Taeolas

For once Discovery Canada is showing their own show before the rest of the world. I think Discovery USA is showing it shortly. And I agree with the above, the carvings have been incredible, and the challenges and themes have been fun. The hosts and judges have the typical Canadian attitudes. I do love how international the competitors are as well, and how well they got along. And the BC Forest scenery is gorgeous as always. Spoiler for the finale:

Technically, I'd say this was 2 segments, since they covered It and It2. The overall story was a single one, but they could have easily ended at the It one and covered another segment if they wanted to I'm sure.

As you noted, I don't think I've ever heard Weird Al on an Over the Air station (at least not in any markets that don't already have every possible type of station possible). That said, I HAVE heard him on Sirius XM, especially on some of the Decade stations. (I've also heard the Power Rangers theme on it once). So I could see the song playing if they turned on Sirius. :)

Sad to see him go as well, but his team's cakes were the least matching of the 3 pairs, and he did seem to be getting the Exit Edit that episode. It was probably just editing shenanigans, but it seemed he wasn't as comfortable doing teamwork like the others were. Jill asked to compare the batters before baking, and the next scene showed him closing the oven, implying he hadn't done that. (But I suspect he actually did).

So the next Vs The World is announced: Canada vs The World! The queens will be:

I'm enjoying this so far, with a few more eps to go. The series feels a bit less energetic than other shows, but I'm fine with that. Fewer camera tricks, and especially MUCH less "SHOUTING!" and "DRAMA!"; just a lot of supportive cooking it seems. Sometimes the host/judges seem to be showing some favoritism early on, but all in all, I've agreed with their rulings. Rotating the guest judge among the Netflix Food celebrities is fine as far as cross promotions go. I'm glad Jacques finally got to eat some properly cooked food, and some excellent deserts. The quirks and challenges in the first half (Dish Dash) do make for some interesting cooking techniques. Looking forward hopefully for season 2.

CTV didn't get the memo, so we got the new ep here in Canada.

No Harp in the first group, but some good challengers. Since I'm in Canada and don't care about throwing balls around a field, I actually just watched the ep. :)

Yeah, I wonder what the story with the new team is. Were they always intended to be there, but had to be held back (for COVID maybe?). I'm not sure if it would ever be done, but I'd love to see a challenge or two sometime where the local Lego Masters are competing not only against themselves, but also against some true Lego Master winners from Australia or the other series. The other masters aren't there to 'compete' but to be part of the challenge somehow.

Harp is a strong singer, but her costume keeps her immobile which does mean she has to rely on her voice and less on dancing and that can make her less entertaining compared to more mobile singers. I suspect the next few rounds we'll see the strong singer in the second and third rounds just to "shake things up" and show it isn't just the first one who gets through.

They sort've did that in the first episode, where everyone was building modules on the space station. The problem in that design though is that everything tends to be more compact and it's harder to get an overall big picture view with everything. Usually they do a city build where everyone takes a neighbourhood and just builds what they want and then pushes everything back together. When they do that you get to see a bigger picture with everything at once. I missed how Stephen & Stephen are also Canadian; they're pushing the Fire Fighter angle for them, but for the bull riding they mentioned how they'd done that at Calgary and I had to rewind just to make sure I heard right (and just googled to verify). As for this week's ep, the bucking bronco is a good replacement for the shaker table, and has its own challenges. I'm fine with both the top two and the bottom two. The older guys rightfully went home; on the bottom twice in a row and IMO their design was simple compared to the rest.

I would expect that they make a distinction between "hiding among your property" and "hiding in public". So if you get an advantage and hide it in a public space (as in in the woods, near the water well, on the beach, etc....) then if someone else gets it, then too bad, so sad; you left it in public and lost it. If it's among your property however, then it can't be removed, it's still effectively in your control. Now, what this means for conditional advantages ("Lose your vote until all 3 parts are revealed" type things), I don't know. There might be an implied rule about "must be kept on your person" or something to avoid this edge case.

Yeah I sort've miss the clue review after the reveals, though some of the clues are a lot more obvious. That Pie-rat came out with a smaller rat leaned heavily on a ventriloquist. I first suspected Terry Fator, but Terry tends to have much broader shoulders.... and he can sing. Jeff Dunham was an obvious second guess. So this is twice now that we've been faked out, with an "obvious" athletic singer... who isn't actually in sports. That seems to be becoming a thing now. Especially since they faked out the judges twice by actually having 2 of their popular guesses on and no one getting them. I almost wish Nick had said his guess before the panther reveal just to prove that he knew who it was. I'm pretty sure he did get it, but with everything he was saying it would've been a nice jab for him to get a 'win'. I know normally he can't/won't guess because he's so close to the singers, he gets more clues (intentional or otherwise) that others won't. (At the very least he hears their unmodified voices a lot more). But when the reveal is about to happen, I'd be fine with him making a guess. And I have no idea who Harp is, but damn, can she belt out those songs. Panther put on a real challenge though. If it wasn't scripted, it was a real toss up as to who should get the crown.

I think Thirsty had a talking head mentioning never winning a round yet, so I'm not surprised she got the win this time. Chakra put on a great performance and I'm pretty sure Ru isn't going to knock out the last cis-female in the competition at this stage, so getting second was pretty much a given. By elimination that left Chic and Poppy in the bottom two, and Poppy's pretty much got this in the bag, so it was Chic's time to go. Really it was going to be Chic vs either Poppy or Chakra, and it could have been either; but Chic was always going home. Really, given how much the show likes to do Face off against Face off to a final Face Off, I'm surprised Ru didn't do a non-Elim so we'd have 4 queens in the final and could do 3 Lip Syncs for the Crown to wrap things up.

That was rough; I hope she gets invited back sometime for a second attempt with better celebrities. She certainly seemed like a good contestant and seemed to know the game. (She seemed to realize that Nicole hadn't actually gotten that clue but kept pushing hard anyways).

Spielberg (with or without Mr) is an excellent clue, even better than Colbert or Carell. Though it may lead them to "Famous Directors" before you get a second one out.

Haven't watched yet but... Famous Stephens: Colbert, Hawking, King.... Library for Librarian is a real edge case, especially with how lax the judging has been. But one is a profession while hte other is a building so I can understand not giving it yet; but maybe it should. A "Read it again" prompt seems fair to me, when the contestant is giving obviously wrong with their clues. They're often hyperfocused at that point and may not realize what's going on, so it's a nice nudge to keep the game going without burning the category.

The main reason they Ruvealled everyone is so they can get more padding into the episode by having the group shots now. And overall I'm fine with that. This is Poppy's to win at this point and it's no wonder considering who she is; the Backstreet Boys history she has is certainly a boon for the lip syncs. It was good to see a Rusical of sorts, but man that was a bit of a mess, mainly because I couldn't really follow any sort of story in it. I doubt it weighted too much in the final decision, but mainly was there to fill time. I'm a little surprised Donna was eliminated, but not too surprised. The pool is too small now to have room for stories, and Donna got the win last week, so her time seemed due.

I'll skim through the show this weekend, but I am glad a singer didn't win. I have no idea how it works, but I suspect for most group acts (or at least big group acts) they are actually incorporated as an LLC or something similar, and that is what they were entered under. So the individual dancers probably won't see a dime of it, but the company will get the prizes and figure out how to distribute the money, handle taxes and (most likely) spend it in promoting the group in general. Hell, even the smaller groups and single acts would probably be wise to set things up that way, just to shield themselves from the tax bills and other issues that might come up.

That area of Ontario is beautiful, and it was nice to see part of it other than Toronto or Ottawa. All in all we got a pretty decent tour of Ontario this season; they just missed Thunder Bay and the north basically. The closest I've ever gotten to that area was probably 30-some years ago, when my aunt and uncle had a place in Sarnia. And that only puts me on the same (Great) lake, no where near the actual area. I don't know why, but I never placed Wiarton up there. I know of Wiarton Willy (but Shubenacadie Sam is better :P ), but I think for some reason I always mentally placed it somewhere near Kingston or Peterborough, not way up there. I LOVED that they got that Squirrel! moment on camera, and I'm sure the editors loved having it too. It was so perfectly timed... and since peacocks aren't common in my neck of the woods, if I saw a wild one I'm sure I'd be reacting similarly. I'm satisfied with the final 4 and hope any of them will win it in the end.

Between Robert or Kevin, I'll take Robert back any day. So I'm happy to see him back. He probably found it a bit strange to be back in the Den and only "recognize" Arlene. He is still in the tank too apparently, but I'm wondering if this will be his last season there; it feels like he's been having less and less time there, as he tends to get swapped for guest Sharks. Interesting the Lobster guy went with Arlene in the end. He passed on a strong offer from Robert and Guzzo. The eye gadget sounds interesting. Michelle seems to be a good fit for them. The Parked guys had a good idea for the App... but yeah they really shot themselves in the foot. I almost wish Jim was still there to give them the Mr Lube-job when they said they wanted to go B&M AND App based. The Sprinkles company is interesting. The valuation was really tough to hit I'm sure. I'm surprised they had as many offers as they did. The dragons pushed for some hard deals, but Arlene should be a good deal. Hopefully Arlene doesn't get too stuck on the Royalties. She's best in the role as the Elder Dragon now I think. She seemed honestly surprised to have the deal taken. Anyways, Robert didn't make any deals, but he does seem to be vibing well with the other dragons. I'm happy to see him back.

I'm fine with Dara's win. As noted above, her overall meal was "Just right". And she certainly got the winners edit. They seemed to try to get some criticism of her dishes, but it didn't seem anywhere near as strong as the criticism of the other dishes put out. It was so obvious by the Entree judging they probably could've skipped desert entirely. The only real flaw she had was over freezing Joe's meringue, so he ended up splattering when he broke it up; that might've been a good chance to add at least a bit of criticism to sow some doubt, but it was probably too little too late by then. As for the deserts, the banana pudding needed more thought. If he'd done more to it or around it, he might have been better. Maybe blowing a sugar bowl (or making a white chocolate bowl or isomalt bowl) for it instead of a standard glass bowl might have been enough to "elevate" it a bit higher and to show off more skills. (Granted doing that in an hour would have been extra challenging). And the milk desert, the empty part of the plate was too much. They were going to notice the missing milk cube regardless, so he would have been better having three extra instead of being one short. I'm not all that familiar with the flavours, so I can't really say how appetizing it was, but it wasn't really appealing to me.

Yeah, I agree that they should have another guaranteed level higher up to make it more tempting to push on and/or to give you a bigger cushion if you do decide to go all in. As is, dropping down to 25k is too damaging when you're playing with hundreds of thousands of dollars. I suspect the overall payouts wouldn't change much regardless since most people fizzle out at the 75k and 100k levels regardless.

I'm fine with the stomping, since the rules are you can't use your hands. Grimaces and facial expressions and other body movements are fine. Plus, the clue wasn't exactly related to stomping (ie it isn't "Something you do on Riverdance"), it's an (allowed) random body action which let's her get to the vocal clue she actually gave. It is admittedly an edge case that may be disallowed in the future now that it has happened; but overall I'm fine with it.

The British category, when he said "Where the Queen Lives", with this week's news, I wonder how long it will take for people to start thinking of it as "Where the King lives". It's probably going to take a few years at least (and not just due to a backlog of shows) .