Tony begins to comfort her, thinking he did something to offend or upset her. The tenderness Tony shows Jennifer in this episode seems to come from a genuine, caring place. She shies away from his hovering presence, telling him “We’ll do this, go sit over there”. Her voice is quiet. She blames her tears on her injured knee. She tells him to go on.
All in Television
Diane keeps sitting down to try to pin down that perfect book, but every time she tries, her thought process unravels and her inner self spirals. Shown through increasingly unstable, sketchy animation of herself (as in sketches on a page), her inner self is constantly bombarded by voices of her peers as she speculates them shutting down everything she says—perhaps even more so than they would in real life.
Day by Day episodes were mostly flawed affairs, Louis-Dreyfuss raised the comedy bar with every appearance, Thorne-Smith was always charming and funny, and Barnes consistently stole the show, but the writing was uneven, and the focus on the ex-yuppie parents often fell flat, so after 33 episodes the show was cancelled, but not before producing One Perfect Episode.
Adoptive father Matthew Cuthbert is pleasantly baffled by young Anne, appreciating her imagination and gregariousness as a contrast to his own stammering but warm shyness. He also understands that she sometimes needs protection, but that protection is rarely (if ever) about punching out some bad guy. His protection is a mix of patience and generosity.
“War is the H-Word” is one of the Futurama episodes that leans into the sci-fi the most. Fry, Bender, and Leela (after assuming a fake male identity) are shipped off to another planet to fight in a war against a race of hyper-intelligent brain ball aliens.
Early on, we discover that these men are in fact demons. We’ve just happened to come by their routine get-together at their favorite place. These demons are old. Despite their disgust of humans, we all apparently share the trait of hanging out in our dotage to drink coffee and talk shit.
The show was ahead of its time in not treating the topic like a joke, except perhaps lightly where appropriate for entertainment that successfully stood beside the message. Matt’s conversations about Rambo diving off cliffs and stitching his own wounds, and athletes being shot up with novocaine and cortisone to make it just one more game, are contrasted with him fielding questions about preparations for George’s baby shower, like whether there should be beige or maroon napkins.
As I mentioned, Lovesick’s tone walks a tightrope between humor and melancholy, which is underscored by the episode’s theme: the hollowness that comes from prioritizing sexual wants over personal needs. After the party, Luke learns that Ilona isn’t the person he made her out to be, and the next morning, Evie wakes up to a regretful Dylan. She has to come to terms that by having sex with her best friend, she might have just ruined her future marriage.
The episode centers on Frank’s former military school dedicating a new library in his honor after a sizable donation from a lobbying group Frank works with. The night before the dedication Frank is surprised by the arrival of three old choir mates from his days as a cadet at the academy. Frank spends the rest of the night gallivanting with his choral comrades and for the first time we see Frank truly happy.
There’s a thematic disposability to the many iterations of Mr. Phillips that recalls the abundance of white men named Chris portraying the same mold of superhero again and again. There are no white men named Chris on Watchmen.
It’s at this point things begin to swell both at the party and in town with some ultra-intense Gregorian chanting and a few dead Sunnydale residents as Giles makes his way to the Summers’ house to warn everyone. When Willow finds Buffy packing, she attacks her for abandoning her. Joyce is right behind, drunk on Schnapps and twists the knife in deeper.
TELEVISION / Exploring 'The Expanse' Within Ourselves: A Review / Jennifer Lemming
Jennifer Lemming explores Amazon’s series, The Expanse, in this in-depth review of the first four seasons.
We are shown their lives at breakneck speed. Quentin marries and has a son with the woman who sold fruit. Eliot lives with them and the four make a life in a small cottage next to the mosaic. Tragedy strikes and Quentin’s wife dies but Eliot is there to help pick up the pieces and raise their son. Quentin and Eliot, now past middle age, send their adult son to make his own life while they stay together, working on the mosaic.
Lisa and Zack seemingly only lasted for this one episode, which is disappointing. But the pair signified so much that the anchor couples of the show did not. It was an interracial romance, which had close to zero representation on television at the time.
If you like stubborn, you’ll like this dude. Notable qualities: really slow on the uptake, sneaky good in bed, consumes the most drinks at the illegal sex club while dancing terribly. On the other hand, he does defeat the hunter Remiel in single combat.
Joseph feels isolated and alone after his growth spurt. His bike is now too small for him to use and he has acne and stretch marks on his back. Bobby however has the opposite problem. He is a late bloomer that struggles with feelings of inadequacy and insecurity when he sees his friends seemingly growing faster than he is. Connie struggles with confusing romantic attraction to both Joseph and Bobby.
What other episodes lack in cohesiveness, however, can be found in “Mistaken Identity,” which is the first to thread the needle between the show’s often brash humor and its honest engagement with serious social issues.
The world is weird, and beautiful, and in the age of 3-episode seasons and creators writing, acting, directing, lighting, editing, and best boying their own shows, it’s refreshing to see hope on the horizon for those of us who loved longer formats and weirder stories.
Hilarity ensues, in classic Simpsons style, with jokes about her resorting to psychics, video dating, and artificial semination, and despite the sensitive topics, none of it is particularly dehumanizing, or make the viewer unempathetic to Selma’s plight.