JudyObscure

The more I think about it and read the thoughts here, I think that cutesy shtick is what it all came down to. Some of us were slightly sickened at seeing a grown man hug his knees pout his lips and talk in a baby talk sing song. Others (and almost all of the jury) heard that sing song as a comedian's delivery and found every word out of his mouth to be funny and adorable. We saw it in every episode. Yam Yam making a simple remark and everyone, often including Jeff, laughing as though he was as brilliantly funny as Robin Williams. We saw it last night when the final three walked out after Carson went home -- Yam Yam looked at the jury, and said, "tomorrow we party," and they all roared.

She's such a hoot. If she were a little bit more famous I could picture SNL doing a sketch of, "Jamie at Home," beaming over every little thing that happened and bursting with pride over a burnt roast because she had turned it into a, "Very special treat for the dog." Then they could do one of Carolyn at home; people standing outside her house, deciding to call 911 because they hear her screaming and swearing, only to find out she was just trying to get the fitted sheet over the mattress corners. I can't remember a season when I laughed so much.

I've never really liked how often the winner of Survivor depends on how good they are at bragging about themselves. The jury has spent many long days and nights with these people, they should have a very good idea before the final of who they think was playing the best game. The jury knew how clever Carolyn had been about her idol, they saw her wonderful personality, her gutsiness during challenges, her work getting out Danny and others, and her great, positive attitude through out. Why should she lose so many votes to Yam Yam just because he told a good story about himself? I did like how kind he was to Carson. Honorable mention should be made to Lauren's fabulous hair. It went through mud, water and jungle snags, and always sprang back like a wonderful miracle.

Sorry Crazy in Alabama, I was deleting my post about Martha at the same time you were commenting on it (realized I had already posted about her the first time.) But, Yes. She's awful. Telling everyone some relative stole her father's guns when she had lost them under the hoard!

One more week to new shows! Yay!

I'm always afraid they'll reach their limit, forget where their legs are, and truly panic before they can't get them out. I'm already there.

Every time they have shown anyone driving through Poplar, I've held my breath. They all go too fast through streets full of pedestrians.

Thanks @Badger for the cut scenes. Do the people at PBS have a grudge against the Turner family? Is it because, like me, they can only understand half of Shelagh's dialogue? That never stopped her from being my favorite character and I'm fascinated by all the Turner's home scenes. From Badgers recap: "She [Lizzie] then says that she didn't know how any of this was going to turn out, but that she realized that if you go where love is, that's where life is. Shelagh says she realized the same thing once and that it was the beginning of everything." We needed to hear this! It's a call back to Shelagh's decision to leave the order and marry Dr. Turner! Oh well. Moving episode. I'm thrilled to see Trixie happily wed and mother to the little boy who loves her so. My husband hasn't quite recovered from the street caesarian.

I love her too, and I like my fiction to be fairly logical, but I don't think the writer's treatment of sister MJ is any more illogical than lots of their other stories. Sister Monica Joan talks the way she does because she's from another generation and another class. Her dementia has good days and bad, just like my father who continued to teach and sell wonderful art while some days unable to figure out how to work his thermostat. Chummy found raising a baby and keeping house in an apartment in Poplar with no modern conveniences to be just too boring for words and had nothing to do with her time but make radish roses. Nancy was entitled and dishonest at first and still indulges herself with too many stylish outfits. Miss Higgins can seem like a autocratic fuss budget at times and Sister Veronica is a straight up liar. We tend to still like them and the others make excuses for them so why not sister Monica Joan? She may be my favorite.

Alun Armstrong (Squire Western) made me laugh enough to overlook a lot of other things.

I don't think I've ever understood a word he said. I try not to be mad at Lucille, but I am. She married a man who worked in England, they've made a nice life together, they have their church friends where he is their pastor. Seeing Cyril look so sad because she has chosen her mommy and a warm climate over him... I just don't know.

Kaye and her roaches, This one is the woman who just happens to have a huge bowl of roaches in her kitchen. She doesn't want to throw it out quite yet because "some of them are still alive." The exterminators come and freak out a little bit before gently telling her they've never seen anything like this. She's not a hoarder though! She just doesn't like housework. She's too much of an intellectual for such activities, she prefers to read. Camera shows us her thousands of paperback romances. Kaye says she bathes by putting a towel in the microwave and then rubbing herself down with it, "every few days." Umhum. Her daughter, Shannon, is trying to help her and wants to throw out some spoiled food. Kaye starts screaming at her in rage. Dr. Julie Pike arrives. I like her -- she has a soft manner over a steel core -- but she can't get a full sentence out without Kaye talking over her with excuses and lots of " I know, I know." Her daughter walks up carrying a petrified copperhead snake they found in her bedroom and as soon as she sees it Kaye starts with the "I know, I know." The junk removers are throwing up and crying from the roaches and the stink, but we can now see Kaye had a beautiful kitchen and the floor is rotten and caving in.

That's interesting information about migration being a risk factor. I remember reading once that early research showed that moving from farms to towns raised the risk factor. Then there's concussions, mononucleosis, cannabis use, LSD, exposure to cats ... At one time I was obsessed with finding the cause.

Research has found a connection between prenatal famine conditions (Chinese Famine of 1950's and Dutch Hunger Winter ) and schizophrenia. So that people from countries with a lower food supply may have a higher rate of schizophrenia.

Yes, and as usual there are people like Heidi, who, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, will look at Kane and say, "He's big so he's a huge threat in challenges." What show has she been watching? I can't stand people like Danny who lie through semantics and act like it's clever. He's the type who would swear to his wife that he never slept with that woman, while saying to himself, "Because I kept my eyes open all night." I liked Carolyn admitting that she wanted Danny out just because she couldn't stand him anymore. Me too. It would be fine with me if the three men went next, Danny first, then Yam Yam for all his "aren't I adorable?" mannerisms, then Carson who seems to think he's the only one who's hungry and we should pity him accordingly. Then Jamie, the fount of wisdom Yogi, who's wrong all the time and can't balance on a block for 15 seconds.

My best friend had a baby in 1968, while not married, and "putting up for adoption," was so expected I don't remember any discussion at all over the possibility of keeping it. She was 21 and starting her final year of college.

I thought that was a very satisfying blindside after Brandon informed us all that we needn't worry about any of the women's votes because they were sure to do whatever their men told them to do. I'm surprised they've kept the net crawl challenge after we all saw how cruel it was to Noelle when she caught her prosthetic leg in the nasty thing. There's something sort of sadistic in a "woman in bondage," sense about the whole thing.

Great story, Kenzie. Your grandparents were good looking people!

As much as I love babies being born, this look at life in London tenements has always been my favorite part of CTM. I wish they hadn't felt the need to move the time period forward every year, because the early shows in the 1950's just amazed me. I grew up in West Virginia and there were children in my elementary school who lived in shacks and came to school barefoot in the fall (until my mom's PTA group would buy them shoes.) They had no indoor plumbing and would be encouraged by the teacher to wash themselves in a bucket of water from the pump or the creek. I didn't think you could get any poorer than that. Now I know an outhouse in the woods that was only used by your own family would have been a luxury to poor people in Poplar who had to share, and a shack in the woods with a fire burning would be better than a cold flat overrun by vermin.

Someone on the, "All Creatures Great and Small," thread had a great name for officious types like the BOH man. What was that?

Well, I've always kind of liked Vanessa Redgrave's little sermonettes at the end, tying everything up in a theme with a few inspirational words, but this time I was rolling my eyes. In an episode where Timothy and Matthew gave baths to needy people, Matthew's father died, Cyril got stabbed while braving a young man in the midst of a psychotic episode to save a baby, and a sweet young man, Spencer, comes down with schizophrenia, which I consider a fate worse than death -- what does Vanessa wax poetic over? How wonderful women are, how much they sacrifice. We have schizophrenia in our family. I see it every day, so I was excited to see they were touching on it in the show, but touch on it was all they did because we had to have five other stories that repeated things that have been covered before. How absolutely horrible that they all talked about Spencer as though he was dead and should be written off sooner rather than later. Even at that time there were medications that allowed people to go home, even if they were sedated to an extreme, they could have some semblance of a life.

Good question, LuvMyShows. I often want to point out how risky a young woman's lifestyle is (or was) even if it's just something like getting wasted at fraternity parties, but I'm always afraid someone will think I'm judging them. Nice young women do all that! They go on spring break and hang out in the hotel rooms of boys they just met on the beach, they go to clubs with girl friends and then leave alone or with a guy. I'm not judging them at all, but I want to warn them and I think Dateline could maybe be a little more cautionary as they tell the stories. Not blaming the victim just trying to teach something from the victim's experience.

Jamie's bio says she thinks she's most like some player who was "brilliant" and her occupation is yogi, so I guess she's in the seventh level of enlightenment from years of meditating on a mountaintop in India or some such, so she would know if Josh has an idol or not! I can't stand Jamie with her "aren't I adorable" smile and I love Carolyn who is just the opposite, that rare Survivor with a tiny bit of humility.

Same for me in West Virginia, only, even though it wasn't required for college prep, I took Home Economic classes 7 through 12. I wanted to get my degree in it, primarily because it was an all-girls class where anything could be taught. Budgeting was one of the things I planned to teach which was not taught at all. Through those classes I was led to believe that being poor meant cooking lots of dishes made with hamburger and sewing my own clothes. I found out the hard way that being poor meant not being able to afford hamburger or a sewing machine. The one really worthwhile thing I remember from that class was the teacher saying we should breast feed, "That's what they're for, they aren't play things." Which made everyone giggle because absolutely no women were breast feeding at that time. That doesn't excuse Nancy. I left home and got an apartment in Columbus at 19 and as ignorant as I was I knew that when I got paid I'd better pay the rent and buy food before buying the psychedelic miniskirts I wanted.

LOL Plus I've always thought the Kondo style encourages excess. I wonder how many women went out and bought fifty colorful pairs of panties so they could fold them so they would stand up. Who really needs a pantry full of spices in matching jars?