KarateKate

The heavy hand of production is just so grating. On the note of Celine's song being too big for her... she sang a Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey duet as a solo. That's basically too big for anyone. That said, yeah.

And, don't forget, she cut off her husband's, um, well she Lorena Bobbitted him. With a dull knife.

I love their use of family to help the stories - first Laverne Cox's twin brother to play pre-transition and now Dacha Polanco's daughter to play her younger self. Also, I OBVIOUSLY knew it was pornstache as Mama Steenburgen was on the phone, but without his titular pornstache he was much more sympathetic just by appearing so different (and, while being clean shaven would have served the purpose of looking DIFFERENT, Pablo Schreiber will always and forever ultimately be the INSANELY creepy, sadistic, evil (insert adjective of depravity here) William Lewis from L&O:SVU to me, so... masking the face is a better bet towards making him even momentarily and partially sympathetic).

They did already do a Taystee flashback (maybe season 2??), but I do like it when they came back and fill in more with flashbacks, or (especially for tertiary characters that should remain so) through conversational call backs. Like in the episode where Allison gets a flashback, but relates to conversational backstory of white supremacist chick. Or how we find out Skinhead #2 is in for hate crime poisonings. Some of the others have had multiple flashbacks. Janae had an arc with her as a HS (and college?) track athlete, and we got a fish this season showing her younger as a great academic student (which I don't remember being a focus on her earlier feature). Poussey got at feature earlier in the run that was her family rejecting her sexual orientation, and I really thought that was a completely separate feature from The Last Best Day of Poussey Washington, Free Woman With the cast having promoted so many players to features or even credit-named stars, it does feel like there is not enough time for either form of backstory exposition to really get filled in, though

The song or what Frieda was in for (well, what Frieda mentioned doing... I'm not sure what she specifically got in for. Although if I had to bet it would be shooting a cop with his own gun. Pretty sure that was Frieda) The introduction and way-back story were just a few episodes back. The full knife Bobbiting is just hard to forget.

I loved the melodic reprise of The Survival Ballad of Frieda the Wonder Scout as she was passing out her bunker invites. I mean, yes, she has killed multiple people, Bobbitted her husband (with a dull knife, at that), and who knows what else, but at heart she is still that Girl Survivalist, progeny of a paranoid prepper. And there is something upbeat about that.

Kinda boards on boards, but I have to point out how much I love the LSoH nod in the post title. Keeping it in the quirky musical family!

I think Terry Fator was the number one competitor against Paul this year. Yes, I know he wasn't in the competition. But Terry is SO good that - while Paul is a great ventriloquist and has a fun act - anyone who does remember how great Terry is is thinking "well, he's good... but he's no Terry Fator". And that's different than saying about, say, Piff "Well, he's good and he's funny... but he's no Penn & Teller". Penn & Teller were never on (as contestants) AGT. Terry Fator not only was, but is highly promoted by AGT (since he's their biggest success story, by far) Still, "not as good as Terry Fator" leaves a lot of room to be very, very good. Congrats to Paul on the win.

... that was it? Really?

MrKate and I thought both acts were given unfair hope by the pairing. I called a double elimination; he thought the band had made it. He lost; he drinks. (I won, I drink, too. Because drinking* makes AGT more fun!) *Responsible, legal drinking, of course. Drinking's not cool kids!

I almost never "get" how a trick is done. BUT I don't know how the numbers got in the gumballs - again, I next to never get these things. But it seems like standard magician fare. Not to say I wasn't entertained by it! What he does he does well. And he did a great integration of pre-show plants (and AGT lurrves twitter integration), banter, story, etc. It's just that one bit that seemed obvious to me.

I love the little BMW callback and summary - "I was weird; he was celery." Corey with the celery poster is the BMW equivalent to Corey in the Shovel sweatshirt (which I am making for myself. I love it! And, apparently, have some sort of arrested development)

Ugh. The regurgitator. There are many things I cannot do. There are many things that clearly require skill and practice and are, I guess, impressive? There is a much smaller number of those I find entertaining. This not only doesn't fall into the "Entertaining" cross section, it falls into the black subcategory of "Things that Actively Repulse Me". Not things I would pay to see, but things I would pay to NOT see.

YMMV, but I felt like Howard was doing it to help them...kinda. It's the call-in show judge equivalent of a guy negging a girl he's trying to pick up. By saying "You're good, but I just don't think America can be image-blind enough to vote for non-model boy band. And you're nerds." America - who may have, unprovoked, found these guys to be good, but not great, or may have subconsciously overlooked them in a soft-prejudice says to themselves "Ho, ho hoooold on there Howard! These boys are not trolls! Sure they're not classic boyband, but... they're relateable! I feel I am a nerd (in the new definition of nerd that is not at all like in 'Revenge of the Nerds')! I like these guys. You know who is a judgy-mcjudgerson? YOU, Howard. You think I won't vote for them?? I'll show you. Redialers... assemble!" The placement at the end is not who they were up against for slots in the show, IMO. Like you said (and we could be singing two verses of the same song here) - "never forget the contortions TPTB can and will go to in staging and placing acts" In each group of three it wasn't "and only one will go through", it was more "only 6 will go through - let's fill in the others around them as we announce".

I am not surprised that there were 105 fish. I am surprised that there were apparently 105 fish TANKS. Are these kids going to buy new cars when they need new windshield wipers, too? That said, I always hold network theme shows to lighter standards (they are only one step ahead of Simpson's Tree House of Terror for character continuity, frankly). That doesn't mean I like them - this one won't get a purposeful rewatch from me - but I don't hold it against GMW in general.