atlanticslide

Seriously. What I really hated was that Theresa's whole justification for her hypocrasy was "at least I felt bad about hooking up with guys, but you don't feel bad at all!" NO ONE should feel bad. They're all adults, single, on vacation, and have nothing else to do but drink and work out. Why the hell shouldn't they all be hooking up with one another? And the fact that all of this anger is directed at Nany is so infuriating. Why no anger and nasty comments for Johnny Riley for being the one rubbing all over Nany a couple of weeks after breaking up with Avery? Why no anger for ANY of the guys who have slept around just as much as the women on these shows? Such bullshit.

I can let a lot of things about the half-marathon go, but the eating pasta for breakfast was so ridiculous.

The whole return of Jordan scene really highlighted the difference in how Ashley sees this experience vs. someone like Whitney - Ashley is viewing this completely like a game, a competition that she has to win, rather than seeking a potential husband. She doesn't care about getting to know Chris or him getting to know her, she's entirely focused on her placement in the competition and beating the other women. If she had more than two brain cells in her head, she'd realize that if Jordan really had the potential to steal someone's "spot" then Chris's feelings towards that person probably weren't all that strong. And come on, does Ashley seriously think that a farmer from a town of 700 people in the middle of Iowa is looking for a Kardashian or a princess? Also, she looks like a terrible kisser. That said, at least Ashley is the entertaining kind of trainwreck. Kelsey was genuinely creepy in this episode. At first I wondered if maybe the editors were making her look bad and taking quotes of her's out of context, but the more she spoke the more it became clear that she really did say all of this exactly as it came across. There's something deeply weird about macking on another dude eight seconds after finishing your sob story about your dead husband. The "panic attack" looked totally fake. I'd expect Chris would send her home, even if he isn't seeing everything the audience is seeing, just based on how obviously she used her "amazing story" to get a kiss out of him, but I'm pretty sure there was a clip in the "this season on" montage that showed the two of them alone together outisde somewhere that we haven't see yet, so I think she'll be sticking around for a while (though I hope I'm proved wrong). I really don't understand why she thinks any of this is appropriate to say on camera or makes her look good. She honestly seemed kind of psychotic. Britt not showering - super weird. It definitely looked like she did shower before the date with Chris, because her hair looked noticeably nicer and cleaner.

Nia, you drank sweat. You have absolutely no room to judge anyone else about anything. Between the sweat-drinking, which was literally the most disgusting thing that has ever happened on The Challenge (even fastforwarding it on Tivo, I almost puked), and the absolutely vile comments about Nany, Nia has suddenly become one of my least favorite Challenge castmembers ever. Just a gross human being all around. I love Wes, but hate Theresa. I love Nany, but don't really care for much Johnny. Really wish the partnerships were opposite. Or, better yet, Nany with Leroy, who I also love, but can't root for because his partner is a disgusting asshole. Much as I like Nany, though, it was pretty awesome to see Johnny finally lose. That said, I hope they kick ass in Exile.

The Nany stuff with Johnny is so out of left field after years of them being nothing but platonic on the Challenges that I can't help thinking it was played up entirely for screen time.

Actually, I'm not certain, but I think Lee beat the shit out of Ben at Lee's birthday. I doubt anything will come of the police report of the rape, unfortunately, because it really does seem like it's just down to Linda's word against Dean's, but I did enjoy Mick telling Dean they'd reported him.

I can certainly understand why they wouldn't want to tell Nancy and Lee - I imagine telling anyone that you've been raped is horrible and feels humiliating, but to have to tell your children that would probably be doubly so - but I do hope with Linda going to the police that it all comes out so that Nancy can have a better understanding of what's been going on. That said, considering Nancy already thinks that Dean and Linda slept together, I wonder if maybe she won't believe the rape story and will buy Dean's side of things.

I feel the opposite regarding Emma. There's never an excuse or justification for trying to murder your own child - if she was feeling stressed out and overwhelmed she should have gotten help. I'm also not finding her interesting or enjoyable at all. Mostly just weird. I don't really care about her angst over the James/Moira affair. It was 20+ years ago and when you try to kill a child and ditch your family for two decades you lose any moral high ground to act like the injured woman over something that happened 20 years ago. I'm really sick of the Belle storyline. Glad they're finally moving it along. Archie is seriously the cutest baby ever.

Because different periods of illness can look very different from one another, and going through multiple battles with cancer, complete with rounds of chemo and radiation, takes a toll on your body. Lots of people are able to survive cancer once, but it's not as common to beat it three times. Even Diem's doctors had said there was nothing more they could do. Sometimes you really do just know when someone is going to die soon. I'm not saying the MTV producers necessarily did in this case, but it's certainly not unfathomable that they assumed correctly that she wouldn't survive this.

Actually, I can see it happening, precisely because of what you said - that video packages are very time-consuming to make, especially with interview subjects scattered around the country. They had a few weeks in between her death and the airing of the special in which it could have been produced, but I wouldn't be surprised if they started gathering interviews beforehand. For example, Stuart Scott, a longtime anchor on ESPN, died last week after several battles with cancer himself, and on the day he died ESPN already had several special pieces with interviews with his colleagues and friends ready to air. Even if she hadn't yet died, it seems like everyone was expecting this outcome, so I don't think there was much thought about if they would use all of this, but when.

That's true, although I do think Marlon has behaved horribly with regard to April since Donna's death and Laurel seemed to do the best she could early on to urge him to get April into therapy or at least figure out a better way of dealing with it than to constantly give into April's every whim at the expense of everyone else. Laurel has to look out for Arthur too, and doing things like cancelling Arthur's Halloween party because Marlon can't figure out what to do when April panics doesn't help anyone. But yeah, recently it's been much more about her jealousy over Donna and the fact that Marlon spends a lot of time with and checking up on April, which really doesn't make Laurel look good.

Was it Jenna who said that all fifty states have a president? I didn't know what to do with myself at that point. I find it genuinely scary that a grown adult can be that stupid. Yeah, that was really difficult to watch. I feel like we're literally watching someone in the early stages of dying. Very, very sad.

I like Laurel, but man, I can't stand her with Marlon. Mostly because Marlon is the worst, especially lately. I don't blame her for drinking so heavily - her marriage sucks. That said, she did it to herself, so I kind of like that her perfect relationship and perfect life are starting to crumble just as Ashely is really putting his life back together.

Heh, I keep thinking, "Man, they really need to give Chas a new storyline - maybe a new romance! She's been a alone for a while now..." and then remember that she's with James.

Ouch, sorry, then, to break it that way. I'm not actually sure if that's really a spoiler or not, but yeah, articles from the late summer said that she collapsed during filming and was rushed to the hospital and that's when they discovered the cancer had returned. I'm not sure when, exactly, though, so I also watched the whole episode waiting for it to happen, and will probably watch the next episode with the same sense of dread.

Johnny's ego is so overinflated at this point I think he's just in his own universe, totally detached from reality.

But... you know that they don't win it, right? She collapsed during filming and that's when shew as rushed to the hospital, so she didn't get to finish the season.

I might be wildly off base, but that didn't look to me to be related to Diem - it's a super brief clip so it's impossible to say for certain, but it looks like he's standing outside of one of the buses they use when everyone goes out to a bar, and he looked a little disheveled, which made me think it was just a random drunken moment that they threw in the preview clips to seem dramatic.

Well, between watching Knight happily booze it up and watching Diem's home videos from her previous battle with cancer while listening to her talk about how she can't wait to get her life back on track, that was certainly awkward as hell.

I was watching the Season 4 Christmas episode the other day, and overall it's a pretty decent one, as clip shows go, but every time I watch this episode and I get to the plane emergency scene, I can't help laughing out loud. What pilot would actually say "this is going to sound worse than it is..."?

I'd like to see a return to the larger team format, as I'm getting a little sick of pair teams. I really liked the Free Agents format, but I'd like to see large teams from start to finish again, and a final challenge that benefits from having a large team to cut back on the "trimming the fat" mission-throwing. I'd also like to see fewer strength/endurance challenges and some more varied types of challenge - more puzzles, memory games, strategy games, etc. I may be in the minority, but I love TJ. That said, Devyn really would make a great host.

Maybe Pam and Ian aren't on the suspect list? Pam because it was Les, if I recall, who was shown looking at his phone, and Ian because it's already been established that he was with Rainie that night.

Excellent episode. The mystery has really been dragged out at this point, but I'm enjoying picking things apart for clues, such as - when Emma was meeting the killer in the park, Ben, Jay, Denise, Whitney, Lee, all three Brannings, all of the Beales + Jane were unaccounted for. When Emma left the park, we cut to Lola and Billy leaving their flat, which makes me pretty firmly believe it's not one of them. Ben and Jay seemed to be checking out Phil's stashes of money, so that may account for them as well. I don't think, based on their reactions when Lucy was first killed, that it could be either Ian or Peter. I don't think Denise either, considering how she was all set to leave Ian but then felt obligated to stick around in that unhappy relationship while he was grieving. The Cokers were thrown in there too, but they wouldn't make any sense at all. Lee looked mighty suspicious when he came into the pub, but I think that was a red herring, and Emma was acting strange enough that it wouldn't be out of line for anyone to be giving her the side-eye. I think it's down to one of the Brannings or Jane, and based on Emma's behavior back at the Brannings' house and in the car with Max, my money's on one of them. There's also her general behavior throughout the episode - she was freaked out, disturbed, trying to negotiate with the killer for them to turn themselves in, which makes me think it's someone that she has a personal relationship with - so not Jane. The conversation in the park just didn't seem like it could be Max, so I'm down to Lauren and Abi, and why would Lauren throw herself into investigating the crime, trying to track down the cab driver, etc, early on if she was the one who did it? So, my bets are placed on Abi, and I think Max knows something and helped cover it up in some way. Also, everything with the car crash and Ronnie in the hospital was excellent. I figured for sure that Emma would end up dying (and seriously, good god, why on earth would no one take her to the hospital right away??), but they had me going for a good long while that it was going to be Ronnie who bit it.

I have no idea what Emma figured out from looking at the houses in the square, but whoever it was is someone that she has in her phone's contact list, who presumably has her as a contact as well, which further leads me to believe that it's Abi.

It also probably doesn't help that Linda and Shirley have never gotten along. It's probably much easier for Shirley to take the side of the son she desperately wants to repair her relationship with than the sister/daughter-in-law who she's never liked. I'm also convinced that Abi is the one who killed Lucy, though I have no idea why, other than something to do with the affair with Max (though I was only watching sporadically in the weeks leading up to the murder, so maybe I missed something). Her violent outburst at Lauren on Halloween made her seem pretty capable, but at the same time, I wonder if she's too obvious a choice.