Sir RaiderDuck OMS

So who took the baby's body out of the casket? As Perry pointed out, everyone was watching. AFAIK, I'd never seen Matthew Rhys in anything before, but found myself really impressed with both him and the rest of the cast. Looking forward to next season.

I remember Christie, Michie and someone else being nominated by America to be next on the veto block last season. A tearful Christie suggested "This doesn't necessarily mean America hates us" and an increasingly self-aware Michie replied with "Actually, it does."

My wife and I just re-upped to CBS All Access to get the feeds (and I'll probably cancel it after Season 3 of ST: Discovery). With all of our usual social haunts (i.e. gaming parties) shut down due to COVID, there's not much else to do. As for the people in the shot: the only two BB seasons I've watched were the first season and the most recent season (i.e. the one where Christie Murphy cried constantly whilst telling us all what a strong person she was), so almost all of these people are new to me.

Jenny and Sumit: The brother is obviously tired of acting as a go-between/peacemaker between Sumit and the parents. Hence, his enthusiasm for a big family meeting. Either the parents will be OK with the relationship and direct communication will be restored, or there will be a big blowup leading to Sumit's exile from the family and/or Jenny's departure. In any case, he'll be off the hook. Tim and Melyza: Melyza has two choices if she wants a healthy relationship: forgive the affair that happened OVER A YEAR AGO, or dump him and move on to another guy. Either is acceptable. What she cannot do is pretend to take him back, then lord his infidelity over him every minute of every day. Have they had a conversation about any other topic? And after a year of apparently talking about nothing else, what new revelations are there to uncover? I can only imagine their conversations a decade from now: Tim: "Happy New Year! Here's to a great new decade of the 2030s!" Melyza: "OMG Tim, who cares??? We still need to talk some more about that time you cheated on me in 2019. Now why did you invite her over again?" Why Tim would even want this is a mystery. Deaven and Jihoon: Jihoon is a total flake, but Deaven's "Give me money so I know you love me" routine is ridiculous. And am I the only one who thinks she's worked very hard to perfect that sobbing quaver in her voice? His parents are hilarious, though. Give them their own show. Finally, both Ari and Deaven should cut the cord with their overbearing sMothers.

If the Reddit rumors are true, Clare didn't quit but was fired. The "Clare fell in love with Dale and is leaving the show" narrative is pure spin, either by ABC trying to make something positive out of this disaster, or Clare herself (or someone close to her) leaking the info to justify her departure. ETA: I can't say I'm surprised by this turn of events. Clare's hiring was promoted by ABC and the Bachelor Powers That Be as taking the franchise in a more mature direction, but Clare has always been an immature drama queen when I've seen her (I came into the franchise after Juan Pablo's season, but I saw her on BiP and Winter Games). Maturity-wise, Tayshia makes ten of her.

Wasn't JoJo supposedly sneaking Jordan over to her room early on for extended boom-boom sessions or whatever?

Mrs. RaiderDuck and I were wondering how Clare's contract is set up. Can she just walk off the show this soon without facing financial recriminations from ABC and/or Fleiss' production company? They've invested a lot of money promoting her and bringing in a whole new cast to match her age. One idea I'll put forth (and I claim ZERO inside information): Fly in Andi Dorfman as a replacement. She's single, old enough (33) that Clare's remaining suitors wouldn't be a total mismatch, and certainly knows the format.

Remember the season where Kaitlyn and Britt were cast for the premiere, with Britt being voted out at the end of the ep? One of the suitors came up to Kaitlyn and said he liked her, but really came on the show for Britt. Kaitlyn politely thanked him for his honesty, wished him well and walked him out. He and Britt ended up dating for awhile.

Doesn't look like it, and I'm not sure Burr would have approved anyway. Remember how they made Sulu gay in the Star Trek theatrical reboot as a nod to George Takei? It backfired slightly when Takei publicly criticized the decision, saying that while he personally was gay, he'd understood the character of Hikaru Sulu was not, and had never played him that way.

Remember that before three key SCOTUS decisions in the 1960s (Gideon v Wainwright, Escobedo v Illinois and Miranda v Arizona), the cops could lock you in a room without your attorney for hours and just wear you down until you confessed. They could also try and get you to confess by pretending to be after someone else and getting you to incriminate yourself. I assume so. The church she founded is still around and HBO has no desire to be sued.

One thing I definitely remember from the early novels is the casual racism: in the debut novel The Case of the Velvet Claws (written in the 1930s), Della tells Perry that locating a witness they were after would be like "Finding a n----r in a haystack". It was a little startling to read, especially when I was picturing Barbara Hale saying it.

Gardner actually hand-picked Burr for the role: he hadn't liked any of the actors that the network had brought in to play PM, but Fred McMurray was leading. Burr, who had played the bad guy in several films, was brought in to read for the role of District Attorney Hamilton Burger. When watching Burr's screen test, Gardner stood up, pointed at the screen, and said "That's him! That's Perry Mason!" His PM novels during and after the TV show were obviously written with Burr in mind, as Mason's physical description and speech patterns were changed to more closely match Burr's. You're thinking of the radio soap opera Edge of Night, which included Perry, Della, and Paul as regular characters. When they made the transition to television in the 1950s, the series was split in two, with Perry, Della and Paul going to the Perry Mason series which was strictly episodic with no soap opera elements, and Edge of Night having those three characters renamed.

The thing to remember about most third-world countries: their cities basically look like our cities. They have all the modern conveniences, same as we do. It's when you get even a few miles outside the cities that everything gets primitive and/or impoverished. I have no doubt that a hospital in a major Ethiopian city would be the rough equivalent to a hospital in a big American city. Why on EARTH would anyone say "I'm giving up my life and flying around the world to be with this guy, even though I don't remotely trust him and he's shown zero ability to step up and be the kind of provider I want?" She makes zero sense, and her mother is the very stereotype of the Ugly American. As for Brittany and Yazan: Yes, he flew off the handle way too hard. I suspect it wasn't the hugs that set him off as much as the oversized bottle of tequila. Hugging the crew members could be seen as an impulsive "in the moment" act by someone who doesn't yet know all the rules, but bringing a huge bottle of booze to a country and culture that forbids alcohol consumption is a deliberate act that shows only contempt for that culture's rules. A ten-second Google search would have told Brittany that even drinking a beer is considered a sin in Islam. And as I said a couple of weeks ago, Yazan has been very plain and direct about his wanting Brittany to wed him immediately and settle into the life of a Muslim housewife, whilst Brittany's attitude has been "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just gonna do what I want and he'll have to deal with it." I cannot see any way this ends well. And as for the hotel: My wife and I have occasionally investigated visiting Turkey, Egypt and other Muslim-dominated countries. Sharing a hotel room with someone of the opposite sex is 100% forbidden unless you're either married or related somehow. As my wife and I have different last names, we might even carry a copy of our marriage certificate with us should we ever realize these vacation plans. And we both noticed the room porter going out of his way to ensure he didn't even touch Brittany accidentally.

She may have received alimony at one point. In a lot of states, alimony isn't permanent: it's just meant to provide $$$ for a housewife to learn some job skills and start earning on her own. So the court will order alimony or "spousal maintenance" or whatever for a set number of years, then it ends.

The Walmart in south Scottsdale still employs greeters. Even if her local store has eliminated greeters, she could find work elsewhere in that organization. From what I've been told, Walmart works you to death and the pay sucks, which means there are constant openings.

Yazan and Summit are definitely different. I was thinking more in terms of Brittany making horrible decisions and Jenny being Brittany 35 years later: her life in shambles because of those bad decisions, and she continues to make her situation even worse. Oh, I agree. My grandfather retired at 60 from his railroad job as an Engineer with Southern Pacific and took early retirement even though it cost him $$$ (at the time, railroad employees didn't get Social Security per se, but rather it was combined into their railroad pension). His health was so bad that he didn't think he'd make it to 65 and wanted to enjoy a least a couple of years of retirement. As it turns out, it was working on the railroad itself that was making him sick. Once he was retired, his health suddenly improved and he lived a long, happy retirement until he passed away a couple of years ago at the age of 102. Jenny, on the other hand, does not appear to have obvious health problems or another reason why she can't work another few years, THEN take her full Social Security. I understand Walmart is always hiring.

And what 61-year-old only has a $6,000 401(k)? Sounds like she was a housewife who didn't enter the workforce until her mid-50s. She also is making one horrible decision after another. Does she not understand that this 30% cut in SS benefits (for beginning them at her age) will dog her for the rest of her life? Yazan is being very honest about what he and his family will want and expect. Brittany is saying "Yeah yeah yeah, I'll just do what I want and he'll have to deal with it." This will be the dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires. Kids who start learning a foreign language when they're in their grade school years or younger can learn to speak that language without an accent: examples would be Gloria Estefan or Gene Simmons (or Jodie Foster the other way: I understand her French could pass for native). If you start when you're in your early teens, you'll have a small but noticeable accent: an example would be Varya. If you start when you're an adult, you will never sound like a native speaker: examples would be Desi Arnaz or Henry Kissinger. Each language has some unique sounds and your brain will simply not be able to tell your tongue and lips how to make those sounds. This can easily happen when you're dumber than a box of hair. She's Jenny 2.0 in a lot of ways.

Ed is a jerk but his mocking of David on that point was legit. David needs to understand what an incredibly lame excuse "she can't use the phone because of her nails" is. Either that phone was factory reset and sold off before David's plane touched back down in the US, or Lana likes having the upgrade but has no intention of using it for David. Of course, none of this matters. David does not see he's being scammed because he does not wish to see it. The situation reminds me of an episode of Catfished I heard about where some scammer was catfishing a guy by pretending to be Katy Perry. MTV went to the trouble of not only introducing the victim to the actual scammer, but also playing him a video message by the real Katy Perry saying "I'm sorry, but you've been scammed. You and I have never spoken in our lives." Even after that, the guy was convinced he really had been texting Katy Perry and she was now denying it all because blah blah blah.

My wife picked up right away that it was a wig, and an ill-fitting one at that. Darcey's part was way too far back and it didn't frame her face well at all, not to mention it being totally the wrong color for her skin tone. We'd always thought Rose was a little slow, given her deliberate monotone when speaking English, but when she gets riled up? The Tagalog comes fast and furious from than one. I was kinda Team Avery until this ep. Dumping a long-distance relationship because THEY are cheating on YOUR diet screams "Control Freak." Run, Ash, run. Ed's daughter seemed genuinely hurt at his offhand comment that he'd give her up again to go chasing after Rose. It's very obvious how much he values her advice and counsel in his life: in other words, not at all. Erika's not the first, nor will she be the last person suckered onto a reality tell-all with the promise that "We'll let you tell your side of the story" only to discover the producers have no intention of allowing it. As intimated above, Tom has gained some weight. His formerly lean face is showing some chubby. Assuming TLC doesn't give Geoffrey and Varya another go, it looks like we'll only be seeing any of these people again if: 1) Darcey's sister suddenly mentioning an impending K1 for her overseas boyfriend means Stacey makes the actual 90 Day Fiance show with Darcey chirping in occasionally 2) Stephanie gets her own show, which could explain TLC letting her and her friends run roughshod over a blindsided Erika.

Methinks Lana knows English waaaaaaay better than she's letting on. It's weird that a couple of 45-year-old women think their 48-year-old brother, were he still alive, would have time to be their 24/7 wingman/enforcer/whatever and not be occupied with his own wife and kids. As for their cars: As someone leasing his third straight Nissan Sentra*, I wouldn't describe a late model Altima as "dumpy." However, grown adults do not normally graduate straight from Nissans to Jaguars unless they win the lottery or something. *No, I'm not the world's most boring guy when it comes to cars. Why do you ask?😋

Yes, but dead frozen cows can't produce baby cows. When this supply of beef is gone, it's gone for good.

It's another sign of the gradual wussification of our society that many places now allow people to take their "Emotional Support Animal" everywhere, even when it's unsafe, unhygienic and completely inconsiderate to do so. And nine times out of ten, it's an annoying, yapping pocket rat. Speaking of luggage, Varya had very little for a two-week stay. Methinks she didn't expect to need many changes of clothes during those two weeks, if you know what I mean...

Looks like the train's entire beef supply is no more. Things are going to get a lot more uncomfortable. And they're passing that same unstable section of track again in less than six months. When the Tailie kids are being "apprenticed," does that mean they're being brought forward to learn, or to be used for protein?

Angela, for all her many faults and total white trashiness, was basically a happy person. Lisa is basically a miserable person. Mary knew exactly where she stood when Varya showed up unannounced, was totally rude and inconsiderate towards Mary, and Geoffrey just stood there and said nothing, thus de facto taking Varya's side. A similar thing happened to a friend of mine (I'll call him "Mike"): his ex showed up at his home a year after she'd broken it off with him, then tried ordering his current girlfriend out of the room, saying she wanted to talk to him about "closure." But Mike handled it the opposite way of Geoffrey. He told her "No, you are not ordering my girlfriend out of our home. If you want to talk about 'closure,' fine. We'll talk about it all you want. But it'll be in a public place that we'll agree on, and if my current GF wants to come along, sit at the table and listen to EVERY WORD, she'll be welcome to do so. Now please leave and don't come here again unannounced." It's the difference in behavior between a male and a man.

FYI: The 21-minute preview is now up at TLC.com. Haven't had a chance to watch it yet.