QuantumMechanic

Pretty much the entire season :( My favorite moment in the episode was when Rod finally realized all he had to do to get the soccer goal was to just truck everyone in his way and just kick it in. Especially the background music and clobbering that one guy just before the goal.

Big difference between being in a spot where a team is native speakers for a leg or two vs doing it for the entire season. Just like it would be BS for, say, every single roadblock to be super athletic.

I started to well up a bit at that too. That was the sole good thing about the episode. That and seeing and hearing the original handset.

Looks like the writers were having trouble with the script deadline approaching and watched Midnight Run and Home Alone.

If it ends, as rumored, basically the day Rogue One starts, don’t think he or we need to worry about sequels.

I took that more as "intentionally look like something filmed in 1961"

You'd be surprised. I have a friend who's a director at Meta and we've talked about what comp packages are these days and you might be amazed what even right-out-of-school compensation is at the FAANGs. $250+K total comp starting out is not a rare thing. It's a whole other world.

For starters they are, IIRC, software engineers at Google, so each one’s share of the prize is definitely less than two years’ and quite possibly less than one year’s compensation. There’s also buzz out there that their family is also quite well off, but I don’t know about that one way or the other.

Soooo.... I thought the bi-generation thing was going to mean that FourTenTeen was now mortal and would be stuck on earth and that's how he'd let go and "stop". But I guess he's neither mortal nor stuck on earth. So the letting go and stopping is (I guess?) because with another Doctor out there he doesn't have to do anything anymore and can just have a life because Fifteen and beyond will be out saving the Universe?

Wow. That episode was a big step backwards on so many axes. Re-establishing Addison as the hologram, Ian's ridiculous out of nowhere anti-science garbage (especially the "it's ok to believe in nonsense because who knows, amiright?" crap), the obviously not New England landscape (and I swear that in the post-rain scene at the end the buildings looked more like a mid-1800s Old West set), all the stuff people mentioned with William, the apples, Ben not even trying to fit in (not to mentioning whispering/talking to (from other peoples' POV) the air -- that wouldn't be suspicious at all, no sir!) and on and on. One thing I was curious about -- would there even be an Irish person in 1692 Massachusetts?

I actually think Ben (and his actor) is doing a good job as the leaper except for the making almost no effort to hide when he's talking to the hologram. And I like Ian and Jenn as holograms. My problem (not unique to the crowd here) is that I cannot stand Addison as a character and cannot stand her interactions with Ben. And further that I have no interest in any of the "back at QL HQ" stuff. And yes, while this season still contains those flaws it is still better than last season was.

Boston? Which, by the way, flagrantly stole the Stockholm transit system logo.

Pretty clear she left him. Maybe she finally realized what an unethical turd he was and dropped him. Though it's more likely because he didn't give a single shit about what the kid was interested in. He was exhibiting way more than "lack of interest in soccer". That was asshole levels of "I'm going to performatively demonstrate how little I care about or share one of your major interests." I don't think Michelle is interested in Ted again. I think they've reached an amicable co-parenting place. And why rip the kid away from all his friends, etc. to go to the UK where he probably won't see much of his father anyways? (Being the head coach of a Premiere League team is a huge time sink.). I'm also not convinced that Ted wants to remain in the UK anyways. He took the job as an escapist way to avoid the pain of his personal situation. With that mostly resolved he has no need to stay there. And will be more comfortable back in the US anyways.

Interesting! So the 14->15 regen is actually going to be in the last 60th special and then Christmas will be all 15?

Yeah -- some people complaining about people complaining about the show are conflating two things. There are the people who want to pretend gay and enby and trans people don't exist. And there are the people who are fine with that but put quality storytelling above Making Some Point. For example, the scene were the neighborhood kids deadname Rose and then Donna and Sylvia talk about that and how Sylvia tries to use the right pronouns and Donna talks about how enraged she was by what happened was natural and was a great scene. (Natural because that taunting is something that really happens and Donna and Sylvia's discussion in the wake of it follow naturally from that.) But the metacrisis plot resolution scene was eyerollingly anvilicious and clunky and takes one out of the story. (Not to mention that it (a) was a clear contradiction of the point the episode had been trying to make and (b) was blatantly sexist to boot!)

Thoughts in no particular order... * Tennant and Tate picked up where they left off like they had never left the roles and still work great with each other. * Bombastic story, which I guess sorta makes sense for a special. * Liked the musical nostalgia/callouts * The discussion between Sylvia and Donna about Rose was so nicely done which made the ending that much worse. * Couldn't roll my eyes hard enough at the cookie-cutter "we're gonna kill her...hahah no we're not" thing. * Can really see the effects of the Disney $$$$ * Davies could easily have tied the resolution to Time Lords vs humans (short-lived humans find it easier to let things go) or specifically to Ten who quite famously was unable to let go. But no -- Davies had to instead show his sexist ass. * Nonetheless, that was still better than almost all episodes of ChibnallWho.

It really is amazing how literally everyone who interacts with Ben has better chemistry with him than Addison. They biffed it big time hiring that actor.

In fact, one random local did know it without looking it up!

I enjoyed the episode — more for some of the funny lines and mistakes though, and not for the tasks which were actually pretty boring. I wish there was a rule saying you are not allowed to receive help from anyone who uses a cell phone (or asks anyone to use their phone) to try to help you. How on earth did the eliminated team think Euro coins were “historic coins”?? Though given their ferry screwup I guess they probably didn’t read the clue closely enough to realize they were supposed to get special coins. And that first roadblock had to be one of the most pathetic if not the most pathetic in Race history — do a simple math problem (which also could be trivially brute-forced with little waste of time), walk a bit, and then do a short rapell. Might as well just let them sit in a sauna for a little bit.

I’m so annoyed by the way the new format cheapened everything. You can now get to stage 3 without ever having hit a buzzer previously in the season. Or the way the head to head stage 2 guarantees 14 people will make it to stage 3. Or the way they reduced the difficulty of stage 3 (for example, I noticed there’s only one “across the gap” jump on Ultimate Cliffhanger, show).

No, it hasn't. This is the first season with segregated leaderboards. They used to have a unified leaderboard but would then take enough women from outside the leaderboard such that, say, 3 women would advance to the next round no matter what. So if no women finished in the top 15 they'd take the top 3 women outside of the leaderboard. If one woman finished in the top 15 they'd take the top 2 women outside of the leaderboard, etc. And if some woman finished the course you'd see her on the leaderboard with the other finishers and ahead of all the others (men and women) on the leaderboard who didn't finish. But this year they aren't doing that. There are separate male and female leaderboards. I was very annoyed when Taylor Greene -- who by virtue of finishing, mind you -- did better than most of the men who competed in that round didn't show up on the top 13 leaderboard even though she was in the top 13. Instead, her finish got relegated to being shown only on the women's mini-leaderboard. Boooooo. They should go back to presenting it the way they used to. Doing so doesn't prevent them from bringing whatever number of men and women to the next round that they want.

These were Diane Duane's stuff, such as The Romulan Way where Ensign Naraht appears.

Phil said "sometime before the next leg there will be a mandatory vote. It will be a blind vote". I don't see how to interpret that other than as that right before (or right after) ripping the clue to start the leg each team will have to vote on who to U-turn. I'm assuming they'll tell Phil (or the camera) who they are voting to U-turn, though that info will not be put on the U-turn board ("a blind vote"). I would then expect the picture of the "winners" of the vote will be put on the U-turn board and they'll be U-turned whether they're the first team to arrive at the U-turn board or the last team or any team in-between.

Apparently not, given that the scooby gang had to blow up the SAM site to prevent the real plane from being shot down by that same SAM site.

If only there were no more Benaddision. Is there any doubt the producers will be putting them back together even though she is terrible and has no chemistry with him? And the stupid inevitable love triangle will make it even worse.