Yeah No

This from the Daily Mail article on Tony:

I read that while his estate was small, he also left his daughter a sizable trust fund, the amount of which is not included in the estate and not required to be public knowledge. I had read before he died that he was worth several million, so I'm sure he was worth much more than the 1 million reported in the estate. Unfortunately the news and tabloids ran in haste to print that he was relatively "broke" before he died without doing the fact checking to mention the trust fund. Setting one up was the best thing he could have done for his daughter according to some sources in the know about these things. I hate how the "news" these days twists everything around without first getting the full story, but don't get me started!

Speaking of securing fish, how hard is it to do that? Why aren't there any nets this season? At least throw a net over it after you catch it so it can't wiggle away! I thought so too, but the show hasn't exactly made that clear. I can't even imagine how he weathered that rain storm in that flimsy tent. I also didn't understand what Britt thought he was going to do with that deer after he shot it. Wouldn't it either sink or continue to float away from him? I'm actually shocked at the lack of good judgment this season already and we're only a few days in. In the past you could blame advanced hunger for some of that but what's their excuse after just over a week? Yes, until if and when he becomes emaciated. Then, just no.

I guess I just see don't see the point of a rom-com in which the entire series revolves around Liza and her relationships with men making her end up solo in the end. There's plenty of room on TV and in books and movies for heroines that end up alone, but this show in my opinion is not the place for that kind of ending. This show has set us up for the main character to end up with someone. If the show didn't go there after all that anticipation, most of the audience would be pissed off because that's what they're expecting. If the show took a different angle and made it all about a character's growth into not necessarily wanting to end up with someone, that would be different. But so far the show has been all about Liza being in love with someone, and who will she end up with? Will she or won't she end up with this guy or that guy? She would have to do a lot of changing in order for her to free herself from all that, and quite honestly, I didn't sign on to this show for that kind of ending. For me this is a light hearted romp and I think that's what the show is intended to be anyway.

This isn't about anyone else that searches for the perfect word. I do it too. This is about Jess alone. Somehow when I see people use words like that and then mispronounce them like they're trying to appear more cultured or smarter than they really are, I tend to see them as pretentious. If she had a different attitude, I'm sure I wouldn't feel that way. She just comes off to me as a know-it-all food snob in the worst possible way, so almost anything she does appears pretentious to me.

I remember when Matthew Grunwald, who won Comeback Kitchen last year was eliminated from that season's regular FNS, he was not on Star Salvation. So it may be a policy that the Comeback Kitchen winners don't get yet another chance.

I agree with you, but we were talking about our preference for how some characters end up, not real life people.

I agree, besides this is kind of a rom-com of a series so it would feel unsatisfying for her to end up alone. Real life is different. I wouldn't mind seeing her go through an extended time without any love interest, though. At this point I'm almost ready to agree with you about Josh, and I was one of the biggest Charles shippers out there. Thanks a lot, show.

It was her motivation for using the word that was pretentious, not the word itself. She thought she was going to impress everyone with it.

Thank you, I agree, Jess is full of herself and pretentious. It felt like she was just looking for a place to show off her favorite pretentiously uttered word. She has become my least favorite contestant now that Harrison has been eliminated. "The judges didn't understand how my story related to my dish". Well, perhaps that should be rephrased as "I failed to make my dish understandable to the judges", but of course that would involve a certain amount of humility that she doesn't possess. And Palak - I am completely FLOORED that no one caught her mistake about capers. They are not a berry, they are the bud of the flower of a Mediterranean bush. There is such a thing as a caper berry, but it's the berry of the bush, not the bud that she was asked to describe. I can't believe that even Giada didn't catch that one! I failed to understand why they narrowed down the bottom four involving so much emphasis on presentation ability, then chose to base the elimination solely on cooking ability. Unless what I often think about this show is true and it's all engineered in advance to produce their desired result. It's absolutely no surprise to me that Adam was eliminated. Early on this season I said he was the Matthew of this season and guess what? He was eliminated just like Matthew was, when they were good and done with him. And like Matthew, he's completely gone, too.

I hear you. I still think Peter Hermann is very attractive, but the more time goes on and the more he fails to show any depth, the less attractive I find him. I agree, both characters are not developed well past the surface stuff. I also think Josh is a much better developed character. I think Darren Starr thinks these alpha males need to be "men of mystery" in order to make them irresistible to women, but I think he's taken it way too far in Charles' case and it's backfiring. If anything, he's coming off as indecisive and weak spined.

I've known rich and powerful businessmen/suits like Charles and those with a lot more substance and personality, so it depends on the person in my experience. I was a high level executive assistant at big companies in my career so I've met quite a few of them. Unfortunately, the show has written Charles to be very stiff and uninteresting, which he really shouldn't be considering his field. At least Big seemed to have a little more of a personality, although I never much cared for him.

Oh, I don't think the two characters have much in common whatsoever as people, I just think there are several parallels in how their characters have been written with regard to being a love interest of the main character. Like being the "one that keeps getting away". Or the one that always wears a suit, or has a certain mystique that is played up for the supposed romance it brings. I don't think any of that is a coincidence in a Darren Star show. It tells me that the things that floats his boat are similar things as float mine. The Josh's of the world are cute and fun to play with for a while but the real goal is that big, powerful daddy in the corner office that has an aura of mystery, glamour, yet a boyish charm all wrapped into one. Don't tell me I'm the only one that sees this!

I've wondered about both with her for a long time. Speaking as someone that has "medical issues" that' can be considered responsible for my weight, I know how hard it is and what I'd have to do in order to lose weight and it's in a word ridiculous, not to mention unhealthy in the long run to keep up a diet that's that restricted calorie-wise. I was thin before menopause, now forget it. As soon as I restrict calories and lose a few pounds my body ups the ante and makes it even harder to get any more off or keep off what I lost. This is a familial tendency on my mother's mother's side. Now I know why my grandmother ate a healthy diet and weighed 225 lbs. I recently found out from my DNA that I'm "carb sensitive". I fully believe Janelle is too and most people that have a "weight problem". I've done low carb diets and have lost weight on them but can only keep up the severe form of the diet for so long before I start going nuts. Meanwhile my 91 year old father eats cake 3 times a day and his favorite food is grilled cheese with bacon and he's never had a weight problem. He's obviously not carb sensitive, but I'm sure my mother was. And he thinks he eats a "healthy diet", LOL. For him, I guess he does, but most people would have dropped dead long ago on what he eats. He came to stay with me for a couple of months recently and lost 10 lbs. in only a few weeks eating my healthy diet! And he didnt even need to lose 10 lbs.! So now I've had to serve him more fattening food so he doesn't lose any more weight. It's just not fair! I also found out from my DNA that I have a tendency to injure myself pulling muscles and tendons from exercise. While none of this was an issue when I was younger, it is huge now. I have to be careful just getting up and down from a step stool. I tore a ligament last year that way. So these are the ways medical issues and age can conspire to thwart a person's best efforts to lose weight. Janelle irks me because I don't feel like she's ever looked into her medical issues to this extent.

I agree and see a lot of parallels between Charles and "Big" from SATC. Charles being like Big in being the older, more traditional, more established choice that was her true love that she held the torch for even as she dated others (like Carrie did in SATC - Carrie even cheated on some of the others with Big). And Big was definitely the one that kept getting away and fate kept keeping him and Carrie apart like Liza and Charles are being kept apart. I also don't sense that Liza has many misgivings for having split with Josh, although the show could possibly make her have some in the future, I just don't see it sticking. She has had enough contact with him since the breakup, even attended his wedding and nothing so far makes it look like she's still holding much of any torch for him. If she were she would have been throwing up at the wedding and declaring her love for him before it happened.

I don't know if I'd agree that she's losing popularity, at least not based on her tour schedule. I took a look at her tour dates for 2017 and 2018 and she's working about as many dates this year as last. She doesn't always visit the same cities and often adds any missing dates later in the season, plus this season her tour is starting earlier than last. When channel surfing I keep chancing on a psychic or medium on another channel that reminds me a lot of her down to the New York accent, but I have no idea who she is. Sorry to hear about her and Larry actually divorcing, that's sad but definitely not unexpected.

Very true, and it could ruin Charles' career as well. Not sure how his company is structured, but if it has a board they could and probably would vote him out. The offense is seen as much worse coming from a senior executive than involving lower level employees. I actually know of a case of a high level executive having a long term affair with his admin., although they kept it a big secret for many years and it ran its course and is over now. Over the years his friends suspected that they had a relationship, but there was no proof and they acted completely professional at work so no one ever knew. Neither one was married. The point is, it can be done but it involves a lot of discretion and secrecy, which most people don't want to live with. What baffles me about Charles is he seems to want to do "the right thing" or what appears to be the right thing ethically in so many situations, except when it comes to Liza. He can't look in the mirror? I suppose that's realistic because people are rarely consistent and often blind to their own hypocrisy.

It pisses me off now reading that Nicole and production should have known better than to let her on the show this season. It already sucks that at least some of the female contestants can't get caught a break on this show due to spectacularly bad luck and other circumstantial problems, but this is even worse because it's something that could have been prevented beforehand. It irks me even more knowing that there are men out there who would use this kind of thing as a justification for why women aren't cut out for this kind of challenge.

I actually enjoyed this episode. I noticed Christina, winner from "Hell's Kitchen" on the truck culinary staff as well as Aarti Sequeira from Food Network at the VIP table. It seemed to me that Clive was the one that contacted the show and it was the staff that was taken off guard.

Liza telling him to get to know the "real her" seemed very out of place to me at that moment, plus cringe-worthy as it felt like a self-humiliation and like she was debasing herself to run after a guy that is clearly angry and pulling away from her. The Liza we have been set-up to know would never do that, at least not at that moment. But then again I thought the show should have made Charles' reaction a little more conflicted and see-sawing between fascination and anger. They're playing him so "one note" with the anger and rejection of her that her attempts to get him back are falling flat and not believable under the circumstances. I personally think they should have made him not confront her with his knowledge of her age right away and play the "Charles has a secret" angle for at least a few more episodes. There could have been some intrigue out of that. I wonder if the show thinks it only has one season left after this one, and is rushing some things it probably should have let develop naturally. Like having Josh's marriage fold so soon. I would have liked to see his wife create tension between him and Liza for a while before that marriage imploded. That actually would have felt more believable and satisfying. Doing away with Claire so soon was kind of a set-up and let down from a viewer perspective. Now Josh is just a useless dangling character, unless they have some big plans in store for him in the future.

No, it's not just you. I've re-watched a couple of episodes of "No Reservations" from about 2012 and the difference in him is striking. It even surprised me and I've been following him since 2002. That was definitely the "old Tony" at his finest. I shed more than a few tears thinking of how he had changed in only a few years. He was definitely more lighthearted and I remembered how witty and funny he used to be, cracking me up in every episode with ironic cultural references and the like. In the eps. I watched his daughter was still very young and he was often commenting about how he was all about "rainbows and unicorns" now. The symbolism of that lightness vs. the darkness of these later "Parts Unknown" episodes is striking.

I finally saw this episode. I thought Tony looked pretty rough and tired, like he wasn't getting any sleep. I agree that it was hard and disturbing to watch, and definitely focused on a very dark side of Berlin. I have read opinion pieces on Asia that she dabbles in the occult and some of it is very dark stuff, so this fascination with the most profane, ethically promiscuous side of a society feels like it comes from the perspective of someone that was leaning toward a similar darkness in his own soul. And not for the betterment of it, in my opinion. I haven't watched the later episodes.....I shudder to think what's in store for me there.

My husband is 62 and he can't imagine pulling an all-nighter. He's a limo. driver and is used to working crazy hours and doesn't need much sleep, but these days even he won't take jobs that don't allow him at least 3 consecutive nap hours to total at least 6 hours per 24 hour period. And he's a road warrior that only until a few years ago could tolerate all nighters with no problem. I can't imagine it myself and I'm 60. I'm a wreck if I don't get at least 6 hours these days, meanwhile even 10 years ago I was able to get by on much less if I had to. I would never let any show make me stay up all night, no way no how. It would take me a long time to recover from that. I wonder if Gordon has had to let some of the older employees go home for a few hours overnight. I don't think he or the show would want to be liable for whatever might happen to them as a result of sleep deprivation.

I was shocked they won. I think they're trying hard to make Harrison happen. He's also self-entitled (as was Rebekkah, a lot of that this season), and I don't think he's all that good looking either. I was shocked too. I was sure he was going to be blamed for bringing his team down and when it didn't happen I was dumbfounded. I totally agree about him being self-entitled and not as good looking as all that either.

I'm of two minds on that myself. He already had the rolls from his first concept so perhaps they were OK with using them since he he was able to rework them into the new dish. And a burger isn't exactly a traditional Mexican dish anyway so maybe they looked at it as a sort-of fusion?