I have to figure out what bottom drawer the DVD of _Be There to Love Me_ got into before I had a chance to watch it…

No less than Carl Hiaasen (_Team Rodent: How Disney Devoured the World_) might weigh in on that one…

And something not hagiographic nor propagandistic (from either side's perspective) about Ho Chi Minh's decades-long struggle to get some international attention before the guerrilla wars began.

> about 30-40 engineering nerds.

Then on to Curtis LeMay's life told in flashbacks, all leading up to his curious decision to be Wallace's running mate.

Alexandre Dumas got a little studlier

I think the critic who wrote that (it is not an original thought with me) may have been thinking of the early early years, with the lead detectives, played by George Dzudna and then Paul Sorvino, lasting about a season apiece.

Read somewhere some years ago (how's that for a cite?) that it was also why they had such a revolving door in the early years — lots of the actors found this just-the-facts-ma'am approach, with character development rationed out in bits and pieces here and there, to be rather frustrating. More came out about their…

> S. Epatha Merkerson, who plays—the sergeant, I guess? She’s in charge of the
> detectives. I have no idea what that’s called.

The crossover I'm hoping for is Ant-Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Two pop-culture reflections of reality that for me are deeply embedded in that year:

I thought they had the best chemistry of any detective pairing in years, Linus Roache was extremely watchable (and his conflicts with his boss were no small part of the fun), and renewed energy in the writer's room came through in all those aspects.

> I think that TNG's first season was the only one that wasn't good,
> season 2 wasn't quite there yet but was a big improvement

> it’s rare that a live version of a song is better than whatever a particular artist
> has already laid down on tape. (Production takes weeks, costs fortunes, and
> requires producers for a reason.)

It is an interesting philosophical question. All due respect to The Boss, but I think that things worth being sure of will survive the occasional moment of doubt, and your surety will emerge all the stronger for it.

I've long thought Phoebe was not only the most interesting character, but the only one who could be relied on to come up with a timely bit of wisdom and common sense (even though they set her up to be the most unexpected source of either). She was the grown-up, if a distinctly odd one, in a roomful of 30-year-old…

I think he has matured well as an actor, but yeah, when it comes to pop-cultural impact, he'll forever be jumping into a Ferrari.

I seem to recall that over-the-top courtship gestures gone (hilariously) wrong went on to be a running theme of Frasier. One of the lessons he very slowly learns (the whole of that series being, in effect, his analytical journey) is how to quit trying 'way, 'way, 'way too hard to make things happen.

"The Boys of Summer," a post-Eagles hit for Don Henley, also struck me as being all stalky and creepy in the same vein. She left you some unspecified but presumably considerable time ago, for reasons you haven't even figured out, and is seeing other people? Duuuude! Let it go already — if she notices you…

Hopefully in skilled and respectful hand, that battle deserves a Major Motion Picture — both a sea fight and a wheels-within-wheels espionage thriller.