needschocolate

Well, according to the description, Christine is losing her hold on people, so Julia and Big Jim probably don't need to find a way to discredit her, ad should be looking for a way out or, at the least, a way to make cattle feed tasty. I do wonder what sort of new capabilities the Dome has. I also wonder why they titled it "Alaska" - they have already done the freezing temperature thing. Maybe Christine's deadly plans are to shoot people from a helicopter?

KL turned out to be much better than I thought. However, I missed a lot of the lyrics in beginning of Duets because I was too busy looking at her face. I haven't seen KL in years. I kind of hoped at some point one of them would sing "Kathie Lee talks and talks, but she would look better without the botox." She seems like a nice person and I haven't heard anything bad about her, too bad that she thinks she has to do this to herself.

They have a beloved character in the making - the dog. He just needs to appear a little more frequently. If you ignore the love interests on UTD or the family relationships on Lost in Space - Dr. Smith - Big Jim Dr. Robinson - Barbie Mrs. Robinson - Christine (although she is more like the Mrs. Robinson from the Graduate) Don West - Junior or Sam Judy Robinson - Julia Penny Robinson - Norrie Will Robinson - Joe Robot - dog

I agree that Emilia was trying to be funny, and didn't intend to be mean. However, I think her delivery was horrible, and she came across as bitchy. Since the audience didn't know the rest of the people, there was no way they would understand her jokes. Plus, IMO, her jokes weren't very good - I have been watching the show, I know the people she talked about, I got her references, but I didn't think her jokes were funny either. To make matters worse, she did a terrible job of reading the audience - she didn't seem to notice that no one was laughing. I think Emilia's biggest problem is that she doesn't have much self-awareness. They tell her to be more cheerful and less school teacher, but, she doesn't seem to see that, and, until this episode, she seemed to do nothing to change it. She couldn't see that no one was enjoying her comedy act. She thinks she is an alpha. Perhaps she is as camera-shy as Dom, but it surface in a different way.

Do we know if these houses are being used as vacation rentals? Given the stuff inside - like the scary looking dolls - I thought these were house that people lived in year-round, or perhaps second homes, but not necessarily rentals. Although, I liked the rest of their design, I thought the island was a terrible decision and was worth losing for. It was too close to the wall. There was enough room for people to sit, but not enough room for people to walk by when others were sitting there. And it faced the wrong way, imo. When you stand at the island preparing a meal, you have a view of a wall - a wall about 6 feet away from you, instead of a view of the beach, which the other three house had. I do agree that they are difficult to root for, which may have clouded my judgment here.

I think the writers are attempting to explain why no one is investigating anything - they are all under the spell of the Lifeforce, except for Big Jim who is too busy trying to evade the wrath of Junior and getting kidnapped by henchmen and scientists, and Julia, who is too busy trying to hold onto her man of 12 days and keep him out of the arms of a woman he shared a dream with. Of course, we have now witnessed Christine losing control of many residents and I am sure they will soon start investigating the cocoons, or closing off the tunnel, or building a dance hall,l or calling an appliance store and asking if the refrigerator is running, or watching a hockey game on the radio, or learning to read lips in case their parents go deaf, or constructing a combination gallows and windmill. The fish all probably died or became poisonous when the lake was contaminated with methane. This is also the likely reason why they can't use lake waster for drinking or putting out the numerous fires. However, the people who pop up in the middle of the lake, often by going through a red door in a neighboring town, are unaffected by the contamination in the lake, probably because the dome is protecting them, or they are the chosen monarch, or they were already dead once before. See, this show makes perfect sense (sarcasm, of course).

I think Dom would be gone if Kermit and Medusa weren't part of the judging. There was no way the people in charge would let someone who disses others stay over a guy who is camera shy. On the other hand, perhaps the network has had so much bad luck with the "winner gets their own half hour cooking show" concept (2 of the last 3 didn't have shows broadcast, right?) that maybe they are now aiming at having the winner do a much shorter show - like only 1-2 minutes long - to fit in commercial breaks of their reruns. Dom could be perfect for that.

Watched the first two episodes last night. I want to like the 2-women team, but their attitude prevents it. If their "oh we are done so early let's drink/eat" seemed to be intended to be humorous, I would enjoy it, but the "we are better than everyone else" attitiude make their margarita drinking and cookie eating feel like more bragging. Plus, they seem to be the only ones doing any real trash talking in their talking heads. The blond from one of the other teams complained that another team was copying them, but I can see why she would think that - it was a logical conclusion based on what she knew, even though it was the wrong conclusion. Burlap wall - yuck. Bad idea for texture, bad installation, bad color choice, bad paint application. The mural - I think it would be a great idea for the sales office of a timeshare company. For a beach house? - put the saying on a piece of driftwood and hang it on a wall, a mural is too much. Plus, that couple bickers too much. I felt sorry for that one couple that had the mold and then got the wrong counter delivered. Even though they were able to get a replacement counter, everything sent them so far behind that they didn't have time for the backsplash. I don't remember much bickering or trash-talking. I think there was only one point of contention between any of them - something to do with one woman wanting to use the same cabinet/furniture as someone else, but it was resolved quickly. If you like Beach Flip, I think you would like Flipping the Block.

So they come with a storyline about the "Lifeforce" and how Christine, who may be an alien, is able to control everyone and they set up these plotlines of Junior now being forceful and smart, Norrie now being cheerful and cheating on Joe, Ava and Barbie having a deep love connection, Sam being a counselor with his whopping 10? 7? 3? days of sobriety. And now this storyline is already drifitng away. Last week ended with Christine proving that she can control everyone, and in this episode, people stop being controlled and go back to their old selves. She didn't even control them for a whole episode, which is like 8-12 hours in Chesters Mill time. Well, two (main) people are still being controlled - Junior, which kind of makes sense, he's always been rather gullible, and Barbie, which makes no sense at all, since he has always been a skeptic. The tent fire was ridiculous. And the only way to get to the tent was to jump over a fire that covered a 5 ft by 5 ft area and was about 10 feet away from the tent. They couldn't just run around this side fire, all three had to run through it. And they miraculously have a fire extinguisher handy. Also ridiculous - Norrie's bite of chocolate. She hasn't had chocolate in weeks, she is so excited about the chocolate, she eagerly unwraps it, and takes a bite the size of a raisin. Then puts the chocolate bar down. And so much of the Ava and Barbie scenes were ridiculous - she finds corn kernels and explains how they can plant these now to have food for later and he dumps them out of her hand so they can hold hands as they walk through the devastated fields. Then he is hanging onto the edge of the silo, and, instead of moving the sharp piece of farm equipment out from under him, she climbs up to help him, yet it looks like he pulls himself up anyway. There is no way she could pull him up by herself. The only reason she was up there was so that somehow he could pull himself up with such force that he lands on top of her. I think they made an attempt at zombies with Melanie, so why not try vampires with Christine? Chesters Mill residents could walk past a human revolving on a spit over an open fire and still not figure it out for days. Since when do people flirt by giving someone their sweaty shirt? If someone gave me a sweaty shirt, I would have thought, "Gross, you jerk." And then she steals his clean shirt? Maybe she had to come up with the sweaty shirt plan because she couldn't go with the tried and true throw-someone-into-a-wall plan, because the only wall around was a tent wall. In three weeks, his girlfriend died, he discovered his mom was alive, then his mom died, and his second girlfriend died, but Junior's biggest issue is that he doesn't like his daddy. I think the explanation is that Junior believes that everything that happened in the cocoons really happened and so he has had a year to deal with it. Actually, this is one of the few times, perhaps the only time, the show has been consistent. Junior started out as being out of touch with reality and really gullible. And he still is. I loved Junior's tutorial on how to take down a wall, which proved his vast knowledge of construction - first you remove the drywall and then you cut the studs with a reciprocating saw. I think they had him use "drywall" and "reciprocating saw" so he would sound like he actually knew something. Even people who have never seen HGTV would be able to have Junior's knowledge of wall removal - first you take off the stuff outside the wall then take out the stuff you find inside the wall. If junior really knew anything about taking a wall down, the first thing he would have said was "first, you make sure it isn't a load-bearing wall, then you check for any electrical wiring or plumbing going through the wall." And then, after all his talk of using reciprocating saws, he knocks down the post with a sledgehammer. Is it the botox that makes her upper lip so weird looking, or did she get bad collagen injections? I really want to know - this intrigues me way too much. I can't take my eyes off her lip whenever she has a close up.

Fernello and Lana had the same amount of time to paint, yet Fernello got sent home for doing too little, and Lana got called out for doing too much - it made me realize just how fast Lana must paint (or maybe Fernello was slow). After the first episode, I would have said I would be glad to see Fernello leave (all that boasting and bragging), but now I think, in real life, he is a probably a nice guy who was trying to play a character, making "shocking" comments, like his one about women last time. I am not going to miss him, but I sure wish it had been Cheryl Ann instead. Ugh Cheryl Ann - delusional doesn't even begin to describe her. And her speech pattern annoys me. However, the way the rest of them joke about her, with their comments on being/having assistants, makes me like them even more.

The feeling I got was that Harvey appreciates how well Donna does her job, and how she goes beyond her job description and does things like keep him in check and work late, etc, and he felt she deserves more than the firm was willing to pay, so he paid the extra himself. If he told had told Donna that he paid her extra himself and threw it back at her if she came back late from lunch or made some mistake, then I may view her as him owning her. I suspect, if Louis pays Donna's extra salary, Louis would throw it back at her and make demands that ended with "That's why I pay you extra." As for Harvey and Louis arguing over her like she is a possession, that is not cool, but it speaks more to the them being immature and bratty. It would be worse if Donna were someone weaker, like Rachel, but we know that no one can push Donna around. I agree - Gretchen is awesome and proves that Donna isn't the only "World's Greatest Secretary."

I don't mind monsters, as long it isn't All-Monsters-All-The-Time. More pretty would be good. And I would love to see old age make-up again (not old monsters though). I have always though it would be interesting to have them make they model look like a celebrity or have them do a make-up based on someone else's drawing - I think both of those are similar to things they would have to do in the real world.

A "performer" made it through to the next round by smashing pumpkins with his head and another did it by drinking dozens of eggs. Others, whose "talents" included teaching people to kiss and making his ears wiggle, weren't as lucky, but they still thought they had talent. What is your "talent"? (Note: this is "talent" in quotes - not a real talent, like being able to play the violin, instead, it is some relatively silly thing that you think you are able to do better than most people you know and that may impress random strangers) Mine is being able to say the alphabet in reverse order very quickly.

I think one criteria they should use on deciding whether an act continues is whether it could actually be an ongoing act in Vegas. Occasionally, like with the kissing lady, one of the judges will say that it isn't the right act for the show, but they put a lot of things through that couldn't be Vegas acts. For some, it is the logistics of the act, like the trick riders last week - they were good, but, unless they are part of the jousting show at the Excalibur, where would they be able to perform. For others, it is that the act isn't sustainable, like the melon smashing guy. He can't smash a record number of melons every night, and he isn't funny enough to turn his failures to break a record into something worth watching. This week, it was the extreme eater. I can see how people may enjoy watching a guy eat a bunch of food really fast - hey, I spent 10 minutes of my life watching the 4th of July hot dog eating contest. But, how could eating a lot really fast ever be a show in Vegas? He certainly can't (or definitely shouldn't) drink ten dozen eggs every show, six shows a week.

Further proof that this show is written on the fly or by different writers every episode - if there was any master plan for this show, Pauline's last painting would have been of giant cocoons.

Or, maybe, the world has finally found out what would happen if you gave one hundred monkeys one hundred typewriters (or, more likely, laptops)

The problem is that we all think this show is supposed to be a serial - that the episodes are connected - that to understand what happens one week, you need to watch the week(s) before. The producers, unfortunately, encourage this sort of thinking, with the way they start every episodes with "Three weeks ago..." and showing viewers bits and pieces of past episodes. However, this show is, apparently, not a serial - each episodes stands alone. So, whatever details happened in the past may or may not have any bearing on what happens in the current episode.

Well I am glad to know I didn't mess up choosing which one of the 43 showings a week to actually record (I am exaggerating, but it sure seems like they replay an episode 43 times a week. I did record one of the late night showings just to be sure that there really wasn't a new episode this week. There wasn't. Episode starts off with a giant cake. So this means that after airing episode 2 on the 17th, they replayed it a bunch of times the following week. And now that they didn't air an episode, they replayed episode 2 a bunch of times for another week.

As they climbed out of the tunnel, I realized that the slime the cocoons were filled with was some sort of hair gel - Nori now has luscious curls, Junior now has, um, curls... In the past, I'd watch the show, notice a few 6-7 things that were ridiculous enough to comment on in the forum, then come on here and see what ridiculous things everyone else noticed. Now, there is so much ridiculousness that I can't keep track of it all. My head is spinning. I think the writers/producers got to the end of Season 2 and had this conversation: Writer A: The dome is shrinking and everyone is on their way out of the dome. I thought this was going to be the series finale, but now you tell me the network says they want one more season. I can't believe anyone is watching this dreck. I purposely wrote it to be so stupid that the show would get cancelled and I could get out of my contract and go work on The Walking Dead. Producer B: The ratings aren't bad, all things considered. The weird part is that all of the viewers are members of Previously.TV. They must be getting something out of it. A: Well, getting renewed puts me in a bad place - How can it be Under the Dome, when they are now on their way to out of the dome. Can we at least change the title? Then I can spend season 3 having them figure out why there was a dome in the first place. B: No name changes or DVRs won't automatically record it. Maybe they didn't get out of the dome, maybe they just got trapped inside. But you have another problem you didn't think of - Marg Helgenberger wants to join the show. You need to add in a new main character. A: (Thinks for a few minutes) I got it - they never got out of the dome because they were trapped in a bunch of pods, where they dreamt of alternate realities. And Marg is the evil mastermind - or anthropologist or therapist or something - that put them there or controls them or something like that. I can work out those details as I go. B: Great! But make it cocoons, instead of pods - The whole butterfly thing you know. A: Oh yeah, butterflies. I am so sick of butterflies. I am going to make the butterflies evil and attack everyone. There will be so many butterflies swarming around that the CGI people will tell me to stop with the butterflies and I can kill them off. B: Lifecycles - got to love 'em A: Life what? I didn't hear you B: Lifecycles. The whole birth - death thing. Butterflies don't live that long. A: Oh, I thought you said "Lifeforce" and that makes no sense - hey Lifeforce! That give me an idea. B: Maybe you can use this cocoon thing to solve a few other issues? A: What issues? B: Well, we think more teen girls will tune in if Junior wasn't such a loser. He's the best looking young guy on the show. A: Sure, his pod - I mean cocoon - dream could show him how to be more assertive and whatever else teen girls like in a boy. B: I think they like emotion and angst. A: No problem, I will ramp up the daddy issues. What else do you want fixed? B: Well, the two love affairs are getting kind of boring - three weeks in and they act like old married couples already. A: Alright ... Barbie and the boy will find new loves in their dreams and the women will get jealous. B: Fine, but can you make it be Nori that finds new love? She says she's tired of playing the obnoxious teen and wants better hair. A: Okay, Nori gets a new 'do, a new 'tude, and a new dude. And I can use this cocoon thing to fix whatever ails everyone else. All the injuries magically cured. B: Good idea - I was wondering how Big Jim was going to wreak havoc after getting stabbed in the foot and shot in the shoulder. And Julia can stop wearing that stupid tourniquet. A: Oh ... I wasn't going to have Big Jim or Julie be cocooned. Gotta leave someone out so they can realize something is going on and they didn't go into the tunnel with everyone else sot hey are my only choices. B: Well, can you fix their injuries anyway? A: Sure. No one will notice.

Six posts in and everyone has already said pretty much everything I was thinking. Not much - good or bad - to comment on this episode. I skipped the dardevil acts, but that sounds like it was a good decision. I enjoy the multimedia acts but the actions really have to go with the light show/video/electronics to impress me. This time, they missed the mark, their timing was off most of the performance. It was more like two women dancing with an unrelated light show in the background. And the dancing wasn't anything spectacular. They shouldn't have made it through. I would guess that the Guinness people (or whoever is in charge of keeping track of world records nowadays) don't want to send someone out for every person who says they are going to try to break a record. There may be an official judging for things like longest fingernails, but for something like watermelon breaking, where someone can just keep trying 20 times a days for as long as it takes, they probably use video and witness accounts as proof. The video would certainly need to by uncut and give a better view of the broken watermelons Note: This opinion is based on not seeing any official judge when Bobby and Cindy tried to teeter-totter their way into the record books nor when my next door neighbor and his friends tried to break the record for bed pushing decades ago. I am wondering if watermelon guy really broke a real record - he didn't seem to be going all that fast, with the multiple hits to some melons and the re-positioning of others. There is opportunity to do this much faster - one good whack per melon. I wouldn't be surprised if there was no official record of watermelon breaking by head. Maybe he heard about some guy in New Zealand and decided that he could buy himself his 15 minutes of fame for the cost of 50-60 watermelons (extras for practice). Or maybe he made the whole things up. Imagine if he wins ... the marquee at the Belagio reads "The Amazing Watermelon Man - World record now at 73! Will he break 74 tonight? Show times 8 pm and 10:30 pm." In the winter he will switch to butternut squash (ouch!).

Yay! for no "celebrity" guest. And Yay! for none of the the games they keep playing with the celebrity guests. Speaking of games, I used to enjoy Weird Newscasters, but now I find myself getting a bit bothered that Wayne and, especially, Ryan don't treat it like a newscast. Back in the old days, Ryan would tie the weather into his character, but now he is just playing a character - instead of being a weather reported in a war movie he is a guy in a war movie. That said, I likedthis episode and laughed out loud a few times (can't remember the specifics now).

IMO, the only way this would have been better is if we see him in the next scene with a thin piece of cloth covering his wound (either over the top of the shoulder and under the armpit, or wrapped around the chest) over his t-shirt, with a small drop of blood on the bandage.

And on this forum, no one will get mad at you because your post was "boards on boards." I liked TWoP and mourned its passing, but this place is so much better. Welcome!

Getting shot in the shoulder was always a shrug it off wound - didn't Phil get shot in the shoulder and then went on to become sheriff, or go on a shooting rampage, or both? Anthropologists and coroners can always identify bodies from Chesters Mill because they all have this empty spot in their shoulders where they can be hit with a bullet and not get really injured, other than a small trickle of blood from the breaking of the skin.

I couldn't watch until last night and it was so frustrating, because I was anxiously looking forward to reading the snark on the forum. Your comments are worth waiting for. I love how no one seems to be posting "real questions" about what happened, the way people used to analyze Lost. We all know it is ridiculous, why bother trying to understand it? Especially since whatever doesn't make sense will never matter again. As I watched the show, I kept thinking of all the Lost In Space reruns I watched as a kid - such cheesy sets. Then when we got to the end, it was flashbacks of Bobby coming out of the shower on Dallas. I think this episode provides answers, if the answer is "that didn't really happen, so-and-so was just dreaming it when in the cocoon." I think his full speech was supposed to be "Ill be damned if I let you kill my son. I am the only one who gets to kill my son." Re: Skater Boy's death - he only died in somebody's (Barbie's?) dreamworld. Re: Memorial --- no mention of the original sheriff or the radio station lady or the restaurant owner lady or the hoarder's wife or .... Then again, the memorial was only in the dreamworld too, right? And everyone was cocooned except Big Jim and the dog? So the the only thing that really happened this episode is that Big Jim shot his TV and Drownsie is evil - or is she? I am pretty sure Julia will say that the cocoons were to protect them. Apparently, Nori needed to understand that she really is a sorority girl and she should give up the angsty teen act, Barbie needed to know that there is someone better for him out there - someone who calls him by his first name rather than that of a fashion doll, Junior needed to learn that he should be a world-traveling hero instead of an an insecure guy who locks up women in his storm cellar....