sweetandsour

The taller brunet criminal reminds of a more unkempt Billy McFarland of Fyre Festival infamy! I wish he had said, "let's just do this and be legends, man," in this episode.

The former president of the hybrids has gone on social media several times to declare that they aren't going to pay for that fucking wall. I agree, not a great premiere, but I will still give episode 2 a shot because whoever put together the "previously" clip reel at the top of the hour clearly understands what we all wanted to see - another glimpse of the horrible CGI when Jamie was standing at the open jet door, after she pushed Logan off to his not-so-certain doom. When Jamie was walking on the street on her way to break into whatever that was, and she was wearing her leather pants and black hoodie, all I could think was, "Jamie is A!!!!!" That would have been a much more entertaining reveal for Pretty Little Liars than the actual series finale. Part of me is a little sad for James Wolk that this is the show that's managed to stick for him. He's appealing and talented, but it's just never worked out for him before. I happened to like Lone Star before it was unceremoniously yanked after only two episodes.

I already disliked Hold My Balls after the first time and am officially completely over it now. I wouldn't mind never seeing it again. I really dislike games where one team ends up disadvantaged, whether on purpose or by chance. Once Mike Colter got the two huge exercise balls, I thought that team was going to lose. I didn't mind Hardwick as much because at least he was legitimately into the game and helping his civilian win. Compare him to total useless hams who really don't give a shit about the show or the contestant (looking at you, Martin Short), and I'll take him any day. Xzibit was a real delight, I thought. Not as much in the gameplay, but his attitude. He was always laughing and smiling at the others and he had zero qualms about interacting and being friendly with his civilian. Charlotte McKinney joins the club of female celebrities (in her case, I should say "celebrities") that did not get the memo on really high heels, or doesn't understand the nature of HGN, or doesn't care bc looking good is the most important thing. And oh man about her little spotlight time with Jane. I'm not sure if they do any preparation with the celebrity for this (I mean, it's not the same thing as going on the Tonight Show and production making sure the interview isn't a disaster), but she was just so uninteresting. I'm not surprised, but geez. Jennie the civilian was a superior contestant so I'm glad she won. River was probably just OK/average. Hardwick wasted a lot of time in the car game with his intros. If the other team had ended up pulling out the win, he should have rightfully felt bad about that. Charlotte didn't help with her physical slowness and her clues. I really did not understand the snail's pace River physically moved at during the car game. Bro, you know you need to do as well as the other team + 5 more answers. David and Sherry were dashing around and this dude is like molasses. And his clues were terrible. Maybe nerves? Sherry's clues were inefficient, but she got Xzibit there. David was the only one playing to win. I felt bad that River was disappointed, but his lack of hustle didn't help. Not that that would have closed the gap of 5 answers, though. They did get the same number right as the other team, so there's that. Once Jennie advanced to the final round, I knew she was going to get the $25k, even if she got mediocre clues and Hardwick was yelling and screaming. She definitely knew her pop culture. If she had Yvette Nicole Brown giving her the clues, they might have been able to set a time record in the final round, too. I thought it was cute how she cursed when she won.

Agree about the floating steps being too far apart. And it's not viewer-friendly at all since it's not interesting to watch someone take so much time to get through. I think the only people who can really just bound through are the veterans with very high confidence (Kevin Bull, Drew). But what a shocker if a vet bounded through and they fell. Another way the shorter/lighter contestants are disadvantaged is the trampoline work. They have less weight to have to move around, which is good when you're hanging there but bad when you need to get momentum from your weight. Also tying into the fixing mistakes and the Kacy and Jessie conversations - I don't think anyone can deny that Jessie is much better at fixing mistakes than Kacy, plus we've seen Kacy struggle with the same trampoline problem in successive years. She just isn't heavy enough to get the lift she needs in some obstacles. Not usually a problem jumping from the tramp to the salmon ladder bar, but a huge problem jumping from the tramp to say, the helicopter blade. Kacy and Jon Horton are basically the same height, but Jon outweighs her by 35 pounds, so while he may have a problem with some height-based obstacles (like scaling the wall in the national finals), he's not going to have the same problems with the weight as Kacy does. My fave commentary from Daytona was probably during the 65-year-old's run. "Is this Cocoon? Where's Wilford Brimley?" They just needed a "dia-beet-us" joke and I would be comfortable prematurely calling it as peak commentary for the season.

Okay, I think we officially have evidence that the top five women rule can end up in some real tomfoolery. The fifth woman who qualified tonight failed on the second obstacle (tic toc), but made it there / through the steps obstacle in 16 seconds. I don't doubt that she did do better than most of the women (that's inherent in the rankings), but to allow her to advance to the city finals vs. many of the men who made it farther is pretty dumb. To qualify to top 30 as a man, you had to make it to past the fourth obstacle of the rings and to the pipe fitter in less than 3:29. Vs. making it to the second obstacle, exerting energy for only a quarter of a minute!

Like everyone else I'm reserving judgment on the 5 women rule. I'm just glad that it doesn't cut into the top 30, like "now the top 25 go through + the next 5 fastest women" because that would be tremendously unfair to the people who would have made the top 30 otherwise. If there are any wild cards, they should be given to people who were just outside the top 30, perhaps by the smallest margins. No preferential treatment for the women or allowing them to come back in when they made an early mistake and went down fast. Farthest, fastest makes sense in terms of guaranteeing a certain level of advancement until finals stage 1. That said, sometimes I get annoyed when someone moves through just because he/she zoomed through the first x obstacles, but fell early in a very difficult obstacle that is taking a lot of people down. Compared to someone who, granted, didn't reach the very difficult obstacle as fast, but made it much farther or nearly finished - it just seems like they showed the better performance. Were they as fast? No. Did going slower or taking longer breaks between obstacles allow them to go farther than a speedier competitor? Maybe. But I just feel like the person who went the farthest on the difficult obstacle should go through. Would this require some interpretation? (Oh person A fell with 2 feet to go vs person B fell with 2.2 feet to go, or person A hit the landing pad at x spot and fell vs person B hit the landing pad at y spot and fell.) In some cases, sure. So I'm not sure how fairly that could even be applied.

I think they chose the team based on a few different considerations that I wouldn't have remembered except for the commentary from Matt and Akbar. It does seem to be a matter of "what have you done for me lately?"(recent performance), but I'm not sure if they would do that, period, or if that was a function of the USA vs. the World course being just like the US finals, so of course it makes sense to run the people who just showed they did well. Jake Murray was one of the six because he turned in the fastest Stage 1 time in the Vegas finals. Daniel Gil turned in the second fastest, I think, and then he obviously also was one of the two who made it to Stage 3 (along with Drew). I'm sure Jessie didn't turn in the third best Stage 1 time, but she was really impressive and a ratings draw (though I don't mean that second part as her not being deserving, not at all). They're your three Stage 1 runners. It made sense to run Daniel again and Drew for Stage 2 since they were the only two who made it through Stage 2 in finals. I think they mostly put Brian on the team for Stage 3, which he has completed in the past. On paper, in choosing a third Stage 2 runner besides Daniel and Drew (out of Josh, Jake, Jessie, and Brian), Brian did make the most sense since he's the only one who's completed Stage 2 before (albeit different obstacles). With his amazing climbing prowess, Josh Levin basically is on par with Isaac, so he's a natural choice for the team to contest Stage 3, even though he didn't make it there in the finals. And then Drew was the third to run Stage 3 - I think he made it farther than Daniel did in the Vegas finals, plus they weren't going to run Daniel in all three stages. So as far as why other great veterans like Joe Moravsky, Kevin Bull, Ian Dory, Flip Rodriguez, etc. didn't get put on the team, it's because others had just eclipsed them on the exact same stages with the exact same obstacles. Even though there are others, like Geoff Britten, who have done amazingly in the past (beating all four stages, even), his finals outcome that year didn't come close to that, so it really did seem like they mostly went by that year's performance (Stage 1 isn't "that hard," so pick the fastest to rival the other teams; Stage 3, pick the people who stand a real fighting chance against the course, Stage 2, pick who makes the most sense out of the people you put on the team for the other two stages).

I have to agree with you on this one. I love the show, and I love watching episodes in a row on hulu, but I have a hard time watching episodes new to me back-to-back for some reason. It's not a high brow comedy, but I feel like I almost get tired trying to catch and react to all of the jokes. But when I've seen the episodes before, I can sit back and enjoy the overall gist and the punchlines I know are coming and know I enjoy. (Cowabunga, mother!)

No, Yanic Truesdale is "The Cleaner." He's the one they summoned to "clean up" Rhys and then Rhys bounced up all alive and well and Alice sort-of threatened The Cleaner with the dissolving chemical solution. Alice's brother is Mockingbird, tied to both Margo and Ethan's enterprises now. Though I didn't pay enough attention to the Mockingbird Trust in connection to the Cozumel scheme - I'm not sure if the brother (I can't remember his name) did the by proxy embezzling just to get money or if he has a bone to pick with Ethan in particular. You'd think the brother could do that to any millionaire's company - why steal Ethan's money when Ethan was nice enough to help him out earlier in the season? Once again, a case-of-the-week was ridiculous and nonsensical. I have no idea why they had to go the "everyone sign Ethan's card" route to get handwriting samples. They all work for Ethan's company - Ethan has access to forms with signatures and handwriting, unless they somehow thought circulating a card was faster or they didn't want to request documents through HR. At least this was still better than the fixed roulette game last week.

I know this reference from an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond - the one where Ray is invited on a sports commentary show and is so nervous that he starts saying nonsense, like sweet sassy molassy. I think that's what happened, but my memory is a little spotty (maybe he said it intentionally or something). I have never heard this phrase elsewhere, so I don't know if it's actually used by people and ELR borrowed it.

I don't have the episode playing right now, but I remember from the first time I watched it, he basically said the equivalent of "you can't kill what's already dead." Maybe he used different words - kill/murder, dead/not alive, but that was the gist.

Love triangles are generally a terrible idea in my opinion. They can work if they feel organic and if one of the three parties is not a regular - you can write that person out and move on from that storyline without said triangle continuing to plague the characters or the fans. But when they feel forced or done only for drama, it's annoying, and when all three parties continue to stay on the show, it can be super annoying. They also make no sense to me as a business/creative decision if you know the triangle will be really polarizing and you'll alienate/lose a huge subsection fans who probably would have stuck with the show longer if you hadn't messed with them so much. (Which I'm sure was the case with Gossip Girl (Dan/Blair vs. Chuck/Blair) and I bet Vampire Diaries.) Re: case of the week, I did enjoy this one and the busybody brain, but in the flashback of what really happened during the fire alarm, it seemed so dumb to me to have the lady who pulled the fire alarm clearly do so with bare fingers. It made it apparent that the police never even dusted the fire alarms for prints as you would expect in any halfway-competent investigation. Fixing that detail only would have required the lady to touch the fire alarm with paper towels or a scarf or something - not difficult to write.

The fixing of the roulette outcome was beyond ridiculous. Oh sure, it's not suspicious that you keep picking the winning number over and over again. Even if they only showed the 4-5 times Felicity picked the right number, and it was out of a much larger population where she also lost a little. And then when Felicity successfully blames the cheating on the other guy, even though anyone who was at the table and has 1/10th of a brain would obviously understand, "hey, that alleged male cheater didn't win a ton of money - this woman who was caught with the fake roulette ball and is accusing him - she's the one who benefited from the cheating, but I'm sure it's really HIM who's the culprit." Not just lazy writing - plain stupid. That said - Gretchen (Maria Thayer) has beautiful hair.

I really enjoy Jake and Amy together, too, and they're a great example of how a show can put two characters in a relationship and NOT constantly add conflict due to quirkiness because what else is there to do with the characters now? You CAN have a dynamic and sustained relationship. I'm looking at you, New Girl / Nick and Jess.

To be fair, it was a matter of angles. There are a few different recordings of this. Ones that make it look like Ryan hid behind Cheryl were more from the side. The recording that's head-on makes it much more apparent that he quickly stepped back once the guard tackled the protestor and rushed into Ryan/Cheryl on their left side. Cheryl was standing to Ryan's right and Tom was in front of Cheryl. Ryan was really the only one in the path of the tackling guard. Rather than push into Cheryl from her left to get out of the way, or push into Tom to shield Cheryl (and go into the direction of the guard, which is no one's reflex), Ryan seemed to stepped back and to the right so he didn't jostle into anyone. Sure it would have been cool if he pulled a Riggins, shielding Julie Taylor from shattering glass windows, but I really don't think he was being selfish.