marybennet

I wondered that, too, about Alysse and Ronnie. I think I decided in the end that it was about the tragic loss of your colleague--about the strength of work friendships. Alysse's vigil would still be moving but in that way. I felt a bit upset that it was Ronnie who died. Too much of a "kill your gays" trope, or really a "kill your non-binary friends" trope. The queer charcter is too often a Trekian redshirt.

Hannah was as horrible as ever, but telling the guys she looked like a grenade was perhaps not Nick’s finest moment.

One of the things the books and show are good about is the pull of what you were born into, the power of that provinciality. It’s hard to leave because you don’t have money or resources, because there’s no place better for you (Alphonso), or because there’s a strange comfort in knowing the place you’re from, even if it’s awful. It can feel like you fit there. In the books, it has always felt to me as if Lila fits and resents Lenu for being able to leave, which is why (partly why) she pulls her back.

Does Jack Lowden not play River and the doppelganger, who is just made up to look more mousy as doppelganger/JL than as River/JL?

I didn't find Jon boring, which makes me doubt that particular conspiracy theory. And I did find Andy so. Jeff Probst's loud praise of Jon as a storyteller also makes me think they'd have liked him to stay, too. I thought Jon was smart and funny and, as someone said above, appealingly self-deprecating, which survivor contestants almost never are (at least genuinely). Franny and Matt were genuinely self-deprecating and charming in being so, but those are the only ones I can think of. I'm on the side of someone else above (forgive me for not combing back through!) who suggested that the podcaster/radio hosts/thirsters who want the kind of minor celebrity lives one gets after Survivor didn't want Jon around taking the attention.

I do remember Jeremy but there were others on his season (Kwame Onwuachi, Karen Akunowicz, Isaac Toups, Marjorie Meek-Bradley of bread-making fame) who were more striking and memorable as chefs and as personalities. Philip Frankland Lee, too, though not particularly in a good way (🙃).

Best wishes to Shirley!

I’m so sad about this. I liked her a lot on tv—something always so fun about her hair, her clothes, her presence—and I have loved for years one of her recipes. “Wedding chicken.” My boyfriend just made it. She’s a chef who affected our table. https://www.foodnetwork.com/fnk/recipes/wedding-chicken-7151729.amp

Agree. And I loved the way it used (assumed) our knowledge as viewers of two seasons of the show. It had all the more power because all that work was behind it. Beautiful.

The latest episode of The Watch podcast includes an interview with Gail Simmons, who said Danny’s was unquestionably the best meal, that his dessert was the best dish of the night, and that the editing exaggerated their quibbles about his dishes while missing things they didn’t like about Dan’s food.

The last episode of The Dish with Kish is now up on Bravo. Mei Lin makes Danny’s dessert, which has a nearly Katsuji-level number of ingredients. Looks great! Episode fun.

Leche de tigre is a kind of ceviche or aguachile — it’s a name for the citrus that cooks the fish. So the record remains and it’s still season 21!

I read? or saw? Kristen saying some time that she eats more of the dishes she doesn’t like, trying to figure out what’s wrong. Maybe that was happening with Tom with Dan’s dish, and Dan misread what it meant.

The cane and braces are prosthetics, and his deciding to wait until the kitchen is clear is his choice or the consequence of the way the running of the chefs disables him. An accommodation would be production finding a way to help him carry things when one hand is occupied with his cane. An accommodation is a change in work circumstances to make those circumstances less disabling for the person who has a disability. Or it’s my making sure there’s a way for my blind student to hear test questions that other students are reading.

I kinda loved Paul Bartolotta for saying “I’ll always remember that pozole” to Manny as he left.