MerBearStare

Yeah, if this were real life, my position would be to bring it up once but then let it go. The hotel manager isn't ruining their honeymoon, Shane is.

I watched the first two episodes yesterday and really enjoyed them. And I say this as someone who doesn't really like musicals. Or at least movie musicals; I can handle less than half an hour of singing. I'm interested to see what happens between Cecily Strong and Keegan Michael Key (I don't remember character names yet) because they broke way earlier in the season than I was expecting.

That struck me as really irresponsible. I wasn't paying close attention to the case - did he live in a high rent area, like NYC or the Bay Area/Silicon Valley? It reminded me of this Onion classic - https://www.theonion.com/apartment-broker-recommends-brooklyn-residents-spend-no-1819579222

New Ted Lasso video! I don't know if I can wait 16 more days.

There are links to multiple articles in the Cheftestants thread. You could also just google it.

This is the first episode of Days I've watched in a couple months and Ciara and Theo's relationship didn't seem on the up and up, consent-wise. And a better show would be able to explore that dicey gray area. If Ciara had her memory back, would she want to be with Ben instead of Theo? Absolutely. And Theo definitely knows that, which is why he's rushing it. I hope when news of the engagement becomes public, people bring that up. I was like, "How did Abe, of all people, not know about this?!" You can't just knock down a whole-ass commercial area without multiple government departments knowing about it. I did laugh when Eli said to the demo guy about to remove the Horton plaque, "Those are my great-grandparents!" Like, what did he think they would say? "Oh sorry, we didn't know these were *your* great-grandparents. Demolition cancelled!"

I wonder if there's a morals clause that they could use to not pay him, after Bravo/Top Chef/Magical Elves does an investigation of their own. I think they withhold payment until after the finale airs so there's incentive not to spoil the season, so he may not have the money yet. There could also be pre-production paperwork and agreements that could trip him up. My sister's worked in professional kitchens and the best ones have had some form of toxicity and behavior that wouldn't fly in most other professions, so the fact that Gabe, a talented and celebrated Austin chef, *got fired* for his behavior leads me to believe the accusations are true. The restaurant owners wouldn't have fired him unless they really had to. ETA: To me, that arrogance is totally on-brand for a man who thinks he can get away with sexually harassing women and making, or at least tolerating, anti-semitic comments.

She had a name! It was Precious! Although, as I learned from the Wikipedia entry (which I really recommend reading because it's ridiculous), Precious was actually played by a male orangutan named Bam Bam.

That was a different Dale in season 3 (Miami). The blonde guy with the short mohawk, I think. Dale Talde was in season 4 (Chicago). He's still a dick, but not a hypocritical dick in this instance.

OMG. I am, as they say, shook. She's kind of reminding me of Lisa Vanderpump - older, pretty brunette Brits with interesting and unexpected pasts.

I just googled Hilary and holy shit, she's 68-years-old (or possibly 69, google and wikipedia had different ages). I need all of her skincare (and maybe plastic surgery?) secrets. David is 55 and I totally thought they were closer in age.

Ha, I guess there were more successful recasts than I thought. I probably just remember the bad ones because they're bad; the good recasts end up seeming like they've always played the role and don't register as a recast after a while.

I wasn't watching Days when Charity played her, but I remember seeing a clip on youtube years ago of a scene with her being slapped, I think by Jan, and it was some of the worst acting I've ever seen. If that was TPTB's plan, that was really smart, as long as they let Charity know and she was compensated well. Based on that clip from twitter, her Belle seems like a spoiled twat (or maybe she always was but Kirsten Storms had enough charm to pull it off). I always feel bad for these recast actresses because most of the time they get compared unfavorably to their predecessor, either because the audience doesn't think they're as pretty or as talented or both. I used to watch All My Children and I remember when they recast Greenlee. The poor actress (her name was Sabine something or other) never really caught on with audiences and when they brought back Rebecca Budig they made these commercials that literally said, "The real Greenlee is back." That felt particularly shitty on the network's part. I have a short memory when it comes to soaps - can anyone think of an instance when a recast was more popular than their predecessor?

This episode in Hawaii with Yarda might be the one that pisses me off the most. So Yarda harasses and threatens the neighbors so that they feel unsafe even walking to their cars or to the mailbox, that's fine. But he smokes a cigarette, well that's a deal-breaker. Lois may have been a nice person, but she wasn't a kind person. And I don't blame the neighbors for threatening to sue her over it. Also, there are episodes where I can truly believe that no one saw it coming. Petty, tit-for-tat behavior rarely results in murder. But when a paranoid man with anger management issues is stockpiling weapons, yeah, that's going to end in violence.

The one thing that really annoyed me about this week's episode is that all Brad had to do was pull out his driver's license and be like, "See, it's not my birthday." And then it would have seemed really weird and shady that his brother contacted David weeks in advance, lied about it being Brad's birthday, and then showed up to surprise Brad on his not real birthday. I actually do like this, for the time being, because I think a lot of people, if they were to become super successful, would kind of be a jerk while they got used to being super successful. It's like that quote by Bill Murray about how how anyone who becomes famous is gonna be an asshole for like two years and then they'll either calm down and get back to normal or stay an asshole forever.

The non-cumulative judging is the thing I hate most about Top Chef (and Project Runway). Like I don't think it should always be cumulative, but if the bottom three is made up of two consistently strong competitors, Sara and Gabe, and one consistently weak one, Chris, the consistently weak one should go. Especially this far in the competition. We all know Chris isn't going to win, but I really think Sara could have (and of course she still could with LCK).

They also cut out that pastry chef Johnny something or other with the tall hair. I don't remember his last name, but I mockingly called him the "pastry bad boy" because I didn't like him. I don't remember the season, but the quickfire was the cheftestants had to make something for Padma and him in a hotel and deliver it to their hotel room. They ended up just showing Padma in the room with some very awkward feedback. ETA: Google tells me it's Johnny Iuzzini. There isn't a ton of info about him being edited out, but according to a reddit thread (I know...) he was edited out of an episode at the Overlook Hotel, so it must have been the Colorado season.

Ya know, now that I think about it, Lisa and her time on Top Chef reminds me a lot of Wendy Pepper on the first season of Project Runway (although, as unpleasant as Lisa was, she wasn't scheming or manipulative like Wendy was). Both got through the competition by always being only the second worst in any given challenge - and even doing well in one or two challenges. Then in the second to last challenge, they beat a well-liked and more talented contestant (Antonia/Austin Scarlett). I can't really blame Stephanie and Richard for being shocked by it and I thought it showed a real lack of self-awareness for Lisa to be like, "You guys could at least congratulate me," or whatever it was she said. But Lisa at least had a good showing in the finale and did way better than she had the entire competition. There seem to be fewer and fewer hotheads and dicks each season, which I'm grateful for. I remember watching season 4 when it aired and, because it was still so close to season 2, no one seemed that bad. But looking back, Lisa, Dale (who has done a lot of self-improvement), Spike, the one guy whose name might have been Andrew, I don't remember, but he reminded me of a squirrel, all of them really sucked. This season, the "villain" is Gabe and even he's not that bad.

This is just speculation on my part, but I'm gonna hide it just in case.

I also got into this show a couple months ago and binged the whole series on Discovery+. It seems like 75% of the episodes are like "You're all assholes, but obviously the person who commits murder is the biggest asshole." And the other 25% is legitimate mental health issues. It also seems like a lot of times, but not always, toxic masculinity is a huge factor in what went down. And people being way too upset about being dIsReSpEcTeD. So many of these tragedies could have been avoided if one side just let it go and ignored the other side.

I mean, that is the most glamorous meal someone can eat. I remember in 7th grade - this would have been 1995 - I asked for a Viennetta instead of cake for my birthday and it was really underwhelming. I was definitely expecting my life to get 1000% more glamorous as soon as I ate it. That did not happen. I started watching Days in 93 or 94 (my mom was always more of an ABC soaps person) and was definitely Team Carrie and Austin, but in hindsight Sami and Lucas are way more interesting and fun to watch.

I'm thinking Coach is kind of in the same situation that William H. Macy was with Operation Varsity Blues. Like he definitely knew about it, but he wasn't the main person driving the scheme and there isn't enough evidence to arrest him.

I was fully expecting a little surfer to pop out of his hair.

At least now we know how Jen and Coach have so much money.

There's not one weak link among the actors or the characters, which is quite a feat considering how many people there are. I watched the show as it was released and at first it seemed like they were setting up Keeley and Ted to be the couple, but I'm glad they didn't go that way. Though one of my favorite scenes in the entire season is when she and Ted were talking about the photos the paparazzi took of both of them. "Tartt's tart breaks Tartt's heart" "Lasso makes passo and creates team fiasco" "You have no idea the power of rhyming in this god damn country."