rab01

I feel like I should explain - I voted against the Mendoza plotline because of the scene with Ken Howard in the Oval Office and because the show claimed that he didn't believe in a right of privacy but supported abortion rights. (A total cop-out.) I'm a lawyer and the high standard that the show usually hits on legal issues is a huge plus for me (like Babbish questioning people about MS disclosures is really the types of questions we ask clients and how we ask them, including different tones for different seniority levels in the witnesses, albeit condensed for drama.) So those parts were such huge duds for me that I had to vote against it. I don't know any legal scholar from that period who would argue that the Constitution protects a right to an abortion but not a right to privacy. In the late 90s, anyone who opposed a right to privacy was automatically against Roe v. Wade. (I don't follow the issue as closely anymore so I don't know if that's still true.) A nominee who had actually written against a right to privacy would have been automatically disqualified as a Democratic nominee - the Senate Democrats would NEVER have forgiven Bartlett for putting him up (even if they had voted for him). Also, I love Olmos and all the scenes in the jail but I don't believe that a Supreme Court nominee who has been summoned to the White House wouldn't fly.

Power plant meltdown Mendoza

Mendoza Toby press briefings (I didn't watch regularly in the post-Sorkin years but I'll be surprised if, when we get to it on the family rewatch, I end up really liking this one.)

mandyville mendoza Hoynes' affairs

I think that's close but Shawn doesn't admire anything. I think it might be that Michael tells him that the flaw in the plan was trying to hide that it wasn't the bad place from the humans. That he's now let them in on the "secret" to better enlist them in torturing themselves and each other. {Or, that Michael called Shawn with this idea right after Vicky went on strike.] Human lives are so short that 1,000 years of tricking them in one particular way might not be possible. But maybe you can play "Lucy with the football" in different ways each time until they sink into despair ...

O

The shooting and the staff's PTSD afterwards Hoynes' philandering Mandy's alien abduction and cover-up

Of course, Jed and Leo for the win. Maybe even more one-sided than the romantic pairing. The only relationship that I think might be a more clear winner would be mentor-mentee relationship (where Jed and Charlie could win based on the carving knife alone)

The winner is foreordained because people on this forum have both seen and liked the show ;) Josh and Toby Tie breaker - Toby and CJ (I guess I like some salt with my sweet. The most memorable moment for me was Toby refusing to listen to CJ about the bipartisan breakfast and then admitting to her having been right all along.) My votes may be influenced by where my kids are in the show. What was the best moment of Toby and Josh's friendship?

I'm new to this thread so I'm leery about jumping in near the end but the winner of this particular competition is foreordained so I think I can safely vote: Toby and Josh tiebreaker -- Toby and Sam (More unequal than Toby and Josh but I valued it more because it was deep enough that it really hurt when Toby betrayed Sam by not trusting him enough to tell him about the drop-in for the environmental speech.)

I've started rewatching TWW with my sons (who are early teens) as an antidote to the current news cycle and they both love it. The only thing that takes them out of the episodes is the sexism of it. They can understand that Josh is written as sexist and shown to be stupid about it but can't accept when the show allows groups of the characters to act that way and not get called on it. My younger son also couldn't stand the Sam/Laurie plotline and I almost lost him for the entire series because of the sheer awkwardness and stupidity of it. We are midway through Season Two at this point. Also, the show engenders some dark humor from them -- jokes about how real life presidents can't possibly be expected to have an opinion on policy details and how this is a Fantasy show, like Star Trek -- stuff like that.

I've given up and deleted this show from my DVR recording list. Stuffing two inferior versions of shows I've already seen into one show and then making most of the characters magical idiots was bad enough. Now it's incredibly dull too. I'm out. (It doesn't help that my kids and I have begun Netflixing West Wing as an antidote to the daily news cycle. The difference is ... stark.)

My DVR didn't realize that I'd given up on this show so I had this episode sitting on it and gave it a whirl ... Lord, it's still so relentlessly mediocre. The writers just aren't politically savvy enough to pull off West Wing lite. I would, however, like to give credit to the things they improved: 1) No kids in the opening episode. 2) Emily believably laying down the law twice - once while telling Seth that he had until the end of the day to choose sides and once while ordering Aaron to follow her orders. 3) Less attention of the show's characters on the plot stuff. After the main conspiracy is outed, a president can't spend every day dealing with cloak-and-dagger stuff and the show seems to recognize how absurd that would be. But, it is laughable how the show keeps telling us that Kirkman is unpopular without ever showing why. No one would really complain about a mere $7 billion to replace the Capitol building. We spend a half-billion dollars per federal courthouse for god's sake! As for building it in a year, I remember that was Giuliani's request for the Twin Towers. He wanted them rebuilt identically and completed by the first anniversary. As for Kirkman's polling numbers, how many victories can US voters expect the man to have in one year? Seriously, any president that accomplished as much as he did in the year after the entire government was destroyed would still have 75% job approvals at this point while everyone at the Pentagon would have been facing a dozen congressional investigations over their lack of security allowing military information to be stolen. Unfortunately, taking out some of the terrible stuff doesn't help unless you replace it with entertaining alternative content and a kindergarten level West Wing isn't it.

Serious question about the new klingon make-up - is it flexible enough to allow the actors to show emotion? I couldn't tell whether they all looked blank to me because of bad acting, immobile make-up, or because I'm not used to reading expressions through the face paint yet. (Also, I'll throw my klingon continuity issue into the hopper - when in this timeline will klingons adopt the "that body is just an empty shell" philosophy. It's not really a true continuity problem; I can fanwank it away easily. It's just that this was pretty much the first of Worf's lines that I actually liked on TNG.) Even for those who didn't like the episode at all, weren't there a few moments you liked? I gotta admit, drawing the starfleet emblem in the sand got me in the exact way they intended and I also liked the suit EVA.

There might not have been any record of his DNA pattern on file. He was governor of the colony so maybe he wiped the medical files before going underground. As for this show, I liked some parts of it, including the set design. The ship looked cool but also looked like there was a chance that TOS Enterprise could take it out. I liked that both main characters (really the only characters) were women and I certainly don't think that preserving "canon" includes memorializing one of the very worst episodes of Trek (other than anything filmed in the first season of TNG). Grading it on a curve for Star Trek pilots, I thought this was pretty successful. (As in, hugely better than TNG and Voyager; better than DS9 other than the Wolf359 bit; and I can't remember Enterprise). Now for the downside - (1) It's a bloody prequel and I hate prequels ... but that's the story they wanted to tell and I knew that going in. (2) there were only two and-a-half characters in the pilot. The second officer doesn't qualify as a character until he gets some beat other than "prey species." (3) The Klingons talk so slowly that their scenes take twice as long as they need to be. (4) The bleeping mutiny - Leaving aside that it didn't seem to me like the "right" call, it broke character. We are told that they have been together for years and we are shown Mike respecting her judgment but suddenly Mike is so sure of herself being smarter than her captain that she knocks her out after being overruled?

I don't know if she was a paid actor all the way through but I'm morally certain that she was instructed to create that footage about Jason' s pan. There is no way that he didn't taste it before serving and the judges' reactions were suspicious as well. Commenting on the alcohol hit to Jason but not dinging his food at all when they were discussing the contestants screams of creating tape to allow the editors to craft narratives.

I'd like a three-person judging panel of a network suit, a producer, and on on-air personality known primarily for his/her cooking. The producer could be someone like Alton Brown who produced shows for himself and others. And then have a former winner in a host/mentor role. Mainly, I agree with Totale that we need a return to primary judge being the person/people responsible for hiring decisions because they have a different responsibility than do Bobby or Giada - it doesn't damage Giada's reputation if she picks a dud in the way that it would for someone whose primary job is to make hiring choices.

I watched some of Hannah Hart's show last night and it is so incredibly bland - it's exactly like Carnival Bites and Katie Lee's show and everyone else who travels around trying food but doesn't have the revolting charisma of Guy Fieri. I'm actually a fan of Hart's comedy on youtube and her "jokes" on this show fell so flat that they didn't even succeed as self-parody.

I liked Candice during the competition; she baked interesting things and personally I enjoyed most of her facial expressions. I certainly don't think that the people who were irked by her are being sexist. Full stop. I do wonder, however, whether her expressions were more irritating to other women than they were to men? Not that all women disliked her or all men liked her etc., etc. It's just that sometimes I've had female friends bothered by something said or done by another woman that I never noticed and the flipside has been true with my irritation at some mutual male friend that didn't bother them.

I liked Candice from the beginning (tbh, as much as I like all of the contestants) and was happy to see her win but I would have been happy with any of the three finalists. I like finals like this one where everyone does pretty well and the winner is the person who absolutely nails it. Thanks Rinaldo for the spelling tip. I'm not sure where I got the wrong spelling in my head. I googled her to see what's happened since the airing of the show and turned up the cutest article about her taking time off from teaching because of the opportunities and I particularly liked this quote: "Brown said that children at her school were surprised to see her back after viewers saw her win the series in October - the last before the show moves to Channel 4 - because they thought that she was now a millionaire. "They asked me why I was back after the final as I was now a millionaire. I explained to them that I hadn't won a million but, in fact, a cake stand!"

Rachel Ray too - except the time I saw her do it, she used the clear plastic lid from a take out food container, which I prefer because you can see the tomatoes as you're slicing. Unlike everyone else, I was surprised by this episode because I've always expected the winner to be Cory or Jason. Even stranger, if what they showed us was anywhere close to the truth of the demos, I agreed with the decision. I guess I'm just naive.

I can't believe I'm saying this but in defense of Matthew .... (wait, give me a second to recover) ... If he was told by production to pretend not to know coq au vin, he would be absolutely forbidden by contract from commenting on that so deleting the question might be the safest course and might have even been done by someone managing the page for him.

I agree with a lot of what you've said about Shane but pre-ZA Lori was heading towards divorcing Rick and then, if Shane really wanted her, he could have pursued her. That said, I'm not sure whether post-ZA Shane had deep feelings for Lori as Lori or just for Lori as Rick's wife or former wife. We never really saw what Shane had to do to keep Lori and Carl alive for the first few weeks but I bet it felt like the first time he had a serious purpose in his life. (And the reason I infer that about those weeks is from the performances we saw on the screen, not just head cannon) The shit this year with Tara or Rosita or Sasha just doesn't hit as hard as any of the character beats from the first few seasons. Rosita just seemed like an idiot fucking things up, not a conflicted person whose tensions cause other people pain. Y'know Kirkman may not have been great at plot, dialogue or world building but I think he was great at creating characters that were memorable and rich (while admittedly also being somewhat archetypes/stock characters) and at giving those characters some really memorable moments.

I finally watched this episode last night and I've been skimming the forum since then but apologies if this has already been said: I liked Rick trying to convince Negan that he'd never break him; it was Carl's best chance to survive. If Negan really believed that Rick would never stop trying to kill Negan, he might kill Rick rather than Carl. I might have kinda liked this episode if it hadn't been for Maggie's voice-over at the end. Show-don't-tell damn it. And, in this case, they'd already shown all of it so why retell it? Everything Rosita touched this season really turned out badly for everyone involved didn't it?

speaking of that kind of editing, I'm almost positive that the woman who stayed (maybe now that she's the last woman standing, I will finally remember her name *sigh, so bland*) said that she had to come up with a story for her lamb sandwich after she had already biffed her presentation. It makes a lot of sense as recrimination that the the producers asked her to rephrase as forward looking. One other note - the only thing they dinged Jason for this week on his food was the doneness of the fish, which might have been affected by having to fry stuff and then pack it for travel. I'm not sure that fried anything is a good choice for food to pack in a cooler but if his technique keeps it crispy for an hour or so of travel and wait time, more power to him.