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Doux News: June 17, 2012

This week: Casting news -- Weeds -- Birth announcement -- Political weirdness on Game of Thrones -- Comment(s) of the week

TVLine has posted an article with a ton of casting news, mostly for two Showtime series, Ray Donovan and Masters of Sex (about Masters and Johnson) that will be arriving sometime in 2013. Joseph Fiennes might be joining American Horror Story; here's hoping he does better there than he did in FlashForward. And Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski is going to be on next season's Dexter.

To be honest, the two bits of casting news that most intrigued me this week were that Brent Spiner (I'm such a Star Trek Next Gen fan) has been cast in a lengthy episode arc on Warehouse 13, and Robert Patrick (The X-Files) was just cast as Alcide's werewolf father on True Blood.

Weeds

The eighth season of Weeds, which will be airing soon on Showtime, will be its last. I avoided Weeds for a long time, but gave it a shot last year and ended up watching all seven seasons. It's sort of like Breaking Bad lite. I'm probably going to watch the eighth season after the fact, and I'm rather hoping that Nancy finally gives up her life of crime and marries her dippy brother-in-law.

Birth announcement

As a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel, I was delighted when series stars Alyson Hannigan (Willow) and Alexis Denisof (Wesley) got married nine years ago. (Nine years ago! How time flies.) Hannigan just gave birth to their second daughter, Keeva Jane Denisof. Their first daughter, Satyana, is now three. Love the creative names they have given their daughters.

Political weirdness on Game of Thrones

The tenth and final episode of Game of Thrones' first season shows heads on pikes, and one of those heads is that of George W. Bush.

We don't do political, and I didn't want to post anything about this one. But it was a huge news story this week about a show we cover, and not mentioning it felt weird. (If you haven't seen any news stories about it yet, you can do a Google search for game of thrones bush head and check it out. Or look at this one, which includes a clip of the offending sequence.)

Personally, I don't get how the producers of the show could have done something so idiotic. It is against the law to threaten the head of state, pun intended, and even if it wasn't intentional, it was undoubtedly in bad taste. As a liberal progressive (and I doubt that's a surprise to anyone), I imagine I would have been offended if it had been a depiction of Obama that had been used, so I'm trying to give Republican outrage the benefit of the doubt. But pulling the episode, and re-editing and re-releasing the DVD? Does this feels like overkill to you guys, or is it just me?

I'd be interested in hearing our readers' opinions of this situation. But please, if you post a comment, remember again that this isn't a political site, we try very hard to keep the discourse civil, and that we do delete offensive comments. (Which I am happy to report almost never happens.)

Comment(s) of the week

Speaking of great comments, Josie Kafka posted a discussion topic earlier in the week entitled "Sexiest TV Actress," which has gotten 46 comments (so far). A topic like this one could easily have devolved into a string of shallow and sexist comments, and it absolutely did not. Instead, some of it turned into a thoughtful discussion of how we define "sexy", and why we're attracted to one person and not the other.

Every time something positive like this happens, it makes me proud of this site that I started back in 2004. I love our readers, I enjoy nearly every comment posted on the site, and I love the community we have here. So this entire comment thread gets Josie's and my votes for "comment of the week."

That's it for this week. Opinions, raves, rants, questions? Ummm, post a comment!

12 comments:

  1. The guy, or at least the head, with the longish hair, whose face one doesn`t really see, is supposed to be GWB? I do not see your presidents at a regular basis, but even when pointed out I see no resemblance.

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  2. Interesting story about Game of Thrones. I have watched that scene three of four times and not once twigged to that head being Bush's. Now I know.

    I agree that it was an incredibly stupid thing to do. No matter what one's political leanings, this was over the top. Frankly, if I were Bush or a member of his family, I would appreciate knowing that future viewers would not see that particular head.

    I guess that those of us who already own the season one discs should consider them collectors items now. :-)

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  3. The George Bush head was not an intentional incident; the prop guys simply noticed that it bore an uncanny resemblance to George Bush and made a joke about it, one that was carried to the commentary. It was one of those quirks of a set, that's now been blown out of proportion.

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  4. Great news about Brent Spiner on Warehouse 13! I really enjoyed his guest spot on Alphas and hope WH13 gives him something good to do (they've got a spotty track record with guest actors). Although given that Alphas and WH13 supposedly inhabit the same fictional universe, it might be a little weird to have him playing someone different on WH13. Then again, it isn't uncommon for different people to look very similar (or severed heads, apparently).

    Speaking of WH13, I read on TV Guide's website earlier this week that they've gotten bumped up to a 20-episode order, which means they'll probably be doing a split season of 10 and 10. Let's hope they only put a couple months between the half seasons, a la Stargate and not a full year, a la Eureka!

    Wonderful news about Alyson Hannigan and Alexis Denisof. I thought she looked like she was really pregnant on How I Met Your Mother this season, but I wasn't totally sure since her character was pregnant.

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  5. Yeah, it wasn't meant to be a political statement or anything, in the DVD commentary they just shared a cast in joke that they had noticed that one of the heads looked like bush and hbo overreacted and started damning it and it seems that the story has now spun out of control a little bit perpetuated by people reporting the story wrong...like here.

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  6. Brent Spiner on Warehouse 13, although Jess is right about them having a spotty track record when it comes to guest stars.

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  7. Robert Patrick on True blood should be awesome..I hope it's this season.
    Three cheers for Spiner on Warehouse 13. He will boldly go where..others from Star Trek shows have gone before?
    When do we get Mark Sheppard on True Blood? It must be the only genre show he hasn't done..Or maybe Game of Thrones? Who could he be there?
    Anna

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  8. Oh my... (head story)

    They would have kept their mouth shut and nobody would have noticed. Did I ? Absolutely not. A simple warning on future DVD set would be sufficient.

    b) Yvonne S. : yes, add her to my very incomplete list of the sexiest TV actresses list. (and an indirect 47th comment LOL)

    c) Brent S. oh W13 ??? Oh cool ! A mid season hiatus ??? No way, I hate these so much, and a DVD 4.0 and 4.5 sets even more. I'm very eager next July to see this great show again, and I wonder how the story line will continue after last season's big boum, ba da boum (fifth element shout out here)

    d) aw, love you back Billie ! I don't remember exactly when I started being a regular reader for your blog, but one thing is sure, I'm staying.....for a long time...

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  9. Weeds.

    I've completely forgotten. They should have ended it at the end of the 6th season. It was a brilliant end, not to mention the LOL Hitchcockian cameo of Jenji Kohan, the show's creator.

    in a parallel Universe, If I were a College or University teacher, I'd use the six seasons of Weeds as a course on character development, storytelling, etc.

    So when season 7 aired, I was half and half about it. And those mixed feeling were the same at the end of the 7th season.

    Don't get me wrong, it's a great show, but sometimes, it better to end on a high note that drag on...

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  10. The whole dust up strikes me as silly. I could say more but in the interests of peace and civility won't. But since when does G.W. Have hippy hair?

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  11. Has anybody watched the Canadian series Continuum that started last month. It stars Rachel Nichols, from the last season of Alias, as a cop from the year 2077 trapped in the present day tracking down criminals from her own time. I've only seen the first episode so far, but it sets up a really interesting science fiction world, and I would definitely reccommend it to you guys at Bille Doux :)

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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