auntie thesis

I think that TPTB need to send the judges' save to the scrapheap. What's the point of saving someone like Mel? She seemed like a strong contender at first, but as the season has progressed, her work has really slid downhill. Droopclops was a mediocre idea. If she had had a stronger concept, it may have been a decent makeup. Passable, at least. However, she probably would have been in the bottom 2 regardless. Glenn would have thrown her under the bus for not following the parameters of the challenge or some other such thing like he always does when a contestant doesn't fulfill his exact vision for what he thinks fits the bill for a said challenge. Cyclops = Giant dude with one eye influenced by Greek mythology. The only liberties taken could be with paint jobs or fabricated pieces, not the actual concept of the cyclops itself. That's where Mel's design failed, imo. She went goofy/fun with a serious challenge. Not only did she take the challenge away from the focus of Cyclops, she then did a terrible job of it. There was nothing redemption worthy about that make up, although in all fairness Walt's Lavenpurpclops was pretty heinous and almost as far off the mark as Mel's Droopclops. So they both missed the mark by at least half a mile. Who to save? Well, I would have went with neither because both make ups were off the mark because both contestants ignored the primary point of the challenge: the eye. Walt thought that spending time painting Lavenpurpclops' body was more worthwhile that making the face worth looking at and Mel's concept was so terrible that I'm surprised Mr. Westmore didn't grab her initial sculpt and toss it out the door while McKenzie ripped up her sketches. Alas, I'll continue watching on DVR where I can fast forward through Mel's mini-meltdowns and the rest of the shenanigans at will.

Pretty much sums it up. :D

This season of Fixer Upper seems kinda...blah. It seems like they are running out of "old houses in dream neighborhoods" and are now just taking anyone in the region who wants them to redo their property and is willing and able to waste a certain percentage of their budget on Joanna's pointless decorative crap. Plus I've got this tinfoil hat-ish theory that some of their homeowners are likely fixing to rent and not to actually live in these places. At some point, they are going to run out of Baylorites who can afford to drop 200k+ on rehabbing old homes. They are also going to run out of side projects. Farmhouse, silo, B&B, what's next? Adopting a block or a town? Building a church? Tbh, I'd like for them to do something that isn't all about Magnolia Homes and making $$$. It might restore some of their "small-town folks making it big" charm that they had the first couple of seasons. As it stands, I give the show 1-2 more seasons at the most before people get tired of it and the whole shebang shows up on Netflix.

Eh, I'm not sure about either couple. I thought Dave and Ashley could have worked, if she had been willing to put forth like 1% effort. Neil and Sam, I didn't see working because he was too introverted and there was never really anything besides Sam's drama holding them together. 66% failure rate for this season. Time to change some things, get some new experts and stop train before this show turn into The Bachelor for Regular Folks.

JS as Stephanie is main factor behind why many of us will watch a second season of Fuller House, no doubt. She's also the reason why some of us put up with The Michelle Show during the early-mid 90s. You knew you were growing up when you quit relating to Michelle's antics and started to relate to Stephanie's struggles instead. I really hope that the second season is more centered on her character and less so on DJ. Tbh, I wouldn't mind if DJ was nearly absent like Danny was during the later years, only around to deliver a dopey feel-good dad moment and then carefully hanging on the background bitching about cleaning or laundry.

The experts seem more like narrators than anything else. They sit around and have their group chats and occasionally have a session with one of the couples via Skype. That's about it. Pretty pointless and their presence doesn't seem to add much, if anything, to the experiment. I do think that the marriages would fair better if they had more guidance or at least some consultation from time to time. However, I'm also in favor of a stronger screening process and scrapping the personality exams in favor of something more comprehensive and personal. A lot of the problems with the couples on this season were due to poor matchmaking, imho. Sam and Neil were never going to work and I think TPTB knew that and went through with it anyway for teh dramatiks!!! Ashley and Dave could have worked if they would have had some serious counseling and A LOT more time to get to know one another. Dave especially needed to work on the issues he had surrounding his father's death, imho. Ashley was far too reserved and honestly seemed cold most of the time. She signed up to marry a stranger and then proceeded to...well, do nothing to get to know the stranger she married. Then it was all his fault when he started talking to her friends to find out more about her. I wasn't surprised when he went on that date or whatever. At that point, I think he knew it wasn't going anywhere with Ashley so he was trying to give both of them a way out without it being so personal. Jmho.

I know that those dresses the girls wear are probably expensive boutique pieces or expensive Etsy purchases and I wonder: why pay that much for hideous? They look like ragamuffin castoffs from a 70s afterschool special most of the time. And please, brush their hair or get it cut. Both girls tend to look like they are badly in need of a shower and haircare, STAT. Confession: I think that 3 out of 4 Gaines kids got hit with the ugly stick. You can decide who they are. :P

Ugh, open concept. I'm a loyal viewer of Fixer Upper and I truly loathe the way that almost every single house has to be open concept. Even when the current layout of the home is actually workable or even nice. Personally, I think Joanna Gaines is just remaking the same house (the farmhouse!) every time. Almost every kitchen is some shade of white, with an island and a farm sink. WTF? Don't some homeowners opt to have kitchens that are closed off, more formal, or just say no to having a fucking immobile island hogging like 20-50% of the space? I also watch Love It or List It on occasion and they too are guilty of open concept abuse. EVERY SINGLE FAMILY/COUPLE just has to have an open concept. In some cases, open concept is necessary (visually impaired couple, people with lots of kids or pets, people with large furniture or media centers) but EVERYBODY? No, not everybody needs to have a kitchen that is visible from the front yard and has a clear view of the living room. I just hate the idea of planning on gutting houses from the get-go. Half the time, I think they'd get more bang for their buck if they just used the original layout and tweaked the design to fit the couple/family. I also get hung up on why 90% of the living rooms don't have a TV on display during the reveal. Who doesn't have a TV or at least a screen (computer, tablet) in their living room? How the hell are they going to watch the show if they don't have a TV? And why bother with elaborate designs and vintage furniture and such if it's just for show anyway? The more I think about it, Joanna Gaines seems particularly irrelevant...

I don't think FTFTF is the worst concept for a weight loss fakeality show. (See My Diet Is Better... for that.) All that aside, I do think that FTFTF is a gimmicky piece of crap that I have little desire to watch all the way through. Mostly because I am tired of every single weight loss show ignoring one of the major reasons why so many people are overweight/obese: economics. Carbs like flour, rice, pasta, cereal, bread, etc are cheaper and more energetically dense than fruits, veggies, and meat. They are also cheaper and more widely available than "good" foods. High carb, high sugar, processed foods comprise the poverty diet for exactly those reasons. I'd venture to guess that those of us raised in environments where eating various forms of the poverty diet is the norm have a stronger tendency to develop health conditions like pre-diabetes and high blood pressure and may be more prone to overeating and becoming overweight/obese. Some of this is due to scarcity. When I was growing up, we only went to the store twice a month (when my dad got paid). Mom had a list and we usually only got what was on it, with 2 "treats" (ice creams, candy bars) allowed per person. The rest of the time, we ate home cooked food. Lots of carbs, fried stuff, beans and rice, tortillas, cornbread, home baked cookies. Not healthy, even when supplemented by produce from our garden and generous helpings of flavorless canned "vegetable" mush. My younger sister and I still struggle with our weight as adults. It's not a secret that the habits we developed such as bingeing on treats on the way home and eating 2-3 helpings at every opportunity regardless of whether or not we were really hungry stuck with us as adults. It is difficult (but not impossible) to overcome those poverty diet habits. It is just something that needs to be acknowledged as part of the problem. Cheap processed foods that are high in carbs and sugar, and low in vital nutrition taste good to mask the fact that no one would eat corn 5x a day if it didn't taste like zingy powdered cheese or chocolatey sugary goodness. Think about it. A lot of overweight people (myself included) grew up eating like livestock. It isn't a mystery as to why today's kids are overweight and unhealthy. It's because we're stuffing most of them full of brightly colored and oddly flavored carbohydrate-based feed. I have an inkling that most of these health-nut trainers are used to shopping at Whole Foods and organic open-air markets, ordering specialized protein powders and supplements from sites that cater to special diets and/or fitness nuts and rarely eat anything pre-packaged or anything that they didn't make themselves. They probably don't stock up at Aldi and consider a visit to a chain restaurant to be a night out on the town. So of course they are going to experience severe shock as they stuff their gullets with Little Caesar's bacon-wrapped monstrosity called a pizza and wash it down with some Dr. Thunder. Just standing in line at LC's probably exposed them to whole other world of people they would normally never encounter. And to think that they themselves may end up becoming just another mouthbreather awaiting a $5 dinner for one. Oh the horror! Also, I think that Katie really did herself a disservice by not learning how to cook or how to eat good food when eating out. Seriously, boxed macaroni and cheese with some hamburger added isn't good. I'd puke and cry if I tried to force a giant bowl of that crap down my throat. Her client was a freaking chef! I'm sure he could have given her cooking lessons or hooked her up with a list of places he frequents in the city. I'm pretty sure Mateo didn't get to his weight by eating straight crap when he had access to Iberico pork at his restaurant! I'm sure that wasn't the only foodie ace up his sleeve.

I'm not saying that the challenges should be balls to the wall Survivor-style competition for prizes. Personally, I'd enjoy the show more if there were SOMETHING that the couples had to work together for/towards. Competing for prizes off of a "dream registry" would give them something to do besides sit around and mope about how the other person isn't the answer to the prayers/dreams for an ideal spouse whilst going on elaborate pre-planned dates to have awkward canned convos about trivial dramatic moments. I think that the prizes should be rewards for completing tasks as a couple and not the couples competing against the other couples. For example, the husband could have to plan a romantic evening out for his new wife. If he does this and both parties enjoy it, they could get a prize. Something along those lines. Or maybe the whole idea should just be to earn a real wedding and honeymoon at the end. I just think that something is lacking. This show is good, but it could be great if they reworked it and quit matching people based on arbitrary test results and interviews. ------ A side thought: I think that this show relies too heavily on churches to recruit people who want to be married without regards to whether or not the individual is ready for marriage. Either this show is about young Christians marrying other young Christians because church/God! Or it's a show about people looking for love after taking a personality test under a rock and veiling their true selves in their interviews. It can't be both without seeming insincere about the premises of marriage and divorce, imho.

So far I've watched 4 episodes of the new season. I've yet to see a single broken skull. Although that one really short chick scraped her inner thighs tumbling down that hill. Ouch.

Millennial = Person born between the years of 1985-2005, technically. Gen X'er = Person born between the years of 1964-1984, technically. Those are the working definitions I was thinking when I wrote my post above, fwiw.

So I started binge-watching this On Demand a few weeks ago. My ideas to fix the show: Get rid of all of the "Experts". Clean house with regards to production staff and whomever picks the participants. Lengthen the experiment to 12-16 weeks instead of limiting it to 6 weeks. Stop relying so much on test results and other such metrics. Numbers don't predict chemistry. Pay more attention to physical attraction. Both Sam and Ashley were not attracted to their husbands. WTF? MONITOR AND SCREEN THE SOCIAL MEDIA OF ALL PARTICIPANTS!!! No more of this sneaking around asking friends about your spouse bullshit. After all of that has been done, do a mixer (someone suggested this upthread). I would do a masquerade mixer or a costume party. Maybe a Halloween party? Everyone has to stay in costume or wear a mask the whole time. Everyone also wears a placard on their person. This placard would have a number or a symbol on one side and some basic information on the other (name, profession, religious beliefs, one interesting fact). They play some games (20 Questions, Pictionary, Charades, Rockband, DDR, pool, whatever), dance, nosh, etc. Then they do a speed date thing where they sit down with each participant for like 5-10 minutes, masks still on, and do a 3 question AMA with each other. At the end of this, each person rates the other participants with regards to compatibility and then the experts or whoever matches the participants for a shotgun wedding in a secret location. After the wedding, they get back to real life in a house that is already set up and paid for the length of the experiment. Each week should have a theme of sorts and a challenge. Like maybe they compete against other couples or they have to complete tasks or whatever to earn prizes off of a "dream registry". The couples would be allowed to choose their own prizes. I think that would be a good way for the couples to break the ice and decide what is important to them, as well as giving them a way to assess the tastes and convictions of their spouse. The prizes would have to be decent though. Like vehicles, high end kitchen equipment, appliances, furniture, stuff you'd actually need if you were to move into a new home together. No deep discussions and made for TV drama over a Bed Bath and Beyond gift card...unless it's for like 5k lol. The grand prize could be a real wedding, with an awesome honeymoon of their choosing. All of these prizes would likely require sponsors, along with the wedding and honeymoon. More $$$. Personally, I'd find the show I described above much more interesting than MAFS as it currently is. They need to spice things up and stop trying to force certain things on the audience. I get that the main appeal is supposed to be millennials and late gen x'ers who are currently interested in serious relationships, marriage, kids, etc but probably don't have those things because it's a bitch finding someone who isn't gay, taken, or crazy, period. But if you're to the point where you getting married without ever interacting with the other person...well, that's a little desperate and weird to me. Marriage at first sight is almost a gimmick anyway. It would be funny to watch the couples fail IF some of them didn't seem so invested in the concept of a perfect marriage and happy family shortly after. So let's set these couples up for some sort of long term success. You won't get that by forcing them to tap dance around intimacy and shady pasts while talking about their values and faith, all with a camera shoved in their faces. You don't get genuine love and care on a honeymoon with someone you've known for a few hours. Hell, you may not get it with someone you've known for years, but at least you won't be weirded out if the person you've known for years farts in their sleep and brings a deathcloud of destruction above your hotel room.

Ha! I was just thinking about this the other day. Can Gia please come back in season 2? Maybe she's a sixth grade teacher? Lol, how great would that be! Maybe she works at Jackson and Ramona's school and Steph runs into her at parent-teacher conferences...

The dessert baskets are what have been making it hard to watch for me. Cookies, rice puff treats, frozen yogurt sundaes...c'mon, those are easy-cheesy. I'd venture to guess that the kids on Rach and Guy's Cook-Off (who are all younger than the contestants we've had so far on Chopped:Teens) will be getting more complex ingredients to work with in their challenges. I'm not against the ingredients themselves, I just don't think that they belong in a dessert round basket UNLESS they are paired with either rare curveball ingredient that no one will recognize like strange fruits or foreign items or something that doesn't fit at all like hot sauce, strong herbs, beans, stinky cheese, etc. I also think that since they are getting an extra 10 min for appis, those baskets should be a bit more challenging as well. I'd like to see some dessert items in those baskets, perhaps some everyday items that the kids may be familiar with that would have to be transformed ie pbj sandwich, cheetos, ramen, spaghetti sauce, etc. The french fries in the first episode were a nod to this, but none of the kids excuted them well. I'm just going to say this because it has been bothering me: Lucy should have won the last episode. I feel like Dante was handed the win because his sob story was more convincing. I know he works one-on-one with a chef mentor and all that jazz, but if this were an actual episode of Chopped and not an episode during a VSE competition series, she would have won for her creativity. I know that I personally would rather watch someone who is creative and having fun in the kitchen over a self-promoting sourpuss any day of the week. I've seen professional chefs that screwed up worse than Lucy who went on to win. Most recently, that kooky lady who was going to use her money to teach troubled youth how to bake bread. I had some notions of this last week up until Jay got chopped over kid-that-won. So which is it show: best sob story or best self-promotional tactics? Most deserving or most watchable? Since they are handing out scholarships, I think that they should limit the contestant pool to charity cases and serious competitors if it is truly about who is most deserving OR ditch the scholarship component if the winners are going to be determined by criteria other than financial need and merit. If the competition is about "Passion is all it takes; anyone can win." then the show should reflect that by dividing the contestants into categories, imo. Serious chef kids who are in vocational programs on one episode, charity cases on another episode, food-passionate kids who aren't training to be chefs on another episode, and a wildcard episode for everyone who doesn't fit into the other categories. Maybe even let the viewers vote for the 16 kids who would get an opportunity to compete, or at least who would get to appear on the wildcards show. I want to like this competition, I really do. But I can't if it keeps on like it is now. I think that it is far more fakeality than genuine and that Chopped could do more to improve this concept in the future. Because I for one am not interested in hearing teenagers' sob stories any more than I am adults'. /rant over.

Mikayla looked like she may have had some sort of health condition. Something was off, but I was impressed with her shrimp cleaning. Tweezahs, please! Gnocchi Boy...well, I think that he got ahead of himself. If he hadn't have screwed up those frog's legs, I think he could have taken Dante out. Dante's dish was safe. Lucy's entree was whack. Frog bones in the pasta. What the freakin' hell? C'mon girl, get your head in the game. I knew she was going to make it to the dessert round though. The spooky, kooky ones usually do. Dante was the clear shoo-in. Mentor, Daddy issues, Mommy worship, giving God the glory...plus he had the stankiest stank face evah! during the judging sessions. I'm sorry to say that Chopped teens has been lackluster so far. The baskets are far too soft for my tastes. Especially the dessert baskets. Last week they had rice puff treats, this week cookies. Next week they'll probably have ice cream and the week after that graham crackers or pudding cups. All of the stuff is like 101, maybe 102. I also don't like how the judges treat them like special snowflakes that are going to melt if they apply too much heat to them. Why praise mediocrity just because the person is a "kid"? Sure, if the kid is crying like Makayla, go easy. But there isn't any reason why they can't lay into cocky smugsters like Dante and the kid who won last week, imho.

No where are they nows yet. A few of the former participants have turned into life coaches and the like. Jacquie from season 2(?) has been on a few times. Bruce from this season will undoubtedly be back next year as well.

IIRC, any episodes that occurred prior to the first champions tournament were pretty good. Back then, they had a rotating panel of Geoffrey, Amanda, Scott, Aaron, Chris, Marcus and Alex. All male panels were common and Geoffrey was ruthless in his commentary. Scott was also a lot harsher in the early days and Aaron was usually billed as the "resident Latin expert" or something of that nature. Maneet was rarely around and she looked really pregnant in early seasons, I think. Alex was much more bearable, since she wasn't on every other show yet. She had just came off of competing in NIC, IIRC. People were often (but not always) chopped for forgetting ingredients. The chefs were usually there to win. Ted didn't walk around the kitchen trying to interview contestants. They didn't restock the fridge after every round either, meaning that bacon, butter, and cream were usually gone by the dessert round. They was less bullshit, imo. The end of the quality era in regard to Chopped came after Lauren's unexpected trouncing of Wayne in the first champions tournament. That was probably one of the highest of the points in the show's history, imo. She was a total dark horse and she whipped everyone with that red wine and suckling pig ravioli that remains to be the only dish that effectively silenced Alex for most of the episode. I can't remember if the Lance/Yoanna episode occurred before or after the first champions round, but that was probably the best episode in the show's history, imho. Lance's first appearance would round out my top three. All of those were early episodes. The first Grilling tournament was what really stuck the nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned. That sucked and the show had been going downhill and leaning towards sob stories every since.

I just got around to watching the Teen tournament. I was excited about it at first because I thought I'd be getting a break from idiotic sob stories and shownanigans. Nope. First episode was a standard episode of Chopped. Our constestants: Loopy girl. Openly gay minority boy. Young cocky upstart. Serious food blogger. They got a 30 min appi round. They had insanely easy baskets with no real curveball ingredients. That dessert basket was a joke. The whole episode felt very flat to me and I didn't really care who won or lost. In fact, I read 2 chapters from my bedtime book and almost missed who won. They gave the win to the smug upstart whom I didn't like and sent the openly gay boy home. Whoop de whoop.

I don't think that Brandi was horribly unpleasant. She wasn't the most likeable person they have ever had on the show, but she was far from the worst. (Ty comes to mind, as does Nyla and a few others from previous seasons.) I wasn't sure but how much she had missed the goals. I know 40% was the goal to get skin surgery and she had only reached 38.xxxx% at the 9mo weigh-in. I didn't recall the lbs goal being 180 to get it, but in all fairness, I was FFing through most of the last half hour because I had to leave for work afterwards. Agreed. I have to wonder how much of her lackluster efforts reflected her upbringing. She mentioned quitting everything when she was a tween. Did her parents not put their feet down and tell her that she needed to finish what she started, etc? It seems to me that she just kept giving up and doing whatever she wanted and then having tantrums when the results came back to bite her in the butt. I think the reason why I didn't really feel Brandi's story was that a lot of it seemed to be based around issues that were never addressed. Usually we get a montage and a meltdown or two about childhood upbringing, college, first loves, big regrets, whatever that shed some light on how the person got the way they are. Dave, Charita and Kathie all had such stories that made their episodes watchable and they themselves easier to root for. Brandi didn't have that, imo. It was a cut and paste "used to be a pageant princess, then I got fat" storyline that seemed more fitting of MTV's "I Used to Be Fat" than EWL. Brandi herself seemed to be stuck in the mentality of a late teen/college student even though she was pushing 30. (IIRC, she was 27 or 28. I might be wrong though.) I also thought that Chris indulged her a bit too much at the beginning. Rocco made her a junky looking meal that was oddly devoid of any vegetables or fruit. She was having Sunday funday with no restrictions later on, per Chris' program. He works with food addicts. He should know that you can't give them license to eat whatever they want. It just doesn't work like that. You wouldn't give an alcoholic non-alcoholic beer in rehab, or let them have wine on Sundays...so why let a food addict fill up on essentially empty calories and low fat/calorie free garbage and let them have junky crap on Sundays? I suppose that the program is workable if people can have a normal meal with their family or maybe a single 20oz soda or a candy bar on Sundays, but obviously Brandi was going way beyond those boundaries. I believe that Chris knew about the sabotage and if he didn't, TPTB and her trainers in Georgia did. Ultimately, Brandi was responsible for herself and she failed. That is probably why they kept revising her goals and denied her skin surgery at the 9mo mark, imo.

I didn't care much for Brandi. There. I said it. I did like that this was a Chris episode with minimal Heidi. I also like the Triathlon training guy, although I did think that a half Ironman was a big ambitious for a six month goal. I really don't have much to say that hasn't been said already. Shitty makeovers? Check. Liar McLiarface caught lying? Check. Unresolved daddy issues? Check. Messy breakup that was awkward to watch on camera? Check. Overworked person trying to get into an unrealistic health routine? Check. Chris' unwarranted indignation at the weigh ins? Check. Why no skin surgery? Check. Girl had some vicious bingo wings and was in need of skin removal surgery. If Josh and Dave got skin surgery for their gut overhang and mantits, then why couldn't Brandi get it for her bingo wings? Big wah-wah over her missing the mark by 4lbs and that was enough for the show to say "Fuck no, you cannot have your bingo wings removed!" to her? Didn't make sense to me, but this show rarely does.

ITA. Makeover = suck. My bad. Yes. THERE IS A CORRELATION. The less we see of Heidi, the better. Chris is a much better choice, imo. I don't mind if Heidi is in the background, or working as an associate trainer. Or even brought in to deal with people in certain situations (eating disorder, Chris is sick or busy, etc). She just doesn't do it for me show-wise though. She's not particularly warm or relatable. She's not motivational. She's just kinda...there. Yelling. Crying. Scripted drama. It would be different if she were a good actress or had the persona to pull some serious bitchery or motivational trainer/friend hybrid off, but she doesn't. She's a bland bottle blond with a hot bod and a semi-famous husband. That's all. Nothing to aspire to, imo. I really like Dave and I'd rather watch people like him and Charita than the assorted box of nuts we've had so far this season. They seem to be the only two thus far that were actually in it for themselves. Their stories had a realness to them that no one else's has so far. Or perhaps they just seemed like people that I knew and that's why I liked them both. Dave's story was sad. There wasn't a neat wrap-up with a pretty bow at the end. He was working through his issues and mending things with his parents and remaining brother. I liked that about this episode. It was similar to Charita's situation in that even after she had the family meeting with her parents to discuss her abortion, there wasn't a tidy resolution to the issues. It was just a day-by-day working through of the issues. It was messy, it was emotional, but it was REAL. Or so it seemed. Too much of the other participants storylines have been too scripted or too pushy, imho.

The final weight was 201 lbs, if memory serves. This episode was a drama-free, almost Heidi-less show. Yay! I liked Dave and his backstory was actually one that I could relate to. I was cheering him on. I think this episode will end up being one of the better ones this season. This is what I want to see, fwiw. Not more show-nanigans and disaster porn. Just determined people who really want to lose the weight.

I'm not 100% on the Heidi hatetrain yet. Yet being the key word. Awaiting tonight's episode since I'm off work for a few days. Whoo. It's another guy episode, so hopefully that means less Heidi and more Chris. This season seems to have crashed and burned. It's like watching the charred remains of an accident, puffing faint whisps of smoke from the smoldering wreckage. Maybe it's not THAT bad, but I seriously sense a nosedive in quality. The 2nd and 3rd seasons were both pretty good. The 1st was shaky, but that was to be expected. This season seems to be way shakier than even the first one was. I blame Heidi for some of it, but it also seems like the caliber of the participants has gone down as well. We've only had one really inspirational go-getter, imho, and that was Charita in episode 1. So far, she's been the only one that I can even half-assedly say that I liked. Kathie wasn't too terrible, but the weird Daddy storyline with Josh really screwed that episode up for me. Jayce and Bruce were both bland. I didn't even make all the way through Jayce's episode. Bruce and Chris had an epic bromance. I haven't seen anything like it outside of Bob Harper's TBL cargo cults of years past. The whole episode was really odd for me. It seems like TPTB cast solely for shock value and sob stories, aka low-hanging fruit. Sad. Maybe next season will be better but I doubt it. Last I read on the casting site, they were casting couples for next season. As in, "engaged and wanting to lose weight for TEH BIG DAY!" Gag. I have a bad feeling that means more Heidi and more whack makeovers...and more histronics ala "Say Yes to the Dress"...gah.

DVR'd epis still count towards ratings. I suspect most of us watch via DVR, fast forward through 30%-75% of the show, and go on with our lives. Some of us watch online as well, which sucks since you have to watch the ads in the ABC app. Such is life. Tuesday nights are slow anyway. AGT is fine, but EWL's main competition is probably Chopped on the Food Network. :-/