TV Question Qorner: America’s Next Top Plimpton, clowns hold YSL hostage, and more
Making the Band 4. I have a lot of questions, most of them concerning that hottest-of-messes white fur vest Diddy keeps showing up in. The man is a style icon; that is a fugly garment which I suspect came from the women’s section, unbeknownst to Diddles; what is up with that?
Does anyone else still watch the show? Because even I almost gave up on it, but you never know when something awesome is going to happen, and I enjoy Brian. Still, the season has felt off so far, until The Que Meltdown Arc kicked into gear. And how is it not obvious to everyone who knows him personally that the man needs medication? Because I enjoy Brian, as I said, but picking a fight with that guy is in the DSM as a hallmark of depressive, self-destructive behavior.
America’s Next Top Model. Could a member of the panel please just say out loud that Celia obviously cut Martha Plimpton’s face off, ran it through an old-tyme clothes wringer, and sewed it over her own? Come on now.
Actually, scratch that. The panel doesn’t get to say dick — not if the panel is going to bag on the contestants’ clothes every week but not say a word about that Paulette Goddard Crypt Collection For Target “blouse” Tyra had on last episode. Tyra, honey: not with your front porch, I don’t care who designed it. “But when that circus troupe kidnapped Yves St. Laurent” I SAID I DON’T CARE TAKE IT OFF.
I will say that her brisk smackdown of Celia made me not want to yank her weave out for the first time in like five years.
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. No, my question is not when I turned into my grandmother, because I think I’ve pinpointed that in the late ’90s, so get off my lawn. My actual question: in the “Payment in Blood” episode, where James McAvoy accidentally frenches that girl he thinks is his sister while Idris Elba is cuckolding the actual killer (you heard me), the woman playing Helen isn’t the same Helen as later, right? I watch them all out of order and I can’t keep track of the Helens; is this a Becky-on-Roseanne type of a thing?
And why is everyone in this installment suffering from chapped lips?Seriously, every character except Havers has flu-y dry lips, and speaking of Havers, I know she’s the working-class blah blah different worlds blah, but must her hair always look like it was styled with a handful of Crisco? The accent gets the point across. Lend the woman a bottle of clarifying rinse, for the love of Scotland Yard.
But that leads to another question, for all you other doddering pensioners who watch the programme: whose hair is worse, early-series Havers with the modified Steve Perry, or later-series grieving/suspended Lynley with that age-inappropriate bowl cut? I believe he had it in the installment where he slept with that daughter of a friend of his and then she jumped out a window or something? I may have misremembered that plot, because I am a hundred and seventeen years old.
Felicity. When can I expect Julie Emrick to get less annoying? Ten years I’ve waited, and it hasn’t happened yet. Every time Sean walks in on her and Noel kissing, I want to kick her in the balls. Every. Time.
Edited to add: I forgot to mention that, if you enjoyed this installment of “this TV is terrible — and such small portions!”, you should read Linda’s Real Conversations About TV. Our bad-television Venn is kind of frightening with the overlap.
Tags: America's Next Top Model Chapstick Diddles don't wear that ever again Felicity friends Inspector Lynley Mysteries Making the Band 4 Paulette Goddard shut up Julie Emrick TV Yves St. Laurent
Here’s when Julie Emrick gets less annoying: when she leaves the show. She is annoying right up until the end. They tried to soften her after the whole “I wrote one hundred angry songs about Felicity and I’m going to sing them all while we’re stuck in the subway” episode, but it never worked for me because she’s whiny and looks like a rat.
Wow, I haven’t watched that show in years and I clearly have some residual anger.
Your comments make me very glad that I broke up with ANTM about five eps into last season.
Man, there has to be a word that describes that feeling of release that comes with unclogging your DVR by deleting the huge backlog of episodes of a show you now realise you’ve lost interest in.
@Kim: “And add a breathy ‘…yeah’ to the end of each one, because I’m plaintive and adopted.” Hate!
I thought that one day, on rewatch, I would merely feel pity for her and her 184,281 butterfly clips. But no.
Thirty Helens agree.
Well, if watching Lynley makes one a doddering pensioner, then I’m not only a doddering pensioner but also a 150-year-old great-grandmother or something, because I just finished watching the whole series last week. In order. Hee. (And I might have squeaked out loud upon seeing this post.)
To answer your questions:
Yes. From the pilot to the finale there are three different Helens; the one in this episode is Helen #2. I don’t know what’s more irritating — the fact that she was recast so many times in such a comparatively short series, or the fact that the most irritating Helen (IMHO) lasted the longest.
And later-series Lynley hair is definitely, definitely worse. IMHO, anyway. I’m kind of fond of the perpetual awfulness of Havers’ hair, especially in the later seasons — they start quite obviously prettying her up, but even when it’s grown out and paired with a new wardrobe, the perma-bedhead survives! Hee.
Gack, this is what happens when I de-lurk — remove one of those IMHOs.
Re:Lynley If you’ve never read the books-that hair is also part of the whole thing-because a lot of her reactions to things have to do with the fact that she’s homely and knows it, so she just doesn’t try. Also, that girl wasn’t his friend’s daughter, it was the girl his friend wanted at that age.
I’ve been calling Celia ‘Fake Martha Plimpton’ since day one. I both approve of and disapprove of the smackdown. FMP shouldn’t have stepped up and said it, but on the other hand, if Tyra gives a flying weave about people’s attitude, she needs to actually have someone watching these morons. Still, at least FMP showed some awareness in the preview for this week’s episode, assuring everyone that she’s the one going home. Probably, and I shall miss you, FMP!
Alternately FMP is known as ‘Fake Vanessa’, with random green slime comments, which probably shows you all how old I am.
“Thirty Helens agree.”
Heh. Drive-by Kids In The Hall reference; cool. Can’t help you out with the Julie-annoyance issue, since the pace of the damn show (approximately half the speed of glaciation) made me give up on it about five episodes in, for the sake of my jaw muscles, and my sanity.
And I think I mis-read “Diddles, don’t ever wear that again” as a single tag. I think it’s funnier that the Did needs his own category of special wardrobe-ed. Does that make me a bad person?
I couldn’t ever take Julie seriously because to me, she was always the Pink Power Ranger. (I did a *lot* of babysitting as a teenager and as a result I know way more about Pokemon and Power Rangers than any reasonable adult human being should.)
OK, I knew you were watching Making the Band. Question 1: Speaking of that awful white fur vest, do you think there’s some sort of contract regarding those hats they’re all wearing all the time? In any given scene, two or more people are wearing those weird-ass hats, and I think they all just pass them around like, “No way, dude, I had to wear that thing in the studio – it’s your turn now.”
Question 2: you mentioned Que needing medication, but did you get the feeling that the rest of the guys were implying that Que was on drugs or something? In the meeting, they were all tip-toeing around, saying, “If something’s going on…” And then Big Mike cried… I don’t know. It felt like an intervention. He’s getting into fights, freaking out about money, and in one of his interview segments, he seemed resigned and was crying and said something like, “I was acting out of character, lashing out at everybody.” I wondered if that was recorded after this season wrapped.
I was totally taking Que’s side for awhile too, because he’s hot and I have a soft spot for him. I agreed with him that Willie was acting rigid and controlling when it came to the group’s music and what they would record. But then… he went off the rails. The best line of the season came from Diddy on that episode, when he visited the recording studio and Que was raging about recording the song he liked. After talking them down, he said: “But you know this dude is sensitive – try a record for this bitch.” His delivery was just perfect.
If Lynley makes you a doddering pensioner, how old does owning all of the Brother Cadfael mysteries make me?
I’m not sure I can really judge (if only because of my deep love for Antiques Roadshow), but my feeling is that age ain’t got nothin’ to do with enjoying the Inspector Lynley Mysteries. If you appreciate male beauty but not the opportunity to gaze upon Nathaniel Parker’s magnificent visage, you’re either dead or haven’t been born yet.
Thus it follows that I think his late-season bowl cut is a worse crime than the show’s stubborn refusal to ever let poor Sharon Small near a comb.
Oh, Julie. There is no end to her annoying qualities. CBS recently aired (and still may be) a Canadian programme that has her in it…I couldn’t watch it for fear that my Julie hate might spew all over my lovely living room. Oh, Julie. Just stop.
Fourthing the Julie hate. My blood is at a low boil just from reading this and remembering…every time that stupid guitar would come out, I’d be all about refreshing my cocktail.
Nathaniel Parker is my best tv boyfriend ever. We have passionate times. Even though I nearly broke up with him because of that long hair/sideburn crap Lynley was sporting while Parker was filming Bleak House.
Anyway, all Helens are hateful, the 2nd Helen most of all (she migrated very badly from the page to the small screen), and Sharon Small suffers bravely through the requirements of Havers’ hair. And my grandmother only wishes she had someone as hot as Parker to enjoy when she was watching Masterpiece in her day.
My sister and I were slightly older than the Power Rangers target age range when it first came on, so we watched it because we thought it was hysterically funny in its badness. So, the only reason I watched Felicity was because the Pink Ranger was in it, but it was way too soapy and not nearly enough monsters or killer robots to hold my interest, and I didn’t even make it through the first season. But now Amy Jo Johnson is on Flashpoint on CBS, which is a very good show, and she is very good on it, so I feel sorta bad about the fact that I still think of her as the Pink Ranger.
Anyway, based on MCB’s similar sounding experience, I’d say watching old school Power Rangers might be the cure for Julie-caused annoyance.
We need DinoZord Power, NOW!
That’s what Felicity needed: more monsters and killer robots! Instead of yet another sighed, passive-aggressive conversation with her father, Felicity could have zzzarphed him with her laptop-mounted laser cannon. Don’t like Felicity’s new haircut, swimmer-boy? Too bad. ZZZAAARPH.
Pacing problem solved.
My animation-fan friends and I were ironically crazy about the Power Rangers (mid-20’s when they first aired.) We saw the first movie in the theater, I dressed as the Pink Ninja Ranger for Halloween in 1996, and one day we walked around the sculpture garden in the correct color-coded clothing and posed for dramatic pictures of us fighting with statue-monsters and preparing to morph in front of the Spoonbridge and Cherry.
That did not make either Julie or Felicity any more bearable, though the “foreshadowing” when Felicity was upset that someone was “kissing the pink Power Ranger” at a Halloween party with some extra in an actual PR costume was creakily funny.
You do have to give Amy Jo Johnson props for having the most successful post-PR acting career of any of them, though.
@Carrie Ann: I don’t watch MTB regularly, but yes, WHAT is up with those damn hats? I think, “Why are they wearing them inside? And why do they exist in nature, because they are heinously fug?” Here are more questions: Danity Kane is dunzo, right? Like, can Dawn and Aundrea go home and get jobs already, or try to start solo careers, or something other than hanging around the boys’ apartment? I guess they’re probably being paid for being on MTB, but they just look kind of pitiful. And why did Donnie and Diddy have their “meeting” in a hallway with their coats on? And I am totally sorry that Dawn got mugged, but why was she carrying her laptop in her purse?
Best part of that episode: Big Mike with the recorder. Actually, the whole part with Big Mike on the way to the station was hilarious. Big Mike is my favorite.
And also: Idris Elba is on TV somewhere (other than The Office) and I am missing it? When and on what channel?
Wait wait wait wait wait. There’s an episode of a TV show that features James McAvoy AND Idris Elba? I can’t believe nobody ever told me about this.
Sign me up for AARP The Magazine, because I’m about the Netflix the crap out of that baby.
Right on Holly Martins! That’s exactly what I was thinking — James McAvoy AND Idris Elba on the same show? How have I not seen it yet?????
One of my biggest pet peeves with The Lynley series was their decision to make Helen a major character, when she wasn’t in the books. And then they made her such an unlikable shrew, and recast her every year. Why bother with the character at all?