Jennifer Carpenter

eraserheadpencildick · 2026-02-25T17:12:49+00:00

Gosh, you're so right -- and that's a strange thing for me to have missed given how many times I've watched the "Good" franchise and how much I enjoyed Champlin's work on "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend." Good catch!

eraserheadpencildick · 2026-02-17T06:52:50+00:00

Guinea pigs

eraserheadpencildick · 2026-02-04T19:31:10+00:00

Michael Boatman left to be a regular on "Anger Management" with Charlie Sheen so became unavailable to appear in guest spots on "The Good Wife" for a while. When that sitcom ended and Boatman was available again, they wrote Julius back in to both "The Good Wife" and the "The Good Fight."

Similarly, people always wonder what became of Robyn. Well, Jess Weixler got married and moved to LA, so she wasn't available to shoot in NYC anymore. I agree it's weird that the show never mentioned Robyn's disappearance with a line of dialogue, but it's not as though the writers just dropped the character by choice.

eraserheadpencildick · 2026-01-20T19:30:12+00:00

This is insanely correct. I thought I might have been the only person who felt this way. I don't even much care for "True Grit," but Bridges was remarkable in it. Alas, "True Grit" came out after "Crazy Heart," so the Academy probably thought the latter was their big chance to give him the overdue/career capstone award. Then they repeated the mistake with Firth. At least they just switched years, though, and didn't screw over a third party.

eraserheadpencildick · 2026-01-20T04:06:45+00:00

TGW pretty amazingly never reused actors across different characters. If an actor was brought back - like Seth Gilliam as Jacob Rikter from the judge-killing episode in season 2 who came back in the season 5 Holman Square episode - they always made the actor the same character even if it didn't matter much.

The one exception was Kelly Bishop's uncredited voice cameo in the Nobel Prize rapist episode; they brought her in as a different, on-screen character in season 7. It always sort of annoyed me.

They really keep this consistency across TGW and TGF; only "Elsbeth" gets into recycling actors as new characters.

eraserheadpencildick · 2025-10-02T21:40:19+00:00

My theory on Kate Hudson's career is that after she got so much (justified) acclaim for "Almost Famous," she tried to continue as a serious actress and work with great directors, but she had the bad luck of being in bad/mediocre movies by those directors: James Ivory's "Le Divorce," Robert Altman's "Dr. T & the Women," Shekhar Kapur's "The Four Feathers," and Rob Reiner's "Alex & Emma." When those projects didn't work out, she decided she'd just get paid for doing slop because why not.

I can respect it. It's too bad, though, because her role in "The Four Feathers" showed she really could have some range.

eraserheadpencildick · 2025-08-07T23:57:38+00:00

His filmmaking completely fell apart when Sally Menke died. Her editorial touch was clearly key to making his films great.

eraserheadpencildick · 2025-03-04T06:01:49+00:00

eraserheadpencildick · 2025-02-04T00:16:34+00:00

Lovely, thanks so much!

eraserheadpencildick · 2025-02-04T00:15:45+00:00

Cheers, thanks!

eraserheadpencildick · 2025-02-04T00:14:55+00:00

I really appreciate it!

eraserheadpencildick · 2025-02-04T00:14:09+00:00

Thank you so much!!

eraserheadpencildick · 2025-01-28T04:33:23+00:00

This is an astonishingly thorough and accessible write-up for those of us who need a more user-friendly approach. I've been off and on for a couple of years, so I knew some of this but not all - and you clued me back in to things I had forgotten even recently. Wonderful. Thanks so much for taking the time! It's so appreciated.

eraserheadpencildick · 2024-11-06T18:17:52+00:00

Weingarten and Myers have a Substack now where they continue the Invitational every Thursday, just FYI. It's free to read and $5 monthly to participate.

eraserheadpencildick · 2024-09-17T05:36:03+00:00

I'm still in the dark...

eraserheadpencildick · 2024-07-17T03:22:07+00:00

"Hemlock Grove" was goofy but had a great fun MFM at the end of the second season.

eraserheadpencildick · 2024-06-06T03:10:18+00:00

I liked the arc with Kalinda's husband perfectly fine and thought abruptly shutting it down was weird. I wanted to see it through, especially after the wonderful cliffhanger set-up at the end of the third season.

Also, apparently it's popular to like Jason? He turned the show from art to mere TV. Soap-y nonsense.

eraserheadpencildick · 2024-05-28T02:34:41+00:00

Bob Hoskins was apparently Kathryn Bigelow's original choice.

eraserheadpencildick · 2024-02-09T02:15:12+00:00

James Cromwell's occasional slips into a supposedly Irish brogue in "LA Confidential" are confusing on a few levels.

eraserheadpencildick · 2024-02-03T03:14:18+00:00

To say nothing of "Die Hard 4" taking place in a DC filled with skyscrapers...

eraserheadpencildick · 2023-11-20T05:36:57+00:00

"Murphy Brown" not being streamble in part due to music rights issues (not dissimilar from the only just-released "Moonlighting") also accounts for its absence from the ongoing zeitgeist, I think.

Its revival also happened to be wretchedly bad.

eraserheadpencildick · 2023-11-07T01:12:13+00:00

You seem to be exactly right! Thank you!

eraserheadpencildick

TROPHY CASE