satrunrose

I'm really starting to feel that the tragedy for all of these Duggar, Keller etc couples is that they're in arranged marriages and don't even know it. Yes, arranged marriages can and do work quite well, but the participants have been raised with a concept of marriage that goes along with it. The Gothard girls (and guys too, to a slightly lesser extent), on the other hand, are raised to believe that God (aka Daddy) will send them their perfect soul mate prince charming who they will fall madly in love with instantly. They're encouraged to become infatuated and to approach, well, life, with the maturity of a seventh grader. Where does that leave these women when the infatuation goes away and reality hits?

As a Canadian French teacher I am so, so, soooooo embarrassed by Suki and Jinder. Why do they keep speaking Spanish and Italian in Paris. Whyyyyyyyyy?

Shoot! Jen and Shawn were my hometown team. Oh well, at least there are a lot of other great teams to root for... just not Rex and Bob. The surfing I could see but the chair. Really? How do you expect to get anywhere in this competition if you can't (or won't) build a chair?

Although it would have been great to know more about why Kelsey Grammer's great-grandfather ran off, I also think that information probably is lost or never existed. My great-grandfather left his son and moved to the States from Canada around 1927, after his wife died and left my grand-father with his sister-in-law. Why? Well, if you asked my great-great-aunt, he was a worthless drunk who ended up on the streets of New York and Boston. The other version of the story is that he was blacklisted in his home town for his union involvement and had to leave. He wrote to his sister-in-law several times asking her to come to the States so he could be reunited with his son, but she always refused. Should I be like the annoying WDYTYA celebrity who brags about how he was a rebel with a cause - just like me! Or should I shake my head in shame and look for more inspiring ancestors? I'll probably never know. It's what drives me crazy every time I try to see what shakes out of the family tree.

I just found the Brian Blessed episode and wanted to mention it among my favourites too. I loved his enthusiasm, his random singing and poetry quoting and the way he dealt with everyone he met on his "quest" (loved that he kept calling it a quest too!). Jabez's triumph over adversity and finding his brother was really touching, although I wondered a few things, like how the family became paupers in Portsmouth and whether Martha was really an "idiot" or whether she was just so sick from whatever was killing her (and probably killed her father and sister) that she came across as disabled. I guess that's the kind of thing it really isn't possible to find out. While my absolute UK favs are Patrick Stewart and Jerry Springer, it was a lot of fun (I enjoyed Alex Kingston's WDYTYA for similar reasons).