vousviou

To be honest, I wasn't expecting a lot out of this show, but the pilot was really funny. I'm a fan of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and there are notable similarities in tone and style, although this show isn't as crude and the main characters are more screwups than awful people. But I can see a lot of potential for the premise -- you could see a lot of funny pieces arising from their interactions with clients like the Hot Tub King of Detroit. They did a good job too with most of the satellite characters like the art student and the bartender, although the confused secretary joke seems like it could get overdone. Robinson and Richardson do a great job as the leads and their brainstorming session that turns destructive was hilarious. I could see how it might stop being worthwhile if they stand pat, but it definitely has a lot of promise and a lot of opportunities to develop characters and go interesting places.

This is pretty much my reaction. I feel as though a parody really ought to stand on its own even if someone hasn't seen the target. Otherwise, it ends up like a lot of Saturday Night Live or later Simpsons where you can tell the creators are patting themselves on the back for how many references they got in, rather than how funny it actually was. I don't want to be too harsh, because it wasn't terrible, but the heavy borrowing slowed the show down. Always Sunny at its heart is about (paraphrasing one of the characters here) people yelling at each other until the loudest voice wins, and this show didn't have that. Howerton did well as the central focus, Olsen's impersonations of Maureen were funny, Charlie's tranquilized interview was hilarious, but overall it felt padded to me. One other observation I had was that there's really one been one straight up Always Sunny show at the halfway point this season -- the water park one. By that, I mean where the gang does something pointless, there's no social commentary, no unique format, just the gang being greedy and nasty to each other and generally being funny. It's been a good season overall, with no clunkers, but I wish there were more in the format of Charlie Catches a Leprechaun, The Gang Gets Stranded, Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack, with a simple setup and then cascading chaos.

I agree, it felt sort of cobbled together and not as sharp as the previous three. For example, Dennis's reaction to the dog seemed pretty forced to me -- it's not like he was getting licked by Poppins, and he seemed fine with Dennis Jr. Last week's episode seemed like a much better "media commentary show" than this week's show, where the characters are obviously making some larger point about the entertainment world. Those shows seem to be hit or miss -- I loved last week's sitcom and The Gang Desperately Wants to Win an Award, but this week's show and Dee Makes a Smut Film seemed pretty flat. The premise was very solid, and I liked bits and pieces, it just never really seemed to me to gel.

I agree that KO is good in it, and it's trying hard, but I wouldn't call it great. I'm sure I'm influenced by Always Sunny, which sets a really high bar. The Mick is definitely struggling with the network TV model -- Sunny isn't afraid to have people speak quickly, talk over each other and interrupt all the time, which lets the show do some fantastic things with pacing and conflict. The Mick ought to be more like that, considering its chaotic situation, but it feels overly stage managed to me, as though there are a slew of network execs firing off notes about countless little details. But I don't want to be too harsh -- Olson is really good and the rest of the cast is solid, which is especially hard with kid actors, and they're definitely given a long leash for a network show. It's just hard for me to view it without thinking about how Sunny would do it.

It's interesting that the manipulative, sociopathic side of Dennis has been highlighted the past two shows, but he hasn't descended into the depths of kidnapping, rape and murder that usually gets hinted at. Which I suppose is a development of some kind -- they maybe figured that they needed to stop going to the well quite so much and figure out other ways to show that dimension. Likewise, they so far haven't dug into the Mac is gay theme yet, which I think makes sense. It was such a big part of the two parter that ended the season, and it's worth dealing with other things that make him funny. Like other people have said, when Mac is in denial about his family and desperately wants to believe they're all warm and loving, it's absolutely hilarious and (almost) heart wrenching at the same time. I completely cracked up when he said if he'd known there were going to be visitors he would have worn his hands.

I wasn't sure at first if I was going to like it -- it seemed a little overly meta with the back and forth between Dennis, Charlie and Mac about the laugh track. But when Dee showed up at the house doing her wacky neighbor bit, I almost lost it.

He and DB Weiss are big fans and they wrote Flowers for Charlie. I think I read they were interested in casting some or all of the Sunny cast in Game of Thrones but it didn't work out.

The girl ripping off Dennis at the end is what really elevated that part of the show. I thought the actress and Howerton did a really good job selling the con. Danny DeVito in Throw Momma From the Train wasn't a nice guy but he was pretty sympathetic by the end in a weird way. Martini in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest wasn't a bad guy, although he obviously wasn't all there.

I think they've had three musicals over the past twelve seasons, with two of them revolving around the Nightman song, and that's plenty. But I agree this was a solid episode. I was expecting it to fail, but they stayed focused on the extreme shallowness, poor judgement and generally rotten qualities of the gang, and that kept the show centered, in a weird way. The Bakula twist was a lot of fun, and Charlie's song about how terrible his life has been was a classic Charlie horror story.

In last season's episode Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs, Frank won a bet with Mac, Dennis and Dee. Mac and Dennis couldn't last a month in the suburbs, so the three of them had to sleep in a bed with an old man.

I agree -- I seem to remember that Amy and Maya pretty much won because the final challenge was trickier than a simple memory dump and that added some drama to the finale. I'd add that I think a lot of challenges would benefit from adding a mental angle to a physical challenge -- instead of things like climbing a single ladder to the cliff jump they did this season, require teams to solve a puzzle along the way to find out which ladder they need to climb before the jump, and if they do it wrong, they need to resolve the puzzle and jump again. I agree they did really well, and I have to say they forced me to completely rejudge them. I think they come across in their first (and even third) impression as far less smart and competent than they really are, and if Dana and Matt had been zapped with worse luck finding a cab, they would have won. They definitely got by with a good share of luck, but that was only part of the story, and things like the way Sheri solved the Chinese park puzzle and the two of them completed the unicycle challenge without too much drama impressed me. I think both the dating season and this season were better than I feared, and I think the reason is that they've managed to minimize the gimmicks fairly well and pick enough solid contestants to tamp down the faces who just want to be on camera. I wouldn't be surprised if some producer is managing to do a decent job adapting to the effect of edicts from the network brass to change the formula more. I'm open to the possibility that pairing strangers might work. I think it will lead to some unfairness, as a strong competitor will be paired with someone way over their head and will get eliminated, but it may lead to some interesting legs. It avoids the worst angle of the dating season, which was the cringeworthy scenes of Phil pushing teammates to talk about non-existent sparks. I just hope that the luck of the draw doesn't create a superteam that essentially crushes all season long.

I think it's pretty clear nobody had planned this in advance. After Tyler and Korey had U-Turned the frisbee bros, they suddenly had second thoughts when it dawned on them that if Burnie and Ashley didn't U-Turn Tyler and Korey, then Kurt and Brodie could easily make it through the round. I think the reason that Burnie and Ashley figured it out so quickly is that they are so heavily involved in gaming, which of course is their Youtube focus.

I really liked the way Kurt decided to go whole hog with the face cream and slather himself for good luck. He said he knew at that point they needed all the luck they could get, and he looked like he knew they were all but eliminated and just wanted to have fun at that point. They seemed gracious on the mat when they were told they were out of the running, I just wished the stupid middle school romance bit hadn't come up.

I'm pulling for Burnie and Ashley, but I'm not counting on Tyler and Korey doing anything as boneheaded as Justin at the end when he told the cabbie to drive away and leave them stranded miles from another cab. I just hope both of those teams are in the final, because I suspect otherwise it will be a pretty dull last show.

Chasing the chickens reminded me of the scene from Rocky (and Creed), but these chickens were clearly a lot slower. I felt bad for Kurt and Brodie after the U-Turn because the following roadblock was so simple. They had very little chance once Burnie and Ashley figured out the trick to making sure no one else was U Turned. On the other hand, if the Bros had done better in the previous leg, they wouldn't have been in that position, and the top two teams did what they had to do, and made things a lot easier for themselves. Still, I don't like such linear legs. I just hope it doesn't come down to the taxi gods deciding who goes into the finals.

I have a couple of fig trees, and you're right about how great they are. You might be glad to know that most garden variety figs in the US aren't pollinated by the tiny fig wasp. The wasp isn't native to the US, so varieties were introduced which didn't need it. Plus, figs will dissolve the bodies of any trapped wasps as they grow. Of course, all types of fruit will have insects walk on them, probe them, lay eggs inside them, and other things, which is why the USDA allows small amounts of insect parts in processed fruit -- there's no way to keep them completely bug free.

> I can't believe it, but I'm actually rooting for two teams this far into the race....Burnie/Ashley and Sherri/Cole. I agree, especially about Burnie and Ashley. I don't particularly care about Brodie, but I'm a fan of Kurt as well so if that team wins I won't be too upset. > Agree there was some Ugly Americanism.....because...even if its goat testicles, just eat it and move along.....as someone else said, the soup looked delicious. Although I may have asked them to take it easy on the hot sauce since it looked amazingly hot. The thing that always bothers me about food squeamishness is that there are things in the US that are also "bad." Sausage is all manner of pig ground up with fat and stuffed into an intestine, honey is the collected liquid extrusion from countless insects, and lobster and shrimp are basically giant bugs.

The father and son Dave and Connor who won a few seasons back were both cancer survivors and that was brought up more than once by them, so I didn't assume Kurt's story meant that they were in trouble. Speaking of the father and son, though, I'm glad that the show is making a point here about both teammates doing an equal share of the roadblocks, since those two notoriously got away with the son doing a lot more than he should have. I suspect the prominent mention of the balance of tasks by more than one team was the result of either a reminder from the production staff, or else someone on the remaining teams bringing up the rules on the way to Indonesia.

This batch has been generally fine for me. Last season had Justin and the Papparazi who were pretty unlikeable people, the dating season had the awful passive-agressive nag, but I don't find any of these racers nearly as aggravating. There's no one so whiny as Brachel or slimy and self pitying as the Dad who tore his Achilles tendon (did anyone know he tore his Achilles tendon? Because he tore his Achilles tendon. And he was old. With a torn Achilles Tendon.) Some of them are less than loveable - I don't like the vibe of the dancers - but if I had started watching last week, I'd be surprised that they were all social media types.

I have met a number of people who understand English much, much better than they speak it. You could ask for directions and they could point where you need to go with mimed extra guidance. There have even been cases where I've asked a question, the person has gone off to find someone who speaks English, relayed the question, and the English speaker returned with the info I needed. For that matter, when I took French in high school my comprehension was vastly better than my ability to speak.

That was an outstanding episode. I loved the way the detour almost everyone wanted to perform was deceptively hard, and how Mom and Son got a significant advantage by going against the grain. And yet, the candy making was also something that rewarded competence over brute strength, and two teams were able to jump ahead by figuring it out. The dance roadblock was hard but fun to watch, and again rewarded competence and coordination. Blair only sunk lower in my estimation, but her father grew a lot on me by the end. I'm glad to see them go, but really just to have her gone. I really like the shakeup and I hope the two top finishing teams keep going strong. I get a good vibe from both of them -- they're smart and competent but not loud, and seem very supportive of each other without being arrogant. They seem glad to be in the race and enjoying themselves, and to me they don't seem to have any of the annoying self-promoting affect that I feared was going to be the dominant theme of this season. This episode I completely forgot about the whole social media gimmick, and just enjoyed it as a race. Great scenery, fun shots of animals, and the Georgians were engaged and entertaining. Did I mention I really liked this episode?

I agree -- maybe it's because the annoucement of the gimmick lowered my expectations so much, when they actually got into the race, it didn't seem so overwhelming. It seems to have faded even faster than the stupid love connection gimmick, when it quickly became obvious that the racers just weren't going to play along. I could have easily seen a bunch of really bad social media tasks on this show -- require teams to find an internet cafe in Geneva, read tweets in all four official languages of Switzerland, and then write a 500 word blog post about them, that kind of garbage. I hope it's not just looming ahead.

It's not uncommon for doctors who want to get involved in hospital administration to either get an MBA or a law degree. It's definitely a crazy extra load of work, but on the other hand people who get MDs are often very good at absorbing information and then taking exams on it. Studying and passing the bar is supposed to be a lot like studying and passing the medical boards. Neither is all that connected to being a good practitioner -- they're both supposed to be mostly about memorizing huge amounts of information and then writing it all down in the proper format according to standard lines of reasoning.

Armenia was basically the Northeastern border of the Roman Empire for a while, switching around from an independent state to a part of the Empire to an ally, depending on the complications of the times. It was an important buffer against invaders and a pretty well populated area for a long time. They were also a link in the trade routes out of Asia Minor for the Greeks and Romans. They've struck me as a pretty competent couple, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them in the final. Definitely more so than the two parent-child teams and the dancers. I've probably jynxed them now.

You could be right that part of the problem was overfocusing on the stick. In their defense, I don't think it's necessarily a function of selfies, since I am guessing that holding it was a requirement of completing the task and they'd have a problem if they dropped it while taking off, something like tasks in the past where people have had to carry trays of drinks or food without spilling anything. It's often natural for a lot of people to overconcentrate on what they're carrying and lose track on the footing below, and running in deep snow on a slope is a hard thing to do.