J-Man

Well, on "Wayward Pines," they killed off two of the biggest stars within the first three episodes. Does anyone know which shopping mall they used as the locale for the scene where Ray meets his ex-wife? It sort of looked familiar but I couldn't place it.

Isn't this the earliest they've ever released the information about an upcoming season (at least in recent years)? It seems like it usually doesn't get officially disclosed by CBS until two or three weeks before the broadcast premiere date.

Antigone and Athena's surname is Bezzerides, which I believe is a shout-out to film noir writer and novelist A.I. Bezzerides. https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=A._I._Bezzerides Also, I assume that Vinci is supposed to be something like Vernon, CA, which is a tiny industrial city that had a huge corruption scandal that was uncovered by the LA Times a few years ago. Is Ben Caspere's name, and the Maltese Falcon-like object that was in the car with him, a shout-out to Kasper Gutman?

Ok, when I first heard the teacher refer to "Abbies," all I could think about was "Abbie Normal" from "Young Frankenstein." Anyway, with respect to how they're populating the town -- in such a small population, doesn't the number of former Secret Service agents (three) seem excessive? Why such an over-representation of such an unusual occupation? I'm wondering if there's a reason for this, or if it was just a plot device to start the ball rolling.

Maybe I'm too influenced by stereotypical thinking, but I'm somewhat surprised that Dom and Arnold seem to be BFFs on the show. I do hope that Arnold can help Dom overcome his nervousness, as his food always looks pretty good.

It was beyond ridiculous for the pastry chef to ask Michelle if she made the puff pastry herself. Yeah-- didn't they tell him they only had 90 minutes for the entire project? Arnold's presentation (of the food) has been uniformly flawless, and his food seems to be pretty good, too. The editing seems to be very odd on this show -- when they told Eddie and Arnold they were safe, Bobby said "all of you can leave the studio" or something like that. Since when do two people constitute "all"?

Mentoring? Is that what they're calling it now?

Especially since we'd just seen an attempted (and almost successful) courtroom shooting on "The Mysteries of Laura," which immediately preceded this episode. In that one, someone invented an undetectable plastic gun which was able to be smuggled into a courtroom.)

According to this article http://deadline.com/2015/05/felicity-huffman-timothy-hutton-return-american-crime-season-2-abc-1201427118/, both Felicity Huffman and Timothy Hutton will be coming back, but playing completely different characters. So I guess this is going to end up being like "American Horror Story," with many of the same actors coming back, but with a completely new storyline each season.

When was Jelani wearing lipstick?

I never heard "grazie," but they said "gracias" numerous times. And most Latin American countries use "ciao" also. (Although it's spelled "chao," or "chau" to match the pronunciation rules of Spanish.) I'm curious about the first location in Peru where they met the band and picked up the first clue. The people who arrived on the earlier, non-spoonfed flight (Hayley/Blair and Jelani/Jenny) got there at night, where they got to see (and set off) the cool fireworks displays. But I presume the people who didn't arrive until morning didn't get any fireworks. (Did they show much of the other three teams arriving?) Anyway, it must have been a pretty big deal to have the band and the fireworks, etc., all set up, so they must have known and expected that some teams would be arriving at night, right? Otherwise, they probably wouldn't have chosen something like fireworks that wouldn't be as visual in the daytime.

It was hard to tell how much Blair's Spanish helped them out in the "Mamas" detour. They made it seem like it was quite useful both in interpreting the list and in locating the vendors and dealing with them. But Mike and Rochelle blasted through it just as fast, and they seem to know almost no Spanish. So either the Spanish wasn't all that necessary (we couldn't see the clue or the list--I'm not sure what was in English and what was in Spanish), or possibly the vendors were pretty easy on Mike and Rochelle because they'd already gone through the process with Hayley and Blair and knew what to expect. (Of course we don't know what their specific instructions from TPTB were. The "fitness instructor" who was handing out the sugar juice was very attractive, albeit quite short. I really wish they'd been forced to do long division without a calculator.

So Phillip Jennings will become Bruce Jenner!

I have a feeling that Blair would have no problem if Hayley "accidentally" did this. This episode provided two good examples of why people should think twice about going on reality shows: 1. Anyone considering hiring Jelani and/or Jenny who viewed the footage of them being unable to come up with "ice" after getting "skating rink" would definitely hesitate. While the "5 I's" clue by itself might have been somewhat difficult to solve, there's no excuse for not being able to come up with it when you have the other two-thirds of the answer. After all, they should have known they were trying to come up with a phrase or expression, and with "skating rink" your first two thoughts are going to be "ice" and "roller." (Think of "The Match Game. If your clue was "____ Skating Rink" wouldn't those be the top two answers?) 2. Anyone who would ever consider having Hayley as a friend, much less dating her or employing her, would back away after seeing her behavior this week. She's a harpy and a shrew, and life's just too short to have to deal with her. If they win the race, Blair should either (1) give her his half of the winnings if she's signs something promising never to contact him again or (2) use his winnings to hire a competent attorney (i.e., not Jenny or Jelani) to draft an ironclad permanent restraining order requiring her to be at least 300 miles from him at all times.

Someone should also let her know that Virginians don't like to have it referred to as a "state." Mellie should have said "the great COMMONWEALTH of Virginia." "How I Met Your Mother"? Huh?

While they got a lot of those details right, I think they messed up on the MASH promo--the end of the voiceover said "only on channel 5." The CBS affiliate in DC is on channel 9.

We'll probably find out in a few weeks that her birth name was something like "Norma Schwartz." Compare this with "Jessie St. James" (Jonathan Groff) on "Glee," which actually WAS a (female) porn star's name!

Wynn Duffy is to "Justified" as Saul Goodman is to "Breaking Bad." Ergo, we need a Wynn Duffy spinoff! Make it a prequel, like "Better Call Saul," so we can have lots of Mikey, too! I remember from the DVD commentaries in the first season or two that they shot a lot of the outdoor scenes in the area around Lebec, so I guess it was sort of an "in joke-reference" to have Ava end up there.

Modesto is in the Central Valley and would definitely not be considered "southern California." It's in the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto media market (TV stations all come from Sacramento.)

No one switched to an automatic. All of the cars had manual transmissions. They switched because the car they had originally chosen was more difficult to extricate from its parking space.

So New Directions does three numbers at Sectionals and not ONE of the Warblers gets a solo or even a featured part? I'm pretty sure they would've screamed bloody murder before allowing that to happen.

Why do they bother setting shows in real-life locations (in this case, Modesto, CA) but then just make stuff up? There is no airport in Modesto with commercial passenger service.

So what was the deal with having to fly from LAX to Tokyo via Taiwan? Was it just because they had to use the product-placed airline's flights, and they had no non-stops on that route?

I guess I was not paying close enough attention, because somehow I got the impression (although I couldn't make sense of it) that NINA was going to be the US-Canada Institute visitor to Washington. I thought I saw her picture on the projector screen at the end of the meeting where they were discussing it. I was trying to figure out how they managed to reintegrate Nina into "the system" and bring her back, but it made absolutely no sense.

Directed by Tom Verica, Annalise's now dead husband on "How to Get Away With Murder." Now I need to go buy some boysenberry jam.