Jacqueline Bublitz

You know when you're flicking through TV channels and you come across a documentary on some ordinary person doing some extraordinary thing?

If only life were a dance musical. If only music started when you kiss the girl, and if only your feet could do the talking when your tongue gets tied. Wouldn't life be a little - or a lot! -more fun if we spent more time singing in the rain? This gorgeous production of SINGIN' IN THE RAIN sure makes it seem so. Sometimes - you just gotta dance!

We're going to be talking about this one for a long time to come. Right? That ending. That slap. That lonely walk and that promise of another beginning, right at the end. Or an end right at the beginning, set out for us seven years ago, when Alicia Florrick was shocked into being, and here we are now, seven  years later, shocked at what she's become.

Murderous plants. Demented dentists. Lee Lee Chin. LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS hardly your regular musical - and yet. With a memorable, '60's inspired score, a super-talented cast, and just enough wink at the audience, this new touring production of the cult classic is everything that makes musical theatre great.

This doesn't feel like a penultimate episode. Like the penultimate episode. Mind you I'm watching 'Verdict' with a slight fever and a large dose of feeling sorry for myself. And perhaps I'm in denial. Surely this is just any old episode of THE GOOD WIFE. Presenting a ton of moving parts that will take weeks and months to resolve (with some, inexplicably, let go along the way). That's THE GOOD WIFE we know and love, right?

I'm conflicted. That was a great episode. Except when it wasn't. I laughed, I cried (the goodbyes!), and red wine didn't help me understand my feelings any better. Was I watching parody? Homage? A wink-nod combination of both? Parties can be hard work, and this house 'Party' was no exception …

Something is about to end. Sure it's just a TV show. But it's seven years of TV show. Seven years of the best TV show I've ever watched. I need a wine for this …

I don't usually gasp. Then need to hit pause, so I can pour a wine and raise my glass at the TV screen. You'd think the episode title might have given it away, hey? “Unmanned”. Whatever. It's been a long time coming ...

Alicia Florrick is done with bad timing. By the end of the hour, she's not even really concerned with good timing. She just wants what she wants. When she wants it. We might have only been waiting seven to her twenty years when it comes to seeing THE GOOD WIFE come into her own ... but man o' handsome man is it worth it!

Maybe the presence of Owen and Veronica is enough to do it, or maybe we're all just getting nostalgic with the end so close, but “Hearing” feels fun and familiar - and fast, that sure sign of great TV, and a mark of so many of this show's best episodes.

Writer Tom Wright and director Matthew Lutton seem to have an acute awareness of their audience here, and what that audience brings to this picnic. This version is a retelling of the events that Valentine's Day in 1900, an explicit mythologising of them.

We were right there when the lights went off, when the skirt went up and the lights went down. We were right there - all the way - until the camera panned out and effectively told us to mind our own business while Alicia got down to hers.

I liked “Monday”. There was flirting. There were power struggles and double-crosses and creepy Government-y organisations doing the dirty work for corporations. Back at the firm we all know so well, we also got nods to elevators and the second floor, and a reminder that even the smartest people can have blind spots when it comes to diversity (Diane, stop it!). There were a lot of hints about what's going to happen next.

Welcome to Fab Friday at the Butterfly Club, your guaranteed salve for the soul. A night where you will grin, sing, clap and maybe even dance your way to a musical theatre state of mind. That's the place where you are what you are, you don't let gravity bring you down, and you remember you've always got another day, another destiny. It's the place where you become your very own 11 o'clock number - all with a wine in your hand!

Aussie musical theatre fans, David Harris has returned to Oz - but only for a flying visit! We get our homegrown leading man back to the Australian stage for two nights this weekend, when he joins Sutton Foster, Aaron Tveit, Betty Buckley, Joanna Ampil and Helen Dallimore in DEFYING GRAVITY - a world premiere concert celebrating the work of Stephen Schwartz. 

Oh, THE GOOD WIFE. I've loved you for so long. And now all signs are pointing to the end! After seven seasons, it might be time - but it's going to be hard saying goodbye to your clever, contradictory, resonant stories, and to the people who play them out so beautifully, like they did tonight.

If you've ever seen Meow Meow perform, you know she's going to tell you something about herself that will ultimately feel a little bit like your own revelation - and so it goes with MEOW MEOW'S LITTLE MERMAID, a tale she might book-end with an assertion about happiness, but fills with sadness, discomfort, desire, and nostalgia through every minute in between.

I feel like when it comes to 'Iowa', Alicia has finally kicked off her shoes. There is a shot of her slipper-clad feet, right before she takes a stack of plates and throws them at Eli's head, that makes me think about her being closer to the ground now, more real. The rage that comes after, the attacking Eli, and the sobbing in her bedroom, that's all so real, too.

I need a moment. I need six years worth of moments. I thought I'd be fine. I'd read the fan forums, seen the preview. Assumed it was going to be about that thing. That thing six years ago. And then it was about that thing. And my heart remembered all its damage, because you get wiser over the years, and six years might be a long amount of over, but you never really get over missed connections - not the ones that matter.

No matter how many episodes THE GOOD WIFE devotes to technology, there's always one more thing for me to think about. Tonight, 'Discovery' spends the hour addressing technology as both a reflector, and cultivator, of racism. Essentially - if what we are shown online is primarily a reflection of how we see ourselves, how responsible is technology for making us aware of our blind spots?