Jesse

Best thoughts to you and yours, caprice. I'm glad your folks are safe, at least.

We only have until midday tomorrow to do anything, so I'd be psyched to see some more ideas or evidence or whatever.

Well, hell. Now I have no idea what to do!

Yeah, I really appreciate when people are relaxed with the game, especially in tournaments like this. I mean, they have already proven themselves, right?

Oh man! Come on, heroes -- let's get it together! I will see if I can figure out anything this evening.

I call so much bullshit on Final Jeopardy, and I even got it! That was a ridiculous "definition" of PC.

Wow, that whole game seemed pretty easy to me (not that I knew all of them) -- until Final!

Thank you to the people who already pointed out that it wasn't vocal fry or upspeak....eeeekuh. Sad about Mike -- I liked him more and more! And I always like a hometown contestant.

For what it's worth, this is still a reality TV show, and I'm sure we don't see every comment made on every item (except maybe the technical?). I think it's a little of both -- the directions do tell you what to do, and people do look at each other's work. I mean, even if I've never seen a Charlotte Royale, if the directions tell me to make a jelly roll and slice it and line a bowl with the slices, I can do that. But we've definitely seen people not knowing how thick how make X or what direction to pipe Y or things like that.

I was 90% sure Boeing was in Seattle, and also the other military-industrial and/or aviation companies I could think of had two names (Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas), so that clinched it.

Poor Julia had the flu! I hope there are more special event type tournaments so she gets another shot.

The TOC page is hilarious because if you hover over the pictures, you get a little gif of the person doing a signature move.

I would say it's especially the overpronunciation of loan words like (my personal favorite) genre. When speaking English, you don't have to say that word in French!!

Ha! No, it's just the zebra ears here with a zebra-ish dress. I'm not even sure the dress is supposed to be zebra-striped, but the pattern is black and white, at least.

Ugh, you guys, sorry I haven't been available much. And it's not going to get better until the middle of next week! In the meantime, I will start my day with a virtual bloody Mary. That's the right accessory for my work-appropriate zebra costume, right?

That was beautiful.

In greater Boston, we're having late-night airings Weds-Fri, thanks to the Patriots game on Thursday. Usually just the Thursday and Friday schedules are screwy during football season, which is bad enough.

Yeah, only a trick question because Hamilton is so in the air right now. I mean, without any other part of the clue, saying "Name a signer of the Declaration of Independence" would get most people to Hancock pretty quickly!

Me too! I was really nervous, since Nora had been such an obvious front-runner the whole time. You can only do so much in a few hours -- did they even do multiple takes on anything? The films weren't the real point, anyway -- like Reishe said, it was more a test to see how the makeups did in real-world conditions. Yes to all of this. They seemed like a great group and I bet they all work. And yes! re: Patrick. It does really feel like they are running out of contestants, though -- but maybe if they frame it more explicitly as being for up-and-comers -- recent grads, hobbyists, etc., it could still be interesting to watch.

Agreed.

Yeah, funny -- nothing in that review about how authentic everything looked?

I feel like I will never figure out a clue, and game play is a mystery to me, too! Until people start getting real real obvious, anyway! So... what do the rest of you think?

As long as we're topic-adjacent.... I was 10 in 1984, and that song gave me the serious wiggins! "Hey little girl is your daddy home" in that voice I knew was sexy just gave me the creeps.

Bummer, Machiabelly!

I think it's the Hollywood Reporter interview where Effie says something about the crew "looking like America," which I kind of wish she would stop. It looks (or the leadership, at least) looks much blacker than America. In a good way! I mean, those roles are usually much whiter and more male than America, right? I just feel like the phrase gives racists ammunition.