fishcakes

I'm getting pretty tired of the constant focus on Jennifer, who I otherwise like, Kennedy, who I can't stand, and Kendal, who is likeable enough but seems like he only started cooking a couple weeks before he got on the show. We've never heard a single word from the Asian woman on the West team, and I would swear that I've never seen Kolby before last night. And I'm sorry but a big-ass plate of food, half of which is red cabbage, is not elevated anything.

Bobby is in the hospital and I feel like Joey Tribbiani wanting to put his copy of Little Women in the freezer because he got to the part where Beth is sick. I knew this was coming but didn't remember the timeline and was thinking it was a year or two later.

This one never gets old. Roy: You know what I do when I have trouble with a woman? Antonio: Deflate her?

Not sure if I'm remembering this correctly, but I think Hell's Kitchen was his first US show, and it started a couple of years after American Idol began. When I saw the first promos for HK, I assumed that FOX was trying to capitalize on the popularity of Idol and Simon Cowell in particular, whose whole thing was being (a) British and (b) a dick. I didn't even know who Gordon was back then; I figured he was some random English guy they brought in to be a second Simon. I agree he's much nicer on his UK shows.

I live in Seattle and I have to say the city-wide shots were definitely colorized. All those unnaturally bright blues and greens made me wonder if I needed to adjust my set. Nine months out of the year, we are more gray than technicolor. It looked to me like the pop-up shops were near the Pike Place Market, which is where the original Starbucks is still located. So I feel like a lot of tourists got boned since no matter how much Starbucks reputation has fallen, I would think most tourists would still rather go to Store Zero than to some random pop-up that, as @AZChristian noted, they were probably being herded into by a PA. The customers didn't seem like the normal morning crowd grabbing some coffee before work since some of them said they had been waiting 30 minutes for their order. Despite the prices on the menu, I kind of suspect the orders were free, since I never saw anyone paying and those tip jars were stuffed way fuller than I've seen anywhere.

On Hell's Kitchen, Gordon will scream at any contestant who uses a meat thermometer, but I can't remember it ever coming up on Masterchef, where in general he seems less shouty overall. Even so, I too thought it was strange that they had so many of them last night and were stabbing them in every single pork chop. I don't get why James was even up for elimination. He saved the team by taking over the grill station. Ryan seemed as if he was in over his head, but I thought Brynn should have gone. She tried to talk over the judges when they were tasting the test dish, and when she said they were cooking the pork chops to 150° Gordon specifically told her to pull them at 140° and let them rest. Then when Ryan said 140°, she changed it to 130° for some reason, which is why so many came up raw in the center.

I just started season 4 and everyone is in a pretty good place. Well, not Abby, but I was never crazy about her, so I don't care. Bobby is back on the force and he and Diane are engaged, James and Gina just got married, Andy and Sylvia and Theo are all healthy and happy. Cohen and Kirkendall have paired up, which spares anyone else from being stuck with them (please let me not see any more sex scenes between these two though; it's worse than the murders). Something tragic will probably happen soon. But everything is relatively lighthearted for now. I spent so much of season 2 and 3 in tears, so it was a lot of fun to see the episode where Andy is obsessing about the meaning of Pop! Goes the Weasel, even asking suspects about it. "Does the monkey kill the weasel?" lol

Caroline is at least entertaining in a love-to-hate kind of way, and it's fun to see how much almost every other person there hates her. I got a huge kick out of Caroline sadly saying, "we tried," and Eyelashes being all, "OH HELL NO DON'T PUT ME IN THIS." Sydney was just stupid and ineffectual and since she's been enabling Caroline's attitude for the last few weeks, she deserved to go. Caroline really showed herself during the grilling by going on about how she did everything she could to help Sydney, but then didn't hesitate in telling Gordon that Sydney was in over her head. Her breakdown after the elimination was some of the fakest crying I've ever heard.

You can watch it on the FOX website, although last night's episode is still locked. It should be unlocked at least before next week. Or if you have Hulu, last night's ep is available today.

They should have made an exception to the team immunity and sent Kendall home anyway. That might be the worst dish anyone has made on the show ever.

Speaking of, I saw Mr Monk and the Astronaut the other day, and the astronaut and his smug, punchable face has to be the show villain I hate the most. Especially at the end as he's being arrested, and he gives Monk a nod of respect, as if that's worth anything. Favorite villain is maybe the neighboring farmer who killed Randy's uncle, if only for his befuddled reaction to Monk reeling off a long list of slang terms for marijuana that have no meaning to anyone but him. Bambalachi, the Devil's Parsley.

The series is getting a Blu-ray release, with the first season available for pre-order now. An Amazon reviewer said that they're releasing one season a month for the next 8 months, but I can't find anything official to confirm that. This is probably not worth it if you already have it on DVD. The season 1 extras are all identical to what's on the DVD version, so I assume the whole series will be like that. I do like the DVDs for the extras (and not being at the mercy of whichever streamer currently has it), but unless you're really particular about getting the absolute best picture quality, it's a big price difference: $40/season for blu-ray vs. $40 for the entire series on DVD.

Andy finally told Sylvia the reason he'd been avoiding sex was because he was having trouble with his prostate and he hadn't said anything earlier because he didn't want to tell her his body was falling apart. She told him he had to tell her these things because they were going to grow old together, and I don't think my heart can take this.

I'm about 4 or 5 episodes into Bobby Simone's arrival, and it's so funny to me that my reaction now is exactly the same as it was in 1994, which was, "welp, the show is ruined now." I adored Jimmy Smits as Sifuentes in LA Law (also when I saw the promos for East New York last fall, I tried a couple of episodes just because he was in it), but I really resisted him here. Eventually, I came to like Bobby a lot and I know I will again, but even knowing that now, I'm still having the same trouble adjusting to him as I did originally. I don't think it's just him vs. Caruso though; season 2 has a different tone from season 1. Season 1 was so gritty and unsettling, and in 2 it's like they sanded off the hardest edges. Even the first few eps of season 2, when Caruso was still there had a softer feel to them.

Sometimes when I'm wiping down the handle of my grocery cart and I look around and see that the only people in the store still wearing masks are me and three elderly people, I think about this tweet:

I'm just happy that Risotto guy got called out for having one of the worst dishes and told that if he didn't have immunity, he'd definitely be in the bottom 3. Was it Joe who did that? Brownie point for Joe. I was pretty sure Fish Taco was going home only because whoever makes fish tacos usually goes home. It seems like there was a recent season where fish tacos went home three times in a row and I couldn't figure out why people kept making them.

I've noticed that Queen and Caroline both say the names of their businesses as often as possible, probably thinking that if they don't win, at least they get all that free advertising. And that's okay with me because if I ever see a Pizza Girl or Indulgent Essential Spices product in the store, I'll know not to buy it.

I’m watching on Prime, but Hulu also has all 12 seasons. I don’t think it’s currently airing anywhere.

I'm rewatching this now for the first time since it originally aired and am about halfway through season one. I know it's been 30 years (!), but it's amazing how much broadcast TV has declined since then. The writing and the acting here are so good, but mainly the fact that there's respect for the audience as adults who won't get the vapors if they're shown a non-sanitized, non- black and white, non- good vs. evil version of the criminal justice system. Or the occasional naked butt. I mean, I do recall that some ABC affiliates did get a little bunched up and refused to air the show in the beginning, but I think eventually they all ended up showing it. I don't remember, but I think I might have missed the very last season or two, so I'm looking forward to seeing the whole series in its entirety.

I also have to disagree that those two had a "scintillating connection." Charlie/Daphne had a lot more chemistry than Charlie/Emma.

I only recall a couple of times that Monk reacted to someone else moving on after a spouse's death, the first time being when the former police commissioner murdered his wife and it was his nonchalance about it that made Monk correctly suspect he had killed her. And the other time was with a college classmate who had remarried, and that mostly seemed to make Monk sad because he couldn't relate. But neither time did Monk tell them they shouldn't be grieving in the way they chose to, which is what Natalie was doing. Rather than justifying it, the fact that she didn't really know him makes it especially insensitive. Who would tell someone they barely know that they need to stop doing something that comforts them after someone they love has died? Monk was wrong on the issue of her expenses, but she was the one lacking empathy there. In any case, the point I was trying to make was that I thought Natalie's introduction could have been better, but because it went the way it did, I understand why some people still don't like her.

I thought it was a pretty rough transition. I didn't watch the show back when it first aired and didn't pay much attention to what people were saying about it, but there were enough media stories about how the audience was rejecting Natalie that even I knew about it. When I did start watching just a couple of years ago, the first episodes I saw were Sharona episodes. That was on Decades, I think. I quickly got hooked and saw that there were also episodes on H&I, so I started watching those at the same time, and they were Natalie episodes. I expected to hate her based on everything I heard, but I didn't. I liked Sharona more, but I didn't see why Natalie was so disliked. Before I got too far into it, I bought the series and began watching it from the beginning. Once I got to the introduction of Natalie, it made sense. In her first episode (where she hires Monk to find out why her house was broken into), she's perfectly fine. But in her second episode, Mr Monk vs. the Cobra, she's apparently been working for him for a couple of weeks and has just gotten her first paycheck but he says he doesn't reimburse for her expenses. And he's wrong, of course, but her reaction is so horrendous that you end up having to side with Monk. When she finds out he's still paying rent on Trudy's office, she demands that he close it down so he'll have the money to pay her. And hello, she just started working for him; as far as the audience is concerned it's her first day as his assistant and she's trying to dictate how he deals with Trudy's memory. Later in the episode, she throws another fit because he won't close Trudy's office, leaves him alone at the funeral parlor, and he ends up getting buried alive. So, bad start for Nat. Then in her second episode, Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever, where he witnesses a murder, she gets on her first "karma" jag, telling Adrian that his inability to mind his own business is "bad karma," and actually accuses him of causing all the murders that happen when he's around. Not a great thing to say to a guy who spent years being guilt-ridden over the murder of his wife. She comes around by the end of the episode, but I still kind of hated her. Another early one was when they went to Las Vegas and she wasn't too bad there, except that she called herself cute a couple of times, which is never not off-putting. Because I had seen her later episodes first, I already liked her, but once I saw those very early ones, I hated her for a while and had to be won over again, which I eventually was. She obviously loves and cares about Monk, and I like anyone who cares about Monk, but I completely understand why she was initially rejected by the audience and why, to this day, people still don't like her.

I adored how much the food photographer clearly hated Caroline. He was talking and smiling with Megan on the other team, then they'd cut to him being completely stonefaced while Caroline micromanaged him.

I don't think Zelda was mistreated or that she thought she was mistreated. The Weissmans were high-maintenance in the way that children are high-maintenance, but clearly Zelda was part of the family, albeit the one who did almost all of the household work. It was Janusz who wanted her to stop working and cut off all contact; behind his back, she continued to talk to and do favors for them after she quit.

I know people have asked for this before and it looks like it was never resolved and then just forgotten, so I'm going to request again the return the alphabetical divisions to the shows we list on our custom homepages. This was standard before the latest update and there didn't seem to be an answer as to why it was removed, or if there was, I missed it. Without having the list of forums broken up alphabetically, it can be difficult to find the show you're looking for because it's just a mass of words that shifts every time you add or remove a forum. I don't even follow that many shows compared to other people I've talked to about this, and it's still an annoyance to have to scan nearly the entire list to find something that begins with anything that's not close to the beginning or end of the alphabet. For anyone who's neuroatypical or has a reading disorder, I would imagine that the custom homepage is very nearly unusable.