Rancide

This is not what I remember. I remember Julian refusing to go through with the experimental procedure because he wanted to hold his bone marrow over Sonny's head a la Ava's fetus as a kind of life insurance policy, which I remember being the original--and in my opinion justified--source of the friction between Sam and Julian. Julian refused to even try to bank his marrow for his grandson.

Nathan Molly

I hated the editing of this episode. I thought Sandhya was being whiny and immature because I saw no indication that the other two were bullying, but then her teammates spent the rest of the episode being about as heinous as I've ever seen anyone be on this show, so I'm going to give Sandhya--who could have thrown them under the bus but did not--the benefit of the doubt and assume that the worst incidents of bullying (pre-Tim convo) were not shown. God, who goes into the holding room AFTER elimination and starts whining about how the judges hated someone else more but couldn't pick that person so you got screwed? It's over. Accept defeat graciously and move on. I hated the winning design. I feel like I've seen that dress at least twice before, by designers who were either eliminated or almost eliminated for it. I'm remembering a very early season candy challenge with string (?) and lifesavers (?). And maybe a hardware challenge with twine (?) and washers (?). Why is it so great this time? I don't mind muslin in the unconventional materials challenge to give support and structure, but the model would have been nude without the muslin here. It was a muslin dress with some string over it. WTF?

Nathan Bobbie

Diane Nathan

Maybe she could donate half her facial expressions to her brother? The best part of today's episode was when Nina said she could always tell when James was upset because of how he touched his face. It's like the writers have given up hope that one day the actor playing Nathan might be able to convey emotions through actual acting and have instead decided to just have him stand there and do hand signals.

If Julian goes to jail for shooting Mickey while Sonny continues to walk around free after [take your pick], I may have to commit an act of violence myself.

I don't know if I'm happy or sad that we've evidently cycled into the heap o' stories I don't care about featuring people who suck block taping session. It certainly makes watching the show a lot faster. Sam and Silas's "break up" continues to be stupid beyond words. Silas spends months looking alternately bored or irritated by his wife. One day Sam announces they need to break up because Silas "obviously" still has feelings for her. Now, one day later, Sam is telling Silas they broke up because Silas said he still had feelings for his wife. Are the people who write this show obligated to watch it? It appears they often do not. I don't care if it's wrong, I like Julian and Ava better than I like Julian and Alexis. I couldn't bring myself to watch anything else.

Diane Danny

Today was particularly bad on that score. Granted, the only parts I watched were Juilan/Ava and the Alexis household. But I had to hear Molly tell Alexis that she only came back because Julian was gone, Julian tell Ava that he ran two businesses, one that was a front for the other. Other stuff, too. This is another reason we need more friends on this show--people should be summing up previous episodes by having conversations with their friends, not by talking to themselves aloud or having bizarre conversations in which they say aloud something the other person clearly already knows. Ava and Julian are awesome. They're such good frienemy siblings. I also love MW and have been very annoyed I've had to ff her for the last few months because Sonny. The Alexis stuff was whatever, but watchable. There was nothing else I could bring myself to look at.

Nathan Diane

Nathan (terrible actor) Diane (we've killed off the mob, so there's nothing left for her to do)

Forgive the question because I admit to ffing the Baby Rabies plotlines, but is there still a Lante embryo on the loose? And if so, is there any way Nina could get hold of it? Please, no? I was really squicked by (what I very much hope were not) the Nina baby anvils on Friday.

Okay, re-editing in what I'd said because someone had already "liked" it. If backstage gossip stuff is allowed, I'd prefer a separate thread for that and another one for people's opinions about show management (e.g. writing, directing, budgeting, scheduling, etc.) They seem to me to be two different topics and some people might be interested in one but not the other.

I hope Mitchell's childhood was really terrible for him to still be whining about it in public at the age of 25. Sheesh, dude. Save something for the second date. I was surprised that Hernan (too short, too tight, no design, ugly fabric) or Emily (Renaissance Festival bustier) didn't hit the bottom. I thought Kini's all-floral Ann Taylor dress was pretty fug, too. I didn't really have a problem with the Pube pants. I also think Tim needs to see more naked women. I think you'd have to come from a remarkably hairy clan to have to worry about your bush showing in those. All-black chick seemed, like Amanda, to have completely ignored the theme. Does the Samsung sponsorship mean we're going to see a challenge that involves only materials from the fully stocked fridge?

Nathan Diane

Exactly. Sam could have accused Nina and had Silas take Nina's side and have had that been the fight. She also could have broken up with him when Nina came back to town and Silas decided to let Nina live with him. It's dumb. And it's one of the reasons I don't believe this "break-up." It's like the show is going out of its way to let us know that the problems aren't real. Yes, show, we get it. KELLY MONACO AND MICHAEL EASTON 4EVAR!!!! I think the show underestimates how much more interesting couples are when you have to actually root for them. I was not a Liason fan, but I think a big part of the attraction there was that there was YEARS of will they/won't they coyness. Years of timing being off, signals being missed, etc. Relationships are more interesting when you don't know the outcome in advance. Heck, one of the reasons McBam was way hotter than Silas/Sam was that it wasn't clear where it was going or how it was going to turn out. More ambiguity, please! I'm pretty annoyed at the moment, mostly because for a couple of weeks there a couple of week back this Rafe thing looked like it was going to be a pretty interesting story. It took place at the hospital, it involved a bunch of different characters, including some that don't typically interact, and wove together a bunch of different strands of story (Robin's leaving, Rafe's death, Alice's heart attack, the drug smuggling, whatever is going on with Nina, etc.) that were not otherwise obviously related. I was intrigued. And now it's reverted to silly. Oh, well.

Today's episode made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I was mercifully absent during the years in which Jax's rape was made fun of, but Nina giving Silas drugs and talking about wanting a baby gave me the serious willies. Please, please, please show, don't go there. Silas and Sam's "break up" continues to make no sense. Sam both thinks Silas isn't over his wife and that he should be with her AND thinks his wife is a crazy loon who is faking being paralyzed? Come again? I really hope this isn't a stupid plot contrivance to make it so that Silas's upcoming sexual assault doesn't count as cheating (since on this show being a male rape victim is a form of infidelity). Loved Ava and Julian, was annoyed stupid Mickey had to be there. I don't care how many years it's been, I still get startled every time Ned calls Tracy "mother." When I was a kid I couldn't understand how someone could be the same age as his mom, and that's still basically how I feel about it. Did not watch: Sonny, Shawn.

I'm going to vote annoying minor characters for a while. We've killed off half the people on contract, and I don't want the last people standing to be the ones we see once every 2 months. Carlos Diane

Silas and the lone tear have GOT to stop. They crack me up every time, and I don't even hate ME.

I'm refusing to take bait. I still don't believe it. That break-up was... weird. On one hand, it felt way more final-seeming than I was expecting--there was an actual conversation about how and why things weren't working, which generally comes across as more serious and final than the door-slamming pouty fight that I was expecting. (See: "your wife had a WILL???") On the other hand, the how and and why that were discussed made absolutely no sense. Silas looks at Nina like she's someone's annoying pet he's been asked to babysit and pays maybe 10% attention when she's talking. But Sam is breaking up with him because she thinks he still has feelings for her and that his life is with her now? Sam wasn't more than 10 feet from Silas for 6 months. But she hugs Patrick twice, and now she's supposedly neglecting Silas for the sake of Patrick? I'd maybe believe this was real if the things that were coming out of their mouths accorded even a little bit with what we've seen on camera. I'm going with fake-out. I give it two weeks. Maybe a month, tops. I also refuse to get my hopes up for my beloved SamTrick. The show has let me down too often in the past! For the rest of the show: Julian looks lovely in his undies, but I wish someone would tell him not to sit on the edge of the bed with his legs spread apart like that. It was really not a flattering posture. Lying to Molly is stupid, but whatever. Love Patrick and Anna. Love them talking even when the crap they're saying makes no sense. Did not watch anything else.

I don't hate anyone. Everyone has their tastes and preferences, and I don't think mine are better or worse than anyone else's. I don't even have an opinion about Guza's skill as a storyteller or affection for the show because I was so offended by the actual plots that I couldn't watch. He could have been writing Shakespeare for all I know. Just different preferences. I'll take RC and his embarrassing twitter antics over Guza and his 24/7 mob focus any day. I still don't watch the mob stories under RC, but at least I'm only ffing 25% of the show now instead of 80%. And glory be, occasionally a whole week goes by with no Sonny! I'll take it.

I'm far from a huge fan of RC, and I have many complaints about the current show, but I honestly usually can't even be bothered to rant because I find him so much better than Guza that I forgive him a lot anyway. Between pushing mob morality, killing off young women who were legacy characters in violent deaths, and firing the vets, I found the Guza version of the show so offensive that I could not watch it. I literally stopped watching the show circa 2006/2007 as a direct result of being so offended by what was going on that I couldn't bear to look at it any more. I didn't start watching again until I heard that there was a new head writer. I dunno, I just can't ever get worked up about RC because he gets so many "not Guza" points in my head that I never make it beyond the mild head-shaking or eye-rolling stage of frustration with any of his antics.

Carlos Nathan Diane

Once this is over, it might be interesting to play a version of the game where you get three (then two, then one) up votes per day along with three (then two, then one) down votes. The incentives of this game are interesting--you get hit hard if a segment of the audience hates you, but you get no help if a segment of the audience loves you. With certain polarizing characters (Patrick, Liz, Ava) this could potentially lead to an early demise even though those characters also have a lot of fans. I'm curious to see how this plays out. It's possible that because of how the incentives line up and how you can only vote against people and can never vote for them, the entire thing may be won by, like, Danny. Or Rocco. I'd be curious to see how (if at all) differently things would shake out in a version of the game that had up and down votes. But hey, we have years here together to figure all these things out!