The TV thread

Billy Joel would've made a good actor based on some of his early videos especially Pressure.

 

https://tvline.com/2022/04/27/melissa-mcbride-leaving-walking-dead-spinoff-daryl-and-carol/

For those that forgot ... TWD is still on TV. LOL

And now Darryl will have his own show instead of a buddy comedy... or whatever the hell it was going to be.

 

For some damned reason, I'm still watching. Actually, I'm not completely hating the final season, but if I wasn't such a sucker for completing things, I'd have bailed a while ago.

All I had read about the spinoff is what is in the article, that it is set in Europe. The rumor is that it focuses around searching for Rick. They are also shooting in Europe, which is the stated reason for Melissa McBride leaving the show.

 

Wow, the iT crowd sucks ball. Never heard a more obnoxious laugh track.

 

I love that show, but I think it might be a bit baggy in the first season. You might want to skip to s2, e2, "Return of the Golden Child." I remember that being the first episode that had me crying from laughter.

 

Finding this last half-season of Ozark a little convoluted/tedious.

 

You just figured that out in the last season? That show is ponderous as the day is long.

 

I just re-watched "18th and Potomac" and 'Two Cathedrals" again, as part of my winter-long re-watching of "The West Wing." Simply tremendous television.

Not sure why they killed Mrs. Landingham off. But Leo's reaction when Charlie tells him she'd been killed is staggeringly good acting.

 

They wanted to give Bartlet an absolutely devastating personal loss to rage against, without killing off any of his actual family. Mrs. Landingham, as was described in the scripts, served as either an older-sister or surrogate-mother role for Jed.
I don't believe I ever heard Bartlet's mother (or for that matter Abby's) ever referred to on screen.
I always thought it would have been good for one or two of Jed/Abby's parents to be alive, for at least part of the series. The Bartlets were supposed to be mid-50s (both 56 I believe) when Jed took office so it wouldn't be unusual to have had a parent or two still alive.

I suppose they could have killed Liz or Ellie at any time, although each of them had a couple minor story arcs in the last couple of seasons.
They referred to Jed's brother off camera, he never appeared in an episode.

 

One huge part of that show was how much acting was done non-verbally. Richard Schiff and John Spencer were particularly good at telling a story just with facial expressions and body language.

The story I've heard was that Kathryn Joosten, the actress who played Mrs. Landingham, told Aaron Sorkin and others that she was up for a regular role on another series. She hadn't decided if she would take it or not, but that gave him the idea of writing a sudden exit for her character. Then it goes into what Starman wrote, the desire to deal Bartlet a devastating personal loss as he was dealing with the MS reveal. They really hadn't developed the idea of the character as a sort of older sister to Bartlet before they killed her off. They were clearly loyal to one another and had a friendly relationship, but the only real character development for her had been the loss of her sons in Vietnam. The show got into their actual relationship in "The Two Cathedrals," making it clear just what she meant to him. Much of that was done in flashbacks, though in hindsight, you could see it in "18th and Patomac," when it is revealed that he had put off telling her about the MS as long as possible. It was as if she was the person he couldn't face telling more than any of the others.

 

When I got to that episode of TWW, I knew they killed off Mrs. Landingham. But man, I still cried buckets.

 

I just remember being so shocked by that death. He obviously was going to run again, but the plot regarding the public reveal was reaching a fever pitch and that just came out of nowhere.