MarylandGirl

I thought his taking off the mask was a bad sign because then he'd feel the need to kill the hostages so they couldn't ID him. Though he doesn't know that the police aren't on their way, so you'd think he'd be trying to get out of there quickly. Another thought I had was: Don't most convenience stores have an ATM? I'd have thought he would have forced Lucas and/or Jo to use their card to get money out. But maybe this store doesn't have that.

Could there be some other "Mountain's Keeper" twist in that last leg where someone else gets eliminated (and their share of the money along with them), I wonder? Or some other kind of twist?

I generally liked both Therron and Amy before. This ep changed my opinion on both of them, for different reasons. Therron, because he was an idiot to get rid of Dusty, when Amy was the obvious choice. If he wanted to make more of a gameplay decision, BeckyLee could have been a good choice, as she seems close with many players and competent (but isn't helping them the same way Dusty was). Plus, his logic is flawed in another way--he thinks Dusty is a threat due to being the leader. Well, if Therron steps up and becomes the leader, won't he then become a threat and a target? With Amy, as others mentioned, it was her whining about how she deserved to go to the summit and claimed she wasn't slowing them down. When, maybe aside from the glacier climb, she *was* slowing them down all episode, even when just walking through the snow (I won't be critical of the panic attack crawling through the tight space, as I'd have likely been panicking then, too). Yes, they've still gotten to the checkpoint each time, but she made them closer to not making it. I suppose I'm now Team Punkin and Jeannie, as they're the least annoying ones left! And I actually like both of them, too.

This was...OK. I feel like the show keeps having good ideas (the assassin at the wedding being another recent one), but less good execution. I'm just not connecting with it for some reason. I'm even interested in behavioral science.

I feel like I must be missing something when Beckylee keeps talking about being a mastermind. What is she even doing? Fully expecting her to get voted out as she sits there in shock because she's such a mastermind. In her own mind...

I wonder if the producers expected more people to drop out on their own? "Most of these people are afraid of heights. Let's just make the height challenges more and more terrifying. Surely someone will bail out and go home!" I'm also surprised there haven't been more injuries that have kept players from continuing. Even the one with the bad-looking knee injury (Jennye?) kept going until she was voted out.

It seems very much like an OCD and PTSD thing to me. As someone with OCD, compulsions (like her sitting in the bus station) don't generally make sense. She may be engaging in what's called "magical thinking," that she can control events by what she does, like if she follows her "rule" of sitting in the bus station every night, then she might find her son. It may seem crazy and/or illogical to people who don't have OCD (or whose compulsions show themselves in different ways, like checking many times to make sure a door is locked), but it can be part of the disorder. I think she's portrayed rather realistically, including fighting against someone who is trying to take down the information on her son from the bulletin board (not that I've ever done anything like that!). The thing with OCD is, the more you give in to compulsions, the more they can take hold. The therapist she saw for a bit was doing the right thing, in getting her to work on gradually decreasing the amount of time she spent there. But it was too painful for her.

I really was expecting Mika to die alone when all the interns went to help Chloe. Which would have led to more guilt. Agreed that it was ridiculous that 40 minutes went by with no attending showing up. The moment when Mika woke up and Bailey had to tell her about Chloe was really moving and sad. I imagine it will lead to her leaving, the guilt, needing to take some time for herself and be away from the hospital. I also teared up when Blue was talking to her. Yes, he was saying what a bad roommate she was, but you could hear in his voice how much he cared and wanted her to make it. I never hated Schmitt, though they clearly didn't know what to do with him for a couple years there. Wish they'd focused more on his friendship with Jo during the last few years. And with Helm. It did seem really fast with the priest, but nice that he had a happy ending.

Hm, interesting

Randomly, in therapy today, I referenced both FBI (my therapist said in my marriage, I'm like the people in the control room on police shows, and I said, "Oh, like FBI?" and he said he didn't watch that one) AND SVU, including mentioning "St. Olivia" (I had to explain). On episode topic, I also wasn't a fan of the new hire. It seems like a trope on these shows where a potential new person totally messes up, thinks they blew their shot (no pun intended) at the job, then it's like, "You're hired!" I mean, she messed up so many things. Maybe she learned her lesson, but it's doubtful. Didn't something similar happen with Tiffany in the beginning, too? In a drill they did where, had it been real life, she'd have gotten Scola killed? At least that was just a drill... And she didn't point a gun at someone threatening to jump or go alone to seek out a suspect and end up being held at gunpoint.

Yes, it would be interesting if there were other trackers, especially if they sometimes assisted him. It seems ridiculous at times that he goes into these places all by himself. Also, the fact that he doesn't seem to tell people where he's going or what he's doing. Like if he'd told, say, Reenie and Velma that he was going into the compound, that if he doesn't check back in within the hour, to send help (though I guess in this case, the police wouldn't have helped). I did like this case (including the supernatural part) and the missing girl.

Right? Way to make it obvious and for the guy to make his escape. He could have just gotten Alec's attention and subtly gestured toward him. I otherwise liked that they used Rizwan here. I feel this ep had a lot of potential, but I don't feel like it lived up, in part due to reasons already mentioned. I also wish they'd just stayed with the embassy, rather than going back to the former assistant trying to implicate her professor. It went from a setting with tension to a total lack of tension. Would be different if, say, the former assistant was providing comic relief or something like that, but she wasn't.

Teddy is much more interesting when she's apart from Owen. I hope this leads to them splitting up, though I've had that hope before. She could have just not told him about the kiss, so it's better she shared. And the way she said it, it seemed obvious it was a surprise to her and that she wasn't into it. I also liked Jo and Amelia interacting.

When they showed Margaret at the police station in the beginning, i thought maybe it was going to be one of those "starting at the end" eps. Where whatever happened in the case led to Margaret being arrested. Nope! When they were asking kidnapped teen Gabi's mother about whether she had a temper, at first, I thought they were going in the direction of her having dissociative identity disorder. Nope, though she was the kidnapper. I agree that it's good Lacey admitted at the end that she needed help. She clearly doesn't seem to be taking her safety seriously by dancing around in the rain and wandering out of Zeke's place on her own in the other episode. And agreed that Margaret really needs help--maybe this will be a wake-up call for her? I feel like Gabi should tell her she needs to get help in order to keep working there, but, obviously, Gabi needed help herself before she kidnapped Sir. I'd also forgotten what Dhan's husband looked like! And I thought maybe they'd already split up. Not sure if they'll survive this. Pretty good episode.

I actually thought the new assistant might have been the killer, and his reaction at the crime scene was partly guilt. Maybe because in a past...Criminal Intent, I think? There was a woman sickened by a crime scene--she claimed it was because she'd never seen a dead body before--and it turned out that she was involved in the crime. The cilantro thing bothered me, too. Couldn't they at least have gotten Mexican or Indian takeout, as those are cuisines that do frequently have cilantro in them? I also could do without the assistants. Or, they need to find something else for them to do. I recall them being interesting in an ep where they were in a casino, as they were helping with the investigation. And I really don't care about the one who's now working for someone else--I assume she'll end up coming back to work with Alec eventually? Or maybe there will be a case involving her boss being killed, with the student she plagiarized being a suspect maybe? (Note: I haven't watched episode 4 yet, so if something like that happens, this wasn't a spoiler!)