MisterGlass

I agree this was generally pleasant but unevenly paced, and some gratuitous bits didn't mesh with the tone. The leads were good but I enjoyed a lot of the chorus members' moments. This would be a decent place to end it but I will probably try out a second season if there is one. I looked up the actor playing the wizard during the video game hallucination because he had such a striking voice, and it turns out that he has played the Phantom of the Opera and Javert in Les Mis on Broadway. Interesting. It's much better balanced this way. I can't imagine liking Lindsay without seeing inside her thought processes. I feel the need to mention the fun but short lived Galavant whenever discussing musical comedy series.

Here is a picture of James Hong on the Oscar's red carpet with googly eyes on his bowtie.

I enjoyed the mix of gothic horror excess and black comedy. This put me in mind a little of the Hannibal TV series, what with the sophisticated food and death. Regarding the deaths of the chef's staff, while they were following the chef's lead on the night, it's stated a couple of times that they were in on the planning of this mass murder/suicide. There was the first sous chef admitting that he would never be a great success and this wasn't the life he wanted, and the second sous chef said that everyone dying was her idea. They were miserable. I believe the barrel was the accelerant for the fire.

Omega is probably a subsidiary of Alpha, like Google, Waymo, and X Development are subsidiaries of Alphabet. Maybe all the Alpha subsidiaries are Greek letters. That might be a subtle Covid-time joke. I wonder if Alpha's Delta and Omicron subsidiaries are suffering.

I enjoyed this as a pleasant mystery parody. The first movie was sharper and newer, this one is softer and comfier. I also see why it isn't for everyone. The peers of this movie aren't necessarily Agatha Christie works, but rather "Clue" and "Murder by Death." I certainly liked it better than the latter. Daniel Craig was of course the stand out, but I got a few laughs from the others too. I thought he was overselling the "aw, shucks" persona in the beginning, so I was delighted to find that it was an intentional bit of bad acting, and there was a distinction between his regular parody performance - already heightened - and the even more heightened performance within the performance. Kate Hudson was good, and Dave Bautista continues to entertain. Miles is a C+ at most things but an A+ huckster, and that can get people a long way. Every famous tech start-up has some kind of mythic figurehead, and he can play that part. Lionel's discussion with the Alpha board made it clear that they all knew Miles's defects, but he was still often an asset in that role. He threw out random ideas, and it was up to others to implement or dismiss them. I also agree with other posters that Miles comes from money. He threw out that supposedly humble story of seeing the Mona Lisa at age six, forgetting that the average person can't afford to take themselves to Paris, let alone their six year old. I thought Helen smashing the box at the beginning was a statement that this woman doesn't play games, literally, in contrast to the others. The costuming and set dressing were great. I loved that so many of the glass statues were tacky reproductions of better art.

I enjoyed all the challenges and all the bakers. I was surprised that in the technical challenge they used piped lemon curd dots to decorate the cake. I don't think I've seen that before.

I'm also unfamiliar with the show they're on together, though I recognized Shaun as a "Hey, it's that guy." Recently he was in a couple episodes of the Witcher. And Lydia was on a not so good Dracula miniseries a couple year ago. Sincere as everyone was, I think the producers made a good call in asking them to make pies with meat that was already cooked.

Daphne could sense the approach of Lilith, so she did have her moments.

I feel like the bombe technical is one of those recipes people developed to use up stale bread, like croutons, French toast, and bread pudding. It sounded and looked like an unappealing texture. I thought Abdul's showstopper was the prettiest, but Syabira seemed like the winner to me. I was a little taken aback when Paul referred to honey as a potentially overwhelming flavor. Maybe he meant overwhelming sweetness.

I agree with what some others have posted about the second movie being overly long. There is a tight, entertaining 90 minute mystery movie tucked between scenes of unnecessary, over the top action, monologuing, and sometimes forced comedy. They are still grafting some of the atmosphere of the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies on this. I like those movies, but this could be its own thing. All that said, I enjoyed the development of the relationship between Enola and Sherlock. Both actors are good at their characters. I would like to have seen a full family reunion. While what they are presenting is entertaining enough, this sounds much more interesting. In these movies they are inconsistent about the rules of their Victorian society. I can accept an alternate history if the rules are consistent within the world they've made. Was anyone else permanently scarred by the story "The Little Match Girl" as a child?

I thought the vertical tart was interesting. It's the sort of thing I would order out of curiosity if I saw it in a case. As confused as they all were to start with they each ended up quite close to what it was meant to be. I thought it would be Sandro that left, but they did have several comments about Janusz's bakes throughout the episode. I was happy that Abdul made it into the final. He had a clever approach by piping the cookie shapes. Why were they making dry sugar caramel? Two people burned it this episode alone.

There was an article on this episode that included a link to this video on making spring roll wrappers. It looks interesting and sounds squelchy.

I was actually interested in spring rolls as a technical challenge. I've never thought of those as pastry, but from a certain angle it is a fried pie. This is another one where it would have been more pastry focused if it had been a challenge of multiple doughs. A fried roll, a fresh roll, and a steamed roll, maybe. Have they ever done a dumpling week?

The chocolate at the bottom of the cone is the best part of Drumsticks. If I were to guess at the weight of the technical, I'd say 15%, with the signature 40% and the showstopper 45%. The technical matters under certain circumstances, but a pass or fail in it will never matter as much as the scores in the other two.

Good for Hannah for being a person with integrity. I agree the executive probably would have made their lives miserable for as long as Gordon was involved, but he could have tried not being a jerk. He is 60% selfless for quitting. I am surprisingly invested in Clay. He's more earnest than I was expecting.

I enjoyed this one. All the bakes were good choices. I like the ile flottante concept but have never actually had one. They had some interesting twists. It jumped into my head that by coating hers in sugar Syabira made headless peeps. Ice cream and cones was a good technical. My guess is that for this one they were specifically instructed to use only their own equipment so that they had to live with the choice of initially cooling in the freezer or the fridge. I can understand that since it was a technical part of the process. I wasn't surprised by who won or who left. Kevin made poor technical choices in the signature and the showstopper. He added alcohol to the meringues and melted them, and he tried to stack wobbly custard. That made less sense than stacking tres leche cake. It sounded wonderful, though, and his macarons looked lovely. Janusz did well in the signature. If he hadn't, I think it could have been him.

A YouTube series called "Otherwords" just did an episode on the history of sign language in the United States and a time period when it was banned. I found it educational.

The show is not as satirical as the pilot, but I'm okay with what it is at the moment. The show pitch was about Hannah wanting to expose her father and get revenge on him, but instead both of them have decided they want some kind of relationship, and if they collaborate the show allows them to have that. When Reed was suiting up for the basketball game - getting his sneakers out of a box - I thought I knew where the game was going, but in the end it was much funnier than I imagined.

I would have liked this. If caramel and candied apples had been the first challenge, then that would have been a more Halloween use of apples. Dawn had the right idea there. And, I remember seeing Alton Brown make candy corn by hand once. That would have been an appropriate technical challenge.

It just perfectly captured the atmosphere. It has a great balance of sincerity, camp, and outright comedy. I loved the choice to make the werewolf a low-tech looking, traditional movie wolf man while juxtaposing it against a well done Man-Thing. There is so much care taken in the costuming and set dressing. I loved Jack's 'vertebrae' tie at the beginning, and as soon as I saw "This End Up" on the back of the coffin I knew exactly what I was watching. I did not realize the character's name was Jack Russell until the end credits and I laughed really, really loudly at that.

While Syabira struggled compared to her previous weeks, she did some clever things outside of the technical that earned praise. They said her textures in the final dessert were excellent - which most bakers struggled with - even if the flavor got lost. I thought the idea of slitting the tops of the puddings so that they would burst and reveal a pattern was clever. She did watermelon because the contrasting colors would be obvious, but if she'd found a better flavor and and color combination, that would have been a winning effect. I would liked to have seen Kevin's little cloth wrapped puddings succeed. That was an interest and I suppose traditional approach. I was worried that Maxy's sunrise wouldn't show up in the slice the judges cut from her mousse cake because she put an oblong roll in a round cake, but it was there.

I was absolutely certain when they announced Mexican week that the technical would be flan. A different spin on the technical could have been to have them do a variety of corn dough products - tortillas, tortilla chips, gorditas, sopes, hard taco or tostada shells, or tamales. Just going to leave a refried beans recipe here because that part threw me.

I agree Matt Ryan's Constantine was very good, and I'm glad the character got a life beyond the canceled TV series.

It occurs to me that no one actually made dessert pizza. That seems like a missed opportunity. Talk about an acceptable time to put pineapple on pizza. Jon Stewart, though he is a New Yorker. A lot of the time square pan pizza is Detroit style.

That showstopper was a mix of odd and interesting. In a way the layers and fillings reminded me of hot water crust meat pies. Now that I've read the mentions upthread about party sandwiches in old cookbooks, I do vaguely remember that from one of my mother's books. The savory 'frostings' were a surprise to me. The pizzas were okay. The only thing that disturbed me was the idea of mushrooms and pineapple sharing a pizza. I noticed they were allowed to bring a starter to improve the dough outside of the time constraints. I despise raisins, so I was never going to be in favor of the technical.