rab01
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Posts posted by rab01
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Here's something I don't understand abut Derek's complaint - if someone hasn't had a serious relationship in 2 years after going on MAFS supposedly ready to be married, why should they be set up in a second chances situation? I understand Bachelor contestants going on its spin-off show since they were just dating in the first place but shouldn't inability to form (or disinterest in forming) a meaningful relationship be a dealbreaker for something like the MAFS franchise?
(I didn't watch his season so that's apart from anything personal about Derek.)
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Is it just me or does Val's mom look like Virginia Madsen in that photo?
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On 5/29/2018 at 9:24 PM, Amarsir said:
Fair use says you can talk about, use, or display products if you want. However, this being America there is always the chance of a nuisance lawsuit, especially if the brand name shows up in an ad. "Your show used our trademark without obtaining licensing rights." Worse still if the chef makes them seem bad. "Your tuna and grape Rice Krispie treats didn't taste very good." Neither would likely have merit, but it isn't worth taking the risk.
(And there's also the chance the network can sell a product placement later, which means they don't want to give it away for free.)
I agree it's silly. But lawyers.
It wouldn't cost them much (if anything) to clear the rights to say "Cheerios" on air but they would have to go through a clearance process with lawyers from General Mills, which is a huge hassle and a cost in itself. Most likely though the bigger issue is that their current advertisers have rules about not advertising competitors' products on-air and that review is also tedious and would result in a weird dichotomy between which products get brand names and which don't.
(I'm a lawyer but not a trademark lawyer so it's just an opinion, not a hugely informed one. That said, I'm not sure that "Fair Use" would apply to a pure entertainment program like Food Network Star.)
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I just caught the Wagyu episode too and the editing of the judging session was really over-the-top to hide the results. They showed light criticism of many of Stephanie's dishes and huge praise for all of her challengers' (even that ugly burger) but Stephanie ended up winning pretty much every category.
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49 minutes ago, DearEvette said:
And yet, I am cynical enough about this show to believe they will truly fuck it up somehow.
He dies by accident while protecting Negan in his jail cell from a lynching by Maggie's group and then, out of guilt, they let Negan live.
Could there be a more perfectly Gimple/TWD exit than that?
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If he's going to be the lead, they'll probably put him on a horse for some scenes at some point -- there are too many romance book covers where the male character is on horseback with his long hair flowing behind him for them to forego that image for the fans :D
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Linda Holmes' on the Arrested Development interview: NPR The former Miss Alli's take on a subject is always worth a read.
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Also, if you were an alien race with an FTL drive, would you want US to have one? Look at how badly we're screwing up our own planet; let alone how violent we may appear to outsiders.
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4 hours ago, Lura said:
The final blow was yet to come. Alex Guarnaschelli gave an ad, right there on the set (paraphrased): "Stay tuned for next week's Battle Gruyere. See who wins!"
I thought that was just when they were joking around about a rematch and she was saying that the rematch would be another cheese, maybe one more to Alex's liking (?)
It did feel a little off to only have 2 judges, rather than 3. Is this a permanent change or did they have to edit out another problematic judge like they did with John Besh during one of the Iron Chef Showdown episodes?
And, I wholeheartedly agree that Alton was being actively unpleasant during the broadcast. His humor has always had a mean streak to it but it seems now to be curdling in front of our eyes.
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I really didn't care whether David won or not (though thinking of him being called "le flavor" into the future on TV makes me cringe) but I was really disappointed by the order of results. I was weirdly bummed out that Stephanie lost by a lot and Alex won by a lot. I was also annoyed by David's implicit disrespect of Stephanie by acting more worried about the other two ICs and by desperately avoiding their strengths. It made the entire episode feel like the other two are real ICs and she's still an apprentice.
I also can't believe that a soup that looked like mud was served to judges on Iron Chef, let alone participated in a winning dish.
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46 minutes ago, greyhorse said:
I don't understand the Parker Posey gender switch. I guess they needed two adult males and two adult females as the main characters? Never cared for Parker Posey and certainly didn't care for Not Smith.
I never cared much for Dr. Smith and NotSmith is becoming an even less believable character. I think they may have flipped genders because Parker Posey is a well-known name (even if I agree with you that I struggle to see the appeal). In addition, flipping Smith's gender fits with switching the leader from John to Maureen.
Also, if NotSmith were male, there would be additional creepy sexual tension vibes, which are so damn common in shows with a female protagonist and male antagonist (and vice-versa). And, even if the writers and actors avoided putting in that subtext, the audience might anyway out of habit. (Look at the scenes between Don and Judy in the show -- the actors aren't playing much more than friendly/fraternal but we're already talking about about why are they pairing off characters with such a huge age difference.)
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19 minutes ago, psychoticstate said:
True. Molly said that Jon started the fight but she never said exactly how that went down. Why not say Jon started the fight because he was talking to another woman, or he brought up the threesome or whatever? Molly's version IMO sounds like a child fighting. My brothers and I used to do that - - so-and-so started it, with no corroborating info because we didn't have any. We got caught by our parents and wanted to shift blame.
I think it's fair to say that Jon told us that he started the fight. He says that she was being monosyllabic with him but opened up and became chatty as soon as another guy started talking to her. He then said that he chose to start recording to show the experts that Molly really did have an issue specifically with him, not just a general go-slow approach to relationships. So, in Jon's own version, he started the argument. I still think he was right to do it and I'm on his side. I don't think that has to make Molly a terrible human being; just a bad candidate for this show.
As for did she or didn't she say that her "skin crawled" when he touched her? We've been shown him asserting it at least twice on the show and she's never denied it. If her denial was edited out, it was better editing than they usually use. More tellingly, she has defended herself on social media but AFAIK has not denied using that phrase. Whether or not she had good cause to use the phrase in the moment when she did, everything we've seen strongly suggests that she did actually use that phrase. And, regardless of whether Jon or Molly would have been the injured party in that moment (none of us were there), there is no way that they should have stayed together or been pressured the way Pastor Cal seemed to be doing ...
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On the returnee list, Adam and Monterey are the names that stood out to me. I had to google the others to remember anything about them. (Though after googling Yaku, I was happy to see him back.) Adam can't be there to win the competition because he's been on the network sporadically ever since his season. I really don't think that they believe it would make good TV to watch him beat newbies. He's probably shared a green room with all of the potential judges at some point or another. As for Monterey, I vaguely remember her having a sense of humor when her dish was a trainwreck and that she is very, very pretty.
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2 hours ago, Ellee said:
Does anyone else miss the length of the previous NIC competition? For me it seemed that we got to know the competitors, understand their views a little better and could appreciate their journey more.
It's an interesting question. I think I prefer this format because the cooking required is always closer to Iron Chef cooking. NIC used to have Top Chef rip-offs like tailgating and State Fair cooking competitions that were sometimes fun and sometimes really corny.
What is really amazing in retrospect is how badly NIC showed off some amazing competitors from its early seasons. For example, I didn't understand why the other competitors were so very respectful of Dominique Crenn's cooking when, to a home viewer, it never seemed any better than any of theirs. It wasn't until seeing her Chef's Table episode that I got any sense of why she's so respected. Unfortunately, I still haven't made it to the bay area to try her food.
As long as we're on NIC, I need to admit that I was a John Besh fan during his season and am now so glad that they dodged a bullet in not naming him the winner.
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12 hours ago, dewelar said:
I too like Chef Lefevre best of the remaining candidates, but for show purposes he has one prominent quality that I feel should at least appear absent in an Iron Chef: humility. An Iron Chef has to have a certain amount of swagger, and Chef Lefevre does not (FTR, neither does Marc Forgione, which might be why he had the worst record before the old series ended). In fact, I think it's one qualification (perhaps the only one) for IC that Alex does have. I think Chef Gomez probably is the best choice remaining, but perhaps that's because Chef Baloo has been flying under the radar all season so I don't know enough about him.
I think Izard is even humbler than he is and she's my favorite chef to watch on Iron Chef these days other than Morimoto. That may be because I watched her season on Top Chef and she was one of my three favorites that season but I think it's because I'm often surprised by what she makes ... I think Iron Chef is very theatrical and all the chefs enjoy playing a character while on it so I'm confident that, if Lefevre or Gomes wins, either one could bring enough swagger to kitchen stadium. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if no one won this season because Alex hates to ever lose and Symon won't want to lose twice in a row.
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14 minutes ago, dleighg said:
I don't know the time issues involved in doing IC; is it hard to have a running restaurant and still do it? It seems the majority of TC big or well-known players do have running (usually kind of small) restaurants. Or do they do a whole bunch of these tapings in one big batch in a week or so?
In an article about Flay quitting, he said that he did a bunch of IC battles for each season over the span of about a week and was exhausted by the end of it.
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12 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:
Your husband LEFT the family for what seems to have been an not insignificant chunk of these kids' lives. How are you still managing to look like the worse parent and partner in this? Combined with the flashback of her hemming and hawing about whether they would be disappearing into the far reaches of space forever without Dad and her ridiculously idealistic sell of the new planet where there would be rainbows and no war just makes her look like a petty idiot when she's clearly not supposed to be that.
I dislike her as a parent and spouse but like how fully realized she is as a character, if that makes any sense. Throughout, she's controlling and convinced that she's always right while also deeply being concerned about her kids but sometimes being terrible at actually helping them. I've known women like that but rarely see them on-screen. As for John "leaving" the family, I got the sense from the way they talked about it that while his most recent posting was voluntary, that was after they were already having deep marital problems.
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15 hours ago, Cardie said:
I give the show kudos for the brilliant production design and F/X, the reliance on brains and science rather than combat skills to deal with problems, and the touching bond between Will and Robot. I had problems with the characters. The Robinsons spend most of the season in a state of melancholy and/or peril. I found Posey's Dr. Smith portrayal to be extremely lacking. She held her face rigid, made her eyes dead-cold, and talked in a low monotone. Sociopaths are charming and lively as manipulators. I doubt anyone would have bought into her lies for a nanosecond. Don seemed to me the only one of the regulars who had a spark of personality. There are actresses who at 18 wouldn't seem way too young for him; he reads more as 30 than his real age. The problem is that Taylor Russell is very slight and has a baby face. During the pilot I thought she was in the 12 to 14 range.
The show, like Maureen, hoards information for no good reason. We don't find out for three hours that there are many survivors on the planet; it's episode five before we find out which Robinson is Judy's biological parent. I did find interesting (if regressive) the arc for John. He's a Navy Seal who is nevertheless the least useful of a family of geniuses in a situation that depends on smarts rather than combat skills. Even his qualifications as protector get usurped by the Robot. Of course he proves the patriarchal rescuer in the end so that he emerges into S2 as the proper head of the family, rather than brainy Maureen.
Finally as someone who watched the original series as a teenager, this version lacks a sense of humor and adventure. It's sort of like a Supernatural that is all Sam and no Dean.
I agree with everything you said except that I don't think the Dad is in charge at the end. Yes, he gets a last second save of Will but until then he's just the episode's damsel in distress and in earlier episodes (like where they're trapped in the tar), he's fully deferring to Maureen. An advantage of Judy looking young means that she doesn't read as parental with her sister and, for me, the sibling relationships are a real strong point. As for the age gap with Don, maybe they aren't going to be romantically linked. Their scenes so far could read either way.
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8 hours ago, Daltrey said:
Did Anyone else feel like there was an episode missing between #3 & #4? Maybe I missed something but weren't they still surrounded by ice and snow at the end of episode three? Where did all the lush greenery come from? I remember they virtually had no fuel left thanks to the eel creatures, other than what was in the lines, when they broke the ship free...did they have enough to travel that far? That seems as far fetched as anything. I'm enjoying it so far, though.
In the final shot where they've broken into the air, fly for a bit and then crash, they show you that they crashed in a place surrounded by trees. Also, lush greenery was less than a day's walk by an 11-year-old from their original crash site so really not that far away - just a long way down.
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12 hours ago, Netfoot said:
Now why have I been referring to him as "Robby" the robot? I believe that Robby made a guest appearance on the original LIS, but their robot was not Robby. Thanks for helping me get it straight.
Maybe you'r mind is merging him with Robby from Forbidden Planet.
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I just figured that (1) the test he he failed was an age-appropriate one, and (2) with an entire planet full of people who want to leave Earth, they can afford to be really picky about who they take and only ship whole families if everyone passes their tests. For example, if the adults are both really capable but not specially-needed-exceptional and one of their teenage kids is a drug addict, they might say he can't go. When you're only selecting a few thousand each year out of billions of people ...
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58 minutes ago, AngelaHunter said:
I meant she could have done right in the ep, at the end when Rick and Michonne are playing tag-team speeches: "Your days of tyranny and opression are ended, Negan. No more will you-" and then Maggie bursts in and shoots him right in the head, turns, blows the smoke from her gun barrel and strides out, past the dumfounded Rick and Michonne, muttering, "Theer. Ah took keer of it." I might even like her if she did that.
You mean like Daryl did with Morales less than six episodes ago? Or Carol did with Lizzie? Or Rick did with the cop who was slowly walking away from him near Grady? Or Carol tried to do with the captured Wolf? Or Rick did to Jessie's husband? Or all of them did to the sleeping saviors at the outpost?
That would be totally unprecedented, uncalled for, and out of character! How dare you even suggest it?!?
(God these writers suck. I'd have cheered on Maggie too. If they'd done it your way, our conflict next season could be the same break between them but it's about Maggie having defied Rick, rather than some stupid plot against him. Again, god these writers suck.)
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16 hours ago, Vella said:
And of COURSE Vijay immediately blabs about what Penny told him, because of COURSE Penny blabbed to him for no reason because of COURSE she overheard her parents discussing it because of COURSE they were talking about this HUGE problem out in the open instead of in a closed room. These lazy tropes are tiresome.
You're right about the Three's Company level of plotting. The final link in that chain, however, was fine with me. Vijay was right to blab.
It was unfair to ask him to keep a matter of life and death secret from his father who is also something close to being the head of the colony. The mom made the wrong choice in not telling Victor before he went to get the fuel. I liked it because I think it makes her character more interesting but I do think it was dumb and arrogant on several levels.-
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On 4/18/2018 at 2:46 AM, Vella said:
I don't get how this world is dangerous and yet Penny and Will can just wander off for HOURS without telling anyone anything and everyone sort of acts like they just went to the playground or something. I mean, it's not like their camp was just attacked by 2 enormous creatures that could have killed many people were it not for the robot.
This! It takes me right out of the show every time. They are on a huge freaking alien planet and not required to let everyone else know where they are at ALL times? Absolutely insane. Each episode seems to have at least one completely insane moment where I have to pause it to say "what the fuck?" so I can stop obsessing over the silliness. Even so, I like the show.
I like the relationships between the Robinson kids, The parents are growing on me a little bit. I find Dr. Smith a little too eeeeeevil without real benefit to herself but I'll let that slide. (I'm fine with her giving terrible psychiatric advice because I assume she's trying to harm everyone she's pretending to treat.) I like the look of the show, its general approach, and that the mom is a badass and everyone recognizes it.
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Talking Dead: Where Chris Hardwick Got His Groove Back
in The Walking Dead Franchise Shows
I didn't really want to weigh in on this because I don't know either of these people from Adam but is this story -- other than the very vague claims of stifling her career* post-breakup - really a MeToo story?
I've met very few couples that have broken up with no bitterness towards each other. Clearly, their relationship went toxic - either from the beginning because he was selfish and controlling or later because of her infidelities. But she herself says that her main allegation - bad and unsatisfying consensual sex inside a 3 year relationship - was not assault and was consented to by her. Since this also doesn't involve any workplace harassment or invading a stranger's personal space, is this really part of the MeToo movement? If he hadn't discovered her cheating, wouldn't they still be (perhaps unhappily) together? Yes, he was more successful and 17 years older than her but she was prettier than he was handsome so it's not obvious to me (an outsider) who had the power inside their relationship.
*Also, this is uncharitable but how is cosplay a career? How did Hardwick supposedly destroy it? And isn't she set to have her first professional movie acting credit this year?)