Kathira

Good game. I was also rooting for nerdy Jesse, but Matt doesn't bother me. So far, at least, he's been keeping the antics to the intro and then settling down. For FJ, I could see Orson Welles in my mind, but I had to concentrate for a second to clear my mind of every thing else about him - Rosebud, Mercury Theater, War of the Worlds, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Chimes at Midnight - to allow his name to float up. My brain was trying to be helpful, but sometimes it just needs to shut up!

Glad to have a librarian winner. I'm not one myself, but I have several friends and relatives who are. Frankenstein was definitely an instaget, as well as the Burj Kalifa. If we're selecting our best categories - I'll take science fiction and fantasy in books, tv and films. I'm pretty good on movies generally, British royalty, ancient, Biblical, classical and medieval history. I slept through American history and politics (and I wish I was sleeping through it now). I'm Ok on science and medicine, as long as it's not too obscure or technical. And Latin. I'm good at Latin.

What a great word! I use one too, when I sign cards and things like that. Fun vocabulary add. Now I just need to find ways to work it into everyday conversation. Although if I ever get on Jeopardy I'll make sure to skip it. LOL

I thought maybe it was dried unicorn poo. Or other unicorn emission. She did say it was from a very rare magical creature and unicorns are white. I agree, I'm not super happy with Poppy. There are enough characters without her and she seems like a disruptive element, when we already have plenty of those.

Missed this Friday's show, due to my station showing a Black History Month special. My DVR tried to record it on a later airing, but it turned out to be a Ninja blender infomercial. I doubt there's any useful way to complain about this without seeming like a crank, but at least they could have scheduled it overnight correctly. I take it Alan of the annoying signature and general "extraness" won?

This was the first time in a while that a contestant has finished in the red, isn't it? Rob's a good player - he has his annoying tics, but he's not intolerable. I got Ladysmith (a disappointing miss), vietnam, Chinatown, TE Lawrence and the Exorcist. FJ was an instaget. Me too! I wanted to say either Iceland or Sweden. Durr.

In some ways, the rich were worse off than ordinary people, who could easily use folk remedies like mustard plaster. They had to use doctors who in that era were little better, and in many cases probably worse, than medieval quacks. (Mercury vapors for syphilis? Poor Ernst.) Actually, I was thinking how lucky V & A were that all of their 9 children lived to adulthood. Before modern times, it wasn't unusual for families to have only a few children survive the wide range of childhood diseases and injuries. We take our modern medicines and vaccinations for granted, but there's a lot of stuff out there that can kill you, especially if you're very young, or old.

She had 9 children in 17 years - that's an average of one every two years, not really that much space, especially when you consider that a pregnancy takes nine months. If there were gaps in between children, it's more likely that Victoria had miscarriages than that she withheld sex. If she miscarried early, she might not have even realized it, and even if it was a few months in, I would not be surprised if there was no record of it. That kind of thing was very much hushed up. Even today, it's such a taboo topic that many women who experience it don't know how common it is. It can also take a bit for ovulation to restart after a pregnancy, although since Victoria was such a "fertile Myrtle" it seems like she didn't have an issue with that!

OK, I take back my suggestion that Frank could be on the autism spectrum. He doesn't get that excuse - he was just a full-on annoying jerk. I'm not usually this happy when contestants lose, but he was pretty close to intolerable. So much that I forgot to make note of any TS's I got. I did get the FJ though.

This episode reminded me of Star Trek TNG's The Inner Light, where Picard lives out a life on an planet in his mind. It wasn't quite at that level (Patrick Stewart was robbed of an Emmy), but it had that quality. At the end I wondered if they could have found the key piece sooner if they had dug around a bit, but I think the point was that the solution to a design representing the ineffable beauty of the world (or something like that), could only be found after they had lived a lifetime dedicated to it. I like the idea that the solution was their lives, well lived. Eliot's sad, amazed comment "we had a family" at the end made me tear up a little. I like to think that that Q & E loved each other in whatever form that took. That that's what the true beauty of the world is - a lifetime of love and caring and dedication. I love this show.

I knew that Buffy's Giles was a librarian. There's very few episodes of the show where they aren't doing research on the various baddies in the library, at least until the later seasons after they graduated fron high school. And even then, Giles was always the guy with the books. Loved that show. Also got The Time Traveler's Wife. That's me - sci-fi and fantasy girl. Frank was very annoying. It's not good to diagnose people from seeing them for a few minutes on tv, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was on the autism spectrum.

That was an exciting game. It looked like a runaway for Marty, but then he missed a couple and the others came up on him. I'm glad he won, though - I like him. I got shell shock, but not Shropshire. I agree, Dom got points for curling, but button mashing and the big, creepy grin he flashed when he knew the camera was on him made me glad he lost.

Yeah, Bruce really seemed like he hit the wall. Joe redeemed himself for some bottom dishes recently. The Quickfire was fun, even if most of the dishes weren't great. I loved Chris and his pastry experience - the Creamy Brown Brother, Doctor Chocolate - too funny.

I had a complete brain fart on the FJ for this one. I knew the CDC was in Georgia but I literally couldn't come up with any appropriate universities. All I could think of was Johns Hopkins, which I knew was wrong. I always feel a little sympathy for the contestants when they freeze on FJ.

Riverworld is one of those books that's hard to adapt well to the screen. It's so sprawling and high concept and weird and over-the top all at the same time. I totally loved the historical characters and the wild visual ideas, but they need a strong editing hand. Asimov's Foundation was an answer on Jeopardy recently, wasn't it? I think they got it.

Riverworld! Altered Carbon! And both are or have been tv series as well as books. I'm always sad when the contestants don't know science fiction. It's one of the types of categories I can almost always clean up with. Sean's a good player, but he definitely bugs.

Actually, he did. Alex mentioned it. In addition to being born there, he wrote a song called "Oklahoma Hills" which is the state folk song. Oklahoma has more than one state song, which was part of the clue. I never heard of it either, but I did know he was born there and that along with the obvious show tune put me over the top mentally to the answer. And, should it ever come up in a Jeopardy queston, Oklahoma also had a state rock song, at least for a while. It was "Do You Realize??" by The Flaming Lips. They're from Oklahoma, too. LOL Sadly, New York's state song is that stupid "I Love New York" which was written for an ad campaign. There are so many great New York songs, although I suppose they all refer to New York City rather than the whole state.

Oklahoma! OK! It was one of those where I had to squinch up my whole face to think, but I got it in plenty of time to write it down. I like the new champ, Jenny. She seemed really genuinely happy whenever she knew the answers.

Well, annoying as he is, Ryan is pretty good player and risky with his wagers, which is always fun to see. The football stumper category was hilarious. I didn't get any of them either. I got Lawrence of Arabia, tabouleh, Althea Gibson and indigent. Peter O'Toole was so great, so fully formed as an actor in Lawrence of Arabia that people forget it was his film debut, although like so many Brit actors, he had spent time on the stage. Poor Althea Gibson. Forgotten already. I was stumped on FJ at first but then got Kerouac at the last second. I wouldn't have had time to write it down.

OK, I agree, Ryan is annoying. I liked him initially because he looks a bit like an old boyfriend of mine, and it turns out there's a reason he's an ex. LOL

I feel like she thought maybe "on Tyne" (there is an English place named that way), and then remembered the "th" category and got stuck. I still like Ryan. He definitely reminds me of my old boyfriend. And he's good on history stuff, which I love. I also went for Icarus for FJ. Oh well.

Because of course they do. And the capital of South Dakota is pronounced Peer. I live in Rochester, NY, where we have a suburb called Charlotte, pronounced sherLOTT, and another called Chili, pronounced CHAI-lai (rhymes with jai-alai). No one really knows why.

The Treaty of Paris, Neil Armstrong, Princess Grace, The Ice Storm, yeah, that was bad. On the plus side, I am in love with Ryan. If he was blond, he would be the spitting image of an old boyfriend of mine crossed with my husband (35 years ago, but still). What can I say, I have a thing for pencil-neck geeks. LOL And he's going to Iceland to study medieval Viking history. He's perfect.

I got all those tonight, too. My son keeps saying I should go on the show, but I know there's way too many categories that would completely defeat me. I like Rachel. At least she's reasonably fast on the category calling.

I was rewatching this episode and was curious about them showing a black actor presenting the scene from Othello. I thought it was usually done in blackface, up through modern times. (Sir Laurence Olivier did it in blackface for a movie in 1969.) I checked and it turns out that there was a famous African-American actor named Ira Aldridge who performed the role in London in the time period and it is at least theoretically possible that Victoria could have seen him. Watching the scene again, sure enough, Victoria calls him Mr. Aldridge. Between that and things like the Boy Jones, it's these nice little details that make me really enjoy this show. I knew about Ada Lovelace and was glad to see her included, especially the nice little detail that she was Byron's daughter.