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Black Knight

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Everything posted by Black Knight

  1. I expect attendance will be a little better than it would otherwise be, on account of this potentially being Belichick's last game coaching the Pats.
  2. Black Knight

    The NBA

    Practice facility, hell. He's made enough millions to have sufficient facilities in his own home if he so chose. His return really is the ultimate test. He's on the world's thinnest ice. One more incident and he's effectively done in the league, because nobody will want him. In his prime, he could get away with costing the Warriors a championship, and even last year, he could get away with destroying the team because he was just coming off a championship. He has run out of road. And he must realize that, so we're about to see if he can control himself or not.
  3. I'm so relieved. Yay Mai! She established in this episode why she was the most deserving one out of the three, continuing to make the strategic choices. I liked how she concealed her eagerness to go first, and slow-played her volunteering, so that Sam wouldn't realize that he should also be pushing to go first. I think he just kept continuing to underestimate her - which is why in the last episode, her lying that she picked Amanda instead of Roland was a smart play. And of course she knew how to play RPS strategically. I rolled my eyes when Phil said he wasn't using any strategy. If he had managed to blunder into the win I would have been furious. The other thing is that Phil is totally one of those people who would be bankrupt within five years (although I don't think it would take him close to that long) of winning the lottery. Barring any dire emergency or outstanding high-interest debt, I expect Mai will have the sense to invest pretty much all of the after-taxes take home money. I liked seeing the contestants outside of the game.
  4. As soon as Amanda turned away from her to head out the door, Hallie dropped the act and looked/acted super-guilty. I expect Mai never stopped observing everyone, and so she noticed. This was a much better episode than the last one, because finally the seven remaining kumbaya idiots were forced to play. (Mai and Ashley, of course, have always played.) Of course, a few of them still wimped out by choosing people they weren't close to, but a few of them didn't. The difference between Mai and Ashley, the two who weren't part of the kumbaya idiots group, is that while they've both always competed to win, Mai is good at strategy and Ashley is not. As soon as Ashley put the box on Phil's desk, I knew she'd be out, because with his first nomination, Phil had it between Ashley and Rose. With Rose gone, he went for Ashley. He knew it wasn't going to be any of the others. Ashley had enough sense not to put the box on Mai's desk, but not enough not to put it on Phil's either. I'm rooting for Mai to take it all, because she's the only one who is consistently competing to win. I'm sure the producers would love it to come down to Phil and Sam, especially after that little hand-holding (hmm, Sam said he's gay, but I don't remember if Phil's said anything), but it's quite clear now that they're either not rigging things or they are completely incompetent at rigging things. Almost all of the competitive and strategic players were gone by the final 20, leaving us with a bunch of people who mostly would have fit in just fine on the Pagong tribe in S1 of Survivor. Aside from Mai and Ashley, I had had hopes for Trey and Bee, but unfortunately it became clear that Trey's mom was the one with the strategic sense (I hope his mom smacked him - metaphorically - for making multiple jumps), and Bee the big gameplayer got infected with kumbaya.
  5. Oof, I found this episode so annoying. During the bridge game, I kept screaming at people to stop hugging and get moving. And why did every person who was going to be next to choose a tile wait on the stage first, instead of going ahead and moving to the penultimate safe tile so that, when their turn came up, they only had to move forward one more tile and then make their pick? So freaking slow and inefficient. I was really expecting someone to get eliminated for time. And then during the dice game we had ten idiots - nobody even bothered to check with Ashley to see if she'd commit to nominating herself? not that I'd believe her either way - and a total hypocrite in Ashley, who risked nothing at all during the bridge game, and one sensible person in Mai. I was totally with her. If I'd been part of that game, I would have pushed for everyone nominating Ashley until she was eliminated, and then implement the self-elimination plan. And mind you, the only reason I would have agreed to the self-elimination plan, once Ashley was gone, is because the odds would be better for me to be in danger only on my own roll (I'm not like Bee, I don't roll sixes constantly) than if I could potentially be targeted by multiple players. And my problem with the ten idiots is that nobody articulated that as a reason - it was all kumbaya nonsense. I really need these people to remember that this is a game. I hated seeing Bee go, but woman, you knew you were good at rolling sixes, you should have broken the chain. I do not believe Ashley would have nominated herself even if she hadn't been nominated by Mai. She did have just enough sense, this time, not to say that. The show producers must have been pretty dismayed at this point. Almost all the competitive people are gone except for Ashley and Mai. It's not Ashley's choices in the bridge game and dice game that make me dislike her, because unlike almost everyone else present she's actually competing to win; it's the lack of self-awareness in her whining in her interview about Mai nominating her. If she'd just owned in her interview that her bridge game decision made her an understandable target in the dice game, I'd like her just fine. Fingers crossed that people start actually competing in the next episode. Sheesh.
  6. I really did not understand Ashley's decision here. Players with high numbers, sure, I wouldn't agree either if I were, say, #15. Glass Bridge is inherently not fair and I was genuinely surprised that this show didn't change it like it changed the tug-of-war one to be battleships. But she's got a very low number, and has zero chance of making it to the other side without the 50/50 plan. She just did not game this out at all. I also was half-expecting, when the other woman agreed to go with the plan and overtake Trey, for the glass panel to collapse when they were both occupying it. In short, that the glass panels were rigged to only allow one person's weight. It would have been interesting to see the 50/50 plan backfire.
  7. I thought this was a good way of tricking people into pairing up with whoever they liked best, when they knew the marbles were coming at some point. In Survivor, especially older, longer seasons, we'd see contestants not behaving that smartly once faced with having decent food. I haven't gotten a good look at what their usual rations are here, but they're clearly just in the "meh, edible" category. And then there was the little business with not having even numbers. I wonder if Phallicia would have chosen her second and third eliminations differently if she had known the marbles game was next. Eliminating the contestant who had an advantage still makes sense; his advantage was probably going to be that he would be the one not paired up and thus (perhaps?) have a free trip to the next stage. But if I knew all the bestie pairs were going to be destroyed by marbles anyway, were I Phallicia I would've just eliminated the strongest players.
  8. I was surprised that nobody brought up 161 stealing extra meal rations. Seems like that would have put him on people’s radars even before the apples thing. I hope 342 feels better about his elimination after seeing this episode. He would not have made it through this vote, and he didn’t seem deluded about his unpopularity. He just thought his physical strength would negate the need to play a social game. I don’t think he thought through how this reality game show would have to differ from the original show, aside from the whole “players don’t actually die” part.
  9. Strategy involving balance and momentum. But since everyone playing has watched the original show, they already know those tricks. Bee killed as captain and I’m going to remember what she said about C-3!
  10. I watched this last night. I agree with Haynes that it's not camp, and nor do I think it's a comedy, even a black one. I realize the studio chose to submit it in that category, but I feel that's more due to the studio having a basic discomfort with the material, leading to an attempt to sort of handwave it away as a comedy. None of the interviews I've read with the director or the leads have talked at all about comedic aspects. Let's remember who generally runs the studios: The sort of guys who thought Vili was lucky. A brief joke about hot dogs that occurred five minutes into the movie and the amusement of Elizabeth's pretensions being exposed at the end isn't enough to make this movie not a drama to me. Speaking of Elizabeth's pretensions, I liked the way the ending was foreshadowed earlier in the way she carried around that stupid notepad and insisted on writing down the precise brands of Gracie's makeup ensemble. Oh, and of course, what we were told about her filmography up to now, and the fact that this is a "TV movie." If it were prestige, it'd be referenced as being HBO, or even Netflix (ha). I too was very impressed by Melton. The way he embodied a 13-year-old at times, and at other times a middle-aged man, was remarkable. Only in his last scene, watching his kids' graduation, did he finally seem like the 36-year-old he's supposed to be. I really felt for Joe in this, because not only do we have the ongoing violation that Grace commits against him, we have this new violation that Elizabeth commits against him. It's really sad when the most appropriate "romantic" relationship he's had is the texting one with his friend in the monarch butterflies group, the woman who called a halt to things once he crossed a line and was like "aren't you married?". The last scene between Gracie and Elizabeth was everything. I think Gracie probably wasn't molested by her brothers, but nor do I think she's quite as secure as she claims. She took off one mask only to reveal another mask. It's masks all the way down. And that's the problem for Elizabeth, because not only did she realize she didn't have Gracie figured out, she still doesn't have Gracie figured out, and she's never going to have Gracie figured out. Portman did such a fantastic job with the insecurity after Gracie sauntered off.
  11. CBS Sports is already saying Baltimore will sit its starters next week. I can't figure out why Antonio Pierce suddenly decided to be so conservative against the Colts. Oh well. I'll always have the Raiders beating the Chiefs this season!
  12. Black Knight

    The NBA

    The Warriors probably blew any real chance they had of getting Green to change his ways when they refused to meaningfully punish him for punching a coworker last season, and were far more concerned about finding out who leaked the tape than actually addressing the incident itself. As long as the Warriors keep enabling him, he's just going to view this as him vs. the league. He's going to get another suspension from the league, but the team should give him an even longer one to make a point. He's turned into a net liability unlike his younger years. They won't, though. I'd be laughing if I were Poole. Sure, he's not on a good team, for now. But the Warriors aren't going anywhere this season either, and it's increasingly clear how badly the team screwed up in not disciplining Green last year and then re-signing him. He's not bringing them any more championships. He is near the end, while Poole is still only 24 and has a lot of road ahead of him.
  13. Yeah, I was bummed to see Lawrence go down. I hope he can make it back this season. If we keep going at this rate, the playoffs are going to end up being full of backup QBs playing each other. I agree about the importance of a left tackle. But I don't know if I would consider Williams the MVP even on his own team, much less the league. That's because if all you have is a great LT, you're not going to win games, and the perfect example of this is Joe Thomas, one of the best offensive linemen ever, who played for the Browns his entire 11-year career, and had exactly one winning season with them, his first, followed by 10 years of abysmal losing seasons except for the 7-9 season which looks positively amazing compared to some of the others (1-15! 0-16!). Football is a team sport, of course, but there are positions where a great player on a bad team can still pull out a win sometimes for the team. OL is not one of those. An offense has a really tough time being consistently successful without a good OL, but some wins can still be managed if the offensive skill players are good enough. But if a team has a good or even great OL and no good offensive skill players, a team will not win games. For the Niners, I think their MVP is McCaffrey, whose own absences correlate pretty closely to the Niners' losses since he joined the team midseason last year. Williams's absences have hurt, but the Niners run a system offense that relies heavily (too much, Shanahan is going to wear him out) on CMC.
  14. Both the Eagles and Niners are highly motivated and I think this game should be good and competitive, barring any major injuries that happen early in the game...like last season... That said, I kinda wouldn't want to win this game if I were either team. This is a likely rematch in the playoffs, and I feel like so often, the team that lost in the regular season wins the rematch in the playoffs. I don't know if it's something to do with the losing team getting extra motivation to win next time, or if the losing coach purposely saves some stuff for the playoffs, or the winning team gets overconfident...
  15. I don't hate it. Dodgers near the top, Raiders in sort of the lower middle section instead of down at the very bottom, which was better than I'd expected. If only the Giants and Jets would do better, maybe GRRM would have actually finished Winds of Winter by now. (Just kidding, I know he'll never finish.)
  16. I don't really see how that was plausible deniability. Where was Lucy Gray going to get loose cosmetic powder to fill the compact with? If she'd brought some with her, somehow, then of course it already would've been in its own container. The mere fact she had the compact was enough. They cut this line out of the movie, but in the book, Dean Highbottom makes a point of telling Snow that Lucy Gray fought really hard trying to keep the compact from being taken from her. They all understood how incriminating the compact was for Snow. Maybe in a world where there was a legal system in which a defendant had to put on trial and be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before suffering any punishment, perhaps, and so Snow's attorney could try to argue that he didn't really mean that Lucy Gray should be filling up the compact with rat poison, but that isn't Panem. I can see one reason the movie made this change: So that Lucy Gray would be suspicious right at the start of their planned getaway. In the book, she's not suspicious until the killed-three-people bit, but in the movie, she's clearly suspicious before that and really pounces on that part as a result. But I also don't think it was that big of a change. In a way it's more logical, in that it doesn't require Gaul to be as omniscient as in the book. I don't think Snow really needed to worry about being implicated; the fact that he recorded Sejanus, and turned that recording in, would be enough to establish him as someone who was acting as an informer in drawing Sejanus out about his plans, rather than someone planning to take part. It's not really any different from when law enforcement makes use of informers that are either planted, or flipped.
  17. A friend and I saw this today. We both loved it and thought it the best out of the HG movie franchise, and plan to see it again. I think it's an improvement from the book (which we also each really liked) in that it fleshes out Lucy Gray, and Lucy Gray's relationship with Snow, a lot to be able to actually see and hear her for ourselves instead of only viewing her through Snow's POV. Zegler, along with the rest of the cast, was excellent. It really adds to the end of the movie to listen to "Can't Catch Me Now" as the credits play, right after listening to the last line of the movie, about how the things you love destroy you. One theory is that Katniss is a descendant of Lucy Gray, but the juxtaposition of the song supports another theory, that Snow's experiences with Lucy Gray led him to make unwise choices later on, in Katniss's time, that led to his downfall. So much of the value of this prequel has been how it sheds light on the future. One moment that struck me during this movie was when Dr. Gaul caved to pressure and agreed to declare Lucy Gray the victor and get her out of the arena. Many years later, Seneca Crane made a similar decision, opting to save both Katniss and Peeta rather than have the Games end with no victor and viewers upset, and Snow had Crane killed for it. It says something about how the older Snow changed his view on Gaul's choice.
  18. Black Knight

    The NBA

    I think it showed the opposite, that he's not really so valuable anymore. It wasn't about being there for his teammate. He escalated that situation so far beyond what was needed that it was pretty clear that it was just about his hatred of Gobert. He was already diving for Gobert right about the time Gobert was taking hold of Thompson, and the video makes clear that Gobert was just pulling Thompson away from the fray, not strangling him or some such. And I don't even like Gobert, I think he's an even bigger ass than Green generally. But a ten-second chokehold is not about a teammate, it's about personal beef. If Green wanted to defend his teammate he would've gone after McDaniels. And I notice even Kerr has backed away from his original comments defending Green, now calling his conduct "inexcusable". I guess he had a chance to review the video. I still feel as before, I'd be pretty worried if I were Green (although I think he lacks that self-awareness). After he got booted, the team showed that they don't need him anymore. His defense was special in the past. He still has the defensive smarts, but he's also old and slow which takes away from that and lessens the Warriors' need to keep him. If Thompson were shooting better, that would be one thing, because it would help hide Green, but the Warriors are not in a position to keep shielding all of the big three from their liabilities, when only one of them (Curry) is bringing anything remarkable on one side of the ball. They probably would have been better off if they had shipped Green out and kept Poole. It was obvious that the Warriors' refusal to meaningfully punish Green for punching out a teammate affected Poole adversely. Green isn't that important anymore defensively, while Poole can contribute on offense. And with Thompson not shooting, the Warriors have really missed having another offensive producer alongside Curry. But if Lacob and Dunleavy have the nerve to tell Thompson he'll have to come off the bench next season (and be paid accordingly) or leave altogether, and tell Green bye, they can still make the most of Curry's remaining window. Green was integral to previous championships on account of his defense, but between him being older and not an offensive contributor, the Warriors are better off with someone else in that position.
  19. I find it hysterical. She's just pointing out the obvious, which is that these reports are utterly predictable. It's the same as asking someone who just lost a family member in a tragedy how they are feeling about it. We all know the answer. I'm sure the coaches were happy to have her give the answers they would have given anyway so that they didn't have to bother with it. "We need to do better" blah blah. In fact, we know it, because when did a coach ever come out and say, "No, I didn't say that to her"? When was the last time a coach said anything surprising? When was the last time we had a sideline report that actually gave non-obvious information aside from a just-injured player's status? This is why they give a woman the job of being the sideline reporter in the first place, because it's a bullshit job that contributes zero value to the broadcast outside eye candy for male viewers (queer women might appreciate the eye candy too, but let's be real, the networks are not thinking about queer women in selecting female sideline reporters). In a way I admire Thompson for recognizing it's a bullshit job and just playing into that. I see other reporters being very indignant, but they didn't/don't bring any more value to it than she did. It's a bullshit job. Thompson is just the one who's admitting it and isn't trying to pretend.
  20. I think this is the right call. MLB is different from the other sports in that one player cannot carry a team and one player cannot really make the other players around them better, with minor exceptions (catchers who are very good at calling pitches, an infielder who is great at the double-play tandem). So I don't feel excellent players should be penalized for playing on losing teams to the extent that they would be in another sport. But baseball has WAR- Wins Above Replacement - which measures how many wins a player does manage to bring a team over a generic player. I've pointed out before how a historically significant WAR is still a tiny number of a team's overall games, which underlines my point about baseball being different from other sports. Ohtani is #1 in WAR this season without it being close, he's at just over 10 WAR and it's rare to achieve 10 WAR - which is just about 6% of a team's schedule. Baseball just isn't the same as other sports. I don't see a reason to dismiss 10 WAR just because Ohtani played on a losing team. He's still a Most Valuable Player - which is why he's going to make a fortune in his upcoming deal(s).
  21. Black Knight

    The NBA

    It will cost him nearly 800K in salary, too. And if he does anything this blatant again, the next suspension will likely be 10. Might all that possibly get him to moderate himself a bit? Hahahahaha. But all of that actually pales in comparison to the possible ramification coming. GSW ownership has to be taking a hard look at that game. All of the big 3 out, and up against a very good team. Yet the team played both offense and defense well, and nearly came away with the win. Keeping Green, and putting up with all the drama he brings, for his defense may not really be a necessity anymore. And Thompson is shooting horribly. Sentiment aside, it seems like maybe the Warriors really only need Curry, and it may make a lot more sense just to surround him with talented youngsters with fresh legs. The difference energy-wise once Thompson and Green were booted was very noticeable. Kerr wouldn't go for it, but then, Kerr's not been extended. I don't expect him back next season.
  22. Jimmy Haslam deserves what he gets. I'd prefer Watson to go out and play poorly for every game of his contract, as opposed to getting injured, because that would be more humiliating for him and the Browns.
  23. This is a good rundown of the restrictions and requirements re: flexing, which does work towards keeping the NFL from flexing games just for the sake of flexing games.
  24. Shanahan has always drooled over Cousins. If the Niners don't get a SB win this year, I expect Shanahan to demote Purdy and bring in Cousins.
  25. One touch I liked is that both Madeline and Pym, after attempting to kill Verna only to learn that that doesn't work, each apologize to Verna. Very simply, just "I apologize." It was such an irony when Verna was promising Roderick that if he took the deal, his kids would never want for anything and never struggle, because we saw in the previous episodes that those kids were nothing but want and struggle. Verna appears to be essentially omniscient, so I would say that in this way she indeed was a trickster who was misleading in the terms she set out. I don't know if it would have changed Roderick's choice at all, and the show was very clear that it was his doing that all the kids were such a fucking mess (but also that that did not remove their own culpability for their awful actions), but the picture Verna presented was not remotely what the kids actually got. Yes, they had all the money they could want, but I went back and rewatched Verna's speech and she heavily implies that she's not just talking about material wants. Her closing lines are, "What's more loving, 40 years, 50 years of a gilded life? Or 70, 80 years of anxiety, tribulation and heartbreak?" Madeline and Roderick went from accidentally burying their mother alive to intentionally burying Griswold alive. I wonder if that's why they chose to kill him the way they did. Except for Lenore, the kids died in reverse birth order, but I think the reverse birth order is a red herring. They actually died in the reverse order of importance to Roderick, which fully accounts for Lenore - and Madeline as well. The three younger "bastards" were basically throwaways to him. We started seeing actual emotion from Roderick when it was Victorine's turn - Victorine who we also learned was the only one of the four "bastards" to have a board seat. He was pitching a fit about Tammy, who he mentioned was the most like him out of all his children. And it was obvious that Roderick really did favor Freddie (hence "Froderick"), because otherwise there is no way that useless git would have still been in the position of being the heir apparent. He got a billion chances from Roderick even though he was clearly the least capable of any of the kids. (Even Perry was actually onto something with his statement that his real business would be the leverage over all the important people at his parties. Verna no doubt appreciated that and Pym would have, had he known.) I'm not saying Roderick loved any of them outside of Lenore and Madeline, but there were varying degrees of mattering to him.
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