zenithwit

Watched the first two episodes and this show seems okay so far. The only really distracting element is how much the politicians are copy cats of real-life politicians, particularly Gretchen Whitmer and AOC. But seriously, Gretchen Whitmer should sue this show for giving the character clearly based on her such a crazy sex scandal.

Just finished this show and it had the most predictable results ever. The only surprise was that one throuple was still kinda together... sorta. WTF was up with the show having the singles meeting the couples' loved ones but not vice versa? I get that maybe it was a harder logistical hurdle bringing the singles' loved ones since the show didn't necessarily know which singles would be picked. But couldn't they try to bring some? Or maybe have a mixer that includes all of the singles' loved ones? It was so strange to see the singles who were already at a power disadvantage in their throuples have to justify themselves to the couple's family/friends. As for the couples and singles... Rehman & Ashmal: I wasn't too keen on Rehman and Ashmal at first but grew to like them as the show went on. Their communication skills did seem to improve but as a couple they were a hot mess express. It was great tv but probably not great for Jonathan and Frank. I get why they liked Jonathan (he fit right in looks wise) but it's not surprising that their whole relationship desolved fairly quickly. Maximo & Ashlee: they were just as messy as Rehman and Ashmal but covered it up with therapeutic type language. For people with ethical non-monogamy experience, they sure seemed shady when it came to open and honest communication and being up front with their intentions. I still don't buy them as a primary couple, they give me roommate vibes. Brittne & Sean: out of all the couples, Brittne and Sean seemed like the most solid couple. And they worked really well as a couple too. I think they probably would benefit the most from a monogamish-type relationship. It was nice to see that they were engaged in the updates at the end. Dylan & Lauren: Jess did seem really cool but it was creepy how much she looked like Lauren. Also, Lauren's mother seemed way more concerned about how the throuple would impact her daughter's status with Dylan rather than how it would impact her daughter's overall well-being. Something just seemed strange there. Wilder & Corey: I want to know the real reason they left early. Yeah it seemed that they had settled on Denyse but they still had issues that they needed to work out. Honestly, it felt like they wanted to add a third just to keep up with Wilder's sex drive (3 times a day is insane!). Jonathan: I really felt for Jonathan at first. He was definitely being tossed around by Rehman/Ashmal and his hesitancy to stay in their throuple was understandable. But towards the end, he seemed to be in the drama as much as them. It's interesting that he and Rehman were together for a little bit after Rehman and Ashmal broke up. Becca: I really liked Becca. She seemed easygoing and free. She was in the middle of a lot of drama and she didn't start most of it. She seemed understanding and really just wanted to everyone to be honest with her. She probably would be fun to gossip with over a cocktail. I thought it was interesting how in both of her pairings she had a stronger connection with the woman.

Yayyy!!! I'm so excited that this show now has a forum. This is one of those shows that I rewatch every now and then. I always forget how good the first season is and I love the little CRU universe (can we make Dobblers be real place please?). Currently, I'm in the middle of another rewatch. I'm after the point when the ZBZ's accidentally burned down the Gamma Psi's house and the Omega Chi's getting 3 Kappa Tau brothers expelled in a dirty prank. I never really liked either of these storylines because having events with such serious consequences really took away from the light-hearted nature (which was nice and fun). Kinda surprised that none of the actors broke out in a big way after this show. I've seen a lot of the actors in other stuff but it's usually been in a supporting role. I think Clark Duke (Dale) might have been the most successful post-Greek. Oh and I guess James Franco and Olivia Munn (who both had very small roles in this show). Also, Fisher really was the worst boyfriend. Anyone who doesn't realize the cinematic genius that is Clueless and its play on Jane Austen's Emma loses major points in my book. CRU did have a bad film program.

Hulu (originally was ABC Family, which is now called Freeform) Premiered July 9, 2007 "Greek follows the story of Casey and Rusty Cartwright as they navigate their way through Greek life at the fictional Cyprus-Rhodes University. Casey has it all—good looks, popular boyfriend, sisterhood in the most elite sorority—but her party life is turned upside down when her younger brother Rusty arrives on campus and insists on rushing a fraternity. Don’t miss even one episode of this exciting ABC Family original series!" Drama An oldie but a goodie. I thought it would be fun to have a forum for this show.

Yay, this show got a forum! Ok, a disclaimer before I begin... I'm not polyamorous and have zero interest in polyamory in my personal life. But I love a good trashy reality show and this show is a trashtastic dumpster fire of one. Also, I'm currently on episode 7. To begin, it's cool that we're getting a reality show that explores a different type of adult consensual relationships. However, this show is more like if the Bachelor attempted to do a show about throuples. I don't really buy that most of these couples are truly looking an equal partner to be their third. If feels like most probably want to be monogamish (to use Dan Savage's term) and have a reliable third person for threesomes. And in certain select cases (cough Brittne and Sean), that third person is not allowed to provide any critical feedback or explore any romantic interests of their own. Maybe Ashlee and Maximo are the exception to this but I'm not sure I buy them as primary partners anyways. The power dynamics are completely off in this show. The couples have so much power. I know the singles technically get to agree/disagree with their couple's decision but considering how we only see the couples' villa, the singles will barely get any screentime if they don't agree. While this dynamic might be tolerable (at best) on a show like the Bachelor/Bachelorette, it completely undermines the types of relationships portrayed on this show. It would be really cool if the singles had some sort of mechanism to rank or even exile couples that are acting in bad faith. Side note: there is an old Showtime show called Polyamory: Married & Dating that explores polyamory in a much more complex and nuanced way (at least compared to this show). I would recommend anyone interested in this topic to check that show out. At this point, I think the singles are more interesting than the couples. I wished we got to see and learn more about them. But I do like the camaraderie amongst the cast. Everyone seems to be fairly supportive of each other (for the most part).

Unpopular opinion: I'm over Rusicals. I get that the Rusicals are pretty much auditions for Ru's Vegas show and the theater queens love them but they are getting too long for me. They were never that funny or that clever and the performance overall is usually average or slightly above average. I would much rather see another fashion challenge or improv challenge. Though the one thing I did like about this Rusical was the reference to the "Break Up Bye Bye" song from Drag Race UK season 1. That was fun. Side note: was Q supposed to be in that number? I could have sworn they showed Q practicing the number but she wasn't in it during the actual Rusical. In the past, the smaller parts were actually better. Really good queens were able to transform their smaller parts into over the top characters that made Ru laughed (thus landing them in the top). Nowadays, the Rusicals are so long that the lead automatically lands in the top as long as they stay in character and don't fall flat on their face. I actually thought Xumani did quite well. She looked stunning as a Baroness clone and she had some good physical comedy bits when she was tangled up in Q's Baroness train. I was watching Xumani more than Q or Plane in that trio. And yet Megami landed in the bottom even though she was the "lead" of her trio. It's true that several roles were more of background characters this Rusical but I think there was still enough room for the Queens to create their own character in an attempt to stand out. I thought Xumani and Nymphia stood out as secondary characters even though they weren't in Ru's tops.

Peacock Premiered Feb 8, 2024 "Hosted by Scott Evans and guided by Sex and Relationship expert Shamyra Howard, Peacock’s new Original series Couple to Throuple follows four curious couples through the world of polyamory as they experiment with bringing a third partner into their relationship. Set at a remote tropical resort, the couples will meet, mingle, and date a group of singles, many of whom are experienced in polyamory. With three times the fun, the feelings, and drama, these relationships are put through the ultimate test to see if they are the perfect match. At the end of their time in paradise, the couples will decide if their hearts have room for more than just “the one” and commit as a throuple, go home as they arrived, or leave separately."

Noooo Traitors!!! Randomly implementing a twist mid-season that kills the game's momentum and makes everyone hate the show is Big Brother's thing! Maybe the producers were drinking from Dan's chalice and got confused which game they were in? I don't think it's a bad idea to murder MJ. It would give creditability to Sandra's theory that Peter's alliance is trying to eliminate members of the "leftover" faithfuls to even out their numbers. Plus MJ was one of the people Peter shooed out of the room. Also, I think MJ is considered one of the Bravo people like Phaedra? Murdering MJ could help frame Peter as a "traitor" and take some heat off of Parvati/Phaedra.

I think Dan's problem here is he played this game too much like Big Brother. In Big Brother, you can eliminate your direct threats openly and keep information on a "need to know" basis with the other players. As long as you can move the people in the middle to vote with you, you're fine. You don't need to talk to everybody in the house (except for basic housekeeping stuff). In this game, the murders need to be random to throw the scent off the traitors. Dan was so lucky that Parvati poisoned Ekin-Su and not MJ like he wanted because Dan would have been out two episodes ago. What Dan should have learned from that murder was that by going after someone other than the expected target (MJ in this case), the house was thrown into disarray. Even if Peter was telling the truth about the shield, Dan was being too obvious with the Bergie shot. This group would have figured it out regardless. I think Dan has totally blown up Phaedra's game at this point. It may have looked like a desperate attempt at the roundtable but now that it's known Dan was a traitor (who knows who the other traitors are), Trishelle is right... a player like Dan would throw out another traitor to save himself. Maybe if Dan started dropping hints about Phaedra earlier in the day, his Hail Mary would have worked. Assuming Peter accepts becoming a traitor, I think Peter's challenge next episode will be persuading others not to pursue Phaedra because of Dan's antics at the roundtable.

Ugh I rarely watch SNL nowadays, I don't need to see a blow by blow recreation on Drag Race. So sad that Mirage is gone. I was really rooting for her. The monologues on SNL usually suck (unless it's done by a stand up comedian). Mirage's performance was on par with like 90% of SNL's real hosts. It's clear she was the expected winner of the lip sync but sealed her fate by not knowing the words. Love how we now get an obligatory RuPaul performance each season. It's always her moving just a little bit while a bunch of hot, half-naked men do the heavy-lifting. And you know what, I'm into it.

Keep in mind that the players are operating with partial information. They don't necessarily see all of the private conversations Dan and Parvati are having or other sneaky stuff. I get the sense that Dan is better one-on-one. So while he's getting clocked for being too quiet in the group, some players may disagree with the "He's a traitor" assessment because they've had good individual conversations with him. If I were a player, I probably would suspect Dan but that's only because of his reputation of being one of the best strategic players on Big Brother. But then I would also suspect Sandra for similar reasons and I would be wrong. Though I would never suspect Phaedra. She's doing a great job blending in. Her reactions are perfect every time.

Ahhhh yeah!!!! I love reviving old threads. Travis Kelce has now entered his Taylor Swift era. When I read that he had a reality dating show on E! from 2016, I had to check it out. I just started watching the first episode. Here's hoping that I don't regret my decision (I probably will lol).

According to IMDB, He plays Nicolas de Léon. He's only been in 6 episodes. Honestly, a lot of the male actors in this show look alike to me so I'm not sure which he is either lol.

Nooo!!!! Not Peppermint! I was so excited to watch her on this show (and generally see a Ru girl outside of the World of Wonder ecosystem). And I bet she did have some great outfits planned. Though I kinda understand why Peppermint was banished. She really didn't help herself and kept slipping up with her words. It probably doesn't help that Peppermint is used to an environment where everyone talks trash about each other and it's not taken seriously or literally. She probably thought Trishelle was just throwing shade. What Peppermint didn't take into account is that these highly strategic (and paranoid) game players from Survivor/Big Brother/The Challenge/etc would hang on her every word. Here's hoping Peppermint brings some zingers and a badass look to the reunion.

I think I'm over the split premiere format. It's clear that Ru always stacks the first episode with the better queens leaving us disappointed when part 2 comes around. I did like Nymphia and hope she does well. But I'm afraid we'll be stuck with Plain Jane until the final 4.

Just finished the first episode and I'm worried about this group strategically. Why would you go into the vault and tell the whole truth about blocking the other players votes? Personally, I think the two who went into the vault should have said that the second offer was to add the 5k to the pot in exchange for blocking THEIR votes. The other players didn't need to know that they could pick who to block. It's a simple lie that's pretty close to the truth and it makes them look like they made a personal sacrifice to add money for the group. Maybe the other players would see through their lies but I think it would have been a better strategy than whatever they did.

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/white-lotus-season-3-cast-jason-isaacs-parker-posey-michelle-monaghan-1235862617/ From the article: "The third season of the hit HBO series has added six new cast members, Variety has learned. Joining the new season are: Leslie Bibb (“Iron Man,” “Jupiter’s Legacy”), Dom Hetrakul (“Bangkok Dangerous,” “The Outrage”), Jason Isaacs (“Harry Potter” franchise, “The Death of Stalin”), Michelle Monaghan (“Gone Baby Gone,” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”), Parker Posey (“Best in Show,” “The Staircase”), and Tayme Thapthimthong (“Farang,” “Skin Trade”)."

And you're not an anarchist when you call the cops when someone takes your phone. Sorry, I had a typo in my initial post. I meant to write six, not three. I still think the six episodes were not enough and the docuseries failed to tell a full story arch.

Guess I'm the only one that watched this show. It wasn't bad for your standard frivolous and slightly trashy reality dating show fare. Though I think the show started to get trapped in by it's own twist of having the eliminated twin collect their twin from the other house (thus eliminating the set). While the twist sounds great on the surface (and it definitely led to some dramatic breakups/eliminations), it pushed twin sets to pair up with each other to avoid eliminations. It's not surprising that only one semi-legit relationship was formed on the show. But some of the competitions were fun on this show! I liked the dancing one. If this show somehow manages to find ~20 more twin sets for a second season, I would watch it.

I just started watching this show for fun. I'm a few episodes into season two now. So far it's difficult to not think about the storylines in today's context and I have to keep reminding myself that the first season of this show aired ~20 years ago. Specifically, I keep wondering how these most of these families are able to live in such huge houses in an assumingly affluent area on one person's salary (except for maybe Bree/Rex with the doctor's salary and Gabi/Carlos with Carlos' sketchy dealings). But seriously, how was Lynette able to afford private school for three kids, a part-time nanny AND a mortgage on just Tom's non-VP salary? Also, when Lynette went back to work, the amount of control her boss had over her time just wouldn't be feasible in today's context. Even before the pandemic, I think such a controlling boss/company would have difficulty retaining talent. But overall, this has been a fun background show!

The first 2.5 episodes of this series were well-done. It was so difficult and uncomfortable watching a person die a slow and painful death (literally). At some point I wondered how much control Amy Carlson truly had over her cult. There seemed to be a couple moments where she temporarily gain conscientiousness and tried to seek help (from her "earth" family, a hospital, etc) but her cult followers pulled her back down. Given the amount of video footage available from all of the live streams, it's surprising that the group didn't face more charges that actually stuck. However, the second half of the third episode was way too rushed. They left too many open questions. Clearly there was some splintering in the group that was barely touched on (other than these people live together here and those people live together there, etc). They probably could have had an extra episode showing the fallout and how everyone views their path forward - which would be interesting to me at least. Also, there was almost no explanation about the children discovered in the home where Amy Carlson's body was kept. I understand that maybe they couldn't disclose much to protect the children's identities but certainly they could have provided higher-level explanations as to why they were in the house and what happened to them afterwards.

Streaming on Max (and maybe other platforms too?) This "documentary" felt way too short. Three episodes was definitely not enough to really explain or show the vibe of the place. But it was interesting trying to discern if this place was actually a cult or not. I wouldn't mind if there was a second season.

It's "twin" pun-o-rama over here! Streaming on Amazon Prime.

Just watched the Amazon doc and this one is definitely better. While the Amazon doc had more interviews with family/friend connections to Jeff and Shaleia, this one did a better job showing the build from a new-agey group to a coercive cult. Also, the Amazon one was way too focused on the journalist. While journalists can provide a nice narrative backbone (which was done in this Netflix one), I thought the Amazon one spent too much on the journalist's reporting methods. I feel like coercing someone to change genders can't be legal - especially if it involves surgeries and other physical body modifications. Maybe this type of case hasn't really been seen in the US Courts yet. But if they had solid evidence to prove this type of claim, I can't imagine any jury would be like 'nah, this is totally okay' .

I just finished all three episodes and this was really interesting! I'll have to check out the Amazon one. Specifically, it was interesting watching Jeff and Shaleia essentially run a cult over Zoom. Between that and the new age-y spirituality stuff and supposedly being LGBTQ+ "friendly", it felt like a "modern" version of a cult. Another interesting aspect of this is that since they haven't taken the step of physical proximity yet, we are seeing a bit more of the initial foundation of the cult. Once they all move in together, that's when the really scary stuff begins. Hoping that they don't reach that point. It seems that they recorded most of their "classes". So hopefully this will provide the authorities with enough evidence for an investigation and criminal charges. And maybe we'll get a follow up in a couple years? One thing I liked about this docuseries is that seemingly whenever I had a question, the show answered it. For example, towards the end of episode 1/beginning of episode 2, I started wondering why Jeff and Shaleia were pushing their followers to pursue people outside the cult (especially since most of those people were either not aware of the cult or had rejected the cult and its beliefs). It just seemed they were setting up their followers for failure and was kinda a bad business practice. And then poof! We get the list with the 20 or so internal twin flame "matches". Another example was I starting to think to myself "this is kinda like NXIVM" - especially with all of the classes upon classes, private coaching and the mirror exercise felt similar to some of the NXIVM teachings. And then boom! We find out that Jeff actually commanded Keely and others to research NXIVM lol. Of course it was under the guise of "proving" he wasn't a cult leader but all it proved is that Jeff is a wannabe Keith Raniere. If I was Keely/the mothers/others, I would pay close attention to how NXIVM developed and how Keith Raniere controlled his group because I seriously think that's Jeff's playbook. I genuinely do not think Jeff and Shaleia are that creative and Jeff isn't nearly as effective/articulate as Keith (who's seriously a scary cult leader), so hopefully this cult will be shut down. Thinking about it more, I'm kinda surprised when they did the 20 twin flames "matches" that they didn't come up some random vision saying that since Jeff is the divine "chosen one", he can have multiple soul mates. And then start matching up all of the straight women with him. Though the 20 match thing was pretty clunky and they lost a few deep followers over it so I doubt they could have pulled off a multi-soulmate scheme. A few more random thoughts: - Keely showed a level of remorse and accountability that is unusual for high ranking cult members. While she acknowledges how she fell victim to the programming, she also takes responsibility for her own abusive behavior in enforcing the cult hierarchy. She seemed genuinely sorry for her actions. I hope she'll get to speak to her sister one day even if her sister does not (understandably) forgive her. - Switzerland is expensive! And it's tough for Americans to find jobs there. I hope Kiran ("twin flame" of Stephanie the real-life twin) is loaded. - And... Yeah, Elle's story did not add up for me. Maybe the night club thing was a coincidence but it just felt like she wasn't telling the whole truth about the situation.