WicketyWack

"It's King Snow. ... or is it King Jon?" "Doesn't matter"

If the character of Howard — professional, well groomed, conservative, handsome Howard — also sported a mullet or a spiky shag, we'd all be talking I think.

There was a bit of foreshadowing about Toby's collapse. When he came in initially, he was pretty sweaty and gasping for breath. When he came down the stairs with Kate, he was definitely gasping and wheezing, though that was to be expected given the timing I guess. Then in the ending montage you see him lifting the littler girl up and it looks like he's struggling. I wasn't surprised at all when he finally dropped the plates and hit the floor. Yeah I'll say it: when it comes to Toby, I'm firmly on the "bye Felicia" train. I will feel bad for Kate in the show but good Lord get off my screen and get her a better storyline. And, who grows up celebrating Christmas but doesn't know the name of Santa's reindeer? WTF Rebecca and Randall.

Erin's look was so hands-down the worst to me that I am still mad she didn't get the auf. Your mom has to wear a lab coat to work so you make her a 10 times bigger, uglier, permanent lab coat? And then the dress was a 70s preteen party dress. She has maxed out her credit with those early wins, time to get rid of her. Laurence's daughter looks like a young Whitney Houston to me. I was also surprised she was not in the top three or the winner strictly based on the fact that she's a teenager with a model figure, the gold standard for past "real woman" challenge wins. I found Laurence's look for her to be very boring tho. I was surprise she didn't step it up and make her something killer that only a teenager with a model figure could wear... she would've had this challenge in the bag. But the girl also did seem very reserved. i'm not a huge fan of hip-hop and never heard of Bahamadia until now. When I Googled her I was super impressed, she's very respected in the hip-hop community. I like her music and she was a trailblazer for women in hip-hop back in the day. There's not a lot of room in hip-hop for gay black men and I wonder if that has something to do with her and Mah-Jing's complicated relationship. The tension between the really was palpable. I'm glad they had this experience to bring them closer together. I have to say, I was not as crazy about her look as the judges were, it kind of reminded me of Darth Vader's helmet. But she asked for "origami" and to look like a ninja and Mah-Jing delivered on both counts. The origami top part looked a little contrived but hey, that's what she asked for. Glad Rik pulled out the win for mom, yeah he needs to pay her back! What a gift. I wonder why AARP went all out with this prize? They could've dropped 5K each on them and everyone would've still been delighted and no one would've been the wiser. And it's not like AARP got this great product placement, I mean… no one's going to look back on this as "the AARP challenge" but just the "real woman challenge of season 15." I don't know, I just feel like AARP's 50K could be better served helping… ya know… seniors.

She just doesn't strike me as the type of person who is going to wear party clothes from the night before on a plane ride but then go through the trouble of doing her hair showing that she did care how she looked that morning. Ahhh but remember, what's dressy in Boulder was casual to Patsy. A cashmere sweater and dress pants, to me, would be something she'd wear on a plane. And her stepkids would never know she'd worn those clothes the night before, so she wouldn't mind. Now, if they'd been at the dinner the evening before and would recognize the outfit? Never.

I don't put much stock in Patsy wearing the same clothes as the night before. As someone else pointed out, she was a secret slob and she might not have done laundry in a while. Also I believe she'd gained weight in the past year and maybe a bit more during the holidays ... she might not have had a lot of outfits that fit her properly. She mentioned in one interview coloring her own hair in the day or two leading up to JonBenet's murder. I would think that a woman of her means would never EVER allow her hair to come into contact with box color -- they make appointments in high-end salons. So her behavior was, to say the least, not predictable or consistent with someone of her wealth.

Ok -- if the scenario that this show presents is accurate, then the Ramseys were horrified to discover that their beloved older child had just accidentally killed their beloved younger child -- Patsy's favorite, by most accounts. Then they stage a kidnapping to cover up for him. If you look at JonBenet's throat injuries, you see the garotte was not just placed around her throat and pulled tightly. There is a deep furrow down her throat where the garrote was first applied and tightened, then abrasions (including one very deep one) indicating that the garotte was pulled higher and tighter up her throat to its final position. So the person choking her took some time doing it. The nail marks were found above and below the garotte, with the half-moons pointing in both directions (so the nails were above and below the item doing the choking) and I don't think this would have happened if it had been a shirt collar -- you would only have found nail marks above the collar, not below it, because a small child's fingernails wouldn't be able penetrate fabric enough to break the skin. Anyway, I would liked to have seen this show address the presence of those half-moon nail marks on her throat and they didn't touch on it -- didn't even mention it. That seems like a big omission to me. Also ... this is the big sticking point to me ... I'm trying to imagine parents or a parent who just found out their much loved child has been killed, and the first thing they do while her body is still warm is to rape her with a paintbrush and throttle her with a garrote to the point that it leaves abrasions and deep furrows up and down her throat? ... I just can't see that happening. The Ramseys have never shown themselves to be violent to that degree before or since that night, and that's not the action of a parent who has just suddenly and unexpectedly lost a much loved child. Most parents, if faced with an unconscious or newly dead child, would rush the kid to the hospital or call an ambulance to try to save her. They had no way of knowing how severe the head injury was. There was no swelling or broken skin. The pathologists at the autopsy didn't recognize there was a head injury with the naked eye. So parents who believe their much loved child was accidentally killed by a sibling, start an elaborate kidnap staging to protect the other, and in the middle of it the injured child revives to the point where she's clawing at her neck ... and they keep going? Instead of rushing her to the hospital because OMG she's not dead ... they decide to finish her off instead? I can't see that happening at all.

Ok so it was all touch DNA -- but still, found on 2 separate garments that had not been manufactured together. So it didn't get on the clothing during the manufacturing process. They ruled out law enforcement & the Ramseys as being the source of the DNA, and have not yet identified the unknown male that the DNA came from. This show never touched on that, though others have.

I never believed Burke did it, but now I do see the possibility. However. There are a few things that they did not address in this show that still has me leaning more toward an intruder: - the half-moon scratches all along JonBenet's throat, which has been described as marks from her own fingernails clawing to get the garrote off, indicating she was conscious when the garrote was applied; - IIRC, the stranger's DNA on JonBenet's underwear was not "touch" DNA but from a bodily fluid; i.e. semen; and the same DNA was found years later as "touch" DNA on the waistband of her pants. So 2 different garments, 2 different time periods, 2 different types of DNA, same person who wasn't a Ramsey; - the footprint found in the basement of someone wearing hiking boots that none of the Ramseys owned; - the footprint on the top of the suitcase; -The show's whole "JonBenet wasn't really sexually assaulted" position took me by surprise as it's always been reported that she was, with forensic evidence pointing to sexual assault. Lou Smit said her sexual assault was violent. Most notably, it has been reported that someone raped her vaginally with the paintbrush handle. I just can't see any parents doing this to their (favorite) child that had been accidentally killed just minutes ago, even to protect another child. If the BDI theory is correct, that means John or Patsy actually finished JonBenet off with the garrote ... and I can't see parents doing that to their golden child either. If there was any evidence she was alive after Burke supposedly hit her, I believe they would have rushed her to the hospital. - Going by what Lou Smit said, a blow to the head of that magnitude would cause immediate swelling that would be noticeable in a living person, and the swelling in JonBenet's head was minimal. That, plus the fingernail marks on her throat, led him to believe the blow to the head came after she was killed with the garrote. The one BIG thing that makes me think it could actually have been Burke was during the interview where they asked about the pineapple -- his "Oh" when it dawned on him what that was. That was recognition.

Neoprene is stiff and can be easily molded to create garments that hold their structure. Most of the neoprene garments I've ever seen are on the racks at Saks Off Fifth, Neiman Marcus Last Call or Nordstrom Rack. They started out as super high-end designer garments that ended up in the outlet store, mostly because they tend to develop annoying vertical snags and pulls in the material. I tried on a neoprene dress once and dare I say I liked it on me -- and I am very much an "everyday woman" size 12 and very picky about what I wear. But I didn't buy it because of neoprene's snag-run issues. I haaaaate, hate hate hate drop crotches and surprisingly I liked Jenni's look -- because the crotch was so dropped that it was practically a skirt. I have only ever liked one other drop-crotch outfit in my life, also on Project Runway, by designer Alexandria in Season 12 -- and also because it looked more like a skirt. So I guess I just like skirts.

According to the most recent round of shows, the duct tape put over her mouth and the cord used to bind and choke her were not found anywhere in the house.

I lost a child too. My infant son died suddenly and unexpectedly. I didn't react in the way I would have thought a "normal mother" would react to her baby's death. I went into a crazy state of shock. For 3 days after he died, I didn't cry. I was numb. I was polite. I was distant. It felt like I was standing outside of my body watching it be controlled by someone else. Everyone told me later that my behavior creeped them out more than anything. I learned later this is not unusual in situations like this, but it was BIZARRE for me. Had my son died under mysterious circumstances, I know now that I would have been the primary suspect, partly based on my behavior, and that thought terrifies me to this day. So, I will say that "behavior of grieving parent" is not ever a "clue" or a "tell" in my book. Not even close.

Because the #1 job of *any* business is (A) to get more business for itself. Any PR firm that specializes in crisis management would LOVE to have John and Patsy Ramsey as clients ... what better way to advertise your business than to have the entire world know that these people had the money to hire literally anyone else in the world and they chose YOU? If someone in a PR firm tried to tell John and Patsy Ramsey to take their super high-profile business elsewhere, that person would be fired, and for good reason. "Providing excellent client service" is a function of many businesses but that is (B). It might and should lead to (A), if the business is ethical, but let's not forget that (A) is the primary goal in EVERY business out there. John Ramsey was tipped off by a law enforcement insider that he and Patsy were being targeted from day one and that he should lawyer up and he did. And it was SMART of him to do so. The attorney, *I presume*, suggested they hire a PR firm because the Ramseys let's face it were WEIRD. They were never going to play well with the public and they needed help and they hired it. SMART. If you truly think the Ramseys did it, then you also have to acknowledge that they did not spend one second behind bars. So I would say that hiring attorneys and a PR firm right off the bat was pretty damn smart.

This second installment was hard for me to watch. More so than the first, I felt horribly sorry for Burke. I don't think he did it and I don't think he knows who did it. I could practically feel chronic anxiety coming off him in waves through the screen. If he and his family are truly innocent (and after nearly 20 years of being obsessed with this case, I have arrived at the conclusion that they are) ... what happened to all 3 of them after losing JonBenet is beyond traumatic. Burke struck me as someone who has lived with intense public pressure, scrutiny and scorn that none of us could possibly relate to. I think it has affected him in ways we can't even imagine.

This second installment was hard for me to watch. More so than the first, I felt horribly sorry for Burke. I don't think he did it and I don't think he knows who did it. I could practically feel chronic anxiety coming off him in waves through the screen. If he and his family are truly innocent (and after nearly 20 years of being obsessed with this case, I have arrived at the conclusion that they are) ... what happened to all 3 of them after losing JonBenet is beyond traumatic. Burke struck me as someone who has lived with intense public pressure, scrutiny and scorn that none of us could possibly relate to. I think it has affected him in ways we can't even imagine.