fishcakes

I guess I'm rooting for Megan now too, but she's been almost invisible the last few weeks, so I don't know if she really has a chance. I kind of remember liking her at the beginning of the season, but she's faded into the background as bigger personalities have emerged. I think we're gearing up for a Trenton/Kiya showdown; she hates him and he's generally arrogant. For someone who couldn't figure out he was eating tuna even with Gordon repeatedly saying "T - U - N - A" at him, he could maybe be less impressed with himself. And then he explains it by saying he doesn't eat a lot of raw fish. Okay, well, but can he spell at all? I still think Steve should have won, but if Gordon gives him a job, which he's done with a few people who didn't get to the finals, he might end up doing just as well. I kind of doubt that the winner of this season will be Gordon's actual protege; they'll probably just get training in one of his restaurants.

I think it's likely that Kelsey made a traditional French onion soup, which uses water instead of stock and is therefore a little harder to make if you want something really flavorful. I have no way of knowing, but the reason I think she didn't use stock is because in the short amount of time that she had she would have had to use canned stock, and Gordon will almost always chide them over using something canned or frozen, even if the end result is good. It's pretty impressive to me if she made a soup good enough for Chef Ludo to say he'd serve in his restaurant out of primarily water and onions.

Yeah, I hated that. It was the same with Kelsey and Autumn toward Suu too. Suu would try to offer an idea and they'd immediately dismiss it and start talking to each other. All made worse by the judges saying that Abe and Suu were taking a backseat, when they were both trying to be part of their teams. I guess tuile are fashionable in fine dining right now, given how much they've shown up this season. At least it's not that horrible foam trend that was happening a few years back. Joe: "It's a rare thing that we get a perfect dish, but this one was perfect, except for the sauce." Or in other words, not perfect. Thanks Joe. That was helpful.

Gordon's choices in each round were odd. I would have put Kiya through in the first round along with Trenton, and in the second round Steve had the best looking tuna dish. It's a decent final five, though overall I think Antonio is stronger than Meghan and should have made it through.

Ha ha, this is more proof that I watch too many reality shows. Anne was nicer to Joseph than I expected though; she was a bulldozer but not mean, and she seemed genuinely sorry when he got eliminated.

Anne was in over her head and has been for a while. She probably has a few dishes that she makes well and used one of them in her audition, which got her on the show, but in general, she's not a very good cook. The last few weeks, her technique, palate, and plating have all been bad. And I'm not sure why she keeps trying to make Asian food because she doesn't understand how to use the ingredients and she fails every time she does. But now she's going to be so certain of what a great cook she is because she got to seventh place on Masterchef. She's one of those people whose self-confidence far exceeds their competence. This is the person who usually ends up becoming your boss. Joseph was in a bad position because with only five minutes to plan a dish and get everything from the pantry, there was no way he was going talk Anne into anything other than what she wanted to do. He had no choice but to follow her, and that was especially clear when he tried to object to a technique with her during the cooking and she shouted him down. By the time she was yelling instructions that would completely ruin the rice, his face was so resigned, I was waiting for him to give a Jim Halpert look to the camera. He knew they were going to lose and he should have saved himself by not following her bad directions, but he got too hung up on the identical dish requirement of the task and not on the restaurant-quality requirement, maybe because with that horribly conceived dish that was a lost cause. She should have been eliminated instead of him. He's been inconsistent and might have been the next to go, but it's wrong that she outlasted him, even if it's just by one spot.

Idk if this is what you’re referring to, but after he scolded one of the chefs (Sam?) for something, he told Brynn to tell Sam the same thing and she did. He knows she likes to boss the other chefs around, but not in a way that makes look like a leader, more in a smug know-it-all kind of way. It was a weak moment for Gordon, I thought. He was being shitty to Sam by exploiting a shitty trait of Brynn’s and it made both of them look bad.

I can't understand how these chefs fail to cook chicken properly at least half the time, yet I've never had an undercooked piece of chicken at any fast food restaurant ever. Sam was the right person to go, but I do think he was hamstringed by the agreement not to say anything bad about Antonio. That whole thing was weird; they know they're going to be asked why they should stay over the other person, and if you've borked the chicken three or four times, pretty much the only thing you do is talk about why the other guy is worse. Sam should have known that going in. Antonio: "I don't want to say I'm an intellectual, but I read books." Youth really is wasted on the young. Every generation thinks they're the most awesome, forward-thinking generation ever. Every generation also thinks they invented sex. Every generation also blames the previous one for ruining the world, but there's this funny dynamic right now where millennials are blaming Boomers, and GenXers keep whining, "STOP IGNORING US!" Well, not "funny" so much as annoying. I had to mute generational words on twitter because it's relentless.

When the judges called time, Anne looked up to the balcony and said something like, "what do you think, Joseph?" but it sounded sarcastic to me, like, "pray tell, what does the doooorman think of my quail?" The previews for next week showed the contestants being put in pairs for something, so I'm guessing we'll see Anne and Joseph coupled up, with replays of her comments about him to make it look like they're feuding, although if they are, she's the only one who seems to know it.

Oh that’s interesting. Where I live they used to say a small amount of food residue was okay, but in recent years they’ve been saying if it’s not clean and dry, it and anything it touches becomes garbage. It’s good to know that’s an exaggeration because with some food containers that can be a pain.

Antonio is growing on me. The Jumble, the perfect Wellington, and I LOLed at how befuddled he was in the previews for next week. Honestly, Steve seemed pretty fed up last night, which was why he was so quiet. He's usually not super loud anyway, but he was shutting down and I think it's because of the punishment. He was right that the picking bits of food out of the carpet was absurd, given the existence of vacuum cleaners. It was solely a way to demean the contestants and he was probably questioning whether or not the prize of being GR's protege is worth putting up with that kind of thing. It's like the garbage challenge where they have to sort out the recyclables, which is stupid as everything is already contaminated with food waste and no recycle center will take the stuff that way. They have to go through the garbage only to have it all end up back in the garbage. I'm glad he didn't quit or get eliminated though as he's been my favorite since the beginning. OTOH, I had to laugh at him a little for this: Gordon: Why should you stay? Steve [mild-mannered guy trying to be tough]: I'm ready to KICK ass and take INITIALS because getting the whole name takes too long! Gordon [craps bigger than Steve]: Uh. Okay.

A fitting end to a crappy season. I think they air the shows the day after they film, which means right about now, Korey is back at home and finding out he gave $50,000 to a bigot.

Here's a reddit thread that posted a link to Olivia's tiktok along with links to some of the tiktoks she's liked recently, and it's apparently a lot of racist and homophobic stuff. Anti-Juneteenth, anti-BLM, anti-LGBTQ, according to the comments, but I try not to watch stuff that makes me despair for humanity so I didn't watch them personally. But yeah, she's faking it with Korey. I can't say I'm surprised. She never showed the slightest bit of interest in Javonny, and her face when Korey chose her last time before Andre could was not a happy one. She latched onto him solely so she could stay in the villa, and then found herself stuck with him after someone she preferred came in. I also saw some random blog post that said Cash unfollowed her a couple of days ago after her tiktok came to light and then refollowed her, but no idea if that's accurate.

I looked at twitter because I am a masochist, and if it's representative of the voting, then Jeremy and Bailey are winning in a landslide. A couple of days ago it was more evenly split between Olivia/Korey and Jeremy/Bailey, but now it's running almost entirely toward J/B. People are mad at Olivia for voting for Trina's elimination, so they're voting J/B as a fuck you to Olivia specifically and to the others more generally for saving Jeremy so many times. It's funny how they always do that. You'd think they'd divide up the date budget equally, but every year, the frontrunners get the helicopter and catamaran and the other two get the showroom at Pier One Imports. But like others have said, I thought the cheap dates were nicer/more romantic this year, but maybe it's just because I like those two couples more. And lol at Korey, who thinks he and Olivia will go on a helicopter ride again and parachute out. That's not a date; that's a suicide pact. Korey and Jeremy's TH was so funny, especially when Korey said he was "more psyched about their date than ..." and Jeremy burst out laughing. I think Korey was about to say, "than my date with Olivia," and Jeremy knew it, but Korey caught himself in time and said more than the dates making dinner for the new girls. There should be a spinoff reality show where these two are roommates. I really love Charlie and his quiet ways. When he was getting ready and said, "I hope there's dancing," he was just the sweetest. And then they did dance with the hula dancers in the background and it was like, I don't know, couple goals or something. Really lovely scene.

Posting in the middle of the show because I don’t care if Korey and Jeremy’s date was a prank. They’re the cutest couple out there and I will be so disappointed if there’s no option to vote for them. Alana and Charlie are really sweet together. Of all the couples, they seem the most genuine with each other. I wish we could have seen more of them together over the past week. They have almost no chance of winning, but I hope they try to see each other once it’s over. I guess it depends on if they’d have to be long distance. They’re really too new to make that work.

I saw that commercial and another similar one the last couple of nights during Love Island (shut up, it's summer, there's nothing else on). It's interesting that they never say "Survivor" or show the name or the logo. Those of us who watch the show recognize the image of the person emerging from the water with a torch as well as Probst's voice at the end, but I guess they're trying to create some mystery around the show to draw in new or former viewers.

I neither like nor dislike them, individually and as a couple. But I think they've been treated the worst by the other players and by the show. It's really the other women, specifically Olivia, Trina, and maybe Shannon, though she was more reactive than anything else, who have been trying to sow discord and make her doubt Will. What Will did at Casa Amor is nothing compared to her supposed friends continuing to bring it up and harp on it long after Will confessed -- which he did within minutes of CA ending -- and Kyra forgave him. Even last night, Trina tried to bring it up again with Will and he got impatient with her, so she said she wasn't manipulating anyone, buuuutttt since he hadn't accused her of that, it was pretty telling that she immediately denied it. I do feel Will has been honest with Kyra and I don't see that he is so much less interested in commitment than she is. Usually one person is more into it than the other person and maybe Kyra does want more than he does, but I don't see the huge disparity in their feelings that everyone else sees. When he was talking to his family, before Kyra joined them, he told them he wanted to bring Kyra to Colombia to visit them. He could have been saying that for the benefit of the audience and a bid for votes, but if so, it wasn't nearly as obvious or as obnoxious as Olivia repeatedly having pointedly self-serving conversations with other people about why she and Korey are stronger than Will and Kyra. I see Kyra as emotionally immature and somewhat fragile, but not dangerously so. The cutting, if it happened, is concerning, but if she's past that, then everyone needs to let her be past it. But if she is somewhat damaged, for lack of a better word, this would explain why she's been the target of the mean girls, who've excluded her in the past and now pretend to be her friends so that they can shit-talk Will and make her doubt herself (and in Cash and Aimee's case once they were out of the villa, talk shit about Kyra herself). Bullies sniff out weakness in a person and pounce on it and there's also a snowball effect where even decent people who are around that kind of dynamic join in the pile-on. (I know the word "bully" is overused, but it applies here. Kyra asked them to stop talking to her about CA and they won't even though they see how much it hurts her.) When Olivia and Trina cornered Kyra in the dressing room the other night, Bailey stumbled on that and was making general remarks but didn't seem to be trying to hurt Kyra the way the other two were. Alana saw it and walked out, seeming kind of disgusted by the whole thing. But within a couple of days, you see all four women up on the balcony, spying and commenting on Kyra's conversation with her family and then not going to her when she was crying around the corner. Imagine if they had all talked to Trina about Cinco the way that they talk to Kyra about Will; they would have had to take Trina out of there in a straitjacket.

For some reason, I was thinking last night was the penultimate episode and then Sunday was the finale, so my heart sank when Matthew said, "on tomorrow's show ..." I remember when I used to love this show, but that was ages ago, in July. Watching them gag in the pheromone challenge made me gag. Even thinking about it now makes me gag a little. I'm surprised Olivia and Trina didn't try to eliminate Kyra and Will, you know, quote for Kyra's sake unquote, but I guess getting shots of every other couple talking about how Korey and Olivia will be the greatest love of all time will get the same result. At least Trina's finally gone. I'm sorry to lose Andre though. I also feel bad for Charlie and Alana, only because they have no chance and that's pretty much on the show. They've said they're attracted to each other, and they were probably affectionate at some point, but we never saw it. Have we ever seen them kiss or even put their arms around each other? They've barely had any airtime since they became a couple. They might be a real couple or they might just be friends, but there's no way of knowing since they were just props in the Tragic Saga of How Cash Was Betrayed. I cringed last year when the parent visit was a day or two after Justine and Caleb had sex in the Hideaway. Justine was worried about her mom's reaction but then her mom gushed about how proud she was. Uh, okay. At least Korey's mom mentioned that she could have done without knowing Korey had slept with 29 women. He looked utterly confused by that and asked her how she knew, so evidently he doesn't know how television works.

Oh, okay, now I see what you're talking about. I thought in your original post, you were suggesting those are scars from a suicide attempt, which is why I was looking at the wrist that was turned up. Yeah, I do see those faint white lines on the back of Kyra's arm.

It's hilarious to me that Antonio regularly does The Jumble and is apparently really good at it. Now I won't be able to look at him without thinking of the car service driver from Seinfeld: "God forbid you could discuss The Jumble with me!" What was it Josie said? That she was waiting for her chance to show how "very superior" she is? Ha ha. Good luck with that.

I'm a little annoyed that Kelsey got into the top 3 with a cake because that really wasn't what the challenge required. She said her first experience of food from a truck was ice cream, but that's not a food truck, that's an ice cream man. Also, she didn't even make ice cream. I guess it doesn't matter; no one was getting eliminated so they just had to burn off an episode. Yes, Roy Choi is a legitimate legend. He's the reason that these days food trucks are more than just taco trucks (not that I don't love a good taco truck). He's also just a really good guy; he's involved in projects getting meals to food-insecure people in Los Angeles and in bringing more and better food options to economically depressed neighborhoods where fresh produce can be hard to find. He was fun last night. I loved how excited he got when Abe was cooking, "I've never heard of this! I can't wait to taste it!" and his face just lit up when Abe walked it up to the judges.

Jeremy: "Great, I get to meet her parents looking like a porn star." If this show were going to be on for two more weeks, Jeremy would probably win me over completely. He's definitely not a "right reasons" guy, but he certainly made the most of his time out there. Six weeks in Hawaii, five girls. lots of mirror time. I still sometimes hate him, but every once in a while, I can see why everyone keeps saving him. His mom seems fun too. None of the dads seemed all that excited to be there or to meet the guys. Olivia's mom didn't seem all that pleased either. Everyone else was suitably cheerful and polite. Andre's daughter is adorable and Kyra's sister is really cute. Bailey's mom looks about 25. Korey's mom and grandma were like two twins born 30 years apart. I finally went back and watched that IG Live I posted above, and it's obvious that there's a lot of animosity toward Kyra and a group effort to take her down, not just from the other contestants but also from some of the production staff. Cash and Javonny were saying Kyra researched everyone who was going to be on the show and also the villa beforehand (they had no other details of how she could even get that info, they just stated it) and then Aimee said her chaperone at the villa took Kyra's phone and let Aimee go through it. Aimee thought the big news there was that Aimee saw that Will had liked some of Kyra's IG posts, but I think the big news is that Aimee's chaperone at the villa took Kyra's phone and let Aimee go through it. Jeez, how is that okay? The takeaways from Aimee's story are that they do have access to their SM during the game, they each have chaperones, and that these people have the maturity of middle-schoolers. On the one hand they're attacking Will and Kyra for allegedly knowing each other and being in a relationship before the game; on the other, they're saying that Will is just playing her in the villa and isn't interested in having a relationship. A lot of gross mean girl stuff happening and Kyra is the target. I Zaprudered that after I saw your post, and that's actually Will's wrist that's visible. They're kind of tangled up, but if you look at the way they're lying and the way the thumbs are pointing, it can't possibly be Kyra's hand because it would mean she has a right hand on her left side. And this is more of a judgment call, but I don't see any scars, just the crease where the wrist and hand meet and lower down a somewhat prominent vein. Tonight should be a drama-fest, and then the finale will be boring AF. At this point, I'd like to see Charlie and Alana win it, or Andre and Trina but only if Andre keeps the whole 100K.

Olivia maybe, but I think Trina knows she's out of the running. But based on what I see on SM, I doubt Will and Kyra are winning (though I think they should -- and I don't even like them that much). This has been such a terrible season and so focused on Cash that Olivia and Korey could win based solely on being so close to her. Cash is campaigning for them on her instagram, so it's probably a done deal. Ugh. I'd rather have Jeremy and whoever he's with at the end take it over Olivia and Korey.

Olivia is a ridiculous person. She acts likes she's worried that Will is shady and going to hurt Kyra, none of which bothered her when she was trying to steal him away from Kyra. Olivia's just mad because Will's reaction to her hamfisted seduction was, "aw, buddy. No, thank you." Not sure what Trina's motivation is, except maybe that she doesn't want to be the only person who made a damned fool of herself out there over a guy who didn't want her, so she's convinced herself the same thing is happening to Kyra. Unless there's a bunch of stuff on P+ that we didn't see, as far as I can tell, Will did tell Kyra 100% of what happened out there; in fact, I think he told her more than we saw. We saw him and Flo kissing out in the villa, but I don't know if we saw them kissing in bed, but he told Kyra that that happened. This isn't a Johnny/Cely thing, where Johnny tried to minimize what he did. Kyra probably will be hurt if she watches the Casa Amor episodes, but I don't see where Will lied about it. Everyone is pushing the narrative that Will doesn't want to be with her, but he's been with her since day one, two different women have unsuccessfully tried to get him away from her, and except for his somewhat begrudging interest in Flo, he's never looked at another woman out there. Like everyone else on this show, they'll probably break up within a few months of the finale, but they've been the most stable couple out there from the beginning and deserve to win. OTOH, Charlie's brave little smile when he found out twitter thinks he's boring was the best thing I've ever seen on this show, followed closely by Alana's genuine surprise over the "flawless body" tweet. If those two win, I won't be mad. Jeremy, admiring himself in the mirror for the eleventieth time that day: "I have low self-esteem."

Someone put their IG Live talk up on YouTube for those who missed it. I tried to watch but couldn't get more than five minutes into it because Cash was LOUD, Cinco was mumbling, and for some reason Aimee was cramming food in her mouth like she was about to go to the chair. I didn't have the patience to wade through all that to get to the good gossip, but here it is if anyone wants to watch.