Taeolas

Going back to the HK ep... I think when Gordon's giving unreasonable times, it's a test for the chefs (whether on MC or HK), to push back at him to show they know what times are actually needed and that they aren't fudging the times to give themselves more wiggle room. If they mutely agree to the times, then he knows to double check the dishes and can go into the undercooked rant. If they push back and say "no I need X minutes" then they might get a "what have you been doing?" rant but they dodge the undercooked rant if they actually do it right. It did seem that he was going easier on the MC's than he does on the HK chefs. Maybe a bit harder than usual for MC, but no where near t he same sort of pressure HK chefs get put under. I suspect it will probably become a regular MC challenge in seasons to come in any case, so you might as well get used to it.

The number of words doesn't seem to matter as much as what words are needed. The early rounds tend to look for words from an early verse or the chorus, the lines that tend to become earworms. So often times they're easy to nail and the contestant will go on for a few lines after because of how confident they are. Later rounds tend to look for lines deeper in the song, in the later verses and almost never part of the chorus. Those are lines that people tend not to be as familiar with, and by requiring more words (6-9 words) they tend to have less context to work with as well.

Both JMM and Judge Mathis's new shows seem to have very cheap sets; but I'll give them time to find their legs and start decorating. (I think it was Mathis's new show they had some mic problems early on because it was a bit echoy I found; JMM's show didn't seem to have that problem at least) For Justice, I noticed they still have the same voice over guy it seems, but no Doug or Douglas sadly. :( I don't think she even addressed the bailiff by name yet which is sad. The new show seems to be missing some of the personal touches, and I miss her banter/friendliness with Douglas. The cases are pretty standard TV Court cases so far. As for the rest of the show, I'm also missing the post-case interviews (with or without Doug), since that tends to add a bit more snark/fun to the cases. I agree that JMM seems a bit more energized now. At the end of TPC, she was going through the motions, and once they knew the show was cancelled I suspect she checked out a bit. But having a new show can be invigorating, and having an audience probably helps. In any case I'll leave it going on the PVR and we'll see how it goes.

The briefing from the First Nation chief was a bit unexpected. From TAR:CAN and other big events, we've gotten used to these First Nation recognitions, but I didn't expect to see it on a US production. Good to see the international recognition like that. And the implied touch on the Residential School tragedy was nice to see too; going into details was out of place for this show, but the "No child left behind" flags were focused on for a bit.

I think if one team got all the challenges at once, that team gets the bonus money but they still do the team challenges because that's still money the other team could get (if they could smarten up). I doubt it would ever be that off balanced, but they'll still give both teams the chance to get the challenge money even if the bonus is off the table.

A bit weak for a final episode for such a long running show; but as others have noted a lot of the recent cases have been weak. And FYI, JMM has already confirmed she's starting a new court show ( Justice for the People with Judge Milian) in syndication for the fall. No word on how many of the rest of the People's Court crew she'll bring with her but it seems like it is just her.

Rona was an independent nationwide home hardware chain (that always had blue branding), but in the past decade or so, they've been passed around a bit. They were bought by Lowe's in the mid teens, but just last year (according to wiki) Lowe's sold off their Canadian operations to a different holding company. Since that happened so recently, I wonder if TaN had planned a Lowe's sponsorship for this challenge but the last minute company sale forced them to avoid explicitly mentioning it when they were filming. Home Improvement stores in Canada are a bit of a mess. We do have Home Depot and they are the 900lb gorilla in the market. Rona did well enough as the secondary chain for the most part, but they're mainly Ontario West as usually happens. Out in the Maritimes, the Irvings locked down the market early on with Kent, and they've bought a few other maritime chains through the years (in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia mainly; New Brunswick was always Kent). I don't think Rona/Lowes ever made it into the Maritimes, certainly not to any significant degree. The third major chain is Home Hardware. While some of their stores do deal in lumber, they mainly focus on tools and hardware. They've been around for a long time, and often serve as the small town Home Improvement store.

Correct, this is my Followed Content page, ("Topics I follow"). Jumping to the first unread from that page hasn't worked since the upgrade in the OP. The topic column squishing happened in the past day or two.

For Topics I Follow, when I click a topic, it still brings me to the first topic. I usually work around it by going to the Forums the topic is in and then clicking the Topic; that jumps me to the first unread message. And like @TVBitch above, in the past day or two, my "Followed Content" page got squished with the Topic smooshed into a 5-10 character wide column it seems. (I think the Forum view is a little squished as well but not quite as bad). I'm on Chrome on the Desktop with Nightmode enabled (Checked in Day mode and it does the same thing) Was the "Change Preferences" always a column on that page? I don't seem to recall it being there; if it was added recently maybe that's thrown off the column widths? This is an example of what I'm seeing: This

I don't like the changes to the judging this season. Ideally they are trying for 10 seconds per match, but when you are doing 2 rounds of 3 and 2 (at 30 and 20 seconds respectively) it still doesn't feel fair. If the rounds had the same number of cakes to find (3 and 3 or 2 and 2) that would be fine. Otherwise just give them a flat 10 seconds with 1 cake and decoys each. If they want to shake up how the judging works, then maybe the decoys should be more akin to the themes the bakers have to pick from at the start. So instead of saying "You have to find the basketball shoe that is cake" the decoys are various types of shoes, and the judges have to pick the one that is cake. Or various basketball related items (a basketball shoe, a basketball, maybe a gatorade bottle) and they have to pick from that.

I thought the same as well, but with the way things were cut, I think they regroomed the mudpit after each round to try and even things out. Still, even with grooming the early rounds were probably on firmer territory than the later ones. At the very least I would have hoped they did a trial run or two before the actual competition so the first team didn't have as clean a track. Making the Woops was a good challenge, and changing the muddy shocks also was good. But I didn't really care for the mud race as the individual challenge. It didn't really feel like a "Tough" challenge (but slogging through the mud with a 1/3 body weight log isn't easy). Losing 3 women so quick is rough, but this one seemed a fairly balanced challenge that anyone could have won or lost. Carly lost because she fell for the power wash trap I think. If she hadn't taken the time to get the power washer (and then forgot to loosen the lugnuts before lifting the ATV), she'd have been in the competition more.

And we're off! 10 racers starting in Winterpeg err Winnipeg in mid spring by the looks of it, and then jetting off to Calgary for a long day of racing. As usual the challenges were at the TAR:CAN standards. The Drum circle drumming judging seemed fairly strict; and having the pancake orderers move after ordering was pure evil. :) The rappelling task was straight forward enough... if you opened your eyes as you went (unlike one team). The teams themselves seem fairly good. Seeing some early cracks and frustrations already but none seem particularly bad. And that was a LONG day in Calgary by the looks of it, considering how dark it was at the end of the leg. Was I seeing things, or was the greeter the former mayor of Calgary? ( Naheed Nenshi?) It sort've looked like him, but I don't think they actually introduced him. With Tough As Nails filming in the Hammer (so Phil's hanging out in Canada) I had hoped we might see a bit of a TAR/TAR:CAN crossover this season; but obviously from the weather on this leg, they were filmed at quite different times.

The Hammer is representing and as a Canuck I'm happy at how well we're doing so far. I'm also glad they mixed the teams up and didn't do a US vs CAN send up like I'd anticipated them doing earlier. The teams themselves seem fairly balanced. And it's interesting the 2 Fire Fighters ended up on the same one. Loving the Bluenoser (Haligonian/Nova Scotian) and the old guys so far. But everyone is doing well and seems to be good people so far. And damn, those challenges seemed tough, worthy of TaN. Glad to see there was legit judging of the work too. I wonder if that sod field was already basically written off. Or maybe the show basically bought it so they could do whatever would happen to it. If it takes 2-3 years to grow properly, I'd hate all the 'waste' from amateurs harvesting it. On a side note, I do wonder since TaN is filming in the Hammer, if TAR:CAN might've done a TaN/Hamilton leg 'hosted' by Phil. Of course that would be a TAR:CAN thing and not a TaN thing. :)

So 2 Canadian eps so far in the current season. I haven't been able to see Hoarders Canada, but is A&E using Hoarders Canada to pad out this season? It would make sense (and I'll be happy to see those eps without having to find another streamer).

A solid contestant, who knows his lyrics for the most part, and can actually sing pretty decently. I'm watching it on the weekend after it aired, so him picking the Tina Turner song is a bit of a heart stab. I know they didn't plan anything, but seeing her song come up the day before she died was a choke moment.

Seems like Huge finally lived up to its potential as a meta breaker. Glad it did so well. Wish it would have won but Sawblaze got a lucky hit to partly disable the weapon and that's what tilted the fight. The judges certainly made the right decision. I also think that Sawblaze also may have MacGuyvered a proper answer to Huge with those eyelashes addition. Having something that can contact Huge's central axis and help push it around while not putting your own bot in significant danger is what is needed. I'm pretty sure most bots will have eyelashes in their armory next season, just waiting for a Huge match up (and/or a match up from a Huge derivative, since it's now a proven bot model that can succeed)

I think Yam-Yam's win feels like it came out of no where (at least to me) because his game style isn't really TV-friendly. He plays a very low-key social game, based on knowing people, staying on the edge of the radar but not really drawing attention to himself (positive or negative). So it isn't really something that would be visible on the TV, but to the jury, especially as he pointed it out during the Tribunal, it would be more obvious how he was the behind the scenes manipulator, knowing how votes may or may not be going and never obviously panicking along the way. Combine that with a bombastic personality that does tend to draw a lot of Camera attention like Carolyn, and you end up with Yam-Yam seeming to be a non-player through the game.

Yeah, I was sure Macaw wasn't NPH from the get go. Aside from not sounding like him (I'm pretty sure they don't sound similar), I don't think their stories really lined up. Admittedly I haven't looked into NPH's history much (aside from being a fan/watcher of Doogie Howser back in the day), but I don't think his Coming Out story was as rough as Macaw's story was. At least NPH is a closer guess than Susan was for Medusa.

Well, I was wrong. I was sure after 3 women winners AND a male LGBTQ+ contestant, that the Macaw would win. And I still think he should have won. But oh well. I was surprised by Ken; he seemed very subdued this time compared to normal. His comments about David seemed very truthful and heartfelt. I get the feeling that he figured out who Macaw was early (in the ep) and that affected him deeper than he may have expected, (or the editing cut out some of his wilder antics after the fact). We only seemed to get the 'usual' Ken with him going back to guessing Susan for Medusa. (WTF sort of guess is that?) Oh well, this one is done. Guess we'll have to wait and see how the next season goes. Hopefully a male singer can finally make it through.

As I said earlier, I disagree that the fix is in for Medusa. She was always meant for the finals IMO, but historically TMS winners are tilted more heavily to women at the moment; the past 3 winners have been women. So I suspect they're planning for a man to win this time, which is why/how Macaw gets to the finale. That Macaw is clearly LGBTQ+ is an added bonus for PR purposes. So Im pretty sure Macaw is going to win it all this week.

Yeah, while Jeffy's said a lot of inappropriate (or almost inappropriate) things through the years (with who knows how many more that are on the editing room floor), in this case, there was a clear connection to what Carolyn said earlier about not sleeping and spending all her time plotting/scheming/examining the angles. So his suggestion to "maybe get some more sleep" was a valid suggestion to the survivor whether they were male, female or other.

As for the Immunity Challenge, I liked how in the zone Yam-Yam was, to the point they had to dive in and poke him to tell him he won. He was ready to go all day and all night if needed, and probably would still be there if they didn't have the rest of the game to run. Technically speaking Carolyn didn't have to play her idol, and I'm sure that will nag her a bit. But from a gameplay perspective, she only knew the Tika votes were probably going to Danny; she couldn't be sure Danny's alliance was still going to go for Carson or not, so it was the proper play. Now that they are the Top 6, Tika is in the dominant position. They can force a tie at a minimum, but there's still one idol in play (maybe 2? Does Carolyn's idol get hidden again for the next few TCs?). Whoever wins the immunity challenge next week will be key I'm sure. If it's someone on Tika again, they'll probably be able to get one of the rest out. Carolyn better be ready to push hard for that immunity necklace though, because she put a big target on her back with that move tonight.

Yeah blantant pre-arranged elimination. Pentatonix must have a concert scheduled for the night they filmed hte finale or something. California Rolls by far were the best singers of the night, and Macaw would probably have been safe because of the back story they're setting up. Oh well, it is what it is I guess. Is this the first time they put the entire farewell song AFTER the end credits? Usually they sing out (if they sing) as the credits play, but this time Nick did the "Tune in next week for the finale" while the credits rolled, and THEN Pentatonix did their full song uncut and without being credit scrunched. (Sadly the song was their cover of Creep. Not being muffled by the masks it was slightly better, but I still didn't care for it.) I'm thinking that this is Macaw's to win now. This is season 9, and there have been 5 female winners so far, 3 of them in the past 3 seasons. So we're due for another male winner. If they're LGBTQ+ as well it would be an added bonus for PR purposes too.

When the panel actually HAD to drop "Pentatonix" as a guess last night, I was sure that was a sign they were going to go home, despite being far from the worse act last night (and actually being the second best act). Thankfully they did keep going, but it did have me sweating a bit. The show is obviously rigged more than a classic schooner, but California Roll going out before UFO or Medusa would have been a REALLY hard sell.

The editing for this episode felt a bit strange. Probably due to having to fit 2 challenges in AND the Letters from Home segment, so they didn't have as much time to dwell on anything in particular. Count me as someone else who fast forwards through the Family sections. I have no interest in stories from home in general so they do nothing for me. I'm glad they acknowledged having non-alcoholic drinks available. I would hope that option is always available, even if they don't have someone who is too young. Not that I'll ever be on the show, but I just don't drink alcohol (never have, and have no interest in starting), so if the reward challenge 'only' had say Beer and Pizza, I'd be in trouble. In hindsight, Frannie should probably have thrown the reward challenge. Two Immunity challenges in a row is a huge target on her back, and tossing a reward challenge on top of it is basically carrying a blue and yellow flag into Moscow. Had she thrown the reward challenge, and (assumably) lost the immunity challenge, the target would be diminished and she might have been able to play out a way to stay in the game.