Amarsir

She's never been especially clever. Most of her arc has been "It's nice to have dragons". And she was overwhelmingly rewarded as a result. I think the destructiveness came out of nowhere and her "turn to the dark side" (so to speak) should have been set up better last episode. But I'm not bothered if she isn't the ultimate hero. On the contrary, seeing her waltz into a happy ending would have been boring.

I liked Stingray and his ability to inject comedy in otherwise serious scenes. But they have to be careful because a little goes a long way. On the other hand I’m disappointed that Hawk is still playing out so 2 dimensional. The actor killed both the shy and bully roles in the first season. Now he seems to have pursued aggression beyond his friends, girlfriend, or sensei and it doesn’t really make sense.

I’m happy that Arya was the hero. I’m not happy that after clearly foreshadowing it they then had her come out of nowhere so it would be “a surprise“. The suspense should have been whether she pulls it off not how long they wait before she shows up. I also wanted a plot-changing death and none of the ones we saw are.

Because he knew something they didn't show on television: the family was the target of arson from a former employee. You're right, if there was no explanation it would have been an obvious reason for Marcus to leave instantly. Since he didn't leave that reinforces that there was an explanation, and thus the show's choice not to show it is pretty shady.

Yeah, the thing that made the second half work that hurt the first half and the prior season was that we finally got to see the Bluths interacting properly again. The more of them in the scene together, the better it worked. Which, related, is why Tobias's side show was such a drag. David Cross was available but he really had nothing to do. Alia also had nothing to do but with less screentime at least it didn't annoy. Maybe she wasn't available much. Overall it just felt like without Portia the writers didn't want to include them but had to. All in all I think it was a fair sendoff. Not a revisit of the glory days, but enough good stuff to make me remember why the show was great.

I don't know if anyone saw the April Fools special. It was definitely filler (no new contestants, one trick stretched over the hour) but I enjoyed it. I've always enjoyed April Fools and good-natured pranks, and to me that's very true to Penn & Teller's nature as well.

Well Mark retweeted something about them which I don't think he'd do if the deal had fallen through by now. (And Cuban specifically has been very much opposed to people using the show just for publicity so I don't think it's something he'd conspire about.) From that tweet I learned that other investors include Peter Thiel and Blue Horizon group (alternative food provider best known for the Impossible Burger). So there must have been some more credentials to that product that just didn't make the air.

Well as always I'm a lot less interested in the relationship counselor aspect but this was certainly less toxic than most. Interesting to me that this is another company which ties in nicely with Camping World. Seems a lot less risky than putting all his faith in a clothing designer or trying another fast casual restaurant.

I use YouMail which makes it easy to check voicemail from my computer or even get transcripts. As a side effect it does a pretty good job of identifying scammers. It still rings my phone but an overlay says "suspected scammer" on the off chance I might have answered. Also I can do customized outgoing messages for known numbers, so whitelisting is easy. With that sort of smart technology I can see the virtue of an AI answering service that wastes their time. But I don't think Jolly Roger is anything I'd go to effort or expense over on its own.

Going to be interesting sleeping in that tent if you need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Unlike a lot of products we see on this show, Marcus controls a major retail network for this via Camping World and Gander Outdoors. They're pretty much guaranteed a decent success if they don't go bankrupt on contaminated real estate plays.

It almost seems novel to have a more traditional episode. Interesting to see a similar problem to Jackie's Cookies with this desire for a facility way bigger than required. Fortunately it doesn't seem like this guy had the resources to get himself that deep into trouble and is maybe a bit less deluded.

I think all this season he's been trying to do things differently. Some of them were real hits, but this one missed. I'm OK with the show taking risks like that. But I also agree that editing might have helped a lot. Maybe the problem is that the group kept doing stuff off-camera so they had trouble telling the story. They're the newest though, aren't they? I would have figured Inkkas to not be doing that well, to be honest. It seems like there was a major attempt early on to push the brand but I don't get the sense it really took off. She seemed to have the most natural authority of who was there, but I think that being part of Marcus's umbrella organization they didn't want to tie her down into this group.

Manjit seems to be growing into the villain role a bit. I don't mean that in that I dislike her, but that she's using the Kevin approach of maximizing the deal for herself. I was really surprised the furniture folks took the deal with both of them. To me that was the 3rd best choice. But some people come in thinking they know what they want and it's as much advice as possible. I thought they were a bit unfair to the heating packets. It's an exothermic reaction hot enough to boil water. Of course there are inedible chemicals! However, I do agree that pitching it for camping is a mistake. I wouldn't want to carry disposable plastic and I sure don't want the risk of a packet activating while it's in my pack. Shocking to me that alternative "flesh tones" are still that hard to find. If so I'm very glad for that woman solving the issue. But I wonder if it wasn't a mistake to give away 40% so early. He's been doing that a lot this season. More than anyone else he'll just say "I'll give you what you asked for." What's your issues with him?

There's a hotels.com ad right now that features their mascot getting "goat yoga". I think it's fair to say that an idea is no longer new when it's being parodied by a character named "Captain Obvious."

I like to go into Asian markets and restaurants that have little product sections, and to me it often appears as "Here's literally anything we could think of to add in hopes you buy it." Which is exactly what Marcus did. Now to be fair this is stage 1 of a two step process. First try lots of stuff, then rotate out the losers and focus on the winners. But the problem of too many things with rainbow cloud packing and whatever else is going on is that it doesn't compel me to try any of them. (And it doesn't help that I can't read the language. That's on me and presumably not a problem for many of their customers.) What I'm saying is that if I see Doritos, pretzels, and a strange green bag that says "cucumber potato chips" on it, I'm going to go for that third one because it sounds interesting. But in a different context, without those first two and just cucumber potato chips and shrimp puffs and dried plums I'm probably not going to try any of it because it's not appearing to me in a familiar context. I don't mean to suggest that they need to Americanize. I'm just saying it's easier to buy something new if there's at least some familiarity rather than if it's a completely foreign experience.

Gimmick themes are silly but they generally don't get in the way. I didn't care for the family cheering squad though, even though it probably didn't take up too much screen time. I like hot sauce but I can't see the point in custom ordering one. There are just so many varieties already. However, a custom label could make this a nice gift item so they've got that going for them.

Another nontraditional episode this season and again a really good one. It could have been very painful, given yet more owners who are stubborn to change. All the more reason I'm glad we didn't stick with that old pattern. Maybe I missed it - did Chandler go to college? He reminds me of business majors I've known - excited for the big picture and genuine about wanting the job but without the experience to know all the small stuff that gets you there. And thus the question is what Marcus was trying to resolve - are they willing to put in the work or just want the paycheck and glory?

Standard practice for a deposition is that you never ever volunteer information and are very much on guard. During a deposition the opposing counsel is in charge and their goal is to get you to say stuff on the record from which they can pick and choose later. If the case goes to jury they will never hear all or even most of it, just what the opposing counsel wants to quote. So it is much more important to be on guard than to say even a single thing wrong. (Plus there is an element of wasting their time so they never get around to anything useful.) And when I say "standard practice", I mean I was taught this in engineering school on the chance I might ever be called as an expert witness on anything. It's just that common of a technique. Linked below is an amusing reenactment of an actual deposition if you've never seen it. And I understand that's not so unusual. BTW the case appears to have been that some woman was the sponsor of an event and then the event replaced her with Camping World. She was mostly suing the event but also named CW, Marcus, and his wife because that's how suits work. You name everyone so that if any one of them deflects blame it's helping you against another.

Oh yeah I forgot how ridiculous that was. At first I thought she was just clueless about financing. (Which she is.) That's bad, but having seen enough business shows I know it's surprisingly common. But now in hindsight it really does seem like a delusion.

Fraud requires deliberate intent to deceive. Being stupid would be an affirmative defense. It may be that they didn't actually have a PO and it was simply David's "optimistic" view that they would get one. In that case, a loan secured via PO would be fraud. However if they did have a PO, funded it legitimately, and then between the time the buyers paid and when the loan was due they stupided the money away, well that's just a loan default the same as any other.

Another really interesting episode. Marcus is smart enough to instantly see that he shouldn't be investing, but stuck around to consult anyway. I guess for the show's sake even though he says he doesn't do stuff for the cameras. It reminded me a bit of Swanson's Fish Market. There he made it about their personal spending and here it was about optimism but both were deep in debt and ended with a surprise reveal of a lurking foreclosure notice.

I did watch the BTS and even in hindsight he seems a bit blind to the personality problems there. He did end by saying they need a behind-the-scenes for the second episode as well. What Marcus admits to getting wrong about Standard Burger is taking a burger joint on Staten Island and pricing it like downtown Manhattan. Marcus was talking about $3.50 ingredients and a 75% profit margin so that means the main target would have to be a $14 burger. Which all implies to me that he likely would have stuck out all the fighting if they were making money.

Arlene is really the heavyweight on the team. She often wins head-to-heads and often gets her demand for a higher percentage. I was particularly surprised the Eyebrows folks went with her instead of franchising Jim's way. He clearly knows his stuff in that regard. How did Lane become the beauty care guinea pig this season? Someone behind the camera is getting a lot of laughs out of that.

We need Alton Brown as a shark. He doesn't even need to invest. I just want to hear him berate people with stupid single-purpose kitchen items like that SubSafe.