Kel Varnsen

The fact that Buck of all people was the one to point this out made it extra annoying. And then when Cap said "do you want to tell her" I was like, no stupid you should tell her, that's literally your job. Let Hen comfort her son while level headed people work on him. Since if she is treating him and he still dies, I can't imagine that level of grief. I often wonder about shows like this. Is there a whole other shift that works at the 118, or does it just close when the main characters aren't there? And is Nash the other shift's captain too, or is there another one?

I couldn't really get a read on what Carmy was feeling both before he confronted Joel McHale and after when he was walking down the street. I wonder if all that talk from the other chefs about the great people they worked for and the collaboration actually hit home or if he was too focused on hating and confronting the guy he became. Which was extra hilarious since Joel McHale pulled an M. Bison on him. Whoever the financiers are they can't be any worse than the local mob boss who can pull his funding at anytime. It would be more than just a $10k difference though. Because owning equity in the Bear is basically worthless, what with having about 16 months to pay off Jimmy. There will be no profit sharing for a long time, if ever. And if they don't pay him off her equity disappears. At least with the new place she might make some profit at some point in that same time period. I will still watch the next episodes whenever they come out, I just hope there is more people talking to others about important shit. And fewer Faks. Maybe have Neil go back to being the handyman you see occasionally. Because why would he want to be a server and why would anyone want him working as a server?

I imagine the biggest difference in the deals is no Uncle Jimmy loan at the new first place. But at the Bear they have probably about a year and a half to pay back $850,000. Which means if you are a shareholder you probably aren't getting any profit shares in that time. And if Jimmy doesn't get paid off you lose your job and your equity. If a normal business has debt they would probably have a more reasonable payoff plan which means you might start making money as soon as the place starts making a profit. Ok so the puree is like a sauce? That makes more sense. I was picturing something like how one of the courses would be a plate of pureed cauliflower, in which case my first thought would be: gourmet baby food.

Marcus said to puree the cauliflower. I have never been to a place anywhere near that fancy but would pureed cauliflower really be on the menu? Or are they making something to feed Nat's baby when it starts to eat solid food? It's annoying that the financial success of the restaurant is kind of like a C level plot when it is super important. They said at the start of the episode that they had one and three quarter turns. So they aren't even runny at full capacity anymore. And if they weren't making money running at full capacity, I would think that would be really bad. Also if Carm is the executive chef and the guy who gets magazine profiles, shouldn't he be out in the dining room, meeting the guests and shaking hands and that kind of shit. Not barking orders in the kitchen and getting mad about everything. They need to hire the woman from Ever to be the kitchen shot caller, Syd can supervise the actual cooking and Carm can just be the hype man cook telling people about the delicious menu he prepared for them.

My interpretation was the Beef window was already profitable even with Ebraheim's messy, inefficient system. You get him some help and move a lot more sandwiches and make even more money. I wonder if that would work. I imagine that in a city like Chicago there is a decent amount of competition when it comes to fancy restaurants like that. And we heard this episode that people are already not showing up for reservations. And we still don't know what that big review said. So risk is that you raise prices and you lose customers. Especially if The Bear, being a new place doesn't have an established reputation.

That was a great episode. Years ago I was unemployed for 4 months after getting laid off from a company where I worked for 12 years. And while my situation wasn't as desperate as Tina's they really nailed the frustration and the worry that I was feeling. Also while I do enjoy the story of the fancy restaurant, I think I would have loved a show all about Mikey and Tina and Ritchie working at The Beef.

One small thing. On WU when Jost was setting up the joke about Peanut M&M's being the healthiest Halloween candy I really thought we were going to get a Norm style punch line about what the unhealthiest Halloween candy was:

Neil by himself isn't bad but him and his brother getting their own conversations is super annoying. It's like they cut from the actual show to some kind of old time Vaudeville skit. And then adding a third brother made it extra annoying. I was also kind of surprised that Richard didn't ask out the chef from Olivia Coleman's restaurant he was talking to. Also what was the deal with Computer saying they needed to open a 6th day. I thought they only closed on Sunday.

The whole chlorine gas thing was stupid. They were acting like it was only bad if your face was right in the green stuff you could see. But I am pretty sure if you are that close to the green stuff, like when TK escaped from the ambulance, the concentration in air your are breathing would still be really bad. And the part where the wind changing can suck the gas back out from under the door was funny.

The budget thing is so frustrating. If you are selling out every night and still not making a profit that's a huge problem. Your options there are to either cut costs or raise prices. I would think that raising prices would be super risky and turn people off trying an unknown place. Especially if it is a now expensive place with swearing from the kitchen and super hot or miss service. So you have to cut costs. They have 18 months to pay back Uncle J. It took 6 weeks for construction and this episode took a month and they still aren't profitable. So they have 15.5 months now to make like 800 grand in profit. Cutting costs seems like it would be the number one non-negotiable.

I would assume that the standards for maintenance of a airport runway would just generally be higher than the standards for a highway. Like on a runway they probably aren't going to just ignore potholes.

A fork on the floor would also probably make him think of the Christmas dinner in Fishes with Mikey throwing forks. So if there is a fork on the floor it means things are really fucked up.

It also seems like a bad idea from a customer point of view. Because a new restaurant like that is probably going to rely on a ton of word of mouth promotion as well as reviews to get customers. So if someone comes in and wants the chicken their friend had on Saturday and the server tells them it was only available that day they would probably be annoyed. The first night was friends and family and they said that no one would be paying. So they likely wouldn't be getting tips that night anyways. Although I was shocked that Richard was the guy against tipping. I would have thought he would totally be the guy who likes the power he has over servers or barbers or whoever. So him thinking it was demeaning is some nice writing. Hearing Ed's version of that song on the radio is what finally drove me to watch this show. When I saw Pearl Jam in 2011 and in 2016 they played parts of Save it for Later at the end of Better Man (more of the song in 2016). But both of those were faster more rocking versions. So this slowed down version was really nice. Also interesting that they used an Eddie Vedder song, since one thing Pearl Jam is known for is completely changing their concert setlists every show. So while that might not be as hard as changing menus it would be a challenge.

That makes sense and is super helpful. I spent a bunch of the episode trying to figure out the order. And that must have been a super complicated episode to film. So many short clips from different locations. What I don't get though and hope is explained as the season goes on is why Carmy moved from Copenhagen to NY. Because it seemed like he moved to NY after the Christmas Dinner in Fishes (Aunt Sarah Paulson offers a place to stay and Sugar drops him off at the train station). And it seemed at the Fishes dinner he talked about living in Copenhagen. But why would you move. Copenhagen looked awesome (and was clearly a very famous restaurant). In NY he was working for Joel McHale, and with how small that fine dining world is he would probably know that McHale is a horrible boss. And to top it off moving to NYC means being closer to your crazy family.

So I basically binged both seasons in the last week and I really enjoyed it. Although I think I enjoyed the craziness of the sandwich shop in season 1 over the crazy construction project in season 2 ( although Forks is probably my favourite episode). Mostly because in my old job I was involved in a lot of crazy construction projects. The thing that bugged me most about season 2 I think was that almost all their problems were self inflicted. Like Carm just offers to give Cicero the property if they don't pay him back in 18 months. Then it's half way through the season before they realize that having a mob boss as a business partner could be advantageous. Then they have to have three fire system inspections because instead of hiring a real fire alarm company (and those guys don't mess around) they get their buddy to wire it up. Even though just paying a real contractor would probably have been cheaper than 3 inspections (plus all the associated delays). And to top it off Carm blows up his relationship because he doesn't have the emotional brain power to realize that an ER Resident is probably the perfect girlfriend to tell that you need to slow things down for awhile because you need to give your career 100% focus. Because if anyone would understand that she would.

The thing about working hurt is I would imagine it's not just about a bad fall off the top ropes onto the concrete or taking a bad pile driver. But to be as big as some of these guys were especially in the 80's you would have to work out all the time. I think I read Hogan's autobiography (I can't remember for sure) but I think he talked about how often he was working and the number of times he flew across the Pacific. So if you are spending that much time traveling the time you actually spend working out would have to be pretty intense. Which means lots of opportunities for injury or just being really sore. So if you want to perform well, you have to find something to help you.

I have heard so much about the Montreal Screwjob over the years that I am kind of tired of hearing anymore about it. Especially since I kind of think that if Bret did go ahead and agree to lose his career would have gone so much better. I mean a lot (maybe most) fans at the time knew that the storylines and the outcomes were fiction. So if he went out and had an epic A+ match I don't think fans would have cared that he lost. I also think Vince likes talking about the event because it totally plays into his evil boss character and it's not really that bad compared to other stuff he has done. I mean I totally believe he used his influence to make sure his biggest star wouldn't get charged with murder. And while he probably wasn't handing out steroids, he did have business where guys had to travel 6 days a week and somehow managed to be gigantic (and quickly recover from injuries and training) while living off takeout food and working out in crappy hotel gyms. So in that situation what else are you supposed to do? Especially since I remember reading an article back during the Stone Cold days about how most wwf contracts back then had a fairly small salary you would get. But you could get all kinds of big money bonuses if your merch sold really well or if you were in a PPV that a lot of people bought. Which means you have to be available to be on TV all the time. Also I was surprised they didn't talk about any of the controversy over the events held in Saudi Arabia.

Not super surprising for me. I watched all three seasons of Young Rock (Dwayne Johnson's autobiographical show) and a major plotline is how Vince blacklisted his dad just before the 80's wrestling boom made them going from living a luxurious life to being working class living paycheque to paycheque. But even then within the show (like the narration) he would speak about how much he loved Vince. Also wasn't there some fallout between Owen's widow and the rest of the Hart family because Bret went back to WWE and the family decided to sort of settle things (personally) while she was against doing that.

Or recast the character. Or say she is in town but had to quit her job because one of her parents got really sick or something. There doesn't need to be that many scenes at Judd/Grace's house so just have it so anytime someone comes over Judd says "she's at her mom's". Plus if she is still in Austin you can say she took the kid with her anytime you don't want the kid in the scene.

So I have been reading the Season 1 book as I got it for my kindle. Thinking back to the season 1 though, one thing I can't figure out is what it would have looked like if River had done the training exercise correctly. Like say he doesn't get the wrong description from Spider and goes after the right guy from the start. The guy is still a fake suicide bomber in Kings Cross station, so even if River found him earlier he could still detonate his fake bomb in the station. I am not sure how that is any better?

For that matter if you are going to get some random person to land the plane, wouldn't a flight attendant make more sense that a police sergeant? I mean at least the flight attendant might have gotten some basic training (or just picked up some things on the job) or at least know how to communicate with air traffic control.

Fun episode although I kind of didn't buy Athena remaining anonymous. I mean I get that they had to do it. Otherwise she becomes an international celebrity (I mean look how famous Sully got, and he was an actual pilot). At the same time there were 100's of people on that scene, plus police scanners. And no one leaked that Sgt Grant landed the plane. It also kind of screws over the little kid, since that would be a story he should rightfully be able to share with everyone for the rest of his life. Also I have never driven in LA but I have driven on some other highways that would probably qualify for busiest in North America, so I was curious would the 110 really just be a basic 3 lane highway?

So in the last like 2 months I watched all the Monster verse movies and this show. I thought the show was ok although it probably could have been two episodes shorter. The whole Lee actually being in love with Keiko thing was pointless. And there was a lot of stuff about the kids (and the monarch funding debates) that just weren't interesting. I did like that they had near movie quality monster effects though. Also watching after seeing everything else made Lee's ending kind of anticlimactic. Like by the time Godzilla Vs Long comes around Monarch is regularly visiting the hollow earth. So in 4 years (which is probably a few days for Lee) they can probably be able to rescue him. Also we're Cate and May supposed to have a romantic thing going on? With how close Cate got to her in such a short time it seemed like there was something there. But it was hard to tell.

Her eating the giant burger like corn on the cob was really funny. I also appreciated how she wasn't really afraid to get super messy. I said to my daughter that I guess she is done for the night after this sketch since I imagine she would probably want to take a shower after that.

I was just about to write the same thing. I think his goal was that David would completely buy that he was River and he could tell him to take his pills and get in the bath. The weird thing was if you are a secret assassin why would you carry any ID on you even your fake ID. Plus I imagine that letting Harkness go would require a pretty big cover up, especially after the Patrice shootout and Harkness in public with the grenade. So if you are going to cover that up, you don't want another investigation going on at the same time looking into how Patrice died.