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Thursday Night TV and Open Thread

Justified was great last night -- one of the best episodes so far this season, and FX has just renewed it for season 3.

If you missed the premiere of AMC's "The Killing" on Sunday, catch it on On Demand or Xfinity or whatever you use as a Tivo these days. It's a winner.

AMC is also re-running all three seasons of Breaking Bad, beginning last night with the pilot for season 1. A new season will start after that. If you haven't watched it so far, give it a try and see what we're all praising and why Bryan Cranston has won so many Emmys for his role as the chemistry teacher with cancer turned meth lab cook with cancer in remission. [More...]

Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife (Anna Gunn) and teenage son (RJ Mitte) who has cerebral palsy. White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of two years left to live. With a new sense of fearlessness based on his medical prognosis, and a desire to secure his family's financial security, White chooses to enter a dangerous world of drugs and crime and ascends to power in this world. The series explores how a fatal diagnosis such as White's releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to a kingpin of the drug trade.

Nurse Jackie is a disappointment this season --so was the second half of last season. Looks like this season will be about Jackie being in denial about her drug addiction, which sounds like typical war on drugs fare to me, not groundbreaking, cutting edge TV. The characters have all become one dimensional on the show. Too bad, the first season was really good.

Shameless is done for the season on Showtime, but will be back for another season. Weeds begins in June.

The upcoming season of The Bachelorette with Bachelor non-winner Ashley Hebert is filming this week in Phuket, Thailand. The show begins airing May 23. And yes, Brad and Emily are still together.

As for tonight, who's going home on American Idol? I really hope it's Hailey. She was no Janis Joplin last night and I still think of her as an off-key yodeler. She also seems like fake sunshine. The other two women are much better.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome, even those not about TV.

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  • Display: Sort:
    The Borgias was good, if only (5.00 / 1) (#6)
    by ruffian on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 08:51:57 AM EST
    to see Jeremy Irons slouching in that pope chair, dripping venom. Priceless.

    The last half hour of Episode 3 of Mildred Pierce was riveting. I like the pace of the series overall - it seems slow by today's standards, but you really get a chance to immerse yourself and know the characters.

    Actualy (none / 0) (#7)
    by nyjets on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 09:19:11 AM EST
    I caught the Borgias on demand. It was quite good I thought. Irons was excellent but overall I thought it was a solid production.

    Parent
    Jeremy Irons? (none / 0) (#10)
    by sj on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 09:41:23 AM EST
    I don't subscribe to Showtime, but the Borgias are endlessly fascinating.  And I love Jeremy Irons.  

    I almost want to reconsider.

    Parent

    The Borgia story (none / 0) (#11)
    by ruffian on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 10:04:20 AM EST
    is tailor made for a series like this - so much of it is rumor and legend anyway, they can take some pretty wide dramatic license with history. The cast is great so far, and very cool production values with the palaces and costumes.

    Yes, Jeremy Irons plays Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander ...I forget the number...Cesare and Lucrezia's papa. He's great, as usual.

    I'm in for the duration!

    Parent

    Can't wait for Justified... (none / 0) (#1)
    by MileHi Hawkeye on Thu Apr 07, 2011 at 09:52:25 PM EST
    ...to come out on DVD.  FX also renewed Archer for a third season.  Yeah.

    Will have to check out The Killing too.

    No TV but very much (none / 0) (#2)
    by oculus on Thu Apr 07, 2011 at 10:22:31 PM EST
    enjoyed performance of Richard Strauss's last opera, "Capriccio," with Renee Fleming singing the role of the Countess.  

    Thursday night TV is the bomb! (none / 0) (#3)
    by kgoudy on Thu Apr 07, 2011 at 11:19:10 PM EST
    I was on P&Z for 8 years and just recently, after retiring, am aware of the humor on 30 Rock, the India telemarketing show (oh man that is funny and surreal) and the physics comedy. I LOVE thursday night tv!

    on the India (none / 0) (#4)
    by Jeralyn on Thu Apr 07, 2011 at 11:32:18 PM EST
    telemarketing show (Outsourced), rent the movie "Outsourced" on which it's based. It's even better.

    Parent
    Ousourced (none / 0) (#5)
    by kgoudy on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 08:30:37 AM EST
    thanks I will! I am so behind on media I didn't even know there had been a movie!

    Parent
    Okay (none / 0) (#9)
    by sj on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 09:37:41 AM EST
    I'm wracking my brain and crossing my eyes trying to interpret P&Z.

    Can you enlighten me?  Thanks :)

    Oh, and I agree about Thursday night TV.  But I add Grey's Anatomy to your list.

    Parent

    Emily Litella reports on Wisconsin S.Ct. race (none / 0) (#8)
    by Peter G on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 09:28:14 AM EST
    Just checked at home phone messages (none / 0) (#12)
    by Militarytracy on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 04:00:53 PM EST
    for when I was gone today.  There are lots of them.  Some people wanted to know what I know but I know nuthin.  Sounds like some deal has been struck concerning military pay and is unannounced at this time, but you can look up your upcoming military LES online at myPay and they are all showing Half Wages :)

    Perhaps this is some sort of compromise :)  I cannot check our LES because I don't know the password.  We don't really go to the myPay site for anything.  We don't live from one LES to the next.  But if Obama has settled on paying half wages to active duty soldiers that is fricken funny as hell.  If he has chosen to do this, I am so proud of him I could spit.  He didn't roll over, and you can't say he's completely screwing all the military families now.  You can't throw their families out and into the gutter, and we all have enough money for food and essentials :)  If it's true....that's fricken genius and you still have stateside soldiers doing the work of four people and still just as pissed at the Republicans :)  I don't know if this is true though, and my husband has been in meetings all day about the shut down.  As soon as I know something solid without disturbing him I'll put it up.

    good strategy (none / 0) (#13)
    by Jlvngstn on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 04:19:09 PM EST
    of all the storylines that will play out if the gov't shuts down, i assume that the dumbest of the left is providing cover for boehner with the accusations that he cannot control the tea party candidates.

    Seems to me this gives Boehner and republicans an "out" in the next election.  They can blast the tea party candidates at their leisure because on 95% of the issues they are going to vote with them anyway even if they are pissed that in the election the republicans called them obstructionists.  

    The tea party seats will be right seats anyway by and large so it does not matter if they are thrown out for being obstructionists as the right keeps the seat.

    It's not that he cannot control the tea party, it's that he wants to get rid of medicare, privatise ss and tell the disabled to quit whining and learn how to get the wheelchairs up a curb.

    yes or no?

    Putting this here and in the Budget thread: (none / 0) (#14)
    by Anne on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 08:37:35 PM EST
    Tentative deal being reviewed by the WH per Marc Ambinder:

    Numerous GOP and Democratic sources on and off Capitol Hill tell National Journal that the outline of the deal is as follows: up to $39 billion in cuts from the 2010 budget, $514 billion for the defense budget covering the remainder of this fiscal year, a GOP agreement to abandon controversial policy riders dealing with Planned Parenthood and the EPA, and an agreement to pass a "bridge" continuing resolution tonight to keep the government operating while the deal is written in bill form [...]

    The proposal under review could form the basis of an agreement on a six-month continuing resolution that averts a government shutdown of longer than a few days. The prospective measure would cut spending by about $39 billion from current levels, two aides said. It would not include a ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood, but part of the arrangement would likely be an unspecified and symbolic procedural step intended to give Boehner and conservatives political cover on the issue, the aides said. Democratic appear to have accepted an increased level of cuts in exchange for the GOP dropping the rider.

    Who wants to calculate the cost of "saving" Planned Parenthood and the EPA?

    David Dayen and Ryan Grim:

    You have to go back to the initial numbers to see the magnitude of this policy loss. In December, when a continuing resolution for the rest of the year was getting negotiated, the level of funding for FY 2011 was markedly higher than it will be under this deal. Ryan Grim runs the numbers.

    The difference comes from the starting point. Democrats are working off of the president's requested budget for the fiscal year, which was $1.128 trillion. That's the same baseline that House Republicans used when they cut $102 billion with their first bill, H.R. 1, bringing the spending down to $1.026 trillion.

    But there is a number that realistically could have become law, and that's the one that was proposed by Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). Known as the Sessions-McCaskill level, it blew up in December over a fight over earmarks, but it had the broad support of both parties in general.

    That figure was $1.108 trillion -- $58 billion above what Democrats are now willing to accept.

    That was written before this latest deal, so it's actually $59 billion. And the benefit for exchanging the Making Work Pay tax cut with the payroll tax cut, one of the only changes in the tax cut deal that didn't simply extend current law? $60 billion. So if you accept that Democrats could have gotten Sessions-McCaskill into the tax cut deal, four months later almost the ENTIRE stimulus from the payroll tax cut is gone. Completely. As Ryan notes, "The focus on Planned Parenthood may be distracting from a dramatic GOP victory on spending."

    The $513 defense budget is precisely the level that Senate appropriators targeted back in December. So the defense budget is basically getting out of this untouched. Republicans tried to up that defense budget above the Pentagon's request, so that was beaten back.

    This means that all $29 billion in cuts - remember $10 billion have already been enacted - will come from the non-defense budget. The latest on that is that about half will come from the discretionary budget, and half from mandatory spending. This spreads the pain, but there's a great deal of uncertainty about what those cuts will mean in the specifics.

    Hard to know what to say to this...

    Why are we calling it (5.00 / 1) (#15)
    by nycstray on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 09:10:21 PM EST
    "Planned Parenthood funding" when it's actually Title X funding aka women's health services and has a much broader reach than just PP?

    Parent
    For the obvious reason: it equals abortion, (5.00 / 1) (#16)
    by Anne on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 09:21:17 PM EST
    which makes it so much easier to demonize than, say, "women's health services."

    Maybe it's time for Planned Parenthood to play the same game and re-name and re-brand to more accurately reflect the bulk of its services;  sure, the media would always say, "...which used to be known as..." but so what?

    Honestly, this whole thing just sickens me; I truly just do not understand people, I really don't.

    Parent

    Yeah, I'm getting pretty d@mn p*ssy (5.00 / 1) (#17)
    by nycstray on Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 09:44:56 PM EST
    about it. I checked in on CNN (OMG WHY?!) and they had the guy from vote vets and another former service guy with Wolfie lamenting about how they were bargaining chips all the time. Neither seemed to notice how often woman parts were on the table also, even as they mention the "A" word.

    Listening to my 2 CA Sens today reminded me of, oh about 25ish (more?) yrs ago, when friends and I went to a protest/rally regarding our women parts. I made an impromptu logo (yes, a hanger was involved) and painted it on squares of muslin to pin on the backs of our jackets. Our 'backs' made the front page of the SFC. And here we sit all these years later . . .

    I think PP could re-brand with an emphasis on Planned and a tag line that says "preventing 650,000+ abortions every year and taking care of the women you love"  ;)

    Parent