innocuouspuff

We've got Kelley twice and Joe not all, so correct that oversight and I agree! Though Jeremy may be one of the winners with no desire to play again, I think.

So Kelley definitely plays again, yes? Spencer also? Keith maybe possibly, and Tasha no way? "Aw, heck." We love you and stay eloquent, Mr. Nale.

Well, I think Jeremy very carefully didn't say "you should vote for me because pregnancy". The implication may be there but he didn't frame it that way. Just talking about why he's playing, and truthfully. I love the way he leveraged completely accurate facts in the ftc, with that news and the Kimmi stuff also.

Spencer's trying his best but has the personal growth story ever won anyone the million. Goddamn Jeremy making me and the jury cry. And actually dropping the baby news in a flawless, non-desperate/tacky context. Perfect speech.

Good point, he got the best of both worlds. Putting any potential ricochet votes on Spencer without actually having to break away from his "voting bloc" to vote for him. Poor Keith is always a bridesmaid. Seeing him go all the way would have been fun.

I really doubt it. She'd be getting sub-plots about fundraising committees and party invitations, et cetera. Which is not to downplay the amount of work that goes into being a politician's spouse or to say there's nothing there for the writers to work with, but a lot of it is the invisible, female coded type stuff that they are trying hard to keep Henry away from. So instead he's the only CIA employee who can get them intel on Russia and it's pretty ridiculous. And honestly Henry actually dealing with home and local stuff could be made really interesting if they tried, or if he had his own more realistic Washington-based career in politics/lobbying/activism. Though I guess we sorta have that show and it's called The Good Wife.

It's not shocking that she wouldn't tell them about the car, but the framing of her reasoning as so adult and noble was weird to me. She was mainly trying not to get in trouble. Understandable, but also understandably frustrating to mom and dad. This season just takes place in a melodramatic alternate history universe, I can't decide if I'm totally onboard with it but it's fun. Henry's storyline has been bugging me because I'm not sure that, if the genders were reversed, they would feel the need to give Mister Secretary's wife such a large part of the real action. But this week it was like, please put him back in his own isolated storyline! They don't know what to do with him, but I don't think they'd be nearly so stumped if he were female? idk.

I don't hate Stevie but...I think she bores me? However despite usually loving this show for its overly optimistic progressive outlook, this ep may have been too much. Like if Bess is an anti-slut-shaming feminist, that's to be expected. If Henry is and loses his temper on tv, also to be expected - he's basically adorably perfect after all. Aren't all jet pilot spies also feminists? But then littlest wants to quit the football team in a teenaged stand for feminism, the ex-secret service guy feels really bad about everything, and he and Stevie have the longest, most pointless conversation in the last act. Don't get me wrong, slut-shaming is terrible. But it's pretty unrealistic and kinda narratively unbalanced to the point of distraction for everyone (except faceless phone-in caller) to be so aware of that. The dinner was adorable as is everything Bess/Henry. Presumably the actors got chosen in part because of their great chemistry, so I wouldn't criticise them for not having to pretend harder to like each other. Often that's actually a disaster. :)

Yeah, was thinking the same about the LSAT. The logic section takes a lot of very smart people some practice to get the hang of; they're puzzles requiring a specific approach. So taking them without a clue how she'd do actually seemed irresponsible? I mean I guess as the SoS' daughter mediocre or bad test scores might not actual affect her school or scholarship options, but I was rolling my eyes pretty hard.

Yeah, there have been a couple comments here and there that the cab driver messed them up by getting lost on the way to the lion walk but I thought he clearly wasn't lost so much as talked out of going in that direction by our confused athletes. You could see the "um, ok, if you're sure" expression on his face. And then they just kept being confused about everything else as well, lol.

I feel bad for the cab driver that he is getting blamed around the fandom as I didn't perceive it to be his fault at all. He understood that the lion walk and main lodge were different places, but the ladies didn't and confused him by insisting their destination was the lodge. So he took them where they were claiming they wanted to go. I'm sure the clue as well as signs clarified the real destination where the walk commenced.Two reading fails, on the *same damn clue*. Amazing indeed.

Thought that was fun from Stephen's blog since through this ep we'd only really been seeing Angkor. (Ejaculated at full volume lol. Stephen we already know your vocabulary is excellent, no need to prove it all the time.) Although I keep forgetting to read the blog as it's been going up so late. Guess CBS has to vet it for state secrets?http://www.people.com/article/survivor-cambodia-second-chance-stephen-fishbach-blog-jeff-varner-eliminated

Speaking of God's blessings, has Tasha always been that stacked? Somehow I'd never really paid attention but tonight I was kinda hypnotised.

I think there's a bit of a theme, between this and the comments about the video, and I find it interesting that folks wanted a more cut and dry case. Because I think the fact that there's never any such thing is part of the point. Though I guess that it doesn't seem to have been well made, so perhaps we could have had some dialogue from Carisi or Barba about the impossibility of a case having a perfect victim. There's always something to say, that the victim ran or mouthed off or had a hand in their pocket and it could have hid a weapon. Or they were in trouble one time. (Carisi found weed or something in the drawer, or is my memory misfiring? But they didn't focus too much on victim blaming stuff.) And the officers, same. Not being able to find someone's paid subscription to Nazi Monthly or whatever is what allows the lie that race wasn't a factor, nothing needs to be done. The system sustains itself.Plus, possibly too close to the Paula Deen episode. Ending on more of the original criminal is a good idea, it would have been interesting. Showing that the shooting didn't actually make the streets safer.

Rob C keeps complaining that Stephen is not the nerd weakling the show paints him as. Though the only point of the argument I remember is something about muscles and Crossfit. But like Andrew Savage, Jeff/the show really has very specific criteria for manliness, and if you don't fit them then too bad for your edit.

Oh, it totally didn't work, but I guess making the finals is *something*? Arguably. As Russell demonstrated, I just don't know how a chaos game gets past the jury. There's a Maya Angelou quote: I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. That seems like the inevitable chaos downfall but maybe my imagination is too limited! Sandra does have a touch of chaos to her game but always escaped really having it pinned on her. Hee, what about Sandra vs Abi-Maria in Survivor: Third Time's the Charm?

Hmmn. I didn't infer that the second shooting was a result of the first one, or that they really knew anything about it either way. More of a reminder that the threats they're taught to worry about aren't totally imaginary and that the results are tragic. I didn't think it was an unfair point or that sympathy is bad, it just abruptly changed the overall tenor of the episode for me. Which is how the show rolls. You're thinking one thing, bam mood change, bam credits. In fact if I had inferred a connection between shootings, that would have seemed worse. Admittedly it's hard for me to separate this from the real world discussion, and I'd assume the writers actually want eps like this to run parallel with the discourse even though they've got the drama dials turned up so high. And in the discussion, there's a strong trend of feeling that the BLM movement is intrinsically violent, that there's a war on police, that the slogan is basically code for "die, white people, die". And that's why they need to be kept in line. So having that anger directly cause a police officer's death would seem to me like an extremely pro blue lives message which justifies mistrust of the community. And maybe they intentionally kept it vague to get us chatting! Hee. Anyway it reminds me of the Gamergate ep in that there's no way really to make people with strong feelings on either side completely happy. Nature of the SVU beast imo and for them to even try would result in some pretty awkward television.

Same here and I guess it was kind of therapeutic to work out exactly why she was pushing those buttons, lol. And I also guess I took it as a given that my tacky internet analysis of some tv show scenes does not really qualify as a diagnosis. No offense intended. Going with the idea she's mostly pretending, which would be fun, actually, have we ever seen keeping everyone off balance and frustrated work as a strategy for someone? I can only think of Russell grinning and burning people's socks. And I guess Phillip arguably crafted himself into the perfect goat. But I do like the idea that people only *think* Abi's the goat, she could just backfire on folks all the way to the end. At which point does the jury have to throw up their hands and say okay, you got us? Or is likeability an insurmountable issue for her? I know we haven't seen a lot of people much but is there anyone out there she could put herself in a position to beat? Who goats for the goat? Hee.

Part of the issue with US police shootings is that the law in theory and juries in practice give them huge amount of leeway in defending themselves. Even more than a civilian might get. As long as they can argue they perceived fear, which doesn't at all require an actual threat, the law is on their side. It's pretty impossible to overcome, no matter what the charges really. The episode was touching on that when they had the officers keep repeating "I was in fear for my life." Pretty much all they need to say, so I thought Raul did a good job showing his horror at the practical implications of dealing with an even more impossible prosecution. Barba and Carisi both had some good quiet beats, but I too was dying to hear Fin's opinion. In fact they did their best to throw in all the debate points, including that bit at the end to remind us how totally dangerous it is to be a police officer!!! Up to then I found the ep surprisingly pro-BLM. That's usually the stumbling block for the discussion, the idea of what if the police officer doesn't shoot first and then gets hurt. (At which point they could just nuke us all from space and live safely ever after, but whatever.) Declan and Amanda: the ship I didn't even know I had.

So just in the interest of clarity, the emotional regulation problems that are pinging me with Abi are more a symptom of borderline personality disorder. Which is related, but different. Reality tv does skew to the self-involved but I think Abi's dramatic mood swings and overreactions are a little more unique. For whatever reason.

Sure, I wasn't going to bring it up for that reason but then discovered I wasn't the only one who'd noticed the similarities of certain behaviours. It's just a theory for discussion, no more or less likely than "Abi is an evil genius and this is all a part of her master plan". Which I would also be happy to talk about, if anyone:s got analysis for that one. :)

Hmmn, both yes and no. (I was the only one in my family willing to research this topic, in case that's not abundantly obvious.) Lack of empathy is definitely a symptom and it's related but this is also about the emotional over-reactions. One of the ways I've seen it put is that to a borderline personality there is no real difference between what's happening and the emotions that they're currently feeling. To them their emotions *are* the sum of what's happening and they're genuinely not able to perceive anything else. So if we're trying to explain Abi-Maria through this framework, I see it in the way she honestly can't seem to think about the game at times. Her feelings are all that exist in the universe. Woo made her feel bad, Peih Gee and Shirin made her feel bad, and therefore they *are* bad. With no ability to see things from their pov and almost no room left for prioritising other criteria in order to try to win a million dollars. Which is supposedly why she's there.

The question was not whether we laugh, but whether it's kind to do so in their faces. Anyway, I'm happy to agree to disagree.

Laughing at someone's life choices or circumstances is skirting the kindness line pretty hard to me, yeah. As balshureen pointed out, Marissa doesn't really know Caroline F like that. If she did, Caroline might receive it differently.Or to put it another way: what's so intrinsically hilarious about having a younger boyfriend? Other than that it's apparently not something Marissa would do. I can't think of anything funny about it, causing all that giggling from M, that would actually be a compliment. I don't disagree that they're all hypocrites, lol. Though Juliet asked if the shirt was okay or a bridge too far, so she was actually tuned into the social niceties for once. Being happy to talk about something isn't the same as wanting people to laugh at you.

Joining the 'family members with narcisisstic/borderline personality disorder' club. (An awful club so sorry, guys!) Yes, Abi definitely throws up behaviours I recognise. (People have called her a sociopath and that's the same spectrum of problems, but the most dramatic end of it. I personally wouldn't go that far.) Folks with bpd or npd can absolutely make friends in the short term or in the bar. Eventually those friends see the problems and drift away, joining the ever-growing category of People Who Have Wronged Me For No Reason, Woe, I am So Persecuted and Misunderstood. The behaviour of Abi's that sticks out as being a red flag (in theory as I wouldn't definitively diagnose anyone either) is her inability to see past how things make *her* feel. It's more than selfishness as she doesn't even seem aware of the existence of other concerns. Don't you care that Woo wrote her name down? Twice!?