salmondean

This episode was paaaaaaainful, especially the Mitch/Cam plotline. It sure was fun to watch Cam call a group of mostly POC kids "garbage" and "monsters" almost the entire time. I know the reveal at the end that the kids were actors was supposed to wipe the slate clean and I realized what was happening a little bit before the reveal, but the fact that I was like "yeah, Cam is enough of a jerk to viciously turn on a group of kids if he suspected they took one of his possessions" for so much of the plotline is...not great. Not to mention the fact that MITCH believed his own husband was genuine in saying all of those insulting things and just stood by and let him belittle them until he finally confessed. And was the part about Mitch saying he would just blame the missing clown on the "cleaning lady" supposed to be...funny? It's hard to believe that they were two of my favorite characters in season one. Combined with the grossness of the Manny plotline and the joke(?) about Alex missing the safety of female company, this episode felt even more out of touch that usual. I did like Phil's real estate themed lullabies though! That was cute

lol, I forgot about the face eating sideburns!!

haha, I actually like Jared's hair quite a bit. Aside from season ten at least when it looked like Sam had been attacked viciously with a flat iron every episode. That was atrocious. Now it looks much bouncier and floofy

I liked this episode more than I have the previous couple. Phil and Gloria tend to be very funny and/or sweet in their subplots together, and I thought they made a very cute fake couple in the photoshoot (...and phil was also kind of cute with that rando guy before he was booted out). Sometimes I think that Gloria/Phil would make a better couple than Claire/Phil and Jay/Gloria, especially now that they've really toned done Phil's borderline creepy crush on Gloria from the first couple of seasons that got so tiresome to watch. Now that he's more normal around her and affectionate in a way that feels more appropriate, their scenes are much more charming. And as much as it was initially dragged down by the whole "haha old people are too stupid to use technology" thing at the beginning, I thought the Claire and Jay plotline also ended up being pleasant. I agree with seacliffsal that they clearly have no idea what to do with Jay's character anymore, but there were some nice father/daughter moments and I thought the video tape thing was cute. As always, I didn't really care for the Cam and Mitchell subplot but at least we didn't have to watch Haley and Dylan being nonfunctional idiots again this week. Also, is it a new thing for the Principal of the school to be a bullying jerk to this extent? I can't remember if there have always been hints of him being that way or if it was just invented for this episode

To be honest, I just can't relate to the fact that the show seems to be making a big deal over Hailey being young and pregnant. She's like 25! I realize that being in your mid twenties doesn't mean you're automatically financially and emotionally capable of raising a child but she's not fresh out of high school and knocked up. But then again, most women in my family started popping out kids by the time they were 23 or 24 at the latest so that probably colors my perception. And I know that Hailey is too stupid to know how to save money but she does have a stable job (that she just got a promotion in) and Dylan inexplicably seems like he's going to do well in his future nursing role, so they're in a better place than a ton of pregnant couples I've known, even considering the crazy housing prices of LA. Also, I get that Phil and Claire don't want their grandchildren to be raised in a shitty little garage where owls will drop baby gophers on their heads or whatever but I would NEVER let my dumb kid and her dumb boyfriend and their newborn twins live in my basement. They're insane.

He looks amazing!! He's such a handsome man, and he looked adorable with those cats. He's been relatively active lately; I know he was on some show called Chesapeake Shores (which I don't watch) last year for a string of eps and I remember seeing him in Rizzoli & Isles a couple of years ago, although he looked much better in American Housewife. It's the beard, man. He wears it well.

Once again, I think they made very good usage of Franklin in this ep and his line about having FOMO cracked me up (as did Anna Kat's face when he showed her his chickenpox). I don't often like Kathryn as a character, but I thought her plotline with Oliver and Taylor was actually pretty funny. I loved the scene where she shoved Taylor into the bushes and she just bounced back up very nonchalantly while looking at her phone. Kathryn's mini-breakdown over realizing that she had been broken up with ("my only rebound was a crow I befriended by feeding him berries through the window!") also made me laugh. Katy and Greg's plotline was cliche and not terribly interesting, but it still had some fun moments and those actors work very well together so I can't really complain.

I jump around a bit when listening to the podcast, so I heard a few references in future eps (in the successful Mr. Show and failed Kids in the Hall submissions I think) to the time that Joe submitted an SNL ep to the canon and promptly talked himself out of it, so I was so excited when I actually got to the ep and it didn't disappoint! I also remember hearing a reference or two to a GI Joe centric episode that people apparently complained about, but I got to it yesterday and thought it was super funny. Cold Slither, jesus christ.

I love the tapeball pictures! Jared looks so cute in that one.

lol, I actually just listened to that one earlier this afternoon!! I had to pause it at a couple of points to regain my composure because I was at work. The way that Joe eventually began to criticize the episode more than anyone else while Dave and Tara periodically yelled "what are you doing???" as he continued to sabotage himself and the way he defended himself by saying"this is an experimental canon submission!"was so funny. I almost lost it when he was finally like "I'm not voting for this." I also totally didn't realize that Joe was the one who originally came up with the "Will Dave Hate This?" segment! Such a fun recurring part of the show. That Under the Dome thing was also very funny, as was any time they discussed the show and Tara would have an emotional breakdown over how stupid it was and how much she hated recapping it

lmao, Claudia. I understand desperation, but no one should be that willing to sentence themselves to marriage with David. Nothing is worth that! Also, when I was scrolling through the visual aids, I thought Pia was Shannen Doherty for a split second. There was less resemblance when I actually got a good look at her, but it would have been pretty funny if they brought Doherty back in a one episode guest spot late in the show, cast her in a totally different role, and never said anything about it.

I forgot about the water scene! It was pretty funny, you're right. Chandler looked so excited (and adorable in his little sweater vest thingy)

I really hated the plotline in The One with the Birth Mother where Erica mixes up Chandler and Monica's file with another couple's and Chandler (like a sane, reasonable person) wants to point out Erica's mistake while Monica decides to go along with the charade and pretend that she and Chandler are both doctors or whatever the other couple's professions were supposed to be. Aside from the fact that the ruse would have absolutely been discovered eventually even if Chandler hadn't convinced Monica to come clean, the whole thing made Monica look like a borderline psychopath. I know we were supposed to sympathize with her because the adoption process is extremely stressful and, as she pointed out, it could have been their only chance to have a baby but committing identity fraud in order to manipulate someone into giving you their child is horrifying and Monica's emotional breakdown when she was convincing Chandler to go along with her plan wasn't sold very well in my opinion. And then Erica decided to let them adopt her baby anyway because they admitted they were lying (eventually). What the hell? You aren't giving them $50 because they did the right thing and returned a lost wallet, that's a child. I would have kicked them out of the room. There's also an earlier ep during Joey's soap opera days where he dates someone obsessed with his character Drake that's really creepy in hindsight. The woman is literally delusional and genuinely believes that Joey is Drake and he goes along with it because she's hot (when previously, he seemed weirded out by the idea of a stalker because he assumed she was ugly). The fact that he tricked a mentally unstable woman into believing he was his own fictional character because he wanted to sleep with her was super grody and it's one of those eps that's aged extremely poorly. The other character's reactions to it were pretty gross as well from what I remember. That said, I still really like Monica and Joey! I just think those episodes made them come off very poorly

That's my main issue with the Nick/Lucifer plotline as well. I think it's something that could be done in an interesting way but, as you said, it's already a shortened season as it is. I thought it was bad enough spending so much time on Lucifer during season 12 when all the BMOL stuff was going on,especially since the plotlines rarely seemed to intersect in a way that was actually meaningful. I mean, I think the BMOL provided that egg thing in LOTUS or whatever but for the most part, it felt like the Lucifer plotline was from a totally different season. In fact, I very often forget that it was season 12 and often accidentally lump it into season 11's Lucifer shenanigans. And now in season 14 it looks like we're heading there again even though the Michael thing and the AU hunters seem like more than enough to sustain the season as far as plot goes. Not to mention they also need to resolve the whole "Heaven is all jacked up" storyline from last season.

I didn't care much for the epilogue but I agree with this. It happened over ten years ago, it's time to stop acting like JK Rowling murdered your childhood. I mean, she pretty much had to write some sort of epilogue and I don't think anything she could have come up with would have satisfied most people. It was just a tall order.