevin is not Kevin - Kevin is Jason. Good twin Kevin shot himself, and a guilt-stricken, traumatized, unbalanced Jason took his place. In his tortured mind, it is his penance to finally be the good son. And no one knows. And that would lead into the next year of story: Carrie Todd, who once had DID, would discover the secret, but Jason (who would not have DID, and be fully cognizant) would blackmail her into keeping silent. Then Holly would pick up the scent and begin sniffing around. And la dee dah! I had a lot of time on my hands in my sophomore year of college.

It was particularly pie in the sky because I wanted them to get Beverlee McKinsey back, which would never have happened. I believe she also said no to AW before it ended. I had much weirder, darker ideas than that for Blake and Ross's twins, too, something I always thought was a good one, but it would have required their literally being retconned into being identical twins instead of fraternal, which is just too big a hurdle for me to jump, looking back as an adult - it's Pratt-esque, to introduce that out of nowhere.

Since people were mentioning Hope Bauer, I will say I remember watching GL through the 2003 debacle. OLTL at the time seemed ready to dispense with Catherine Hickland as well as Roscoe Born, and I had always found Ron Raines singularly unimposing as Alan Spaulding. My idea, however misguided, was to bring Born and Hickland on as Alan and Hope Bauer. Alex would bring Hope back to town to throw Alan off his game, and the two star-crossed lovers would ultimately reunite. They'd had great chemistry as their demented characters on OLTL, and of course they were on The City together.

A source over at the Dugpa forums apparently spoke to Kyle MacLachlan today at the Independent Spirit Awards - he said the scripts are looking great for Season 3, and that they plan to begin filming in late May/early June in both Washington State and parts of L.A., just like the original series. A great deal of the series post-pilot was filmed in wooded areas around L.A., carefully camouflaged to look like Washington; they worked a lot to make locales like Shelly and Leo's place, the area around the Double R or Big Ed's Gas Farm, etc. look like the original location. I assume they have more latitude to film in Washington then they did 25 years ago as an untested pilot for the network.

Some Season 4 bloopers. Ser Pounce returns!

I have not watched this show regularly in aeons, but I did watch yesterday's show on YT and was fairly impressed. I wish there was an easier way to find the show to watch here in the US, or maybe I just don't know of it. As I said in Carl's status update, I often like these dark, domestic secret stories - the problem is EE seems to have done a thousand of them and they all come down to destroyed families, deeply damaged or insane young people and, from what I've seen anyway, no real redemption or reunification. After a certain point it just wears on me to watch that again and again, and I usually love that [!@#$%^&*]. I just can't deal with there being no catharsis, and I fear the same for the Beales, though their keeping the secret is, in the pitch, a great idea. Oh, and I also was very impressed to hear some of this was live. I wish our soaps would do that. OLTL should have made it an annual tradition.

AFAIK Erin didn't start til 1990 or more likely 1991. Eliza Clark, who I think still acts, is the sister of Spencer Treat Clark, who got his start on Another World as Vicky Hudson's kid before growing up into a hunk. He does a lot of stuff. They would never have made Erin's Jessica play DID.

What we need now is magic.

I think they've done a wonderful job translating the material, but you are more than welcome to condemn them and Martin at your leisure.

This seems like an exercise in masochism for you.

There was a rumor many, many months ago that Missy would be a companion for the latter half of the series. I didn't buy it but I wouldn't dismiss it either. I'm not sure Higgins will be playing one of the sisters again. Could just be a new role.

Michelle Gomez confirms she will be back for Series 9, which we knew - but she's also back for the premiere episode, which we didn't know. Also appearing again, surprisingly, is Clare Higgins, British thespian and a personal genre favorite of mine for being the evil Julia Cotton in the first two Hellraiser films. She previously played the lead sister of Karn in The Night of the Doctor, the 2013 minisode with Paul McGann.

I also think the young guy they have doing some of Weekend Update - Michael Che? - is fun, and has taken some pretty sharp shots at stuff like Ferguson, etc. over the last year. But I think Lorne Michaels trying to deal with a blacker face of entertainment in 2015 is an awkward proposition at best. I'm glad they hired the performers they did and I love Leslie Jones, but I think the show seems unsure and uncomfortable with how they handle them and I think it sometimes bounces back onto their audience. Chris Rock said a month or two ago that he pointed Leslie out to Lorne, and said that Lorne Michaels would never have found someone not at one of his usual (white-dominated, more conventional) comedy haunts.

I think it's simply what many of the performers and writers, etc. have said - Lorne is older, he's more settled, he's less willing to rock that boat. It's easier to coast with the hottest new performer or a political skit that isn't too pointed, and not have to deal with endless drama over, say, Louise Lasser tripping out in her dressing room or Sinead O'Connor tearing up the Pope. We'd all get too old to deal with that kind of strife on a regular basis at some point. I think Lorne is probably still pretty liberal, but it's easy when you get to be a certain age and tax bracket to be an entirely different kind of liberal, especially when you work for General Electric. I'm sure it's easy enough for him to say to himself, [!@#$%^&*] whatever safe vapid [!@#$%^&*] I put on my show, I give to Elizabeth Warren/Obama/whoever in vast amounts every year. And he's got a right to that. I just wish they had someone like Jim Downey back on those sketches if he isn't interested. I have seen a few pretty good, pointed political sketches over the last couple years, and I do think Tina Fey and others have been a little more cutting about it. But I do think that for most of the 2000s they might as well have been doing Bob Hope's USO show. They weren't war cheerleaders, but they definitely were not willing to engage with what was actually happening with the Bush administration in any real way. Most of the media was frightened and they were too, but they were also very cozy with NBC/GE/etc. Whereas in the '80s they were just savage.

I haven't watched regularly in years, but I do know for a fact that as recently as the last five or six years no one was saying boo to Lorne about [!@#$%^&*] in terms of serious content alteration or interference from the network, and I'm sure that hasn't changed. He is a huge mainstay at the network, and he runs his little empire with an iron fist. He personally masterminded NBC's last late night host transition due to his heavy influence on that block, and they also leaned on him to help them through the various stages of the Leno/Conan debacle. The network does not control him, he has them at his beck and call. Lorne and Lorne alone is responsible for the musical acts, etc. being blanded out, the show being made more rote, and many, many cast and crew have gone on record about that. It's all him. NBC can't do anything. Yeah, but you love everything.

What exactly did that mean?