Awww, so cute. Emma Kenney is quite possibly my favorite cast member.

I need to read this book.

Oh God, how embarrassing…I'd meant to type Special Ed. But then I did something. Something that was the inspiration for a terrible novelty song by Afroman.

Is it bad that of all the point in this thread, the one I most want to address is Benny's dissection of Melrose Place?

@Assless Chaps, I'm of the opinion that to the degree the show has legitimately declined in quality (or even changed perceptibly enough to be considered a decline), the perception of that has been multiplied because folks are viewing through the lens of "BET screws up everything."

It sort of reminds me of "South Central," that weird thing Fox tried back in 1994. It's like there's some rule that a 30-minute show with black people has to have a laugh track, regardless of its actual tone. Sure enough, Mara Brock Akil worked on that show.

I just want "My Brother and Me" back. Seriously. Where's a reboot of that show? Surely there has to be some 40s-ish rapper who has some adorable brown babies to put on a television show.

I can dig that. I definitely got what Michael Clayton saw in it. It reminded me of the end of "Sherrybaby" when Maggie Gyllenhaal's character returned her biological daughter in much the same way.

The heading's fixed. It's episode nine.

Yeah, this didn't quite work for me either, but there are three more episodes, so I think it'll all come out soon enough.

I noticed that one of Kash's shots at Mickey also hit and exploded a bottle of orange soda. Maybe that's just the show's symbol for "somebody got pregnant." So maybe both Karen and Linda are pregnant.

I forgot to ask…
…I saw somewhere that the Aunt Ginger plot was new for the US version, and that in the UK version there was a Kev and Veronica story in the third episode. Was it this story or something like it, or are the writers doing their own thing with those characters?

This is actually pretty helpful.

Oh…yeah…yeah…that sounds right. I can't tell if I'm not paying attention because I don't care or I don't care because I'm not paying attention.

@ Pimphand: Agreed. In my notes I typed "Go viral? What does that even mean in this context?" But whatever. You gotta pick your battles with this one.

Ha! That commercial still delights me.

Tom's wife is oddly similar to the Tobins, pushed into a desperate situation that requires a drastic lifestyle change, and willing to do anything to avoid it. If all Deb had to do to keep the lake house is have some flight attendant killed, I'm sure she'd have made that phone call.

I agree that it was a big risk to cut off Winstone, but I don't think it was out of hotheadedness on Joe's part, more like a bit of short-sightedness maybe. He did ask Winstone to deliver the envelope of incriminating information that Louis left for Patty when he died, so there was at least some forethought about the…

The Origin Story
Interesting points, Claire, about why you weren't invested in the cause of Tara's DID. My issue with the origin piece in season one wasn't so much that I wasn't yet invested in the character as much the fact that I didn't feel like I was /supposed/ to care.

I can't believe I forgot to mention 3 DUN days DUN later!!! Wasn't this the first time they've overdramatized to this degree? I don't remember having seen that in any other season…but there was so much going on in this episode I s'pose I was bound to forget something.