The TV thread

How did they deal with Garlin? Kill the character off?

 

Mhm. He ded. Which makes me think that they must have hated him from a production standpoint, and in interviews, he doesn't really come off as a teddy bear. But with him and Segal gone, you don't have any curmudgeon balance, except for occasional appearances by the 87-year-old Judd Hirsch, who's clearly on light duty and not up for 23 episodes of a network sitcom.

 

I've loved Judd Hirsch in many past roles, but what he does there pales in comparison to Segal's contributions.

I usually take the killing off of a character to be correlated to how he's viewed by the showrunners as he leaves. But Taye Diggs didn't seem to have any beef or vice versa, and they killed him off "All American."

 

Pretty sure that was a money deal - a lot of shows reach five years or so - contracts have to be renegotiated, or in many cases, they need to cut characters loose in order to get renewed. CBS has had to deal with this as their shows go well beyond six years - you change showrunners, dump original supporting characters etc.

 

Didn't Garlin get fired because of some inappropriate behavior on set, like I think there were multiple complaints and he got booted.

 

I really enjoyed this show for the first 5 yrs or so then it got a bit repetitious (or Adam just got old).

REAL Bev's feed is wonderful; I hope my wife and I show the same level of love and happiness.

 

Yes. He was fired for being an asshole.

 

Great episode of Poker Face, until the last scene.

 

As I had mentioned up thread, I didn't play The Last of Us Left Behind DLC, so I went into last night sort of blind. Good episode that I will likely enjoy more on a second watch, as I was exhausted and sort of drifting in and out it last night. That said, there are only about 90 minutes left this season, so they've got a little work left to stick the landing. I have confidence they will.

 

I wasn't as high on this episode as I was the others. We got some of Ellie's motivation and a payoff of her Emmy speech last week. But the whole episode I knew what was coming because how could it not culminate in what it did? And after the Bill and Frank episode, this friend "ship in a bottle" didn't have the same impact. I wish we had more with Joel to build the tension. But I'm probably more critical because the other episodes—even when they are meant to be story-building and less action—have been fantastic. Probably do need to give this a second watch.

 

I'm a couple years behind, but I binged the first season of You this weekend on Netflix and loved it.

Two and a half more seasons to binge before the final four episodes of season 4 drop March 9.

 

I agree and think overall this was probably the weakest of all of the episodes. I understand what they were trying to accomplish here ... Riley was her best friend and roommate and clearly a love interest, and they're trying to refute Joel's "you don't know anything about loss" line from E6. It's obvious that Ellie had to kill Riley after she turned and I'm fine with them not showing it on screen. But we are missing a bit of Point A-B stuff in how Ellie ended up in the hands of the Fireflies. Did Marlene go searching the mall for Riley when she didn't return for her new Atlanta assignment? How would she not see Ellie's arm and put her down on the spot, other than for Ellie to say "hey, look, I was bit X hours ago and nothing has happened." I do remember in E1 Ellie yelling out "they're going to come looking for me, you know?" and she has a good point. If one of the kids just disappeared I don't think the FEDRA folks would just shake it off.