Lugal

This one was fun, and we got to see how talented Rose McIver is. She has an incredible singing voice, but the scene where she taps with the plate on her head, that's skill. Followed by Jay's "Where are all our plates?" Pete's still smug, but after seeing him taken down a peg or two last week, he doesn't seem quite as bad. I can see why Alberta would go there, since we saw her passed over for jobs despite her talent, so I can see how she could believe in Sam but still want a hedge. And that was probably the best plan. But even Flower points out that telling Flower was the weak part. I didn't either, he was attracted to Marissa, the pretty girl who happened to show up in Jay's dreams. If anything, it was more like he was dating Jay's imaginary friend. Really, Sass should have had Sam comp the real Marissa a few nights at the Woodstone, so he could meet the real one.

When it's the situation of "Giant squid-monster eats the Empire State Building" you can pretty much bet that nearly every channel is going to cover it. But in that situation, rather than telling them to turn on the TV, it's just as easy to tell them, "Holy @#%& shit! There's giant squid-monster eating the Empire State Building!!"

Racism and misogyny definitely played a part and I won't deny it, but I think the economy really was a big factor. I saw something about 14% fewer people who make less than $100,000 a year came out to vote. They didn't see anything in either of the policies offered, and I can't really blame them. People are struggling and Biden/Harris failed to offer them anything. Trump didn't offer them anything either, but was able to at least play lip service to their concerns. Like the old saying, "You can't con an honest man, but you can con a desperate one." Due to an accident of history, mostly due to the pandemic, under Trump the US built up an almost European-style social welfare system and people found their situations somewhat more stable. Then under Biden all that went away. Now a lot of it was outside the control of either Trump or Biden, but just the optics meant Biden, and by extension Harris, was already running uphill. And since 2020 and the inflation crisis, nearly every incumbent government has been turned out. I don't think a lot of people voted for Trump, so much as voted against Biden and Harris. It didn't help with Harris running to the right and trying to court Republicans who were never going to vote for her. All of which, unfortunately, left only the alternative of Trump. I'm willing to bet that within six months, when Trump has failed to solve their problems, people will have turned on him.

I agree the show should avoid current electoral politics, both to avoid alienating the viewers, but also because most of the ghosts are old enough that politics really doesn't matter.

Tariffs are different than inflation, because by slapping a tariff on something that cost will be passed onto the customer (especially the 100% or more that Trump talks about). Tariffs targeted are to protect domestic manufacturing. However we don't have any manufacturing here anymore, we're dependent on cheap goods from China. But Trump throws them around like crazy and he just guaranteed that a lot of prices on necessities will go up, possibly by a lot (And China has plenty of other markets to sell to). Will it stimulate domestic manufacturing here? Maybe, maybe not, and either way, it will take years to spin up and a lot of that manufacturing will be automated anyway. I think a lot will get hung up in the courts for the next few years, and some of it will get stopped, but some will get through. It can cause a lot of damage in the meantime.

At least with regard to Palestine it's like the old joke, "I'd settle for a second." I can't blame people who find both candidates unacceptable and support for the killing of your extended family definitely qualifies there. If the line can't be drawn at genocide, then where? That said, I understand Kamala is between a rock and a hard place, if she comes out for Gaza, then AIPAC cash will flood into Trump's campaign. The question is if she distanced herself enough from Biden to make a difference.

Wayfair is one of their big sponsors. Gotta show off the merch!

From what I read, it seems like Jay will be able to see the ghosts when his family is there for Christmas, which I think will be hilarious.

When a friend passed last year, I found myself listening to Wardruna's Helvegen a lot. I recently found this live version by Einar Selvik with Eivør and the Danish National Symphonic Orchestra.

That sounds about right for Patience. She's that rigid that it is the work of the devil for Sam to talk to ghosts (and the toast thing), even if Patience is herself one of the said ghosts. I think it may have been more of a matter of not knowing what to do with Sass in the episode. European witch beliefs probably don't map too easily into a Lenape framework (Even Thor calling Sam a völva lacks condemnation since it's translated just as much to seeress as it's translated to witch and just does kind of describe her). And if anyone can talk the others out of it, it would be Sass. I was hoping he would turn up at the end and say how he was smelling the food in the kitchen and ask if he missed anything. Anyone else feel for the Vietnam Vet Ghost? Poor guy survives the war, thinks he has a quiet farm upstate only to die and have someone move in who blows shit up all the time.

According to wikipedia, zippers were first patented in 1892, so for Hetty to have one before she died in 1895 would be quite the status symbol. The newest thing like a telephone. Also, Isaac is not exactly the type to "listen when other people talk" and having dealt with people like that IRL (and not for centuries like the ghosts would have) eventually you just give up trying. Look how long it took him to learn about dinosaurs. Isaac asked Sass if he knew about dinosaurs, Sass's response was: "Yes, because I pay attention."

Curious about that, I looked it up, and discovered that the good news is they would not have used lead paint on wallpaper. The bad news: a lot of Victorian green dyes and paints were colored with copper arsenite. Hopefully any lead and/or arsenic based paints would have been removed in subsequent remodels. Or at the very least they would have to be removed during Sam and Jay's renovation (which would up their costs tremendously). Otherwise, knowing there's lead or arsenic-based paint in the B&B will sends guests running out the door faster than SIN appearing in blood on the walls.

The Pilgrims (technically called Separatists) were a different sect than the Puritans. Close but not the same thing. I noticed that too. Maybe Carol just didn't feel like listening to him. It's not like he provides her a cheating opportunity. Now that Isaac thinks he's being a better person, he's getting even more insufferable. I do think it's a nice touch that the other ghosts didn't want him there. I think they all saw that as the ass-covering that it was especially since Frank knew Sam's history with regard to his girlfriends. And it's not like Jay really sold the "I'm super-conservative now" line. It could even come off as sweet that Jay's covering for his wife (as far as they knew). But her scapeghosting makes me wonder if she was seeing ghosts as a child.

It had to do with balancing the humours. If the fossil's a dinosaur bone, Isaac will be all over that. He's very peripheral. It doesn't matter.

Yes, thank you! That stupid thing fired up my inner nerd!. If it was a simple paternity test and they tested YDNA, they would have noticed that the sample from "Cody" was lacking a Y chromosome. OK, benefit of the doubt, maybe the lab just knew that it was a paternity test and they didn't know the sex of the people involved (Cody could be a girl's name too) but an autosomal DNA test would reveal a niece/uncle relationship. I assumed it was the writers remembering that those of us that like Sasha and Cody (we really do exist!) can't have nice things either.