theatremouse

I agree she didn't know. That's why I thought it was interesting. Because for once it wasn't about trying to get the competition axed - which only works if other people are voting with the same thing in mind - but about trying to fix herself at the top. In other words, going into the ranking she thought the top vote-getter based on the overall rankings would automatically be the winner. So if she figured she'd be voted 1 or 2 by a few, by downvoting the other people she thought might also have 1s and 2s made her more likely to land on top, not guarantee it, but skew the math. It's possible when she said that it was bullshit, but it seemed real enough to me.

I don't know why Ru keeps hiring Derek Berry for stuff. He's so one note and uninteresting. But he keeps showing up. I thought Plane Jane's strategy was somewhat interesting in that her goal wasn't to try to "get rid of the competition" - which is what usually comes up when people bottom vote whoever they think is strongest. It was that she A) believed everyone who said they were going to rate based on what they really thought and B) assumed she'd be in the top. Her strategy wasn't to try to oust the competition, but to ensure herself the win. She's still a jerk, but hey at least that was a tiny variation on the usual villain business.

Yeah but it looked like at least 30 burgers for like 7 people.

When Teddy first said collectible candy dispensers I did not at all think he meant Pez. Only when we saw them near the end. I was expecting, like. antique gumball machines and other random stuff. I was irrationally annoyed at Bob trying to write down the math problem when he was trying to help for a second. Gene has it written down! You don't need to rewrite it! Just ask to see the paper! I expected the double fake wall, but thought it'd be behind the intentional fake wall, not to the side, so they got me. I couldn't stop thinking about how expensive that burger needed to be given how much they put into it. They needed something more like a 25 person baseball team, not a basketball team. I mean, I guess they didn't given the group was willing to order it. But seriously, how much did they charge? I bet they forgot to do the math for profit and it was just about the fun-factor.

Every time Emma Stone or Claudia Winkelman is on this show I think "gee, I bet she's fun to hang out with" and then promptly forget until the next time.

I could watch Helen Coghlan all day. Especially the "Penn's reaction to Helen Coghlan" part.

I appreciated Miriam's Now Understanding Pronouns, but I cringed when she was talking to Greta Lee about speaking Korean. It was a very Older Person Tells Younger Person What To Think About Their Own Experience. And I don't mean "older" as in she's 82. I mean just that she's older than the person she was talking to. Very squirmy for me. I have relatives that do this and it drives me nuts. Greta was extremely graceful about it. But I just kept wanting to say "Not your turn now, Miriam!" To be clear, normally I don't mind when the people on the couch chat with each other, in general. It frequently leads to good stuff. But this was not one of those times. It was interference instead of camaraderie.

I get what they were going for with the Bob existential dread, but my knee jerk reaction is "but you don't do the same thing every day! you make a burger of the day every day! the one-hit-wonder business is more akin to having to make the same one burger every day and nothing else". It still makes no sense to me they do all these episodes about stuff happening in front of the restaurant and the implication that is bad for business rather than good. As long as people could get in the door, they'd be packed.

Not identical, but very similar. Love it.

Bob said something about the cheese holding the balls together, which made it sound bad. Plus Mort's reaction. Jimmy described the pizza "balls" as basically the pizza version of cake pops? I also find cake pops gross from a methodology standpoint, so this seemed just as bad. If they pizza balls were like teeny tiny calzones it wouldn't be gross, but it'd also be too time consuming to be worth doing. The "using up scraps by making them into a ball" thing isn't for me.

I did not miss the Jimmy Pesto dynamic. It feels stale. Also both of the ball pit specials sounded gross. I really didn't need the gross-out factor in this episode. I know it was supposed to be tension-cutting but I cannot take the queasiness.

Penn and Teller are back, with new host Brooke Burke.

The explanations I was referring to were text on the screen during the 10 seconds singing unmasked. I get why they don't do it if the judges had guessed the person at some point earlier, even if it weren't their final guess, because then they would have discussed their thinking outloud. But when the judges are all completely wrong, it's sort of annoying we don't get the blurbs anymore.

I miss how they used to do a chyron at the bottom when someone was unmasked, explaining what various clues were supposed to have meant . The Friends thing made sense in the end, but a lot of the other stuff was either red-herring overload or I have no effing clue what they were trying to imply. And since nobody guessed right, it's not like the judges preemptively explained much.

I mean...they've maintained the burger of the day puns, and the exterminator and next door... I bet they could maintain a gag for a while. I do like this version better, tho.