LuvMyShows

I've seen his body, but I am still waiting for Aven's personality to show up! Preach!

I do too, and I'm not blaming the mom...but what mom in this day and age could possibly think that you can simply forbid away a relationship that involves a young adult male? It's going to backfire, in big ways or small. Speaking from some quasi-related experience, you just tell the daughter that you don't like it, and why, but you aren't going to forbid it because you know they will do it anyway, and you love her a lot, and are always there for her if she gets scared or something goes wrong and she needs help. By outright forbidding it, you are now removed from being a source that could actually help her navigate things if she needed a shoulder, or more.

I called such BS on her little woe-is-me speech in the 2nd episode, when she was saying something about how everyone else is so fancy and she's just a jeans-and-tshirt kind of gal. It's such false modesty, and is actually veiled (or not so veiled) humble bragging. I thought that whole thing was truly weird. It's not that he got Teresa to lick the icing off...it's that Teresa gave him the cake and she intentionally chose to go in for a kiss while he still had the cake in his mouth! Not only that about the food, but also if they are having a dinner of any kind, they will be the only ones in the restaurant, or it will be in a secluded place where they are the only ones (unless the whole point is to be in a fun public place). When they went to the diner, with all those other people, I immediately wondered what was up. I used to wonder why they did that, with the not-eating and no one else around, until I watched Love is Blind and Married at First Sight, both of which had couples and family/friends eating in public restaurants, and it was genuinely distracting, between the sounds of all the other patrons and the spectacle of watching someone eat and try to carry on a TV-worthy conversation at the same time! Yes, the gray comes in at the roots some number of weeks after you've dyed it, and the rest of your hair stays roughly the color that it was dyed for much longer.

Good point! That is actually the one thing that really leads me to believe it was suicide. Who says something like that? And the fact that the sister didn't say anything in response like "What on earth are you talking about?", leads me to believe that those who knew her well did indeed believe that suicide was possible. Another good point! Plus, if he had killed her and then dragged her through all that, then there would have been serious scratches on him, even if he was wearing long sleeves and pants, but IIRC they checked and he had none. And yet another good point!

Uche is def an asshole, but Stacy is just mentally unstable. I think Lydia is just all over the place. And Izzy is a contradiction, because he's very patient when it comes to dealing with Stacy, and he's very aware and explanatory of his own feelings, but he was sooo not that with Johni. I hope that if Stacy and Izzy watch the show, that they are appalled at how they treated her. I also hope that Chris was just kind of frozen in shock, because it took him hella long to step in and defend Johni from Stacy and Izzy's attacks. I really wish that he or Johni had just walked away, saying to both of them, "You are abusive, you are bullies, and you two deserve each other." Actually, I wish in some parallel universe that Stacy and Uche were together. They each have this same way of talking in an argument, which they think is calm and rational, and they are very superior about it, but in actuality they are so one-sided and derogatory and not concerned at all about what the other person is trying to really say and explain.

Thank you sooo much for mentioning this...I completely missed it! Looks like there will be one more showing, this Wednesday at 9:00.

Well I can name that tune in only one note! Seriously, as soon as Lester Holt said, "Tonight, on the season premiere of Dateline" and the voiceover said "a man was out walking his dog with his wife, and he was gunned down", I knew that the wife was in on it. Having seen enough of these cases, we've seen that if such a brazen shooting takes place at a home, during a daily routine event, with the spouse conspicuously present yet unharmed, it's very likely to have been something planned by the unharmed spouse. I also couldn't help but notice her almost Chacey-Poynter-like levels of gasping speech in her interrogation. Kind of mystified me as to why law enforcement professionals would seriously develop a theory of robbery for a shooting in the morning when people were out walking their dog. Short of a cell phone -- and this couple didn't look like the kind that would have a cutting edge cell phone worth murdering for -- people don't usually even bring anything else with them on a walk!

Loved it! The problem to me seems to be that she starts by telling him what she wants him to do or not do, rather than asking. So when she backs down and asks, he still won't do it. Unfortunately, by having so many preferences/requests for him, she minimizes the chance that he will do/not do something that actually means something to her.

So I swear I heard one of the girls talking to Taylor at one point, and said something about JT being a player. Does anyone else remember that? And holy hell, if JP is a player, then it must be at something like D&D or WoW!

Am I really the only one on Team Uche? I think Aaliyah seems very nice, but she is a hot mess of insecurity and poor decision-making. Don't get me wrong...Uche is no prize. But he had every right to be really angry and hurt, especially after Aaliyah started trying to defend herself by saying she didn't have time to write a letter. Huh? Her leaving was on her own timeframe...she could have delayed it as much as she wanted, so as to not leave Uche completely in the dark, even if it was to just say she was confused and needed to get away. What makes no sense is her lack of having a reason for leaving. It wasn't simply that she was pissed that he didn't tell her earlier about Lydia. It seems to have had something to do with what Lydia was saying to her, and he is entirely right that that's beside the point and outside the scope of their relationship, especially since Lydia didn't say anything problematic or conflicting. Really makes me wonder if this year they did like they have in previous years where there were other engagements in the pods and for whatever reason they chose not to keep following those couples, or whether there were just only 3 total engagements this season. I can't imagine if there really were more engaged couples, that they wouldn't have them come along on the couples getaway too, since more couples to follow equals more potential drama leading up to marriage day.

Lots of thoughts about the recent People Magazine Investigates episode, "Manhunt": Usually it's parents blindly sticking by their little snookums who I just know couldn't have done it. This time we get the adult son blindly believing his super daddy couldn't have committed the credit union robbery and murder, even though the father had apparently robbed a bank before! The son insisted that dad is the greatest man I know, and I'm proud to be his son...but, oh yeah, he killed a guy and left many others traumatized. Try as he did, that umbrella with dad's fingerprints can't be just wished away. Also, the son seemed to have willful ignorance about the true nature behind those trips to Japan, and I do believe the friend about the trips being to sell marijuana. IIRC, the father's job at Xerox was fairly mundane and blue collar, and he didn't have a lot of seniority or experience or anything. So, son, how do you think dad could afford to go repeatedly to Japan? And why did dad go 7 times to apparently the same place? And why did he bring along his random male friend (who wasn't a "special friend")? And what do you think all that interacting with the local people was about, rather than doing sight-seeing stuff across the country? And in the son's own words, there was "never a shortage of money". Plus the dad found a way to pay the $9K parental share for the private school tuition. Yet the dad couldn't hire a teenager to watch the son after school in 5th and 6th grade, so he could stay at work for his full shifts? But the son isn't the only one who deserves scorn in this episode. WTAF was wrong with the people who did the initial investigating? They mentioned having compiled a list of 600 suspicious (that wasn't their word, but I can't remember what they said) Xerox Black employees ('cause they knew the perp was Black). But apparently they did not do anything AT ALL to narrow down this huge list, like, oh, filter it on people with a prior conviction, or maybe people with multiple prior convictions, or maybe even people with multiple prior convictions that include BANK ROBBERY! Oh, here's maybe possibly another silly idea for that filter...PEOPLE WHO HAVE SUED XEROX!!! I"m guessing that the people who appear on both lists might be a good place to start! SMH The dad was clearly not a rocket scientist. Having an open umbrella on a day with no rain is not a good way to go unnoticed by potential witnesses! One of the talking heads speculated that he did it to avoid the external cameras, but, uh, there were going to be internal cameras inside the credit union that would get a far better pic of his face, even with the weird disguise. The dad also had some nerve, or idiocy, to try to claim racial discrimination for habitually coming in late and leaving early (supposedly due to the child care issue, which I think they only mentioned being a problem after school). The son said something about how, yeah, my dad will choose his kid every time. Seems like the only way it would be racial discrimination (since time cards will prove that the absenteeism did occur), is if a White co-worker was allowed to have chronic absenteeism over a period of 1-2 years, while he wasn't, and it doesn't sound like that was the case. But we already know the dad had balls, because 3 weeks after going into the credit union with the FBI jacket and pretending to the manager that he was there on FBI business, and then committing the credit union robbery and murder, he calls the FBI hotline about the fraud he was experiencing in another area of his life! Finally, the idea to give him potato chips in the interrogation room to get him thirsty enough to drink the water from the bottle to leave fingerprints, was brilliant...but too bad he had the baby with him who also got thirsty and needed to drink from the bottle.

We've got three weeks in a row of new mysteries! Building off of this past weekend's Mystery Island, we've got a Hannah Swensen movie this coming weekend, "A Zest for Death". And then the next weekend it's a Curious Caterer movie, "Fatal Vows". Not really sure why they wait to release a bunch in a row, with looong stretches without new ones. But I'm glad that they're at least still making them!

I took a look at the previous seasons, and in seasons 1 and 3, they were already on the couples getaway by episode 3, and for seasons 2 and 4 it was season 4. This season, it's season 5, so, yes, they have spent longer in the pods.

Quoting myself, since I watched the new mystery. The ending was clever, but ultimately a disappointment in my opinion. I wasn't wild about the format...I guess I like one with more a 'naturalistic' premise. Also, I'm uncertain how the police were able to corroborate that the other woman died as the result of an accident. All they had to go on was the word of the other woman who was with her. I don't recall the details of how she said the woman fell, but it was on a beach, so it's unlikely that she fell just from having slipped. And I don't recall there being any rocks big enough to have done enough damage to kill her, so that would mean it wouldn't have been accidental.

...and yet she mystifyingly wonders how it all fell apart! I think Kodouche had an inkling that this time may be different, or at least that this time is serious, when he saw her at lunch and she didn't stand up and hug him on her own, and he said something about "you didn't think I'd come in and kiss you on the mouth?" It's like he was making a big deal that he had done that, because he needed to show her some (in his mind) grand gesture.

Very interesting interpretation...something I had never considered before. I absolutely could not believe it when she said that, since she is the master puppeteer. Sometimes I had found myself believing her schtick, and I thought that she couldn't be as manipulative as everyone is saying, but all it took to finally push me over to the correct way of thinking, was that scene the other week where she talked Meri out of inviting Janelle's boys (??) by saying something about how "won't it be unsafe?", and just like that Meri 'all on her own' came to do exactly what Sobbyn had wanted. I noticed that when Sobbyn was saying something that involved summarizing something about each household's kids, she talked about "Meri's daughter". But by the time of filming, wasn't Leon out as trans by then?

I think he simply said that to be polite. I think he had probably experienced her crazy, and didn't want anything more to do with it!

Bingo! That's all I could think about as I watched. Plus, she knew she had been around 350, so having known that she lost at least 40, would put her around 310. But she kept talking about how long it's been since she's been even close to 300, all the while knowing that she's already close, if not there already.

I actually give a more sinister motive to Lydia. I think she intentionally kept going and was quite aware that Aaliyah wanted her to stop, but was doing it either because she could see that it bothered Aaliyah and she was hoping to break them up, or because she wanted to 'mark her territory' as having been there first even if Aaliyah and Uche did end up together.

Something that was not delved into sufficiently was the drug angle. Kouri has already indicated that they were the only adults in the house. So if Eric truly wasn't a drug user (which I think a hair sample would indicate), then either he for some reason decided that he wanted a huge amount of drugs that night, in an amount that could prove fatal. Or they came from Kouri. The defense tried to discredit the argument that Kouri got them from the cleaning woman who the prosecution says was the one Kouri contacted for the drugs. But there wasn't enough about the flip side, which is where would Eric have gotten the drugs if they came from him (cell phone records, second phone, etc.) and why would he have taken them. Since nobody thought he was suicidal, and nothing was said about him getting the drugs himself, or why then that by default means they had to have come from Kouri, whether they came from that cleaning woman or not. And why would she have given such a large amount of drugs to Eric, a man who never takes them, if not to murder him. At the least, she would be guilty of reckless endangerment, if the defense tried to claim it was for reasons other than murder, given his lack of history taking drugs.

Something from the recent Buried in the Backyard episode, "Death in Christmas Town", brought up something I have wondered about. They mentioned having gone to Quantico for an FBI profile on the potential killer, and the FBI got it completely wrong -- saying the guy was single, with no attachments, no job, etc. From a cursory Google check, profiling is wrong almost as much as it is right. I seem to vaguely remember a case where profiling was essential, but it just doesn't seem like it usually provides much more than something interesting after the person is caught, to see if it matched or not.

The part of all this that makes no sense, is that they do the financial changes, like changing the will or creating a trust, in secret. The whole point of the changes they make is to protect the assets in case something happens to them. So instead, why not minimize the chance of something happening in the first place, by telling about the change, so the financial gain motive for their death is removed. And further, make it clear to the potential murderer that along with the changes you've made, you have notified so-and-so about the changes, along with a chronology of events that have led to this point, so that if anything happens to me, you will be the very first person they look at. The idea is to make the possibility of the death so undesirable on every level, that the potential murderer changes their mind. I'm not saying this would stop the murderer in every one of those cases, but the combo of removing the financial gain and increasing the spotlight after the crime, would undoubtedly deter at least some. And yeah, leaving, especially when abuse retribution worries do not seem to be at play, is another good way to minimize the murderer's chances.

I couldn't exactly understand what Taylor was getting at, but I think she had issues with his teeth?

OK, so here's what I'm confused about. Separate from the merits of whether we think Uche is or isn't a good guy or worth Aaliyah's time, I don't understand her reasoning for leaving. She said that one of the major reasons that she was leaving was what Lydia said and that Lydia kept giving her more details even when she asked her to stop. But the not stopping would be a reason to not be friends with Lydia...it wouldn't be a reason that had anything to do with Uche. And the content of what Lydia said was actually pretty innocuous...it didn't indicate any deep emotional involvement on the part of either Uche or Lydia. So the only rationale that would seem relevant is that he kept this a secret for so long...but she didn't mention that as being very important in her decision to leave. I think she should have stayed and tried to see if they could work through this, because by leaving, she played exactly into what it seems like Lydia was trying to accomplish! Maybe Uche is a dick, maybe he isn't. But it would seem like it's worth a best effort, so there are no regrets and what-ifs.

My thoughts from the episode: Taylor looked less than thrilled about JP when she met him...wonder if this will cause problems, a la Cole and Zanab, Bartise and Nancy, and Shake and Deepti. Milton may be a very nice man, but I am always distracted by his hair...it always looks like he has a Jheri Curl toupee. Izzy's whole face and demeanor reflect his inner turmoil about his decision of who to pick...it looks very very genuine. I hope that Stacy becomes able to express her feelings. I really feel for Chris. On the one hand, no one wants to feel like second-best. But on the other, Johni may have a new appreciation of him. I think of the Bachelor, where twice the Bachelor has chosen someone as the "winner", only to change their minds after a few months, and get with the second-place person. In both those cases, they have gone on to have successful marriages. I guess the difference is that in the case of the Bachelor, the men made the re-choice after experiencing what it was like with their first choice. But in the case of Johni, she made the re-choice because her first choice rejected her. Still, Chris is under no obligation to marry her, so he could propose and get to see if she treats him as a priority over the next month. The power dynamic theoretically could then go one of two ways: she could have the upper hand because of a subconscious perception that he needs to prove his worthiness, or he could have the upper hand because of a subconscious perception that she needs to atone for making him suffer by going through the pain and humiliation of being picked second.