Chippings

Love me a catfish story, no matter where. But the most obvious clue, besides the 'broken camera' (and as said above, anybody that vain about his looks would surely have a working camera) is his voice! That voice does not go with the image - and further, it's about as far as you can get from an English accent - including any variety of Cockney or Yorkshire or whatever you got. Just not. If her daughter had heard him talk, she would have been smart enough to pick it up? If they had a few days, wouldn't one of her kids gone on line and done some snooping? Poor woman is woefully deluded, letting herself believe this pitifully thin set-up. Hope it doesn't drag on too long!

As we've noted, for whatever reasons in her little brain, Victoria didn't at all work within the terms ofThe Challenge, and the same judges who have so often reduced the grade of a garment because it did not, just did not mention it at all. And as you all said, how difficult to ask another designer "What means this 'sheer'??" or ask Christian at Mood, &c &c. Less than no excuse. Further what she did create used that Thing many of them are doing this year, the hem that is 1/3 mini-skirt and 2/3 knee-length or longer. REEEally ?? Such a cliche' by now. Given how dumb it looked, I think we all groaned when Nina's first comment was how nice that it was yellow.

That opening monologue of Buck Henry's (with the crawl over it) was really incredibly funny. You had to have been, you know, alive in 1976 to catch some of the names of alternate hosts they'd invited. Very cool, and it was nice to see it all. That, and to see the show when it was barely a few months old, the customs that've stuck and those that disappeared.

I have to admit I didn't watch all of Love in Winterland, but enough to get the gist of it. But, given what we know about required tropes for these stories (e.g. 'meet cute' before the first commercial, 'near kiss' in Act 7 or whatever it was) - even given that, I nearly threw something at the screen when, at the predictable 13 minutes before the end, the True Love saw his lady love with Other Guy, misunderstood what he was seeing, and walked away. (I remember liking one earlier version of this, the chocolatiers in Brussels, when the True Love was carrying some flowers for the lady at the 13 minute mark, saw the pair, and threw the flowers in a trashcan. ) How can a screen writer even screen-write with requirements like this? This was a departure of story line, somewhat, superimposing the Reality Show setup on the usual returning-home to small town thing. Still. Gag.

Re: Bangkok: I know it's all about the editing, but what made me queasy about the discussions of which place to choose was that the word 'school' was never mentioned. (If they were home-schooling, I missed that - sorry.) But it would seem almost as relevant as distance from the husband's work. I was listening for it because there was one of the Mexican ones (not HHI) this weekend where a family from San Francisco were relocating entirely to, I think, Cabo, with a 10 and 13 year old and - ditto. If you're going to show people with kids, it seems a pretty central issue. The editing monkeys could at least give it a line or two.

The New Yorker article had a lot of interesting bits I hadn't known before, but one was that "Hallmark screenplays have nine acts, each of which hits specific plot points -- a meet-cute in Act 1, before the first commercial, an"almost kiss" in Act VII." I knew there were a whole lot of tropes, and the obligatory misunderstanding about 17 minutes before the end, but .. nine acts! .. that was much more calculated than I had imagined.

We rated this episode Pretty Much Perfect. Could not have come up with a better resolution 10 years out for everybody -- the cherry on top of the sundae being Big Head being president of Stanford University. (Kind of like Peter Sellers' character in "Being There" -- so much simple idiocy can take you far.) As noted above, it would've been nice to know how Laurie ended up in prison, but like Big Head's story it's something to muse about on a cold winter evening.

And here again was Martin Starr (Guilfoyle) on 'Schooled' on ABC (the spin-off from 'Goldbergs'), playing a video store manager -- and with either a very good wig,or a serious haircut. We let out such a whoop when we saw him!

Funnily enough, C.I.A., I watched that rerun too, or the last several minutes of it. I tried to find a place on line where I could see the earlier part of the episode, where they unraveled the truth, but altho I found the episode, I would've had to Join some site I never heard of, and the one version I found had looong commercials and promos for 2019 shows, (literally 3 to 5 to 14 minutes, which you couldn't fast-forward) and I gave up. Does anybody know of a place you can watch very old episodes a little easier? Also, this is one of those you would really like to see an update on, but they are really bad about that. Maybe it's a contractual thing. But in other reality type shows there are people who scrape up subsequent info. She was a terrible, terrible person and I wonder if she did indeed just keep on communicating and sending money.

Regarding the thrift store Anny was taken to, I looked it up - (much time on your hands ??) The name is Avalon Exchange, in Winter Park FL. They seem to pride themselves on their website on being a 'cut above' in the resale store category. The reviews say it tends to younger stuff. No idea how savvy Robert is about this stuff, or if Production chose the place. It was still a dumb move, since he had to have some idea of her 'tastes'. But a guy who hasn't even bought his growing kid a bed yet may not even be up to prices at a Nordstrom's Rack or the like. Generally it looks like this relationship has a shelf life of about three days, but knowing how these things go, we'll see a spoiler that they got married this fall &c &c. p.s. Can I just add that Pao remains as unlikable as ever and isn't a great addition to 'Pillow Talk'? Wrong topic? Sorry.

When the New York Times wrote about the show (and the whole franchise) on August 18 they mentioned the airport business with Tania and Syngin. It says: "..Then she [Tania] and two girlfriends left for the airport. In the arrivals hall, they scattered more petals (a custodian tried to sweep them up; a producer had the custodian sign a release form) and took photos and Jagermeister shots." The next paragraph is kind of fun - .. it describes their anticipation of the reunion, as the crew are listening, then ".. Terminal 2 filled with pheromones as they kissed and clutched" - and then: "Flushed, giggling, they went back for his unattended bags and exited through a main door. Outside Tania turned to a producer. "Do you want us to redo that?" she asked."

The thing that bothered me about the "Bay Area" episode with the Indian couple was that they never said what actual towns the houses were in. Usually they do mention at least, is it the Peninsula, East Bay, over the hill in Livermore or what? The husband mentioned he was with a major social media company, which would probably place his work around Palo Alto or Cupertino, but they never got so specific as an area, let alone a town. In that area $800,000 won't get you a 3 bedroom house with a yard, I don't think, so it had to have been a ways out. Of course they didn't mention the commute at all. All kind of frustrating, and unusual actually.

Possibly I can answer that one. Many years ago we adopted our son in Central America, and one of the things that was required was a "police report" - in our case, the other country required that our county sheriff's office provide them with a report that neither of us had a criminal record, and no untoward events at our house. It may be a thing like, that, where her home town's police would review and see if there was any record on her. It sounded kind of the same, although coming after a poor interview, maybe in this case it is the next step to see if there is a shred of a chance.

Thank you, Angora, thank you ! Our two brains here only came up with Brian Doyle Murray, which was sort of close but not really. Good recollection on his bio, too - I had not remembered he was Geo III off-Broadway! I'll play the lip-sync in a second, wanted to thank you first. Sometimes mid-show I wonder if there's going to be a super-whammo ending to it, and sometimes there is not, which is fine. But this time they went entirely beyond what we've ever seen before. Good grief - And yes, let's see the lyrics to that song!

Quick, oh please, who was the Broadway performer who sang ? I think he was the lead in 'Something Rotten ? Know his name as well as anything. Thank you ! (Incredible number, absolutely amazing. They're sure they ran it all by their lawyers, right?)

Being a London nerd, I loved the line about the London neighbourhoods - that was fabulous. "Knightsbridge, not Kensington and certainly not Brompton." I looked them up on my always-at-hand London map, and was reminded that the three of them are literally contiguous. You could throw a pebble from one and hit the other, or walk in all three in twenty minutes. That's the pinnacle of Tahani-type snobbery.

Another couple (North Carolina) for whom it's obvious they shouldn't last another five years. She was so demeaning toward him - maybe he could live with it for sixty years, but he'd be miserable. She wasn't listening to any kind of logic. Actually I dozed off before they made their choice. Was it #3? If so, he deserves the 60 years of grief.

Such an interesting article. When I read it originally I didn't take away principally that they were using the show for publicity for their soap company (though that's in there). But the bulk of the article is a very interesting account of how they choose couples, the criteria they have, and a very close look at how the filming goes on and "stories" they anticipate will come along -- and then expand on when they do. The journalist went along on some shoots, including the day he arrived at the airport. My favorite part was that after the filming of his arrival at the airport, "Tania turned to a producer. 'Do you want us to redo that?' she asked." And Syngin is quoted as saying "For me, it's getting exposed.." Someone might even see the show and offer them a camper van or some land, he suggested. "Like, I put a lot of hope on that .. That's kind of my end game, what I want from the show."

Gracias again ! I will look him up.

Okay, the person playing the Chinean investor (Massimo?) looks very familiar but I can't find any listing of the cast that includes him. Does anybody know who he is? Gracias!

I wondered how Amsterdam couple even got on this show, except for the 'drama'. If there had been an interview before they were chosen, her voice should've disqualified them. I got to thinking about the realtor, though. Obviously she's a "perky" person, but it seemed almost as if she were auditioning, with hopes of being the next Toby or Richard B. in London, or [you know who I mean] in Paris. Let's see if we see her again.

Oh, yes, Mostly in County Wicklow, evidently.

While this was an interesting story and the research interesting as well, it was padded so badly that in the end I came away 40% satisfied with the story and 60% frustrated with the time I wasted watching the stretched-out parts. The whole five hour thing could have been presented very completely in three, maybe? Less shots of driving along in the rain, another view of that intersection in McCaysville -- showing the same conversation once before a commercial break, and then again immediately after. Maybe that is good documentary-making, but it's lousy viewing.

I'm in the West as well, and the Live Chat (aka "Rice a Roni.." etc) is only on while the show is being played on the East Coast. So if it's on at 9 pm there, we have to log on to the Live Chat at 6 pm here, and we read the chat as it goes along, just not see the show. When it gets to be 9 pm here, there's no Live Chat available to participate in, but that is the blow we have been dealt. (Same story, I assume, for Central and Mountain time, with different math to calculate the times.) I do it often, which means I'm killing four hours of my evening instead of just two, but who would understand better than this group.

Whew, it's been viewed ! Have to say my favorite part was the salsa dancing. Who knew-- in Nottingham!