kingshearte

Reading through all this has made me glad I opted not to bother watching it. I had more than enough of Lee on the actual show. I don't need to spend even more time watching him pretend to be sorry. And even without watching, I do not buy his contrition. If it hadn't been so obvious during the main show that he knew exactly what he was doing and saying and the effects that it would have, then maybe I could buy it and feel bad for him. But given what I've seen, you'd be hard pressed to convince me that if he was upset, it was over anything more than simply being ganged up on, which is unpleasant no matter how much of an asshole you are. And now I will just express my fervent hope that he never darkens my TV again, so I will never have anything further to think or say about him.

Ooh, I like that idea. We basically learn the time differentials between most of the teams arriving at the mat, based on their leaving time on the next leg, but they don't always show all of them, and we never get how far behind the eliminated team was. I would love a chart like that. Maybe they think it would take away some of that sense that everyone's always neck and neck, but surely they know that we know it's not always like that, so this really wouldn't be spoiling anything. I think it would be fascinating, actually. I also like your idea of a leg that doesn't need to be done in the same order for everyone. In addition to making things more shuffly with less obvious placements, it could also help reduce some of the time spent waiting in lines when all teams end up at a turn-based challenge at more or less the same time.

You can actually seriously injure your back diving. The dancing (this dance, anyway; obviously, there are some dances that could also lead to serious injury) is unlikely to. You might be too stiff to be able to actually do it, but you'd have to try really hard to actually damage yourself. A bad dive on an already dubious back could cause much more serious and long-term problems. Race-wise, switching was a time suck for sure. But life-wise, it was probably a smart call.

If you believe in what's implied by cliffhangers (not recommended), he might not even get one, thanks to his irrational belief that getting engaged means you want to get married.

Well alright then. Too bad. I kinda liked the idea of him actually appearing in the show.

I also saw it. I suspect/assume we'll get flashes, perhaps with increasing frequency and duration, of real Cooper right up until he finally wakes up fully right at the end. I don't know how I've never noticed how amazing Kyle MacLachlan is with his face before this, but I'm kind of glad I'm watching it if for no other reason than that. I believe the piano man was in fact Angelo Badalamenti, playing something of his own composition (the end credits have him listed as performing a piece; I'm assuming it was that). Someone who's more familiar with Twin Peaks music could perhaps comment, but I wondered if maybe the piece's themes included some sort of variation on Laura's Theme? I'm not entirely on board with the Candie love, although I do hope we eventually find out just what the hell is up with her (spare doppelganger like Dougie, brain injury, alien, what?). Robert Knepper and Jim Belushi, though, are at just the right level of ridiculousness for me to find them 100% entertaining. Especially Knepper (I do have a fondness for the straight man in a comedic duo). The soot guy approaching the car was almost at Bob-coming-over-the-couch level creepy, but I don't think anything will quite match that for sheer terrifyingness. I laughed out loud at Gordon's "He's dead" line, though. I don't usually find his oddness as entertaining as I feel I'm probably supposed to, but something about that delivery was just straight up hilarious to me. And the scene with Bobby, Shelly and Becky in the diner was such a beautifully succinct example of how to deliver exposition without being heavy-handed with it. The whole relationship situation there was laid out with perfect clarity, with almost nothing explicitly stated. Love it.

So much this. She may well pick him, and they may even be well suited to each other. But mom will kill that relationship, no question. Maybe soon, if Rachel opens her damn eyes and gets the hell away, or maybe after years of festering resentment. But you cannot have a successful relationship with a mother like that unless you (and by you, I mean the offspring of the mother in question) set some very firm boundaries. And, although we've only seen a brief glimpse, nothing in that glimpse indicated to me that Bryan is prepared to set any such boundaries — or even acknowledge the need for them. The way he talked about the previous relationship kind of said it all for me. If that had happened, and his response was along the lines of "Whoa, can't let that happen again," it would be one thing. But it came across very much as warning Rachel: this is how my mom is; you better be prepared to deal with it. That's not the attitude of someone prepared to set those boundaries and stand up for his wife.

I don't think it's that strange. Anecdotal examples aside (we all know someone who's happily married to their high school sweetheart or whatever), the vast majority of people do not spend the rest of their lives with the first person they ever fall in love with. So learning that I was the first person a guy had ever fallen in love with would make me... I don't know. I don't know quite how to phrase it. But I probably would be skeptical about whether this guy were truly ready for a lifetime commitment if I were his first love ever. Maybe that's not fair. But I think I'd still be skeptical. Seriously. Only in weirdo Bachelor-land is a statement like "when I get engaged, it will be because I for sure want to marry this person" considered a devastating revelation. Her take on what it means to be engaged makes no damn sense. In fact, if that's what she feels like it means, then it kind of seems to me that she and Peter do in fact want the same thing; she just wants it to involve jewelry. So basically, she wants a promise ring. I gotta say, though, that this episode has got me coming pretty close to all the way around to believing that it'll be Bryan after all. In addition to the watches, he's also the only one who met her friends, and her reactions to her family's reactions to him were indeed telling. And in the realm of manufactured angst, the whole "I think I love him, but my family isn't convinced he's sincere" beats Peter's fear of hardware hands down. I thought the latter was the big manufactured angst to provide doubt, but maybe that's actually a legitimate issue. On the other hand, the fact that they went to cliffhanger on it suggests that it will ultimately come to nothing, so I don't know. I was kind of all excited to have gone through the whole season unspoiled, and have formed a definite prediction all by myself, but now I'm kind of back to not really having any sense of how this is actually going to shake down.

To be fair, I've never tried blacksmithing. But I have tried throwing pottery, and there's no damn way I'd pick that one. Even people who are genuinely good at it can screw up an as-yet perfect pot soooo easily. Even if the judge wasn't being super picky, I just don't think I'd even attempt it. Kudos to Korey & Ivana, though. I figured the strength required for the blacksmithing would be more up their alley, but apparently they're both pottery-throwing savants. Also a little sad to see the cousins go with an express pass in their hands. They really should have bitten that bullet when it was down to them and the one other team at the pottery, and no way of knowing whether anyone else was still in the other task. Maybe sooner, but definitely then. Also agree that Karen and Bert's use of their express pass was unwise. Kind of hilarious, though, how they were so sure they were number 1 as a result of their brilliant little strategic move, but in fact were not even close to number 1.

Bryan's mom is the kind of mother who cries at her son's wedding, not because it's a wedding and people cry, but because she's "losing" her baby. Ick. I'd be running far, far from that nonsense. Dean's family date was by far the most awkward date I have ever witnessed, but also, I think, the most genuine thing I've ever seen on this show. That family, if they have any desire to come together at all, needs some serious therapy. And I see both sides. I fully understand how Dean can be so angry about his dad's failure to step up after his mom's death, but I can also understand how a parent can fail like that. I genuinely do not know how a person picks themselves up after losing their life partner and successfully parents their children after that. I can barely imagine the kind of personal fortitude that takes. And I know that people do, but I truly do understand how some people can't. So I think they badly need an impartial third party to help them see each other's point of view — assuming they have any interest in re-forging a relationship. I still think it's Peter. All the angst about whether or not he'll propose totally seems to me like the standard fakeout. But maybe it's just because I feel like her insistence is somewhat ridiculous. I get knowing what you want and being upfront about it, and I even get expecting some signs that a relationship is moving in a marriage-y direction if marriage is what you ultimately want. But the very idea of tossing a relationship aside if you genuinely think it has potential because the guy isn't ready to propose after 3 weeks? That's even more absurd to me than the whole concept is overall. But I guess we'll see.

@vavera4ka I don't specifically remember the music that appeared in this episode, but if it's what I'm thinking, it's not that uncommon a choice for a music box. I definitely had at least one that played it. I don't think that theme is specifically Rothbart's theme, and it's probably the most well-known piece of music from Swan Lake, so it's not that weird. Unless it's a different piece of Swan Lake?

To the first part of this: yes. Me too. I would have summed this up as having about 30 seconds of actual plot (EvilCoop gets shot, EvilCoop is not dead), but I guess at least some of the rest of it was relevant to the mythology, if not so much the plot. Which is fine, I guess. Didn't really do much for me... Actually, what annoys me most is that, for some reason, the service where I watch this doesn't have episode 7, so I had to just read a recap of that to find out what happened — which was a lot — and then I find myself watching this for an hour. I have never really had a lot of affinity for art for art's sake (not that I'm knocking it or those who do appreciate it; it's just not my thing), so I can't help but wish that if I had to miss an episode, that it had been this one. I could watch it later if it came up, or I felt like having the experience, but since it doesn't seem to add a lot to the current storyline, and doesn't likely require a lot of current storyline context to appreciate it, it could just as easily have been experienced separately. But anyway. I haven't actually seen Wrath of Khan (my Star Trek love started with TNG, and I'm still in the process of working my way through TOS material), but the bug thing definitely gave me the vibe of a TNG 1st season episode, "Conspiracy." Which still squicks me out every time I watch it. Serious yuck.

I don't have a favourite yet, but I also don't really have an un-favourite yet. I find that my favourites tend to reveal themselves gradually, several episodes in (and they're almost always on the quiet, "boring" end of the spectrum). But if I'm going to actively dislike anyone, I've usually figured that out very quickly. Some of these teams are definitely a little shouty, but I can deal with that when it's not mean shouty; it's just over-exuberance. Which is somewhat annoying, but no one's really hit my active dislike threshold yet.

Me too, as far as his performance goes. He's killing it. But I'm glad I'm not the only one seriously struggling with the way everyone around him is reacting (or, more to the point, not reacting) to him. And on one hand, I want to say that it's dragging too long with no advancement (although I suspect that those who have posited that we won't get fully normal Cooper back until the end are right), but on the other hand, it's Twin Peaks, and everything moves at a glacial pace.

Yes, I actually had seen the next episode before I wrote that, and you're right, that people's reactions do start to make slightly more sense. However, I'm still maintaining my very dubious opinion of the situation. Someone for whom behaviour like that is normal probably needs a little more support than just being shipped off to work like everything's hunky-dory, and someone for whom this behaviour is not normal should be getting a very different response from people who know him.

This is probably what bugs me the most about that plotline. Even a casual observer who comes into only brief contact with this man (the various members of the casino staff, for example) should be able to see that something is very wrong with him. For people who actually know him to just dismiss it as him being deliberately obtuse, or just coming off a bender, or whathaveyou is just completely inexplicable and irritating to me.

This. This forum has at least helped me make sense of the story (the main one, anyway. There's still lots of peripheral weirdness that I do not understand), but I've yet to find it as endearing as the original was, despite its extreme weirdness. Cooper being Cooper in Twin Peaks is what this show needs, so I am anxiously awaiting the moment when that occurs.

Oh, I missed that. Nevermind, then. :)

Wasn't he living in Neverland and/or immortal or something during that time?

But you just know that Ashley would show up and weep everywhere. I'm pretty sure Jared as Bachelor would be an unmitigated disaster. Unless you were watching my house constantly, you'd probably see a lot more of my husband and I coming and going separately than together, and we're certainly not on the verge of anything terrible, so that hardly seems like much of an indication of anything. I mean, it's a Bachelor relationship, so the odds suggest that there will be a breakup at some point, but I wouldn't consider not being joined at the hip at all times to be a sign of impending doom (if anything, the opposite, actually).

Playtesting very well could have never shown this result, because the placement of them was presumably either legitimately random or deliberately spread out, so if teams spread out and don't all go in the same direction, there's no odds-based reason for one team to end up with more than one (or all of them!). Or maybe they were actually placed close together on purpose in hopes that this would happen so we could get some super fun drama over handing them out, because we all love that so much. This does remind me, though, that while I appreciated their strategy later when the gave one of them up, I though they missed an opportunity when they found the last one. I mean, I think I probably would have kept it pretty quiet if I found any of them, but I really thought they should have definitely kept the last one quiet. Not to keep it a big secret that they have it (with the quite short window they have to give them away, that would be an even more pointless secret than usual), but to encourage other teams to potentially stay at that task longer looking for that last Express Pass, to give them more of a time cushion. There was at least the one team that had found all the clues, and were giving it a little extra time to look for the Pass. If the boys had kept quiet about having found it, that team might not have beaten them out of the task.

@LeGrandElephant @secnarf It's originally a Shaker song. I first learned it in church, way back when when I used to go, but it's not a particularly churchy song, so I can see it being deemed suitable for use in schools. As for its intended purpose in this context, I don't know. The Gileadeans would not be into the Shaker lifestyle, since it was pretty gender-equal, but it does sort of evoke that Puritan sort of era. I feel like maybe the idea of simplicity as freedom would appeal to the Gileadeans, but their version of it is rather distorted, so there's also that juxtaposition. So yeah. I don't know, but there are a variety of ways it could have been intended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Gifts

Seriously. I can only think of one other occasion that I've ever been so completely captivated by an actor not even speaking. It was phenomenal.

If I'm not mistaken, Jon said they had to give up the extras by the end of Leg 3, so they only have one more leg to give them away, so giving one up now wasn't a huge strategic risk. Generally thus far, I find them more annoying than not, but that was a smart play. This leg also did help redeem the penalty-takers of last week for me. I'm a big believer in decent numeracy skills (and, side note, think there's something seriously wrong with the way we're teaching math if it's leaving what often seems like a majority of people so scared of it that they just straight up freeze when confronted with anything more complicated than basic addition) so I'm always stoked to see people arrive at a math task and basically go "Yeah, OK, I got this." It's true that it doesn't make the most exciting TV, but it warms my nerdy little heart anyway. I think I like Adam and Andrea OK, so I hope they've now learned that, even if you're going to follow someone, make sure you get at least general directions, too...

Yikes. That is not a great look. I agree that the dress doesn't look like it fits right, and those shoes are inexplicable. Unfortunate choice to be worn next to a red carpet, but they also seem like a weird choice with a yellow dress. I feel like the ensemble needed a piece of statement jewelry or something in that sort of colour for the shoes to make any sense at all.