TeeVeeStevie

The whole Apu controversy is idiotic, and I'm so angry that the show's going to end up caving, especially after addressing it in such a clever way that made it seem like they wouldn't. The Simpsons is literally all about goofy/exaggerated/ridiculous stereotypes with funny voices, performed mostly by the same small group of voice actors, and a lot of the stereotypes are ethnic/national: - Groundskeeper Willie (Scottish) - Krusty the Clown (Jewish) - Fat Tony, Luigi Risotto (Italian) - Mayor Quimby (Irish) - Cletus Spuckler (Southern Redneck) - Uter Zorker, Gunter and Ernst, Coach Lugash (German) - Cesar and Ugolin (French) - Bumblebee Man (Mexican) - Cookie Kwan (Chinese) - Kumiko Nakamura, Akira (Japanese) - even Homer (American) But only the Indian one is problematic . . . after 30 years! GTFO

The idea might've come from this old article: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garbage.html

Charlie said his mom had witnessed two turns of the century, which means she had to be at least 120 years old! LOL That's a good callback to Charlie not being sure of his age, but apparently having lived through many more historical events than you'd guess possible judging by the way he looks.

What I was calling ridiculous is the way that TV relationships so blatantly ignore reality on so many levels. The statement you're talking about was just one example, and I think it's pretty well-known that non-Asian women don't often date Asian men. https://theblog.okcupid.com/race-and-attraction-2009-2014-107dcbb4f060?gi=d1370fa47c33 https://mic.com/articles/74135/are-asian-men-undateable#.wCYHHIp8u

That last sketch made no sense. There were never any antagonisms or hierarchies between Poles and Italians. They both immigrated around the same time, were both near the bottom of the social ladder, and were both considered "not real whites." Was the "joke" supposed to be the hypocrisy of the Poles? The cluelessness of the tour guides? Or was it just an excuse for the writers to slam Italians?

I guess the writers have tried to make her seem more down to earth and less like the "unattainable dream girl" but not very believably IMO. We're still in TV fantasy land territory. If only high school had been like it's depicted on all these shows! Re: Manny, this isn't the place to get into that, but let's just say I'm not the only one to notice him being paired up with hot girls: http://forums.previously.tv/topic/34368-s07e06-the-more-you-ignore-me/ (Posts by CleoCaesar, Tooch & Latverian Diplomat)

What I mean is that he's a chubby hip-hop fanatic with geeky friends, and she's like a future homecoming queen. And since you bring up racial issues, AM/WF couples are also extremely rare in the first place. It's just not a realistic relationship from any angle. It's a ridiculous "TV relationship" like the ones on Modern Family where Manny is always paired up with really cute popular girls even though he's a chubby dork. For once I'd like to see these types of characters with someone in their own league, or even with no one at all.

Nice Teen Wolf parody with the bathroom "transformation" scene. On another subject, Eddie's relationship with the cute blonde is about as believable as Manny's relationships on Modern Family. It's like the old "fat guy/hot girl" trope being applied to teens now on every show.

The crossword puzzles are an interesting idea. Weird that they're being introduced at the end of the season though. Why is this forum so dead when the Jeopardy one is so active? Don't most people watch both shows?

Walter O'Brien is pale skinned. He also has blue eyes and dark brown hair like a majority of Irish people. I don't see anything unusual about him. Plenty of Irish people look even darker than that, such as Colin Farrell and Caroline Morahan.

Yeah, I guess Toby's not much of a catch either, what with the gambling problem and everything. But at least he's laid-back and fun. I don't think I could stand being around Happy for a very long time.

What if your husband decided to change his name to something you didn't care for, and you had to hear it spoken, see it written and use it yourself everyday? What if he wanted to wear sweatpants to your special anniversary dinner? Or what if he went out and did this to himself? None of those things would affect anyone but him, right?

Stanley the Manly!

Of all the things in this show that stretch credibility, nothing is harder to believe than Toby's romantic feelings for Happy. She's cold, distant, robotic, demanding, scornful, grouchy and mean. And she's not even that hot to make up for it. No way would a (relatively) cool guy like Toby be going so gaga over her.

The silliness of the Johnson/Johnson argument was obviously the source of the humor, but looking at the situation realistically, it was Bow's fault for making a distinction between the two identical names in the first place. If she had just said "Maybe they [the lesbians] will each keep their own last name; some couples do that." the whole pointless argument could have been avoided. Dre's ridiculousness after that was just a response to her initial ridiculousness. Which last name(s) to use is something couples should discuss before getting married and be on the same page about, just like everything else. It does impact men because they're 50% of the marriage and have to live with whatever decision is made too. They should not be left out of the conversation as someone upthread suggested.

They couldn't have waited for a more convenient night to make their escape? Like one when they didn't have dinner plans with the creepy neighbors. Then Beverly wouldn't have been so nervous and made so many mistakes. And Ethan left his microchip in his hotel room. Wouldn't it have made more sense for her to leave hers at home too? What good is it in the neighbors' bathroom? What if the escape had to be aborted and she needed to get the chip back? Didn't seem like a very well-thought-out plan, especially considering execution is the punishment for failure.

Wow, people get really touchy about science. The article just summarizes the results of the two studies. To debate the details and data, we'd have to find and read the originals, then follow links to any related research, all of which would take too long and be inappropriate for the purposes of this discussion. I was just trying to offer some scientific support for the point I was making after everybody jumped on me. Didn't mean to get you all so worked up. What would have been funny, in keeping with the absurdity of the whole situation, is if Phil had left Todd in the desert, and then Todd miraculously stumbles back into town a couple months later having lost 100 pounds and looking like a young Burt Reynolds...just at the exact moment that Phil has finally convinced Melissa again to have sex with him. The show does seem to be slowly redeeming Phil's character though, and judging by their recent heart-to-heart talks, I'm betting he and Melissa are endgame (unless more survivors show up and complicate things).

I realize the science I referenced is based on small samples, but it's still science, and those of you who aren't dismissing it outright are (deliberately?) misinterpreting it. There are two studies that basically replicate each others' results. They both find that horny women (e.g. Melissa) whose mates are sexually unattractive (e.g. Todd) will cheat or be tempted to cheat with men who are more sexually attractive (e.g. Phil). That backs up my point perfectly. A "bunch of women" are telling me I'm right--38 in the first study and 43 in the second--which is a lot more than the 5 or 6 here who are telling me the opposite. I think I'll go with the former group. All that said, I'm not trying to sell Phil as a Chris Hemsworth type or Todd as completely undateable, and I agree with most of what DittyDotDot, LADreamr and SlackerInc said in their posts between this one and my last one. But Phil has only ever been in times of challenge and nothing ever goes his way. Yet he still always manages to do the decent thing in the end. Meanwhile, golden-boy Todd is off having endless monkey sex with the hottest woman left on earth, and the other surviving woman thinks he's great too. Of course he's always pleasant and affable. I'm sure he couldn't care less about Phil's "douchery." I know I wouldn't. He doesn't even seem to notice it.

Context is important here. Since he arrived, Todd has had absolutely everything go right for him in the most improbable way, while Phil has had everything go wrong in the most infuriating way. If the karma were spread out a little more reasonably, they'd both be decent guys most of the time, and Phil's looks would put him over the edge and make him the superior option. I maintain that if this situation were depicted realistically, Melissa would choose Phil over Todd for sex because of his looks, or at the very least "marry" Todd the way Phil is "married" to Carol and then fantasize about/cheat with Phil whenever she gets really horny. This hot-sex-with-Todd stuff is pure fantasy for comedy purposes. People can say I don't understand women, but science is actually on my side here. You're analyzing this as if they had other options. Carol likes Phil and wants to be married to him, or at least she wants to be married to someone and eventually repopulate. If he leaves, there's literally no one else in the world for her to do that with now that Todd is taken. Staying with her makes him a decent guy in my book. Abandoning her would be cruel. And they bicker constantly, so I don't think he's faking enjoyment. She tells him she's horny, Carol proposes the "sharing him" idea, and she's immediately on board with it even though she had never expressed any interest in repopulating before. That sounds like readily agreeing to me. And her demeanor was more "let's get it on already, I'm horny" than "let's get it over with." If I recall, she starts by going in for a kiss.

But that's not at all what happened. Melissa was having fun hanging out with Phil at first, telling him that she was horny. The only reason she didn't pursue him was out of respect for Carol. But then she readily agreed to the deal where she would get to have sex with him too and seemed very into it for the couple of seconds they went at it before Todd showed up. That's because he's not really a jerk or a shithead or a creeper, but a decent guy who's incredibly and understandably frustrated by the circumstances. I think Melissa (finally) realized that when she went to apologize to him for all of her and Todd's PDA. That's also not how things happened. He was annoyed by Carol from the very beginning and treated her poorly but each time eventually came around (the wedding, the tomatoes), which is still what his relationship is like with her now (cleaning the shit pool). He always acts like a decent guy sooner or later, even as his frustration grows to the point of almost breaking, with all the crying and screaming and contemplating murder. We don't know anything about either guy's skills in the sack, and neither did Melissa. I'm just talking about basic physical attraction, which women are not above being influenced by, especially very horny women.

Phil isn't a jerk or an asshole or an awful human being, and he hasn't forgotten how to relate to other people. He's an average guy caught in an extremely frustrating situation who's starting to lose his mind. There are two women left on earth (so far) and because of dumb luck he can't have the one he wants and ends up stuck with the one he can't stand. What I find "tired" is not that he wants the normal pretty girl (duh), but that everyone is totally oblivious to that fact as if it were weird or unusual, and that the show is determined to make the pretty girl not want him. Looks are important to women too, and in real life, there's no way horny Melissa would want to have that kind of nonstop hot sex with Todd rather than Phil, no matter how nice Todd is and how "superficial" Phil is. But I get that this ridiculous situation is where the "comedy" comes from.

LiveScience - Chivalry Not Dead: Male Crickets Risk Lives to Protect Mates

People wouldn't have all died suddenly at the exact same moment wherever they happened to be and then vanished into thin air. They would have died over an extended period of time and been buried or cremated by the still-living. Only the bodies of the last to die would still be out in the open, but they wouldn't be in cars or anywhere in public. They'd be in hospital beds or beds at home, and decomposed by the time we enter the story.

Top search result for "sexiest scientists": http://www.businessinsider.com/50-sexy-scientists-2013-2?op=1

Uh, Africa is not the cradle of civilization. That would be the Middle East between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. That map was showing the migrations of humans out of Africa thousands of years earlier. It's ironic that a complaint about failing to give due credit fails itself to give due credit. As for Rock and Roll, that's a blend of R&B ("black" music) and Country ("white" music), so credit goes to both races there. The first big Rock and Roll star however, was neither Little Richard nor Jerry Lee Lewis, but Bill Haley and the Comets.