sharifa70

I have a hard enough time wrapping my brain around what I see as egregious food waste on Chopped, but then they go and do a “gargantuan” twist? Unless there was a line of homeless people a block long outside the studio waiting for the leftovers, this was absolutely appalling. I’ve never gone hungry a day in my life but this makes me actually angry. Food prices are sky-high and they do this? Badly done, Chopped.

I sort of remembered Bailey, but wow - I didn’t recognize Slavik and I just looked up his season - sadly, none of the names ring any bells for me.

And Jaja and Dominic! Yay! Also: Phillip Chbeeb and Hok have choreography credits!

Um, I wasn’t even close. My brain kept yelling “Blithe Spirit no that’s too modern it was whatever the hell Lincoln went to see Blithe Spirit NOT BLITHE SPIRIT YOU FOOL IT WAS EIGHTEEN SIXTY FOUR AND CLEARLY LINCOLN EVEN THOUGH IT’S TOO SOON.”

Ugh, that might be worse (Endeavour worse than Will, I mean). I can’t stand being around people who not only know they’re the smartest ones in the room but treat everyone else like they don’t know anything. I could work with Annika for sure. And Father Brown, Vera, Lewis, Hathaway, and both Barnabies. On topic: I loved Fitzroy gathering the troops to stand up to his father. I hope Wellington doesn’t pay for it again. I really do enjoy Eliza’s motley crew: Hattie, Ivy, Moses, Clementine. More Scoobies, please!

Since we don’t see it all the time I suspect they conspired amongst themselves.

I’m not crazy about Andrew’s playing style (that long pause before he answers makes me very tense), but I enjoyed this final immensely. Their little skits as they were introduced each game were adorable. Yay for Amy! She has such good, positive energy and she has been such a pleasure to watch.

Aaaauuuuuuggggghhhh I got Will from Grantchester. We’d kill each other in the first ten minutes. I like his taste in music but that’s it. Anyone wanna trade?

So… Alan was murdered over…an anagram that made the main character’s name ridiculous? What a massive letdown that was for me. I figured out the murderer right away because that actor seems to be The One What Dunnit in everything I see (except that one Bollywood movie), but I found the motive to be ridiculous, and after that I didn’t even care about the last 20 minutes. Boo.

Yes! I say this almost every time I see her. All she needs is foot-long eyelashes to complete the anime look. I loved Bruce’s story about going home with the fan.

Ok, normally I’m rolling my eyes at most of the drummed-up Jeopardy outrage, but this time? They seriously couldn’t come up with a better way to clue “Alligator” than bringing up the death by his own hand of a (suspected) murderer? Aside from that, I enjoyed this episode. Yay, Wil!

As a Pacific Northwest resident who’s still processing the cancellation of King and Snow crab seasons, I had a hard time watching that king crab getting mixed in and buried with other ingredients. My admittedly very gatekeepery opinion of Alaskan crab (as well as Dungeness, and Alaskan salmon) is those ingredients don’t deserve to be treated like yet another part of a recipe. They're so marvelous on their own that I am cursing the producers who introduced King crab into a challenge that requires the ingredients to be transformed. No. It deserves to be on a plate with a lemon wedge and some melted butter. Every one of those appetizer plates was sacrilegious.

The exhibition match is preempted in my market (West Coast) and I’m so frustrated by it (even though I was also really bothered by the flappy hands and wasn’t looking forward to seeing them again). Our polls haven’t even closed yet, for crying out loud!!!!!

The word “Christian” was bleeped in yours? I didn’t have that at all.

And ditch the “Master of Chaos” if it’s going to stay as a pre-recorded video. I mean, come on, show. Zoom is a thing now; there was no reason those interactions couldn’t have been live. I was rooting for Anthony 🥹 but I was glad to see DJ win. That back piece, though not my cup of tea, was pretty amazing.

I really enjoyed how that first introductory segment felt so organic in how it came full circle and everyone’s conversation flowed so well. I’m not a devoted Taylor Swift fan, but I do always enjoy when I catch her interviews. I appreciate that she is confident enough in herself to share compliments and give credit where it’s due. It’s often a hard lesson to learn that showing appreciation for other people’s work doesn’t minimize your own. Eddie Redmayne is always such a charmer.

I actually thought Hasan was funny. I was rooting for Wil but I like Hasan and actually laughed over Mayim’s “time’s up! TIME’S UP!” because it was so unexpected. Yes, I know I’m being inconsistent because I hated episode two when all the players were just goofing off.

Ordinary Victorian women being rather extraordinary: https://medium.com/history-of-women/an-1889-magazine-asked-single-women-why-they-arent-married-and-ouch-the-replies-eab5853e1f45

I think the point of the show is there were women in Victorian times who acted like her: strong, independent, trying to make their way in a world that imposed certain behaviors and expectations on them. Nellie Bly is a great real-world example. As a journalist she went undercover and allowed herself to be committed to an asylum in order to expose the conditions there. She also famously went around the world in 72 days as a challenge to Verne’s novel. Women with “modern” sensibilities and ambitions aren’t a tv invention.

That’s because Meet Me in St. Louis is set in 1903 and the first documented s’mores recipe is from a 1927 Girl Scout handbook. I don’t know how popular s’mores might have been by the time the movie was made, but my own experience (50 years old, American) was the first s’more I ever had was at a Girl Scout camp-out in the early 80’s. I had never heard of them before I joined.

I loved the opening scene with Eliza and the ladies’ Not-a-Group-You-Uncultured-Heathen. I also loved Eliza and Hattie working together, as well as the last scene with William telling Eliza to use the things she can’t change about herself rather than fighting them. The mystery itself was way too contrived and heavy-handed for me, with too many plotholes.

They have. It was a signature bake last season during “Free From” week.

Even more specifically, the “fitz” originally implied illegitimacy. Hmmmm…. He had specifically asked her if she would have refused to investigate the case if he had asked her to, and they were interrupted before she could answer. He was feeling undermined by her as well as by his boss, and it was a fair question. Her bringing it up before they went to dinner was fair, as was his cancellation. I like their relationship but I also like that the show explores the very real tension that is present with her relationships, her place in society as a woman, and her desire for independence.

Without these bakes we never would have gotten Paul Jagger’s lion bread or Nadiya’s soda pop cake. I am 100% a fan of the engineering.

I love the builds! It’s so much fun to see what people can do beyond simple layer cakes or gingerbread houses (I say simple despite not having ever actually made a gingerbread house, but they’re the only engineered bakes I ever might run across in the wild). Though I did snicker at the highfalutin s’mores (we’ve come a long way from only getting them at Girl Scout campouts!), I did appreciate the various skills that were required. I wouldn’t have been able to do any of that from scratch, since (as most of the bakers said) it’s cheaper to just buy the fixings. I agree that my biggest issue would be with time. Although I can be efficient in the kitchen when I have to be, some of those challenges seem to be set up so that if you have to pause to fish a bit of shell out of your egg bowl, your whole bake is doomed. We’ve reached the point in the show where all of the eliminations will be sad for me. My favorites to watch are Janusz, Kevin, and Syabira for the joy they bring, but Maxy, Sandro, and Abdul (and his delightful blowtorch noises) are so strong and they come up with some beautiful creations.