scrb

They’re keeping secrets from each other. Terry had told Simon to leave Arabella on the night she was raped. She’d be taking care of Bella since they’re best friends but there seems to be guilt behind it. Inevitable it will come out. Is she going through writers block? Been a year since she got an advance. Maybe she could side hustle magazine or newspaper pieces or the online equivalents. Or use her notoriety for other IG influencing? These friends are all going through either sexual assault or ambiguous experiences like Terry’s in Italy.

I think that forest is Twin Peaks like. Seems odd for kids to walk through the forest by themselves. Small town, little crime usually? But kids went missing so why would they be walking through the forest in the dark, alone? If not people who may do you harm, are there animals to worry about? You definitely get some kind of mystic vibe about the forest or the unknown.

They devoted a good amount of time to getting police files, montages of boxes of files. If not for the fact that the perpetrator agreed to a plea deal as this series started to air, this would be tough to watch at times. Internet detective work just doesn’t translate well to film or TV sometimes, though apparently McNamara documented a lot and kept old phone messages, some cell phone videos and the like. Almost as if she was saving material for a documentary of her own. So one more episode after this one? Should be he payoff.

So someone mentions that black girls have been getting abducted but I don't know if this scenario rings true, the abductor has a spare apt. that's all wired up with webcams and he's watching her pee and gives her enough time to bust out of the place. I guess this story is based on some real life cases, about girls who were like 10 and then kept as slaves through puberty. But Keisha is about to go to college, so it's different than those cases. Young women around college age when they're abducted, often the outcome isn't good, often you hear about recovered bodies not too long after they've gone missing. We don't know how long Keisha has been missing but seems like people have moved on. Emmet looked at the donation can with her picture on it and then Kev, when he was walking back home with his girlfriend, saw a little memorial on the sidewalk for the other girl whose body was found in the previous episode. That made him think of Keisha for a moment, because they thought that the body which was found might have been Keisha. Then he goes on and meets up with his friends again and they're dancing and having fun. They haven't forgotten Keisha but they are living their life. Yeah the odds of Ronnie hearing Keisha's screams seem really unlikely, unless it turns out the abductor is someone known in the neighborhood and maybe he was planning for awhile to abduct her. That's a more likely scenario, that the perpetrator isn't a complete stranger. Jake talks tough but it seems weird that he's shaken so much seeing Otis beat that guy, probably to death, so he won't be able to go public with it. Guess he's been more sheltered than he thought. Blackout allows Keisha to bust through the door eventually. Actually, if the abductor lives somewhere else -- took him awhile to get there -- how is he going to lock her up again? Is he going to reinstall a new lock in the middle of the night, while making sure she can't escape and the neighbors don't notice? Is he going to make a run to the hardware store to get new locks? For everyone else, the blackout is a chance to have parties out on the streets. Kind of a clash in tones, the terrifying plot for Keisha, with things getting suspenseful as she tries to break out and elsewhere, people are dancing, eating barbecue, etc.

OK so he crammed for the bar and passed? Hmm, if we're to believe the bar wasn't that difficult to pass back then? Why not Della? She seems to be more savvy on legal matters than Perry is. She left home because her father wouldn't let her go to college. But she didn't go to law school? They're going to win this case because of a confluence of factors, like the black cop probably testifying in their favor and then a Deputy DA wanting his boss to lose so he could take his job. Not because of Perry's legal brilliance or the ability to conjure up dramatic arguments in court? This isn't how Perry became a lawyer in the books or the old show, right? Rhys is a good actor but he has some verbal mannerisms which he repeats from other roles. At some places, he sounded just like Philip Jennings, not just in his voice but the way he changed the tempo of his lines.

Slogging through season 3, on ep. 7. Liked the first two seasons but season 3 became really unwieldy, with all these permutations of different time points, two universes and characters of different ages at different times, in the two worlds. I stopped trying to keep track of them all. There seemed to be climaxes but turned out to be many fakeouts, like the nuclear plant disasters, death of Martha, death of 2019 Jonas, but then it turns out there’s another 2019 Jonas. Then several Marthas in both worlds at different times. I will see it through but where it ends may not be quite as stunning or satisfactory. Some things I question, it’s doubtful that the God Particle could be contained by steel drum. The first apocalypse, they broke through a half foot of concrete. OK we know from Chernobyl sarcophagus that that won’t even keep normal radiation contained let alone this thing that explodes like a nuclear bomb, as well as allowing time travel. Another time, the drums are not buried in concrete so Claudia opens it herself. They also showed all these different ways to time travel and apparently go between 2 worlds. Of course it’s poetic license, but they keep coming up with different devices. Maybe they realized after like a dozen eps. that they wanted all these different time period scenes and all these different characters flitting through time that they couldn’t all crawl through the caves or steal Tannahaus’ device from each other back and forth. So they came up with these globes too.

CNN has been promoting the new season a lot. Kamau is doing a lot of appearances on different CNN shows. Maybe fortuitous that it’s premiering after the Floyd murder and protests. Seems like he’d have touched on things like reparations, the discrimination that he talks about with his mother and other racial issues, just because it’s an election year and some of these issues were already being raised, at least during the primary season. But did they film anything after the start of the pandemic? Doesn’t sound like it because he talked about some of the episodes and didn’t mention it. Certainly the race dimension of the pandemic is something to explore, how it’s disproportionately killed black and Latino people, because of the types of jobs they have and limited access to health care, among the reasons why they’ve been hit so hard. He’s noticeably grayer than the last season. He was never mistaken for an angry activist or the stereotypical angry black man, because he has such a disarming manner and tone. It’s great that the show has lasted.

Bananas is on the Bill Simmons podcast. Says luck is important. Says knocking out more barrels in that car challenge was luck, the math equation worked out for him. Simmons said Bananas was fortunate he didn't go against Fessy who's taller and got greater reach for the bell.

Bananas won't care, as long as he keeps getting those checks, never have to find a real job. And the ratings are good enough that they keep producing the show, so MTV doesn't care. As for whether they rigged it, they're not transparent about the rules, especially while the competition is going on. TJ always says in 95% of these challenges that x won. IOW, they tell you who won and you have to accept it. So it's rife for manipulation if the producers believe certain outcomes will benefit the show in some way. I'm not saying that's what happened but most of the challenges and the Finals are like unique, so you can't look for the same rules. So they all feel like they're making the rules up as they go along. The eliminations, it's hard to hide since there are only two competitors, often going against each other. Though it wouldn't surprise me if they throw in rules like they can't make a lot of physical contact with each other. Rogan might have tried to tackle Johnny or push him away so that he could jump instead of them both jumping for the bell. In any event, it would be shocking if Bananas didn't come back, because he's the best-known figure on this show and MTV probably wants him around all the time. He is the face of the franchise. Ugh.

Going to be a long time before they film another season right? Unless they filmed back in January.

This was one Final, unless they cut out a lot of things, where it made sense to have one Final because either a male or female could win. It was about stamina and CV fitness. The biggest and strongest guy finished well back. I guess they filmed in the winter time and the peak must have been close to the Czech Republic. Better when they run in warmer weather because they could have swimming sections and so forth. After the first leg, they all went one by one towards the hut or compound and nobody tried to outrun each other, because there was really no room to do so. There must have been a slope that they could have taken since TJ rode his vehicle up. Might have been better to make them race up the slope instead of go one by one on that rope.

Fake fashion show concocted for the season. Fake drama with Garrett and what's her name and the other guy. Now if there's another season, will they repudiate Alex, the cast members that is?

They have all kinds of juices, not from concentrate, at the stores, including many without any kind of sugar added, unlike in the US. They have various kinds of raw smoothies as well. What they haven't really pushed as much are "organic" products but that's probably changing. They have juicing machines like we do. Some hotels will serve buffet breakfast and there are boxes of fresh oranges that you can feed into the juicer. In Italy, they have red orange juice.

BTW where were they? Don’t know why the last few seasons they don’t say where they are. Maybe they were trying to get the tourism bureau to pay them to mention the locations but nobody was willing to pay. MTV viewer demographic may not be big on travel to international destinations.

Fessy just gassed out even though he was first out of the checkpoint with the locks. You could attribute it to his mass but Jenny beat all the guys and she’s big. Yeah the math just finished Cory and Kaycee. The elimination wasn’t much. I don’t think they were going to make them do anything grueling. But why even bother eliminating at that point? Maybe not enough room in the hut? They should have disclosed that first ones up would be in tribunal so others might have pushed harder in the first leg, though several of them were thinking they couldn’t compete against the leaders. Despite the hype I don’t think this was the toughest Final. Other Finals required them to swim, eat, solve much tougher puzzles, run long distances in heat and humidity. They should have timed it cumulatively, that is they add the times of both legs and add them up. Instead Cory and Jenny only got a minute head start. Even though Corey spent a long time on the math, if he had like a 5 minute advantage over Bananas from the first leg, that might have saved him. On the first leg, some were carrying their skis and nobody really tried to figure out the X country technique. But if you aren’t careful, the skis could cause injury since they’re like levers to twist or pull your legs apart. Hated seeing Bananas win but he was fitter than some of the younger guys and he made sure to get the math right and he performed in the elimination. That means in the next season there will be plenty willing to join his alliance, when in reality, other challengers should be looking to take out the biggest threat to win.

Ryan wasn't taking pictures to exonerate himself. He was using them as trophies to share with his male friends, to boast with each other.

Someone is publishing his books. Or maybe he's using a vanity press. He must be distancing from his parents during the pandemic.

They revisit Slovenia, the young author going in on an apt. with his parents, who were going to visit from CA. They went for an under budget choice instead of an over budget luxury place. But they moved out because it was so small when the parents came over to visit. They then bought an apt. They spent a lot of time renovating. In the original ep. the mother talked about finding some woman for him and she says she got a lot of flak on social media over it. But he’s still single two years later, though he’s cranked out 8 more books since then and now have a nice pad.

She could be hungry for the camera. But that doesn't mean she will end up getting more airtime than she otherwise would have gotten. She could poke her head in other people's scenes but the producers or Bravo can cut her out of the episode that they air. What does taking the chief stew job on a TV show do for her? Is she going to put it on her CV and that will get her more jobs? People in the industry know that it's a TV show, where it's more of a role than an actual ship function, not reflective of whether she has the skills to do the job on real charter yachts. Does Bravo pay her more for playing specific roles? Maybe but their main concern is ratings. How does her being chief stew bring more ratings to the show?

Let's see if it becomes a real thing before condemning anyone over it. Doubt not ordering lemons one time is going to get someone fired. If Hanna failed to provision other stuff, then as part of a pattern it becomes a thing. But if Bravo makes it a major reason someone is "fired" we know the show is a scripted joke.

Yeah they probably relished the prospect of the women going out of their minds about Pete all season. But he's usually backed down from confrontations. When he has been reprimanded, dressed down, demoted, he didn't react with a lot of drama. That may be fatal if you want to be on Bravo.

She handled the situation with Pete well. She didn't blow it up with Pete and she conveyed what Pete said without using his crude language so Sandy knew how bad it was. Then she accepted his apology and didn't try to escalate or cause any more problem. She was civil with him, didn't try to raise the drama. Does she not know she's on a Bravo TV show? Yes she's gunning for Hanna's job, like expressing disbelief that Hanna didn't order lemons. But what exactly does she have to gain? She's not going to be paid more, unless she lasts several seasons as chief stew on BDM like Hanna has. Or maybe she just wants to be in charge but she merits being in charge, knows what needs to be done, works well with inexperienced stews and seems to approach the job with more enthusiasm than Hanna.

Theo was lying to her parents and she justified it by saying her mother lied in the divorce settlement. She also muttered a racist slur as she was walking away from school But the Alliance doesn't come off well either. Arabella and Terry reported and was going to be okay with Ryan being railroaded before they knew the whole story. What was the accent though? It seems like they were mocking the accents of their parents or some who don't speak the King's English? Because they certainly don't talk that way now?

Hmm, maybe my DVR guide has to update.

My Tivo shows no more Challenge after this 7/15 airing. Not even a reunion on 7/22 though that may be because of the pandemic, assuming they were uninterested in doing some huge Zoom reunion. So 90-minute episode instead of doing a Final over two 60-minute episodes as they've done in the past implies it's not as extended a Final as they've had, like two stages with people having to stay up between the stages.