NoNeinNyet

Reading through everything, I agree that the CEO is likely somewhere on the autism spectrum and that the HR representative makes sure to protect him from just hearing every idea from every employee who ever approaches him. He almost certainly did not direct the HR rep to talk to her. Mariana deserved the dressing down but it was completely inappropriate to do it in front of her colleagues. She should have been pulled into the HR rep's office or a conference room with a door.

I've been watching from the beginning as background and it's so blatantly obvious that he and Callie have pretty much the same savior complex, Callie is just more obviously destructive to her own well-being. I really hate that the show keeps throwing their potential romantic relationship in the way of them both just becoming healthy people.

I wanted to like this show so much and I just didn't. It's possible that that was part of the problem. It did show me how many things You're the Worst and Master of None have done right.

That's why I actually think it was a pretty great FJ. If you don't know much about the writer of Amazing Grace, Amazing Grace seems too easy. They were counting on the people who didn't know second guessing themselves.

Slave trader was the tip off for me on Amazing Grace. He wrote it based on his experience being on a slave ship trapped in a storm. He continued in the slave trade for several more years.

Tara was conflating Dave Foley's two ex wives. I haven't seen his Showtime special but I know that it's usually his first one he bad mouths and he blames his high child support for the breakup of his second marriage. The first wife and his two older kids live in Canada and his second wife and younger child are in LA.

I kicked myself for not buying Hotline Bling before the voting cutoff last week so I bought Amy and Madi's songs tonight and voted for the two of them and Korin. Gwen really needs to stop choosing Braiden's songs.

Seriously, it took them until this episode for Mary to fully voice how concerned she was that she'd lose a second husband to a car crash if she married Henry Talbot? That's what her romantic storyline should have been this entire series if we were supposed to care about the wedding. So stupid. I'm just glad they didn't have her marry Tom. That would have been even worse. Run back to America, Tom! The Crawleys don't deserve you.

I genuinely teared up a bit when Gretchen went in pretending to be happy for Jimmy. They're both such beautifully broken people that are both getting it wrong with the best of intentions.

I wish they'd gone after the real reason charity shaming when you shop sucks. The stores get to bundle all of the donations and claim the tax deduction. It really is better to give a larger donation to the charity of your choice. You get to direct where the money is going and claim the deduction for yourself. Win-win.

Sometime between last episode and this one, I thought hey "What if Gretchen's just sneaking off to have some alone time and she's taking the Garbage Person phone to play Snake?" I really wish I had documented that somewhere. It just sucks that the reason Gretchen's sneaking off is so much sadder than just alone time. And stupid Jimmy's just happy she doesn't have a side bitch. I would have been fine if he had walked away just to give her more alone time or because he didn't know what to do for her but the look of joy on his face was the worst.

Gretchen sneaked out of bed in the middle of the night, grabbed her phone for garbage people, and drove off. One minute, I was looking up recipes for breakfast lasagna thinking about how much fun this episode was. The next, I felt like I was stabbed in the heart.

I'll admit that I wonder how many times they had to cut around mentions of Miranda during these blinds, especially during female country singers. Usually her name is thrown around all over the place when he's turned his chair for a woman who sings country, at least as often by Adam or one of the other coaches joking around over how Blake always has that card to pull out than by Blake himself.

Oh good, Maggie's brother is in at least one episode. I hope it's more. I was a little worried given the success Zach Woods has been experiencing lately. I just love him so much.

I think they did the scenes out of order because they used the one about her honor and his life to relieve the tension between Jamie and Jenny. They clearly made a decision not to have the knock-down drag-out fight that the book had and having them fight and get it over with was how they broke a lot of the tension in the book. Instead, we had that tension through the end with the relief at the end.

The first season is only going to cover the first book.

Yes, I should have been more clear. Blake appears to get along with Corey just fine, he just doesn't find much special with his singing. I'm so glad that he chose to save Hannah but I couldn't have faulted him for saving Sarah, either.

Blake often repeats that Corey sounds like current country. The thing is, Blake also is on the record as not entirely liking everything about current country. He often compliments something about a country singer's voice that he thinks is missing from current country radio. I don't think Blake really likes Corey.

So, we got reference to the promise that they could withhold things from one another as long as they didn't all out lie. Guess we can take that as show canon now. I'm a little sad that we lost Jamie saying that directly in the aired show. It says so much about his character and intelligence. Loved pretty much everything else about the episode. It was really well paced.

Yeah, I rewatched it tonight and was actually paying attention to that part (which sounds kind of pervy) and that's totally what was going on. It was such a nice detail.

That is the worst part about the spanking/beating. It really has distracted from the rest of the episode. This is the first sex scene that they filmed because they did all of the Leoch stuff together before the rent party stuff so that could explain a difference. I've only watched the episode once but it did look like Claire was clearly touching herself at one point when she was on top of Jamie which was a good, realistic touch.

I definitely agree that we're going to see more back and forth between the 20th and 18th century than we got in the book. It gets us to Jamie faster and it allows more "show not tell" when it comes to defining Roger and Bree and characters and sprinkling their early flirtation throughout. It just makes more sense when you think about how a TV show is structured. It could be that we have an episode or two where it's all or mostly in one century but I see that happening more in the middle of the season. They got Claire to the 18th century much faster in the show than she got there in the book so it would make sense that they wouldn't wait too long to show us 18th century France in the second season. When I first saw someone guess that they'd show Claire in the 20th century with Bree and Frank at the end of the first season, I thought that was a horrible idea but the more I think about it, the more I like it. It saves them time in the season 2 premiere because we would already know that Claire returned to the 20th century while she was young. Suddenly the direction of season 2 seems much different than you would guess it would be if they went with the book ending. It really is a compelling place to leave it.

I haven't listened to the podcast for The Reckoning yet but in trying to figure out why the feed wasn't working in my podcatcher anymore, I discovered that they had made one podcast feed for Ron and a separate one for Terry on the costumes. The costume one only has podcasts for the first two episodes but hopefully that means we'll be back to hearing mostly about story and production in Ron's podcast.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant about Claire's views on homosexuality and Lord John specifically. Her views make sense considering the context of the time she is from and the jealousy she feels. The story of Alan Turing says a lot about post-WWII British attitudes towards homosexuality. I also agree that it would be nice to have at least one character with subtly progressive views but I understand why the characters we do have have the views that they do.

We also have Jenny telling Jamie that Black Jack didn't rape her because he couldn't get it up. He seems to need the sadism no matter what but also does appear to prefer men. Even with Lord John, we still have Claire being disgusted with his sexuality to extent. It's on a more personal level and fueled more by jealousy and knowledge of everything Jamie went through at the hands of Jack Randall but that almost makes it worse. In some ways, Claire equates John with Jack just due to their sexual orientation despite there being almost nothing else in common between the two men. She does revise her opinion over time but that was definitely something that bothered me when I was listen to the audiobooks a couple of years ago years after I originally read the first five books.