Sylph

Yeah, Jamie Luner rocked. She got to play the new tramp in town - succeding to Miss Hot Lips, Lisa Rinna - and boy, she did.

I hated Lisa's character! She was just so whore-ish, I couldn't stand it. With those ultrapumped lips and breasts and a little too much lipstick... Hideous. As for Lexi Sterling – I know back then I hated her transformation from daddy's good girl on a vengeful rampage to a superbitch who haunted Amanda. Now, I'm kind of OK with it, although I saw so much potential in her being good and still believe it would have been a much better choice.

MP was ultra trashy but just so delicious. I discovered it much too late - for being a La Locklear groupie at least - and still miss it.

Yeah, it really was. Those bitch fights in the pool, gorgeous people walking around shirtless, loads of sex, adultery and intrigue, kidnappings, sundry psychopaths running rampant around the complex... Immense trash, but full of delightfulness and irony.

A bit of trivia: Melrose was also a place where Carol Mendelsohn (now the ultrasuccessfull showrunner of CSI with a multimillion deal up her sleeve) got her first gig as writer and producer. She is a lawyer, by the way (Naren Shankar and she are Cornell alumni).

My favorite MP: Taylor forcing Michael to impregnate her. Both times. Or was it more often? This was one of the most campy side-stories MP ever told - and they had a lot. LOL

My favourite part of the show were Amanda's bitchy one-liners and just that whole character that carried the majority of the show.

As for SatC: Well put: Darren's episodes were so blah compared with everything that followed. I was looking forward to the movie but the first preview kinda blew it. Hopefully the film is much better than those 45 seconds...

I liked the trailer.

I heard Big dies; but I think it's a false rumour.

Why didn't you like it?  I was so against the idea of a film, but when I saw that preview, I was OK with it.

I LOVED MP, back in the day, (can you believe it ended in '99?) this was *the* show. Seasons 1-4 were gold, it started to crumble in season 5 and seasons 6 and 7 were downright awful (although I liked Jamie Luner, she was a nice addition)

I liked Jamie, too! And MP – wow how trashy it was and how much I loved it then...

The only show that had any bite like MP was SATC, which was of course created by the same brilliant man, Mr Darren Star.

Never forget it was Michael Patrick King who brought the show to its now unachievable heights. Yes, Darren was a producer all the way til the end, but it was Michael who had the vision and transformed the show. Just compare Darren's and Michael's seasons and you'll see the difference.

I cannot wait for the film...

I'm checking out:

Lol, I grew up listening to Celine, so I've always had a special place in my heart for her.

Scary, but I grew up with her too!

And if it's the song that I think it is, I can't really see Ryan Chandler listening to that song. He doesn't really strike me as the Celine Dion type.

I co-sign!

"That's The Way It Is" by Celine Dion

I love that song!

From here:

Amy Madigan has been tapped for a recurring role on ABC's "Grey's Anatomy."

She will appear in all five original post-strike episodes of the top medical drama, which returns with fresh episodes April 24. Madigan will play a psychiatrist at Seattle Grace Hospital.

Madigan, who was nominated for an Oscar for "Twice in a Lifetime," recently co-starred in "Gone Baby Gone." She is repped by Innovative Artists and Industry Entertainment.

Murat Boz - Dönmem

Giorgos Mazonakis - M'enohlei o eautos mou (and the translation of the title perfectly describes the moment)

Relax, Take It Easy by Mika:

“Grey’s Anatomy,” which returned to ABC last week purged of Isaiah Washington and Kate Walsh, has the opposite problem. Not even its most devoted fans expect too much from this sagging hospital soap opera: the first two episodes are not quite as awful as last season’s finale, though they are still predictably cloying. The surgeons on “Grey’s Anatomy” remain trapped in swoony, stuttering states of thwarted love, but at least the load is lightened by those two absences. “Private Practice,” the spinoff with Ms. Walsh, is even worse.

“Grey’s Anatomy” wore out its welcome; “30 Rock” deserves a little more patience.

And Collecionista de canciones by Camila.

Try Again by Aaliyah.

So sad, its almost 6 years since her tragic death

RIP, truly an R&B goddess who never got the chance to reach her pinnacle. She would have been great.

I hate to say this - but she stole songs from Arabs. "Sampled" them.

Khaled & Melissa Ya benthi

That video made me think of one my favorite techno/dance music singers, Sonique. Here's a couple of her videos:

Love her! And those songs are fantastic. I still listen to them.

Grey's Anatomy: Tear of rage or tear of joy?

So are they firing Isaiah Washington or what? No doubt, the final scene of the season finale of “Grey’s Anatomy” left many viewers wondering if the tears Cristina was crying after being ditched at the altar were of heartbreak or relief, but some of us were more curious if her anguished “He’s gone” referred to Burke, her former fiance, or the man who plays him.

Washington, of course, was the center of a scandal earlier this year after he referred to cast member T.R. Knight, not once but twice, by a homophobic epithet. Since then, rumors have flown over whether he would be allowed to remain on a show that prides itself on love and tolerance and diversity.

Thursday night’s season finale certainly left that, and a few other things, pretty much hanging. Or not hanging, as the case may be.

In a way, the finale returned the blockbuster drama back to its starting point. Burke and Cristina are definitely not married, and Cristina, mercifully, is once again her obsessively ambitious and most admirable self. After weeks of consideration, the Chief may have offered his position to Derek but in the end, he remained the Chief. Meredith and Derek are back at square one with him being gleaming and open-“You are the love of my life,” he tells her - and her being skittish and closed-“I have to go,” is her reply. Karev once again is too late in realizing that if you like a girl, you should treat her nice and tell her so (first it was Izzie, then Addison, now former Jane Doe patient Ava/Rebecca.)

The only person truly up in the air is George, who apparently flunked his intern exam and now must choose not only between Callie and Izzie but also between quitting medicine and doing his intern year all over again. (In the most tantalizing development, another Grey girl-Meredith’s step-sister - shows up at the tail end as one of the new interns.)

As a season closer it was rather unsatisfying, like having the “Lost” guys peering down another hatch. If you were looking for a church vestibule show-down between Callie and Izzie, you were sorely disappointed.

But then wedding episodes are always so hard to pull off on TV-too much acting within acting and wedding dresses just don’t film well for some reason. As a wedding episode, Thursday’s “Grey’s” was fairly illuminating, reminding us (and any aspiring TV writers in the audience) that marriage, in dramatic terms anyway, is simply a dead-end proposition. Everyone from Jane Austen to Candace Bushnell knows this, which is why so many novels, plays and movies end up in tulle and lace, emphasis on end.

In TV drama terms, two people swearing devotion shuts down many more options that it creates-the actual inner workings of the institution are far too subtle and nuanced (read: boring) to hold up as a prime-time plot line alongside the frisky doings of singletons; writers really can’t go anywhere with marriage but kids and adultery. Witness the Callie/George/Izzie triangle. And that marriage was what? Six days old?

So you either have to base the show on the union, like “Mad About You” or “thirtysomething,” or keep the whole nuptial thing to a minimum. Divorced spouses are okay; actually, divorced spouses are great, because they have all kinds of potential-objectionable partners, irritating demands, babysitting options. But happily married? Yawn.

So Cristina should consider herself well out of it. She will not be forced to disappear, like her eyebrows (how great is Sandra Oh for allowing herself to be seen by millions sans eyebrows?) into married bliss and “being a Burke.” The Avid Viewer heaved a sigh of relief because even if Isaiah Washington has entered anger management/homophobia recovery, Burke is still an arrogant jerk. And Cristina isn’t.

Finale wrap-up: «Grey's Anatomy»

With so much misery and defeat and no one left to sleep with, has this show's golden goose been cooked?

By Heather Havrilesky

May. 18, 2007 | Cristina Yang does not look good without eyebrows. This is what we learned in Thursday night's "Grey's Anatomy" finale, along with a few other important life lessons: 1) Never put your (seemingly) dying climbing buddy out of his misery with an ax to the head; 2) don't have a baby with your wife if you're in love with your best friend; 3) study hard for your intern exam unless you want to repeat your internship; 4) if the thought of your upcoming wedding makes you ill, you might be making a mistake; and 5) if the thought of your friend's upcoming nuptials makes you ill, you might want to consider going back to therapy.

But those wacky kids on ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" don't learn important life lessons very easily, or if they do, they forget them by the next episode. That's why we find Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) going all wishy-washy on us over Cristina Yang's (Sandra Oh) wedding: When there isn't a boulder about to fall on Meredith's head (and there usually is, let's face it), she'll invent one.

Meredith: You marrying Burke restores my faith in me.

Cristina: Oh, I get it. My wedding's about you.

Meredith: Yes.

Not to nit-pick a show whose joys lie in being a big, soapy mess of heartfelt confessions and romantic longings and emotionally brutal twists, but is it really fair to pound home the idea that Meredith is hopelessly self-involved right now, when her mom just died, her stepmom just died, and her long-lost daddy just got drunk and slapped her in the face and blamed her for her stepmom's death? For that matter, is this really the time for Derek (Patrick Dempsey) to lay down the law with Meredith, threatening to dump her and date a pretty girl he met in a bar? Why not dump her the million or so other times that she has wavered and flaked out and second-guessed their love? Why now, when she's (not so clearly) reeling in the wake of a few major disasters?

And then we find out that the pretty girl is a new intern at Seattle Grace who's probably related to Meredith, since her last name is Grey -- another twist that's not all that easy to care about, really, since we've already uncovered a few of Meredith's long-lost relatives and they've all been pretty disappointing. On the other hand, Meredith is at her best when she's pining away, and what better way to pine than over McDreamy dating a hopelessly pretty second cousin or illegitimate sister?

But can we really get invested in another season of pining away?

"Grey's Anatomy" has countless charms -- snappy yet moving dialogue, nice-looking humans, fast-moving story lines. But lately one of those strengths -- those hurtling plotlines -- seems to be killing creator Shonda Rhimes' golden goose. Once Alex (Justin Chambers) has been romantically involved with Izzie (Katherine Heigl), Addison (Kate Walsh) and an amnesiac; George (T.R. Knight) has been in love with Meredith, Callie (Sara Ramirez) and Izzie; Derek has been with Addison and Meredith; Addison has been with Derek, McSteamy (Eric Dane) and Alex, why would we take any of these romances seriously? And, on the other hand, we're supposed to believe that Meredith and McDreamy are the Love of Each Other's Lives, so when either of them hems and haws, it just feels like filibustering.

Similarly, it was clear before Thursday night's finale that Cristina didn't want to marry Burke (Isaiah Washington) -- we've seen way too many examples of how she has surrendered her true self to the relationship and how she's in conflict over settling down in general. So why should we be too bent out of shape if she ends up leaving him at the altar? The promos for the show's finale might as well have blared, "Tune in for the moment when Cristina leaves Burke at the altar!" The only scene that complicated this outcome -- in high "Grey's" style -- was one in which Burke rehearsed his vows in the operating room to Izzie and Addison (which, of course, tipped off that he'd never deliver them):

Burke: I am not optimistic, I am not full of hope. I am sure. I am steady. And I know that I'm a heart man. I take them apart, I put them back together, I hold them in my hands. I am a heart man. So of this, I am sure. You are my partner, my lover, my very best friend. My heart beats for you. And on this day, the day of our wedding, I promise you this: I promise you to lay my heart in the palm of your hands. I promise you me."

As the female doctors and nurses in the room gasp, Burke looks around, then asks, "Too trite? Because I can rewrite it." Finally Addison says, "I think I speak for every woman in this room when I say dump her. Dump Yang, and marry me."

Walsh's crappy spinoff almost made us forget what excellent comic timing she has. Hopefully, if "Private Practice" fails, she can return to Seattle Grace and to the frank demeanor and wry asides that make her scenes a highlight of "Grey's."

Sandra Oh is another highlight. She's fantastic and believable as Cristina, even if, without eyebrows, she looks just like a creature from "Pan's Labyrinth." Her angry deadpan is great for scenes like the one where her mother tells her, "I always feared you were too emotionally stunted to settle down!" It's a testament to Oh's appeal that when Cristina is stalling at the church and Meredith tells her, sternly, to go get her happy ending, we almost want her to march down that aisle, even though we saw this coming for months and we know that getting married will be wrong for her in the long term.

The best scene of the finale was Cristina's unpredictable, manic, half-relieved, half-devastated breakdown post-failed wedding, when she goes home to find Burke gone and then, after screaming at Meredith to help her get out of her binding wedding dress, breaks down sobbing. "Grey's Anatomy" has a deft hand with hard cases -- Cristina, Alex, McSteamy, Bailey, Burke. We care about them, even though we can see they're going to mess up and push people away, over and over again.

But then again, the softies (Izzie, Callie, Meredith, George) are pushing people away, too. In fact, maybe that's the problem here, a pattern that repeats itself in every story we see: Unrequited longing, rising sexual tension, teary-jerky confessional outburst, lonely montage of heartbroken gazing into middle distance while strummy Lilith Fair music plays, confessional outburst No. 2, all of it wrapping up with the Big Breakup or the Big Sexy Reconciliation. Next week, repeat steps one through six and call me in the morning.

"Grey's Anatomy" will offer up a charming, enjoyable diversion even if it stays on its current repetitive course and rides that pony into the sunset. But if Meredith and her friends want their happy ending, then this pony better learn a few new tricks.