sd dude

Never watched TI before and was just vaguely aware of the show in its original iteration. Happened to catch a rerun of this premiere (is it season 2 or season 5?) and got intrigued. After viewing these first 4 episodes, I am sort of horrified by the whole thing and feel as I imagine I would were I to come upon a literal train wreck. I'm constantly shocked by what I am seeing but not really enjoying it as it is kind of painful to watch. If as a couple you are that unsure of whether you are meant to stay together, then take a break and try dating other people (or just spend some time with friends or getting to know yourself if you are not interested in dating others right then). Don't go on a ridiculous reality show with unlimited free booze and unlimited free skanks (male and female) just to test whether either or both of your libidos are still functioning. Once the decision has been made to go on this show to genuinely test the fidelity of your relationship, you can unpack your bags immediately and cancel the flight. You've got your answer. Your relationship has failed the test. For the partnered females, at least, it appears the only acceptable behavior from their boyfriends is to sit on their hands for a month, and not touch a thing. That makes those women either stupid, delusional, or disingenuous. Also the hypocrisy on both sides is so thick, it's difficult to see what is actually going on on the screen. Horny Ashley is the most obvious culprit (and as a result, Rick appears to be getting the most sympathetic edit so far) but insecure Ashley is another one what with complaining about Casey walking around naked, which actually meant with his ass hanging out, which is actually exactly what insecure Ashley was doing in the her bonfire clip, which actually Casey said he was fine with because he acknowledges that she was doing the same thing he was. And Casey is a self-absorbed prick who I don't find very likeable, yet I actually yield him the moral high ground on that particular exchange. As for the singles, isn't the very premise of coming on the show to break up other people's long-term relationships kind of disgusting on its face? What am I to think of any of them in terms of decency or lack thereof? Medinah is about 2 episodes away from becoming Rick's stalker. I get that there is no other guy she is really into, but Rick's apprehension can be cut with a knife. Give him some frickin' space and go get your toes sucked somewhere else. KB was just awful but horny Ashley got exactly what she deserved, so I felt a little satisfaction about that, but still he was so incredibly mercenary about it, he could probably store ice cubes in his trunks in that hot Maui sun and they would never melt. So basically, his message to her was he played her emotions, vulnerabilities, and insecurities like a violin (while she played his flute), got laid a few times, and when she finally opened up about having some feelings toward him and wanting to talk about relationship potential, he says it's time to just be friends. Titanic, keep an eye out for KB's in the water. Of course, horny Ashley talking about riding off into the sunset together after a few days and a few fucks shows just how developmentally immature she is emotionally. And that is really the gist of the issue. The premise of the show is that everyone is there on the island to find love, either reinforcing their love for their current partner, or finding love with someone new. I am curious how TI defines "love", because I don't think there's a single person there (and I'll include MW, the producers, the crew, etc.) who have the slightest idea what the word means. Since I am a new viewer: At any point do the single men and single women get to interact? Since anything apparently goes on this show, they might as well just do a giant mixer and have the whole thing collapse into one huge orgy.

Ouch. Why would it need to be done forcefully? Wouldn't just making it compulsory be good enough?

Last night's episode was a small step down for me in that the main challenge was more of a gimmick than an extreme athletic challenge. Having to down four sun-baked rancid vegan protein shakes is more of a fear factor challenge than an athletic one. Sure, rolling your partner 50 yards in a giant tire requires some power and stamina but the average person could accomplish that. The real challenge was the gastronomic one, and what does fitness have to do with that? I also am wondering if the rage cage challenge is decided ahead of time or is decided once the showrunners know which couple will be joining the losers in the elimination challenge. I ask because in episodes 1 and 3 where the couples looked relatively evenly matched in terms of physical stature, both challenges were some variation of a basic tug of war. But week 2 had the biggest guy in the house (the celebrity trainer, the AA guy who is not well suited for sprinting up steep hills) along with his wife who looks quite powerful herself among the women, go up against a physically less intimidating couple, and the challenge was basically about sliding around in oil. If it had been more of a direct test of strength like a tug of war, it would have lasted a few seconds. The rage cage challenge could have been assigned by chance, but I have my suspicions. Oh, and when you quite matter of fact tell a person you hardly know who is making you a promise that you are not sure if you can trust them, and they go off the rail with anger as if you have insulted their mom or something, that is probably a person who you shouldn't be trusting.

Re S3 E7 "Jimmy and Gianni" So what I can glean is that Jimmy Ray Flynn and Gianni Arone are real life contemporary artists and real life father and son, although the "documentary" was scripted by Duplass. All that said it was still a fucking mess to me. At the end, all I could think was, "What did I just witness?"

Yeah, Master of All Things Food Prep is such an arrogant douche that even when he and his partner went to kiss the Young Guns' asses to get them to not vote them into the Cage, he couldn't help but act like an arrogant douche anyway, to the extent that you could see his own partner rolling her eyes at his arrogant douchery, since she realized that his behavior was making the whole point of having the conversation in the first place completely backfire.

For the record, love her or hate her, but Jenna was a much hotter Harley Quinn than Ally. Of course that was before her anorexia fully manifested. On another topic, I would love to hear Lindsay's mic feed during that team dance, so I can laugh as hard as Bruno and CA about her screaming directions to Sean throughout. There have been times in the past when replaying performance segments from the previous week that they would allow us to hear the performers' microphones but I don't remember them doing that recently. Please, please, just this once, release the youtube video with Lindsay's feed.

I have literally watched every episode of the U.S. version since it premiered as a little 6 episode summer tryout back in 2005, thus it is difficult for me to actually pull the trigger and stop watching for good, but for the first time ever the safety is off and my finger is on that trigger. This is the very first season that I am basically not getting any enjoyment out of at all and if it had not returned after its hiatus last Spring, I probably would not have missed it much. I watched the Disney ep a couple of weeks back late at night on my DVR and was falling asleep throughout. There were huge gaps in what I recall seeing. When I read the episode thread here I realized that I had missed a great deal of detail including entire dances. I didn't care. I just deleted it regardless. A funny irony here is that I presume Sean Spicer's appearance on the show was part of a redemption strategy for him to recast his reputation, yet despite him behaving very decently on the show, this is only going to make many more Americans hate him, if that is possible.

Thanks for that. I know from an interview with Simon that that ending was planned from day 1, but I found it unnecessarily jarring to flash forward almost 35 years to 2019, when of course most of the characters would be dead already. In my view if they wanted to do a flash forward type of epilogue, I would think that moving in time 10-15 years to the mid-90's or 2000 would have accomplished the same in showing the complete death of the Deuce and the resurrection of Times Square into an urban Disneyland, while allowing the opportunity to show a number of "where are they now" vignettes with characters who are were likely still alive in that time frame. Regarding Abby's age, if she dropped out of college in 1971, I presume she had to be at least 18-19 at that point in time, meaning in 2019 she had to be at least 66 years old. Meanwhile, I had Vincent pegged for about 30ish when the series began (no good documentation to support that but he was already divorced with two young kids) so I actually would like to think that Abby was a little bit older than 18 when she hooked up with Vincent. Anyway, that would make him 78 in the closing segment, which is certainly possible, but he definitely had to be over 70 in that scene.

Did you mean most of the pimps?

Is it not possible that someone may have decided to NOT vote for Sailor, or cast a vote for one of her opponents, because (correctly or incorrectly) they consider her to be an entitled brat and felt turned off by that? That can't be a thing? I think that is possible and could reasonably be labeled as acting out an anti-"rich privilege" sentiment. As far as a suggestion that there is a systematized institutional anti-rich bias throughout the country negatively impacting the lives of the wealthy, I agree with you. But the topic at hand was why Sailor did not get sufficient votes to stay out of the bottom two and keep her safe for another week. It's a bit of a catch-22 in that she wouldn't have been on the show in the first place if she wasn't Christie Brinkley's daughter, but her connection to that particular person who was annoying in her ever-presence may have contributed to people being turned off to Sailor as a contestant.

It made me wonder if it was Len's choice of words that upset her. I know it was just a metaphor, but in Len's analogy she was basically being referred to as a horse. Shades of Mel B and the controversy when she was compared to a truck driver by I think Carrie Ann (or maybe Bruno?). She wasn't literally called a truck driver, I don't remember the exact reference but it did create some unnecessary (IMO) controversy.

Yes, the bottom two were not the right bottom two, but I think the judges made the best choice in keeping Ally. And I think that Sailor's incessant sobbing was really over the top. It's just a !@#$% silly dance show, for Christ's sake, and not a real competition by any means. I almost feel that the girl is not emotionally healthy.

No argument on that point. I am not sure if Lamar's mental/emotional health really were conducive to his participation this season. He did seem at times extremely sensitive about his dancing and the scores/critiques, and just unhappy and uncomfortable being there. But I believe he did try, and the genuine tears from his professional partner in acknowledgement of his effort (and I've never exactly considered Peta to be the warmest fount of emotion to begin with) supports that. Master P was simply disinterested and never gave his partner any effort at all.

Re S3 E6 "A New Song" What a mess. I just can't.

I saw that episode as well, but I don't remember it exactly as you do. It was almost 15 years ago, and our memories can fool us, so thank God for youtube He dropped them on the floor and then emphasized his distaste by kicking them further away, but I didn't see him throw them at all, much less throw them at Ashly. I believe his reaction was spontaneous and real, but I think it was a purposeful overreaction for effect and I don't actually believe he was angry at her in that moment. The very next scene shows him wearing the shoes during the quickstep practice. Let's agree to agree on this - Master P was a horrible dancer. He may or may not have been the worst dancer ever on the show (e.g. I don't think Tucker Carlson was any better and I seem to recall one of his "dances" performed seated in a chair while his pro actually danced) but it was clear that Master P had no interest in being there and was simply doing his son and the producers a favor, albeit not very graciously. His attitude was very poor and I think Ashly was genuinely surprised by it and exasperated by him, but let's not forget that they were making TV. If he was truly being inappropriately hostile, angry, and aggressive toward his partner, I don't think they would have forced her to continue working with him.

Don't you think the producers actually paid for them?

Premiered Tuesday, October 15 at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT on the Paramount Network. Anybody else checked this out? Those physical challenges really were pretty intense, and some of the one's shown in the season preview that have yet to occur look even worse. I thought the winning couple made the best choice they could in deciding who should go up against the losing couple in the elimination challenge. Winning the very first challenge is sort of a win-lose situation. They are safe for that week but end up with a target on their backs from every other couple. Choosing what appeared to be the strongest couple to go up against the bottom couple seemed straightforward enough. I don't think acquiescing to the alliance's request would have served them well as I don't think any of them were trustworthy. This way they get not only get rid of one of the strongest couples right away, but they also put the kibosh on that particular alliance. I'll keep watching for now mainly to see how the producer's continue to physically torture these blockheads.

What reads unrealistic for me is that Rudy lied about giving permission for the revenge hit in order to protect Vincent. Mobster with a heart of gold? Yeah, Vince is an earner, but is it worth adding to all the ongoing strife within/between the families to protect one civilian earner? I'm sure someone else can take over the bar and prepare the envelopes at the massage and peeps without too much difficulty. This was pure loyalty. Could guys really last very long in the mafia without displaying a much higher level of ruthlessness?

But since Vince is not a made guy and Caccace,, Sr. is, if daddy still decides to take out his grief on Vincent, would anyone really do anything in further retaliation? Civilian earners may need to be groomed and developed, but I presume they are just considered commodities to LCN. Rudy really did have a soft spot for him, which also might explain why he tolerated all the aggida and disrespect from Vince's PITA twin brother, who also put good money in Rudy's pocket, but eventually would have needed to stop his holding out and be taught a little respect.

Gotcha. But then my point seems even more salient. Since now he is the interview guest on Bill's show, let Bill interview him and focus instead on answering the questions. Again, I have never seen him be a guest on another talk show and not totally hijack the interview. Its zany and most talk show guests are more deferential to the host, so viewers experiencing the interaction tend to get a kick out of it, but let's be clear it doubles as a strategy to avoid being open and vulnerable. Perhaps the interview I've heard where he was most "normal" was on Fresh Air on NPR with Terry Gross a month or two ago. Maybe the absence of any live viewing or listening audience allowed him to stop performing so much.

I think that is a different character than Melissa. I dont know her name but she is the one that works for Abby at the High Hat, was planning to go to Washington to protest against porn at the Meese hearings, and instead took those days off to spend time with that fella (Juan?) who showed up at the bar to pick her up after her shift. I thought that was a legitimate "meet the boyfriend's parents" dinner, with the added awkwardness of not wanting to reveal the true circumstances of how they met, which is why she said to him under her breath "How did we meet" so they could have their stories straight.

I enjoy listening to Stern do interviews. I realize what I don't enjoy about him being a guest on other shows is he will not allow himself to be interviewed. He must control every interaction, regardless of which seat he is in. The questions he was posing to Bill about his relationships were good ones and worth exploring, but MAYBE HE SHOULD INVITE BILL ONTO HIS RADIO SHOW as an interview guest to delve into that. Otherwise, taking all that time to deflect the interview questions back on the interviewer is only a technique to avoid answering questions and not very respectful to the interviewer. Yes, Howard will speak ad nauseum in excruciating detail about his masturbation sessions, bowel movements, and related private matters. This is such an unusual thing that it creates his persona of being completely honest and open since most celebrities (and people in general) don't spend much time (or any at all) speaking about the size of their own genitalia (or anyone else's really). However, try to get past the superficial with him and actually find out something about how he actually feels, and I assure you you will see him flip that on the interviewer rather than share something of substance with an audience. It's lead to his well-deserved success as a radio personality, but I don't expect to ever learn very much about what makes Howard Stern. . .Howard Stern. I would have been curious to hear what their long-standing falling out was about. To the poster who finds Klobuchar. . .uhm. . .sexy - I honestly don't share that attraction but I'll be vulnerable enough to admit I think the same about Tulsi Gabbard (another Real Time top of show interview guest a few months ago). I can't see her as the democratic nominee but whomever does receive that nomination is going to need a running mate to complement the ticket. . .

Wasn't expecting Rudy to bite it. Thought it would probably be Tommy so I appreciated that unexpected twist. I'm assuming that Tommy got the green light to take out Rudy based on Rudy's belligerence and lack of cooperation with the other made guy. It's hard to believe that Tommy decided to do that on his own, even though he was probably furious about being humiliated earlier, for two reasons: his calm demeanor just prior to shooting Rudy - he didn't seem to be acting with emotion or passion but with a well thought out plan; and the fact that he is probably well aware that if he acted on his own and took out his boss, that his life would be over. Given that turn of events, there doesn't seem to be any realistic way Vince can survive to the end of the finale, unless he packs up and gets out of town permanently. I wonder if they are leading toward an even more tragic end, for example Abby (which would not be so tragic, she really annoys me) ends up as collateral damage as payback from the mob, or someone else who has no direct role in this beef. It really seems like Vince went down a road that he cannot turn off from and live happily ever after, at least not in a believable way. He obviously knows he is on borrowed time or he would not have brought the gun into their bedroom for defense. So, Big Mike just walks off into the sunset to die of AIDS alone? "Vince, I gotta go." Puzzling way to behave, and very sad exit. Bobby can't not be a douche. That is all. I'm intrigued by the development of the city official character who is in the closet (can't think of his name) over the last couple of episodes. He is still in the closet professionally which is not at all surprising (it's still only the 80's plus AIDS is now elevating long-standing homophobia), but there is a growing comfort with who he is. He at least can claim it with those closest to him. His confession to his wife last episode was actually a poignant and powerful exchange ("I can't stop. It's who I am.") And in this episode, I was surprised to see that he was out to Paul and that the two of them had some kind of ongoing friendship/relationship. I was under the impression that he was still visiting the gay bars/bathhouses in a completely anonymous fashion, but clearly there are leaders in the gay community who know him and who he is, and he does not seem to be uncomfortable with that fact. Good for him. I feel sorry for his wife, who obviously loves him. Kudos to some other poster who said in an earlier thread that we have not seen the last of Melissa/Margaret, although I didn't pick up much in the way of significance from her scenes. Perhaps the most confusing scene for me was Harvey/Eileen. I did not see Eileen resisting or pushing him away at all. It seemed that she was receptive to his pass/seduction. It appeared to me that it was all Harvey who put the brakes on it, after initiating it. I wonder if others saw it the same. I'm not completely sure what happened there but I would like to take a very optimistic view. Harvey has been pining for Eileen sexually for years, but I believe at this point in time he loves and respects her deeply. After her intense emotional dump on set and perhaps some wine, she was extremely vulnerable and he initially acted with his heart/libido, but quickly thought better of it, realizing her vulnerability in the moment, her steady relationship with another guy, and that challenging their very successful business/platonic relationship in that moment with sexual spontaneity may not have been a wise course. At least, that is my take. I don't know where to start with Lori. Good for her for finally severing her relationship with those parasites - the agent and her manager/boyfriend/suitcase pimp. I wonder if this is where she exits porn for good. After the gangbang there is not that much further down the ladder to go - bukakke? (J/K - that wasn't a thing until the late 90's or early 2000's.) Maybe I'll have more thoughts on her later.

In the wake of a personal loss, Candy finds the emotional core of her latest movie; Abby confronts Vincent after she makes an alarming discovery; Paul turns to activism as the AIDS epidemic continues to ravage New York's gay community.

Re S3 E5 "Drywall Guys" So there is now enough recognition by the creators that no one can figure out what is going on, that they will merely narrate the entire episode by way of exposition. Tell, don't show, I suppose.