Last summer's hour long melodrama Mistresses was a hit, the second biggest show of the summer for commercial network TV (behind Under The Dome which cost CBS a lot more to make per episode than Mistresses does). Season two?
No erosion in ratings.
Increased ratings used to be networks dreamed of. These days? If a show doesn't do the now expected crater, it's time to jump up and down and sound the trumpets.
The first season, Mistresses kicked things off with Savi (Alyssa Milano), her sister Joss (Jes Macallan) and their friends April (Rochelle Aytes) and Karen (Yunin Kim) all competing to see who could go the most over the top.
Savi offered up a marriage to hunky Harry (Brett Tucker who's still strutting around throughout season two in a towel) and attempting to have a baby with him but getting pregnant when she slept with co-worker Dom (Jason George). What might pass for riveting on NCIS was just yawn worthy on Mistresses. Joss was sleeping with her male boss until her agency got a new boss and she became attracted to a woman. In the 90s, that might have been considered daring and rather Party of Five-ish. On Mistresses, no one batted an eye.
Which brings us to April, a widowed mother navigating the new dating scene when a mistress of her dead husband shows up, with child, demanding money and then, shortly after, dead husband showed up. Okay, now it's getting a little more interesting.
But April, Joss and Savi were nothing compared to Dr. Karen Kim -- the psychiatrist who apparently believes the greatest therapeutic tool is her very own vagina.
Karen spent season one flirting with practice partner Jacob (Matthew Del Negro) but mainly sleeping with Thomas (John Schneider) who was dying and who Karen and his wife Elizabeth (Penelope Ann Miller) helped mercy kill. Then Elizabeth tries to take Karen to court for malpractice -- a detail Karen might have seen coming had she not been visited by prospective patient and brand new lover Sam (Erik Stocklin). Did we mention that Sam was Thomas' son? It all exploded in the season one finale with Karen being reported to the board and Elizabeth showing up brandishing a gun, planning to kill Karen but instead killing her own son Sam.
Many believed that Dr. Karen Kim could not top herself in the new season.
Oh, how wrong they were.
Learning that her partner Jacob had reported her hands-on approach to treating men did not leave Karen repulsed. She was still attracted to him and even asked him out.
But mainly she used her reinstated license to focus on a young woman named Anna (Catherine Haena Kim) who explains how, for kicks, she goes to hotels, picks up men, gives them fake names and sleeps with them.
A functioning therapist would probably dig into the issues motivating this sort of behavior.
Dr. Karen Kim?
She buys some wigs and starts hanging around hotels picking up men.
Don't worry, she insists to April, she just flirts, agrees to go up to the men's hotel rooms but cuts out instead.
What possible harm could come from that, she insists.
But no sooner does she leave viewers with the image of a town full of blue balled men angrily chasing her down then Karen breaks her own word (of course) and begins sleeping with the men.
She finds one she decided (after) that she loves and begins haunting hotels trying to find him and give him her real name and explain she's not an aerobics instructor but a kooky, free spirited shrink whose decided to share the magical healing powers of her labia with more than just her client list.
Unable to find him, she quickly hooks up with Jacob who has just broken up with a crazy girlfriend. No sooner does Dr. Karen hop into bed with Jacob then she goes through his cell phone and finds out that his ex-girlfriend is her patient Anna.
When Anna goes missing, Karen shares all the private details with Jacob. Because he's also a psychiatrist? No, because Karen's sleeping with him and Anna used to be.
And she's rather offended when Anna goes off on her after Anna catches her kissing Jacob.
Where do you go after you've gone completely over the top?
There's only the bottom left for you, as Barack could tell her.
Last week, US President Barack Obama, the man who was carried into the highest office in the land based upon the fairy tale that he was opposed to the Iraq War announced that he was authorizing bombings of Iraq.
Clearing attempting to out Karen Dr. Karen Kim, Barack declared last week "American forces have conducted targeted airstrikes against terrorist forces outside the city of Erbil to prevent them from advancing on the city and to protect our American diplomats and military personnel" and "The only lasting solution is reconciliation among Iraqi communities and stronger Iraqi security forces."
The only solution for the various crises in Iraq is, Barack says, "reconciliation" so Barack's contribution to the process is . . . bombings?
Bombings have what to do with reconciling?
Thinning out the herd forces the survivors to reconcile?
Iraqi politicians, seeing the aerial bombings, rush into the Parliament and insist, "We better figure out who's prime minister and how we form an inclusive society before Barack starts bombing us too!"?
Seems to us, if Barack had to bomb some place in Iraq, he'd do the country more good by bombing the home of prime minister and chief thug Nouri al-Maliki.
The US-installed puppet has failed all US goals -- including getting an oil and gas law passed.
On that, we could care less (but are shocked at how little that's mattered to the administration).
But this man has terrorized the country.
It's a long, dirty history.
To focus on only one example, since the start of the year he has daily bombed the residential neighborhoods of Falluja killing and wounding civilians -- these are War Crimes.
Barack spoke about Iraq three times last week and avoided the War Crimes every time.
Even more telling, following his Thursday night address, the press focused on turning the bombing of Iraq into a personal narrative about Barack.
It was as though he was the fifth lead character in Mistresses.
Doubt us?
President Barack Obama stepped in front of the cameras on Thursday to utter words he hoped he would never say as commander in chief.
"I've therefore authorized targeted airstrikes if necessary to help forces in Iraq," Mr. Obama said in a statement from the White House. "Today America is coming to help."
Oh, the drama!
That's reporting?
It reads like a soap opera synopsis but Carol E. Lee, Felicia Schwartz and The Wall St. Journal thought it passed for reporting. Peter Baker seemed to believe he was filing for Soap Opera Digest and not The New York Times as evidenced by nonsense like this, "Hoping to end the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of American ambition."
Bombs are falling in Iraq -- and will continue to, Barack's got no deadline on this 'mission' -- but the tragedy, American 'reporters' insist, is poor little Barack Obama.
Where do you go from there?
Do we next argue the real victim in the Bay Area from 1968 to 1970 was the Zodiac Killer?
Bombs will be falling in Iraq on the Iraqi people -- terrorists and 'terrorists' if the US pattern of killing civilians in bombings holds -- but the great suffering comes from the 'real victim' Barack?
Barack may or may not out crazy Dr. Karen Kim this summer but the US press is sure to out crazy them both combined.
