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    Aftershocks

    What a cold, cruel cad Frasier turns out to be: Even Camille Grammer deservesbetter

    Theodore Bale
    Joseph Campana
    Jan 14, 2011 | 10:31 am
    • Kelsey Grammer informed his wife their marriage was over in a phone call.
    • Still, he wanted her to play the dutiful awards show wife one more time.

    No one knows regret like a woman.

    This week The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was a study in dashed plans and desperate hopes, proving the ladies of 90210 are just like their counterparts across America. Of course, not every housewife is ready to face her regrets.

    The episode opens at Lisa and Ken’s restaurant, Villa Blanca in Beverly Hills, where Kyle shows up for an informal “catch-up” luncheon with Lisa. Kyle is wearing a simple white blouse, both shoulders exposed tastefully, in perfect harmony with the white décor. Lisa, however, is entirely in black, foreshadowing the dour conversation to follow.

    Their rendezvous seems harmless enough until Taylor crashes it with a text. Her dullard husband Russell has just dropped her off and she’d like to stop by and say “Hi.” Not that she needs emotional support for her loveless marriage.

    Lisa’s body language shows how pissed-off she is, and then Taylor shows up in a strange white dress with the word “emotion” stitched in black cursive letters along the waist-line. Really, we didn’t make this up. If you can’t wear your heart on your sleeveless arms or botoxed faced, you might as well advertise it over your gut.

    Lisa avoids the black hole of regret altogether by looking every situation straight in the eye. It’s the first we’ve noticed her suspicions about Taylor. Before Taylor arrived, Lisa advised Kyle to be cautious, saying that Taylor was responsible for “the fiasco” in New York with Camille.

    But Kyle and Taylor seem to wallow together in their regrets, and as soon as Taylor sits down, the two hold hands in support. Taylor regrets marrying Russell, but she won’t just come out and admit it, even to her closest friends. Instead, she laughs hysterically and evasively.

    “Will you stop doing this, because I feel like I’m at a table with a pair of lesbians,” Lisa quips impatiently. She’s fed up with Taylor’s giggling, and tells her that the situation is serious, really serious.

    Why have regrets when you can have children instead? We’ve seen housewives in all the franchises force their unrealized dreams on their only-sometimes-willing daughters. But we had no idea that for Kyle and Kim Richards, regret stretches across generations.

    As Kyle prepares for the momentous occasion of her eldest daughter’s graduation from college, she reflects on her past. Her mother studied the dramatic arts in the hopes of seeing her name in lights. When she became a mother instead, it was her dream to make her daughters stars. By all measures, Mama Richards succeeded. One daughter gave birth to the most famous socialite in the known universe, Paris Hilton, and two became child stars. Beware of what you wish for.

    Kyle regrets never going to college, so she pins all her hopes on daughter Farrah. In fact, she seemed to spend most of the episode swaning about and stealing the show. While shopping for the perfect graduation gift at XIV Karats LTD, Kyle confesses, “It’s very hard for me to look for a gift for someone without looking for something for myself.”

    Kyle throws a lavish graduation party at Il Cielo, and her husband Mauricio’s charming mother Estrella shows up. She is a psychiatrist with a specialty in sex therapy. Of course Adrienne is quite taken with her, and begs free marriage counseling during the luncheon. She’s got regrets, of course, since it’s obvious that she married a vulgar clod who doesn’t appreciate her.

    And Paul (who’s earned the nickname Shrek in our household) doesn’t seem to regret anything. He thinks their problems are just a matter of bickering. Then he talks to Estrella about the possibility of a facelift.

    Kyle’s sister Kim has also drunk deep from the well of disappointment. She has always maintained that she happily and voluntarily ended her own acting career. But when Kim confesses that she might like to act again now that the kids are grown we could detect the same scent of regret in the air.

    If there’s a guy on the show who understands regret, it’s handsome Cedric, Lisa and Ken’s “permanent” houseguest and adopted son. On the way to a vineyard to taste some Pinot Noir to pep up the bland menu at Villa Blanca, Ken tells Cedric it’s high time that he moved out. Later, Lisa remarks that it’s difficult to spit out the wine after tasting it, though she lets several mouthfuls dribble into a decorative ceramic jug. Bravo’s cameras catch Cedric gulping his down, and it’s clear he’s worried.

    Later, as he serves Lisa coffee in her all-white bedroom, which looks very much like the Villa Blanca, he reveals his own true disgust with himself. It’s shocking. He tells Lisa that his mother believed that he was the unfortunate consequence of being raped. “Would you love someone who reminds you that?” he asks Lisa.

    Regret after regret piled up, and suddenly Camille Grammer was playing dutiful wife in the Big Apple for her soon-to-be ex-husband at the Tony awards.

    We won’t lie. We couldn’t wait for Camille to find out this week that Kelsey was tossing her out like last week’s trash. After a season of Camille’s bitchy and often insane behavior, we can’t pretend we didn’t sit on the edge of our microfiber cushions and eagerly wait for the axe to fall.

    We found ourselves doing an about-face right in the middle of our living room. The truth is we didn’t enjoy it at all. The one who deserved the axe was clear Kelsey Grammer, who has now earned the distinction of the slimiest househusband of all.

    Truly, we could have anticipated this after 11 seemingly endless seasons of Frasier, but let’s be clear about just how badly Kelsey behaved.

    After finally returning one of the many unanswered calls Camille worried about last week, he drops the bomb that their marriage is over. She begs, he refuses. But suddenly Kelsey’s begging when Camille refuses to attend the Tony Awards. He offers to fly her to New York.

    Camille explains that he promised they could “spend quality time together and see what happens …maybe spend a romantic weekend.” What a cad. And if he was going to dump her anyway, why didn’t he just wait until after the Tony Awards to spare her the pain and discomfort of playing husband and wife? La Cage aux Folles, indeed.

    Ever hopeful, Camille dons a gorgeous long-trained red gown despite the rain and Kelsey’s creepily cool demeanor. He’s put her up in a hotel for her final performance as Mrs. Frasier.

    And all for what — a failed Oscar nod? All we can do, Frasier, is paraphrase a favorite crazy housewife from the Garden State.

    Karma’s an even bigger bitch than you are.

    unspecified
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    Movie Review

    Toy Story 5 proves that Pixar's toy box still holds some surprises

    Alex Bentley
    Jun 18, 2026 | 3:30 pm
    Bullseye, Jessie, Atlas, Smarty Pants, and Snappy in Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5
    Photo courtesy of Pixar
    Bullseye, Jessie, Atlas, Smarty Pants, and Snappy in Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5.

    For fans of Pixar, the idea that it’s been over 30 years since the original Toy Story came out is a little mind-boggling. While the animation studio has had varying degrees of success with their other properties, they’ve always managed to make something special with each installment of their signature franchise. They’re now rolling the dice yet again with Toy Story 5.

    The story is mainly focused on cowgirl toy Jessie (Joan Cusack), who — along with Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Hamm (John Ratzenberger), Forky (Tony Hale), and others — is concerned that new owner Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) is falling prey to the scourge of technology in the form of the tablet Lilypad (Greta Lee). They’re worried that the “friends” she makes through games online pale in comparison to those she could play with in person.

    Woody (Tom Hanks) and Bo Peep (Annie Potts), living an on-the-go lifestyle but still in touch with the main group, come to help when Jessie goes missing while trying to help Bonnie. And — just because — a large group of new-and-improved Buzz Lightyears that have fallen out of a shipping container that has crashed on an island go on a mission that puts them on course to meet up with everyone else.

    Written and directed by McKenna Harris and Andrew Stanton, the film is a mixed bag, mostly because of the disjointed nature of the story. When the group was separated in previous films, things rarely felt out of sync as everybody was still heading toward the same goal. But the different factions in this film seem to be after something different, especially the wholly superfluous addition of the fancy Buzz Lightyears, whose ultimate purpose doesn’t live up to the time dedicated to them.

    There’s no way around it: While Jessie is a good character and has a lot of great moments in this film, the relationship aspect of the series is not as strong this time around. She mostly spends time with her mute horse Bullseye, but even when she interacts with new characters like Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien), that ineffable magic is not there. Woody and Buzz have scenes together, but since they’re secondary to the main story, they don’t add as much to this film as they have in others.

    However, even if the film can’t live up to the first four movies, it still makes for a fun time. The storyline about technology turning kids (and adults, for that matter) into zombies is a strong one, and the way they incorporate different devices is clever. The large number of characters is unwieldy, but when the filmmakers truly dig down to the personal lives of certain toys or humans, the film is as effective as Pixar has ever been.

    Cusack, Hanks, Allen, and other returning voices are so attuned to their respective characters that you know they’ll deliver each line perfectly. People like Lee, O’Brien, and Craig Robinson are welcome additions to the group, but it’s tough to get used to new voices taking over for actors who’ve passed like Don Rickles, Estelle Harris, and Carl Weathers.

    The pitch-perfect ending of Toy Story 3 made the idea of Pixar making Toy Story 4 seem strange, but then that film proved the studio knew what it was doing. While Toy Story 5 is not a disaster, it’s not to the standard set by the previous films. It should finally be time to put the franchise to bed, knowing that the toys have given all the joy they can give.

    ---

    Toy Story 5 opens in theaters on June 19.

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