theatremouse

Their plant has been in New Orleans since the 1960s. The SF headquarters is just offices now, I think?

Apparently it's a promotional rate for the first 3 hour session. It goes up after that.

It wasn't just Bill though. Based on the output, this wasn't an ugly Hanukkah sweater cake challenge. It was a "put the first Jewish pun you can think of on a cake" challenge. Maybe two of the cakes had anything to do with Hanukkah? I know this show tends to do one and only one Hanukkah challenge (not even episode! single challenge!) before it's back to Christmas Everywhere, but this one wasn't even really a Hanukkah challenge. I'd almost rather they not bother.

There have a been a lot of Fey-era SNLers on the show though. And Dratch is her BFF. Schaal was on 30 Rock. Lots of connections.

Let's return to Holiday Baking Championship, please.

Waaaaay too many guests. From the cold open alone, I was like, geeze, outdoing their already recent highs of too many by a bunch.

I understood why Bob left Linda in the car after moving it outside the cemetary when she started freaking out, but I don't understand why Linda didn't drive in when she decided to be brave and go in. Other than plot necessity of them being very very late.

I'm pretty sure he said was wasn't going to try the extra things, but that the tarts looked lovely. The way he said it came across to me as a sort of a "nice try but no extra points, but since I said your other stuff was bad here's a compliment". I knew there was no way overbaked macarons and flat choux would win. Her showstopper was uglier but properly baked. I think she and Abdul were pretty close before the showstopper, but I still would've given her the edge 2/3 through. So once he made any major mistake on the showstopper, I figured it was probably going to be Syabira.

Focus on the ads, folks.

I did not understand the "hall of fame" theme for the episode. Is it basically an extra clue that everyone in the group is in one hall of fame or another? It's a weird theme. The other theme nights at least had songs that fit the theme. I'm just like, why? This show is grasping at straws.

I sort of enjoyed/appreciated the moment he had Maxy taste his custard, and sort of, realized live in the moment that he had thought he knew how to make custard, but based on last week + that moment, he actually...doesn't. Or perhaps, what he thinks is good custard texture is actually very wrong. It was sort of refreshing. I think the implication is he miscounted. That's why they showed him counting in the fryer, saying 8, when we could see in the shot it was 7.

I think the point was there are no blast chillers in the tent because there are almost certainly no blast chillers in the contestants' homes. So, even though this was a technical challenge they couldn't have practiced at home, the reason there are no blast chillers for the show remains.

I know it shouldn't, but it bugged me that all of them fit into that costume.

If he'd only made the two good tiers, he would've won it. But it sounded like the coffee one was bad.

I'd say they're mostly foam. A lot of the mechanisms in the internals are plastic. Fabric is just the outside. I'd say the joke was worth it.

Let's focus on holiday and seasonal commercials themselves please. Holiday shows/movies have their own topics.

I am also irrationally annoyed that I'm pretty sure I heard Paul refer to one "s'mores", as a singular.

S'mores were a doomed preposterous technical from the start. Their nature is to be messy. It's a feature, not a bug. So a challenge that involves them being uniform and neat is ridiculous.

You're not wrong.

I usually love the anthology episodes, and this one was fine (and had a few gems) but I'm feeling like they go to that well too often so I was sort of...pre-grumpy at this episode as soon as I realized it was one? That may not be fair, but I instantly felt like "again?"

I hate when this show does episodes that make me itch. How is it they've done so several times? But it also just occurred to me technically the cabin is not habitable. I suppose if they rented it knowing the listing explicitly said no potable water...well...it's on them, but like, a rental has to have potable water. It didn't make sense. I know this show thrives on the Belchers being too awkward to function (and/or too stubborn) but some levels of misery are way too much. Also Linda's foot went straight into the water to her ankle when she got out of the canoe at the end. Shudder.

The plot of this one was so flimsy and uninteresting to me, but the puns were solid and plentiful. I couldn't help thinking of the Parks & Rec similar episode the whole time though. It was distracting.

I was surprised (although I shouldn't be - Paul tends to get "American" stuff wrong) when he was explaining the technical and was all "of course they'll have to get the food colouring right" because traditionally, red velvet cake doesn't use food coloring. That's a modern cheat. The chemical reaction between the cocoa powder and the other stuff made it "red", but at some point everyone decided that red wasn't red enough and started on the food colouring. When he first announced it was red velvet I was prepared for him to expect the no food colouring version. So it was weird to me when he went the other way.

The worst part of this show has always been when the sharks won't stop talking over each other - so going live exacerbated it because there's no editing around it. Dumb choice, producers. I think this was the first time I've ever seen a product on this show that I already own. Got oogiebear a year ago, at the rec of someone who already had one for months. Had no idea they were new enough/small enough to bother being on this show.

It's tricky. Overall CLF has been way better, but this episode? Not so much. So if you stay or go not based on track record but on just today's performance, I think the outcome was right. I was surprised Poppy was in the bottom this time, but yeah, it's Poppy's to lose.