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CarolTheDabbler's Replies
Nope, not a Seinfeld fan at all (except for the monologues), but I would have enjoyed that particular scene!
I actually like the "Mountain Greenery" number (though I like Stacey's scenes even better). Rob is supposed to be a writer, not a singer, and he has a pleasant voice, so I find his performance quite enjoyable -- more enjoyable than the performances of some professional singers, actually, especially the ones who try to "fancy up" their songs.
Ideally, yes, they're careful about that sort of thing, and as you say some shows do have official writer's guides that cover the important stuff, and some also hire consulting firms to check continuity and a number of other things. But considering all the little details that go into each episode of a good series, it'd be a full-time job to keep absolutely everything straight.
On top of that (and probably the main cause of slip-ups), the production of American shows for network TV tends to be rushed, because of the need to complete twenty-some episodes per season. So the top priority is simply to get a usable episode in the can on a weekly basis, in order to keep the network and the sponsors happy.
The good shows generally do a pretty good job, considering.
The little country gas station/grocery store down the road from us had a pool room in the back, and our parents instructed us kids that we were NOT to go in there! I did go in a time or two, though, when there was no one else in there. They did have some interesting calendars on the wall -- just cheesecake, though, near as I recall.
Yes, it was a different time.
We're nearly done with season 3 now. Tonight we watched "This Old House" and (other than one laugh) found it pretty pointless. So we figured the next one's gotta be better, it's even got Frasier Crane in it -- but it was just a bunch of silly gags. So we watched "Das Plane" to take the taste out of our mouths, but it was really bleh as well. It's eventually gonna get better again, right?
Also, what happened to the opening theme music? I loved that; it was just about my favorite part. For the first couple of season 3 episodes I figured they omitted it in order to make room for the two-parter plot, but it's still not back. Does this have something to do with Tony Shalhoub joining the cast? [Reference to Monk's theme music being changed after the first season.]
I agree with all of you!
Sadly, television continuity was often neglected (and presumably still is), especially if the show was "only" a comedy. And unfortunately for this episode's basic premise, a lot of things that Mary might be painfully aware of wouldn't really show up on television, so they felt a need to exaggerate, leading to a style of humor more suitable for sketch comedy.
But that's a real-world reason for doing the episode that way, not an in-universe explanation for why Mary might have handled the situation the way she did. I generally prefer in-universe explanations, even if it takes a little work to figure out what they might be.
Mary would have been better off just wearing one of her dressier work outfits. And there are surely ways to style wet hair that look -- well, better than that!
I think pjpurple has the best idea: Go ahead and give her the cold and the sprained ankle, which are realistic enough and can be made plenty obvious by the actress. But then have the final straw happens at the very last minute, as she approaches the hotel. Even if they don't literally have *mud* puddles in downtown Minneapolis, surely there are some potholes or low spots full of dirty water that a truck could splash through, and Mary has lots of dresses that look far better clean and dry than soaked with dirty water!
Since you're talking about the UK, there's another possible reason I can think of, namely themes considered unsuitable for certain audiences. For example, there were a few episodes of the original Star Trek that were not shown there, apparently because the show was considered family fare. If Magnum was likewise considered appropriate for family viewing, they might have considered the Sinatra episode too harsh.
One way to tell -- do the British broadcasts include "Did You See the Run Rise?"? If so, then that can't possibly be it!
Meaning no offense, and not really expecting to change anyone's mind, but I'm gonna disagree.
Up until the series finale, it was quite clear that Sullivan was Magnum's mother's maiden name. (There was even one episode where he explicitly referred to "the Sullivan side of the family" as his mother's people.) We were never given any reason whatsoever to doubt that was where his middle name came from.
At his father's funeral, young Thomas is referred to as "Thomas Magnum, Jr." and the deceased father as simply "Thomas Magnum." If his father had been the 3rd, surely he would have been referred to that way at his own funeral!
Uncle Sully's widow's surname is Sullivan, implying that her late husband's surname was also Sullivan, with "Sully" being a nickname based on that. Thomas refers to the widow as his aunt in one episode and his great aunt in another. I assume she's actually his great aunt, so Sully was apparently Thomas's mother's father's brother.
Sure, coincidences happen in real life -- a man could of course marry a woman whose surname is the same as his middle name. But <i>Magnum</i> isn't real life, it's fiction. And fiction is supposed to make sense. So I can't assume that a never-even-mentioned coincidence explains the suddenly-revealed-in-the-series-finale idea that Thomas is the 4th. It smells to me like either truly rotten continuity or blatant (and pointless) retcon. Or both.
Sorry (so to speak) for the diatribe, but this is my biggest peeve with the show. I've tried for years to make sense of it, but have failed utterly for the reasons mentioned above (and possibly some others that aren't occurring to me at the moment).
I take it this never went anywhere? If it did actually get made and I simply missed it, I'd be interested in having a look, at least out of curiosity. Who knows -- probably just an attempt to cash in on the old show's popularity, but it might actually be good.
As for the reboot, though, I've never watched an episode, even though my husband occasionally does. From what little I've seen, it doesn't feel at all like Magnum, so it'd be like watching some random show, and I don't see the point.
<blockquote>... when Magnum is reunited with Lilly, he can't really communicate with her because she only speaks French and Vietnamese ....</blockquote>
I do recall hearing her converse just a little with Higgins in French, but it seemed like the only Vietnamese word she ever spoke was "bup-beh" (or however that's spelt). You'd think that a child with even basic language skills for her age would be far more fluent than that!
I agree! And the forum seems to be fairly active right now.
I'll be back to it next time we do a Magnum slow-Marathon (i.e., one or two shows a day for as long as it lasts).
<blockquote>I'm just gonna go ahead and think of this as the Nemesis Timeline.</blockquote>
Whoa -- thanks for the warning! I've heard some good things about the show and some other things that make me wonder. Most of the post-Next-Gen series that I've seen are OK shows, but if Star Trek is (as Roddenberry insisted that it be, and frequently succeeded) a show where each episode is "about" something (i.e., has a point to make), and if Star Trek shows a future that the human race can be (more or less) proud of, then they're not Star Trek, they're soap operas set in an alternative Trek universe.
Just call me an old fogey.
I love "Lest We Forget"! It's not only a good story, it's so cleverly done, with the Lockhart mother and daughter playing the woman and the Ferrer father and son playing the man in 1981 and in 1941, respectively.
The plot is the sort that O. Henry might have written, if he'd been into happy endings.
<blockquote>The Final Problem so lacked any connection to reality that I half expected an “It was all a dream” ending.</blockquote>
Hey, that might have been an improvement!!!
I like most of the office scenes too, but to me the actual work scenes are in a different category from either the home scenes or the office-friends scenes.
I've always liked shows that are a judicious mix of comedy and drama, and it occurs to me that this is one of them. The actual work scenes tend more toward comedy, which is fine because they're balanced by the more drama-type scenes, both at home and at work.
OK, when I mentioned merely "sitting through" some of the Buddy and Sally scenes, I was mostly talking about the scenes where Sally sings. She's just not my style of singer (except for the time she imitated Jimmy Durante, which was terrific). I do enjoy Buddy's comic cello routines, though.
As for Laura's jealousy and whining, yeah, she had her bad days, but I don't offhand recall very much of that. For what it's worth, the vast majority of episodes (all but a handful) were written by men. Apparently they just thought it would be funny for her to behave that way sometimes.
<blockquote>I've just realised the series's writers think the audience is stupid.</blockquote>
I definitely see your point, but think the situation may be more like this: The writers were getting bored with doing clever-but-recognizable adaptations of the Holmes stories, so they became more and more inventive, to the point that they alienated a large portion of their original fan base.
Writers Moffat and Gatiss generally blame the current long hiatus on Cumberbatch and Freeman's busy schedules, but there's no indication that the actors have even been approached about doing more. In my opinion, the delay is due to the writers moving on to other projects, to give themselves more variety than they could fit into the Holmes universe. However, the writers and actors have repeatedly expressed an interest-in-principle in doing more episodes.
The writers have also said (as someone already mentioned) that what we've seen so far are the young, immature Holmes and Watson, but what they've been through has now transformed them into the classic characters. And the writers have also been saying from early on that they would never recast those two characters, and would like to revisit them when they're older and more mature. So as long as Cumberbatch and Freeman are still acting, we could eventually see a new episode or three.
I'd like that -- assuming that the writing is back to the quasi-Conan-Doyle style and tone of the first two seasons.
Yes, that blimp (or was it a zeppelin?) was a truly amazing work of dedication!
Unfortunately they telegraphed what would happen to it, which cast a pall over the entire episode for me. And when the inevitable did happen, it didn't seem funny at all, because I was imagining how I'd feel if that was my blimp.
Not my favorite episode!
<blockquote>He wanted to be a character who was more than the village idiot....</blockquote>
I saw him that way at first, but gradually realized that he was actually a complex character with his own very logical way of looking at things and a tendency to see the best in everyone.
I'm tempted to say if Bunny doesn't appreciate him, I'll take him -- but I'm not sure I'd have the energy to deal with his creative viewpoint for longer than 30 minutes at a time.
We're now a few episodes into season 3. For a while there it was, heaven help us, a soap opera (the traditional refuge of a sitcom that's run out of ideas), but now they seem to be over that, at least for the time being. Some of the episodes have been pretty good.
<blockquote>I don't care about the 'work partners', they're always dull to me, even if they are cracking jokes all the time. The blonde woman is repulsive, and the little guy seems kinda egotistical and unrealistic, more interested in making people laugh than bringing any genuine self into the play - artificial entity, if you will.</blockquote>
They aren't my favorite characters either, but I'd like to speak in their defense. The show's creator was Carl Reiner, who had been a comedy writer back in the even-earlier days of television, so Buddy and Sally are based on some of his erstwhile colleagues, and the atmosphere in the Brady Show writers' room is presumably similar to that in those erstwhile writers' rooms.
Perhaps one reason why the home scenes seem more realistic and relatable to most of us is that we're more familiar with homes than we are with comedy writers' rooms. Having worked in some vaguely similar sorts of places (namely software writers' rooms), I can relate to the kidding and the wisecracking. People tend to have their shields up at work. We're not as open and vulnerable as we may be at home, simply because we're there to get a job done. So the atmosphere is different, but that doesn't necessarily make it any less realistic.
Although there are some scenes with Buddy and Sally that I just sit through waiting for the next scene, there are others -- especially <i>non-work</i> scenes, come to think of it -- that I like just fine. For example, the episode "Where Have You Been, Fassbinder?" where Sally has invited a man from her past to come over for dinner, and misunderstandings ensue. And the episode "Today I Am a Man" about Buddy's belated bar-mitzvah. I guess we find it easier to relate to vulnerability than to a public facade. Which is probably a good thing!
We watched the show on its network run, but hadn't seen it since, and finally got the DVD set. We *really* enjoyed the brief first season. A while into season 2, we noticed that the episodes were getting kinda pointless. But the episode that introduced Antonio was good (and not *just* for Tony Shalhoub's performance, though that was terrific). Judging by some earlier comments on this thread, things will improve overall, so we'll keep watching.
I think this show is an example of the difference between each episode having a point to make, versus just having a beginning, middle, and end. We prefer the former type, but a number of season 2 episodes are of the latter type. Some of them start out as though they were going somewhere but then fall back on cliches for the ending (e.g., the UFO episode), while the "plot" of others is primarily a framework to hang gags on (e.g., the one where the plane goes missing).