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Shonda's Necklace

by DICK CHENEY

State of Affairs
creator Joe Carnahan

"Can we get dinner this week?" a young man Katherine Heigl has used for sex suggests from her bed. "I'll call you," she patters back. "But you don't have my number," he protests as she walks out the door. We flash back to their time together: Katherine drags him into an alleyway, and chooses to face the wall as they have wintercourse. She does this so she can pretend he is her now-deceased fiancee:

He enjoyed making love to her from behind almost as much as the rando she brought home did.

The sorrow patterning the man in bed's face now looks like an emoji. Katherine's apartment is so bizarrely lavish for a civil servant that it more resembles the bedroom of the Ayatollah.

Look away, look away, look away... (It's a Being John Mallkovich reference. OK ttyl)

Later that day, on NBC's new Homeland tribute/parody State of Affairs, Katherine - who goes by the name Charleston, presumably after the chew - flirts with a fellow CIA analyst. She's moved on, clearly. Watching her totter around the Oval Office, looking like a piece of gluten, it's hard to feel sympathy. That is until we discover her dead husband was also THE PRESIDENT'S SON.

In a nod to Mrs. Doubtfire, Heigl also portrays her own therapist.

For some reason, even though she is merely an analyst, Charlie commands shock troops targeting suspected terrorists overseas. These troops call her at the most inconvenient times - when she's at the gym, when she is taking it from behind in an alley, when she is having extended Benghazi-esque flashbacks to the perishing of the man she loved. Heigl gets this screwed up look on her face, like, "You're calling me about this now?!"

Bret Easton Ellis should look into a lawsuit, I'm pretty sure this exact scene was in 'Less Than Zero'

In almost every single review he wrote, Roger Ebert would grandiously quote Truffaut's maxim that all war movies end up making war look like fun. This is completely stupid; almost no war movie even did this. Truffaut was an idiot, did you see his later films? I might possibly be confusing him with Godard; ever since my quadruple bypass I'm a tad shaky on the French New Wave. If I wanted to watch the work of a communist, I'd go see Interstellar.

Shonda Rimes trembles with anger every time a male showrunner puts a woman in a pearl necklace. My source is Nikki Finke.

Movies about the intelligence community all seem tremendously boring actually. It's funny to watch State of Affairs momentarily cut to an action scene like they are apologizing for taking us away from the central, important drama of whether or not Heigl is getting along with her therapist this afternoon. "Good doesn't have to come, I do," she tells her shrink, explaining why she was so willing to do it doggystyle while outdoors.

This show badly needed David Cross as her love interest.

Art imitates life I'm pretty sure - wasn't that mentioned in the video where Ariana Grande was wearing those svelte boots? Obama's political innovation, besides adding an uh to every sentence imaginable, is making what used to be captivating, boring. Chris Matthews used to tremble with excitement each time President Clinton made potty; now the Secretary of Defense gets exiled to Antarctica because he criticized the school lunch program and accidentally revealed he didn't know the capital of Uzbekistan, and the collective reaction was, "Gee, Katherine really has lost weight!"

We live in profoundly unserious times. Pauly Shore has a new show where he portrays the British Prime Minister, and it's not a comedy.

Alfre Woodard was cast as the president of the United States and the mother of Heigl's dead fiancee. You could be forgiven for thinking this sounds like either a fascinating story in itself, or a chance to take subtle shots at Shonda Rimes. Neither occurs, no one even tiptoes around Heigl even though the president is basically her mother-in-law. For fuck's sake her own boss at the CIA orders her detained. (He is fired and, predictably, an actor from Lost takes his place.)

Next time, I hope they cast her as a killer-for-hire/wedding planner.

Heigl has no friends, just work acquaintances and casual fucks. Bobbing around from sit down to sit up, she sort of comes across like a buoy on a windy day. No one catches her, challenges her or even touches her other than with their penis or a folder of documents. Everything is exactly as it should be.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. Have a great holiday with your family and friends. Make us feel like we destroyed an indigenous people for a reason.

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