Taeolas

I didn't really care for any of them last night to be honest; but I think a large part of it came down to song choices; none of them seemed to get a good song. And doing the showdown with Fallout Boy's song was a disservice to the singers and to Fallout Boy. That group's got such a distinctive sound and rhythm built into their music that trying to do it in different styles like the showdown is meant to do, leaves them as a muddled mess like we saw.

Yeah I would expect that if you are permanently moved from one camp to another camp for some reason during the game, production would make sure your gear moved with you, both to not disadvantage you and not advantage the former camp (who would otherwise have access to your stuff). But in this case, it wasn't a permanent move, it was a temporary isolation to let both sides do their scheming as needed, so there was no need for production to move gear around. After he was voted out, I'm sure Production made sure his gear was removed before the castaways got back to camp in any case. It does show that you should make sure you have everything you might need for Tribal Council on you at all times at the very least.

IIRC In the Second round they had an 8 streak (I think it was a 10 streak) that was broken by banks. So in Round 3 I think they tried to NOT bank, but they missed a lot more questions and couldn't get any chains going, and thus barely banked anything in that round.

Interesting episode this week. They opened with a P&T trick and closed with Piff and Matt Fool Us. And the magicians they did have on didn't have a Fooler. It makes me think that they had to pull an act for some reason so we had some filler put in. The first magician had a classic carny trick that probably would have sent Allison (and me) to the backstage if he was live. Those sword swallowers and needle tricks in general just gross me out, but I think it's just a standard palm and stage trick. Similarly the purse trick was pretty standard as well, thoguh I have no idea how it was done. I probably should have paid more attention to the card trick; I'm pretty sure it's done with gimmicked cards and/or half and half cards basically, though he did have a lot of trust in Allison's handling of the cards. And on a different note, Piff is going to be up in my neck of the woods next week. I'm tempted to go see him but not sure my budget will have room for him. Still a few tickets left so it's very tempting....

Arranging the votes has been addressed multiple times. But in general, remember, Reality TV shows have a LOT more production behind them than is apparent. Contestants basically need to be ready for long pauses basically at any time so production can get into position or figure out where the story is going next. As others have pointed out (and contestants have often said) Tribal Councils are usually a hell of a lot longer than we see on screen, often going for hours. And the article above pointed out, they have an extra 30ish minutes just to "Tally the votes" off set, so they can stack them in the way they anticipate will tell the best story. In an earlier thread, there was an article/story of a contestant who basically searched the voting booth for an advantage, because they've become that paranoid to look for them; that search was never shown nor even hinted at in show. That article (about tallying) also confirmed that Jeff can change the order on the fly if needed, so the votes are probably stacked in a way to help him easily tell which will be which. Likely they are grouped by name, and then there might be vertical slots that can hold them upright, so Jeff can easily pull from one group or the next without having to reach under the pile or anything like that. Reality Editing "magic" does things like cut out most of the planning on Iron Chef after the ingredient reveal, and makes those "12 hour builds" on Lego Masters seem to be 1 day when they're usually broken across 2 days. It also cuts out all the time needed to get beauty shots on food (and design shows) between the contestants finishing and the judges judging. Apparently on other shows, like the finale of Ru Paul's Drag Race, they'll often film multiple winners, so no one knows who actually won until the episode airs.

Clearly the votes are sorted in the urn so Jeff knows exactly which vote he is pulling out each time. Likely they have dividers put in to separate the stacks, as well as maybe refolding votes to make sure they are stacked neatly. As others have noted, this has been obvious in the game since the very beginning. Then Jeff can decide how he wants to draw out the drama of the reveals, based on whatever advantages end up being played/not being played. If the Immunity idol hadn't been played, he probably would have alternated Frannie and Brandon reveals. With the immunity idol played, he did all Frannie first so the Roku group could realize they'd been screwed.

That's where I got my patio door drapes as well! (or at least my mom bought them for me for XMas for the patio doors). For about that price too. :) Has anyone else noticed that the editing of the cases seems a bit off? I notice it especially at the very start of the episode, when Douglas is handing the case over to JMM. He seems to pause for a long moment of silence before JMM does her usual "Thank you Douglas" and things continue; something I never noticed before.

Not sure where best to put this (I already made a new thread for the series) but if anyone wants to follow Byrd, he'll be over on "Tribunal Justice" with Judges DiMango and Acker (from Hot Bench) and Judge Adam Levy. The new show will debut in June and run every weekday until December. You can just see Byrd in action towards the end of the trailer:

The Hot Bench style of court show is expanding, with Judges DiMango and Acker (from Hot Bench) being joined by Judge Adam Levy in a new show premiering on June 9 on Freevee. Episodes will air every weekday until early December after that. It seems like it may be limited to the US, UK, Germany and Austria. This show is created by Judge Judy, and features the return of Petri Hawkins Byrd as one of the bailiffs. (They will have 2, the other bailiff being Cassandra Britt) Trailer for the new show:

Nope, it's still happening and they just announced more information on it.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious that "Venus" was picked because of the planet; despite the song being related to the goddess. "Yellow" i think was picked because of its opening line ("Look at the stars...") but it's a really weak connection.

If Heidi had targeted Jaime or Brandon and made them vote for Lauren, then Lauren would have had to play her stolen vote to force a tie. Which would have neutralized the advantage one way or another in any case. So from the outside that feels like it would have been the wiser play; but clearly there are some other politics going on behind her decision (or maybe she didn't fully think it over or figured Matt and Yam-yam wouldn't cooperate with the obvious choice)

Honestly, I didn't really care that much for all 3 singers tonight, and I was almost sure UFO would be going out first, so I was surprised at the actual results. All of the songs felt rather weak choices especially for a space theme. I do wonder if not having a male singer limited them more; Elton John's Rocket Man was a given, but to not do Bowie's Space Oddity or Starman on Space Night is almost criminal. Really there are a lot of other choices that would have been more space-themed than "Yellow" and "Venus" (I'm not as familiar with "Starlight" but I guess it gets more of a pass but there are probably a lot of better choices they could have done) As for the final showdown, UFO did the better presentation of it in the end. Neither were particularly good but UFO pulled it off. In the end I think this third group was probably the weakest of the singers this season.

I laughed a bit that not only was Langley Falls losing the Bazookas, they were losing it to OTTAWA of all places. That city can barely hold onto a CFL Football team and were on the verge of losing their NHL team again. So stealing an American team is extra laughable.

It's a bit late, but not surprising, Judge Marilyn Milian is getting a new show. "Justice for the People" No word on if Douglas will go with her. But at least she'll still be on the bench.

The new format where everything is basically plotted out in advance probably helps. An artist knows they only have to show up for an episode or two unless they want to "go long", and that's easier to fit in their schedules than a longer commitment of unknown duration. And I do think a lot of artists do like the anonymity of the show and the chance to show off their singing chops in a way independent of their reputation (for better or worse).

The feeling I have is that the Bell singers are going to get their own episode to find a winner from among them, and then that winner will go on to the finale. The finale will be a 4 singer finale of some sort (Maybe face off elimination style?). 3 from each of the rounds plus the bell round winner. I do hope for the finale they let each round be unique songs for each challenge. While I don't mind the "both sing the same song in slightly different formats" style for the regular episodes, for the end I think I'd rather let them have their own songs that (hopefully) will play to their strengths.

Tough choices tonight. Based on the performances, all three should have kept going. And I'd say Doll was a bit better than Mantis, but damn that was a tough call. It seemed obvious that this would be a bell episode in the end, but man I wanted all 3 to keep going. Doll seems to have a lot of fun, and when Dee was revealed, he still had lots of fun (as opposed to some of the other reveals this season where they were obviously putting in their screen time and getting off stage as fast as possible). I'm surprised they didn't get any WB stars (or B or C-listers) to fill in the VIP section this week. They haven't had this problem in the past so it surprised me for such an obvious theme to not have any other guests. (Next week's Space theme I could see them having trouble filling out a VIP list). I did have to laugh at the intro to the showdown with Nicole doing the intro like that. I've seen that type of "thank you for going to the movie" skit in front of a lto of movies recently, and this version was very tongue in cheek while still matching the attitude that those ads bring out in general. As for the Golden Ticket showdown. I think Mantis did the better performance. I agree he seems to have some Broadway/Musical experience since he seemed to take to that song a lot better than Dandelion did. I would have put him on to the next round and probably belled Dandelion; but I guess the schedules dictated them going the other way.

I suspect even though they were told "No idols, no advantages, just comraderies and a good snack", they still spent a long time searching that gazebo for idols and advantages; it just wasn't shown to us. (Like someone else mentioned a few threads back, how one survivor spent a long time at the Tribal Council vote searching the voting booth for possible idols/advantages). As for Carolyn's chances in the final; I'd say she has some pretty good chances so far. Just getting to the final with her 'crazy' persona mostly intact will probably impress a lot of people, and once the merge happens and the jury starts to fill, she'll be exposed to the rest of the contestants so she can play them. The people already voted out are irrelevant, but can probably be used to show how she played the early game of course. So it will probably ultimately come down to how she presents her game to the jury in the end.

Sexy Urkel was a great jab at Nick. As was Robin's chevron description of "Thinks it is 1880's night". Thinking of the costumes, Moose's costume just didn't feel as good as they usually have, whether on purpose or not. Aside from the lack of expression on the face, it was just way too big for the body/actor. So that may have been part of why George was so immobile during the act. Even in the clue package the body double didn't seem as active though they tried their best (and Moose on the Loose was a nice way to present the clues). So being overheated in that massive costume may have been part of why he was so restrained after the reveal; but I did notice he also wasn't in the VIP section after; he basically did his time and disappeared completely once he was revealed. On a different note, was tonight one fo the first times that a judge's guess was proved wrong by the guess being in the audience? I'm sure it was entirely preplanned like the rest of the show, but it was a bit funny for the guess to be proved wrong so obviously.

Moose was the obvious sacrificial singer. Part of me wonders if his platform was for health reasons and part was for "Norm!". After the reveal, he didn't seem all that good to me to be honest, so I wonder if a bug was going through the singers when they were filming. They kept suggesting John Goodman as a good guess and it had me shaking my head; John can sing; he's a blues brother for crying out loud; there's no way even faking it he would have done Power that badly. Scorpio vs Doll was good. I don't know if it's the costume or something else but Doll's singing seems more muffled than usual, but in the end I agree that he should go forward. As for who Scorpio was, I've seen the show once or twice, but not enough to recognize the people on it, so I had no idea who she was. She was a decent enough singer for a non professional, and she certainly owned the stage. Really both her and Doll did well, but no way was Scorpio worth the bell. I suspect the bell will be run next episode since it's been run on the 3rd and 1st of the groups so far.

Another solid trio of performers, but Axolotl was the obvious one for the early elimination. She wasn't bad; she was quite good actually. But compared to the other two she was the worst of the good. As for Fairy and Macaw, I think Macaw was the better of the two in the end. It was close, but the right call was made. He also seemed more at ease in the costume and on the stage with how he moved around while singing, which (to me) is a factor in picking who I want to go forward. As for who the unmasked ones are; I vaguely recognized Axolotl but not really; mainly because I'm not a fan. Ditto for who Fairy was. But that's normal for me. I'm horrible at recognizing people on good days and I'm just out of touch of most modern 'celebrities', especially ones outside of TV/movies. :)

Arguably there are advantages to drawing a challenge out. The challenge doesn't end until the second team completes it, so the longer that goes on, the more energy the other two teams are burning up and the more time your team has to relax in the shade. It also gives you (and your team) more time to observe the rest of the teams and figure out who the dominant players on the other teams might be to target for elimination (or for alliances) after the merge. Information is king in this game, so the more time you can gather information while not having to do anything else, the better your own position would be. So yeah, knocking down the solution after winning certainly does have some advantages in the greater game sense.

Man, it's been a long time since I saw the Sesame Street crew; their voices all sounded off to me, but that's just my age showing. :( Still, it was nice to see them used more than the Muppets were (I think there were more of them than the Muppets too). All 3 singers were quite good; no obvious one and dones but I felt Squirrel was going to get the first elimination. Her clues were too obvious (not that I got them) and she seemed marginally the weakest of the three. I didn't pay much attention to Fairy when she first came out, so as I was glancing up, I half expected her to be male until she started singing. She put on a good show and I'm fine with her moving on to the next round. Whether she's this group's winner or not remains to be seen. Jackalope also put on a good show and seemed to have fun on the stage. I would have been fine with her going on as well, but Fairy's costume seemed a little more extravagant which (to me) hinted at the results. I had no idea who Jackalope really is, but she's a good singer. As for the guest host, that is just the usual cross promotion they tend to do. I'm a bit surprised they didn't save her for next week with it being Country night.

That would be a twist I could see them doing some future season. Hell I'm surprised they haven't done a Reunion/"All Stars" season where they bring back folk in new costumes to have another run for the trophy. In any case, the bell has been run for this round so the next 2 eps should have 4 reveals happening. And I wouldn't be surprised if in the 3rd group the 2nd episode has the bell. This show is that predictable. :)