Quilt Fairy

During the workroom scenes, I was ready to rename this season Face Off: Student Edition. It seemed as if this group of contestants knew so little that without Laura, Rayce and Anthony to guide them it would be a total disaster. In fact I wondered if that was the reason TPTB brought the champions back after they reviewed the level of the new contestants and realized how low the bar was set. I was pleasantly surprised with the results. I, too, would have gone with the hyena creature as winner over the ram, but the right creature lost and I think the right guy went home. (Nice to see that they're not automatically aufing the female on a losing man/woman team.) I was surprised that Ve referenced the 'mutts' in The Hunger Games as I assumed those were all CGI.

What, is Toad getting on the scale?

I've come to realize that none of these shows are ever going to find anything stupendous, because if they did, it would be in the newspapers long before the show aired. If Rick and Marty ever found the ark of the covenant, or Matt Moneymaker found an actual Bigfoot or Josh Gates discovered Amelia Earhart's plane, no secrecy commitment in their contracts would prevent the news from getting out.

Yes, I found this more interesting than the first episode, but if there is an unmarried woman having an affair in the 3rd one, I'll know for sure she's the murderer. I love 'cozies' as much as the next person but I like mysteries to be more mysterious. This series appears to be more about a particular time and place more than anything else. I take it from the party scenes that Sidney and his sister are upper-class and well-educated but don't have any money? Loved the disregard for things like lawful searches and chain of evidence that we take for granted today.

It was certainly why we enjoyed the American version of the show. Poor Diana! I once lost my sense of taste and smell after an ER doctor prescribed me an antibiotic I'd never taken before. Before I figured out what was wrong, I went to a couple of my favorite local restaurants and kept sending the food back because it didn't taste right. One thing I came to realize was that I could easily eat something that had gone 'off' and I would never know it until I got sick. Thank God my senses gradually came back after about 3 months. It doesn't sound like the prognosis for Diana is very good. I don't understand the concept of the show-stopper. When I read '3-tiered pie' in the TV listings, I kept imagining a sweet pie with multiple layers and crusts. They really just did 3-4 separate pies with a theme and piled them on top of each other. Is that a thing in Britain? It was obvious to me (definitely a non-baker) that the edges of Richard's pies would over-brown and I didn't understand why he didn't just put a thin strip of aluminum foil around the edge to prevent that. I only know about this because it's in the instructions when I bake a store-bought pot pie. On the other hand, steak and ale pie? I'm in! I loved it when Martha said in the technical challenge, "It's like I'm mummifying a pear". Does anyone know how her science and math exams went? They didn't ask her about them this week.

I must be the only one to find most of the 'young thing' dresses on the show to be hideous. They require an absolutely stick thin figure with no breasts and no hips. Speaking of clothing, I found it hysterical that when Blake asked Mary to dinner, she said 'Nothing too swanky, I haven't got the clothes' and they end up in what I considered a very swanky place, and she was dressed just fine. Not that he would ever take her to a fish and chips shop, but still.

Link to the Sally Wainwright interview: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/last-tango-writer-why-i-killed-off-lesbian-character.aspx#.VLwtoFUeybI.facebook

If this challenge was indicative of the caliber of talent we have this season, I think we're in trouble. I thought they were all pretty crappy, with the monkey queen and the one gray alien the judges liked being slightly better.

Don't even whisper that! UTG seemed like it was making the rules up as it went along. I would lose a lot of respect for this show if it went that route.

I'm pretty sure Parker's mom would have his ass in college if he wasn't on the show.

I'll be happy if they balance out the monster challenges with some that require beauty makeup, like painting the models into the background. They did try last season, but a lot of the contestants monsterized everything because that's their sole experience. Based on seeing in the season preview, I have high hopes.

I didn't think he was necessarily tougher, but as the seasons have gone on he's certainly gotten more specific and deeper into his critique and advice. It truly shows he is a mentor, probably the best use of one on any reality competition. Also, they give him much more air-time than they did originally. It's on SyFy.

So I'm counting 5 out of 12 that have already competed in this? This is Marty's 3rd go-round for sure, I don't remember if Dallas was in the first season or not. Does Alaska not have enough people to field a fresh team every year? Or are they all on other reality shows already?

No, no, it's the squatches flushing out the deer to mis-direct the BARFers. Because if there's nothing there except deer, that must mean there's a squatch there, too.

I don't know the background of the tent except it's supposed to be traditional in this show. It's the reason they used a tent in the American version which was shot in Georgia (the state, not the country), although they never mentioned that and I know it drove us crazy on TWoP (RIP). But it is really different and pleasant. It makes me feel happy just watching.

That's undoubtedly the impression Discovery wants us to have.. Certainly in the first season that's what I thought as well. But IIRC, John Schnable made his money in timber and construction, possibly road construction because that's the business his son is in. He bought Big Nugget a couple of decades ago as a hobby mine, someplace to go with his son and grandsons and have fun. Parker is the one who took to mining like a duck to water. There have been tidbits of this that have come out in 5 seasons of regular episodes and The Dirt and behind-the-scenes videos, but I don't think they've ever come out and just said it. The problem with that theory is that from what we've been told, none of these guys, not even Toad, makes anything like a million per season from Discovery. While Tony is certainly the most colorful character on the show, I don't see them paying that much money to keep him when they refused to pay a much, much smaller sum to keep Dakota Fred. ETA: We finally got Parker's version of the accident the following week on the Dirt. He says he was going around a corner and the on-coming vehicle was in his lane and they had a head-on collision.

Just innuendo? I swear, when the woman (don't know names yet) announced the winner, she said to him, "I will happily sail to your penis island with you." Since that was quite the non-sequitur and thinking I must be mistaken, I turned on the closed captioning and watched it again. The CC claims she says "peanut island" but I sure don't hear that final 'T'. (And I have known CC to turn a "fuck it" that the editors missed into "bucket".) Hey, it makes for an interesting show. My biggest problem with this episode was that we never got a really nice view of the show-stoppers, which frankly were show-stoppers. There were some close-up shots of individual parts of the displays but for only two of the more boring ones did we see the whole thing very briefly. And I thought breaking up the display literally minutes after it had been put together was just rude. I would have been much happier if they had to make some sample biscuits to eat along with the display. But I enjoyed the American version of the show and I'm enjoying the original version just as much. If anything, it shows that Jeff Foxworthy was absolutely spot on as the host.

They didn't seem to do the one thing that I think might reduce the pressure enough: increase the length of the pipe between the bomb and the toilets. I do miss the intro of Kari, Grant and Tory, which my mind always turned into Cary Grant and Tori.

Thought this might be of interest: Fake Stuff Out At Discovery Channel Promises New Chief Rich Ross http://deadline.com/2015/01/discovery-channel-new-chief-rich-ross-fake-documentaries-tca-1201344279/ I wonder how it will affect what has become an obviously scripted 'real' show.

In one of the behind-the-scenes videos, Vince Gilligan mentions that he has something like 75% of the crew from Breaking Bad working on Better Call Saul; it gives me hope that it will be an excellent show.

Yep. IIRC he told her she shouldn't call it coq au vin if there wasn't actually a cock in it. Or words to that effect.

Good, that means I can tune in at 15 minutes after the hour and avoid him. Can't stand the man.

Yeah, he torn both his quads, so a transition between sitting and standing would be extremely difficult.

This has been my issue from the beginning. Don't most pirates just dig a damn big hole? All these sophisticated drainage systems and booby trapped tunnels that they theorize, I just don't see it. Of course, ancient men did build the pyramids, the great wall, Aztec temples, etc., without modern equipment or the help of aliens (sorry, Georgio!) so I guess anything is possible.

I spent the entire episode screaming at the TV "Just fucking dive, will you!" Instead we get 58 minutes of set-up and more set-up and more set-up and when they finally get into the water it's time for the "next week on the season finale" shit. What a waste of my time this show has become. I know it's one of History's most highly rated series, but I can't see that continuing after the last few boring episodes that went well the top into the fringe-pseudo-history area. Once they introduced a guy named J. Hutton Pulitzer I just knew the show was headed for the crapper. ETA: They can't figure out what the four feet of debris is at 110 ft? If I had to guess I'd say all the rusted, corroded iron from the walls that we saw coming off in huge chunks the first time the bucket was down there. And can someone explain to Dan Blankenship that if he saw a body down 10X it had to be a recent body because a dead body from the 17th century would only be scattered bones. Unless the muck down there somehow preserves human flesh in a way I'm not familiar with.