Hi there J. Lee, great to see you're still alive!!
I just ran into a similar problem, where a view I created worked a treat, I then copied that view and tweaked it a little (reversed the sorting). The reverse sorting change refused to take, and I could not see what exactly was going on. Sorting appeared to be random, but every refresh and subsequent attempt at rebuilding the view, produced the same results, so, whatever it was, it wasn't random.
I was stumped...
Then I remembered that MC keeps a 'list sort cache', so:
I closed MC
Browsed to the library folder
Deleted the 'Cache' folder found in there
Restarted MC
Applied the sort rules to the view in question...
Hey Presto, Clap of the hands, a few magnesium flares, and all is working as expected and I can now see the last 15 albums imported.
I don't know why this happens, but there you go, worked for me, might work for you too.
Cheers,
-marko.