aemom

Your list just cracked me up. Thanks for the laugh that I needed today!

Not exactly. They are responsible for booking and paying for flights for themselves and their camera and sound person which they use a CC to pay for. They must also book economy class. If they can get a free upgrade, then good on them. If the show has chosen to pre book flights on certain legs, then that’s different and they use that.All other expenses come out of their stipend which is doled out in whatever format the show chooses. This season, it's been that BMO card.

I'm so glad the brothers did the synchro. Those young girls must have been so excited to hear that they were going to be on the race and would have practiced the routine a lot beforehand. They would have been crushed if nobody had done it.

I was surprised at how badly Kristen cramped up. I bet that the show designers weren't expecting that to happen. It was bothering me that they kept saying "X team to arrive" and "not Team number X." Then the TBC made sense. Poor Kristen probably just wanted a massage at that point.

I actually think that Brian and Cynthia were smart not to U Turn anyone. They were in front and had no risk of being eliminated at the risk of bad feelings from the brothers. I personally would only have U Turned somebody at that point if I was in the back, or had incurred a penalty and was at risk of elimination. Now for the second U Turn that will happen in a later leg? Then I would seriously consider using it since it's closer to the end and smarter strategically. YMMV.

Vanessa: "Oh my God. We were first and now we have a penalty. " No, you were first because you didn't finish and TOOK a penalty you numnut.

She actually got her TV start on a few episodes of Buy Me (I really miss that show), and she then decided to start her own realty company. She was popular on her episodes so I think that HGTV approached her to do Property Shop. I think that she felt it would be good publicity to drum up business. Then the show was canceled and her company has grown quite a bit. She probably doesn't have time for TV shows anymore. She is quite the character - perfect for TV.

Tatiana still has her real estate company and still sells houses, but she's not on TV anymore.

The lady corrections officers team that were almost eliminated. He had actually never swam without a life jacket before. There are 3 basic rules for being on the Amazing Race: 1. Know how to drive a stick shift 2. Know how to swim 3. Know how to ride a bike. And always, ALWAYS: Read the clue. Then read the clue again. Good first start. Glad that team was eliminated. She seemed to have the potential to be a real whiner, though I felt bad for him with his dyslexia.

Finally watched this episode. I FF through the rape scenes because reading them was bad enough, I could not bear to watch them. There were quite a few changes from the book, but overall I liked the episode and the acting was phenomenal. Looking forward to the change of pace and scenery of Season 2, though based on a few things I've read, I don't think that it starts the way the book starts.

I've read all the books and I have been dreading these scenes since the show began. This is the only part of all the books that really bothers me TOO much. I fast forwarded through the hand smashing and the nail scene last week. So some minutes, but not a huge portion of the show. I really need to know: About how many minutes of horrible scenes do I have to ff through here?

Many thanks lianau and WatchrTina. That was very helpful. :-)

This has always confused me somewhat and now that the next episode will cover it, I'm hoping that someone can shed some light. Jamie wants Claire to leave him and she drugs up the room with opium and pretends to be BJR. Jamie and Claire get into the physical altercation followed by sex. After that whole episode, Jamie is willing to have Claire stay with him. I really don't understand why that made him change his mind?

When I miss a show and watch it on my laptop, I just connect it to my TV to watch it with an HDMI cable. Works quite well, maybe an idea for others.

I liked that the lead kept changing, but what a lame finale. Catch and kick a ball, ride with some cowboys, rappel off a building to find a clue, then drive a truck, and put some photos in order. Really pretty easy stuff for the last leg. Looking forward to TAR Canada this summer because overall, I have been impressed with their challenges.

I was trying to figure out how I missed that scene. We saw Tobias in that other episode and we've seen plenty of sex and violence so I'm not sure how they decide what to cut. But when everyone was talking about the scene about how Jamie puts on his kilt in that earlier episode, I was "huh?" I think that was cut too.

Kaley, Jim, and Johnny are now each getting $1 million per episode and Kunar and Simon combined are over 1$ million. Factor in the cost of the other cast members, plus paying everyone behind the scenes, this show is VERY expensive, and they need to sell as much commercial time as possible. I'm not in favor of the shorter shows, but I see why they are happening.

Actually they do have a Brita. I've seen Joan take one out of the fridge a few times over the years.

I totally agree. I especially skim over the long surgical diagnostics and/or procedures. It's not the quality of her writing that keeps me reading, it's the story. Though some parts of the story over time I have preferred over the others.

We definitely don't all sound alike. You can hear differences depending on what part of the country you live in. Also some terminology differs from province to province as well. Pretty much like my experiences when visiting the States.

This show has an interesting line to walk. It is based on a beloved series of books and the readers are the core audience of the show. If you deviate too much from the books, you will alienate them, so the show has to incorporate important scenes from the book while at the same time make an interesting TV show. I will say that in terms of the spanking/beating scene, ShowJamie comes off far better than BookJamie. You also want to try and get non-book readers to watch your show. It's tough out there these days because there are so many shows to watch. Nudity and violence will often get male viewers to try a show out. But is the nudity gratuitous in an attempt to get more viewers? I don't think so. There is a LOT of sex in these books, far more than we have seen on the show. Jamie and Claire are very passionate people and of all the sex scenes that they've shown, they've all had a purpose to drive the story forward. First there was Claire and Frank reconnecting after the war. There was the wedding episode, the near rape of Claire which brought her back to reality and had her running for the stones, and finally the reconcillation sex where they both came to an understanding of things would be between them from now on. If you didn't show nudity, people would roll their eyes and say that isn't realistic because most people don't have sex with their clothes on. I don’t think that the nudity is gratuitous at all. Game of Thrones is the show with gratuitous sex. The other nudity has typically occured with Black Jack which also makes sense because as the psychopathic sadist he is, he's going to want to make his victims as uncomfortable as possible.

I listened to the podcast with Ron Moore and he said that they chose the "lighter" music so that the audience would know that everything was going to be OK. They also said in the podcast that they refer to it as a spanking, not a beating. This scene has always been controversial long before the series ever came along. It is only in very recent times that corporal punishment has become unacceptable, period. Back in the 1950's my mother went to school with nuns where disobedience resulted in being struck on your knuckles with a ruler. Children were routinely spanked (and some still are today). Not that long ago, a wife could not charge her husband with rape. Thankfully the world is becoming more enlightened, but 250 years ago, this sort of punishment was considered as routine and innocuous as a "time-out" is today. People had to follow the rules because life was very dangerous. If you didn't, there were going to be consequences because other people might get killed as a result of your actions. Jamie himself stated that if a man had done what Claire had done, there would have been consequences far more serious -- even possibly being killed. But because she was a woman, she got off "easy" with the spanking/beating. Jamie did this because he was expected to by the clan. He would have lost everyone's respect had he not. It was also a turning point for Jamie where he learned a lot about how he should deal with Claire and about himself and how he sees the world. It was a plot point that was supposed to drive the story forward. Was it controversial? Absolutely. But controversial situations are often what really drives character development in fiction and real life.

If Sherlock is so adamant about not wanting children, you would think that he would have had a vasectomy to eliminate the possible risk with anyone.

Killer Fatigue

I was going through eps on my PVR and I was watching the episode with a flight attendant who was moving to Botswana to help start up an airline. Her mom flew in to help her find a place. Her budget was a strict $600/month. I saw the 3 places that she visited, and then after the commercial break, HGTV started a new episode without finishing the one I was watching. "Epic fail!" as my kids would say. I never saw which one she picked and how it was going with her. First ep I ever saw in Botswana so I found it rather interesting. Does anybody remember this one? What happened?