cattykit

Finally, finally new episodes. I have my DVR set to record only new episodes. Of course if it's like last year, they'll show a week or two and go right into reruns again. My fervent wish, year after year, that they update the cheesy set has gone unfulfilled yet again. What was the point, symbolic or otherwise, of having MM put Doug Llewellyn's jacket on him? To prove he's so old he needs help getting dressed? Is this a one-day wonder or is Curt relegated to VO?

I liked this yard with the big deck better than last week's. All I could think of with the fire pit, the putting green, yadda yadda, was how much work it was going to be to take care of all the elements of that back yard. Maybe if you're paying $1.2M for your house you have disposable income for someone to manage all that, but your average HO after cleaning their house's interior doesn't really want to do much more than mow, trim a few hedges once in a while, and maybe hose off a deck. I totally thought the same thing--who says this show isn't scripted? They can't possibly be that stupid; some production person invented drama to go into the commercial break. Speaking of which, seems like they've upped the product placement, too. Closeups of the paint cans and surfing for staging furniture with big shots of the tags, followed by actual commercials for said sponsors.

He doesn't look better to me. He's still obsessed with his maps, and still acting like a landslide is a given even as fivethirtyeight.com says don't be so sure about the electoral college. In my sixth decade of watching election night coverage, I can't wrap my head around someone jumping all over the maps two months before the election as if those numbers have legal meaning. It's like predicting the Super Bowl based on preseason results. Now if he looks better because it's only one night instead of two, then I'm with you all the way...

I was a poli sci major back in the 70s and I've always loved history so I already knew the story of the Whigs and the No-Nothings and how they morphed into the Republican party, but I sometimes wonder if history is really taught in schools these days. Sadly, though, the people who could most benefit from Rachel's history lesson last night are the people least likely to watch her program.

Drumpf isn't spending on ads, and he doesn't need to, because he's scheduling all his speeches in prime time, and the networks are giving him free, unfiltered coverage. I can't remember the last time Hillary spoke in prime time, other than the convention. Rachel's comments last night citing The New Colossus ("give me your tired, your poor...") reflected exactly what I was thinking as I watched Drumpf rant about how only the elite should be allowed in. Too bad most of the east coast probably didn't see her. Which is another side effect of covering these speeches in their entirety in prime time.

John Oliver drives book sales like Oprah

What would happen if a presidential nominee quit? What staffer found that book about the kid running for president? Give that staffer a gold star (not a Gold Star)! That was amazing. I've never been a fan of the public schools, and I even homeschooled for a while, but siphoning taxpayer money from the public schools to a for-profit structure doesn't seem like a way to make public schools any better. Many years ago I put my daughter back in public school because she was chosen in a lottery for a new magnet school. It was a public school but they gave control to a for-profit organization. Within a couple of years the company had run things pretty much into the ground and the school district kicked them out and took back control of the school.

My DVR shows it as S2, E1, but then also says Season Premiere Coming Soon. (The bug on the screen said premiere September 22.) And because Olympic coverage ran over, I didn't get the ending because the DVR cut off at 30 minutes. And it's not in my On Demand to catch up. Obviously there's an Olympic tie-in, but its placement at 10:30 pm on Friday a couple of weeks into the games doesn't seem to be designed to get people to watch. Is Cheyenne still supposed to be pregnant? I thought she had the baby already but she looked totally pregnant.

I'm really trying to understand this apparent redemption arc they've got Mickey on. He takes one for the team so now they all, including Ray, love and care about him? Ray was actually smiling talking to him, and he never smiles for anyone. And then Mickey is the one to get Bunchy to do the right thing? I really thought Abby was going to take Connor to Boston, not take him to the damn firing range where she had been sweating it out with her boyfriend.

That confused me, too. I didn't think the bankruptcy lawyer was the least bit pleased about his clients being solicited to go into worse debt. I dealt with a two-hour public transportation commute (and was still never sure of getting to work on time because SEPTA was so unreliable) for a while many, many years ago. It wasn't a ten minute drive, though, and even if it had been, it wouldn't have been a safe walk. I swore after that I'd never be without a car again, and I haven't been. I LOL at LWT's API commercial. Are they going to force them to take down their plagiarized fonts?

Well, there's sob stories, and then there's "my mom's a widow four times over." Hmmm, what's she been putting in the dinner? I'm not willing to go back and do the math, but how often has there been a complement of three women and one man and the man goes home first? But I really would like it if not every time a woman goes on this show, she belts out a chorus of "I am Woman." We need to get to the point where it's not a news item for women to be chefs, and they're not Susan B. Anthony for going on a reality competition show.

Applause for the journalism segment from the Washington Post I wouldn't like that at all. I'd read something crappy and want my money back. I could easily see a pay-per-view option as leading to even more, and more outrageous, clickbait headlines designed to grab instant cash than we see now.

Why does Ray all of a sudden care so much about Mickey's welfare? As Cochran so aptly pointed out, same guy he paid Sully to kill. I guess they teach waterboarding at the FBI. And Tommy had no problem with it. I just don't care about Hector or Marisol. Is that how they decide if someone is gay? Call their kids? Play 20 Questions? And who the hell would answer questions like that in the first place from a stranger on the phone? Conor is an idiot but I don't blame him for his response. And JOC how old is that actor? He looks like he went from 12 to 35 in about a year. Best part was no Bridget and almost no Abby. Remember, Avi is always right.

The decline in journalism is not news (get it?), but it's still incredibly depressing, especially those of us who came of age in the days of Watergate. Love seeing guys like Bobby Cannavale and Jason Sudeikis doing these skits for John. What, a week without Drumpf? I guess at this point it must have felt like shooting fish in a barrel, and he'll surely have so many more opportunities.

Ok, as someone who's seriously going to have to hold her nose and vote for HRC (even though I know it won't matter since I live in a red state), I have to ask what was more depressing: FF's previous interviews with the die-hard Trumpette Hillary haters or FF's current interviews with the die-hard Bernista Hillary haters. Sometimes you just have to say, what do I get for my principles--if the orange Puffalump is elected and the feces hit the oscillator, will I really feel better about passively having let it happen because I stuck to my "principles"? Sometimes life is full of sucky choices, and guess what--you still have to make them. I wish someone would make the case for splitting the electoral votes, as they do in only a couple of states, over winner-takes-all. I think that would vastly influence voter turnout. I liked this week's ep reasonably well but don't think Sam hit the orange Puffalump nearly hard enough.

No Lena, no Avi, no interest. Giant leap backward in Ray's evolution, too, back to horndogging drunk Neanderthal. Ah, but I counted two dicks to one boob this time. Gotta be Showtime...

Here's this on the shiplap craze. The author seems to like the Gaineses; clocks and shiplap, not so much.

The only--and I mean only--thing I liked on this ep was seeing Izzy. Those wood shelves over the godawful ugly subway tile created about the fugliest combination I've ever seen. And the market in SoCal has to be even crazier than I thought for there to be a bidding war on that tired, tiny, cookie cutter house. Their designs have become more predictable than Nicole Curtis's, and I didn't think that was possible.

Unless it's a breakfast challenge, bread pudding and French toast need to be permanently outlawed. And is it too much to ask, just once, that the equipment in the kitchen be in good working order?

If I find out anything has happened to that cat... And who are those two ugly guys to call that beautiful kitty "ugly?" I got my first kitten from a kill shelter and never again. I couldn't get out of the place without sobbing at every cage for the babies I couldn't take with me, knowing their eventual fate. MKW seems to specialize in criminals with a slightly tarnished heart of gold (Omar, Chalky). If he's for real this time, chalk up another one.

Believe it or not, I actually watch shows like this (and LWT) to help me sort through my decision-making process. I loathe Drumpf and everything about him with every fiber of my being, and I'd cut my wrists before I'd vote for him, but I trust Hillary Clinton as far as I can throw a piano. I want a woman president but not this woman president. But damn, those are our two choices and they suck. Out of 300,000,000 people, this is the best we could do. I'm trying to find something in Sam's pieces or John Oliver's pieces to give me an "Aha!" moment and while I enjoy them, I haven't had the Aha! moment. Being !NotDrumpf! isn't good enough. Watched Jon Stewart last week on the Stephen Colbert show...couldn't he have waited a few months to retire??????????

I thought maybe his business picked up so much with the publicity and the "reward" out there that maybe it was better uncollected. Otherwise I couldn't figure it out. Which wouldn't be the first time I haven't quite grasped a plot line here. You've distilled it to the essence. Success for show: dog, Lena, Avi, lather, rinse, repeat...

HGTV--another network that's been completely bastardized from a great concept into something unwatchable. Many, many parallels here with FN. I don't know what happened to Medusa, but damn if I don't actually miss both of them. They looked at the business side of things and were reasonably good at ferreting out bullshit, most of the time. If nothing else, they should have had more than a two-person committee making the decisions--but then, there's no reason to believe, as has long been pointed out, that anyone at FN actually gives a shit if a Food Network star is born, so long as the ratings for TNFNS are high.

Watch one of these losers? No, thanks, I'm having people over to help me watch paint dry.