HurricaneVal

Wow. I mean ... OMG. Wow. Fantastic episode. Just so much packed into it that I have so much to say that my commenter is just jammed stuck. Everybody was awesome, every character had a moment, the writers deserve a raise and awards, Rebecca Wisocky knocked it outta the park, but everyone else was a rising tide that lifted that boat so give 'em all Emmys, but make Rebecca's bigger for this ep. This is so my favorite show.

This episode was the cast and writers clicking along on all cylinders. As always, the Marty and Malcolm scenes are the best part, but the whole episode was great. I also love how the writers were smart enough to only imply that though it appeared Gemma and Calvin were teaming up, and Tina and Dave were teaming up, it was really Calvin and Dave who had teamed up and schemed off camera to fix the situation. The end with Gemma baiting everyone as she sat in the dunk tank at the carnival was classic Gemma, but then when the ball went to Malcolm, the look of horror on her face paired with the knowing smile on Malcolm's face was truly awesome as he casually tossed the baseball in the air, then pitched it straight at the target. Loved the callback to Malcolm's baseball career and expertise.

I nearly shouted "Hodgins! Who's the King of the Lab!" when that actor showed up as the Elon Musk stand-in. I also loved that the nerds really won the day, since the IT Troll proved to be pivotal in the investigation, and his shot at interrogation was awkward actorly gold, and Tim McGeek gets to be interim director--a role he took with zero dissembling and great confidence. Loved the callback to the original episode with Air Force One. Nicely done. The montage of former NCIS players was missing a few....no Abby? No Ducky? No Jenny Shepard? No Gerald?

The seed for Goodwin to buy the company was nicely planted in a prior episode where he mentioned that he would take his portion of the money from the sale of MaxDot and start his own business. I thought right there, why doesn't he just buy MaxDot and run it? He already knows the business and has relationships with the suppliers and vendors...but then I shrugged and thought "Maybe making compression socks isn't exactly Goodwin's dream." Abishola was utterly charming when she was swanning about, all happy to be rich with that big smile on her face and the inability to feel her toes.

Hunter gives me weird vibes too. I mean, it is perfectly fine to choose a different path in life because you found your passion. I applaud that, in fact. However.....it appears to me from the glimpse we got inside his house where it is less of a home and more of a storage facility for all his Survivor challenge props, methinks his change in careers was more about picking a job which could accommodate his Survivor obsession. I think the high demand and high stress career as a doctor wouldn't leave Hunter much time to reproduce and train on the challenge props, and he probably couldn't get his colleagues or patients to try them out with him. In teaching, he can use his Survivor obsession and his props and mock challenges as a way to engage the kids. Win-win for Hunter! Actually, this is also a win for Hunters hypothetical and now nonexistent patients. All I can think about is that Phoebe's replacement OB/GYN on Friends who was obsessed with Fonzie, and how Hunter would have been like that, only with Survivor.

I got curious, so I googled and found By-the-Bucket, an Arizona restaurant chain that serves spaghetti, uh, by the bucket. The follow-ups where everybody seemed to have leftover spaghetti in their fridge cracked me up. Georgie is so sweet with Mandy that it makes me sad for him that the inevitable divorce is coming in the future. He seems genuinely happy--but honestly, Mandy doesn't. Mandy taking a moment for her dad to walk her down the aisle was sweet.

I think that Tim turned a little contemplative focus on himself when he stood there in the challenge and started doing shout-outs and mentioning other players family members. That's the point when folks realized that Tim is not only a physical threat, but he is a major social threat. He has made relationships with people to the point that he knows their families. We certainly hadn't seen much of that in the broadcast episodes, but evidently he made connections. Though, we really haven't seen much of Tim up to now. I'm kind of sorry to see him go, I didn't realize how connected he was. That was also a bit of a nasty smile that Liz got on her face when Tevan floated a Soda vote. I don't really like Liz, and I can't really put my finger on why, but that smile was creepy. Q has really become completely insufferable. I used to like him when he was trying to coach Bhanu, but something about making the merge has gone to his head. Kenzie--to me--has had a turnaround since the merge too. Before, I was kind of tired of her, and thought she was annoying. She seems to have calmed down and grounded herself since then, and is starting to look like a contender. This season has been all over the place. I can't really get a handle on it.

@Katy M....I think you mean Mandy and Georgie here. Unless this show is taking a really outre and risque turn. She did lust after Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, who greatly resembles Georgie, sooooo...... 😆🤣😂 I liked the little interactions between Georgie and Sheldon, both of them feeling violated by the actions of others who thought they were doing things for their own good. Mandy's dad cracks me up.

I love Hettie. She was killing me last night. So was Sass. And Isaac, and Thor, and Pete. Oh heck. That was a great episode. The part I loved best was how Trevor absolutely couldn't help himself and gave his little brother the wet willie that caused Jeremy to lose the game, and thus evict him from the B&B, even though Trevor was so happy to see him.

I'm totally cracking up at the +1 Alliance. Tiffany and Maria as two of the +1s are all like "Oh. OK. Huh." I'd actually really like to see Tiffany and Maria and Kenzie get together as a power trio. Maria's reaction, in particular, just about made me spit out my wine. It was actually almost a recoil, so methinks she doesn't really care for Tim, and doesn't want to be associated with him. I run hot and cold on Venus. I think her assertiveness is fantastic, but I also find her a bit snotty. She's young though, she's got time to learn how to read a room and temper that attitude from snotty superiority to confident authority. Q is getting a big head. That's too bad. I was hoping he was going o be an exception to the rule that strong males get a taste of success and become raging assholes on Survivor.

It wasn't a good look for Jem when she was grinning and giggling a little when watching her tribemates being stung by ants while digging for a non-existent Beware advantage she planted.

That is going to backfire on Jem. You can count on it. Bhanu, Bhanu, Bhanu ... Your brand of drama is no good on Survivor. You should have tried out for Big Brother. I sure hope medical is helping Moriah's face situation. It's like her whole upper lip area between her nose and lips is completely chapped and raw, and she's got sores on her chin. It looks painful, and I hope it isn't some sort of tropical skin infection. I kind of like that Q us such a coach that he can't help himself from offering help to Bhanu, even though he knows it is literally hopeless. It is truly his calling. I hope Q stays a decent guy, I'm tired of being disappointed by promising Survivor strong men becoming arrogant assholes once their challenge dominance has been established. Looking at you, Hunter. Speaking of, I thought the little sing-along bit was nice. Apparently Hunter didn't, he looked so angry and sour at that bit of fun. I don't understand what his deal was about that. Should they have been building replica puzzles, or practicing swimming, or toughening their feet for the inevitable barefoot endurance challenges?

Yeah, my TV schedule app from Xfinity has a very confusing entry for tonight's episode. It is identified as S5.E7: Worth the Cooties, but the episode description is for the pilot. Same as for The Neighborhood. Very confusing!

I think that only works with glasses made from real glass? Most lenses today are made from plastic so it is lighter on the nose and ears, and it doesn't quite have the same intensity of sunlight focus as real glass. If I were going in Survivor, though, I might have special spectacles made just for this. Won't help me at the penultimate final council where I might need to make fire, so I'd still practice with a flint and machete.

I think the rule is if you have to have medical intervention beyond a check over and basic first aid--like you'd get in the school nurse's office, from a the team trainer, or an EMT in the field--then you're out. Bandages, splints, braces, antibiotic cream are all fine. A little time sitting in the shade with ice packs on pulse points and bottles of water type stuff. That year when that one tribe was on bacteria beach and several (not seven) tribe members had bad infections, I think the rules were stretched to give them prescription antibiotics. As I recall, that one guy ended up going home on a medical that season because there was a bad infection very close to his knee that could have compromised his long term mobility. He was given a choice of staying and risking his leg and/or blood poisoning, or going home, and he chose to go home. I would hope that if the risk of sepsis truly was nigh, he would have been involuntarily removed from the game by the doc, but they gave him the choice for the dramatic moment.

Hmmm.... There doesn't appear to be individual player threads for this season--or at least not any in the first page listing of threads. Anyways, I learned on another discussion board that Bhanu has an IMdB page where the mini-bio states: This mini-bio was created by a Paul Smith, and Bhanu's credits all seem to be walk-on, extra type roles. A couple of those listings say they're "uncredited" which leads me to believe either Bhanu or his agent or spouse or best friend etc. added those to his filmography. I'm not sure if "audience member" or "pedestrian" exactly qualifies as making waves in the industry, either. Self-promotion and drawing focus is the name of the game when it comes to the entertainment industry and the subset of reality TV, so he's certainly giving it his all. If that's the objective, then kudos to him, he's certainly accomplishing that goal! So, when Bhanu says he's "not an actor" he's either totally lying, or he's being very self aware and entirely honest regarding his actual talents.

Good Lord. Bhanu is a lot, isn't he? I thought that maybe he was getting it together when he told his tribe he pulled the white rock and got sent back to camp and has no idea what the other two had to do. I thought that was brilliant strategy. Then he boofed it by fessing to Q. On the first episode, I thought Bhanu had such promise. He fell fast. Faster that anyone in Survivor history, really. I felt sorry for Venus last week. Then this week I can see she is a bit snotty and perhaps her isolation on the tribe isn't just mean girls being mean. Randen's injury seemed to just come out of left field. We never really saw how it happened, not did we even know he had issues. Just suddenly Jeff and the medic appeared in camp, talking about Randen's numb hand. If it was something that happened on camera, like in a challenge or while foolishly rock climbing at the beach cliffs, we would have been subjected to endless slowmo loops of the injury happening like we had to see Joe Theismann's leg breaking over and over again. It must have been something he mentioned at a med check one day that got the medic concerned. I was worried it was an infection, he had that bandage on that wrist, and his hand seemed seemed swollen. He'll be back, and hopefully not come back as a giant asshole as the last early out on a medical came back. You know, we all laugh about Hunter....but if that hadn't all been a house full of obsessed Survivor super fan's recreation of challenges and puzzles, but a very different collection of a guy still hung up on his high school crush, we wouldn't think it was so funny. The boy ain't right in his head. His house wasn't anything but Survivor obsession. He's single, right? All that aside, Hunter made that challenge for his team. He worked it, and hauled them all to the finish line. He is actually a super fan who is walking the talk. He caught fish. Started fire. He is more than faithfully recreated puzzles and backyard net slides. How sweet that he uses Survivor challenges to engage with his students. He's single, right?

"Tulsa" was hilarious! Calvin freaking out over being a grandfather was funny, but Tina being totally OK with being a grandma is both totally in character, and out of character. Grandma lust is real, y'all, and that's what we're seeing now. But at some point, she's got to have the "I'm old enough to be a grandma!" freakout because Tina has always been a wee bit vain--much like Calvin. Or maybe that's the story point, she's finally matured out of her vanity, and embraces the role of grandmother.

I, also, loved the Abishola cleaning scene. She went from uncomfortable with dealing with a spirit to exuberantly familiar as she momentarily gushed over her happiness with Bob to the spirit of Bob's dad. That was really sweet. If you think about it, there is precedent for Max still being around, legitimizing Abishola's beliefs. Didn't Max appear in one or more of Bob's dreams in a prior season? What I really missed here was the other Nigerians weighing in. Ebun, Tunde, and Olu were missing. Ebun lives there, I'm sure she had an opinion...and, OMG, Kemi's take would have been hysterically funny! Bob stashing a bit of his dad at the bar was nice, so was taking his mom there to get some incremental closure.

I am starting to really dislike the three tribe version of Survivor. It seems season after season there is one tribe that just loses and loses. With so few players on each tribe, it just really weakens that losing tribe, not only for challenges, but for the ability to form alliances, and they go into merge with nothing. Then the focus goes to that losing tribe, because that's where all the drama is--sorry Tevin, Bhanu is the drama queen this season--and we go to the merge clueless about the other players. When it was two tribes, I feel like the coverage was more even. We just whipped back and forth between two camps, not three. I'm feeling a little sorry for Venus. I know we were manipulated into feeling that with the editing, but there was some epic mean girl smirking at her and eye rolling from Soda and Tevin that I didn't think was kind--or called for. I mean, over at loser camp they were working a scam on Jess with the fake idol, but even when Jess couldn't be led by hand to the fake idol, the hissing and eye rolling between Q and Tiffany was more exasperation and incredulity than outright meanness. On the other hand, Venus seems to be embracing that martyr role, sooooo..... That "build a freestanding arch, and spell it correctly" challenge was a truly new and innovative challenge, and I applaud Survivor for finding something new and innovative. Tribes truly needed to communicate and work together to make that happen. My only quibble is the challenge favored taller competitors who could more easily brace across more of the arch. Maria was a beast, though. Mama's got depth.

Sorry. Wrong thread!

It was scary the way Tayo went from affable former son-in-law to chillingly controlling possible abuser then back again in the blink of the eye. Kudos to the actor for that. I don't think we saw Dele with Tayo at all, and I'm glad for that. I loved how unequivocally and 100% Bob was on Abishola's side. There's something very dark about Tayo, we saw hints of that when he first came to Detroit and took Dele back to Nigeria with him. What we saw last night was more than a hint. Abishola has her feet under her now, and with Bob's support, I think everything will be OK. That was a cold slap of harsh reality in the middle of a lighthearted sitcom.

This? Is brilliant. Especially if you have zero confidence in your bluffing or acting ability. You could honestly just say "Maybe I have it. Maybe I don't. Do you feel lucky? Well, do you?"

I just couldn't find it. 😆 I scrolled and scrolled, and couldn't find it. Then @LadyChatts bumped it today and it is right there. Whew!

I think there is hope for Jess. At the start of Tribal Council, she was practically non-verbal and spacey and unable to follow a train of thought to form a coherent sentence. I saw the sideways glances at her like "Oh crap, maybe we oughta vote her out now!" But by the end of TC, she seemed fine and was defending herself and making points quite well. Was that because she got it together over the course of the discussion? Or was she faking everyone out at the beginning? If that is a personal strategy, then it sucks because it clearly puts a target on her back. However, as I thought about this later, it might have been a strategy worked up to keep Jelinsky thinking the target was Jess, and Jess was just overdoing it. Maybe those alarmed glances at her from Bhanu and Q were more of an appalled "Cool it, sister!" than "Oh man, we should change our target!"