Melissa Leo was reportedly really mad at Tom Fontana too. Combined with the things David Morse has said about the way his character was treated on St. Elsewhere and I get the sense that Fontana was great at starting shows but did a terrible job sustaining them, and working with actors was not his strong point.

I love that Harris guy, but to be fair I'm looking at a list of recent RRs, and Richard Schiff with Pete Croato, Lori Petty with Esther Zuckerman and Damian Young with Mariah Eakin were all well done. They seemed to have just the right followup questions to dig deeper, rather than the usual "was that a fun movie to…

It's similar in a lot of ways to Platoon, but also better than that.

I saw Trouble in Mind when it was first released, and loved it. It's one of those movies, though, that I've been afraid to go back and watch again because so much of what appealed to me was the mood and atmosphere, and I'm afraid if I see it again it won't be the same. Maybe now that enough time has passed.

His story about scrounging food off of tables reminds me of Carl Weathers's character in Arrested Development. There's an earlier Random Roles where Weathers talks about meeting someone who did that kind of thing right before he was cast for the role, so it sounds like there are people all over Hollywood who do that…

I agree that broad humor should be effortless, but I don't exactly agree that alt-comedy embraces effort. At least the good stuff. I think good alt-comedy winks at the work, but if it ever goes too far down that road it gets awfully self indulgent.

There are also horrible people who eat at restaurants and leave them instead of giving a tip.

I absolutely agree that I tried to see the camp value in them, but it just doesn't work that way. It's not that he's a lone nutjob — he's plugged in to a network of similarly nihilistic people who live to persecute people who are different from them. And there are people who don't believe him for a second but are…

Wasn't it George Carlin who said something along the lines of half the world is dumber than average? There was something pretty smarmy in that routine, but there's a germ of truth and I wouldn't say it was wrong to say Tom was dumber than the average person, just that it doesn't contradict what you say about other…

From Brooks's previous show The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Ted Knight did a great job as Ted Baxter. Many people over the years have made the connection between him and Hurt's character, noting of course that Ted Baxter was a lot more broadly comic. Still, even though Ted was dumb, he wasn't exactly simple, and you could…

Great group. They had a couple of excellent bits on Sesame Street, by the way:

I saw one of Anthony Bourdain's early shows made around 2000 where he runs into Tony Shalhoub. Bourdain shakes his hand and gushes over Big Night and how much it means to people in the restaurant business as an example of how things really work.

I think it's worth mentioning that Roy Cohn's malignant heart is still beating in the current election - Trump was a close associate of him in the 70s and 80s, and not only went to Cohn because of his consigliere role to a murderers row of NYC mobsters, but also because he admired Cohn's politics and style.
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I was going to say Hardhome, but I just looked at the summary and there was a lot that happened in addition to the final escape that I had completely forgotten about, which maybe doesn't say such good things about those parts.

The loosy-goosy nature of security is consistent with lots of scenes in the show, but it seems odd to me from an out-of-show perspective. If it were me, and my brother and sister had been poisoned, my grandfather shot by my uncle who then escaped mysteriously, my mother and wife had been imprisoned by fanatics, there…

Was there any indication why Tommen wasn't there in the first place? I know the Monster was barring the door, but what happened to the Kingsguard? Did I miss something?

I agree that's the smart move, and I assume Jon/Sansa would go with someone who could give them security. Although one thing I could see happen is that Littlefinger frames them, just like he convinced Catelyn that Tyrion was behind the attack on Bran. Or, conceivably some of Asha and Theon's ships go rogue and break…

One obvious issue is which side they try to take when Dany invades. Presumably Tyrion and Varys don't trust Littlefinger, and Tyrion may hold some residual pity for Sansa, which might help her, as would Theon's guilt. But Littlefinger obviously has a long reach and might poison the well before she has a chance to…

I read her look as a warning as much as anything. Although the show is free to go any way it wants, of course, under a reasonable path she'd never trust him and never believe anything he said. That whole bit about wanting to marry her — she saw how he pushed Aunt Lysa through the Moon Door despite claiming he loved…

I've only recently been catching up on Arrested Development, and I just saw the one where Charlize Theron's character is revealed to have the intelligence of a first grader. I think Costner's character makes a lot more sense if you see him as a guy who can't put his clothes on the right way and likes to fingerpaint…