Amarsir

If you did that on purpose I am very impressed. For those who don't know:

Nor did Jason spout any fake southernisms that I recall. (Although he has no shortage in BBA.) In fact this whole season has had a lot less pushing for cartoony stereotypes than the past. Only Christian is over the top and he does that himself. Perhaps they listened to the audience on that. Also, it's worth praising that the "final four" dish didn't have any crazy twists or sprinting to get the card that says "strawberry" so you aren't left with "durian". Just "cook what you're good at". (And then leave out a crucial ingredient and move on anyway.) I think everyone knew Amy wasn't going to win except Amy. The real shame is that it was so obvious that challenge didn't matter. Christian screwed up the presentation and the food, but they like him better so there you go. If we want to be super cynical, "Comeback Kitchen" gives them 4-5 more hours of television without having to come up with any additional prizes. I remember she made a bread pudding that Bobby & Giada thought was the most amazing thing anyone has ever cooked.

Yeah Penn may have interpreted it as a political statement or something. I think the biggest mistake the guy made was not talking up the "police car" aspect at the start. Those cars don't have inside handles on the back doors. So that alone makes it inherently more difficult to get out. Had he mentioned that it would have added at least a little much-needed tension.

You might if you were six years old. I don't mean that as a shot. I mean this is on at 8pm on the CW. Families watch and I bet there were a lot of kids who found it cool that a robot dinosaur tore a police car in half. For me, yeah it wasn't a great trick. But a season has a certain amount of space fillers anyway, so I'm fine varying it up. I agree with @lynxfx that the mirror trick was my least favorite. A simple gimmick, barely obscured. If you have a cool prop, at least work up a better act for it.

Oh, the boss doesn't want to take any of Marcus's suggestions? That's new. Actually this was worse because he wants her as a designer, which means he can't even try to go around her. I mean I guess instead of yelling about it she just, y'know, didn't do anything. So that's kind of different. But otherwise nothing happened. I did however enjoy the irony of Marcus ending the show saying that she wasted his time. I think I can relate, Marcus.

I guess Christian didn't hear about Comeback Kitchen, where Monterrey was eliminated for using liquid nitrogen in a do-at-home demo just a few weeks ago. Funny that that seems to be a recurring theme. Her TH snark at him wasn't bad either: "Let poor Ree Thomson talk!" I think that's why they're keeping her around. She's not going to win because no one there wants to work with her. But she's had some decent talking heads, both about herself and others. Can someone who is a better cook than me explain why she didn't use the prominently-displayed lobster? Too big for the allotted cook time?

The 5% came out of Marcus's cut. First offer: $250k for 33%. Second offer: $250k for 25%. Third offer: $200k for 20%, "5% of that will go into a shared bonus plan." So she negotiated well; going first from a $750k valuation to a million, and then to a new deal that lets her keep 80% and supports the company as well. And then Marcus put in another $100k for the website mentioned only as a voiceover so we have no idea where they ended up.

I would have liked it better had the hand looked remotely like Penn's.

I don't care for the light styles, especially at those prices. But I did think the space looked good and Jen is one of the better bosses. Yeah it's awkward giving equity to an ex, but it's also awkward keeping an ex around in a pseudo-leadership position and not compensating him. It wasn't wrong to push for a decision one way or another. Join us next week when Marcus tries to save a struggling bong water flavoring business.

Steven Brundage was on Fool Us season 2 and also on AGT doing Rubik's Cube magic. Not quite the same but similar enough that I thought of him as well. 42799 is the number from Frank Sinatra's mug shot.

That was 2 years ago. The fact that you forgot last year's is itself a review of season 13. (Honey Lord Ol' Mighty Jason won, and I pretty much forget that season as well because we all knew the winner before it started.) Especially since all she did was recite some commercial copy. I have a pretty high threshold for product placement, but this is not how to do it.

And another thing. Marcus's makeover idea was to spend $30k on each of 2 stores to get them to look different? Isn't it very specifically his point on franchises that above all else they need to look the same? Was he just setting them up to fight?

Dino is much more self-aware, and I agree with @Gregg247 that it's coming more from grief and a fear of losing people than from an ego trip. I couldn't work with him, but unlike Andrew I feel like Dino is more likely to break down into tears than into violence. Little Caesar's adopted the "Hot-N-Ready" model a few years back. Very simply if you order a large plain or pepperoni you can get it instantly. Five bucks. (They also have personal-sized plus drink for $5, or a new extra pepperoni for $6.) While I consider their recipe to be too bready, I don't think the pizza suffers for sitting in the warming station. No worse than bouncing around in a delivery guy's '03 Camry. So a drive-through would fit them fine. And although I've never seen one, a search tells me that LC is already doing that as well. And at a price point well below what Simply Slices wanted to do. Also lots of pizza places sell by-the-slice if you come in. Notably S'barro's at malls. So that isn't really a killer. The awkward thing was allowing customization. I admit that lifting up the cheese to put ingredients underneath didn't look great. Maybe it works out OK, or maybe I'd rather have a much more limited menu that I know was recently cooked for the first time. They must know on some level what was reordered, even if the POS system doesn't say and he didn't have tallies handy According to Marcus on Twitter, 7 flavors made up 90% of the sales.

I liked the way the reveal was done, but all the stuff in-between didn't seem tied in well enough. We got to watch him whispering it in backwards, so playing that same track reversed is underwhelming. Make it appear the sound was recorded inadvertently and that trick becomes 10x better. Matrix is matrix at this point. He was good, but I agree P&T just don't want to try to debunk it and would rather give an honorary win. However, I felt the patter didn't quite work. False bravado as comedy is fine - the first performer used it as well. But I felt there was too much of it, and it was infected by his genuine excitement to be there. (Which should be a good thing - I want to be happy for the magician and am. But I can't buy him getting into character as an egomaniac when the true fanboy is so evident.) I was distracted by how huge the sleeves on his coat were. Also I felt his "pick any size currency" was less impressive than it should have been since we don't know if it's accurate. (In fact I'm not even sure the size that came out matched what went in.) But that's not a heavy criticism. I'm saying the trick is probably even better than it came off. An old-school big stage trick has very little chance of fooling them. However, I really liked it. Nothing obvious in the performance. And although she might have been acting, Allison seemed genuinely impressed for being so close up.

After 5 years the asshole bosses continue, but at least they're getting smarter about avoiding the camera. And hey, we got like 8 minutes of business talk between the drive-through, the menu, and the sourcing. On the first: Average time at a McDonald's drive-through is 3.5 minutes. So targeting under 4 was smart. On the second: OK it's cool that Marcus showed off his social media reach. But shouldn't the decision to pare down the menu be based on what sells? Why ask your random group what flavors they like when you have hard numbers? On the third: I didn't recognize Fabio until he started talking. Not a bad connection for Marcus to have. (Much better than Robert Irvine, who was tweeting love back and forth with Marcus a few weeks ago.) Well, congrats to Dino on a giant ad why no one should ever buy a franchise from you.

I was trying to figure out how none of them got the point. Then I realized it’s because they are still in the mindset of pitching their own show with their own POV. So they tried to spin their idea into being close enough - like they do on every other challenge. Amy I like you (unlike much of the board). And I would totally watch a show about healthy versions of indulgent food. But it wouldn’t be called “Cheat Eats!” (It would be called Junk Food Flip and feature a different blonde non-winner.) It’s a question of whether bacteria could have gotten into what you’re eating. The interior of a steak is fine and serving it raw is no worse than serving it extra-rare. However, never eat purchased ground beef that is close to raw. The process of grinding it up means there is no inside anymore. So cook your burgers to at least 155F.

Writers who want the dramatic angle often point out he was born in Beirut in the 70s and lived in an orphanage. Except he was adopted at 9 months old the year before the civil war started. So while bonding in infancy (or the lack thereof) probably does have an effect, this is kind of a fake lead. Not fake is the fact that he was molested by an extended family member. He didn't talk about it for years because he never wanted his mother to know. Plus he says he was overweight and I'm sure there was bullying there, although it pales in comparison to the first revelation.

There was a certain irony to Nicolas' message. "The cause has to come first, or else people will smell it as a bullshit marketing tactic." He says 50 minutes into an episode as they attempt to add a marketing tactic to a generic bag. It IS good advice. Just not authentic to what they actually did. By the way I thought Nicolas (from Courage b) came off very competent and authoritative. He seems to have grown well into a role for Marcus, well above clashing with family about designs. Also nice to see The Partner Julie Reed, looking less exhausted than last time we saw her. (Though still not sufficiently partner-like IMHO.) To me, when I see a brand marketed for a social cause it shouts "We added $5 to the price so we can donate $1 to charity." It's an ad for inefficiency. But then I never cared much about brand either. The wife was a bit annoying, but I also understand that after being married for years they settled into roles where she takes the lead. She wasn't trying to belittle him. It's just a hard habit to break. But I'm completely with you on how horribly run that focus group was. He was responding to them like they were a board of directors. You're there to get some public sentiment, not pitch ideas for approval. Marcus should have explained that better.

My feeling was that Vinny was actually being generous. Their guess was video effects to overlay an answer on a chroma-keyed blank. If he used any other technology to make that appear then he might feel it was kind of similar but I didn't. Very funny with Gottfried. (Who is close friends with Penn for anyone who didn't know / guess.) Here I felt it was a bit more of a technicality, but they do like him. Penn called the move and the timing, and Gertner said the timing was wrong. So they could have been right on the method, which is the biggest part. Fine trick by me though.

That's actually an interesting possibility. The assistant could have a lot of time with the drawings, and with a big audience there's a predictability to certain things existing. They could tell him "get us a flower picture" and he sifts through to get one and passes it.

The siblings cut her out, apparently. Including the brother who showed up at the end to support him? So they're still in touch, but she's not responding to him, and it's because of them? It reads to me like the mom has some kind of psychological issue, the rest of the family made a difficult decision, and Aristotle isn't ready to. That's OK - if you can't have a soft spot for your mother then when can you? But one way or another he has to toughen up, both for himself personally and for the business.

Speak of the devil. That's what Marcy did with Powerpoint in the season opener, and here you already described it perfectly. For the Sentimentalists, I can't say. They had an assistant but he didn't leave the stage. He could have flashed the image through the glass to someone while the air was still blowing. And then the picture was not a particularly great copy, but that could be misdirection. I also noticed the woman turned the blank card over before she drew on it, but that could be meaningless as well.

And how did Marcus get involved? It sounds like his vanity store was already selling their stuff before they realized they could use him as a lifeline. It doesn't translate in Euros either. That exchange is around 1.2:1. He just had no idea. Don't put Greece on MIllennials though. I wouldn't be surprised if the Greek connection was what drew Marcus in the first place. I will blame the guys for thinking that they can spend their days talking about feelings and then at some point that turns into profit. There's no connection between wishes and work. It's especially glaring because they considered themselves to be "ideas" guys, but when Marcus deliberately wanted ideas from them they didn't really have any. That's what he wants to invest in: people who can come up with creative successful ideas he doesn't have. If he wanted to tell you what to make or just get a list of items in an "accessories" category he would just hire someone. To that extent Aristotle redeemed himself with the kids' glasses and new designs, but none of his posse did a damn thing. Although to be fair, Marcus often gives 3 directions that may not necessarily jive, or he picks one as the most important that wasn't clear. After the initial failure (business card holders?) he said 1) Items for women, 2) Key in to acetate, 3) Ready in 30 days. If his manufacturing is in Greece, it probably isn't plausible to get whole new designs back in that time. And I don't think a leather valet case is any worse of an idea than acetate earrings.

Pop the Magic Dragon skipped out on the family 300 years ago and moved to America. When he heard his son had it it big in Vegas he decided to reconnect in order to freeload. (Seriously, Penn came up with this backstory for him.)