rab01

The point was also to see celebrities act like overcompetitive lunatics like this (while wonder Woman watches in the background): robert conrad vs gabe kaplan

How did Monterey do best in the first half? She served inedible food. Raw chicken is a real no-no to me

I agree that all our bodies are hardwired to do certain things but I don't think that all are hard-wired the same way. My first "successful" diet was when I was 12. I lost over 20 pounds (i weighed 140 at the start) on a weight watchers diet plan. I was heavy again two years later and fat by the time I was a senior in high school. I starved myself the summer before college; that stayed off for a few years but I did nothing to watch my eating so ... another diet after graduation, which stuck for 4 years, etc. Lather-rinse-repeat As an adult, the only thing that keeps weight off for me is a low-carb diet. My body simply does not regulate its weight (and I do not portion control properly) when flour, sugar and rice are big components of my diet but my body works fine so long as I largely avoid that stuff. I don't think that type of eating works for everybody (either as a tolerable lifestyle, or in terms of being healthy, or as a weight loss method) but from personal experience it works for me. We all generalize somewhat from our own experiences and our own bodies so while I believe in a set-point, I'm not sure that it's immutable for everyone.

Hasn't this show always been going downhill? I've been watching since Season 4 and I think that's what everyone says every season. My perspective is maybe a little different than some because Aaron McCargo won that season and, to me, he seemed patently terrible at food presenting so a lot of other winners have been pretty good by comparison (except Lenny of course). I do wish that network people were more visibly involved like they used to be but I wouldn't want a 100% of the time to be Medusa and Kermit because they really forced everyone who didn't look like middle america to have an "ethnic" point of view.

On the bright side, ruthlessness is easy to portray; it's just a plot choice married to not having to pretend to get emotional about the fictitious event. If the script says your character kills someone, you can just play it deadpan and it reads as "ruthless." As for sad, she's always been able to play mopey so sad isn't a stretch. ... Daisy centered plots? yuck. I don't think, however, that it's way outside CB's range.

My recollection of Melissa's year is that $10 dinners was the network's call. Certainly no one has topped Guy Fieri but the Network actually has a pretty good record of using these people in other shows. Alums continue to pop up as judges and talking heads on various FN and Cooking Channel shows. Yes, the show is the show but I think the chance at food network "stardom" is more real than most non-money competition shows on TV.

Like a lot of people on this board, I also like Monterey but it's probably for the simple reason that she is very pretty. It also helps that she is somewhat funny and isn't full of herself (but then she hasn't had much success yet on the show.) Her food doesn't look all that special. As for this episode, I'm completely on her side in being irritated by her partner big-dogging the potato chips; it realistically forced her thinking towards a dessert, which is tough for most of the competitors. The southern lady with 5 kids looks like the favorite and honestly seems like she would be really good on one of their shows so I wouldn't blame FN for targeting her to win.

I bolded "woc" because I had no idea before your post that Chloe Bennet was anything other than white and now I find out that her father is asian-american. It has nothing to do with anything but thanks for clueing me in. As for the character, I don't have a problem with her centrality. May has been central to a bunch of plots, Ward has been central to a bunch of plots, Coulson has been central to a bunch of plots, etc. My problem with Daisy has always been the acting and the way other characters treat her. Recently, I think Chloe has been much better and I think she nailed it in this last episode. If she can learn to play subtler scenes as well as she played the big ones in this last episode, then I'll be happy to have her stick around. The other problem is really the writers room sabotaging the character. When Coulson treats Lincoln like a criminal who should be on death row while at the same time treating dark daisy as a precious steuben crystal to be retrieved, it's insane. When they make it seem like Lash's entire genetic purpose was to save Daisy, it cheapens the character and May's relationship with Andrew. The show could fix it's issues by learning from Agent Carter and show Daisy persevering in situations where people disrespect her instead of praising her. It's a corollary to "show, don't tell." Show me Daisy doing awesome things and I'll think she's awesome. Have other characters tell me she's special and I'll think "well, she's not THAT great."

Alt title -- Who's Afraid Of The Walking Dead?

I think they told us in the Monopoly playing scene last season that Nick and Alicia's dad died. (They talked around him never coming back from what I think may have been a car accident though I'm probably misremembering somewhat.) As for Alicia's hair, I actually find her hair less distracting this season than in Season 1 when she was scrubbing up Nick's vomit with all her hair flowing down almost to the floor. There is no way a normal human wouldn't have tied it out of the way before scrubbing a floor. That said, I don't begrudge the show Alicia's hair because it is more expressive than Kim Dickens' entire face so they have to take their opportunities.

Until this episode, I could at least grant that the writers were keeping the characters consistent but Daniel's break was way too sudden. Showing him hearing voices a couple of episodes ago is not enough to presage the carnage he wreaked this episode (leaving aside the impossibility of how that fire spread). Travis staying with Chris makes sense (he hates Maddy anyway) but Chris running away? what the hell? People doing stuff for plot reasons eliminates the only interesting part of the show - especially when everything they do continues to be objectively stupid and morally reprehensible. This may be an unpopular opinion but I wasn't bothered by the authority Celia seemed to have at the estate. I find it easy to believe that she was the senior employee there and had a hand in hiring a lot of the others, and had maybe even worked with some of their parents (despite their casting choice, the character had to be in her mid-60s at least). It's like the upstairs/downstairs thing they do on British period dramas where the butler and head cook rule the other servants with an iron fist. More importantly, it's the ZA, why shouldn't the employees take over the place and put her in charge? Maybe they agreed with her about their family members who turned. As for the Ship of Fools, if you don't like how the people living there are treating the dead, just fucking leave. You don't have to kill Celia on your way out the door. Yeah, Madison was doing it to "protect" her son from the dread danger of another mother figure talking to him but if she had thought for 10 seconds, she would have realized that as soon as Celia went missing, she wouldn't be able to avoid the questions forever and they would have been kicked out or killed anyway.

We really are following the villains on this show. They all could have just left with Strand and instead they had to murder Celia and burn down the house. I mean, yes, she was nuts but who cares? just walk away next time

That would've been fine too -- Lash goes in pursuit of Hive and when he catches up to Hive and is facing him, Lash still gets the chain through the heart. All I'm saying is that you can get the same exact result without setting it up to look like Lash was overly focused on a non-combatant (Daisy).

Do Daisy or Bobbi count as recurring characters in your analysis? Does Sif? I can't think of too many non-lead characters that aren't killed off eventually (that's what redshirts tend to do ...) But the last part of your paragraph is the more important issue if you are concerned with diversity, the percentages of who is brought onto the show rather that the method by which characters leave it. Departures really matter only if it descends to the level of The Walking Dead, where the advent of a new African American male character starts the countdown clock on the death of another African American man. As for this last episode, I have to give props to the actress playing Daisy. She definitely made me believe she was in the moment and emoting what the character was feeling. Also, her acting choices leading up to begging Hive to be rejoined all worked in furtherance of that scene. They didn't reveal what was going to happen but made more sense in retrospect. I'm so glad that Ward's body is gone. The actor is charming in other settings but everything they had him do on this show came off as a bit wooden and removed to me. I know he has fans here but I'll happily root for him to be in many other projects away from Grant Ward. Lastly, the teaser with AIDA was not at all menacing to me but the music cue wanted me to think it was. I guess she will become a problem but I'd much rather see a new Jarvis type AI, than another Ultron type AI.

I prefer Chris Hardwick in small doses but running these "Talking _____" shows makes perfect sense for the network. If you can run a cheap interview show that lands in the top 20 for the week and gives you a platform to promote upcoming shows, why wouldn't you see if you can make it an every week thing?

She knows it's going to happen but her purpose is to protect her own undead, not just to create more undead playmates, like Lizzie wanted.

I've never actually seen her as mother figure to Chris. When she comforted him after killing the hostage, it seemed to me like damage control. She couldn't really do anything better with the situation so she hugged him. I agree with you that Chris hasn't become a psycho overnight. Credit where it's due -- FtWD has been pretty consistent about character beats (maybe not plot or world building but the characters are more true to themselves than recent episodes of TWD). Because of that, I trace Chris' hesitation in this episode to his "letting" the pirates onto the boat and then killing the hostage and the orgy of second-guessing it's engendered. His response to Alicia could be evidence not of malicious intent but that he can't stand having his judgment doubted even more. (His picking up the steak knife is some Three's Company type misunderstanding fodder but not necessarily a sign of any evil intent by the character.) As for the "original sin" of letting the pirates on board, he was seriously screwed over by his parents in that scenario. Can you believe that they put a teenager on guard duty with a gun and didn't discuss with him what he's supposed to do if strangers try to come on board? Really, is he expected to shoot a pregnant lady on his own judgment? I bet you a million dollars that Travis did NOT have a talk with him beforehand about using lethal force if a dinghy ignores his warnings and pulls up alongside. It's deeply unfair to put a teenager (or anyone) on guard duty and not talk to him first about what he should do if trouble happens. Ghoulina - I think "adoptive mother" was used in that interview to reflect that she raised him as the nanny/housekeeper, not that she formally adopted him. Also, she protects her own (including zombies) with lethal force but she's not Lizzie trying to create extra zombies.

Yeah, the show is making it pretty clear that most people in the household answer to Celia and that Abigail was the son of the manor but not fully controlling it. The people probably wouldn't have attacked or directly challenged him but I highly doubt that his gay lover who mercy killed him will hold the same sway. (What Strand did was the right thing and what I'd want a loved one to do for me but I'm sure it fatally weakened his position in the household.) I like that we finally got a full argument between Travis and Maddie where they called each other on their shit. Now they can move on to more interesting things than awkward silences. Unfortunately, bad acting continues to be a problem. The most that Chris can do is sullen stone face. Since that's his default facial expression, much like Madison's "I smell a fart" face, we don't get a whole lot of insight into what's supposed to be going on with him and I don't care. Everyone involved in this show has made a brave choice to present a bunch of somewhat realistic characters in the ZA. Unfortunately for me, I hate most of them so I don't feel the necessary sympathy dread when they are in danger. I bet people that find them likable are enjoying the show a lot more than I am.

The part that's disturbing is not that many contestants gain weight back; life happens. The part that's really really disturbing is that the show seems to have permanently damaged their chances to maintain a healthy weight by changing their metabolisms for the worse. If you go on a show like this, you expect them to create narratives about you and possibly humiliate you but you don't expect the doctors and professional trainers of a show promising stories of weight loss to do things to your body that make weight control harder. I can't watch it any more. The show was selling itself as caring about its contestants' health. If it's about the reverse, I might as well be watching people eat bugs on a rebooted fear factor.

sorry, never mind

I really love the idea of Roseanne Barr being Penny's mom. She's the right age and there are so many former Roseanne actors in this cast.

I've read that on really popular shows (like this one), they usually only have to subdue laughter. I guess being in a live audience of other fans with a warm-up comic and everything sometimes makes people laugh too much so it goes too far for the home audience. I also remember stories of shows that needed to sweeten their audience laughter using laughter from the Cosby Show.

I think that there are two separate conversations happening in this thread. One is about whether Daisy had any free will in her actions and the other is whether she is to blame for her actions. Taking the latter first, I think it's clear that she is not to blame. She was Hived and her brain altered by parasites. She couldn't have, through sheer force of will, changed what happened to her. The first question though is different. She was not a zombie and Hive wasn't using her as a puppet. At times he asked her things and she demurred. It was never over anything important but it showed that she had an independent existence from him and thus some element of free will. If I were in Daisy's situation rather than a puppet-situation, I would probably feel more doubts about my own thinking and actions afterwards because it probably felt from the inside like she was choosing to do it. I might feel self-doubting about it while still being righteuosly indignant if anyone tried to blame me afterwards. (To be clear, the self-doubting part would be about whether I could ever trust my judgment again or whether there was buried somewhere some trace hive-spore that had come out of hiding.)

May smiling ear-to-ear? Now that's just wrong ;)

yuck -- and I bet the original idea was: "Jenna Bush joins the Innocence Project." I can't believe that, after saying that out loud, they didn't just say "fuck it, let's try for something interesting instead." Sigh, it also means that we will get yet another show with fake political arguments and with the woman voicing the republican side and someone mansplaining to her about the value of compassion and due process and sh*t like that. I'm a democrat but those shows make me sympathetic to conservatives whining about the liberal media. (I'm looking at you Newsroom.) * oh shit, it also means we don't get her charming natural accent or the slightly posher one she does for Peggy Carter but some fake midwestern thing. sigh