853fisher

I enjoy FJs that can be puzzled out. I didn't know that translator but I got lucky and teased "1001 Nights" from the clue. "Dessert Stories" was an interesting creative guess. It doesn't sound implausible, like maybe Kipling wrote them after "Just So Stories." "How the Sundae Got its Cherry"? "The Alaska that Baked Itself"? I'd read those! It was interesting to hear that Mattea belonged to a bridge club in high school. I don't recall any clubs around non-athletic games at any school I attended, other than chess club and quiz bowl. My mother loves bridge but I don't think I have the focus for it! I'd make more of an effort if it was something she was eager to do together, but I think she prefers to play with her girlfriends, and they bring better refreshments than I would anyway. ;)

Ken has skipped 52 clues in 116 non-tournament games. Mayim has skipped 44 clues in 65 non-tournament games. In very rough terms, these numbers indicate that about 50% more clues are skipped under Mayim than under Ken. Another stat just for fun: 12 games under Mayim and 20 games under Ken have featured at least 1 skipped clue. This makes an average of 2.6 clues skipped per Ken game with skipped clues and 3.667 clues skipped per Mayim game with skipped clues.

If nothing else, I would've expected Velasco to be called into the station while 2 of the 4 or 5 SVU officers in all Manhattan were sent out of state! It was a nice surprise to see Petri Hawkins Byrd, the longtime bailiff on "Judge Judy," as the Kentucky sheriff. I never thought he added as much to that show as others did, but I felt bad when I read that he learned from the news that Judy had replaced him for her new show, after 25 years of working together.

I hadn't noticed before, but Mattea does seem to have petite hands. I wonder how she'll ever hold all her winnings! ;)

I liked that Dixon’s attachment to this case was about someone she encountered at work whose story stayed with her, not an off-the-job personal connection. It might seem like a subtle difference, but I think that keeps the stories grounded and avoids some of the soap opera of other shows.

I was just on the phone with a longtime Jeopardy-watching friend. We briefly discussed the inconsistencies of TV scheduling these days. One of many things I appreciate about this show is that, like few other non-news shows, it's on each weekday without exception beyond predictable breaks (and not accounting for the odd preemption). This creature of habit / ritual is grateful. Get out of my mind! ;)

A new article from Entertainment Weekly, in which Mayim makes hay of what is presented as "all day people are freaking out on Twitter and Instagram" with "obsessive commenting" about her having worn the same pieces more than once on Jeopardy! Now I've read a lot of criticism of Mayim, most of it deserved, but I can't remember a single comment about her wearing clothes multiple times, can anyone else? This semes to me like a savvy PR move, furthering the narrative she has put forward in the past that criticism of her performance is based in misogyny or other -isms. There's no question women are judged more harshly for what they wear than men in the same positions. However, I really think Mayim is being disingenuous by invoking this issue, The actual discussion was casual, but this was obviously something she'd brought up with Drew and wanted covered. While I'm here, Drew's response, "I like when people repeat something, because that's normal life," seems silly to me. Hosting a TV show is not "normal life" and nobody should be under any misapprehension that Hollywood celebrities are "just like you and me" because they wear a blazer more than once.

I don't remember the question and wrong answer exactly, but IIRC the amount they banked in that round was exactly 1/20th what was available to them. I would've been so impressed if that had been one of Jane's putdowns! "Speaking of multiplying things by 20..."

I'm sure you're right. I also suspect it's not quite the cross-section of society it seems to be, because many of the personalities on display seem quite a lot more like "a truck driver...with a SAG card" (assumption) and "a Harvard student with 580K TikTok followers" (true, per her Instagram) than just "a truck driver and a Harvard student." I'd definitely prefer to see a straight-up quiz (for less money, if necessary) than an exercise in central casting, but based on Jane's opening monologue this week, the producers seem to think pointing and laughing at the idiots is part of the appeal. I'd bet, with the time pressure, they'd still get some choice wacky responses in between actually banking some money.

There was something so familiar about Rosanny. She was Karina Ortiz, who played Margarita, the girlfriend of Aleida's partner Cesar, in "Orange is the New Black." Nice to see her in a new context!

It occurs to me that this could be read to indicate that I wondered whether those onstage answering questions on Norse myth may be white supremacists. That sounds silly, but you never know these days! To clarify, I only meant that, when I did badly in that category and wondered how I might learn about it / who is talking about it / etc, that is what came to my mind first, and I think it's a shame that these myths have been co-opted in that way. I wish Marvel had popped into my head first - that's a much less grim thought.

I think Mattea and I are about the same age. Sometime when I was in middle school, it was the annual musical in the attached high school. She might know it from something like that as well as the recent revival with Radcliffe, if she’s not just a musicals fan in general. I’m not sure whether it’s still doing the rounds in schools 15 years later but I imagine the extent to which it seems tired and dated vs relevant “period piece” depends a lot on presentation.

That's a good guess. "GG" could be good/great game. I play board games online and that's the shorthand some players like to put in the chat box at the end of a game. My father was born and raised in Bridgeport. One of the few knickknacks he displays is a brick from the original Comiskey Park. I'll have to ask him what he calls the new one. That's a much nicer thought than mine, which was that many people familiar with Norse mythology today know it through its appropriation by white supremacist groups.

I have generally been enjoying this new season very much, but this one missed the mark for me. I feel like many of the shows I watch have already done a QAnon story, and Lord knows every commentator or website I follow has done two. This episode didn't seem to add anything new to the discourse, just more preaching to the choir, and I didn't think the questions raised about potential third party responsibility were fresh and exciting. Maybe the bottom line for me is that the news raises my blood pressure enough that I'd like entertainment shows not to bring up these subjects without a very good reason and something novel to offer. So this one gets a "meh" but I missed this show while it was off for a few weeks, so I hope the next one is great.

In general, I don't think the increasing "siloization" of pop culture into ever more services is a good thing, from the consumer or overall societal perspectives. It will be interesting to see whether scheduling flexibility allows them to resolve some of the problems that have come up over the years, like voting in all time zones. Otherwise, I don't think this portends well for the show. Many of the people I know who watch are older and prefer not to deal with apps etc. I just don't "get" this move.

Hooray! Thanks for that. I wouldn't've said I knew that, but maybe it was stuck in my subconscious. I thought that one might be tough because it's had 4 names in 20 years. As recently as 2018 it was AT&T Park. I'm not a sports fan, so the name of any player likely wouldn't help me, but I know stadium names in various cities...as long as they don't change them!

I sure wish I had read earlier in the day about the lend-lease arrangement the United States is entering with Ukraine. Then maybe I wouldn't've thought that an alliterative policy by which we offered weapons to our allies was "cash and carry," like foreign policy was a wholesale warehouse or something. Oy!

Meanwhile in British Columbia, the schools some friends' children attend have proposed eliminating most music classes. In another article I read, the education minister commented that protesting could wait because "it's a little soon to be determining or assuming there will actually be cuts" based on a draft budget. So what was the draft, just for funsies?! I'd love to see inside Abbott music classes again. Music formed such an important community for me in school. I continue to be impressed by the way the show touches on such serious issues with great humor.

Jane is definitely overdoing it with grandiose speechifying. Yes, there's a prize for charity, but it's a silly Tuesday night game show with Malcom in the Middle and Stephanie Tanner. She talks like she's emceeing a testimonial dinner for the Dalai Lama. I thought they might be easier now than in the past. Many of them seemed to have the artist's name, which is a huge help. It's not really good TV, in my opinion, when so many clues go to one note because they spend forever on what ends up being an exercise on parsing the clue. They could at least leave the clue up onscreen.

It was really great to see a big win! I did fairly well this episode too. Seemed like a reasonable variety of types of music. Sad to see that they sent Jane abroad without money to check a bag again. Oh well! Did she very clearly say "Gavin McGraw" instead of "DeGraw" or was that just me? I find it especially odd because, as you say, it obviously isn't a "real" wheel making a random choice. Just have Jane say "the first tune is Reggae," "the next tune is Country," whatever. I watched after reading this and did get one or two flashes of it. What seems really new to me is that lisp! Have I just not been paying attention? I thought she might be wearing something cosmetic on her teeth.

Meanwhile on Reddit, reaction to various aspects of Mayim's performance today has been so harshly negative that the moderator has closed and deleted the daily game thread. They've been accused of "simping" for her, which I think is unfair: it seems to me they're just trying to remain as neutral as possible. But I think it is silly to have closed the thread altogether. I didn't see any extreme or inappropriate comments. I will repeat a comment made there that crossed my mind too: Blossom said the bibliography of her dissertation (drink!) was full of "Ibid." Isn't the bibliography a list of sources? "Ibid." would belong in the footnotes or endnotes. At least that's how it was when I wrote my undergrad thesis. I'll grant I'm not a fancy neuroscientist (drink!). She might be a lot more likable if she didn't try so hard to let us know she's S-M-R-T.

https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/who-is-mattea-roach-nova-scotia-woman-to-appear-on-jeopardy-1.5848875 "From Halifax...currently lives in Toronto," per this source. A few cute tweets about her family, support for her where they're from, etc

I did think that was a tough FJ clue! Again, 2/3 onstage got it, so maybe it's just me. My brain was stuck on games with a global focus like Pandemic or Risk (although I knew both of those were wrong). I'm sure Life is not relatable to "literally everyone on Earth." It's very much a game of first world problems / decisions. Actually it strikes me as a sort of paean to the fantasy of living in Levittown with 2.5 children, which is just not for me. Maybe that's why I didn't think of it! I could definitely have gone without the laugh track after the "Anchorman" clue. This isn't Big Bang Theory, producers. If someone says something funny, we'll catch on and laugh. Promise.

It's certainly a matter of taste rather than anything objectively wrong, but it seems to me that it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to have realized in late January that such a flip clue about Putin's strongman tendencies might age badly before airing. I'd rather they err on the side of caution, or common sense, than keep airing distracting disclaimers for those who don't know that these shows tape well in advance. Loath though I am to agree with Blossom, I don't think D&D has gotten any more "cool" than it was when Camron was in school either. He's just grown beyond caring about what the mainstream considers "cool" and has found more of his tribe than he had at that time. And good for him! Life's too short to follow the "cool" crowd.

Your last comment gives me a little hope! I don't see myself paying for another streaming service in the near future, but maybe I'll share it with a friend one of these days or something like that. All you say about how ratings are measured and what is considered a high number these days is true. I guess I was just caught off guard. Netflix, which I do subscribe to, doesn't release any ratings. I don't think I'd ever seen average same-day viewing figures for any show, certainly not one considered very successful, measured in the hundreds of thousands. It's a good thing that our culture is less monolithic than in the past, but the drift to different media "islands" sometimes makes me feel isolated. I don't know too much about Delaware, but I know the three largest cities are Dover, Newark, and Wilmington. By the time the second player guessed incorrectly, I would've been set if I were the third! Don't ask me to name a fourth, though. (Probably the closest I could've gotten was remembering that Bethany Beach is in Delaware, but I couldn't've confidently tell you whether there is a town by that name, at least until I looked it up just now and saw there is.) One reason I think the book stuck with me is that, IIRC, it ends fairly abruptly with the father's death. At that age I had basically no experience with the death of those close to me so it was a very powerful idea that the family would support each other and get through a devastating loss, which recovery I eventually read about in the sequel. I'll have to dig my copy out and read it again, now that I'm older and perhaps wiser.