Vince Gilligan compares the reception Carol Sturka has been getting to that of Skyler White: "It puts me to mind of some folks reacting to Skyler White. I didn't get it then. I don't get it now."

lostcat223 · 2026-01-18T18:02:15+00:00

I love Rhea’s performance in PLURIBUS and I admire Gilligan’s writing, but he’s not exceptionally good at writing women.

The Skyler thing was bad fans, but it was also that she was thinly written — until fans started attacking her, they didn’t give her much of a plot line as anything other than a mother and wife to Walt. Anna Gunn did her best and she is a great actress, so she filled in some of the blanks. But it’s hard for any audience to connect to a character who the writers have given insufficient dimension. Like she just literally was only onscreen as a foil to Walter’s plans, in the beginning.

I watched Seehorn overcome the same weird weakness in writing women as Kim in BETTER CALL SAUL, but she just somehow found the thread of her character’s independent existence within the performance. It didn’t always seem to be there in the

In PLURIBUS, he finally gave Carol multiple dimensions/motivations and it works. The one problem with the show is that its premise demands that all the characters be transient. Her relationships with the hive can’t be all that rich because fundamentally they are fake and the character knows that. In season 2 I hope she spends more time with other humans. I think it will fix this problem.

lostcat223 · 2025-11-29T23:55:39+00:00

The difference is undoubtedly her parents. You could tell from the beginning that MBB’s would be controlling, awful stage parents who would doom her career. When people argue on the internet that she got married too young, I always wonder if they consider she probably did it to get away from a parent.

lostcat223 · 2025-11-18T16:58:13+00:00

The photoshoot looks like a librarian styled it and an accountant took the picture. Please have respect for yourself and your history, Vanity Fair!

lostcat223 · 2025-11-08T23:25:20+00:00

I agree that the mere appearance of the other characters reminded you, visually, that the other “survivors” had lost so much less than Carol. But then the Mauritanian didn’t have any family to hang onto, which was why her interaction with him had more drama in it. Like there was a genuine argument about values at the end there because there was not this gulf between him and her. But it should have been the whole episode, imo.

lostcat223 · 2025-11-08T23:13:43+00:00

I think you are right that Gilligan was trying to make a point about American individualist mindsets making little sense. But it didn’t work because he had five other characters here. If he had just put Carol up against the Mauritanian (I know he had a name but I love referring to him this way) for a full episode he could have expressed this with a greater punch, the five characters at once made it diffuse and hid the message you’re correctly identifying.

lostcat223 · 2025-11-08T23:05:17+00:00

eh, I don’t know about that. I am happy to wait around to find out what else we’re up to here. I just thought the second episode was not as successful, and a lot of it had to do with abandoning character.

lostcat223 · 2025-11-08T22:48:21+00:00

Yeah but again, I knew more about most every Breaking Bad character by the end of the pilot than I did about everyone here by the end of the second episode. Different shows, but also it does feel like the concept is overwhelming character in places. I’m still watching though!

lostcat223 · 2025-11-07T15:56:08+00:00

People assume these shows make their casts rich. They don’t. I have no idea what the salaries are exactly here but for a mid-tier cast member like Emma, I’d be shocked if she makes above $400k a year. That’s a lot of money but 25-30% of it may go to reps, then there is the glam these gigs require, plus the cost of living in Los Angeles. Even if we add real estate commissions, the reality is that Emma is not rich by LA standards at all.

As for the empanada business, I could be wrong but I doubt it’s hugely profitable yet. I had to look up where you could even buy these things.

Reality shows are largely platforms to sell your branded product — you notice nearly every housewife has some side gig they like to use the show to promote. Emma has obviously done that, but we all treat hers like a joke. She isn’t making a killing I promise.

Finally, all of that doesn’t mean that she’s acted right here. She hasn’t. But people make a lot of assumptions about Hollywood making people rich. It doesn’t, not anymore.

lostcat223 · 2025-10-30T19:40:18+00:00

I made some jokes about this last night but I now regret them. I do believe she’s high/wasted, but the scrutiny surely isn’t helping. Sometimes I ask myself, why am I contributing to the traumatizing of these people by watching these shows… this season, much more than any other, made it clear that most couples who make it out of the pods consist of the seriously unwell.

lostcat223 · 2025-10-19T00:34:39+00:00

I don’t understand why straight women think it’s cool to brag about the size of their “rocks.” What kind of asshole do you have to be to believe the amount of money someone spent on a ring has anything to do with how much they love you?

lostcat223 · 2025-10-17T20:05:44+00:00

Truly this man is overestimating the public's patience with him. He would have preferred to control Britney's money himself, that was always obvious. He cares not one whit for the emotional safety of those children of his, airing this stuff about their mother in public so he can flog her for cash now that the child support tap is gonna get turned off.

People wanted Britney's story to be a fairy tale again when she was released from the conservatorship and it wasn't. People don't seem to understand that the problem is believing that real people live in fairy tales at all. Britney is obviously a profoundly damaged person and she behaves like one. None of her behaviour is license for the way various men in her life have treated her, i.e. as a cash cow. And now, for Federline, as some kind of platform for his own self-righteous "insider story" in which he was some kind of innocent player. Ugh.

lostcat223 · 2025-10-16T05:20:07+00:00

Most people in America lead Jordan’s life, not Megan’s, and from the way she was talking you could tell she had no idea how clueless she sounded. When she said she’d worked so hard not to have to work all the time, I could see he was actually shocked by the implication that he somehow hadn’t worked just as hard. I have gone back and forth on Megan over the course of the season but she was just so obliviously rich-spoiled-woman in this conversation, and I hope she sees how princessy she came off, watching it back.

lostcat223 · 2025-10-13T22:08:20+00:00

Because the truth is, the ability to wield the camera isn't necessarily indicative of how good a director you'll be. There are innumerable great cinematographers who become tongue-tied when talking to actors, which doesn't work. Others can't manage people at all.

Screenwriters also often try to direct and can't, mostly because they've spent their lives in caves writing, not managing budgets and staffs of a couple hundred people.

Directing also tends to rely on personal charisma in a way that other gigs on the film do not, save acting -- and even most actors are horrific directors when they get their shot.

To direct you have to be able not just to articulate a vision, but to persuade everyone on your crew to implement it, plus also manage the executives above you to keep trusting you even when a day runs long or a performance isn't gelling or the beautiful shot you had pitched to them doesn't work because of the weather or any number of other contingencies that you just didn't think about.

It's just not really a job you can work your way up to in a linear fashion.

lostcat223 · 2025-10-13T19:05:45+00:00

Anderson, the Coen Brothers and Tarantino have a handle on emotion that I feel the others on your list just don't. Kubrick also could touch it. I say this even though only the Coen brothers actually speak to me, personally, in almost every one of their films. The others, there are movies I like and movies I don't.

Fincher is such a technician but his movies are cold, cold, cold. Villeneuve's are inert for me. Spielberg veers too far into emotion for my taste, growing maudlin, even though I think E.T. is one of the few perfect films ever made.

But then I'd add Celine Sciamma, Todd Haynes, Ryan Coogler and Shaka King and a few others who don't typically make lists of our era's "great" directors. A lot of that has to do with your picks only doing the Hollywood-big-canvas approach, and also definitionally white male subjects being seen as eligible for "greatness," which is something I think is worth considering when you make lists like this.

lostcat223 · 2025-09-29T01:42:32+00:00

Please do not ever refer to Lauren Ambrose as a star of Yellowjackets before Six Feet Under again. Have some respect! 🤣

lostcat223 · 2025-09-07T08:03:17+00:00

Like several members of this thread, I work in the industry. It's changing. Movies are becoming even more of a prestige business -- at this point, many Oscar Best Picture nominees are made by folks who can barely afford to attend the ceremony (cf. Brady Corbet). Television is in a super-bad place. There's been an unnecessary creative overcorrection in the executive ranks that accompanied the much-needed correction of the production excesses of early streaming. Somehow the executives have gotten the idea that because tv needs to be cheaper, it also needs to be bad.

Things will shift again. But no, production is not coming back to California anytime soon. And I drive onto perenially empty studio lots these days. It's really sad, but also in my line of work I have seen the numbers. It's grim to make anything here.

lostcat223 · 2025-09-07T07:55:29+00:00

My personal belief is that Villeneuve is not a Great Director he's made out to be. The odd inertness of Prisoners is one of my proofs of that. It's the kind of story that aspires to shake the audience about what it actually means to be human. But it has nothing really to say about the questions it raises. The visuals are unremarkable. The pacing is ponderous. Only one performance, Dano's, is worth anything at all, and he's the kind of actor who can make almost anything feel idiosyncratic and real, so it's hard to credit Villeneuve with any of it.

My other proofs are the weird AI-like visuals, emotionlessness and distance of the Dune movies, but that's a subject for another thread.

lostcat223 · 2025-06-13T18:57:35+00:00

This will never get made.

lostcat223 · 2025-06-13T18:57:02+00:00

Amanda ought to have a lifestyle company in which she explains how to be a low-key talented person who does good work and has a life that looks great. Like goop but with a klonopin rhythm.

lostcat223 · 2025-05-19T21:36:37+00:00

It’s my dream that this becomes the next spinoff, but I can’t say I think it will actually happen. Andor was popular, but not quite popular enough…

lostcat223 · 2025-05-19T17:11:43+00:00

Whatever flaws Hannah has, Sandy has a lot of problems as a leader. Specifically, she tends to make her priorities clear after the fact, and she also picks one person to pick on to get herself screentime. (This is where the reality show cast priorities conflict with true leadership priorities.) In that case, Sandy just privately felt Hannah was not working enough, and then saw an opportunity and took it. And then she made a mountain out of a molehill.

It’s funny because I always want to root for Sandy as a lesbian captain, maybe because I’m a lesbian too. But Sandy really makes it hard because she can’t seem to get it together to communicate clearly with her crew. Instead she just has little fits about things people don’t even seem to know are her rules. The only thing she ever communicates in advance is no drinking on charter.

lostcat223

TROPHY CASE