theodyssey

Not sure Dave is the right guy to be judging a baking show - seems like he's not into a lot of pretty common flavours! Also - as a guy from "the rhubarb triangle" I take offence at the idea that rhubarb is filler - it can be great, done right. Decent rhubarb tarts are definitely not devoid of flavour.

The singing/sound effects on the podcasts are pretty endearing, but is there seriously only one person in your entire team who can edit audio files?!

I do wonder if they didn't do "millionaire shortbread" as the technical because it's such an obvious choice of technical. If the bakers hadn't been told millionaire shortbread was a signature/showstopper, I think they'd all have practised making them just in case. Also - not sure about Yan, but I do appreciate the constant geekery. I realised she was quoting Galaxy Quest verbatim at one point this week: "never give up, never surrender"

For the American viewers: the opening schtick was a play on this very famous British advert from the 70s. If you struggled with Flo's accent, you'll probably have difficulties with this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mq59ykPnAE

Amused (but not surprised) that "The Floral Dance" doesn't translate across the pond. It's the most British thing ever - it was a piece of brass band music that went into the charts with a famous broadcaster "speak-singing" over the top of it.

Andrew is definitely gay. It's not something GBBO actually hides from, other than that the show avoids covering all the baker's personal stories. But it does come up eventually.

Churros may seem pretty "North American" but they're also common in Spain. Probably not very surprising, but it explains the European connection. I've tried to make them once, as a kid, and I seem to remember thinking they came out well - maybe I was just proud of myself.

As far as I remember, they were in a celebrity reality show where they had to sing opera at one point.

Oh and spoiler alert: yes Andrew is gay

Never mind - I got to the bit where Dave filled you in.

Regarding the comments about how GBBO is so much nicer than Masterchef etc. You should watch the British version of Masterchef - it's more intense, sure, but the contestants are still fairly friendly towards each other and there's a lot less manufactured drama than in the American version.

In Britain, we call traditional American-style chocolate-chip cookies "cookies". Is a cookie a type of biscuit? Probably, but if I was talking about a cookie I'd always call it a cookie. Biscuits cover a load of different types.

Seems like Tara found Dirty Dancing less offensive than anybody else who watched it.

I look forward to appearances and foreshadowing for Breaking Bad. But the one person who CAN NOT appear at all is Walter White. He doesn't know Mike, Saul or Gus before the events of Breaking Bad. They can't undermine that. If they get in Brian Cranston, they're cheating. And obviously he can't appear in the flash-forwards. I'd kind of accept Jesse in a season or two, after "Jimmy" has taken on his new name. Jesse and Saul seemed to have met before when Breaking Bad introduced Saul. But I still think they should avoid it really. It just draws comparisons. This is a different show. Almost anyone else works. I'd be surprised if we didn't get Skinny Pete or Badger eventually.

I do love the West Wing - I'm very much (politically) the right audience for Sorkin, and I'm totally fine with the obvious author-soapboxing in this show. When he does it on other shows - less so. Even on the Newsroom the political diatribes feel very forced. But I'm fine with him beating liberal politics over my head when he's doing it in the guise of a liberal President and his staff. I've abandoned every other Sorkin show I've attempted, but this is in my list of all time favourites. It was a perfect match of showrunner and premise.

I don't think Lost really needed to plan its entire storyline in advance "like Breaking Bad" because I don't think Breaking Bad really planned itself in advance. Definitely when they talk about it, Vince Gilligan said a lot of it was motivated by things it felt like the characters would do and the ramifications of those decisions. But what Lost REALLY needed to do was come up with a clear idea of what the island was, what it was doing, why it was doing it, what the rules were and all of the various forms that the supernatural/sci-fi aspects could take... I don't believe that the "truth" was known, even by JJ Abrams, until the last season.

So I did a search for the advertised book out of curiosity and found the link where they were collecting stories for it under the headline "How has Aaron Sorkin changed your life?" Thanks but no thanks... I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I find it difficult to believe the little Sorkin dig in the following advert was a total coincidence.

If The Good Wife is so terrible DROP IT: I gave up on Dexter with only two episodes of the entire series left having watched 6 and three quarter seasons, and I've never had any urge to seek out the remainder. And yes - American reality shows in particular seem stupidly obsessed with gimmicks. From your reviews I'd hate Junior Masterchef USA. The British "kid versions" of competitive shows are basically just the originals, but slightly less intense and with cuter contestants.

Surprised none of you have yet commented that Ken from the con is the same Ken who has his car blown up by Walter in the first season of Breaking Bad. And the tequila from the con is the same tequila from Gus's mass poisoning.

I think it's been established that Netflix use long title sequences without a pre-credit sequence to give your computer time to cache some of the episode and get your stream up to HD quality - not purely for style reasons. If you watch back-to-back via PC, your computer skips the credits.