innocuouspuff

Loved the increased soapiness this ep. I liked Hap playing the longish game with Billy, though it's definitely difficult to take Billy business scenes seriously. He spent all that energy getting the land parcel in ep 1.01, to throw it away just because that other oil field already had the machinery built? Gambler is right. Also hilarious: every time they reference the oil boom. Wonder how long the pilot script was floating around. I can't figure out what they think they're doing with Carla. She's pretty, but not really a trophy wife type. (And in one scene her bra didn't even fit properly, which was hella distracting.) But she and Hap don't particularly seem to be in love either. I can't imagine how much work it was to find an actress who has zero chemistry with Don Johnson, or why they would bother, but it seems like they did.

Fun! She should be Wick's mother, right? That could be an interesting dynamic as well.

I don't even necessarily disagree with you - well, except that I don't think the white teams learned anything. Even Rob Cesternino was rushing to shrug and change the sublect in E&J's interview, lol. It's just not fun for me to watch. I think I keep mentioning I'm a relatively new fan, and this is probably a good example of why I didn't get into it originally. I would say that I think there's a difference between uncomfortable cultural moments, even ones that affect the Race, and two teams having absolutely no shot at not getting eliminated once the leg involved catching cabs in Argentina. That seems equally artificial, to me. Might as well have a task that required lifting things with your penis, or some other non-universal body part. But in general, my position is that if I want to see people get screwed by systemic racism or ableism, I can just leave the house. It's not news to me, so I don't need to watch it on tv.

I guess I don't think intent cures everything? I think there's a huge grey area between a genuinely funny joke about a subject the target may be sensitive about, and calling someone a name in 100% seriousness. Marissa was reveling in it while smirking and constantly repeating herself. While she may not have literally been accusing Caroline F. of child molestation, she seemed to think the mere existence of the young boyfriend was hilarious. That's unkind imo, and there's plenty of room in the grey area for someone to say, hey, that's not cool. Haha, she likes little boys. Haha, she's ugly. Haha, she's stupid. If you later have to explain that you were totally joking! because hypothetical 'she' had just mentioned a bad haircut or bad test scores, some offense is probably still to be expected. Because the majority of your comment was a straight up insult.

Well, and I dislike all of that sniping, personally. :) But my underlying point was that if you take away the "comedy" part of an insulting joke then you've pretty much just got an insult. And if we're ranking insults, the ones Marissa was throwing out are pretty bad. I don't blame Caroline for not wanting to grin and bear it.

One obvious difference to me is that jokes are funny? Not just someone basically shouting "haha pedo" over and over.

Google turns up a number of black travelers discussing how constant the anti-black racism they experienced in Argentina was. (As well as discussions of Argentinian 19th century history that includes the word 'genocide'.) At the point where we have not one but two teams getting eliminated on taxi discrimination, I'd be fine with the Race course just staying out of Argentina. I don't see what else they could realistically do about it, and it may be real life but so are lot of things I'd rather not have affect my tv game shows. Poor Ernest and Jin, they were sweet and I'll miss them.

Pickup Artists were mentioned up thread and this is exactly what Vytas sounds like to me sometimes. And this is part of the long list of what they get criticised for: acting as if women are identical sex-dispensing machines who only need the correct words inserted. And then one of the defenses is that the illusion of "rules" is helpful for well-meaning guys who wouldn't have the courage to talk to anyone otherwise. Maybe Vytas falls in this category.But it's interesting that we don't hear him talk about the guys this way, and he seemingly has no idea where to even begin when an alliance with a guy starts to fall apart. His exit interview indignance about having helped once Spencer with a school project was hilarious.

Ha, I forgot the bag of cash actually, and that is an even better example! I was thinking of Billy writing $50K cheques for his new friend and loudly talking about it in the tent city full of broke and desperate people.

I don't think he was either? It was sarcasm because the shock and horror and how did he ever get accepted to our prestigious program and shouldn't this have been obvious in the background check seemed pretty over the top to me. Why would it have been obvious in the background check? I'm wary of accidentally implying everyone should go sleep with 14 year olds, but it just ended up being weird moral handwringing rather than a truly interesting revelation worthy of the drama it was meant to anchor.

I should hope not! Let's see, these recruits are going to be closely working a difficult job together, so let's have them taunt each other about their most sensitive secrets in front of the whole class. Team-building! Would never argue Mormon guy shouldn't feel bad or be heavily judged, but the whole, how did this SOCIOPATHIC CAREER CRIMINAL ever pass the background check?! reaction seemed out of step with what actually happened. Another Shonda comparison for me was Alex's characterisation and reaction to the one night stand. Actually a bit unrealistically overdone here, with Alex announcing the ons to the coworkers she's just met like slut-shaming is no longer a thing. But Meredith Grey was notable as a sex-positive lead character who didn't need no man (except for the one thing), back when the show was new. Am way more of a Grey's fan than a fan of terrible people doing creepy things, so this may not be for me.

I kind of love that anyone is actually trying to make the retro soap opera aesthetic happen in 2015, rather than creating another Shonda Rhimes ripoff. Sometimes soaps need a moment for all the spinning threads to come together so we'll see, giving it a few eps. Here for Chace Crawford tbh. He is my favourite and the confused puppy approach to acting is part of his appeal. A commodities trader breaks down the realism or lack thereof in the pilot. Don't know that I really need to see sex-trafficking etc, though I was rolling my eyes at Chace flashing his new money around. When you are new to a badly policed town and no one knows you well enough to be worried if you suddenly disappear, definitely make sure everyone knows you are suddenly rich. The chosen scenery is quite pretty. Don't see why they wouldn't keep shooting there as I am sure the state appreciates the job creation. Perhaps Utah offered more subsidies and tax breaks than North Dakota.

Ah, of course. Their ignorance of the wind situation makes even less sense, then!

Jin's given name is apparently Jayjion, he's racing under his stage name or nickname I guess. Team green didn't know the FF task was hang-gliding, but the editors kind of threw Justin under the bus a bit with the close-ups of the fluttering wind gauges. Juxtaposed with Justin going "weather looks fine to me!" after reading the bit about the task being weather dependent. It just seems so silly for a person who's seen every ep to assume "weather" meant rain, but I guess he had express pass tunnel vision. I hope their decision-making improves, if it doesn't they'll be toast.

The taxi driver then said favela which is indeed a Brazilian ghetto or slum, so the dancers were correct. They seem like dudes who are aware and paying attention, I like that. I've watched very few full seasons of TARUS, and I knew the wind at the Fast Forward was going to be a problem. This team are superfans? Though I never mock my fellow frustration criers on these shows, that would totally be me. Especially since it was a situation of his own making. That's the most frustrating kind! Watching Kelly and Shevonne fail to grasp the entire point of a slide puzzle for four hours was also frustrating, wow. "If we move these two pieces it'll ruin everything!" Yes, dears, that's the challenge. You're supposed to start thinking a few moves ahead, instead of spending all afternoon wishing you were doing a completely different kind of puzzle.

If my mum had been walking around town back in the day insisting that no one could give her anything but compliments because of her tragically sick kids, I as one of said kids would have been the first person rolling my eyes. If it happened it happened, and imo illness is not a magic immunity idol against questionable behaviour.

Yeah I remember the Canadian Idol situation, the judges would get frustrated with us residents of other provinces for not giving our talent the same support. So if Newfoundland is willing to throw that much commitment into it, good for them and good for Dana and Amanda for thanking them. And good for the show/Petro Canada for not just burying the prize when G/J won. I'd heard Gino and Jesse were popular, they're young and attractive I guess. Didn't catch an acknowledgement/apology in that long defensive speech, Nick and Matt.

No real memory task, eh? Just ordering the cities in the math task. Whistler is of course beautiful and probably the most interesting thing about an unsurprising ep.

Yeah a schoolyard pick would quickly turn into a game of spot who doesn't have a pre-game alliance, like Candice Cody's vote out supposedly was in BvW. Apparently my interests lie in the meta game as I am perfectly happy to watch pre-game alliances fall apart and old-school players try to hang. Gameplay did evolve slowly, but that's just not super relevant to an individual player. Just like your hometown you haven't been back to in fifteen years didn't literally change all at once but that's not going to help you when you weren't there for the stages in between. Also I remember Colby in S20 being like, who cares about this new-fangled immunity idol, I'm trying to watch a movie! I'm sorry but that was hilarious. None of these who played before the middle seasons are that bad so far, in fact in some cases (Jeff Varner) we may be watching a huge over-correction. Interested to see where it goes.

Only angry, joyless lesbian spinsters would ever find anything to criticise, obviously. *sarcasm emoji* I find it interesting that Vytas is basically spinning the same story he did after Blood vs Water. He had a pre-game friendship/alliance in Gervase/Spencer & Jeff, and Vytas suspected things were unraveling, but other alliance mates in Aras/Terry were insistent that things were fine and in the end this was poor Vytas' undoing. I probably wouldn't hang with Vytas but he's interesting enough to watch. But his skill in explaining things so that nothing's his fault and he knew it all along, amuses me.

Would guess that the Petro Canada chequebook came with a request to showcase the points program specifically, maybe even down to the fact you can spend them in their stores. I don't care about the sponsored bits in general, it's like when the cashier or server has a spiel to say and if that's what they get paid to do then why be a jerk about it. Money makes the world go round and keeps the show on the air so whatever. That said: what a pointless segment lol. Just Race-wise, nothing happened really.

Oops, I was not trying to say *only* Olympic level players at all! Sorry. I love curling for the strategy, too ill to actually play though. Someone else asked about the lack of strategy, so just comparing our total newbies to practiced players that can put stones in exact locations for complicated reasons, almost 100% of the time. We weren't going to be watching something like that but I thought they did fine too.Anyway it was intended to be a simple summary, not a dismissal of everyone not an Olympian. :) I would never claim to be a TAR superfan but listen to a podcast where the rule has come up. I would find it very weird if TAR Canada has no rule against tampering. But maybe there's also some rule about not leaving your bags as far away as the taxi? idk.

I meant rule as far as, then it's your cab and another team removing your bags to steal the taxi would now be in violation of Race regulations. I would think that if leaving the bags helped protect against theivery we would have seem someone trying it out. I'm not sure it's been done all season. But you're right, maybe there was other reasoning in play. While it's not kayak lacrosse, I wouldn't call the curling task the opposite of a physical task. A curling stone weighs approx 19kg, that's probably more than a third of Simi's body weight. Repetition would start to weigh some Racers down. Something that truly gave no advantage to stronger guys would have to be something like a puzzle or memory game.

All of our alpha males lying like dogs in this recap. Gino and Jesse claiming they thought a random unclaimed cab was waiting around in a remote industrial area for no reason. Then Nick and Matt claiming they thought the second cab was obviously up for grabs because they didn't personally see Simi and Ope make the call. They figured that they were waiting around A REMOTE INDUSTRIAL AREA for half an hour, without calling. Nick's interpretation is classic bully revisionist history: "there was a little bit of debate". Ugh, I hate bullies. And the Face Off. That 30 minutes they say Simi and Ope lost by is pretty much entirely the Face Off penalty, I think. But! I'm ready for curling season.

Closest to the button wins in real curling too, but Olympic level curlers will get fancy with it, trying to move and block opposing rocks with their own. These new curlers just didn't have that skill, getting it inside the ring was enough of a challenge. Ugh, so mad. Nick and Matt def used their size, not only on Simi/Ope but the cab driver as well. Hope they feel like asses seeing it definitely was not their cab. Does TAR Canada not have the leave your bags in cab to mark it as yours rules as the original? No one was doing that, just counting on the kindness of strangers. That said Simi and Ope would probably have be effed anyway at the Face Off. I hate the Face Off so much. If I wanted everything to come down to who has the bigger, younger guys I would watch pro sports. Between Face Off and super physical leg last week, it is in no way an accident we have no ladies in the finale. And I wanted to watch Simi crush the final task. Go, Brent and Sean!