juppiter

Watching this every weekend on SoapNet the past couple months... it has been years since I have seen this show but it truly is an enduring gem -- I think, like Knots Landing, this has gone on for a long run and hasn't jumped the shark. They are mid-way thru season 8 and it's great. They were able to keep successfully re-inventing themselves, and even when it feels like it should be "bad", it is good, whether by retro charm or the cast's charm. That said Brandon and Kelly are sickeningly sweet as a couple and I can't wait for them to break up lol. Shocked at how completely minuscule and pointless Hilary Swank's short stint is. She has 2 episodes left and she has done nothing. Maybe that's why this didn't kill her career... nobody even remembered she was on this. While I'm enjoying season 8 I would really really really love to watch the high school years but it's gonna take a while

I live in the NYC area and I actually prefer Anthony Weiner to Christine Quinn. Quinn to me is a hack. Anthony Weiner was always one of the more politically shrewd Democrats and did at least give lip service to the problems of the middle class.

Personally I don't want congress/Obama touching the gay issue (tho I'm aware that former Idaho senator Larry Craig already "touched" it, lol). Nothing except complete marriage equality dictated by the SCOTUS will be acceptable to me.

I was too young but weren't the 70s in general somber? Then they banned quaaludes and coke got popular and the 80s weren't?

The first season can be amazing though, especially if you have seen/read "I Claudius", which Dynasty was partially based upon. Granted all of the oil crap with Matthew/Walter is incredibly boring but the Carrington family drama is at its best and most realistic in season 1. The pace is painstakingly slow but it's a 13 episode, complete arc, maybe one of the best arcs in network tv history. That said upping the ante in season 2 was great as well and season 2 stands out as an amazing season in television history. But it would have been interesting to see the season 1 trajectory play out, still gutting Walter, Matthew, and Lindsay. There is something incredibly and unmatchably glam about the understated glamness of season 1. I haven't seen it in 5/6 years but I don't think my opinion would change.

Tonya <3 I love candles in the wind, and she's a textbook example of one.

I am excited for Sochi. I need to start getting back into this. I just wiki'd it and saw Queen Yuna won Worlds 2013. Would love to see her become the first woman since Katarina Witt to defend her title at the Olympics.

To me this show was at its peak in the mid-2000s when there was constant drama surrounding it whether it was Star Jones using the show to pay for her wedding and then getting fired and pretending she was quitting or Rosie O'Donnell going at it on split screen with Elisabeth. It has been irrelevant for quite a while now.

Jeb Bush is actually much more likable than his brother but America is straight up not going to elect a third Bush.

My job is federally funded and staff cuts are on the table... right now it is theoretical because nobody knows if funding will be cut, but if it is they will really have no choice but to cut 1 or 2 positions (out of about 50). I am not worried about my job because frankly they would be fucked without me... but still, what a stupid self-inflicted blow to the economy. That said, I kind of like the defense cuts and this was the only way they were going to happen.

Gerrymandering has nothing to do with Senate seats

I love this. Ed Koch was an awful person. Just like Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire Israeli government are.

The thing is I kinda like Sarah Palin. I believe she is a brilliant career woman who knew exactly what she wanted, exactly what she was getting herself into, and believed nary a word she ever said. She is an entertainer, and she has entertained. She never had plans to run for president in 2012 and has no plans to run in 2016, but she will milk it for the money it's worth and I can't hate her for it. She never has had any clue what she's talking about, and she knows that, but that's beside the point, and she knows that as well.

I was a kid at the time but I don't think of it as troublemaking when trouble needs to be made. NYC was ground zero for the crack epidemic and the AIDS epidemic.

I dunno if Jesse Jackson was so much a foe as someone Ed Koch ruthlessly attacked for no reason... Ed Koch definitely had a sense of humor I find appealing but I find he is being whitewashed to an annoying extent now that he's dead. An era of politics that is bizarrely so recent but seems so long ago. When war-crippled Democrats and people who actually served could be easily swift-boated as un-American by Republicans who did not serve and refused to defend themselves. I am happy that era has passed.

I agreed with you on the awful Pollyanna speech but I loved Jill almost getting away with killing Val and Val trying everything to prove the truth. It actually is probably my favorite thing the Lechowicks did in their time on KL... I think their work in season 10 in general was good and season 10 in many ways is the last hurrah of Knots for me. But yeah, "The Perfect Crime" was just an incredibly creative episode and went against multiple TV conventions to create an unforgettable hour of TV. And the plot then dragged on well into season 10 which was a relief for me after how quickly the season 8 cliffhanger ("Cement the Relationship") was dropped in season 9. Funny, the Lechowicks kept up the Knots tradition of great cliffhanger but didn't always have the follow through. But I thought Val's never-ending quest to prove the truth in season 10 even as Gary and Karen doubted her was great, and a real throwback to the Val with a backbone of the earlier years. It was almost as if she was setting out to disprove Jill's thesis of "Poor Val." So a really original season finale followed by a fun, true-to-character storyline, I loved it. Definitely the best storyline the Lechowicks wrote IMO.

The thing about Michele Lee as an actress is she can go over-the-top very easily. I love her to death and she is one of a kind but I don't think moments like the Pollyanna speech are written to her strengths.

I hate it too. It was so scripted, so affected, so very Latham/Lechowick. Michelle Lee liked those years -- and why wouldn't she? All of Karen's imperfections were washed away and she became a Renaissance woman. Give me early seasons Karen any day. She was an opionated loudmouth but at the same time a good wife/mother. Both modern and traditional and truly unique. In the later seasons she becomes the antithesis of what she was -- she becomes a judgmental pollyanna reactionary shrew instead of the progressive force to behold that she was in the first 5 seasons. The pure perfect Karen/Mack of the Lechowick years are at best boring and at worst gag-worthy for me. a

omg I love JVA. She's such a psychopath, and I mean that in the most endearing way.

Agreed, he has become much more likable to me ever since Sandy and has played everything perfectly. He has risen above where the current Republican party stands and realized what he has do to position himself for 2016 when the political rhetoric will be completely different. He is the type of Republican I could vote for if the Democrats ever nominated a Joe Lieberman type.

Mitt Romney didn't want to be president? Please. A sad version of "you can't fire me I quit" because he's embarrassed to be beaten by a black guy.

lol @ making an issue of Obama referring to Burma as "Myanmar." There are actually two ways to call Burma in the Burmese language -- one is Burma the other is Myanmar. So the country renamed itself... big deal. This is not the "Polish Death Camps" issue that WAS a gaffe that I backed you up on earlier in this thread, Brian. It's a non-issue. Nobody is saying Burma/Myanmar -- not offensive to call it either -- should be treated as a Jeffersonian democracy. BUT should we start lifting sanctions, and continue lifting them as it improves? I say yes. That shows other countries like North Korea that if you improve your human rights situation the same will be done with you. It's a way to effect change without invading a country and having a costly decade long war, not "amateurish."

Nevermind that the "takers" overwhelmingly trend Republican, they are just "useful idiots" who don't realize they are the ones Republicans are talking about alol.

At least Texas could secede and be relatively successful. Louisiana, and indeed most states with secession movements, would be a basketcase if it seceded.

Well, we have a shortage in the US as well with our non-socialized system so clearly socialized medicine is not the problem.